The Fool Who Told You - Hotel Lights at 20

He went by Mike, but I often, I think, called him Michael, which, retrospectively, may have been the first real instance of something I do regularly now, of referring to people by their full or “government” name. 

And this is a story that I, of course, have told before. Or, at the very least, have told part of it before. So, if it is one that seems familiar to you, I apologize for, again, re-writing a version of this anecdote into something, and you, as the reader, should feel empowered to skim this part. 

And this would have been when I was not my most insufferable but certainly insufferable to a fault and also young enough to lack any real self-awareness to understand that there is no way I was as charming as I thought I often came off as. I would have been 20, nearly 21, and Michael, just a few years younger. I was in my third year in college, and he was in his first. We were both in the theatre department, and, by this point, I had found my way a little more, though regrettably, I would, at times, reflect on the four years I spent at a small liberal arts college in the western part of Dubuque and feel like and I am remiss to say that it was not the best way to spend my time, but I also feel like I maybe could have made different choices with what I chose to study, how I chose to send my days, and who I opted to spend many of those days with.

But I had found my way at this point. A little more confident on stage. A little sharper during discussions in class. But still insufferable. I am confident.

And we would have been in a car—the boxy, old, maroon Buick that belonged to the girl I was involved with at the time, and had been involved with for almost three years at that point. She, too, was in the theatre department—in her final year. Our relationship coming to an end within just a few months because I found myself in the middle of the place where lust and love converge, or collide into one another, and at the time, I was entirely too young to understand that yes, there is this place where those things overlap but there is, more importantly, a difference between those two things.

And I was going to say that this is not really about that. But, the reality is it more than likely, at least in part, be about that.

On a Saturday morning, Michael and I were tasked with taking a handful of posters out around parts of Dubuque, Iowa—posters to promote the spring theatrical production, of which I was in the cast of, and hang them up. Or leave them with business to hang up at their convenience. Michael, I think, had a car, but I remember being the one to drive, which would have meant we had taken the car of the girl I was involved with at the time—the car I was often taking, which meant that I was in control of the stereo and the part of this story that I have of course certainly told before so I apologize for again writing this anecdote into something is when I put in a cassette of Damien Rice and I said to Michael if he didn’t like this, we couldn’t be friends.

This would have been what I was not my most insufferable, but certainly insufferable to a fault. 

Michael would, over the next year, until I finished college, be a friend I was often subjecting to the music I was listening to at that time and what I often subjected him to does speak volumes of the time and of the place. Of the brash pomp and misogyny of Decadence from Head Automatica or the New Wave-inspired glitz of the just-released debut from The Killers. Or of the heart on sleeve and retrospectively toxic masculinity of “sensitive’ male singer/songwriters, like Glen Hansard and his band The Frames, or of Damien Rice, who was just beginning to find fame in the United States after success in his native Ireland. 

And this is is a story that I have told before and it’s funny because I had, at one time, forgotten all about this exchange with. Michael, on a Saturday, in the spring, in a borrowed car but he remembered it and when he told me about it, the only thing I could say was yes that certainly did sound like something I would tell him. 

Michael, was, at the time, when he was finishing his first year in college, and perhaps now, even, as an adult in his late 30s with a family, a fan of Ben Folds—both as a solo artist, and for the brief time he fronted Ben Folds Five.

And 2004 was a time when, certainly, information moved a lot slower. And there was I think just less. Less we felt we needed to share. Less we needed to be aware of. This was a time that was not before social media but it was a time when something like Facebook was called The Facebook and it was only available to specifically selected college campuses. This was a time before Twitter and before Instagram, and other places where we now, or at least I do, connect with an artist, or performer, and can quickly get information about what they are doing—if they are touring. If they have a new record coming out. 

Information moved a lot slower but there was still information, or things to discover somewhat organically. And Michael was, at the time, such a fan of Ben Folds that he was a member of a forum that was specifically dedicated to Folds and his projects, which is how he found updates on what the other two members of Ben Folds Five had been up to since the band split up following the release of their 1999 album, The Unofficial Autobiography of Reinhold Messner. 

This forum was where Michael found that Ben Folds Five drummer, Darren Jessee, had founded a new project and had self-released his debut under the moniker—Hotel Lights.

*

And I have, of course, in the past, and perhaps rather often, or more often than I should, written about the connections I have placed on certain artists, or songs, or albums, and times of the year—of seasons.

The way this association works is, by no means, a science of any kind, and it is certainly one of the more subjective things I do as a listener, and analyst of contemporary popular music. But, since college certainly, and maybe even slightly before, it is something that I do, and what I find is that, not even anecdotally speaking but, speaking with a little more precision or confidence than that, I place more connections or associations between music, and the autumn, than I do with any other time of year.

There are a number of different things that I do take into consideration when I do make these connections to a song, or an album, or a time of year—when the album is released does play a huge role, obviously, as does when I am hearing the album in question for the first time. 

