A Darkness Right Before
People change, give them time.
And, I mean, the thing that I have thought about, over the last three years, is how it, at least at first, sounds like an assurance, more than anything else. The way Georgia MacDonald sings it. There’s a softness or a tenderness. It isn’t defensive—that will come later. Becoming a kind of pleading—deep from within the space where defensiveness and desperation have collided into something that is heartbreaking, and beautiful, and so visceral that you will never really be able to shake how it made you feel that first time you heard it, because it makes you feel like that every time you hear it.
People change. Give them time.
And I am always thinking about time. About the distance between two points, and what forms in between. About how we change, or grow. About why we change—sometimes we want to. Other times, we have no choice, really. We have to. Regardless of how disappointing or painful it might be. We grow. We hope that others, in our lives, will grow alongside us.
You may want to carry as many people as you are able to through time. It doesn’t always work like that.
I guess it can’t.
I am always thinking about time and distance. What forms in between. The ways relationships, or connections, can grow and change. The ways we can unexpectedly become closer to someone. The way someone shows up for us. I think about what that means, then. I think about the ways that we show affection, and care.
The quiet ways. The hushed moments of connection, or a closeness.
There are ways that we can drift apart from each other, as well. Perhaps that, also, is unexpected. You wonder if there was something that could have been done to get in front of it. Or if it was always going to be like that. A slow fade. Years and silence forming in the space between two points. If there were signs, the entire time, that it was a connection that was never sustainable. And you only see that, or understand that, much later on.
Give them time. People change.
*
I don’t think I am unique in this, but sometimes, I remember the smallest, seemingly most insignificant or stupidest things—moments from my life, at any point, really, and ruminate on them. Not endlessly, I don’t think. But perhaps more than I should. It isn’t helpful, of course. I know that. The way you replay things.
And yet.
I answered “Sparklehorse,” and even though it was a subjective question, I feel like, for myriad reasons, it was the incorrect answer to give.
And this was at the start of a new year. 2023. My friend Alyssa and I have not known each other very long—six months, roughly, but the foundation of our friendship is based on a creative endeavor together. We’re working on a podcast. After spending the end of the previous year prepping, it launches on New Year’s Day. We’re recording an upcoming episode about concerts—a longtime friend of hers, and concert attending enthusiast, is our guest for the conversation.
One of the questions posed was about the artist, or concert, you wish you had gone to, but didn’t, for whatever reason.
I answer Sparklehorse—Mark Linkous’ beloved indie rock project from the 1990s and into the first half of the 2000s. The group’s final studio album, Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly of A Mountain, was released in the autumn of 2006, and Linkous took the band on the road in February of the following year, with a Minneapolis date included on their schedule.
I gave it consideration. As I nearly always did when seeing a tour announcement of a band, or artist that I liked. I still do. I look at the date. The venue. Less so then, and much more now, I wonder about the price of the ticket. I gave it consideration, and as I nearly always did, and still often do, I talked myself out of it. The hassle of driving into the city at night. Parking. The anxiety I felt, and sometimes still do feel, in crowds. The hassle of getting out of the city, and driving home, late at night. It is what prevented me, for years, from going to see more live performances—it still is, at times, a barrier.
I talk myself out of it. I had no one to go with. In 2007, I was nowhere near comfortable enough to go to a concert by myself. I barely am now, nearly 20 years later.
I think, “I’ll try to see them next time.”
Mark Linkous died by suicide on March 6th, 2010.
I answer Sparklehorse, because I do, of course, wish I had gone, all those years prior. But I say it in a room with two people for whom esoteric indie rock is a blind spot. It’s met with laughter—sure, it is a bit of a silly, or whimsical band name. Laughter that comes out of surprise at my response. Laughter that, whether it was intentional or not, is ultimately a little hurtful and condescending. It stings. You try to play it for laughs, and be a good sport. And I’m not unique in this, but sometimes I remember the smallest and seemingly most insignificant or stupid things from different points in my life.
