Notes: I wrote this essay for publication but it was never published. Written in September 2011.
If you’re not from Texas, chances are you got into Blue October in 2006, when their biggest song to date, “Hate Me,” hit the Top 40. That’s what happened with me. The song’s naked pathos did me in: “I have to block out thoughts of you so I don’t lose my head,” and “So I’ll drive so fucking far away that I never cross your mind /
and do whatever it takes in your heart to leave me behind.” A little intense, and exactly the type of music I was looking for. But though the song grabbed me, I might not have gone any further, because I sometimes think with a pop consumer mind and I’m not always in the mood for digging deeper.
Thank God for modern media. The song itself worked for me, but it was the video that had me looking further. The band’s lead singer, Justin Furstenfeld, appeared looking tragic, wearing guyliner and a faux-hawk; it might have seemed contrived but it somehow felt honest. At least a part of that had to do with his weight. He didn’t look like a generic pop star. The music landscape was post-Meat Loaf and pre-Adele and it was unusual to see a singer with even a little extra weight on television. As much as we say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover – or a band by its look – Furstenfeld’s look worked for me. I could picture myself witnessing him in concert, and liked the picture. I went right to iTunes and bam, there was their current album. It was called Foiled and it had a song called “Overweight” on it. I sampled and fell, big time.
“I want to tell the world I’ll give them all a piggyback / and try to take away my negative effect.”
I bought the rest of the album sound unheard, and was blown away by almost all of it. Knowing what I know now about the band, it seems that Foiled is one of those albums that achieves a rare hat trick: a perfect summation of the band’s themes and ideas up to that point; an evolving sound that presents those themes in a new context; and as a launching point for future records. Often – not always, but often – these albums are bands’ biggest commercial success. Springsteen’s Born in the USA did it (as did, arguably, Magic); ditto Barenaked Ladies’ Stunt, Gaslight Anthem’s American Slang, and R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People.
Foiled presents Blue October’s frontman as a fragile, damaged human, both desperate for and afraid of love, craving peace while dreaming of destruction. The other songs on the album support the promise of “Hate Me” and “Overweight”: “You Make Me Smile” offers a desperate love song that hints at masochism; “She’s My Ride Home” hides a story of murder and arson inside a sweet romance; “Congratulations” is a sad midtempo lament of misbegotten affection. The album’s other big song, “Into the Ocean,” skirts the edge between literal and metaphor: is Furstenfeld’s character talking about his mental issues, or did he actually hurl himself off a boat and try to drown? The song’s video – a popular slice of goth steampunk – offers few answers, but it’s damned entertaining.
Thoroughly impressed by Foiled, I dove into Blue October’s back catalog. There are a lot of ways to go about this sort of exploration – do you start at the beginning, do you pick and choose based on song titles you like, do you find someone who likes the band and get them to make you a mix CD? All valid options (except maybe that song title thing, which I’ve totally done and I do not feel ashamed by). My recourse was simple: I liked the new album, let’s see what led to it.
If Foiled showed us the bruises, 2003’s History For Sale shows us the punches that came first. This is where going backward through the catalog proves most interesting; instead of arriving at the current version of the ur-person Blue October is singing about (ostensibly both an idealized and demonized version of Furstenfeld himself), we’re digging deeper into his psyche. It’s not a healthy one. It starts right away with “Ugly Side,” a confessional about hiding the worst of yourself, no matter how much it hurts: “I only want you to see my favorite part of me” is accompanied with wails and a harrowing violin, counterpointing the need to get the dark stuff out. It’s telling that the song is called “Ugly Side” and not “My Favorite Part of Me”; the remainder of the album keeps showing flashes of goodness and hints of light, and keeps going back to that well.
The concept of masks and hiding is referenced throughout the album: “Chameleon Boy” (which, in its references breakdowns, comas, self-loathing and constantly shifting motivations seems like a blueprint for the later “Hate Me”) is only the most obvious, but even “Come In Closer,” a semi-sweet love song, references clowns putting on “makeup for show.” Nowhere are these themes more apparent than in the somber “Amazing,” which pleads “can you pretend I’m amazing? / I can pretend I’m amazing.” But as with so many of Furstenfeld’s most inward songs, there’s an element of outward menace: “So have I found your secret weak spot, baby?” is absolutely chilling, hinting at more explicit violence in later albums.
There are echoes of that menace in the album’s most accessible song, the minor hit, “Calling You.” At first listen, it’s the most straightforward type of love song, the story of a man on the road missing his sweetheart and calling home to hear her voice. The chorus is rousing: “I will be calling you to see / if you’re sleeping are you dreaming / if you’re dreaming, are you dreaming of me? / I can’t believe you actually picked me.” But there’s a subtle darkness at the edges at the verses, those same hints of inward anger: “do I try too hard to make you smile / to make us smile?” Even at his most optimistic, Furstenfeld can’t help but question himself.
But “Calling You” has nothing on the twin dark hearts at the center of History For Sale: “Razorblade” is devastating, a memory of childhood sexual abuse couched in angry religious images. There’s no room for interpretation in lines like, “There’s no forgiveness for you, you sick fuck.” The theme of sexual betrayal comes full circle in “Sexual Powertrip,” starting off with “I’m sorry for the way I treated you” and ending with a repetition of “I keep fucking up.” Inside, he admits to not knowing how to treat people, a stark admission that underlines the whole album, and carves the way for Foiled.