There is a place where all of these things overlap, of course. And that happens a lot of the time. But. It really is about the music. Like a little how it makes me, as a listener, feel, or what it evokes, but more than that, the music itself. How does it feel. What does it sound like. Does it feel like a season. Does it sound like that season. 

Despite minor efforts, I have not been able to find a precise release date for the self-titled debut album from Darren Jessee’s project, Hotel Lights. Reissued in 2006 once Jessee began his relationship with the label Bar None, who have released all subsequent Hotel Lights full-lengths as well as the handful of albums Jessee has issued under his own name, I associate Hotel Lights with the autumn of 2004. 

It was released that year, yes, but it would have been in the late fall when my college friend Michael had found out about the album online, from a Ben Folds forum, and swiftly ordered a copy of it to be delivered to his post office box in the campus mailroom. Unless I am manufacturing this memory, I feel like I can recall the day it arrived—his gleeful tearing into the bubble mailer and pulling away the shrink wrap of the CD’s jewel case, unable to contain his excitement and anticipation about what the album might sound like. 

It was release that year, yes, but it would have been in the late fall when Michael first played Hotel Lights for me, from the computer, taking up a majority of his desk, in his dorm room. 

It was released that year. And in hearing it, in the late fall, the year I turned 21—my final year in college, it is, to me, an autumn record. Maybe one of the more quintessential autumn records I have listened to, and connect to not only a season but a very specific time in my life. 

It was released that year, and it is one of those cases where things do overlap—because in hearing Hotel Lights for the first time, in the autumn, two decades ago, I have always felt that in the fragile, gentleness, and warmth it carries from almost start to finish, it also sounds, or at least feels, like the fall—late fall, specifically, when the days grow even shorter, and colder, pulling us gradually into the space between beauty, and the bleakness inevitably comes with the winter.

*

And there is, of course, a risk that comes with not even nostalgia, really. I mean, yes, of course, there is a huge risk when you give in, even a little, to the feeling of nostalgia. But of revisiting something that you are fond of, or have an affinity for, and have so for a long time—revisiting in the sense that it is time, in this case, to listen, for the first time, with a more analytical ear. 

Because that is when the facade does fall away—things do not exactly buckle when you begin to look closer, with a more critical lens. But you begin to notice things that you, perhaps, either did not notice before because you, perhaps, are oblivious; or, you turned a blind eye to. Or were willing to make concessions for. Out of a long-standing fondness or connection.

Hotel Lights does not collapse under a more analytical listen. I don’t think I ever considered it to be a perfect album. It is, certainly, 20 years later, far from a perfect album. One thing, though, that I could never quite articulate, but was able to this time, is that it is plagued by running long. And I say this knowing the length of which the pieces I write often end up being. 

I say this knowing that I have, in the past, appreciated lengthier songs, or longer albums. 

But. And maybe it is the attention span, and level of patience I have, now in my 41st year, so far removed from who I was two decades before now. But at 53 minutes and change, and 13 tracks total, Hotel Lights is a slow album—deliberately so, I think. There are moments where there is an effort to gather momentum to propel things forward, but it is a collection of songs that are on the sleepier side, many of them, themselves, running on the longer side, at times turning into a “molasses up a hill” kind of gradual crawl while they unfold.

But. In that near glacial pacing, what I have understood through nearly every listen, and certainly came to understand and appreciate more, now, in coming to it with intentionally analytical ears, is how delicate, and beautiful it is, in terms of its arranging but also Darren Jessee’s voice, too. At times, brittle, there is is a hush to it, or a mumble. He sings with the fragility of a secret that is desperately trying to keep itself.

And there are, of course, moments on Hotel Lights that do not work, or at least, do not work for me. They, perhaps, have never worked for me.  There aren’t many, but some. Enough. And a descriptor that I certainly thought of, during the earliest of listens of Hotel Lights, when I was young, and one that came right back to me now, in listening analytically, and no longer as young of as an individual, is a kind of Wilco-adjacency. Or a “Wilco-lite.”

This is not, of course, meant to be dismissive, of Jessee’s first foray out from behind the drum kit he spent so many years behind in Ben Folds Five, picking up other instruments, and serving as the front person for a new project. It is not meant to be dismissive, really, of Wilco, or at least this post-Yankee Hotel Foxtrot-era of the group, but it is a way to conjure up a specific aesthetic. An amalgamation of sorts—not like everything and the kitchen sink, but close. There is certainly a very gentle, alternative country or folk or “indie” feeling, or at least indie circa 2004, to a lot of the instrumentation and arranging on Hotel Lights—you hear pianos, and sometimes the chords are enormous, and sometimes they are rollicking or even jaunty. You hear guitars—mostly acoustic, mostly strummed. You hear brushed, rolling percussion, sometimes loose in how it hangs, but still precise in how it keeps time. 

You hear all these things but the album, at times, and this is something that a lot of similar in sound artists were doing around this time period, is slowly leaning into more synthetic textures. Wilco famously incorporated these elements in their 2002 opus Yankee Hotel Foxtrot—an album that, if I am being honest, is overshadowed by the lore and mythology surrounding its tumultuous recording. Folk singer Josh Rouse also did this with his stark, gorgeous concept album Under Cold Blue Stars, released the same year.