I ruminated on them. Not endlessly but more than I should. This is, for countless reasons, one of those moments.
The answer that I should have given, and would give now if you were to ask me the same question, is Camp Cope.
*
Formed in 2015, Camp Cope released three albums before, at least to me, and maybe to others as well, they surprisingly called it a day in 2023—their final performance was held in October of that year at the Sydney Opera House, in their native Australia. The trio of Sarah Thompson on drums, Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich playing lead bass guitar (this is a real thing and it is actually important to discuss), and Georgia MacDonald on lead vocals, guitar, and piano, did not provide a specific reason why they were disbanding.
At the time, Thompson shared on social media that, “The music industry is a bin fire.” Then she added, “Fire your manager. Burn the joint down. Morals over money.”
Hellmrich, just a few months ago, announced she had sold the rights to a yet-to-be-titled book, which promises to, among other things, cover “sexual harassment and gender inequality, and motherhood, body image, and representation” in music.
MacDonald, while giving interviews for her recently released solo EP, God’s Favourite, said that after relocating from Australia to Los Angeles, people had asked her about the music industry in her homeland. “I said, I played in a band for eight years,” she explained. “We were an all-girl band, and people never let us forget it.”
Camp Cope was, from the beginning really, pushing back against the predatory behavior of men in the music industry, and the sexism that the group, and certainly others, faced. MacDonald was critical in her lyrics—“The Face of God” is about how easily people will write off abuse allegations against an artist if the music is good; and the opening track on the band’s second album, “The Opener,” an aptly named entendre, didn’t pull any punches in how it confronted the attitudes the group faced. “It’s another straight cis man who knows more about this than me,” MacDonald sneers in the fourth verse.
Her writing with Camp Cope was certainly personal, but she did cast a wider net in terms of other, larger ideas, or topics, that found their way into the lyrics. Within the songs featured on God’s Favourite, MacDonald is still personal, but it is a much more insular affair. Often tender and regularly soulful and somber, God’s Favourite, a collection of five songs MacDonald made in close collaboration with musician Daniel Fox, arrives six years after her first solo outing, the glitchy, writhing electronic Pleaser, and a mere three years after Camp Cope’s stunning, thoughtful, and ultimately their final album, Running With The Hurricane.
The EP’s arrangements are swooning or emotionally charged, oscillating from a place where indie rock softly intersects with a mournful country and western twang. It is a brief collection—honestly too brief, but it is extremely evocative in its storytelling and lyricism, with MacDonald painting unflinchingly evocative and personal portraits across each of the five songs included, writing from the place where lust, loneliness, and a surprising spirituality all converge into one another.
*
And I am often thinking about techniques, or devices, within writing. In prose, yes. But also within songwriting. Elements that I see, and see often, and admire or appreciate.
And it is a device, or a technique—some may call it a trope, certainly, that I am not sure how I feel about it. But. It is something that I have noticed in the past, and have noticed now, when giving consideration to the songs on God’s Favourite.
If you will allow it, as I often wish to do, I would like the opportunity to break the fourth wall a little. I am not sure how you, the reader, feel about the songwriting of Adam Duritz, and the music of Counting Crows. Duritz, as an individual, for nearly his entire career, has come off as a lothario of sorts, and an artist who struggles between feeling tormented and taking himself entirely too seriously, but also being unable to take himself seriously at all. I often contend that Counting Crows released three good albums in succession. August and Everything After, Recovering The Satellites, which, at nearly 30 years old, is still one of my favorite albums of all time, and This Desert Life.
I bring up Adam Duritz, and his songwriting, because he often writes about women, or at least his experiences with women appear within his songs. And he does this thing—he even spells it out, kind of, in the sprawling “Mrs. Potter’s Lullaby,” from This Desert Life, where he says, “There’s a piece of Maria in every song that I sing.” Her name is mentioned twice on August and Everything After—incidentally in both singles, “Mr. Jones,” and “‘Round Here,” and if you are familiar at all with the mythology surrounding that album, you’ll know she is referenced in the titular track.
