No. 74: Donnie Darko by Let's Eat Grandma (2018)

I’m counting down my 100 favourite songs of all time. To keep this from becoming a Bob Dylan / Tom Waits love-in, only one track per artist is allowed.

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When I young and bored, I often passed the time by flicking through the telephone directory. I’d look up people I knew or search for funny names. Sometimes I’d pick a random person and wonder who they were. With just a name, address and phone number, I didn’t have a lot to go on, but it was something to do that fired my imagination.

This was the late 80s in a small town in the southwest of Ireland. There wasn’t a lot going on. The playground with a slide that could slice your leg open became a halting site. The cinema closed down not long after I went to see Tim Burton’s Batman as advertised but instead got The Karate Kid III. The only book of interest to me in the local library was Ian Rush’s exceedingly dull autobiography – though to be fair that may have been largely due to my football-focused monomania.

I lived in two-channel land so television was a daily diversion of Home and Away and Jo Maxi, though at least there was Zig and Zag for a little in-between anarchy. My ZX Spectrum was continually away for repairs or trolling me with R Tape Loading Errors after I’d spent half an hour in unmoving silence listening to the screech of 48Ks worth of 1s and 0s.

Yet despite this litany of what I hesitate to call first world problems given this was Ireland in the 80s, I suspect that whatever access you have as a teen to facilities and entertainment, the kind of listless boredom that makes the phone book seem interesting is an inescapable condition of youth.

“I saw you in the Yellow Pages”

This opening line of Let’s Eat Grandma’s Donnie Darko was written by a pair of 16-year-olds in 2016. Jenny Hollingworth and Rosa Walton most likely have amazingly powerful mobile phones that can access the entirety of the world wide web, can watch their pick of a decade’s worth of glorious television whenever they want or play instantly-loading video games that use 48K for an imperceptible piece of background scenery.

Yet that primal teen torpor is still there and flicking through the phone book not only retains its appeal, it may have an added attraction. In an interview, Hollingworth contrasted the anonymity of the Yellow Pages with Facebook. Find someone on Facebook and you’ll soon know a lot about them. Nothing is left to the imagination. Look them up in the phone book and all you get is a few bare facts. They remain, essentially, a mystery.

Does mystery have greater appeal for today’s young people when information is such a readily accessible utility? Have a question and you’ll find the answer in a few quick swipes. Want to learn about or understand anything, there’s a website or wiki dedicated to that topic. Even other people. Especially other people.

Social media purports to lay bare the lives of others, except they often appear at their smartest, sexiest and most confident. For a teenager in that difficult age of figuring out who you are and what you want to be, seeing everyone else with a handle on who they are every time you scroll must be disheartening.

Would growing up be easier if you knew a lot less about other people? If you had fewer, better connections?

“I, Gemini”

Let’s Eat Grandma are a testament to the power of quality over quantity when it comes to connections. Hollingworth and Walton met as very young children and recall forming an intense friendship immediately. It was a relationship that was often exclusionary. Having each other meant they rarely felt the need to make other friends.

This bond must have only intensified when the pair began making music together at the age of 13. Many of the delightfully oddball and impressively indulgent songs they wrote during these early years ended up on their 2016 debut album I, Gemini. The title is a smart piece of marketing as the pair actively encouraged the misconception that they were twins. In pop music, siblings sell.

But I, Gemini also describes their bond and how it has helped shape them as individuals. They’ve admitted that their emotional conjoinedness is useful for navigating those itchy identity years. It must be easier to feel more assured when another you is standing right there.

By the release of their second album, 2018’s I’m All Ears, Hollingworth and Walton had become more comfortable in their own skins. They displayed a subtle but significant divergence in style and declared “we’re more confident and want to be marketed as individuals.” The album’s closing track – written two years earlier – seems to capture the beginning of this shift.

 
“Self-alienating phases”

Early in Donnie Darko, after perusing the phone book, Hollingworth sings about her “self-alienating phases”. Naturally this suggests a typical teenage disaffection, but perhaps also speaks to that distancing from her other self. As the world gets bigger, a childhood bubble of friendship may become restrictive. But big worlds can get lonely fast making that true connection more valuable.

