Very few of us sit down to listen to music as activity, favouring the background music during dinner prep or a focus playlist during the work day. While we have vivid memories of music that we listened to in our earlier years, I would argue we don’t have the same relationship with a lot of music created in recent times.
As a response to this, our streaming platforms serve us up mood playlists. For most of the artists on there, we aren’t likely to know them or have listened to their back catalog.
As someone who still likes to listen to albums, on car trips or during the work day, I want to advocate listening to albums as well as the songs I write about here. In this case, 2024’s Pick-Up Full Of Pink Carnations by The Vaccines is an enjoyable listen when you’re in the mood for some anthemic, guitar saturated indie pop. The song ‘Discount De Kooning (Last One Standing)’, has some 80s synth vibes and after a steady diet of Stranger Things and the Kate Bush revival, perhaps I have a soft spot for it.
We open with the chorus, the vocal feeling floaty and spacious, before the drums, guitar and bass kick in for the verse. The guitar has a gorgeous chorusy/tremolo sound with a straight up drum beat. We get the reference to the song’s title in the first verse:
I’ve been thinking about all of the times you used to fill my streets
Until I got deserted, like I’m boarded up with nowhere to eat
Maybe I’m looking for a Willem de Kooning at the discount store
I would buy anything, try anything, take anything to feel some more
Willem de Kooning being the Dutch-American abstract/expressionist artist who died at the age of 92 in 1997. I’m always drawn to abstract paintings with good reason – they feel like the only kind of painting I could feasibly do with my limited abilities, even after completing a year of Art at TAFE in 1999. I have found abstract paintings often celebrate colour, which suits my addiction to it. At any rate, the idea of looking for an expensive and rare painting in a dollar store is a great metaphor around realising one’s expectations are a bit out of sync with reality.
I love the drum fill just before the chorus hits, I can hear the long strums of that tremolo-laden guitar combined with a new lead guitar line and synths padding out the catchy as hell melody. The film clip for this song has a wind dancer in it, you know one of those inflated tubes with a face drawn on that bounces around in the breeze? There’s a slow spin of Justin Young (lead singer) and various other items, including the pink carnations referenced in the album name.
After another verse and chorus, there’s a bridge that breaks down in a similar way to the chorus as the beginning. Here we get the lyric “I’m ready for anything, I’m not going anywhere”, as though a decision has been made to ride out the uncertainty and associated difficulties mentioned earlier in the song.
The chorus suggests that dancing could be the balm our weary souls need to carry on. I feel like dancing has mostly disappeared from our list of past times – more traditional dancing, not going clubbing. Think of how our grandparents would often go dancing, perhaps citing it as how they met. Many people would learn how to dance whatever styles were popular. Back in those days, no one was doomscrolling on their phone or binging a series on a streaming service. Even with the revival of dance styles like swing and salsa in recent years, or the enduring popularity of line dancing in the U.S., dancing isn’t high on the list of hobbies for most people. As someone who has felt too subconsicous to dance in front of people my whole life, the idea of dancing through the night, with the intoxicating feeling of possibility in my heart, seem like a fun but foreign activity. And who knows, maybe something magical could happen – or at least it could be a good way to see in the apocalpyse.