It has none of the bloated self-importance that afflicts so many late-career musicians, no presumption that its mere existence should be celebrated, regardless of whether it’s worth listening to more than once.
In fact, the longer I listened to If Your Mirror Breaks, the harder it was to believe that it’s actually new.
The guitars of Terrie Hessels and Andy Moor intertwine as expertly as ever. Katherina Bornefeld’s percussion continues the band’s storied legacy of making beats that ebb and flow like a chorus of human heartbeats. And Arnold de Boer’s vocals once again prove a worthy successor to those of founding member G.W. Sok.
The way opening number “Beat Beat Drums” turns Walt Whitman’s poetry into an engine for change; Bornefeld’s folk-inflected vocals on “The Wheel”; the declaration “When I grow up, I want to be an apartment block,” on the penultimate track: all could be integrated seamlessly into Ex albums from any of the previous four decades.
If Your Mirror Breaks is so packed with ageless vitality that it kept transporting me back to earlier stages of my life, when I still heard the band’s incisive left-wing lyrics as a call to accelerate progress instead of a melancholy acknowledgement of decline.
Maybe that’s why I kept wanting to hear If Your Mirror Breaks while I tackled my to-do list instead of serenely contemplating it through noise-cancelling headphones in my favourite chair. You might not think that hearing The Ex compete with Walmart Radio blaring over the PA while you are scanning sunscreen labels would be a positive experience. But you would be wrong.
Despite the immense pressure I’m under, hearing The Ex temporarily revived my youthful conviction that I have the power to move mountains.
Correction. Not I, but we.
When I first discovered the Amsterdam band, I was living in an anarchist community in a rough part of Oakland, California. I had ended up there by accident, after a friend, witnessing the painful break-up of my first serious relationship, convinced his housemates to take me into their fold even though I lacked the political bona fides normally required to join.
That’s why, at the house meeting where they voted on my membership, I made the mistake of describing anarchism as an ideology devoted to individual freedom.
“No, my friend,” replied the de facto leader of the household, a prominent figure in the Anti-Apartheid movement that had taken the UC-Berkeley campus by storm a few years before. “That’s what the mainstream media want you to think. Real anarchists are always focused on the group. We aren’t promoting individuality, but trying to make a community work in spite of the resistance it poses. Our ideal is mutual aid.”
Although I was sceptical of this argument, which struck me as too self-righteous, I did not object. I needed a place to live. And these anarchists were a lot more interesting than most potential housemates.
Aside from the leader, who went on to become a political prisoner in Indonesia before becoming a civil rights lawyer my housemates included an Iranian man who had fought to overthrow the Shah and then been forced into exile by the Islamist Revolution; a woman in her thirties who had already devoted a decade to fighting the US government’s interventions in Central America; a graduate student from the University of California, Irvine who had taken courses with Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard; an activist for the disabled who drove quadriplegics around and resold the sheets of high-quality blotter acid they gave him as tips; and an older gentleman from Massachusetts who had been so badly beaten by right-wing thugs at a protest in the early 1970s that he walked with a severe limp and often shook while speaking.
Across the street and up a few houses was another anarchist household with a similar cast of characters, including somebody who had scaled a construction crane on campus to protest the alliance between biotech research and the military industrial complex and his girlfriend, who had a job working on the Emma Goldman papers and would soon complicate their relationship by embarking on a torrid lesbian affair with a housemate active in the East Bay’s burgeoning punk subculture.
I don’t remember which of these fascinating people first played The Ex for me. But I do recall the collective reverence for the band, which was shared by the veterans of European squats who would periodically come through town and sleep on our living-room floor, including an Irish man and woman almost as young and me, newly arrived in the United States, whom I walked up to our tiny neighborhood liquor store only to find them aghast at the number of options.
Because I was keen to repay the kindness my housemates had shown me, I scoured the area’s used bookstores for anthologies of anarchist literature dating back to the time when Berkeley became world famous for its protests.
At first, I struggled to make sense of the relationship between my own situation and the writings of Bakunin, Kropotkin, Berkman, and Rocker. But with the help of my housemates, I slowly came to perceive the overlapping genealogies that had created the Bay Area anarchist network I was experiencing firsthand.
Of all the bands my housemates introduced me to, The Ex stood out. The music of Crass left me cold, though I understood why they were important. Chumbawamba had more appeal, but still didn’t do it for me.
But The Ex hit the nail on the head.
Certain combinations of sounds invariably please me.
If I have to choose between an interesting rhythm and a pretty melody, I’m usually going to opt for the rhythm. When multiple instruments execute the same pattern, then separate, only to converge again, my ears perk up. I like it when the lead guitar acts more like a drum than a lead guitar. I’m a fan of notes that come a little before or after the beat, particularly when they bend a little. And I generally prefer minor keys to major ones.
All these factors explain why The Ex impressed me so much back then. Not only did their lyrics and packaging communicate a political sensibility I could admire, but they had also found a way of transmuting it into form.
And they haven’t lost it since.
Although The Ex are famous for going hard, sustaining that mindset decade after decade seems nearly impossible. Yet If Your Mirror Breaks proves otherwise.
The band’s political convictions surely play a major role. When you believe that there is something problematic with the very idea of selling labour in a capitalist society, there isn’t much risk of being possessed by the urge to cash in that overcomes many alternative musicians.
But there’s more to it than that. The group’s members clearly love to make music, regardless of any other goals they might have.
When I listened to The Ex’s catalogue in shuffle mode for this piece, I was reminded of the drum circles that spontaneously appeared on Lower Sproul Plaza on the UC-Berkeley campus when I was a student there.
Human beings are hard-wired for rhythm. While we are evolutionarily maladapted for most aspects of modern existence, latching onto beats makes the tension easier to bear.
So do activities that make it possible to feel part of something without having to pay for the privilege. Above all else, I think that’s why The Ex haven’t aged like other bands of their era. Their music invites us to pull up a chair and start up a rhythm of our own.
Although I was too young and inexperienced to benefit fully from my time living in an anarchist community, I have vivid memories of the tingly sensation I would get when one of my older housemates would tell a story about their political experiences or show me how to do something by myself that I had previously imagined would require paying an expert to do.
With If Your Mirror Breaks, The Ex confirm once again that they are ideally suited for conjuring that sensation in their listeners, whether young or old.
Photograph courtesy of Oscar Anjewierden. Published under a Creative Commons license.