And there is an ambiguity to it, I think. Or a poetic license of sorts. We are provided with this portrait or this image of an individual or character, but what I have never been certain of is if Maria is truly a singular person, or if she is representative of many different women. If “Maria,” as a name, is just a name that sounds good, or works within contemporary popular music.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—the name “Caroline” appears both in the opening track on Camp Cope’s Running With The Hurricane, and “Caroline” again, turns up on God’s Favourite, in the smoldering, pensive, and twangy “Citronella.”
The titular character, or individual, in “Caroline,” is addressed through a kind of pleading, or a want. There is of course a lot of desire that courses throughout Running With The Hurricane, and there is, of course, desire to be found on God’s Favourite, but here, there is a very palpable somberness that comes along with it. “Caroline” was, at least in how it unfolds and then builds, a kind of self-effacing awakening, “But it’s always you, always on my mind,” MacDonald sang quietly, while the rhythm swirled underneath her. “Come to realize I’ve been looking the wrong way my whole life—now I see you.”
The final verse of the song was an enormous, cathartic declaration.
“Caroline, I feel it—tell me you do too. Take my time, I don’t need it, unless it’s time with you,” MacDonald exclaims. “Caroline, I’m on fire—take my hand and touch my soul.”
“Citronella” in how it inserts Caroline—and, I mean, again, it could not be the same individual. It could, like “Maria,” just be a name that works, places the character, and places her in a less direct role. Or at least, she is the recipient of less attention and affection.
I am remiss to refer to God’s Favourite as a concept album, or even a concept extended play if we are splitting hairs, but it is a collection of songs that are connected by specific through lines—MacDonald’s relocation to Los Angeles being one of them, and the heavy use of religious imagery is another. On the EP’s cover, MacDonald sits facing someone dressed in a cartoonish devil costume, complete with golden fiddle at their side. This image is important later, of course, but the reason it is worth mentioning now is that, as “Citronella” collects itself slowly, and kind of eerily as it begins, there is this warbled, distorted voice that barks through the atmosphere of the song—a devilish voice.
And yes, okay, admittedly it is a little heavy-handed. But it is also impossible to make out what it says, which, coupled with the tense, flutters, ripples, and flicks of the highest strings on the electric guitar, creates a truly unsettling moment that is quickly resolved as the strum of the acoustic guitar arrives, along with these big, twinkling flourishes on the piano.
Musically, once “Citronella,” finds that resolve, it is one of the most tenderly arranged songs on this EP—a softness or tentativeness radiates from it, becoming the most delicate within the chorus, which includes a melody played out on a trumpet. And this approach really does serve MacDonald’s lyrics well because it never overpowers, and it certainly creates a contrast between the kind of harsher or more difficult self-observations she makes the further into the song we are guided.
One of the words I returned to in listening to God’s Favourite each time was “soulful.” Musically, it is a collection that is firmly rooted in a kind of somber country and western flair, or “Americana,” which is how it is described in a short interview with Rolling Stone. There is, like, this stirring, swooning nature to so many of the songs. It never gets out of hand, or like, tries to ascend higher than it needs to. It just rises to a natural peak, which is where “Citronella” finds itself once the elements have successfully tumbled together, sustaining a kind of gorgeous, soft restraint with big acoustic guitar strums and just the right amount of enthusiasm coming from the rhythm tapped out on the drum kit, anchored by the mournful tones of an organ just underneath.
We are placed firmly within an evocative moment, both visually and emotionally heightened, from the moment MacDonald begins to sing. “I like girls who are dancers—girls who are dancers just like me,” she begins quietly. “Black bikini and sandals, citronella candles flickering in the breeze.”
A stage is set, then, or at least a feeling is evoked, as she continues.
“Caroline still comes around sometimes—she’s a cool change from the heat,” MacDonald reveals, though there is something seemingly secretive or illicit about it. “As soon as there’s no light, she’s chaining up her bike to the fence on my street.”
