The Motion Sick – The Truth Will Catch You, Just Wait...

Release Date: 1 January 2008 (Naked Ear Records)

Trying to ride the line between heavy themes and clever witticism, The Truth Will Catch You, Just Wait... seems to struggle, but never suffer, from a dichotomy of maturity and blitheness. The general feeling of the album is an expansive, lyrical effort that intellgently deals with modern motifs of gloom in pop form.

Download “Jean-Paul” (mp3)
Download “30 Lives” (mp3)

Stage Left

Howard drives his Ford Explorer. It is the time of the afternoon that he takes a break from rehearsal to pick up his daughter from school. Since he had such a major role, he typically wouldn’t be allowed to ditch out of rehearsal. Due to the recent circumstances, Howard arranged with the producers of the show to have this daily break.

Pulling out of the parking lot, he puts a new CD into the player. The windows up, the climate controlled, Howard is secluded from the precarious world outside. The Motion Sick’s The Truth Will Catch You, Just Wait… is an album that his daughter recently discovered. Originally, he played it because she liked. But it was remarkable how resonant the lyrics were becoming for Howard.

The play from which Howard had this momentary reprieve was Jean-Paul Sartre’s Dirty Hands. He played the part of Hugo. The play quickly establishes that Hugo has killed a prominent political leader, but the motive becomes the crux of this existential thriller. Hugo is sent to kill Hoederer for political reasons. After Hoederer makes a pass at Hugo’s wife, the murder is committed. Dirty Hands ultimately asks if Hugo carried out the slaying for personal or political reasons. How he justifies his actions ultimately lead to his punishment.

The play states, “I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.” It was easy for Howard to associate this play to the first track of The Motion Sick’s album, entitled “Jean-Paul.” The song is specifically about the death of French revolutionist Jean-Paul Marat. His murderer, Charlotte Corday, declared at her trial, “I killed one man to save 100,000,” before being sentenced to the guillotine. However, the song shares more with Sartre than just his first name.

“Jean-Paul” opens with some acoustic guitar strumming before the first lines, “Got a few demons/ That keep me up at night,” reside. The steady beat of the song underlines the hollow keyboard parts and the sharp guitar riffs as it builds to the refrain, “She didn’t do it for me/ Didn’t do it for love/ Did it for the country.”

It is rewarding for Howard to listen to this song as he drives to pick up his daughter. Connecting the lyrics to Dirty Hands feels like a reward. Of late it has been difficult for Howard to make any new personal connections. He has been distancing himself from everyone since his wife died six months ago. All connections, personal and literary, have been difficult to make. Everything seems to make him focus on his loss and struggle with how he will ever carry on.

The song “30 Lives” begins playing just before Julia lifts herself into the Explorer. The melody of this song rhythmically bounces with a retro feel.

“How was your day?”

“Good.” Julia gives that short answer, implying that specifics were not going to be shared.

“Anything exciting happen?”

She pauses for a few seconds before succinctly stating, “Ah, no.”

Before arriving at the refrain, the song describes an affection that lasts longer than life. “No matter what I do, yeah it's true/ I long to spend another 30 lives with you/ Yeah I do, I'd love to spend/ Another 30 lives with you” and “I won't know what to do without you/ If I'm spawned back up to life.” Howard completely shares the pain of this song, even though this is a pop song full of “ba-ba”s and truly undying passion. There have been times when he would choose to die if it meant he could be reincarnated in a life with his wife again. Now he begins to think I wonder if Julia feels this same way. She must. She always was closer to her mom. I can do my best, but how do I fill the shoes of a teenager’s mother who can’t be brought back. But where do I even start?

As the song repeats the refrain of “Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start,” Howard’s thoughts once again fill the time. Does Julia even know what ‘Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A Select Start’ means? When I was in college, I remember playing Contra and pressing that code in to get my 30 extra lives, but do any of the games on her Wii use that code? I doubt it.

“So, what are your plans for the afternoon?”

“I don’t know. No plans.”

And with that, there is another cloud of silence hanging in the air. Father and daughter are both dealing a too much on their own, but neither is addressing the other’s pain. And nothing is filling the void.

Howard is trying to move on, not because he wants to, but because he has to. Somehow he will still need to provide for Julia. And Julia, as a teenager girl, feels she needs her mom more than ever right now. She has so many questions that she’s not comfortable asking her dad. Instead, they both awkwardly sit in silence, alone with their own thoughts.

Howard is working again, as a lead nonetheless, but he is still in mourning. As “Losing Altitude” comes on, he again connects to the lyrics. “I feel like a planet/ That hasn’t got a moon/ Come orbit me and light night skies.” The ballad swells from acoustic guitar, piano, and organ to add the rich vocals and melodic guitar lines. With its celestial metaphors, however, the song treads into territory that Howard is not ready to traverse. The track moves on tos say, “But I won’t give up gravity or tides/ Or anything for you.” It isn’t about someone who is missing a lover, as Howard currently is. The narrator of this song is beckoning a lover, but not willing to give anything to the relationship.

Before the two closing numbers, one a Joy Division cover, the other a reprise of “30 Lives,” the album places the song “Some Lonely Day.” The allegorical lyrics are set on a stage and make reference to “an ancient text of truth,” “secret plots,” and being “full of gossip, lies, and death.” A pristinely overdriven guitar line guides this uptempo song as the lyrics assert, “So you learn your part/ And you play it well/ But don't improvise or sleep/ When the curtains close/ And you can't go home/ You might earn the role of the thief.”

Howard is back at rehearsal. They are working on Act 4 today. In scene 6, Howard’s character, Hugo, confidently asserts, “a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?”

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Comments

[The Motion Sick]

Thanks.

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