About a month ago now, the scene celebrated the ten-year anniversary of an album that turned out to be instrumental in the pop-punk revival of the early 2010s and in what we call sadboi pop-punk: Under Soil And Dirt by Californian band The Story So Far. This record launched them into the stratosphere of the scene and turned them into powerhouses of the genre. Looking back, it's nothing short of impressive how a group of young people, who were virtually unknown, put out a piece of art, a collection of songs that became instantly iconic to many people, revived a genre on the rocks, and has largely stood the test of time. A decade down the line, it is still regarded as an important piece of music and, chances are, if you asked a pop-punk fan for music recommendations, they would put this on the list. (I know I would.)
Throughout the years, I have grown to love and appreciate The Story So Far and their music immensely, a story that could almost be a post of its own, with all its valleys and peaks, its adventures, started in my brother's old flat in suburban France, leading me all the way to a field in Chicago. Before we look back at this, if we ever do, we are going to celebrate Under Soil And Dirt. It is a collection of songs that have accompanied me for the past five years of my life, an album written by a young band, a record that takes the listener on a journey through all sorts of conflicting feelings, trying to make sense of them, loss in almost every sense of the word, anger, and the vague acceptance that human emotions can be ugly sometimes, but it's okay to experience them and get them out anyway.
Disclaimer before we start: when my brain decided to start writing about specific songs and albums, it somehow remembered I have an English degree that had a module on English and American literature, hence all the potential over-analysing. Also, I've got a big, probably hyperactive brain. Finally, if anything sounds vague, it's because I choose not to assume things about people.
The album opens on States And Minds, a mostly instrumental introduction, save for the line "I'm falling in and out again." It is a perfect way to set the mood and tell you almost exactly what is going to happen during the following thirty-two minutes.
I have to celebrate States And Minds merging right into the next track, Roam- it's one of the elements of music I find unbelievably satisfying. I am a sucker for songs seamlessly fading into each other. Roam is a live staple, and it feels liberating beyond words to shout "give up and go home, alone, and suffer some more" with everyone else in the crowd, like we have all waited for this moment to get our frustrations out. A lot of people tend to describe some pop songs as music made to be screamed with your friends and enjoyed in a group setting, but it works for pop-punk tracks like Roam too. Historically, alternative music, which pop-punk is a part of, is a genre for the outcasts and the people who don't know what their place in the world is, and it's where its universality lies.
Not to be a cliché of myself, the girl who's writing this, but as a lyrics person through and through, I tend to appreciate clever songwriting. Not everything has to be pure poetry and complicated turns of phrases, but everything has to be well-thought-out to click with me. One of the best examples of it in Roam, the one that strikes me the most, is "Let's wreck everything I build except the pace." I can't quite explain how much I adore this line, but it makes my jaw drop every single time. (And believe me, I have played Roam a lot over the past five years.) We also find a nice little parallel with States And Minds, which I love. ("I'm falling in and out again" / "You have no idea how unproductive it is to fall in and out of you as often as I do.")
Favourite line: "Lately I've been feeling gray but today I'm alright, no thanks to you."
Quicksand, one of The Story So Far's best-known songs, the one you get on every playlist at pop-punk clubs, and the first one I heard, is a testament to the band's straightforward style of writing. The chorus opens with the line "This quicksand, it pulls me under, it pulls me underneath her," and, immediately, it clicks, and you understand what the song is about, no doubts. It's an uncomplicated way of expressing conflicting emotions. The idea of quicksand, in its literal sense, is a metaphor for muddiness, complicated everything, messiness, but also something that feels overwhelming and overpowering.
Do you ever, sometimes, listen to songs and realise, years later, that they perfectly described something you went through, down to a T, and you could have used them at the time if you had just known? Quicksand is one of those for me. The line "telling myself to rebuild and rebound / yet always hoping to see you around / 'cause that's my idea of safe and sound" is so fucking painfully relatable. I have been there in the past, my brain and my common sense telling me to move on, but still going places and hoping to see that one person because it felt safe, because they are what you know best despite the pain of it all, and moving on, living without them, is not. And there are so many times in my life where I could have used those words to get by and find it in me to not look for safety in the pain.
