Featured Essay: Those Songs Are Yours Now

by SJ Rayburn

It’s 2007 and I’m laying on some shitty guy’s awful mattress on the floor and he has music on the laptop. It sounds familiar, really familiar. I’m pretty sure I know who it is, but I ask anyway- “who is this?” He stops what he’s doing and laughs at me. “You don’t know?” he says, relishing it. “It’s The Shins, I thought you liked them” god damnit, The Shins. Of course it’s The Shins. That’s why it sounds like a jamboree on a spaceship hosted by a very sad but enthusiastic man, which is your favorite style of music.

I was warbling along to any number of instruments and making up Shins lyrics for years before I met him, the shittiest guy I have ever personally known. But in that moment, they became Mine, But With Conditions. Tethered to him, one of only two musical acts to have done so. The other shall remain nameless, as many years later I ended up working for them, which would have made him so jealous (It is worth noting that for two separate tour dates, I felt it fit to warn them that he might show up and pull some shit. He never did). That band is no longer tethered to him. They’re my friends now, one of them even helped me get sober. They don’t make me think of him, they make me think of La Quinta Inns and venue folding tables all across this great continent and what it must be like to have a bunch of weird brothers who will attack someone for you.

After my friend and her boyfriend broke up, she told me that there was a Guided By Voices show that she wanted to go to, but didn’t know if she should or could because they were one of her ex’s favorite bands, even though she loves them now too. One thing is that there is a Guided By Voices song for every person on the planet, and I’m only half joking. I think we can all find room to exist in there. 

I told her about how a friend and unrequited crush was the main Guy Who Reads Pitchfork at my high school and how many steadfast favorites that yielded me- Quasi, Built To Spill, Stereolab, Pavement, of Montreal, The Sea and Cake, and yes, The Shins. I said it’s surprising to me that I don’t really associate any of that music with him, outside of a matter of record. He could make a mix CD like nobody’s business, I still play the ones that will play. But even though they’re his, with his handwriting on those black CD-Rs, and even though he broke my heart, I hardly conjure a thought of him. Those songs are mine now, and that’s what I told her about Guided By Voices. Those songs, all 8 billion of them, are hers now.

Embarrassment sticks to me like burrs, but I never felt like that explained the pall that had fallen over The Shins’ entire catalogue. The early end of an abusive relationship where you know it sucks but you don’t really know what to do because you’re 23 and no one taught you about what to do if you’re feeling intimidated by your boyfriend, except one afternoon sophomore year your mom goes “keep some cash under a big plant in case things go south” which is good advice, but I needed context I wouldn’t get until I lived it and besides, everyone argues sometimes, was a hell of a time for The Shins to have released Wincing The Night Away. Very effective. Maybe it was just effective

Maybe it isn’t even necessarily him. Maybe that’s just the album that came out at the same time that I went from someone who hadn’t really Been Through A Ton Of Shit Yet, to someone Who has Been Through So Much Shit. “Ask your family for escape money and move into your friend’s basement” Shit. He just happened to have been the person to introduce me to A Bunch of Shit, but what I really sit with when I think about that period of my life, is myself. How doomed and alone I felt driving with The Shins in a torrential downpour running some stupid errand for him even though I thought he was more than able to handle it himself and had plenty of time to do so because he was, after all, unemployed. Wondering to myself if this was a good idea, if any of it was a good idea.

The Shins had already held my hand through minor heartbreaks and various crises, like trying to go back to school and sitting at my computer Knowing My Onion and wondering if this was a good idea. If any of it was a good idea (it wasn’t). I guess he, and that, had just been their biggest challenge yet. “Serenity Now,” I yell to James Mercer. Those songs are mine. I am, to this day, going through so much shit.

While writing this I listened to the album in full (more than once, because for all my baggage, it’s very, very good) which I hadn’t done in a while. I gotta say, I was feeling pretty untethered. Melodies and instrumentation changes washing over me like it had always been mine. It is, after all, mine, I think, while dancing and singing to my cat. Which, by the way, she hates. 

I knew, though. Don’t get ahead of yourself, we haven’t gotten to “A Comet Appears” yet. 

What a closer.

SJ Rayburn is a musician and artist based in Hamtramck, Michigan. She thinks you should go listen to your favorite song as soon as possible.