There are myriad themes, or concepts, that unite the songs on God’s Favourite—things that MacDonald returns to regularly, or places that she writes from. And there is no real articulate way to say this, but often, she is writing from a place that is both horny and sad, which is where “Citronella” ultimately exists in. A kind of thrashing or writhing around, grappling for something, or someone, who will comfort.
This kind of tumultuous juxtaposition of emotions arrives in the chorus. “No, I can’t be caught up kissing,” MacDonald warns, both herself and the object of her affection. “That’s a door that just won’t close. Once it’s open, it stays open, and I’m here until I drive you mad,” she continues, before bellowing sadly, “I’m so bad.”
Punctuating the self-effacing turn that the second verse takes, there is a little distortion on her vocals, and the edge and snarl of an electric guitar works its way into the arrangement, where MacDonald boasts, “Being what you can’t handle, and being too cute to cancel—oh yeah, that’s me.”
As the song swells into its conclusion, there is a bit of a detour in its lyricism, with MacDonald steering us away from the horny and the sad, into slightly darker territory after the final chorus. “I only knew what love was with a knife in its hand,” she proclaims. “Broke the hinges off the doorframe—love the singer, fucked the band.”
And while there is some resolve, then, musically, as the song winds itself down gently, there is little, if any resolve, for MacDonald’s narrative—but maybe that’s the point. That, in these fragments, or moments that are depicted, there is not always an easy answer, or resolution, especially in this intersection of lust and loneliness.
*
MacDonald, herself, is not very religious—she explains this in an interview with The Guardian leading up to the release of God’s Favourite. I think more than anything, she has a curiosity about religion, specifically the Greek Orthodox Church. In the interview, she says she was baptized in the church but her parents did not raise her, or her siblings, within its belief system.
And maybe it is apparent from both the EP’s title, and the photo gracing its cover, but there is a lot of religious imagery, or references, throughout these five songs. “Slightly Below The Middle,” one of the two singles released in advance, and the EP’s halfway mark, does lyrically describe, and provide more detail, to what is depicted on the cover, and over the top of a kind of haunted, somber acoustic shuffle, finds MacDonald continuing to spiral from this intersection of looking for love but only coming up with lust instead, and the isolation that comes along with that—further blurring things with flashes of both religious allusions and surprising violence.
The arrangement and tone of “Slightly Below The Middle” is, in contrast to some of the more soulful, and soaring points on the EP, much more downcast, beginning with a mournful strum of the acoustic guitar, and an even more somber sounding lead melody, plunking down slowly, and with precision, over the top of it, before brushed, restrained percussion arrives to kind of tighten up the rhythm and tempo.
In its downcast, or sad nature, it is also surprisingly dreamy, or woozy, in the tone that it strikes, and with the more elements that arrive, like a crunchier lead guitar, then later, horns—everything swirls around, occasionally rising in intensity, but remaining in this very tightly woven place that treads between beauty, sorrow, and near the end, a little bit of dissonance.
MacDonald wastes no time with her lyrics, and immediately conjures the imagery from the EP’s cover—“The devil plays the fiddle in a lawn chair in the yard,” she begins. “I ask him why he’s over, he said, ‘Well, since your father’s been gone, I went down to Georgia, now I know it won’t be long until you’re singing.’”
And there is something quietly menacing about this—the imagery, and the conversation itself, or what transpires within it. But it does create this eerie, unsettling sensation, and that just continues, and intensifies, with the phrase turns MacDonald uses in the second verse.
“Baby, I wanna die, won’t you nail me to the cross,” she coos. “No, I can’t think of no one who I’d want to get me off,” she continues, before pushing her voice in to a breathier, upper register, and really running just head first into the next, sprawling line, trying to get all of the syllables and words out, allowing them to tumble into the mournful arranging below her. “I know some day they’re going to say I fucked my way to the top,” she proclaims, before sliding in a scathing joke. “Just know I didn’t—okay, just slightly below the middle.”
