Genre Analysis: HEAL

      HEAL by Strand of Oaks will never be an album that is easily categorized. Project creator Timothy Showalter looks like something that crawled out of Motorhead, and yet he shreds guitar like Jack White and somehow also has all the sensitivity of James Taylor. His mutation of style places him in multiple different genres, and to actually specify a genre would almost demand the creation of an entirely new and specific one. But if one genre had to be chosen, HEAL could be broadly classified as a folk rock album. It’s general sound, when observed on the surface, fits fairly smoothly into this group. However, Showalter obviously deviates from and recreates this basic template throughout the entirety of HEAL.

            
     Before HEAL, Showalter created music that was more easily identifiable as folk rock. He wrote and performed songs that could be specifically defined and always fit cleanly into a genre, but they weren’t necessarily what he wanted to be writing. In reality, Showalter wanted something like HEAL-something that would reach into the depths of his mind and bring his buried emotions to life. This speaks to the complexity of Showalter as an artist and reveals the convolution of the messages he wanted expressed through HEAL. His previous songs and albums were too inside-the-box; they weren’t complicated and intricate enough to reflect the elaborate originality of his intent; they were packaged molds and Showalter was not a shelf-music artist. This breaking out of a single genre and expanding into multiple others makes HEAL an enjoyable album not only because it’s the exciting first reveal of Showalter’s improved sound, but also because the different genre mash-ups can be extensively explored and contemplated.

            
     Staying true to his folk rock origins, Showalter has guitar and rhythm present on HEAL that sounds like a combination of some of the more rock and roll songs by Mumford & Sons and songs by the band Phosphorescent. He sings about the small town where he grew up and details parts of his childhood and teenage angst, folksy topics that create an informal and quaint aura around HEAL. The ‘rock’ part of folk rock comes into play with Showalter’s faster pace and denser, more deliberate guitar.

            
     In addition to folk rock however, Showalter displays hints of grunge and indie rock in his music, with tones that are tortured and emotional, anguished and unrelenting.  The grunge on HEAL is not so much sonic as it is the genreal ‘vibe’ of grunge. Using Nirvana’s Nevermind as an example, HEAL has songs like “For Me”, “Wait For Love”, and “JM” that echo the agonizing feelings of some of Kurt Cobain’s Nevermind songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Lithium”. All of these songs have tortured, screaming lyrics and sounds that convey emotional torment and pain. When looking at this aspect of the album, Showalter is partially included in the grunge genre ‘in spirit’, so-to-speak, because his songs are intense, but he doesn’t share the heavy, gritty pace of grunge music itself. He merely embraces the message of grunge and embodies it in many of his songs on HEAL. In this way, he takes folk rock and twists it into a folk grunge rock hybrid, with all the tradition of folk, the hardcore sound of rock, and the torment of grunge.

            
     The other genre aspect of HEAL is its indie rock vibe, given through synth beats and layered tones. HEAL resembles the band the War on Drugs firstly in that they both tend to have tangential songs that are longer but build on themselves, creating an escalation of sound. However, HEAL also reflects the sentimentality of the War on Drugs and other similar bands in that genre. The more abstractly emotional, contemplative tone of these bands is found all throughout HEAL in almost every song, even the angry grunge-like ones. In some artistic maneuver, Showalter is able to combine his folk rock sound with a grunge mentality that is somehow as serene and profound in its purity as those indie rock bands that tend to lean towards the sensitive side.

            
     Together, this combination results in something like an indie grunge folk rock genre that seems to be the only way to truly describe HEAL. The expectedness of the folk rock sound gives this album a definite familiarity and makes it feel comfortable, but the unexpected mixing and spinning of multiple different music genres creates an air of mystery and intrigue. It draws the listener in because it is simultaneously new and old, retro with a unique twist; it becomes exactly what the listener wants and anticipates, and then it expands into more. It is throwback without being boring, brand new without being fresh, and fits into so many genres in so many diverse ways that it becomes mesmerizing in how it is all woven together.

            
     Along with this genre mastery and expression comes authenticity, which is probably the most significant point that can be made about HEAL. The way HEAL is constructed is so creative and exceptional, and the messages conveyed through the music are so real, that it is almost impossible to suspect that the album was forced. The content seems as if it could only have come directly from Showalter’s mind because it is so obviously pure and unfiltered. The reason that Showalter was able to discover the mixture of these genres successfully is because it was the only tool he had to reveal and explicitly express his feelings. The complexity of his thoughts could only be channeled through something equally as complex, and thus came HEAL in its patchwork-genre glory. While it pays homage to its original folk rock roots, HEAL definitely expands itself by tapping into many other musical genres and becomes something beyond genre and definition. It results in a meaningful piece of art that is interesting to listeners because of how it stands out. Showalter didn’t just succeed in a creating a genre collaboration within an album; he exceeded achievement and developed a new exclusive genre personal to HEAL.

