Staff Pix 4/28: Driving Off Into the Sunset
The Milk Crate staff’s favorite tracks that remind us of driving off into the sunset, presented with blurbs worthy of a promotional sticker on a jewel case. Tune in Fridays from 2-3 EST to the Staff Pix radio show.
Amelia Oei
Heroes by David Bowie
“Heroes” transcends anything that attempts to do it justice, and Bowie emphasized this himself: he later told Classic Rock that he “looked at ‘feel’ as being the priority” while writing the song. Its memorable melody, melancholy lyrics, and longing riffs create a wistful feeling in the listener that cannot be explained with any other medium. The narrator sings about a day where their personal and world conflicts would disappear so that they can bask in the freedom of love and peace. This timeless narrative works for a heartbreaking relationship, optimistic end of war, or driving into the sunset. The sound is so powerful that it permeates through memories. Unashamedly, I recall countless times repeatedly blasting “Heroes” while driving into the sunset back in my hometown. During those times, I longed for a perfect world. Listening to the song now, I long for these old memories. I will never be able to listen to this song without longing for something — yet simultaneously being filled with Bowie’s reassurance that everything will be okay, that “we can be heroes, just for one day.” To me, driving into the sunset can mean a variety of things: longing for happiness; hope for the future; an ending that you know will have to happen eventually. Bowie somehow put all of these feelings into one perfect song.
Karenna Umscheid
Sun Bleached Flies by Ethel Cain
In the year that I have been Editor-in-Chief of Milk Crate I have endured a lot of change, I have lost friendships but I have gained a lot of love and a better sense of myself, and this tumultuous experience laced by the support and community that Milk Crate has provided me with. And as I move on to be General Manager of WECB, I am forced to reckon with change once again. This time I am trying not to leave clawed scratches on the things I am leaving behind, I am trying to drive into the sunset and learn and grow and trust. When Ethel Cain nears the close of her tragic, gutsy album Preacher’s Daughter, she, with a full heart, sings “If it’s meant to be/Then it will be,” with encompassing, glowing vocals that, though canonically are quite tragic, I am using to help me let go. WECB and Milk Crate has unequivocally changed my life, and I am certain it will continue to do so. With this song, and all the love and lessons (and playlists and music!) I have gained over the course of my sophomore year, I am ready to trust in myself and drive into the sunset, to new adventures, and always, new music.
Stephanie Weber
Soundtrack for Your Backseat by sundriver ca
Based in California, sundriver ca garnered popularity on TikTok possibly summer 2020 for his song “Soundtrack for Your Backseat.” The song is exactly what you would expect to put on when you’re driving into the sunset. It's just “chill” and has great “vibes.” Seriously, it’s a great song. It’s psychedelic enough to warrant being put in that category but it also is indie rock with great drums, guitar, and synthesizer. It opens with dreamy instrumentals but goes into vocals all about love, with the first set including lines like “Truth be told/ my home is whenever you’re around.” The lyrics are short, but moody and melancholic evidenced by the lines “My love is heavy with dope/ I hope we both overdose.” I have to admit, this song is on a playlist I created with the title “Walking Home At Sunset.” It’s truly perfect for those summer nights that you don’t want to end.
Julia Norkus
This is the Day by The The
The ending scene of the movie Empire Records (1995) is, to me, iconic. For anyone that doesn’t know the movie, it’s about a day in the life of the employees at a record store on the brink of closure. I won’t spoil the whole thing, but the end of the movie shows the staff dancing on top of the roof next to their neon sign while “This is the Day” plays in the background, and I can’t help but cry every time I see it. The dull yellow glow from the signage illuminates the characters’ faces, love and delight emanating from their smiles. “This is the Day” is an ode to being here now and trusting in the fact that everything is going to work out as it should. “This is the day / Your life will surely change / This is the day / Where things fall into place,” are the words I live by and the ones that have ultimately changed my life over the last five years. Its message, its inexplicable joy—I think it changed everything for me, to be honest. “This is the Day” is confirmation that you are here, you are valid and that “This is the day / Where things fall into place.” So have a sip of water, maybe have something to eat, get some rest, and know that I love you infinitely <3
Anne O’Leary
Rosyln by Bon Iver and St. Vincent
POV: You’re driving on a two lane highway somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. You’re surrounded by trees, and it’s slightly rainy. It seems as though nobody is on the road, you feel completely alone. You know you should be scared, but this isolation provides you a sense of peace, somehow. You don’t really know where you are going, you just turned on the ignition and started going, farther and farther into the nothingness. You can’t remember why you left in the first place. What were you really trying to escape? What is there for you to run away from? It’s unclear, now, as you step on the gas a little harder. You look in your mirror, again, nobody is behind you. You’re still alone. You turn on the radio to your favorite folk station, this song is playing. Tears begin to well up in your eyes as the music plays. You don’t know why you’re crying in the first place.