In how it is structured, there is no chorus for “Slightly Below The Middle” to return to, so the verses just continue as a means of revealing more of MaDonald’s narrative, which is the darkest it can be by the third verse. “My baby is a big bad man,” she warns. “Who holds my life there in his hands. Crying, ‘Oh, they want to fuck me but they never want to love me,’” she continues, again pushing every word out as quickly as she can, rushing through the bleakest imagery. “Tied up in the back of a van at the gates of heaven—and god, he’s got a real big gun,” she confesses. “Between my teeth and tongue.”
The downcast, melancholic arranging to “Slightly Below The Middle” already gives the song a much darker feeling than other songs on the EP, and it is this blurred line between lust, or sex, and violent imagery, that makes it also the most unsettling—it is powerful, regardless, showing, if you had not already understood, how sharp of a writer MacDonald is. Like “Citronella,” there is no real resolution at the end—if anything, there is an acknowledgment about the darkness that surrounds the world in which the song is constructed. “There’s no love in L.A.,” she concedes as the song winds itself down. “Just fun and big guns.”
*
I don’t think it is unique to me—remembering the smallest, seemingly most insignificant or stupidest things from any point in my life, and ruminating on them. It isn’t helpful. I understand that. And yet.
At the top of 2023, to the question of which artist, or act, do I wish I would have had the chance to see perform, I answer Sparlehorse—a subjective question, but one that I continue to this day to feel was incorrect for myriad reasons.
The answer I should have given, and would give now if you were to ask me the same question, is Camp Cope.
And if you’ll allow it, again, I would like to break the fourth wall and address you, the reader, by saying that I am not a very confident individual. I don’t believe I ever was. I have made strides, certainly, especially in the last few years. But I am uncertain how one, at this point, finds this specific kind of confidence, or comfort, for and within themselves.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—I talk myself out of things all the time. I always have. I more than likely always will. Things that, in one moment, I believe to be a good idea, or something I am capable of doing—a wave, then, will descend upon me and in the next moment I will think, no, certainly not.
There were the years where I would glance at tour announcements for artists I wished to see, and would notice a date in the Twin Cities and think, well maybe—and then quickly realize no. I could never. The anxiety of driving into the city, at night. Of parking and of being in a large crowd. Of being out late, and driving back even later.
I tried, and it is embarrassing, really. To think about how incapable of things my own brain makes me. More recently, there were attempts—but I ultimately succumbed. Single tickets purchased to things that, upon the day of the show, I would find literally any reason not to go.
I wish that I would have seen Camp Cope perform—specifically in July of 2022, when they played at the Fine Line in Minneapolis. Because I had bought two tickets when the tour in support of what would go on to be their final album, Running With The Hurricane, had been announced. I felt a fleeting moment of confidence that someone with whom I was good friends with, at that time, and had been for a number of years, would be interested in going with.
People change. Give them time.
And there are the ways that we can drift apart from each other. Perhaps it is unexpected. You wonder if there is something that could have been done to get in front of it, or if it was always going to end up that way. The slow fade. Years and silence forming in the space between two points. You wonder if there were signs, the whole time, that it was a connection that was never really sustainable, and you are only able to see that or understand it, much later on.
And it was presumptuous on my part. This friend, ultimately, did not like Running With The Hurricane, or was just simply not interested, despite my insistence that she listen.
I talk myself out of things all the time. I always have. I more than likely always will. And a reason I often give—an excuse to myself, I suppose, more than anything, is that I am “too depressed to go.” To rally, in the evening, and haul myself into the city, and find the sustained enthusiasm required.
Spring turns into summer. July arrives. I have two tickets to a concert that, I, regretfully, do not use. Even up to the day of the show, I am nervously giving consideration to going by myself. The venue shares the set times online and Camp Cope is going on late—later than I am comfortable with, given the commuting required. I, predictably, feel stupid for even thinking that there was potential in this. I stay home.
