Matthew Thomas Meade’s collection Strip Mall is filled with stories innovative in form and heartfelt and indelibly of our time.
All writers are failed musicians in one way or another. Even if a writer never picked up an instrument, it just means they failed very early in the process. Even though writers who try to use music to augment their work are often exposed as dilettantes, it is a difficult siren song to resist. The truth of the matter is, that even though writers and musicians both pull from the same swamp of the subconscious, writers all wish we could be as cool as even the corniest musician. Unfortunately, no writer can manage the statuesque grandeur of Beyonce, the effortless, cast-away cool of a Jack White, nor even the gaudy goofiness of a Post Malone. If only.
The 12-songs (plus one bonus) are each supposed to represent, embody, or somehow commune with one of the 12 stories in my forthcoming collection “Strip Mall” (Tailwinds Press, November 2023). Please forgive me for being a dilettante. I think you know deep down that there is nothing more relatable.
“Yr Mangled Heart” by Gossip
I feel like “Yr Mangled Heart” is appropriate as a companion for the first story in my collection because it sets the tone for what is to come. The Southwest’s Most Dangerous Babies is the tale of two people in a situation where they are so uniquely terrible for each other that they put each other’s lives at risk just by being around each other. Their hearts are mangled, indeed, but by whom? Someone is to blame. The characters have been diverted, distracted, and swindled somehow. Everyone can just feel it.
Haven’t you been swindled? Aren’t you just sick about it?
“You Ain’t The Problem” by Michael Kiwanuka
Everyone has had to be reminded, at some point in their life, that they are not the problem. Kiwanuka is the perfect person for this task. His gleaming-like-chrome, neo-soul sound with raspy vocals rich and worldly, make even the hardest of lessons easier to hear.
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” by Clem Snide/ Eef Barzelay
In the ocean of curated song playlist mixes—from boom box mix tapes, to illicit Napster-burnt CDs, to social media shared playlists—none escape the tentacles of Bob Dylan’s influence. This curated playlist is no exception. The lyrics to Dylan’s 1962 tune “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” from his sound-defining sophomore record The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan is kind of a perfect accompanying song for the story called Sunshowers.
I ain’t a-saying you treated me unkind
You could’ve done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right
That’s the kind of thing most of us wish we could say to someone after a once-promising relationship goes all pear-shaped. Sunshowers is a story about people who are probably wasting each other’s time, but it’s hard to blame them. We are all guilty of squandering a loved one’s hours every now and again. Try not to get so mad about it if you can help it.
“End of Empire IV” by Arcade Fire
While I don’t hate Peter Gabriel as much as the irrationally angry character in the story, In Response to Your E-Newsletter Re: Peter Gabriel’s Upcoming Summer Tour Dates, I am still not going to add a Peter Gabril song to this list, because I want this playlist to be good.
Arcade Fire’s “End of the Empire IV” perfectly sums up the resentment and frustration at realizing what life in the 21st century turns out to be. The story is about the Kafkaesque maze we all meander through on a daily basis, where things meant to make our lives better end up being a labyrinthine hellscape making simple tasks Sisyphean. When Win Butler says, “We unsubscribe / Fuck season five” I know exactly how he feels. And so do you.
“Here Comes a Regular” The Replacements
The titular story of this collection (Strip Mall, or Cognizing Signifiers in Retail Service Spaces) was almost called “Here Comes a Regular.” This sturdy and enduring Replacements song about loneliness, human connection, and absence sums up the themes of the story perfectly. The line, “everybody wants to be someone’s here” could apply to every single character in my story.
Maybe I should have named it this after all.
“Rumors” by Lizzo
Now that Lizzo is problematic, I listen to her more than ever. This is not a defense of her alleged behavior, nor is it any kind of advocacy. She’s just on my mind. And, I guess, if I am being honest, I find the art of problematic people to be even more interesting than the art of non-problematic people. Good art is supposed to be a car wreck. An indictment, an admission of guilt, and an examination of everything that isn’t working. And to find that the person making the music, book, film, painting, is deeply flawed, it makes that car wreck that much more bloody and twisted. This is true of everyone from Lizzo to Roman Polanski, from H. P. Lovecraft to Charles Manson, from Casey Affleck to everyone in the story A Painting of Such Reputation. What do you think art is? Advice? Some kind of scripture? You know it’s not.
“K-hole” by Cocorosie
The record this song is from, Noah’s Ark, received mostly negative reviews by the rock critics of the era. The Guardian said, “it irritates more than it charms” while Pitchfork griped “no friggin’ clue what I was supposed to have taken to enjoy this ride.” These are but two of the many 0.0 and F grades gripes that emerged in response to this strange album. All this static just made me love the record even more. I borrowed the record from the library and burned it to the virus-laden laptop I owned and put songs from it on every mix tape for every girl I met that year. None of them ever called me again. And certainly none of them ever tried to resurrect me from the dead like Bianca from The Re-Emergence of Stephen does for Stephen. But what if they did, though?
