I’m sitting in the Detroit Metro airport waiting to board a plane to Traverse City.
There’s something about heading up north that makes me eager to listen to a few albums, but most notably (and consistently) Rilo Kiley’s The Execution of All Things and The Fruit Bats Mouthfuls.
When I made the four-hour drive north to my parent’s house while I lived in Michigan, I instinctively put one of these albums into my 1995 Saturn’s tiny, but eager cd player. The last hour of that drive was perfect — surrounded by trees, hills, curving roads and Lake Michigan .
The Execution of All Things seems like an obvious choice to any native Michigander who’s also a fan of that Rilo Kiley golden era (in my opinion…). So when the band played Stubb’s BBQ last Fall in Austin and Jenny Lewis took the liberty to change a lyric responsible for so much mitten state pride to an awkward syllabolic extension, “Au-au-stin,” my boyfriend and I teared up.
Granted we were already missing our pleasant peninsula, and so we were ready to croon along, “I drive and close my eyes in Michigan.”
There’s no way you could survive and drive and close your eyes in Au-au-stin.
So, like I said, I’m sitting in the new terminal in Detroit, waiting to board my plane and listening to the Execution of All Things. Crossing the threshold of plains and into the beauty of the north won’t be quite the same from cruising altitude, but I’m doing my best.
This album and Mouthfuls are more to Northerner’s than their apt allusions to pines, lakes and lazy summers. They’re full of youthful memories — the kind you make before you realize there are bills to pay and futures to plan. The kind you build when you’re not only idealistic, but also naive enough to passionately share those ideals with people who’ll never change their minds. The kind of memories stitched together over campfires without parents, seven mile sand dune hikes and the promise of freedom.
And even with all that freedom, they’re the albums that remind you why you’ll always want to come home.