I tell you all of that to tell you this—Hotel Lights is a product of its time. There isn’t anything wrong with that. Some of it has aged surprisingly well. But it is an album that, whether it realized it or not, doesn’t exactly wear its influences on its sleeve but rather, it wears what was potentially informing it.

Structurally, I would argue that Hotel Lights is an album that does almost play its hand entirely too soon in terms of its best, or most impressive material being sequenced near the top—that isn’t to say the second half is bad, or unlistenable. There are just much more memorable or thoughtful songs placed early on.

Placed at the top of the album’s second half, “Follow Through” is one of those moments that feel informed by the time it was recorded—the song itself moves along quickly, skittering with a nervous reserve, and is eventually overtaken, quite beautifully, with a swooning grandeur. 

There is a tension in how the acoustic guitar is strummed, and underneath, eventually, you hear the pittering of a gently brushed snare drum—and over the top of that, at least during the song’s verses, is an organ-adjacent sound, with Jessee’s fragile voice not exactly cutting through, but weaving its way into the mix.

Something that I have been making an attempt at understanding, or embracing, more so than I have in the past, is the idea of music that is more about the whole—the “vibe” it creates, rather than focusing, at least analytically, on the writing, or specific elements of the way things sound. And there are, of course, lyrics of importance throughout Hotel Lights, and also themes that are worth discussing, or at least dissecting through an intersectional lens. I am remiss to say that it, though, is a “vibes” based kind of album because that runs the risk of selling it short somehow. But. It is an album that, at times, is working toward more of a whole. The lyrics are not unimportant but they are not, like, the main thing either. 

“Follow Through” is one of those songs, certainly. And there is like subtle kind of catchiness to the way the song clips along, and the melodies that are slowly introduced. I am specifically thinking of what occurs in the chorus. Jessee’s voice, first, drops down into a lower, mumblier register, for the few words he does utter, which do, quite honestly, haunt. “If you’re leaving, then leave,” he says, almost dejectedly. “If you need it, then I want you to.” But musically, more than anything, is what makes this song among the genuinely interesting, because within the layers of instrumentation being crafted, a little rippling keyboard melody comes drifting in. It isn’t whimsical in sound, but playful enough in how it is presented that it does offset the starkness of the lyrics.

But it is, though, the final moments of “Follow Through,” where the music swells in an unprecedentedly beautiful way, that makes it as compelling as it is to hear—yes, the synthesizer tones do sound a little dated. Maybe they even sounded a little dated in 2004. But there is something that is melancholic, bittersweet, and so gorgeous about the melody, and the way the notes are held and sustained, tumbling down, and then back up again, before arriving at the end.

*

And it is maybe a product of the time itself, or perhaps simply how short of distance Jessee had at this point between the formation of Hotel Lights, and the dissolution of Ben Folds five (four years, give or take), or, maybe it is that some of his tastes in arranging, at least on this album, were informed by his years spent performing with Ben Folds and the trio’s bassist, Robert Sledge—he is a credited co-writer on a handful of tunes from the group, including a beloved rare track, “Air,” and one of the band’s most successful songs, “Brick,” but there are moments on Hotel Lights, that are reminiscent of Ben Folds Five, in terms of how they sound, or the way the instrumentation ultimately is executed.

Ornate is not the right word. Playful is, maybe. Or simply just a little looser, or jazz-inspired or influenced. But you can hear that, I think, in a song like “The Mumbling Years,” in how it, structurally, bounces along with the pinging of the snare drum, and the swaying, unrestrained notes on the piano. It isn’t a waltz. Not exactly. But it does move along with a kind of confidence like that, in terms of the pace, yes but also the swooning grandeur of how it sounds, and how the elements do swirl around Jessee’s voice. 

“Mumbling Years,” too, like “Follow Through,” and a number of other songs on Hotel Lights find Jessee and his collaborators focusing not on one element more than the others, really. There is a jauntiness to the music, yes, but it does not, or is not intended to, overshadow the lyrics. And his brittle delivery in the song certainly is not intending to distract from the melody of the piano, or precision with which the rhythm is kept by the drum kit.

So it is, yes, another song that does try to create a vibe. But. If you are to unpack it, or begin pulling the two elements further away from one another, lyrically, it is a song that, similar to a lot of Jessee’s writing here, and throughout his continued work under his own name or still recording as Hotel Lights, is a little ambiguous and a little embittered. It isn’t a “break up” song exactly, but it does reflect on an off-stage character, as well as the time spent connected to them, and it does so with a bit of a sneer. 

The collision of a beauty and sadness is something that occurs frequently on Hotel Lights—and even with as uptempo as a song like “The Mumbling Years” is, you can hear both of those things not fighting for space, exactly, but circling one another until they figure out a way to work together. You can hear it, certainly, in the lyricism. “You can see right through me,” Jessee concedes to the off-stage character who, apparently, has broken his heart at some point in the world outside of the song. “And I don’t recognize my mouth.”