I think, I’ll see Camp Cope the next time they tour.
Their breakup was announced in early 2023.
The answer I should have given, and would give now if you were to ask me the same question, is Camp Cope.
Give them time. People change.
*
It isn’t on the EP, but the first song MacDonald released, post-Camp Cope, arrived at the end of 2024—“Tropical Lush Ice.” Also co-written with Daniel Fox, it is similar in tone to the songs included on God’s Favourite, in terms of MacDonald’s favoring of a twangy, country and western adjacent aesthetic—twangy, but also terribly heartbreaking.
Powered, truly, by the dextrous plucks of the lead bass guitar, there was a drawl and a twang to Camp Cope’s output, certainly, specifically on Running With The Hurricane, but they were a rock band, first and foremost, with MacDonald’s ferocious snarl just out in front of everything else, and a kind of rough around the edges, ramshackle nature to how the instrumentation folded around itself. So this more inward, somber turn—with things being inherently a little smoother in texture, was a little bit of a surprise at first when hearing “Tropical Lush Ice,” but much less so when MacDonald’s second solo single, “Pay Per View,” was released in June, ahead of the announcement that an EP was on the horizon.
In an interview about the EP, MacDonald says she has tried to lose her Australian accent when singing—it is very heavy on certain words, or pronunciations, on Running With The Hurricane, but the kind of slower drawl she has does lend itself to the melancholic, blues, and regularly soulful arrangements on God’s Favourite. And I would contend that the EP is bookended with its most soulful, and perhaps its bluesiest songs, with “Pay Per View” being one of them.
Opening with a huge, swaying, and very somber, introspective piano progression, in how it is structured, “Pay Per View” knows exactly what it is doing, and how to convey the emotions it wishes to—hinging specific instances in MacDonald’s writing with huge swells within the instrumentation. It ascends, but in a kind of sadly reserved way, if that makes sense—I think that has a lot to do with the kind of wounded inflection on MacDonald’s voice and the pleading and yearning that ripples through the verses, and then surges to the surface when the chorus hits, slowly shimmering, and swirling, with a sorrowful beauty.
The ideas of loneliness and lust are of course present in literally all five of these songs, but it is on “Pay Per View” where MacDonald introduces these themes, and develops them—in tandem, introducing the religious imagery, or allusions, that she also weaves into her writing.
“I’ve got one friend, and we both want the same thing,” MacDonald declares at the start of “Pay Per View.” “Go out at night, and come back in the morning. The walk of pride when I get inside,” she continues, her voice rising just slightly. “I can’t say where I’ve been—I’m gonna find love again.”
MacDonald, in the past, has been very sex positive, and very frank, in her lyricism. In “Caroline,” the opening track from Running With The Hurricane, she casually sings, in the first verse, “I’ve been going down, I’ve been going down—giving strangers head.” And so it is that kind of emboldened agency that she brings here, in “Pay Per View,” as she finds herself not floundering exactly in her new surroundings of Los Angeles, but finding her way on her own terms.
“I’ve got one phone—it’s blowing up in my hand,” she continues in the second verse. “Asking for blow, or asking me how I’ve been. Either is fine, and I don’t mind. Where you are is where I’ve been—I’m gonna find love again.”
There is a kind of sardonic aloofness to the conceit of the chorus, and it is where we hear the EP’s titular phrase woven into the song. “I keep waiting—I’m God’s favourite pay per view to watch,” MacDonald exclaims, with a kind of sorrowful soulfulness in her voice while the music swells behind her. “I get faded,” she continues. “Saturated. Give them what they want—I’m still God’s favourite.”
And it is within the second half of the song that “Pay Per View” does take a little more of an inherently somber turn. At first, it is just self-effacing, when MacDonald sings, “I’ve got one drink but won’t you buy me another? I rode here—embarrassed on a scooter. It’s fun in L.A. cause nobody knows me. At least not yet.” But then, as the song begins winding itself down, there is a cloud of darkness over the resolve in MacDonald’s night out in search of something that has, once again, evaded her.
