Typhoon

• HorsePower
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Sep 26, 2011

Peddlers Of Senseless Faith

Words by Sean Moeller, Illustration by Johnnie Cluney, Recording engineered by Mike Gentry

We think that it's in the CPR half of the song, "CPR/Claws Pt. 2," where Typhoon lead singer Kyle Morton sings about being in a senseless moment. It seems that this is being observed - that senselessness. It's happening to someone he's friendly with and, the next thing we know, the person is selling off all of the possessions that they don't need anymore. It's a jettisoning of the things that used to matter, but now have ceased to matter, for one reason or another. They're unneeded. Somewhere, off the pages, something happened to this person that changed them forever. They have become a wholly new person and it's something that sounds as if it's a little crippling and it seems as if the steps that are being taken are tiny and measured. It's like walking across a structurally unsound floor, prepared for the bottom to drop out at any moment. The big band from Salem, Oregon, builds upon these senseless moments, though the term "senseless" is misleading, for it has nothing to do with logic. More so, they have to do with the peculiar irascibility of the way time messes with us and with the way that major things can happen to us without giving off too much feeling. They just occur and we're stuck staring at them and what they've left us, with a ball of swirling thoughts kicking up the dust in our heads. We're not sure what we're supposed to do next, nor what's going to happen to disrupt those plans, but something going to come along to stir and then tip the pot over, all over again and we'll get no apology for it. It will just be there, lying in a pool on the floor. We're the ones that will have to run the washing machine and we're the ones who will have to clean the splatter off the walls. We'll be the ones on our hands and knees cleaning everything up. These pitfalls always seem to come to us when it seems like there's been a little traction made, like we're getting somewhere. Then, suddenly, our tires go bald and we're on the iciest of surfaces, caroming off of the pine trees lining the way. We're sure that Morton and Typhoon are interested in preparing us for these certainties of uncertainty. They are certain, most definitely, but they are uncertain for the shapes that they taken, often undefined until the very last second before the unveiling, or sometimes not even until they've left us, having already done what they set out to do. Morton seems to touch on these mystical uncertainties when he sings, "If you have nothing to do with your hands, you might as well pray/I am no God-fearing man, but I am afraid/It's something that I cannot quite explain." He sings about how he aspired to be a superhero when he was a child, but it might have been the reality that everyone needs one that made the line of work feel so daunting. It could have been that or the notion that most of those superheroes that he read about in his comic books were just regular men, also struggling with identity and always fighting the good fight - which would sadly only wane ever so briefly before gathering the will and the power to throw the dukes up shortly after the breather. There was, for all intents and purposes, no such thing as winning. Folks are breakables that have been in shambles more times than they can remember, scooped up by caring hands and glued back together just as many times, to be placed back in their original positions, to see if they can be a little bit more careful the next time. These people hope that things will be different. They hope that they won't die alone, but they know that they will. They hope that tomorrow will be a better day. They hope that they'll get through it all with grace. And they might, but it's going to take a lot of work and a lot of senseless faith. Those in Typhoon are peddlers of that senseless faith, happily so.

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