STATE SONGS

I don't think that the songs are liable to be adopted as the state anthems of the actual states, sadly. I was thinking initially that that might be a nice thing, but thinking about it I think songs like 'Oregon is bad' are not likely to go down very well in Oregon.

State Songs was produced by looking at the names of the states and then writing a song about them. The original version was on the Hello Recording Club as an EP (which also produced the Hello The Band EP and House of Mayors), and then this album was produced after Rounder, the record label, said to John Linnell that they'd be interested in more.

Interestingly, the title of State Songs is kind of a red herring. Again, it's produced by looking at the names of the states, but not necessarily the states themselves. John Linnell himself insists that the songs have no real correlation with the states they're about. When discussing Iowa in an MTV News interview, he noted that each state had a "rhythm" to its name, and he would try out different states with melodies.

Let's talk about the rhythm of America. As has been exceedingly prevalent throughout TMBG's discography, as well as throughout, like, the world, America deals in one primary commodity: excess. Especially now, and also when State Songs was written, America is a joke that's being told to the world, but only America is in on it. It is always happening, and it is impossible to run away from. The rhythm of America is, above all else, stupid.

So when we open with the primal, almost state-fair carnival whimsy that is the instrumental Illinois, we know what we're getting in on. The Songs Of The 50 States is possibly the perfect album opener; it features a TMBG/Linnell staple of vaguely handwaving at systems being the actual controlling factor (Of men who are controlling my mind), as well as makes an absurdly confident joke that Arkansas is Linnell's favorite track on the album by playing its melody after the lyric I can't wait for my favorite one.

From there, we get into the melodies of the state names. West Virginia features the fact that there is another deep inside you, a kind of matryoshka doll of statehood and personhood. This is true because West Virginia literally has the word Virginia in it. Like I told you, you are concentric in your form is effectively an "it insists upon itself" type of thing, which is to some degree referential to the way that statehood... well, works.

South Carolina is about getting rich after getting hit by a car while riding a bike and then suing the guy who hit you. This is interesting both because this song features multiple narrators (the neighbor, the rich guy, and the policeman), which is rare for TMBG songwriting even to date, and because it features a uniquely American phenomenon. How many times have you heard the joke "I wish I got hit by a bus so I could pay off my student loans"? Is that a sign of a normal, functioning society? Additionally, the formation of TMBG's Dial-A-Song service was done after Linnell got hit by a car on his bike, which is honestly more of an incidental bit of inspiration than it has anything to do with my read.

Idaho is apparently about John Lennon taking too much LSD and then staring out the window all night in an RV because he thought that if he fell asleep the RV would crash. This both ties into State Songs's overarching theme of delusion — again, America itself is a delusion — and is also just really funny. For me, I view Idaho about being about a trucker trying to reunite with someone but falling asleep at the wheel and crashing. The car siren is intense and overbearing, giving you a feeling of the intense humanity of it all; or, after a car accident, perhaps the lack thereof.

Speaking of delusion, Montana was a leg. Yeah. Speaking of delusion, have you ever tried to apply for a job? Jesus fucking Christ, okay, so our latest position there were 1,100 applicants and they let in THREE. THREE of us got a job. We were told this factoid to try and inspire confidence in our suitability for the role, but really it just shows me that the job market is completely decimated right now. Anyway, Utah is about being a job recruiter reading the next resumé. Weren't you the one I hurt?

Moreover, speaking of excess, Arkansas is silly and I love it. It's got great horns, great vocal intonation, and also Arkansas does actually look like that. In a way, these songs provide a kind of nominative determinism to states; they aren't about anything in the state, as Linnell said himself, just about the state's name and shape and maybe some vague signifiers. Iowa exemplifies this, because Iowa is a witch because look at the name. What else is it.

Mississippi has some perpetual saxophonic building to it that I like a lot — in general, the instrumentation on this album is really fun and experimental. Maine literally has the intro lifted off of The Beatles' Revolver while being about relationship decay, an incredibly human story. New Hampshire goes into this intense, suburban desolation loneliness story. It's all told in a lens that is profoundly American, like you're watching the entire country from a birds' eye view, gleaning information from how people talk to each other.

But eventually that's too much information. You get all these stories, but you never have a sense for how they end. What else is there to do at this point? If you love setup...! You get rich after getting hit by a bike — now what? You're staring out an RV window — now what? Did the New Hampshire guy ever cure his loneliness? It's all unresolved, ephemeral, and it's impossible to see. They just continue, and continue, and continue; more stories, more excess, more, more. This is where Nevada comes into play: a nearly 8-minute track that has about 30 seconds of Linnell singing, the rest having the marching band overpower everything. Eventually, the rumble of the cars overpower the band, resulting in nothing but a recording of things that are happening.

Ultimately, everything on State Songs feels like something that happened. It all feels like it's just stories about people, not states. This is the point. This is what it always was.