Favourite line: "Telling myself to rebuild and rebound / Yet always hoping to see you around / 'Cause that's my idea of safe and sound."
The next song on the record is Swords And Pens, a title reminiscent of the saying "the pen is mightier than the sword." I love the parallel between this track and States And Minds, both in the construction of the title and in the presence of the line "I'm falling in and out again." This song seems to express an idea of desperately wanting, almost needing to do something, get over something or someone, but no matter how much and how hard you tell yourself that, you just can't. There is the sense of trying to figure things out, maybe trying to figure yourself and who you are out again, being scared that the negative parts of your life might last forever, as if some part of who you used to be is lost. ("More aware than ever that I might never be calm again.")
Maybe because I tend to associate songs and albums with colours and colour palettes, I gravitate towards lines that include them in some way, shape or form. Grey has already been mentioned in Roam ("lately I've been feeling gray") and it appears twice in Swords And Pens, in the lines "watch all the colors in your spectrum fade gray" and "tread the granite till you find some place to call home" (I am aware it's a metaphor for the ground, but to the best of my knowledge, streets are made out of concrete, and granite is known for its colour, grey.) The colour grey traditionally represents neutrality and balance, but it is often associated with depression and loss, and seen as dull, so the idea of feeling grey or fading to grey comes down to losing your essence as a person, the shades that make you who you are.
Favourite line: "Put yourself in my place just one day / Watch all the colors in your spectrum fade gray."
I rarely ever think about what my favourite songs are, which is a far cry from younger me, who always had defined favourites that barely changed. However, if I had to choose one on Under Soil And Dirt, it would be track five, High Regard. This song has anger plastered in thick layers all over it, but somewhere, it's tinted with some sort of self-confidence, because you feel like the only way you can survive what happened to you is by knowing your worth and defining boundaries for yourself. ("my walls are build up high, forever bound to be steep.") You start taking what's been said to you and about you and using it to build yourself back up, because the other person is not entitled to you. Is it wrong that I love this feeling? You have gone through the hurt and the sorrow, and they haven't gone anywhere, they're still here, but they make space for anger, and this anger is what pushes you to be unconditionally here for yourself.
Favourite line: Honestly, it could have been the whole song, but "I'm gonna take back what you took" is so perfect, it has to win.
So, full disclaimer, but Daughters always reminds me of that one tweet, posted on vocalist Parker Cannon's old Twitter account. In all honesty, social media aside, even after reading the lyrics, I am not entirely sure what this song is about. I thought I did, probably just like everyone else in the scene who had something to say about this track, but the line "Until now, I know we've never met / But I don't want to talk and I'm already upset / That you'll meet your demise in a drunken man's bet" fucked it all up. I'm letting this one be a mystery.
Favourite line: "Came here against my will / And my will's tested strong."
Before it became one hell of a kickass song, Mt. Diablo was a mountain of the Diablo Range, in Northern California. It peaks at just over a thousand meters and, apparently, if you try hard enough, you can find bears there. As far as the track goes... I absolutely adore when songwriters include specifics in their music, put magic in the mundane, or add to my wanderlust, which is already on a high after eighteen months of seeing the same wheat fields every day. That sunrise over Mt. Diablo must be pretty special if it's included in a song lyric, you know? Travel bug aside, the lyrics seem to be about the idea of watching someone you thought you knew completely change, you don't get along nor connect with the person they're becoming, and you miss the person they used to be. The line "Will I ever see you again" feels more metaphorical than anything, as in, will I ever find the person you used to be again, that person I used to like. There is also the idea of individuality, of not letting yourself get swallowed by everyone's expectations and standards. ("At least none of my friends do what they're told by what they're sold.")
It's worth noting that Mt. Diablo originally appeared on The Story So Far's 2010 split EP with Maker, alongside another one of my absolute favourite songs of theirs, 680 South.
