I’ve lived in southern California my whole life, up and down the coast but have never traveled above the bay area for any substantial amount of time. Most of that time has been split between the beaches and freeways of LA county and the sulfuric hills of the inland empire. It’s so foreign from the outsider’s usual conception of California. There’s no coastal breeze out there and the sun which usually is a commodity as part of the “Cali aesthetic” becomes a constant and brutal antagonist with the sole purpose to make your time outside as much of a pain in the ass as possible.
This a reminder that California is a desert. This experience I have with the two faces of Southern California has only grown more intimate with time as I’ve grown up, getting the freedom of movement that comes with having a car which has led to me driving around at various times of day to gaze at the barren lake beds and dry grassy fields surrounding almost every metropolitan area east of Covina. With long drives, as I’m sure you the reader know, comes a lot of music listening.
I do pride myself on the vast variety of audio technical media that I consume but for this article, I wanted to put that all aside, I can write a rant on White Suns some other time. Now I want to tell you about Mojave 3, the band that I return to most when taking these drives and that has soundtracked both euphoric bursts of inspiration and crippling fits of existential terror. Sounds fun right? If you’re wondering what the hell a Mojave 3 is, they are a band made up of Rachel Goswell, Ian McCutcheon, and Neil Halstead. If any of those names seem familiar, that is because those three are members of the prolific 90s shoegaze band Slowdive. After Slowdive split in 1995, these three stuck together to make folksy and striped-down acoustic demos that contrasted the lovely gluttonous use of reverb tones that permitted their previous work. Halstead and Goswell still were vocalists while McCutcheon stuck to drums. Mojave 3 was the result of a desire to drastically deviate from Slowdives signature sound which caused it to dissolve for a time, and this band captures what I think is a perfect tone and atmosphere that has made me fall so deeply in love with them during the drives I have through the inland empire.
Funny enough this band is from England, ew I know but stay with me because this is what I would call a very American band in a way. Their sound is folk, but it’s distinctly American folk music mixed with 90’s alternative and desert rock. For me, everything about this band creates images of long winding hills of golden grass on cracked dirt and a single interstate that gets split off every couple miles and has one of those luxury gas stations designed to accommodate truck drivers every fifty. - And while that image may be more suited to Arizona, Utah, Nevada, or the massive part of California that makes up the majority of the Mojave; the little chunk of California I inhabit on weekends in my 2003 Nissan pathfinder is close enough for me to find a real connection with that music. Going out to that part of California has done nothing but reinforce this atmosphere as I put it previously.
The feeling of undying love for the land you inhabit with the pain of the knowledge of all its failings, The desire to create something beautiful to contrast the nothing which is also
beautiful, The constant fear of growing old and unknowingly content with a dream you gave up
on, or The hope that everything will just be okay. All are things I’ve thought about on these
drives while listening to Mojave 3. None of which I have stopped thinking about but have been
inspired to create because of. For me, Mojave 3 has been the soundtrack to my growth as an
artist as I exited my teens and entered my twenties. The influence in a direct manner might vary
from art piece to art piece but the framework will always be routed in those drives and the songs
that came along with me on them.
I'm gonna end this with a recommendation to listen to Mojave 3 obviously, Specifically the song “My Life In Art” which if it doesn’t make you cry I’m gonna be convinced you aren’t capable of feeling whatsoever but… also to find what band, song, movie, painting, or live performance sex show you have to find to inspire the ideas that can one day help you make something beautiful. Because that’s how art grows and that’s how people grow, which are very important. Apologies for the grandiosity at the end.
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