“I’ve got one heart—determined not to lose it,” she states, “It got broke bad and now I’ve got no use for it. I’m just depressed, me and all the rest. It’s just me and my friend,” returning to the imagery introduced at the top of the song. “I’m gonna find love again.”
There is uncertainty, yes, but at the end of “Pay Per View,” even in how somber it can be, there is a kind of charm in how MacDonald saunters through it, and in the end, she does leave herself, and us, as listeners, with a small amount of hope.
*
People change, give them time.
And I mean the thing that I have thought about, over the last three years, is how it, at least at first, sounds like an assurance, more than anything else. The way Georgia MacDonald sings it. There’s a softness or a tenderness at the top of the stunning final song on Running With The Hurricane, “Sing Your Heart Out.”
And there is a softness, and a tenderness to so much of what MacDonald sings, her voice soaring up and down as her hands move confidently on the keys of the piano. It is a song, in part, but not totally, about a kind of intimacy. Or a closeness. It doesn’t have to be romantic. What she describes in the song may very well not be. I am often thinking about how platonic love should be treated with the same vigor as romantic love.
“I would rearrange the world to better suit you,” MacDonald explains at the top of the song. “I’d take all the love in me and wrap it around you.”
“I’d watch the sky of blue turn gold if I had the chance to see it all change—the lines on your face so beautiful when they move,” she continues. “People change, give them time. If you can change, then so can I.”
The song is built around that idea, then, in the end, working itself into a frenzied moment of catharsis that, in the three and a half years now that have passed since I first heard it, and was stopped in my tracks by it, there has been no song that matches, or surpasses the feeling this creates—this final exhalation. There is an assurance. Or a promise. By the end it comes out in screaming desperation, like MacDonald is trying not only to convince the person this song is directed at, but herself as well.
If you can change, so can I.
What this song meant to me, or for me, has changed a lot since the first time I heard it.
Give them time. People change.
I am always thinking about time. About the distance between two points, and what forms in between. About how we change, or grow. About why we change—sometimes we want to. Other times, we have no choice, really. We have to. Regardless of how disappointing or painful it might be. We grow. We hope that others, in our lives, will grow alongside us.
You may want to carry as many people as you are able to through time. It doesn’t always work like that.
I guess it can’t.
I am always thinking about time and distance. What forms in between? The ways relationships, or connections can grow and change. The ways we can unexpectedly become closer to someone. The way someone shows up for us. I think about what that means, then. I think about the ways that we show affection, and care.
The quiet ways. The hushed moments of connection, or a closeness.
There are the ways that we can drift apart from each other, as well. Perhaps that, also, is unexpected. You wonder if there was something that could have been done to get in front of it. Or if it was always going to be like that. A slow fade. Years and silence forming in the space between two points. If there were signs, the entire time, that it was a connection that was never sustainable. And you only see that, or understand that, much later on.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—that even though Camp Cope is done, and Georgia MacDonald has moved on, and is releasing music on her own, I find I am unable to write about God’s Favourite without talking about Camp Cope, and the concert I will always regret not attending, and about Running With The Hurricane and “Sing Your Heart Out” and how in time, people change. And about how someone meets you where you are, and how unexpected, but comforting it is, to find yourself in this kind of closeness.
About how someone, then, in turn, is no longer meeting you where you are—no longer meeting you at all. And how unexpected you try to tell yourself it is, this slow fade you find yourself on the receiving end of but ultimately there were hints along the way and you just ignored them.
What this song meant to me, or for me, has changed a lot since the first time I heard it.
Give them time. People change.