Blue October’s major-label debut, 2000’s Consent to Treatment, is where the band really began to develop these concepts (an earlier album, The Answers, was self-produced, and Furstenfeld later rewrote many of those songs for Consent to Treatment). The title alone offers hints as to the album’s ideas: we know we’re in for an exploration of damage. Here, Furstenfeld offers specifics about his own past of drug addiction and mental illness. “HRSA” – a medical initialism for “high-risk self-abuse” – describes being committed to an institution and threatened with suicide watch. If it sounds drear, it really isn’t: Blue October has a way of winding exciting, engaging music around even the most intense, desperate lyrics, so that confessions of false sanity come across as thrilling rather than dour. They take the same approach with “Drop,” doing for drug addiction what “HRSA” does for mental instability; the lyrics are just as searing, and the song is just as oddly fun to listen to.
The core of the album, however, is three songs that each look at love from wildly different angles. “Balance Beam” is as straightforward a love song that Blue October ever recorded, hinting at the relative normalcy of “Calling You” and “You Make Me Smile.” In “Independently Happy,” Furstenfeld seems to be working hard to convince himself that living alone is perfectly fine, betraying himself with one of his simplest lines (and most crushing deliveries): “She lives in Oklahoma City / far away from me.”
But it’s the self-aware “Breakfast After 10” that is Consent to Treatment’s masterpiece. The shifting point of view is fascinating – the verses are in first person, the chorus is in second – as is its intent. At first the song seems to be a brag about being feeling awesome about being dumped, because she was in the wrong – “let her know how it feels to miss you” seems a pointed attack. But on closer inspection, the song seems to anticipate Blue October’s knack for self-deprecation, the lyrics allowing a sense of irony the band would rarely approach again.
Flash forward past Foiled. The success of the album – which went Platinum in both the US and Canada – led to the implied cautious optimism of the 2009 follow-up, Approaching Normal. That optimism isn’t immediately apparent, though: the opening track, “Weight of the World” is another delve into Furstenfeld’s complicated psyche. It’s a terrific way to start the album, screaming into the realities of breakdowns and blackouts. Furstenfeld, though, knows when to quiet down. His whispered, “Let’s go / let’s really really go” is one of his best deliveries yet.
Perhaps Approaching Normal’s masterpiece is “Should Be Loved,” a love song that remains as worshipful as “Balance Beam” and “Calling You” (“I can’t breathe when you’re around” is sweet and somewhat masochistic; shades of “You Make Me Smile”) but is finally tempered by realities of relationships. Not pleading so much as puzzled, Furstenfeld wonders “who am I supposed to be?” It’s a wonderful duality, a summation of statements hinted at in “Breakfast After 10” and “She’s My Ride Home.”
The angry, violent two-pack of “Dirt Room” and “The End” is Blue October at its most explicit. “Dirt Room” updates “James” from Consent to Treatment, turning its rage on greedy record executives: “I want to cover you in ants, bees, and honey / and take a picture for the cover of our album.” “The End” is even more ferocious, imagining a murder for an ex-wife and her new husband, ending in a crescendo of suicide and blood. That these songs are compulsively listenable is a testament to Blue October’s accessibility.
Similarly, “Say It” takes the offensive right away – for one of the first times, blame is going somewhere other than inward. “I gained 40 pounds because of you,” is blatant, as is the admonition, “I will never let you fuck me over,” as the music drops out. Far more optimistic are “Jump Rope” and “Blue Skies,” both sincerely happy songs drawing inspiration from Furstenfeld’s daughter, Blue. The former utilizes a gleeful child chorus and the latter stops just short of sappy, a headlong high-tempo number punctuated by at least one cheerful “woo!”
More than anything, these three songs anticipate the complexities of the next record, a concept album called Any Man In America; Furstenfeld’s newfound confidence in his own stability and his love for his daughter being that album’s twin themes. Using his divorce and his custody battle as fodder for the 2011 album could have been a dour mistake. Instead, Furstenfeld finds shocking life in these subjects, their specificity somehow taking on universality. The record’s first song, “The Feel Again” is an overture to Any Man’s concepts, taking three verses to examine the tricky path through courtship, parenthood, and divorce. It’s one of Blue October’s strongest opening statements, and one of their best songs.
From there, we have variations on theme, and a lot of definite articles: “The Money Tree” and “Drama Everything” are bitter tirades against a woman who says she doesn’t need him while continuing to need him (the latter is one of the band’s catchiest songs, weirdly). “The Getting Over It Part” underscores lack of communication and the need for separation over some of the most propulsive drumbeats the band has ever attempted. “The Worry List” is sad as hell, with Furstenfeld pleading to be left alone to make more positive changes; it’s the continuation of the story in “Overweight,” claiming to be “trying hard to change the things I always screw up.”
The album’s first single, “The Chills,” picks up right where “Should Be Loved” left off, with some added layers of maturity and complexity. Instead of should, it’s could: “why do I only feel the chills when I’m with you … you keep thinking it over / you could catch me if you wanted to.” It’s plaintive, but it also sees both sides – the need to be with an object of desire, but also the unpretty aftermath. It’s smart and aware, sweet but jaundiced.
The album concludes with hopeful “The Follow Through”; if “The Feel Again” laid the groundwork for the album’s themes, this sums it all up. Making peace with divorce, fatherly love, self-confidence: it’s the final statement on an intensely personal record. In a nice final touch on Any Man’s themes of dual natures and division, a female voice comes in to counterpoint Furstenfeld’s gravely singing. Her “I was wrong” could be read as snarky, but the intention seems to be more universal: relationships are hard, sometimes they don’t work, and you should do your best to move on.
Now a completely independent band, Blue October recently did a fundraising campaign to help fund the recording and promotion of their new album. Using a Kickstarter-like service, they reached their goal in less than 5 days. I bought a T-shirt, and in return, I’ll get the new record a month early. What’s exciting to me is that, after the initial wow moment of Foiled, I am still getting new experience with this band, years later. Their lyrics may be dark, and maybe they don’t always pertain directly to my experience, but as one of their songs says “they lift me up when I’m feeling down.” I can’t wait to see what the future brings.