For whatever reason, I love the music of the Blood Brothers. It could be their apocalyptic punk rock aesthetic, their subversive political lyrics or the strange and melodic yet dissonant changes in their music but whatever the case they are one of my favorite bands. Yet with the Blood Brothers passing the subsequent creation of Jaguar Love has me listening to Jaguar’s latest album and well . . . loving it. Like the Blood Brothers, Jaguar’s album is filled with all same elements of disaffection though it strikes the listener as somewhat more palatable (read harmonious). Still, the lyrics are filled with dark and disturbing images and the screeching voice of Johnny Whitney is beautifully unsettling. It makes you want to “take back the rad world” but it also makes you wonder exactly which actions might achieve this end. Although we may agree on the necessity and goodness of some singular political actions or attitudes, as a Christian my worldview is somewhat in opposition to certain solutions and sentiments of Jaguar Love.
Whatever our disagreements Jaguar Love portrays a dark and desperate picture of human realities and situations which are fuel for reflection. Take for instance the following lyrics from track 11, Videotape Seascape:
Oh Townes Van Zandt haunts your headphones
the streetlights sway
You left your pregnant girlfriend in a train station in Spain.
Parades burst from your brain, plaid haired girls call your name
Fireflies weave resorts, built of light on perfect shores,
Knife thrust, lust, angel dust, purple sky’s before dusk
In the back of a pick up truck, racing from your shitty luck,
Oh Townes Van Zandt haunts your headphones
the street lights groan
That piece of shit left you at this train station all alone,,
You steal somebody’s purse, ravens rip through your skirt,
Babies in TV screens chase you out into the street,
Madrid’s finest hotel, whisky and painkillers.
If stolen master cards could pay off all this shitty luck
Black water in a crystal skull
Drink deep and hallucinate an ancient ocean
Black water pouring out your mouth
Time travel to worlds composed of ice fields and sound
When all your friends would call you they’d say it’s for the best
You can’t force a man to love you. He’d be a shitty dad.
They started the trip in the city of Cannes
They drank in streets under Cubist mansions
And when she told him that she was knocked up with thier baby you should have seen his face
And when she told him that she was knocked up you should have seen his face
Black water in a crystal skull
Black water filling up your lungs
Black water in the south of France
Black water changing all your plans
As a Christian reflecting on the subject of darkness, the lyrics above illustrate the oddity of sin and darkness in our lives. Things intended to be good so often become perverse. Something such as the gift of life, here becomes an “unwanted pregnancy.” Something meant to strengthen the bonds of familial love, reveals the lack thereof. Our deficient desires are unmasked - we desire love without commitment, community without sacrifice, action without consequence and hence the life of another becomes intrusive to our selfish desire. Life is as death, light is as darkness: “Black water in a crystal skull.” This is the bleak reality of the world in chaos. It is the world without a proper proportion for love of God and nieghbor. Sadly it is not just the lyrics of a song but an accurate and telling portrayal of one facet of the world in which we live. Jaguare Love challenges us, ”Is this what you want?,“ and the God who is seemingly absent in their songs is ironically asking the same thing. But their solutions to the darkness are not the same and that makes all the difference.
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