God’s Favourite ends with “Mercy and Grace,” which is the most soulful of the five songs included on the EP—a smoldering kind of feeling to it that is simply stunning to witness. There is a kind of ambitious enormity to it, even as it begins, with the low rumble of an organ underneath a playfully and dexterously strummed acoustic guitar. The way it sounds, even in just the first few seconds, does really play its hand, simply because you can tell that it is absolutely going to ascend, or gather itself in an incredibly powerful way, if you give it time.
There of course is the country and western influence, and the twang, that MacDonald and her collaborators have favored, across this release, and if any of the songs on God’s Favourite could be a kind of 1990s-2000s era country radio ballad, “Mercy and Grace” is one of them, in the way it works from a barely held back place of restraint in the verses, and then rides a kind of emotionally manipulative torrent in the chorus, with all of the elements colliding together at just the right moment.
The songs here are not, like, hopeless exactly, but they are also not regularly optimistic—but as God’s Favourite is bookended with the most stirring and emotionally evocative songs, “Mercy and Grace,” like “Pay Per View,” is a beautiful, bright, tender moment that offers a glimmer of something to be hopeful for.
MacDonald is, of course, personal and revealing in her lyricism, but there is something much more self-reflective in how she writes on “Mercy and Grace.” It is, really, a kind of taking stock of what she has, or a moment where she examines her life, the things both good and bad, or less desirable, and she does it in a very humble, honest way. A mix of feeling grateful and also perhaps exhausted by the idea of the human condition.
“I’ve got friends who don’t know who I am,” she laments at the beginning. “I’ve got someone online who’s been trying to make plans.”
“I’ve got a positive outlook on life,” MacDonald confesses later, then adds after another line. “I’ve got someone who wants me alive, and I’m just throwing rocks—yeah, look at what I’ve got.”
The observations continue, in the final verse of the song, shifting between small moments of both clarity and beauty, and minutiae. “I’ve got the sun on my face somewhere in California,” MacDonald exclaims. “I’ve got myself this far.”
Before it slides into the final soaring chorus, the last thing that MacDonald muses on is where there is that glimmer of hope, and the kind of larger idea presented that will stay with you long after the song has finished.
“I’ve got a darkness right before the dawn—it’s worth a watch.”
There is, even in a song that is not “sad,” exactly, but is, like, very sorrowful, even with how much soul it has, a surprising amount of jubilance that radiates from the brief chorus. “I’m going to heaven,” MacDonald bellows. “I won’t forget you. Your hands on my face. Your mercy and grace.” And she really goes for it too, at the end, in the final round of the chorus, boldly sending her voice out into an enormous higher range that she has not used elsewhere on this EP, or even, to my knowledge, in her work fronting Camp Cope. It, again, is a song that knows exactly what it is doing, and it does so flawlessly, creating something astounding in just how resonant it is.
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God’s Favourite, in just five songs, is MacDonald reckoning with herself—humbly acknowledging her past while understanding there is more ahead of her, and time to continue growing. In the interview with The Guardian, MacDonald mentions having had a call to catch up with her former Camp Cope bandmates, prior to the slated October release of a live album of their final show. “The call brought out a bunch of emotions because it’s like, no matter how far I run away, I’m still exactly who I am, and Kelly and Thomo (Sarah Thompson) are such a big reminder of who I am, and who I was back then.”
“We have good friendships,” she continues. “But it’s not as intense as it was back then. I wasn’t always the best person to be in a band with and sometimes I get reminded of that when it’s just the three of us.”
There is, I suppose, a redemptive, or kind of searching nature to the songs on God’s Favourite, and in the same interview, MacDonald wonders if she is in some kind of “redemption arc” of herself. “Maybe people don’t think I’m evil. I don’t think I’m evil,” she says. “But I feel like I want people to know that I’ve changed.”
People change, give them time.
All too brief, God’s Favourite is not the sound of an artist reinventing themselves, but it is the sound of someone easing their way into whatever comes next. It doesn’t need to be as bold or as rollicking as MacDonald’s work with Camp Cope—it is a beautiful and mournful collection that looks at who we were and who we want to be, and where those things intersect within this moment.
