jeff does have some lyrics that TEND towards the depressing… but he also writes with a good amount of hope on some tracks. most importantly, i think the ska punk version of this album embraces a playfulness and an energy that is a lot of fun. (answering this was hard bc i realized my taste in music is also overwhelmingly depressing)
i didn’t quite appreciate this song as much as i do now until seeing it performed as the closer to his live show… such a great encapsulation of the feeling of years of life under very late capitalism weighing on you
how hard can you go,
and for how long can you sustain it?
when the force that fights back
doesn’t ever relax
it’s so relentless,
oh how long can you defend
against a cheat code?
at a furious pace,
with a smile on your face
Particularly, the Peel Session version. I listen to this most days before work, Mark E. Smith was always able to create this bleak atmosphere, pulling all the annoying things from the mundane. All punk seems like a charade in comparison to this, this is the only song that matters sometimes, all that anger.
Jeffrey lewis has a way of making optimism seem actually practical. Hearing him for the first time.. it just clicked immediately. I’m eternally grateful for him, his mind, his comics, and for this song. Once, during a particularly rough shift, I played ‘Life’ maybe about 15 times on repeat. I didn’t even mean to, nor did I have it queued, I just kept hitting the button on my headphones to manually replay it each time I got to the end. I just HAD to hear it again and I soaked in those lyrics every single time around. ‘Life is a story, don't you doubt
Bad times give ya something to talk about
The next time you think youre all worn out,
Remember life is a story,
Dontcha doubt..
It only takes a day for everything to turn around’
