May 16, 2020 – Goodbye to the strangest summer of my life, wrote Taylor Momsen on Twitter on September 4, 2018. She posted the photo featured here with it. I watch Taylor Momsen’s Twitter often, She sometimes has times when she doesn’t post, but when she does, she is good at it, good at posting something revealing, all without actually saying enough that you can figure out what she means, at least not fully. This one, however, made sense.
Taylor’s band, The Pretty Reckless, had toured with Soundgarden in 2017, up until Chris Cornell’s death, summerish of 2017, and then Taylor, fraught with emotion, could not go on. She retreated to her residence located on an island off the coast of Maine. First of all, how cool is that? Second, well, that’s sad. There were rumblings then that the band would have a quick follow up to their 2016 record; I remember reading that she was writing on her downtime from the 2017 tour. I’m not sure what transpired with that writing, and even my perusals of her Twitter didn’t tell me. I was honestly concerned for her though, because … well, she once smiled and waved back at me at a concert — my moment with Taylor Momsen, and that means I know her. Okay, no not really, but still, for whatever reason, I genuinely like her, and that moment sealed my feelings for her.
As if Taylor’s emotions over Chris Cornell’s death were not enough, then in about Spring of 2018, came the news that Kato Khandwala — the band’s producer and co-writer of the band’s songs with Taylor and the band’s guitar player Ben Phillips — had died from a motorcycle crash. And that was it; Taylor’s “nail in the coffin”, her words, according to interviews. She became a mess, not her words, but something obvious, and retreated to heal, a hard and long task.
I don’t know though; If you live on an island, surrounded by nature, you will heal.
I remember looking at her Twitter posts from 2018 until lately. Other than posts showing her guitars, she would post videos of the weather, a video of blowing sand, like the pattern of the sand made by the wind had meaning to her. She once posted a photo of a wood carving, like that carving itself was created by nature. In many of the posts, the ones that showed her, she was often just a silhouette, always without the dark make-up that had characterized her rock singer look, just blending in and becoming one with her surroundings, the nature around her. A child of nature. That’s me too. The most calming things for me are natural: touching the ground as I garden, looking at the desert — my version of an island. Perhaps.
Is she healed? I don’t know. Perhaps we never are. Perhaps only nature knows. But she can work.
In this time when bands are putting everything on hold, The Pretty Reckless signed to a new label; I mentioned that last week, and they are set to release a new album. I can’t seem to find a release date, but I imagine it will be soon because they have summer shows lined up. Unfortunately none are near me so I can’t go and see if Taylor will wave at me again. But I digress.
In advance of their new album, the band released a single, called Death By Rock And Roll. It has a sound reminiscent of their harder sound of their first two records (the third 2016 record had a more bluesy feel). The song is a testament to doing what makes you happy, and honestly, of just doing. And it does mention death, even naming names, death to Jenny, that’s the character name for the character Taylor Momsen played on the decade-old show Gossip Girl, something she really doesn’t like, and more importantly naming deaths, deaths by gunshot, death by motorcycle crash, thinking Chris Cornell (with an indirect reference to Kurt Cobain’s methodology) and Kato Khandwala (with a direct reference to his accident), respectively.
Although, the point of this song isn’t the death, but the life before the death, a life, Taylor reminds us, that should be lived just exactly how we want.