RIOT VAN
James Cathcart
November 02, 2016
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Joel 2:28
‘And afterwards,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Most of us have a band or an album that immediately takes us back to the headlong hormone rush of adolescence. For me it is the Artic Monkeys and their blistering debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. I cannot listen to the jagged guitars, powerhouse stop/start drums and effortless wordplay without being taken back. The cryptic title is a quote from the book and film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning about a headstrong young man struggling to hold his life together. It is an appropriate title for an album that sounds youthful, defiant and vulnerable, especially because the subject matter of the songs loosely depict a Saturday night to Sunday morning.
Riot Van, comes midway through the album, as the late hours of Saturday are bleeding into the early hours of Sunday. On an album full of tenacious energy, the low key track about an altercation between some youths and the police reverberates immensely. Much like the film, the song is about young men caught in a system they don’t understand or appreciate, that in turn, doesn’t understand or appreciate them. It is a bittersweet comedy about being youthful, bored and misunderstood. One line goes, “Got a chase last night from men with truncheons dressed in hats/We didn't do that much wrong, still ran away though for the laugh, just for the laugh.” As a lyricist, Alex Turner’s gaze is sharp and satirical, but full of sympathy, keenly aware of the absurdity and missed opportunities of youth. Turner’s lament is a fond one, and I imagine God often looks at us with such a feeling of fond lament.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j052-ROwPFM
Dear God,
We pray for young people
feeling hurt, alone or misunderstood.
We pray for lives full of meaning and complexity
and beauty.
Amen.
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