Three Things: Jim White - Static on the Radio

Spiritual Advice from Rust Cohle's Best Bud

As part of therapy, I've been tasked to write more, specifically about
music. The task is to write three things I love about a piece of music I deeply enjoy.

1. Jim White knows where the bodies are hidden. Static on the Radio is a gothic hymn and Aimme Mann’s voice serves divinely in that purpose and adds the presence of a seductive spiritual advisor. Cue that doleful “Bring out your dead” drumbeat and the melancholy shuffle. Gentle guitar accents punctuate that shuffle set against gentle electronic swirls just carefully tucked inside the chorus, and I’m thoroughly enchanted.

2. This is an exercise in control. In Jim’s world, coal trains howl, ghostly girls appear out of nowhere and ask for a ride, and forgotten music boxes just begin playing. This is just how his life is, and he’s quite comfortable whistling past the graveyard. He’s unbothered because he’s absorbing the lessons the dearly departed have to offer. As traveling is not about seeing new lands but seeing with new eyes, Static on the Radio is about abandoning what you think you know and heard and listening with new ears.

   “And I know
   It's a sin putting words in the mouths of the dead
   And I know
   It's a crime to weave your wishes into what they said”

3. Leonard Cohen could tell you what the dead’s favorite poem was and how they prayed. Jim knows things too, but he’s applied those lessons to his own life:

   “But don't time change those inclined
   To think less of what is written
   Than what's wrote between the lines.”

   Now ain’t that just the fucking truth.