Favourite line: "If you cut out scheduled time, you'll find peace of mind / Trust me it's worth your weight in gold."
Four Years has a bittersweet feeling to it and touches upon distance with your old friends as they leave for college. ("For the best four years and the promise of pay.") The line "sailing vessels, leaving the bay" is the first of the nautical metaphors sprinkled all over Under Soil And Dirt, and also a reference to the band originating from the Bay Area, in California. I'm not going to lie to you, this song is painful, even as someone who graduated from university ten years ago. There's that feeling you get when your friends leave your hometown for a long time and achieve different things from you while you stay where you are. You feel disconnected and left behind, as if you were watching them move on while you don't, as if staying home means doing nothing of substance. It's strange, because I've been the girl who leaves, the girl who left my hometown twice and, at this point, doesn't even have a hometown anymore. I didn't even keep in touch with most of my school friends because we never had anything real past school, but this still hits so fucking hard.
Favourite line: "I guess some of us just needed a change to heal the bones we cracked."
Rally Cap is another mystery to me and, as we reach the second one of those in the space of a thirty-two-minute long album, I have decided that I don't mind. All I'm writing is just my interpretation of things, what I get out of the words, and I choose not to pretend my vision is the reality of what's behind the songwriting. If I'm calling a song a mystery, it simply means I haven't found the right words to interpret it yet, and it's one of my favourite parts of music- there is always something new to discover. I feel like there is a sense of loss of self throughout this track, though ("You leave me in the deep end with ankles made of bricks" / "I don't have any place to stay but I wouldn't advise the risk"), as well as the idea of trying to escape how mentally exhausting it is to feel that way and lose people that once mattered to you.
Favourite line: "Self medicate 'cause I'm sick / Of cutting ties much too thick / Please make this painless and quick"
If you had to call one of the songs quieter, it would undoubtedly have to be Placeholder. This one is special to me because it almost felt like a deep cut, something I would never get to hear live, until I flew to Prague two summers ago, and it was played at one of the most fantastic shows of my life. You know when you see a band, and they play that one song you weren't expecting, not in your wildest dreams, not in a million years, but they do, and you think fuck, that's really happening? That's what hearing Placeholder live felt like.
If we're honest here, I do have an English degree, and I'm bilingual, but I still had to do some research because there are boat metaphors (again!) that I did not understand, and there is also a chess metaphor that completely passed me by ("Is it safe to be a pawn when all the rooks close in on you?") There is this idea of being willing to make some sort of truce with someone who hurt you, but at the same time wanting them, maybe needing them, to acknowledge the pain they've put you through. ("But I hope you go home and admit you / Were wrong for the stress you put me through.") The fact that the line cuts after the word "you" and doesn't follow the traditional structure of a sentence puts the emphasis on the other person's responsibility, it's all in their hands, now.
Favourite line: "Headstrong in the world / With the wind at my back."
The last song on the record is appropriately named Closure, but it's one hell of a heartbreaking ending. I don't get the feeling of closure from this, as in "everything is now prettily wrapped up in nice paper with bows." I see it as the idea of chasing what you need right now, while you're going through all the feelings we've discussed before, just so you can make a big step forward, even though it's not the final one. Not everything is figured out by the end of this. ("I'm still debating whether I have even found the source all of my discomfort and blunt discourse.") This closure feels more like the idea of knowing what you need, already an improvement in itself, but not being fully sure on how to get there just yet, and every time you try, it just falls short. The voice crack in "I just want to leave" towards the end could be accidental for all I know, but I love how perfectly it drives the point.
Favourite line: "I don't want to push you / I just want to grieve."
I listen to these songs a lot and regularly, but going through them in this almost analytical way felt like a complete rediscovery, especially when figuring out all the feelings I relate to at the minute or have related to in life. This album stands the test of time, undoubtedly and, not to be overly nostalgic of an era I wasn't a part of or anything, but it ages like fine wine to me. Under Soil And Dirt truly is a modern masterclass in sincerity, raw emotion, honesty, and candour, in all their bloody glory.