ALBUM REVIEW: JOHN MURRY ‘THE STARS ARE GOD’S BULLET HOLES’
“In everyday life, contentment is a goal. But William Faulkner said happiness is for vegetables. Is it? That would be incredibly bleak, and I don't think it's true. But is it not egoistic for us to seek contentment when we live in a world where we know there are children who are being paid to kill other people by American private corporations? I do think that as the world becomes a place that we look out into and see as being disrupted and as disrupting more and more of our lives, that we retreat into this idea of ‘find your bliss’. And I'm not sure how close that is to contentment or happiness. That's the ordinary world.” John Murry
In a dreamful, half illusional, half awaken world, experimenting with distortion, electric guitars, and effects, the searching for answers is always accompanied by the awareness of a deeply disappointing and disturbing world. The intensity of an unshakable intrusive, destructive force meets a Mississippi-rooted blues aesthetic and John Murry’s poetic, black humor and seriousness.
“I bought fertilizer and brake fluid / Who in the hell am I supposed to trust? / Sympathy ends in gas chambers / Oklahoma City should’ve been enough.” Oscar Wild (Come Here to Make Fun of You)
“All of the violence in the songs, it’s not to glorify it,” said Murry, “Theses things are going on and on in the United States.”
No one can truly shake off the past. Those things that deeply hurt us and shaped us even we repel it will always be within the eyesight. Maybe it’s the struggle and frustration between being aware of the ugliness and darkness but knowing one can’t really do anything about it. Not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, but eventually peace can be found, or tolerance. The burden is still heavily loaded, but there’s a sparkle of happiness and joy in The Starts Are God’s Bullet Holes.