“Don’t think you’re coming ‘round anymore,” he admits in the second verse. “Turn into you, I’ll turn back into me,” he continues. “False starts are all that keep coming out. And it’s not ours to keep, so we wear it on our sleeve.”

And it is with a mix of resentment, and a reluctant attempt to reconcile, that Jessee, as the protagonist, does reflect on this time he’s describing with the titular expression.

*

In terms of tone, or the overall aesthetic of Hotel Lights, Jessee and his collaborators do not, across the album’s 13 tracks, stray all that far from a place of, perhaps, comfort, or at least the range he was comfortable with, or informed by at the time. However, the group does slightly move in different directions as the album heads towards its conclusion, with the sprawling, and kind of spacey “Anatole,” and glitchy, somewhat mournful and reflective, “Motionless.”

Hotel Lights, and Darren Jessee as a performer, rarely rises above a certain level of intensity in the music that he makes, and so at no point, in his two-decade career, would I ever consider the group to be a “rock band,” though there are certainly, at times, those kind of straight forward elements. “Anatole” is not a “rock” song by any means, but across its run time, it does open up in a way that allows for both a ferocious kind of snarling from the guitar, as well as a looser, drifting feeling that is of genuine interest, as a listener, and the song does go to a place that, musically, as it rises and falls, is something that it would have perhaps behooved him to explore in other songs, either on this self-titled album, or on subsequent releases.

Lyrically, across the board really on Hotel Lights, there is of course a sadness or a melancholy that kind of hangs over it all, but on “Anatole,” that sadness, or at least the sensation of feeling lost in yourself, is much more focused within the vivid and kind of pointed observations Jessee makes, with his fragile voice weaving itself in and out of the layers drifting around him.

“What happened here, where did you go,” Jessee asks in the opening lines. “What’s gone wrong, Anatole?” Then, later, not a scathing remark, but one that is, certainly, difficult to hear. “You’re not in sync. You haven’t been quite right all your life—shows when you smile, Anatole.”

“Motionless” is the penultimate track on Hotel Lights, and something that I did find, when listening to the album with a more analytical ear than I ever had before, was how many songs on the record have a kind of “final song” vibe to them, in terms of their pacing, or their overall tone. “Motionless” is one of them for sure. It is one of the slower songs in tempo, and it is among the handful that relies on clattering, dusty-sounding drum machine beats to keep the rhythm going. 

Musically, it is not among, like, the more genuinely interesting moments on the record—the second track, “A.M. Slow Golden Hit,” makes much better use of drum programming and what kind of compelling layers fall on top of it. But here, it is the lyrics, or at least some of the more introspective observations that Jessee makes in his lyricism, that make “Motionless” one that is worth noting as the album winds itself down.

Jessee had, more than likely, not been touring regularly as a performer for maybe three years by the time the first Hotel Lights album came out, but lyrically, “Motionless” deals with a kind of entropy, or a restlessness, and the longing for something, or someone, just out of reach that comes along with being in state of motion.

“These days, I’m here, and I’m there,” Jessee reflects. “Lay down and disappear until the water goes motionless.”

*

And perhaps it is a structural flaw, or indicative of the pacing, overall, that there are so many slower, or more downcast songs on Hotel Lights—songs that have a feeling, from the moment they begin, of finality to them. Like they are constructed to be the closing track. The first time this occurs on the album is early on, and maybe it is intentional, as a means of winding down the first half of the record, before there is a more raucous song that opens the second. 

Melancholic and slow, “Stumblin’ Home Winter Blues” begins with a gentle, somber strum of the acoustic guitar—which is the main element of the song, even as other instruments do find their way in, like the mournful cries of the harmonium, the gentle plunks of the marimba, and the brushed, shuffling, and tight sounding percussion. It, in its tempo, is also not a waltz exactly, but it does move along quite deliberately, with moments, and layers of melodies that do not rush towards you exactly, but do delicate swoon, and sway in time.

Jessee, as the protagonist in a lot of these songs, is, I do not think, concerned with being a likable character—it’s not that he is unlikeable. But he also isn’t always charming or endearing. For the mistakes that he makes, or is willing to try to reconcile with, “Stumblin’ Home Winter Blues” is a song where he does get close to accepting the role he’s played when something has gone wrong. There’s a sadness to it, of course, but as he reflects, there are also the briefest flashes of hope, or at least a wish for better.

“Goodbye street light, good night,” Jessee begins as the song opens. “I’m sure that I’ll be fine. ‘Cause daylight is breaking, and my head is spinning me stumbling home winter blue.” And it is interesting, genuinely, in how the titular phrase is strung, loosely, into the last line of the verse that comes before it. 

“Sometimes I know I am wrong,” Jessee concedes in the second verse. “Sometimes I know I am right. And lately, I’m thinking these streets are taking me stumbling home winter blues.”

