Julie Doiron is an Acadian-Canadian singer-songwriter who
turned 40 earlier this year and recently released her tenth solo album. She
called it So Many Days, a title that
sounds like the frustrated, hopeless pronouncement of someone who has become
truly overwhelmed with just how many god damn “days” there actually are in the
average human life. Head in hands, head shaking, speaking to no one in
particular (glass of whiskey filled unreasonably high, probably), “so many
days…” the earth constantly spinning on its axis, shadows constantly getting
shorter then longer, the sun constantly rising then setting, and you,
constantly going to bed and waking up again.
Out of all of the units of time humans have created,
seconds, minutes, hours, weeks, months, years, there still isn’t any one that’s
so mercilessly tied to our corporal existence as that of the “day.” Unlike most
units of time, it’s a duration that you actually see before your eyes and you see it over and over and over again,
countless times, literally, “every day.” It’s almost impossible to not be
affected by the staggering consistency and inevitability of one day after the
other and the patterns in your own life that this imminent regularity forces
you to recognize.
Doiron wrote 12 new songs here and each one seems to symbolically
stand for one of the “so many” days that she’s starting to realize have piled
up into an unrecognizable mass. Just like real days, some of these songs are
upbeat, some are gloomy, and some are better than others. Also, like the days
in anyone’s life, many of them seem to have recurring themes. Certain events
and feelings that, though all your days are technically separate occurrences
happening at different times, tend to tie them together and turn them into this
mentally manageable understanding of what exactly it is you’ve been doing with
your life.
Doiron starts the album then, fittingly, in bed, a new day
ahead of her. On “Cars and Trucks” she
sings: “well what do I do when I wake up at 6:30 and I am in the city? I go
back to sleep and wait for the streets to wake me with the sounds of passing
cars and delivery trucks.” Rather than waking up and facing the day, she just
goes back to bed, content to let the world wake her back up again whenever it’s
ready. She finally does wake up and seemingly doesn’t even know what to do once
she’s gotten there. It’s at this moment that the quiet, steady 4/8 bass beat
and acoustic guitar picking that began the song erupts into a 6/8 jolt of
electric guitar strums and snare hits like an attempt to shake herself out of
her own passivity. Doiron switches back and forth between these two
combinations of instruments and time signatures for the rest of the song,
seemingly serving as stand-ins for her daily malaise and her efforts to snap
herself out of it.
As she falls back into the 4/8 lull she sings: “so I’m
writing this song to prove to myself that maybe I can write songs.” It’s a bit
of a strange sentiment coming from a woman that’s clearly already proved her
songwriting prowess several times over, having penned hundreds of songs and
entering the third decade of her music career. It’s, therefore, likely a
knowing wink from a veteran songwriter that’s realized, at this point, “what
else am I going to do?” She ends the song musically the same way she began it,
as if now that she’s written her song (that you’ve just listened to) she’s ready
to get back in bed. Before she falls asleep she sings: “we all have to try, and
sometimes you don’t want to, but we all have to try.” Presumably, the reason we
all have to try is because if you’re not doing at least something during these so many days, they really do just become a
tedious series of non-events by which you have nothing (such as a song) with
which to commemorate them.
Here and elsewhere on the album Doiron pretty much plays it by the numbers musically, similar to the way a conductor scoring a movie soundtrack might, with music narrating content appropriately: the positive scenes sound hopeful, the negative ones sound despondent and when something surprising happens the music changes pace to fit.
Some “days” are a little less heavy than others.
“By The Lake” is just that: a warm folk song that,
unsurprisingly, is the sonic equivalent of what it might look and feel like to
spend a day next to an idyllic lake. On “Our Love,” Doiron plays a sunny
Wilco-inspired country number filled with love, dreams and sweethearts. Most of
the album, however, sees Doiron revisiting the slightly cloudier theme of
coping with everyday life.
As hinted at on the first song, Doiron seems concerned with
doing something productive with her days. “I’m working hard to show you, that I
can work hard too” (“Where Are You?”) and “well I want to give you everything
that I can” (“The Only”). Sometimes, however, even filling your days with
songwriting just might not be enough.
Throughout a series of three songs on the album Doiron seems
to go from recognizing that, on the surface she should be grateful: “well it’s
true, I have a lover, and it’s true, I have my family, and it’s true, they all
love me, but I just don’t feel like I can make it no more,” (“Can’t Take It No
More”) to questioning whether all of that love is actually necessary to be
happy: “well maybe the gambler… the fighter… the drinker, he don’t need no one,
but then again, maybe he does,” (“The Gambler”) to eventually losing everything
and realizing the answer to whether love = happiness was probably “yes”: “I
used to be good, yeah I used to be good, I had people, good people, to love me,
yeah I had love, but I lost it…” (“Homeless”).
On most days though, Doiron seems to find herself in her bed: waking up, going to bed, lying down, unable to sleep, etc. See: “I’m not sure
why this morning, I’m feeling so blue… waking up without you is a most likely
cause” (“Another Second Chance”), “I lie awake for hours dreaming of flowers
that no one ever will bring me” (“I Thought I Could Do It”) “Let’s lie together
on the floor beside your bed” (“Beneath the Leaves”) “Last night I lay in bed,
I rested my head, and wondered how our lives would be…” (“Last Night I Lay in
Bed”)
It makes sense because it’s actually a place that most of us
spend a significant amount of time every day. It’s a universal experience that
almost every human (save those with sleeping disorders/drug addictions) endures
on a daily basis. It’s an endlessly recurring place for rest, for reflection,
for escape, to take comfort in the company of another or to realize how
dreadfully alone you are. It’s an endlessly recurring place where you find
yourself, on so many days, a place to think about how you’re spending those
days, and what you’re turning them into.
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