In Galaxie 500’s incredible On Fire, the opener “Blue Thunder” immediately places the album—and the listener—into a state of motion. The iconic refrain of “I’ll drive so far away” never really addresses the place from which the speaker is so intent on leaving, letting the focus rest on the act of departure and the imagined “elsewhere” to which we’re going and being taken. Money’s sophomore album Suicide Songs is at times thematically and sonically reminiscent (with singer Jamie Lee even belting “I’m on fire” in “Night Came”), positing suicidal ideation as an act of departure from the self, offering a framework through which to explore and complicate the notion of identity formation as simultaneously oppressive and liberating.
