On An On – Give In

In the autobiographical 80s teen movie of my life, there are a couple of facts that I would like to have amended. Remedied, really. First, I would like I, protagonist to know how to drive. We don’t ever need to see him get behind the wheel of a car or anything crazy like that but it’s important that his having a license is – at the very least – implicit because the fact that I am thirty-four years old and still don’t is just stupid and I’m getting a little tired of talking about it. Secondly, I would like I, protagonist to demonstrate that he actually knows what to do when he finally gets the girl in the end (or the middle, whatever). I don’t care if this fact is demonstrated with a sloppy late-teen (read, legal) sex scene or a transcendentally confident kiss or shameless hummer in the woods by the moonlight with the crickets chirping and the owls hooting and it all ends too soon for readily identifiable comfort but unless the studio is expecting kids to pay their hard-lifted cash on a Hanekian meditation regarding the nightmarish awkwardness of misguided teen prudence and bull-headed dipshittery, he is going to need to show the audience he actually knows how to get some when offered.

Lastly, and this is perhaps the most critical of the three remedies (if not, the whole damn reason we’re all here today), the film needs to sound like On An On. Preferably, the film would feature a unique score by On An On but since we’re on the fast track here and I don’t think we have to dough to pull them off the road, perhaps we can just license the entirety of Give In because that record…man…THAT is the soundtrack to the young adult life I’ve always wanted to convey.

It’s tender pop with a sentimentalist’s slant weaving the unspoken undertow on which the teenage riot flits, hums and pounces. Often giddy, sometimes sad but ultimately true to the dust of Holden’s bones, Give In unfolds easily and assuredly belying the (mostly?) inorganic nature of the instrumentation at play to favor the warm, evocative nature of machines in the hands of a trio who from now on I can (and will) only ever envision as sunrise silhouettes.

And, no, it isn’t an accurate reflection of the tempest of bad skin and arrogance that really shapes our youth but we aren’t talking the real thing here. We’re talking daydreams, thin myths and Memorex. An ideal that favors the unfortunate ones, typecast and ready to be found. Freaks, weirdos, etc. who are pretty on the inside, idiosyncratic on the outside and really just need the right context to be perfect.

And, yes, I understand that we’re employing all sorts of rifts in the space time continuum by looking at a thoroughly modern band while plying the shop of 90s angst through a muslin memory of errant 80s clique survivalism but whatever, we’re all postmodernists here and I, protagonist IS “The Hunter.”

I mean, isn’t he?

Give In Tracklist:

01: Ghosts
02: Every Song
03: American Dream
04: The Hunter
05: All the Horses
06: Bad Mythology
07: War Is Gone
08: Cops
09: Panic
10: I Wanted To Say More

On An On - Give In, reviewed by Charles on 2013-09-18T16:20:18-07:00 rating 4.1 out of 5