Micah Schnabel
Your New Norman Rockwell
(Last Chance Records)
Anyone who has seen Micah Schnabel’s band Two Cow Garage knows the source of their power lies in the emotion and energy they cram into every distraught chord, every antsy cadence, every lyric snarled and syllable growled. Indeed, their kinetic, country-tinged brand of punk-rock (complete with Midwestern southern drawls) is as cathartic as it is chaotic; their melodies sometimes swivel on the edge of collapse, sometimes swerve toward catastrophe, but always tighten just in time, leaving the listener’s knuckles white.
Though Schnabel’s solo pursuits aren’t typically different stylistically—they’re quieter, calmer, sometimes acoustic, sometimes backed by a ferocious full-band—the power of Your New Norman Rockwell, his third proper solo release, stems from an entirely different source: His stories. That’s neither to say that Two Cow Garage’s stories aren’t powerful nor that Your New Norman Rockwell‘s melodies are any less emotional; it’s clear, though, that Schnabel has swung the spotlight somewhere else and, even if the music is comparable, the impact is different.
It’s fitting, then, that Schnabel calls this release Your New Norman Rockwell, even crowns himself with the title in the album’s rambling opener, since each track paints a candid picture of characters (in settings, in flashbacks, in their own muddled consciousness) confronting their demons. Some are, presumably, self-portraits—songs like “Cincinnati, Ohio,” which pitter-patters like a rainstorm dribbling down a window, or “The Interview.” In the latter, the singer seems to interview himself, reveal himself to be a thoughtful, insecure character—“Well, how exactly do you see yourself?” Schnabel asks himself, then answers, “Well, in my mind, I’m the singer in a hardcore band. But the truth is that I work in a bar. I take the trash out and I take the money at the door.”
Other feature common folk, forgotten and ignored, like the hero in “Hello, My Name is Henry.” We meet him in his convenience store, sweeping up and fantasizing about stealing all the cash, setting the place on fire, and escaping to life in which he is no longer a mere spectator. “‘Hello, my name is Henry,’ / says this name tag that they make me wear,” Schnabel sings, “named after a grandfather / that beat the shit out of my mother. / I am living proof that not everybody counts. / No, not everybody matters.” Admittedly, the song’s gentle, jangling guitars and strolling beat are a bit deceiving; these songs seem pretty dismal, almost un-Rockwellian, but they are honest, relatable—real.
Whoever these characters are, they are utter messes, but their voices are made vivid by Schnabel’s vocal deliver, which is more often spoken than sung. Those listeners who enjoy Two Cow Garage and Schnabel’s prior solo endeavors may be startled by this; after all, his sneer, so pinched and impassioned, is part of what makes him such a memorable singer. But Schnabel’s in good company (go listen to “A Boy Named Sue” again), as recitation songs are a common folk tradition. More importantly, though, this spoken-word approach allows his stories to float to the forefront, to be understood and felt and better by his listeners.
Still, Schnabel has a way of writing whole novels in his songs—full story arcs incited and resolved in mere minutes. This is executed best in “Jazz and Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” another presumed self-portrait with slippery leads and a kicky beat, in which he presents a series of vingettes—about learning to play drums, about playing his first show, about shooting a safety in an anarchist pool hall in Amsterdam, about pondering death, about the life’s simple joys about misquoting Bible verses to piss his friends off—that twist-tie together in a climax at the end:
“I’ve been thinking about all these things and how my life is gonna end / and started falling in love with music all over again. / I want to remember what it feels like to hear a song for the first time / and feel like it was written specifically for me. / I want to be thirteen years old downstairs in my parent’s basement / learning how to play the drums so that I could join a band. / I actually lied in that first verse, I did get those drums back, / and I went back down in that basement and I got really, really good. / And that took me all the way to that anarchist bar in Amsterdam. / And, yeah, things haven’t turned out exactly how I thought they would. / But cynicism is lazy, and critics are forgotten, / and this world doesn’t owe me anything, for the Bible told me so. / So even on my worst days I just try to remember: / This life is like jazz, we’re all just making it up as we go.”
Subsequent listens to Your New Normal Rockwell reiterates the evident philosophy in “Jazz and Cinnamon Toast Crunch”—in each dismal scenes painted on the album, a sprout of hope exists. And perhaps it’s this brutal hope that makes Schnabel’s stories so powerful, so Rockwellian: They are honest, relatable—real.