I say early in Donnie Darko, but that line doesn’t feature until 1:20 into the song. First, we are treated to a beautifully moody minute of Walton’s guitar noodling backed by the pensive pulse of a synth. This 11-minute long song in not in any hurry to reveal itself but it always throws you something to grab onto. That could be a whip-smart one-liner like “honestly some people are so committed to honesty”, more hypnotically simple guitar lines or that wonderful moment – a good three and a half minutes in – when a 4/4 beat kicks into gear.

Now Donnie Darko is a driving, if downbeat, dance track with a smattering of handclaps and lots of catchy synth hooks. Walton takes over on vocals with a half-growled recitation of skin-crawling physical ailments. But the body horror is psychosomatic - about feeling uncomfortable in your own skin.

As the synths and beats grow in intensity, some relief comes from a sweet recorder melody – seriously – but it’s not enough. The tension builds. The synths become more insistent. Something’s got to give.

Release comes with the crashing chords of a buzzing guitar. Soaring and sublime, intimate and epic. The reverb grabs you. You’re caught by the fuzz. And then Hollingworth cries: “Donnie Darko’s at my windscreen screaming stop the car”.


“I don’t want to be alone” 

In Richard Kelly's movie Donnie Darko, the title character is more than just a typical onscreen teen. Donnie’s mental health issues alienate him from his family, his peers and, on occasion, reality. When a new girl, Gretchen, joins his class, Donnie finally finds the connection he so desperately craves. The feeling is so powerful, he’s not just willing to die for Gretchen, he will [spoiler alert] change the past to ensure she lives.

The ultimate consequence of Donnie Darko’s emotional bond with Gretchen is that he will sacrifice ever knowing her in order to save her life. After Gretchen is mown down by that unstoppable car driven by a manic rabbit named Frank, Donnie creates an alternate timeline where he dies in a freak fuselage accident before he ever meets her. At the end of the film, Gretchen – again the new girl in town – passes his house and is told that someone named Donnie has died.

Just before the fuselage falls, we see Donnie lying on his bed with a satisfied smile. He has altered the past and though it means Gretchen will never be part of this life, he seems content that he truly connected with her in another one. Because isn’t really connecting with other people – in love or in laughter, through pleasure or pain, with sound or silence – what most of us want from life? .



“Hold on tight” 

Watching Let’s Eat Grandma play Donnie Darko live demonstrates the joy and power of really connecting with other people. You get to see expressions of their pair bond. Hollingworth and Walton are distinct musicians but they interchange with ease and one often takes over an instrument to finish a part while the other moves on to something new. They regularly fall to the floor in perfect dramatic synchronicity or play an endearingly clumsy game of pat-a-cake like no-one’s watching.

But these days they are letting others into their world. They sit down cross-legged at the front of the stage and gaze directly into the eyes of the audience. Other times they come down from the stage and join the crowd or invite people up to dance with them.

The performance and the song are all about connections. Lost, missed, interrupted, found. Donnie Darko’s 11 minutes teem with myriad mesmeric moments of magic and mystery. None more so than Walton’s climatic guitar and Hollingworth’s wail about Donnie Darko that never fails to send a shiver right through me.

Then it stops and we’re back with that pulsing synth. After an enigmatic line about being beaten by the hand that feeds, the song returns to its opening lines completing a circular story like the movie it references. As Donnie Darko slowly fades away, Hollingworth sings for a final time “I saw you in the Yellow Pages”.

Once upon a time everyone had a weighty book in their house whose sole purpose was to connect people. Its sheer banalness hid a multitude of mysteries if you were bored enough. Today we have an astonishingly more instant and immediate way to connect with people. But having the lives of others so detailed and ever-present in your day leaves little to the imagination.

Sometimes connecting requires mysteries to uncover. Sometimes it demands distance. And sometimes, as Donnie Darko reveals, connecting means disconnecting.

If you like this, try:
Hot Pink
I Will Be Waiting
Ava
Eat Shiitake Mushrooms

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