Jessee’s voice is not an acquired taste exactly—but he does barely rise above a whisper more often than not, and there is such a delicate quality to it. But he uses that fragile range and allows his voice to coast along just above the warmth of the melodies in the song’s bridge, where the lyrics are the song’s most introspective, and also where there is the most admittance of being wrong, or at least not being right.

“Out of line—incomplete. In between waking up, and going to sleep,” Jessee quietly sings. “Out of line—waiting time. In between the morning light and where I want to be. But it takes time. Yours and mine.”

Jessee, as a songwriter, is often a little ambiguous at times but can be rather vivid when he wishes to be in terms of the imagery his phrase turns can conjure—something that occurs near the end of the song. “Goodbye, streetlight, good night. I’m sure I’ll be fine. I called from a payphone—you were still sleeping. Daylight is breaking and my head is spinning me stumbling home winter blues.”

*

And there are, of course, albums that I associate with autumn, for whatever reason, that are more indicative, in their tone, to the earlier parts of the season. September. October. When the temperatures might still be warmer than you wish for them to be. When there is the give and take of the cool air and the heat of the sun. When the leaves are gradually turning and falling. Perhaps the most wistful part of the season. 

For as many things, banal and not, that I remember from my life, what I cannot remember with any real certainty, what month it really was, in the fall of 2004, when I was easing into my final year in college, when Michael who often went by Mike, received Hotel Lights in his PO Box in the student mail room. 

Because for as much warmth, and a kind of warmer longing, there is to be found on the album, or at least in a number of the songs that I have really taken with me into my adult life, there is an icier feeling a well—a lonelier feeling. Like, the bad kind of longing. Which is why, even though I do associate this album with the autumnal months, I also consider it the soundtrack for when the fall ultimately gives way to the winter months. 

Arriving within the top half of the record, the slow, yet grand, “Small Town Shit” is a track that does find a way to merge the feeling of those seasons musically—there is a warmth that is still implied at times, yes, but more than anything it is one of the many surprisingly mean spirited or at least embittered songs on the record that gives the feeling of late November, and into December—gray, cold days.

It is bold of Jessee as a songwriter to put an utterance of profanity in a song’s title. Bold of him to do in 2004 and honestly, bold if he were to do it now—it’s something that he did again on the rather stunning Hotel Lights full-length from 2011, Girl Graffiti, with the whimsical, punchy song “All of My Asshole Friends.” But the use of “shit” here, in this context, lends itself to the kind of smallness  of it all. Like, what Jessee, in the lyrics, depicts as his woes—but it is his smallness, or the kind of trivial inconveniences that he is living in, at the moment, so they become much bigger or more emergent in a way.

The embittered feeling of Jessee’s lyricism here is offset slightly by the charm of the arranging. One of the slower songs certainly, w/r/t its pacing, there is a very delicate, gentle, and kind of thoughtful nature to the instrumentation on “Small Town Shit.” It doesn’t trudge, exactly, but there is a heaviness that it carries—the percussion is sharp, but not overpowering and the piano chords that ring out are mournful, and there are a number of other elements, and sounds, introduced the further along into the song we’re taken. I hesitate to say that the instrumental break in between verses gives it a whimsical feeling, because the mood of the song is anything but; however, there is something a little lighter happening with the antiquated and kind of wonky synthesizer tones that drift in, and the kind of swooning of all the elements that occurs near the end.

What is depicted in the song is not Jessee’s finest moment when it comes to sidestepping a kind of toxic masculinity. “Put your lips in a pucker,’ he demands of the off-stage character he is addressing. “And keep them there. And keep talking like the waitress down at The Lantern,” he continues. “What’s worse than your refusal is my not wanting to,” he adds, which is the line that he returns to elsewhere.

Again, as it is implied elsewhere on Hotel Lights, Jessee, as the protagonist within these songs, is on the cusp of understanding and potentially owning his role in something that has transpired, which is where we find him the further along into “Small Town Shit” we wade. “Something ‘bout the same old patterns—it’s not lost on me,” he admits in these short bridge section, before heading into the bitterest lyrics in the final verse. “Heads of tails, you win,” he scoffs. “I don’t remember who I am. What’s worse than your refusal is my not wanting to. I heard I was all wrong—it got back to me.”

All of this, as depicted, is written off in a sense as the titular “small town shit,” and like so many other moments on Hotel Lights, there is no real resolution offered in the end for Jessee as the narrator, or protagonist, and for us, then, as listeners. 

*

And there are, as indicated, moments across Hotel Lights that have that sense of finality to them, for whatever reason, that makes it feel like they could be, or perhaps should be, the album’s final track. 

The album closes with its longest track (over six minutes)—the slow-burning “Love to Try,” which, even though it is very theatrical, or dramatic, in how it progresses musically, there is another hint of a kind of Ben Folds Five adjacency to it because it does feature the piano as the primary instrument, and there is a more complicated arrangement happening, as opposed to some of the other places where you can hear more chordal work underscoring the other things happening. 

“Love to Try,” musically, doesn’t build exactly. Or, rather, it builds but very gradually, as more elements, like gently, slowly tapped out percussion is added and then removed, or swooning, wordless background vocals filling the space between verses. 

