By Jesse Sawyer

Modern World, I’m not pleased to meet you; you only bring me down. Wake up in a haze; the day’s half-over and the night still lingers in the bloodshot eyes and bruised face staring back at you through the mirror. Stumble toward the stereo. Fall down upon knees hurting and pray to the altar of sonic salvation. Push Play with smoke-stained finger. Hold your breath while counting down from ten to nine to eight to seven. “Reading Disc,” my digital deity tells me. Six to five to four to three. Breath comes out in broken gasps. Two… One…

And the same ghost every night. And the same ghost every night.

The speakers erupt with drum-stabbed saturation. The same ghost every night. The same stereo mornings. Wolf Parade howls its criminal cry; saw-toothed vocals grate against jarring crescendos. The voice is torn, pouring forth from the darkness of a lost cause. And yet it is not defeated. Its desperation is its self-affirmation. Refusing to suffocate beneath the crushing world from whence it arises, this voice cuts through the smothering curtain of post-modern depression, and in that sublime moment in which the music breaks through the smog, we inhale the deepest gulp of fresh air imaginable. We are redeemed, despite it all.

I had a bad time tonight. Bad things happen in the night.

It’s hard to make sense of it all sometimes. Headspin nights crash into headache mornings. Neon angels float over aimless traffic. Walk from party to party. Empty conversation dribbles from the lips of a girl whose kiss might make it make some sense, if only for a moment.

And I don’t sleep. I don’t sleep. I don’t sleep till it’s light.

Like moths to the lamplight we flutter to our next distraction.

I’ll believe in anything. You’ll believe in anything.

An empty generation. Generating nothing but static. Poisoned crops in fallow fields. I’ll believe in anything. You’ll believe in anything. I’ll hold you close to my empty chest. We’ll shine a light. We’ll be redeemed. We are not lost.

You’re nearing the end of the album. You have not moved from your prostration in front of the stereo. The sound of the last song reverberates through your hollow bones. A phoenix rising out of the ashes of a burnt-out generation. We’re fractured but not finished. Something matters, maybe. Maybe somehow something real. The end of the album. Vocals tremble. The parts, splintered in disparate directions, somehow come together. The last words of our morning-after secular service:

It’s getting better. It’s getting better.

This heart’s on fire. This heart’s on fire.

The stereo dies and you rise to your feet, eyes burning, mouth yearning for a new song to sing, a new crop to sprout from the salted fields of a scorched generation. You walk to class and wonder if it’s really a new world, or just a new mindset. You realize there is no difference and look at things like they really maybe matter. It’s just another morning.