Not surprisingly, like a
lot of John Darnielle’s music, particularly those songs on the album The Sunset
Tree (Pale Green Things springs to
mind and is very much worth listening to), his writing only slowly reveals itself
and its narrative direction. Not in any turgid or tedious fashion, but rather
in an unhurried, gentler and more thoughtful way. Universal Harvester rolls
gently along its path with only a few disconcerting and probably deliberate
hiccups. It starts in Iowa in the 1990s with a young man, still living at home
with his father but unable to leave because of the weight of his mother’s
death, years before, in a car crash. The trauma tethers Jeremy and his father
together like the gravitational pull of a dead star in a comfortable and
predictable but numb orbit, but it’s never something that either of them can
discuss openly.
Jeremy works at a VHS rental store, so we’re assuredly early-Worldwide Web era. His job is simple, repetitive, and keeps him and his father in entertai…
Jeremy works at a VHS rental store, so we’re assuredly early-Worldwide Web era. His job is simple, repetitive, and keeps him and his father in entertai…