My Acolyte Journey: 2014.19

Come With Me Now
Kongos. Stephen informed me that the next few were thumping party-pop tunes with no substance, so any textual analysis will be brief.
The refrain has little meaning by itself.

Woah, come with me now/I'm gonna take you down./Woah, come with me now/I'm gonna show you how.

It's mostly a call for followers (which is innocent enough). The singer doesn't want to feel alone, in the way of humans. I think it's understandable. When I people-watched at the Chattanooga art museum, I noticed that people stand in clumps near the edges of rooms and especially in doorways. The atrium was ringed, but internally empty. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong in wanting company. (Side note: best paper about people grouping in empty rooms) However, I am disturbed by the singer's lack of direction. If the song demands followers to instruct, how are we to take the second stanza?

Confused what I thought with something I felt./Confuse what I feel with something that's real:/I tried to sell my soul last night;/Funny, he wouldn't even take a bite.

Pre-video sentiment: at best, the song is a good thump when you're out in the club. At worst, it's lost and getting loster. The sound, from when I listened to it, is great, and I'd listen to it willingly if it came on the radio (maybe sing along, even if I don't know the words).
Post-video sentiment: Kongos is the whitest band in the entire world. The video had stark brilliance to it: the looping, pointless actions of the characters contrasted with the bleak underwater scenes (I especially loved the underwater scenes, even though an underwater metaphor is done better in Under the Skin and that one Christian song where the water fills the room). But the problem is that this band is whiter than white. Whiter than Noah and the Whale. Whiter than Vampire Weekend. Whiter than Mumford and Sons. So white I can't deal. I mean: I am a man who was able to un-ironically sit through (if not enjoy) a concert by Reformisté, a band that I assumed had reached peak whiteness. At least they had a woman (she graduated). But I was wrong. Horribly, awfully wrong. Kongos has got the stupid long hair, awful fashion sense, utter lack of motion, terribly lack-luster performance, and skin tone of an arch-typical White group. I cannot.
That being said: is there anything wrong with being a white person, or even a White person? Not inherently, no. But when I can tell that you have no passion for your music video when you should be the most polished you can be, all I can think is how much better it can be. Your voices don't match your demeanor, and I guess that's really what I'm driving at. I can feel how utterly uncomfortable you are in your skin, and it's that same discomfort that I feel. I'm practically an expert in really uncomfortable-looking stances and a disconnect between voice and physical expression.

I watched a video of myself teaching. I stand ram-rod straight and with dead-doll eyes speak with the most enthusiastic tone. I am the whitest band on earth.

This song makes me feel a w e s o m e. The video makes me feel itchy and angry, like I want to reach out and punch everybody but the accordion player, who is just doing his best to draw his fellows up to his level and get as hype as he can. He actually spits, which is what I do when I'm garbling the words to this song when Delight cranks the radio. The accordion player gets it.

I wouldn't buy this yet? I'm reconsidering Extraordinary by Clean Bandit and Hideaway by Kiesza, so I'm beginning to doubt myself anyway. I'm over halfway through and all I want to talk about is Hozier, because these kids do not get it.