Lyrically, and maybe because it is the final track on the album, and has the feeling of a final track, there is a sense of not acceptance, but of admittance, reluctant or otherwise, or even some regret, not in so many words, in Jessee’s writing—he, again, is depicting a connection between two people that has come to an end, but there is still his attempt to feel a closeness, however difficult it might be.

“I asked you for a light and a cigarette,” Jessee begins. “When you’ve been up for days, you can’t tell sunrise from sunset.” 

His interactions become more emotionally fraught the further into “Love to Try” we’re taken. “Kids are playing in the park—leaves are on the ground,” he observes in the second verse. “You said you want to cry. Someone hit a home run that we caught on the other side.”

“I fall in love every day,” he confesses near the end of the song. “What can I do? I love you the most.” 

The chorus, then, finds him kind of fumbling with how he feels, or being unable to really articulate himself as he may wish to. “I’m running my mouth again on things I cannot explain,” he resigns himself to. “On things that can’t be changed. You know I would love to try.”

And, for as little, if any, resolution is found in the songs on this album, that is indicative of how it ends, too. Jessee, as protagonist, would love to try. To change. Or to accept his fault in something. But we are left hanging, with the impression that he will not.

*

I hesitate, just slightly, to say that Hotel Lights is top heavy with its finest material, or the material that is the most memorable, or has been the most memorable to me over the last 20 years—like, the songs that I return to, now, easing my way into my 40s. And yet. The two songs that I return to the most, and will continue to return to, especially as the seasons changed, are placed at the very beginning of the record.

Hotel Lights isn’t a perfect record. I never claimed it was. And often, in these lengthy, analytical assessments of something from the past, that is something that I do not have to reconcile with exactly but certainly something worth mentioning. Darren Jessee is a flawed individual who writes songs that reflect that, and the album itself is weighed down by its slower pacing and overall length, which means that there are, unfortunately, moments the further it moves along, that things do teeter into the territory of sounding very similar, or becoming less distinguishable.

I will acknowledge, though, that the two songs that I do adore the most about the record also fall into that trap as well—there are similarities, in aesthetic, to both “You Come and I Go,” and “Miles Behind Me,” but maybe I am willing to give them a pass because the charm of the album’s overall feeling is still fresh within the first few songs, and has not worn out its welcome, or anything, but also has not had the chance to truly play its entire hand. 

The contrast between the two, though, falls on how grand, or swooning they end up becoming in their respective ways—both held back by a sense of tension, and reserve, in the arranging, “You Come and I Go” is allowed to build towards something a little larger, and a little more sweeping, before it recedes to the whisper it began with; “Miles Behind Me” is not provided that, and remains balanced precariously on a kind of icy sense of restraint, albeit a gentle, surprisingly beautiful one, when the chorus arrives.

Beginning with a delicately tapped out, resonant drum beat, there is a fascinating juxtaposition that occurs within the instrumentation used—even for as icy, or lonely sounding as “Miles Behind Me” comes off as, there is an inherently warmth to the use of the electric piano, which provides the song with most of its main melody, and rises to a bit of a twinkle in the chorus. 

There is a starkness, or frankness, to Jessee’s lyricism in “Miles Behind Me.” It isn’t mean-spirited—no, not exactly, but they aren’t exactly pleasant, either, as it depicts the long, difficult end of something. And smartly, yes, I understand that many of these songs are about the presumed dissolution of a romantic relationship, but here, there is a surprising amount of ambiguity used, which removes the clarity of who, or what, this might be about, though the frustration and the hurt, and the disappointment that Jessee experiences are very clear, and very vivid.

“Fading out of sight, into the back of your mind,” Jessee begins slowly, his voice in the brittle, weary range that he does keep it throughout the album. “All this water under the bridge. Everything comes sneaking back—and we didn’t talk after that.”

“Things that we worried you then when patience had run thin. Laughed when we wanted to hide on different sides of the line,” he continues in the second verse. “We went to the end of the night.”

The chorus to the song involves the titular expression, tacked on to the end of the repeated phrase, “Nobody saw you fall,” which, in the way it is repeated, and sung in such a delicate way, with the music gently swooning underneath, does make for a beautiful, albeit kind of sorrowful moment—again, the warm, really inviting feeling of the instrumentation, colliding with the chilling feeling coming from Jessee’s lyrics and the way he delivers them, and the trudge and tumble of the song’s pacing. 

“Familiar roads, unrecognizable turns—seem to be dead ends in tiny rooms out of view,” he continues in the final verse. “Everything’s born again, and this time you’re gonna win. At least that’s what I tell myself.”

And there is, of course, a sense of loss, or of losing, that is present in a number of these songs—it does take different shapes, or is presented in different ways. But there is a kind of unremorseful feeling to how it is conveyed. “Nobody saw you fall miles behind me” isn’t an outwardly mean thing to say—it’s subtle in how it cuts. And cuts into something much more personal, or private, being revealed in such a way that it is cloaked with enough ambiguity to leave much to the imagination. 