           

Strand of Oaks, HEAL: Album Review

     Timothy Showalter, also known as Strand of Oaks, truly dug deep to unearth HEAL, his most popular Strand of Oaks album to date. Dissatisfaction with his previous album, Dark Shores, led Showalter to this incredible project, as HEAL investigates and brings to life Showalter’s innermost demons, and the most painfully passionate of his sensitivities. An unnervingly raw and exposed musical creation, HEAL is gritty and tortured, yet it also contains glimmers of hope, resulting in an impressive patchwork of emotional extremes.

     I have yet to find a really bad review of HEAL, as even those who do not appreciate its full insight understand that Showalter’s collection of tunes, synths, beats, tones, and absolute shred-sessions on guitar is a uniquely attractive and intriguing one. Born and raised in Goshen, Indiana, Showalter includes nostalgic reflections of his youth on HEAL, particularly with songs like “Goshen ‘97”, in which he details growing up, discovering rock and rock, and dealing with his teenage angst. But HEAL isn’t just a collection of childhood memories; in its entirety, it resembles more of a memoir.

     Showalter seems to organize his album in order from childhood. Beginning with “Goshen ‘97”, he continues on to include grief and sentiments about his strained relationship with his ex-wife, who cheated on him, an incident in which his home burnt down and left him homeless for a period of time, and a near-death experience in a car accident just days before creating the bulk of HEAL, in which he broke every rib on the right side of his body and experienced a serious concussion. HEAL is Showalter’s honest and jolting expression of these challenges.

     With musical catharsis to help him, the song “HEAL” from this album seems to be Showalter insistently urging himself to heal and recover from life’s hurtles.  It’s almost a manifestation of his conscience, pure and unaltered, speaking to him through a current of sound. With the song “Same Emotions”, Showalter seems to demand personal reflection, undercurrents of anger and frustration becoming obvious as the song progresses. The crafting of these songs to convey a sonic build similar to the way emotions build and shift is admirable enough, but the sounds Showalter professionally combines are also so engaging that the songs become breath-taking.

     The songs “Mirage Year”, “Wait for Love”, and “Plymouth” are definitely more wistful and sad. “Mirage Year” and “Wait for Love” seem to focus on the heartbreaking, shattering despair Showalter faced with his ex-wife’s affair, although “Mirage Year” communicates a more muted, overbearing sadness than the agonizing and piercing anguish of “Wait for Love”. Meanwhile, “Plymouth” seems to be more of a pensive and melancholy contemplation of how that grief immediately began to weigh him down and take everything from him. Together, these songs all share a deep heaviness that is both sharp and penetrating as well as sluggish and infectious, affecting the listener in the way that only raw and honestly crafted music can.

     More fierce and jarring is the song “For Me”, which sounds like all of Showalter’s distress and anger and angst piled into one track. His descriptions of how his entire world fell apart are so grating, upfront, and damn real that it’s hard not to become righteously angry along with him. His eventual progression into shouting the chorus is powerful enough to inspire a frenzy. But perhaps the most potent section of the album occurs toward the middle.

     Showalter’s fourth song, “Shut In”, is unique in that it sounds like the most hopeful song on the album. It encourages visions of travel, Into the Wild-style, and ‘moving on’, as Showalter talks about losing his faith, making realizations about his life, and trying to make amends with all that has tortured him by leaving it behind and focusing on the future. It seems to be Showalter deciding to look past the burdens of the present, even if they are hard to see beyond. Directly after “Shut In” is the track “Woke up to the Light”, which follows this trend of moving forward, but implies that Showalter doesn’t intend to let go of his past completely because it is part of him, and he will eventually find peace regardless. The harmonizing singing directly after the chorus sounds almost spiritual in its resigned faith, placing this song at a delicate balance between gloomy and optimistic. Finally, following “Woke up to the Light”, comes the song that indisputably elevates HEAL to complete masterpiece status: “JM”.

