Respect the Van
As California’s election results roll in this morning, I’m having a cup of coffee and spinning one of my favorite albums. Politics has a way of making us search for comfort or tokens from a familiar past. This morning is all Brothers Comatose.
I believe in playing an album start to finish. I trust the artists and producers that an album is more than a list of individual songs. The album is whole. Complete. A body of work that must be consumed in relation to its parts. And if that is the definition of an album, then Respect the Van from The Brothers Comatose is perfect—for me at least.
The LP was recorded at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California, a 10 acre ranch in Sonoma County with vintage analog equipment. It is violins, mandolins, banjos, easy melodies and harmonies, cracks and pops from my overplayed record, claps during the chorus, and peaceful lyrics about life’s lessons and revelations. Songs about coffee and whiskey and sunrises and fathers. It is one of my favorite road trip albums with the track 120 East and the lyric “wildfire smoke running over my gills.” The smoky haze blanketing the Bay Area every summer reminds me to pull this record off the shelf.
The B Side turns the corner into faster picking and a driving strum that could get any floor stomping. Individually, I would usually pass on a song like Feels Like the Devil, but in the spirit of the album, that’s a song I listen to more closely. It’s too busy with the tonal discord for an album with a feeling of peace and quiet. It’s a sharp break from the rest of the album.
The arc of the album, with the slow build, the dive, the loop, and the rolls, Respect the Van is storytelling, plain and simple. In photography, I have little interest in the single photo. I need context, cohesion, and a story, when the result is greater than the sum of its parts. This album is the musical equivalent.