And there is, of course, a sense of loss, or of losing, that is present in a number of these songs—it does take different shapes, and it is present, immediately, in the album’s finest moment, which is also the track it opens with—the stunning, mournful, “You Come and I Go.”

If you were to ask me for a list of my favorite side ones, track ones, “You Come and I Go” would be on there. It was compelling enough of a song to have kept me invested in Hotel Lights and Darren Jessee over two decades, and it is a song that, as the seasons change—summer surrenders to autumn, with autumn eventually falling prey to winter, that I do think about. Because of how it sounds. There is something about the way it unassumingly swirls around, at times in a kind of beautiful slow motion—and the interplay between the guitar strums and the piano melody that is plunked out on, like, a single key at a time, with just this little moment of silence hanging in between each note, with the song itself only really rising, or swelling, near the end, with the bridge, where the piano gets a little more cavernous and raucous sounding, and the drumming becomes a little more emphatic, before it all recedes and concludes just the way it began, creating a fascinating cyclical kind of feeling.

I never went into this thinking that Hotel Lights was going to be a perfect album to assess—I don’t think that, during my final year in college, I even thought it was a perfect album, though I think the 21-year-old version of me had a lot more patience with it, and thought a lot less analytically about pop music. “You Come and I Go,” though, is an utterly perfect moment on this album, and within Jessee’s canonical work, just really capturing something that is so vivid and precise. 

The lyrics here are less about loss, or losing, and more about being on the cusp, or knowing that and end is potentially just around the corner. 

“I know, you will, like everything else,” Jessee begins, his voice brittle, and his words measured out with precision. “It comes and goes. You’re young, and full of everything good—and I can’t be wrong.”

The contrast, then, within the song, as it sways, and grows, is the kind of implied sweetness, or tenderness, with the sorrow that is hinted at within the chorus, as well as the final verse. There is a vivid portrait of an individual within the second verse, as well as a kind of youthful freedom. “Pink hair for a blue girl, and anything’s funny when you’re alone,” Jessee observes. “We can leave and run out of money—it’s cool. Let’s go.”

Like “Miles Behind Me,” “You Come and I Go”’s chorus is structured around the repetition of a phrase with something added at the end as a bit of punctuation—“You come and I go, along,” he sings, with that last line stretched out and held a little longer.

The turn in the song comes in the kind of startling revelation as it reaches its conclusion. “Don’t you want happiness,” Jessee asks in the bridge, with the music rising to a clatter around him. “At least as much as anybody else?”

“Up on your toes, who was the fool that told you I won’t let go,” he asks, not even with a smirk, with that sense of impending loss overtaking the song within its final seconds as it ends with the buzzing, synthesizer ripple it began with.

*

She’s a brick, and I’m drowning slowly

And I have, of course, written extensively, I would argue, in the past few years, about the way music ages. Or, rather, the way we age with music. There are songs, or albums, or just even artists, that we make a connection with some point in our lives. And from there, as we grow, both in age, certainly, but as we mature in how we think, or how we give things consideration, you come to a place where you, I mean, if you are like me, must assess if the music you liked, when you were younger, and a different person, is something you are able to take with you.

If it grows with you. 

Or, if it is something that you do, ultimately, outgrow, and leave it behind. And in leaving it behind, how often do you try to revisit. And what, if anything, do you wish to experience when you go back and listen. Do you acknowledge what it offered you, at a different time in your life, and understand that you’ve moved on? Or is it something that you feel little, if any, connection to at all at this point.

Over the last, I would say, seven or eight years, I have become more and more sensitive, and maybe more aware than I should be, of a kind of toxic masculinity that is found in songwriting. Which, often, makes it a challenge to appreciate something for what it is, because I am unable to shut off my analytical nature. 

It often makes it a challenge to appreciate something that has, potentially, not aged well at all. Because despite how much you may have liked something at a different time in your life, when the problematic nature of something is revealed, it is difficult if not impossible to unhear it.

The idea of the “sensitive” male singer/songwriter was something that I was, without question, attracted to in my 20s. And I am not even sure when it became something I found myself less drawn to as I moved through my 30s. It happened slowly. So gradually and unintentionally. And what I have found, in my attempts to go back—to either listen to new albums from these artists, or revisit the material that I was, at one time, so fond of, is that I am surprised at the depictions of toxic, or fragile masculinity that is often imbedded into the songwriting.

The self-titled Hotel Lights album was self-released at some point in 2004—Jessee, the following year, released an EP that is somewhat hard to find, and is not available to stream, called Goodnightgoodmorning (stylized just like that), and in 2006, Hotel Lights was reissued via Bar None Records, the label who has released all subsequent albums from Jessee. He continued using the Hotel Lights moniker for three additional albums before retiring it in 2016, and since then, has released three full-lengths under his own name, the most recent in 2023.

