Sweating under the spotlights at a ritzy club in Hollywood, scrappy frontman Aaron West ofemo-Americana ensemble the Roaring Twenties, a bit out of his element, starts to slur hiswords. He’s lost more than he can count. His face burns with mounting anger––at the label, athis weary bandmates, at the sorry state of the world as it sputters back to life like a ’67Mustang hot off cinder blocks, but above all at himself. The whiskey’s all he can do to quietthe pain in his hand as he strums, busted from pouring concrete. Even surrounded by thepeople who’ve taken him in when no one else would, this family he’s been given, he can’tseem to get it right. “Fuck building a bridge, I’m burning it down,” he screams on high-voltage rocker “Spitting in the Wind,” booze rough in his throat, “I’ll see you in the water.”But he’ll be okay. After all, he doesn’t really exist.The alcohol is iced tea, and the man in the Buffalo Bills shirt is an Eagles fan. Ten years ago,Dan Campbell, frontman of the Philadelphia rock outfit The Wonder Years, masterminded anew character as a tutorial for himself––could he achieve the pathos of his autobiographicalballads in the world offiction?––but also in the inviolability of the human spirit. Aaron’s storycentered on one impossible, perfect question: when we have nothing left, why keep going? Itstarted with just one song, an experiment with collaborator Ace Enders, of the EarlyNovember, about a man whose wife loses a baby. But soon Campbell realized the storycouldn’t begin or end there, that there was an entire person he needed to know.So Campbell took Aaron across the country, Long Island to southern California to Savannah,guided him through barfights, a table of divorce papers, the church piano bench beside anephew he’s grown to love like a son, beaches and highways and couches and phone booths,all in an attempt to understand what it is that allows a person to continue in the face ofcatastrophe. When he has nothing else, he has his guitar, the stage, the lights. He has themusic.After ten years, two albums, an EP, and a single, the answer to Aaron’s brutal seeking comesin the form of his triumphant third chapter, IN LIEU OF FLOWERS. Not a collection ofelegies so much as a concept opera, an ode to the underdog, à la the Mountain Goats’All HailWest Texasor the Weakerthans’Reunion Tour, Campbell and the band take AW20’s signaturedynamics to new heights, marrying the crash of punk percussion and power chords with theroots twang of banjo and pedal steel, tracing the imaginary heartbreak-nomad’s turbulent arctoward healing, from the bottom of bottles in ashy motel rooms and desecrated basementvenues––“gig’s in an abandoned church in Glasgow, the irony’s a little on the nose,” he sneersover plaintivefingerpicking on “Alone at St. Luke’s”––to the disorienting tarmac where hestaggers on and off tour, to the passenger seat of a car with an old friend and new love, and,eventually, to the rehab facility where he gets his voice back.Longtime fans will recognize the bursts of Springsteenian horns, led by Chiemina Ukazim’sbombastic, stirring saxophone, that keep the pulse and grit of the working class East Coastclose at hand. Louder and brasher than ever, and elsewhere even more intimate, moredevastating, with keepsakes and callbacks––shorebirds, the hue of a certain citrus fruit, the interpolation of past horn arrangements––for those who’ve accompanied him on his journeyfrom the beginning, Aaron West manages to stay as clear-eyed and wry as he’s ever been, theacid-spit humor that comes only from tragedy. IN LIEU OF FLOWERS isn’t about perfectchoices, perfect endings, perfect people, it’s about fucking up, and learning how to be heldagain.In the record’s shockingfinal moments, Aaron, wrung out and made new, returns to thebeginning of his story, a place he never fathomed he would ever go again. But if you knowhow to look, every return to the past promises something previously unimaginable, somethingnew. Like Aaron says, “Ain’t that the fucked up thing about hope?”
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