Will Ingman
Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors by Editors
When I think of “driving off into the sunset”, I picture cresting a hill just before the credits roll, amber light filling the sky at the end of a long, arduous journey. Something with finality; a resolution, long overdue. Fitting, that this would be the last Staff Pix theme of my time at Emerson and at my beloved Milk Crate. And, in the spirit of friend, fellow staffer, and well-deserved new editor-in-chief Julia Norkus, I’ll spend the rest of this blurb oversharing: This song, despite its ostentatious choral vocals and enduring runtime, has come to represent that finality for me. The first time I was involuntarily hospitalized for my mental health, I spent the six days of inpatient treatment with the chorus to “Smokers” firmly wedged in my memory, humming away at the back of every moment. I played it on the way home from the hospital and cried for the first time in months. Since then, it’s come to represent periods of change and transition to me, and still creeps back into my brain every time I make a big leap for the better. The twenty months I spent writing, shooting, laughing, sometimes crying, loving, living, and breathing for this publication have been a North Star in a time of great darkness. Something to follow, to chase, to cherish. Time for change. <3
Lily Suckow Ziemer
“southview” by 8485 and fish narc
Maybe it’s cliche, but to me “southview” by 8485 and fish narc screams “relatable.” After first hearing it this April, I couldn’t help reflecting on my freshman year of college. The main lyric of the song is hammered in throughout the chorus: “I haven’t seen anybody I’ve known for a long time / In a long time.” I was more than eager to graduate high school a year ago, and haven’t seen most of my classmates since. It’s not like I hate any of them, but I definitely haven’t missed the school I attended for 15 years. It’s strange though, to only see Instagram pictures of sorority rush week and St. Patrick’s Day parties from people I used to see every day. While I don’t feel exactly the same as 8485 when she sings, “I don’t have any friends from when I was a kid and I’m so glad,” as I still keep in touch with a couple, the end of an era of people speaks to me. The alternative pop song is a pensive drive into the sunset, and as I finish this school year, I can’t stop listening.
Rachel Charles
Cico Buff by Cocteau Twins
When it comes to the Cocteau Twins, their discography is filled with songs that exude that riding into the sunset feeling, and their song "Cico Buff" is no exception. "Cico Buff", although somewhat intangible in its lyricism, is a song that exudes pure blissful feeling, a feeling of resolution and retrospection. It’s that feeling when the protagonist finally learns the moral lesson that the movie has been hinting at for the past 120 minutes, and the character can finally leave their tenacious past behind them. The track's dreamy shoegaze sound makes this the perfect song to get lost in while you drive off into the sunset, windows down, swaying your head to Cocteau Twins frontwoman Elizabeth Fraser’s hypnotic vocals. I think this song is the perfect staff pix to end on as Milk crate rides into the summer.
Maura Cowan
Ketchum, ID by Boygenius
There’s a playlist I have called “An Elegy for I-580,” named after a branch of the interstate that runs through my hometown. I made it last summer, deep in a stew of heat and frustration and grief, grappling with the understanding that going “home” was getting progressively harder as more and more of my life was taking root many thousands of miles away in Boston. Sometimes, realizing that it’s time to go is the easy part. I have to say goodbye to Boston now, and though it is indisputably the right choice for me, it is a terrifying leap of faith for me to break away from a place I’d begun to call home far more than the city I grew up in. “Ketchum, ID,” the closing track on Boygenius’ self-titled EP, speaks to all of the beauty and melancholy and loneliness in moving on. It’s a quiet, meandering track, lacking any instrumentals other than a simple acoustic guitar riff. Instead, it lets Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers, and Julien Baker’s harmonies shine, as they reflect, “I am never anywhere/ Anywhere I go./ When I’m home, I’m never there/ Long enough to know.” Life on the road is one of eternal displacement, but also eternal reinvention. For better or for worse, that forces you to find a home in yourself and the people you’re with, and during my time at Emerson, I’ve been so lucky to find that home with Milk crate. So on we go, to different places and different versions of ourselves. But as the sun sets on this part of my life, I’m grateful for the versions that we all leave here on this page together one final time.