“Baby You Know Me” by Wolfsuka
Can anyone ever really know anyone else? The characters in You Would Understand Why I’m Like This If You Were the Exact Same Person as Me think so. Or at least they hope so. They dream so.
“In California” by Neko Case
I have always been fascinated by the story of Peter Pan and writing The Parts of a Shadow was my way of getting to manipulate the tale in my own unique and irresponsible ways. What I found was that it’s about dreams more than anything else. Neverland is that ancient ache that feels like it predated us, pulling us back to a time that did not exist. All of our childhoods were Neverland. From where we stand, they look just like Peter’s home; the danger, the camaraderie, the casual racism. It was all there, laid out like a landscape made just to be mapped, like a dirty picture crudely drawn just to surreptitiously show it around. Just to lie that you had someplace special to go. Some place other people were not invited. Call it Neverland, call it California, call it Schenectady, NY, the name doesn’t matter. What matters is you.
“All Around the World” by Dead Milkmen
There is something so sad about this song. The goofy veneer makes the tale of fear and mental illness even more tragic. I love how the speaker is so assured in the way they talk about what they know and yet they reveal themself as a paranoid delusional in doing so. The first time I heard it, I wished I could have written something like it. So, I wrote A Unified Conspiracy Theory.
“To Be Alone with You” by Sufjan Stevens
Being alone with someone is so rare. Even when you do manage to get someone by themselves, you are often dealing with everyone who made them, everyone they have been convinced they want to be, everyone they want to be with, and everyone who hurt them. It takes so much work to close that door, lock it good, and look them in the eyes long enough to really manage to be alone with them. You have to dig and bloody your fingertips to peel away the crust and the muck left behind from everyone who came before.
You’ll never know them. They will always be a mystery. They will always be composites of the damage taken from your predecessors, but you might be able to get a glimpse of them in the process and maybe show them a naked glimpse of yourself for one spilt second. And it’s worth the effort.
The Bedwetters is about what happens when you finally manage to do it.
“By Some Miracle” by Phil Selway
If you’ve ever wondered why Radiohead sounds like Radiohead, this tenderly menacing, creepy pop-lullaby by the band’s god damn drummer will make it clear to you. If the drummer’s solo effort sounds this sinister and twee, no wonder the band’s efforts are so relentlessly and intimately harrowing. I have always loved “By Some Miracle” because Selway is right: None of us deserve to survive. By all rights, we belong under ground or never born. It’s a miracle any of us get through the day. It’s a miracle we get to see the day at all.
That is kind of the tension I was trying to capture with the last story in my collection, Terms of Venery. The end is nigh for everyone in this story of an ever-nearing apocalypse. They watch the sun go down on one world and hope to see it rise again on something else, anything else. It’s funny how we don’t think about how precious our lives are until they are at risk. Ever found a lump, awaited a diagnosis, or walked away from an accident? That stuff reminds you to kiss your dear ones on the tops of their heads, breathe in deeply even the most polluted air, and to look up at the oil spill madness of sunset and to feel grateful just to have been there to see it.
“Hellhole Ratrace” by Girls
The thirteenth song for a collection with 12 stories is supposed to be the capstone to all the themes of the book: A transcendent culmination of all the stories. A chorus made from all the voices of all the stories combined. The parting gift you take home from the game show that is 21st Century American Literature.
There is a lot to love about “Hellhole Ratrace” by indie rock burnouts Girls. The shimmering feedback, the pixie dust melody, the insistent rhythms… and it all somehow takes place in that moment between the cool cheer of a constellated midnight and schizophrenic mania of the sky colors during a sunrise. I think I like “Hellhole Ratrace” most of all because the title is so superlatively negative, but the song is arrestingly hopeful. Ultimately, that’s what I hope these stories are. They are about loss, failure, and frustration, but they are also supposed to be about people finding ways to cope with those feelings. Even if I just give the characters (or they give me) space to complain about this stuff, sometimes that is enough. There is something heroic in that. There is something aspirational. I think so anyway. So, when you listen to “Hellhole Ratrace,” and the singer croons he doesn’t want to “cry his whole life through,” that he doesn’t’ want to “die without shaking up a leg or two,” just know that that’s how I feel about it all. And I hope you do as well.
Matt Meade is a freelancer, fiction writer, and wrestling school dropout. You can hear his opinions on music every time he turns on the radio.