Lexo and The Leapers
Ask Them
1999, The Fading Captain Series
“Time Machines” is a song that sounds like a door being suddenly kicked in. Or maybe a bomb going off. But, ya know… in a good way.
It’s the kind of explosive pop throwdown that Robert Pollard hadn’t put out in a spell. It’s a real gas pedal-pusher and it wouldn’t have fit on Kid Marine at all, but as the opener to an EP of lean, crunchy rock, it was perfecto.
I even love the lyrics. I think it’s a song about nostalgia and how you might enjoy living in it when you can, but present day reality will always intrude (“Time machines escape the fall/ But cannot climb the prison wall”). “Time Machines” doesn’t put down nostalgia, though. Pollard was 41 when he recorded it. That’s an age when nostalgia can hit you hard. I know from experience. It’s not necessarily about idealizing your past as glory days that can never be topped. Rather, it’s often a state of not feeling finished with your past.
There’s always something back there, too many decades ago, that you didn’t notice before. Something that you didn’t appreciate enough.
But now you think about it all the time.