Propagandhi #2: “Night Letters”
By Matthew Stella
Propagandhi plays Ritual on August 12th with RVIVR and War on Women. In the lead-up to the show, longtime fan Matthew Stella will reflect on how the band has impacted his life by reviewing a different Propagandhi song every day until August 12th.
Song: “Night Letters”
Album: Supporting Caste
Year: 2009
First Listen: 2009
In 1986, when Propagandhi founders Chris Hannah and Jord Samolesky first sought out a bass player to complete their lineup, they put out an ad that simply read, “progressive thrash band seeks bass player.” It’s difficult to know what they meant by “progressive thrash” in 1986. Some combination of Rush and Venom, with a little Coney Hatch I would guess. But it’s especially confusing since the band’s first two albums ended up becoming skate punk masterpieces featuring the man who would eventually form The Weakerthans on bass.
It was kind of a joke that the band always referred to themselves as “progressive thrash,” but the joke started to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy when The Rod joined the band shortly after Less Talk, More Rock. By 2009’s Supporting Caste the band had entirely moved away from anything that would link them sonically to their 90s output. The politics were still there, but their sound had gotten harder and their message less satirical, more angry.
2009 saw a change in The Rod’s songwriting. Traditionally his songs – take “Fuck the Border” or “Ordinary People Do Fucked-Up Things when Fucked-Up Things Become Ordinary” for example – were blunt messages, delivered with brute force, and usually about 45 seconds long. In fact the titles of those two songs are fully developed theses unto themselves. Does one need to expand more on “Fuck the Border”? The title speaks for itself. But Supporting Caste opens with The Rod’s “Night Letters” and it’s a damn good thing it does, because this song kicks so much ass that I was already four songs deep by the time I stopped smiling after the first time I heard it.
“Night Letters,” unlike The Rod’s aforementioned songs, does not have an easily identifiable topic contained in the title. What remains from his earlier style is the brute force. The volume swells, distorts and eventually turns into a pounding opening riff. After that all hell breaks loose and a flurry of tempo changes, pauses, blast beats, and duelling riffs follow… for four minutes! This is the dream of “progressive thrash” fully realized.
The lyrics see The Rod at his most poetic, telling the story of his thoughts for someone who had to flee a war-torn country, separated from their family, and can’t seem to fully adapt to their new life because they are still connected to their old one.
“You’re caught between this life and the one left behind.
I see it’s burning you inside like some exploding sun.
Your mind constantly returns to a place that’s not so fucking cold,
but on fire with war. You’re starting over from scratch, sending your money home.”
The lyrics are most likely influenced by The Rod’s activist work with immigrant families in Winnipeg. The song as a whole is a radical departure for The Rod in both its scope and ambition.
For me, these newer Propagandhi songs serve a different purpose than their earlier stuff. Rather than open me up to ideas that I don’t quite understand, they remind me not to lose focus, not to get bogged down in my own mundane problems and to recognize that the problems they addressed in 1996 are still relevant today. Rather than beat a dead horse with the same message over and over again, they’ve expanded the lens through which they perceive injustice and oppression. “Night Letters” does this by telling a story, by zeroing on one person’s struggle and showing an experience that, though not uncommon in this world, would be completely foreign to anyone listening to this record.
Back in 1993, on the song “Hate, Myth, Muscle, Etiquette, ” Hannah sang that “We all need a kick in the ass.” I know for a fact that I do every now and then (or quite often), and no song kicks my ass more than “Night Letters.”