     Never has a song been so earth-shattering as “JM”. Beginning softly and quietly, it is an unsuspecting jam, but holy shit, does it jam. It is not a song to listen to nonchalantly; it is not just a background song heard in the grocery store. “JM” demands full attention and focus. The song’s title comes from the initials of Showalter’s musical hero, Jason Molina, who died in 2013. The song itself, however, feels like an accumulation of every tragedy ever, giving “JM” a violently haunting and anguished energy. The chorus is intense and heart-stopping, magnified by sudden switches from deathly quiet to ear-splitting sonic surges. The guitar is tormented and excruciating, and the most defining part of the song is when Showalter barks a chilling shout before descending into a mind-blowing tangent of epic guitar shredding. The dangerous, electric thrill of the entire song inspires quivers of energy, transforming “JM” into a song that most likely functioned as a total purge of negative energy for Showalter. Strangely, the hell-bent song ends softly, stirring up a sense of purity and feelings of being cleansed, shrouding the track in awe-inspiring mystique.

     With such a mixture and range of emotion and sound, Timothy Showalter of Strand of Oaks manages to craft a magnificent album that listeners can be consumed by. Its intimacy, derived from being such a personal album for Showalter, is appealing because it makes HEAL seem authentic and genuine. He succeeds in crafting music with enough depth to instantly be a favorite here on The Deep End.

Hi and Welcome to The Deep End. My name is Bailey Radenbaugh, and this is the introduction to my blog and the music that I will be writing about. 

To start, I have to say that this blog will not include many modern pop, top ten-ish tunes. I won't be analyzing Nicki Minaj, Taylor Swift, Flo Rida, or Miley Cyrus. While I have a separate appreciation for songs you bob your head to or listen to in the car with your friends, the goal of this blog is to delve into songs that will make you, in summary, feel something. Whether it's crushing sadness, heart-clenching joy, or Zen-esque peace, my goal is to find the songs that will bring a person to feel the kind of penetrating emotion that is best expressed through music. 


Although this blog will obviously be tailored to my own music taste, I hope that you will still enjoy the music I choose, and hopefully come to appreciate it and enjoy reading some of my personal insight. The music genres and artists observed will definitely vary. I will explore artists from Bon Iver to Eminem, U2 to Lana Del Rey, Nirvana to The War on Drugs, and M83 to Muse. I want to discuss popular and incredibly revered artists, up-and-coming, on-the-rise artists, and the lost artists who have been forgotten or ignored. There is only one requirement on The Deep End: the songs I choose have to take me to another place; they have to take me out of my head or make sense of what’s in it. 

If a song makes me stop and freeze, forget what I'm doing, or is something that I can only listen to alone at night because its intensity deserves my undivided attention, I will write about it. I want to discuss songs that can rescue a person from the present and swallow them whole, songs that can inspire a person and drive them to the edge. I want to find songs that make a person feel the highest summit of ecstasy or the deepest trench of despair, depending on what they choose. The music I talk about is going to be music that you'll want to drive to with the windows down under a starry night sky; it's going to be music that makes the world seem more vibrant and effervescent and soul-shattering; it's going to be music that seems to somehow capture life so well that you feel more alive just by listening to it. I want the music I choose to enhance the world around you, to upgrade your life in high definition. And if a song doesn't resonate with you at first, my goal is to provide you with my own personal perspective, to inspire you to listen to the music without thinking, and to feel the sounds instead of hearing them so that you can find your own perspective.

In my own experience, music seems to represent all that words cannot say. It reaches and extends beyond language, and it exists as a form of communication so complex that there are infinite combinations of notes and sounds, and yet it is also so simple that anyone can understand it. It's a universal dialect, a direct channel of emotion and expression from the artist, and it can embody the intensity and pain and passion of being alive. It is, in my personal belief, one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It can fuel revolutions, and pacify crowds. It can touch hearts, and break hearts. It can blow your mind, melt your face, and rock you to the core. And it can calm you down, inspire trance-like reflections, and speak to you like nothing else.  And that is what The Deep End is all about.  

I do not want to force any of my opinions or views concerning the music I choose. I just want to try to open the mind of anyone who reads my blog, even if the music is not necessarily “your thing”. I hope that regardless, the music still reaches you, and maybe even affects you in a new way. Try to listen to the music without defining it, listen without judgement, and listen with an open mind. To quote U2’s Bono, “Music can change the world because it can change people”. The fact that music can have the power and potential to reach people in such a deep way, and, as a result, potentially influence the way of the world, fuels my passion for this blog and its goals and intents. So, that said, welcome to The Deep End; take the sonic plunge.