And I think that it would have been, certainly, somewhere in listening to the last Hotel Lights album, Get Your Hand in My Hand, and the first under his own name, The Jane, Room 217, released in 2018, that I began to think more critically, and listen more with a more intersectional ear, and I noticed the kind of depictions of a masculinity, or a treatment toward others (presumably women) that did not sit well with me. 

Ben Folds, the namesake of Ben Folds Five was, of course, the principal songwriter in the group, but Jessee, across the band’s short career, is credited as a co-writer on a handful of tunes, including the surprisingly popular “Brick,” which is, famously, about the termination of a pregnancy—specifically told from Folds’ perspective, and it is a perspective that, in lacking literally any consideration for the woman in this anecdote, has aged embarrassingly poorly. 

The chorus is attributed to Jessee. “She’s a brick, and I’m drowning slowly. Off the coast, and I’m headed nowhere.” 

“Brick” is featured on Ben Folds Five’s sophomore album, and their major label debut, Whatever and Ever, Amen, which was released 1997. The album itself is also plagued with other, more grotesque examples of scathing, toxic masculinity, like the noisy “Song For The Dumped,” which I think, over 25 years ago, was supposed to be funny. The band was always a little smirking in their aesthetic, and never meant to be taken with total sincerity. 

Folds, for how beloved he is, both for his work with the group and as a solo artist, has a catalog of songs that are certainly as troubling or problematic—in 2008, he recorded a song titled “Bitch Went Nuts.” But. This isn’t about Ben Folds. Not really. It is about Darren Jessee, and Hotel Light, and about how, sometimes, it is difficult and if not difficult sometimes it feels impossible to be able to reconcile. Not to separate the art from the artist. 

Because this isn’t about that. 

But just to still appreciate the art, if you can, when what it is about, or in part about, is troubling, or doesn’t sit well.

Because I do still wish to appreciate Darren Jessee and Hotel Lights. But there is something that has been, for a few years, keeping me at an arm’s length. 

*

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

I think about that line a lot. It’s from the John Banville novel The Sea—it is, in fact, the reason why I sought out a copy of The Sea at the very end of 2021. The book itself was originally published in 2005, the year that I graduated from college.

I, sometimes, when I come to something much later in life, think about who I was, or where I was, when that thing—an album, usually, or in this case, a book—was released, and I wonder if that version of me would have been drawn to it.

If that version of me—21, on the cusp of 22, having just graduated from college a month before the book’s publication, would have appreciated it, or felt the weight of it, the way that I did in reading it when I did.

And maybe it is the same for you, as it is for me. The past. And the hold it might have on you. Similar to the hold that specific moments from the past continue to have on me. Beating inside me like a second heart.

And it was brought to my attention somewhat recently, and perhaps it was something that, deep down, I already knew. And perhaps it is something that I have written about, because it is so often on my mind. But, I am an extremely sentimental person. I am often wistful. And I am often giving consideration to parts of the lives that I lived before this one. 

I of course, in the past, have written, and potentially more often than I should, about the connections I have placed on certain artists, or songs, or albums, and times of the year—of seasons. 

I return to, and dare I say that I romanticize, autumns from my life, regularly—specific events or even just small, singular moments that have remained with me, as I have grown. And I do, of course, return to the autumn of 2004. For any number of reasons. I was entering my final year in college. I had ended the long-term relationship I had been in, and found myself confusing infatuation and perhaps lust with genuine love—there is, like all things, a place where those things can and perhaps will overlap with intensity, but I was entirely too young, at the time, to understand that. And it is that misunderstanding that I do return to, in the autumn. 

We make mistakes. We give reasons why. Too young. Ultimately careless with our own affection and our hearts. We learn, over time, we could have treated people we claimed to care about with more respect and admiration. We apologize, late, but better late than never. 

We try to grow. 

We hope we have. 

We hope we have grown but the past, of course, beats inside of us—at least, for me, like a second heart beat and there are still the things, from the past, that we hang onto. Knowingly. Or, we are simply unable to shake. We grow, but we are also still, in some regards, that version of ourselves. 

It is, at current, the beginning of September, where I sit, and where I have been sitting, collecting my thoughts on both this time in my life, from when I was much younger, and less aware, and much less self-aware, and about Darren Jessee and Hotel Lights. There have been days that have, thankfully, been much more temperate, though we are, of course, in the final gasps of summer. The days can, and often will, become warmer than we’d wish for them to, once you have felt even the slightest chill in the air.

The leaves, slowly, begin to turn and tumble onto the sidewalks and streets. The fury of red and orange will arrive eventually. Then they will be bare. The days will grow shorter. The air colder. The sky, at times, a dull gray. The snow will fall. There will be flashes of beauty in it all, you see.

We hope we have grown but the past, of course, beats inside of us. And it does, at times, beat with the rhythm of an album, or at least a handful of songs on it, or the artist themselves that we, at one time, held dear, and are, even with the misgivings we may have, are unable to shake. 

Like these moments, or events, that we romanticize and revisit, often with a wistfulness, there is a beauty in the familiarity of a song that we have lived in for so long.

Who was the fool that told you I won’t let go.