Harry Bates
Deal - Live at Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca NY 5/7/77 by The Grateful Dead
I just can’t wait for the summer. I’m so goddamn excited to be, well, frankly, out of Boston for a bit and back up north taking the roads by storm (haha). I crave a drive on one of those backcountry pathways with my windows rolled down, dust in the rearview, and “Deal” from the Dead’s Barton Hall ‘77 show blasting over my RAV4’s speakers. Few things are as liberating as a foot on an accelerator pedal, singing along to some old tune that lives happily in the back of your mind, and picking up a friend or two after work for some summertime shenanigans. Whether I’m heading up to Franconia Notch for hiking, trekking west-bound for some concert, or just going on a late-night drive to cool down from the weighty humidity of New England’s summer months — ”Deal” is there to spark comfort, laughter, and all-around good times!
A big thank you goes out to my friends and family at Milk Crate for another great year of talking about music & “shooting the shit.” As always, I’ve had a blast! So here’s to a season ahead full of impassioned fire-side conversations, good music, and endless amounts of citronella spray! May the sun keep shining wherever you’re headed <3
Matt Kugel
Turnstile by Vasudeva
I was introduced to three-piece post-rockers Vasudeva a few years ago by my best friend Cam, and despite the fact that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reach the level of obsession he’s at, I’m a really huge fan. The band is entirely instrumental, and it honestly makes perfect study music, but this isn’t your Grandma’s Lo-fi beats to relax and study to. They are able to capture emotion with great nuance, and no track is better evidence than “Turnstile”. The song has this feeling like it’s the end of something big, but the finality never feels bitter. It’s an uplifting track through and through, and the absence of lyrics opens the song up for a whole slew of meanings. But, to me, “Turnstile” will always be the perfect song to continue on living to. It’s a song that perfectly captures a feeling we all know well, the ubiquitous melancholy of new beginnings. That’s a strong feeling that can be hard to work through, but it’s only made all the more punchier by the fact that I can’t hear this song without reflecting on Cam and I’s many year-long friendship, one of the most important relationships of my life.
Izzy Desmarais
Flow by Cage The Elephant
When the staff decided on “driving into the sunset” as this week’s theme, I knew I wanted to pick a song from a playlist of mine titled “my ultimate movie soundtrack.” Composed of songs that would be on my life’s soundtrack or songs that give main character energy, this is without a doubt my comfort playlist. I decided on “Flow” by Cage The Elephant because of its dreamy yet melancholic tone. It’s short and the lyrics are a little repetitive, but the imagery these simple words evoke is absolutely incredible. “Ugly as a suitcase / I can see it stretch for days / Hanging on a sunset / Softly trampled by the rain.” The first verse alone feels like a poem I would have analyzed in AP Literature. “Flow” is playing as I ride into the sunset and leave this semester behind because, well, I’m tired. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy my sophomore year at Emerson College — there were numerous bright spots and memories that I’m sure I will remember fondly. But on the other side of that same coin, I’m homesick and my social battery is worse than dead and it’s time to have a hermit summer. Like I said, dreamy yet melancholic.
Salem Ross
Man In the Sixties by Balue
Driving into the sunset can be dramatic, it can be liberating and can uncover thoughts that need to be solved on a highway. Sometimes the sunset view is just the drive home. Your car stereo holds memories you forgot about. A song coming on shuffle makes the driver subconsciously step on the gas. Summer heals a lot of things. It gives time between school, and relationships that need a healing period. Balue’s opening notes instantly put me in my 2011 Volkswagen Jetta. “Grab a bag and hit the beach/Chew on the stems and plant the seeds” ring in a stereo system from more than ten years ago. It flows through a car that used to be my grandmothers and makes the sound from the same speakers I listened to when I was nine to nineteen, and hopefully many more years.