A Guest Post by Mathilda Hallstrom

How catsitting in Philadelphia introduced this English major to dreampop

Hey folks,

I’m off to celebrate Diwali today, so we’re having a guest post!

She’s none other than Mathilda Hallstrom, writer of long-form essays on Substack’s “All the Right Notes”. You might have read her pieces on Neko Case and St. Vincent. At university in Philadelphia, she’s pursuing a major in English and a minor in music, hoping to kickstart her career in music journalism. Mathilda’s a super-talented young lady with a bright future in writing evocative pieces that are well-researched and edited.

Welcome, and over to you!

Mathilda Hallstrom. Likes dogs, English, and music. In that order.

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Hi, everyone!

It is my absolute privilege to be taking over Nikhil’s spot for a moment — I’ve got big shoes to fill here.

I was first introduced to Barrie by an ex-fling during my freshman year of college, during those inimitable years where new sounds are all around you, a time of extreme absorption. I hadn’t known I wanted to be a music writer back then; I hadn’t known much at all. I was majoring in French back then — you know, the kind of decision you make when you’re nineteen and convinced life is meaningless. In fact, most of the decisions I made back then were born of just that: I was directionless, going with whatever crossed my path. It worked until it didn’t.

Certain music has a knack for entering my life at just the right time. The part of me which is deeply irony-poisoned (I’m working on it) bristles at my admitting this, but from time to time, I find myself commanded by certain songs.

I play my temporary fixations to the point of exhaustion until each individual part is woven into the grooves of my brain until it seemingly permeates my skin. Music has always made a home in me; it is so much of who I am.
Such is the case with Barrie’s “Tal Uno”.

I was catsitting for a friend in North Philadelphia, so I did what any dirtbag nineteen-year-old would do: invited the boy I liked to sit in their living room with me and listened to music. We sat together on the couch, probably dragged in from the curb, and he played this psychedelic, dreampop outfit. It was everything I loved in a song then: hazy and bouncing with a bassline so thick you could slice right through it. I was attached immediately. 

Back then, I was grappling with how things could change so suddenly, how the rug could be pulled out from under you and send all of your parts flying into the ether. What was the point of trying so hard if it could all be taken from you at a moment’s notice?

For months and months after that, even after he and I parted ways (thank God), I found myself pulled into Barrie’s orbit, chewing and swallowing their singles and debut album day after day after day. The rest of their discography is a marvel in itself, but my fixation for “Tal Uno” never evaporated; I took it with me on the train, in the library, and on my long walks alone through the Fairmount neighborhood.

“Don’t you think that you can do better?”

She asks once, and then again. It felt personal, and still feels so when I revisit it almost two years later: Don’t you think that you can do better?

I did think that; I still do. But when I was too jaded for my own good, this song existed in my life as a sliver of light in a black hole. I still can’t help but tear up as the final chorus ascends into echoes, a yawning back-and-forth. “Tal Uno” takes advantage of all its space; it fills every corner and bounces off the walls. I needed so badly to feel full.

Things are better now, impossibly better; it’s freeing to know that I don’t have to be ruled by nihilism in such a devastating manner. Yeah, I do think I can do better; it feels good to prove that to myself every day now. Better, for me, is continuing to do what I love and acknowledging that there will always be more to learn.

Music allows me to go back to the past, to reinhabit my body as if for the first time. I’m still growing up in so many ways, and I am often amazed by the ways in which new chemical reactions occur inside of me, new feelings I haven’t known yet. At nineteen, Barrie gave me that.

Thank you for reading ‘What’s Curation?’, and I hope you find some of that catharsis in Barrie’s work — or, at least, have a good time listening.

-Mathilda.