The following is a transcript of a conversation I had with my psychiatrist.

GEORGE

What seems to be the trouble, Steve?

STEVE

Well, Doc, I have this terrible headache. I went to see my regular GP but after a battery of questions and tests, he ruled out any physical reason that I have this…well, it’s beyond a migraine. So, he suggested I see you about it.

GEORGE

Well, let’s see if we can find the cause, then. What kind of pain is it and how much?

STEVE

It feels like my head is being simultaneously crushed together and pulled apart. I can actually hear the pain.

GEORGE

Wow, that’s some description. Do you know when this symptom started?

STEVE

As best as I can determine, it all started right after I got done listening to Shield Your Eyes‘ new album Theme from Kindness. It wasn’t an immediate reaction, but a half hour or so after finishing the album I was struck by this surge of brain-numbing pain. It really hasn’t stopped since.

GEORGE

Certainly music can’t do that to a human. Well, music played a reasonable volume, anyway. But even if a sound were blaring it would only cause pain when it was playing, not when it wasn’t.

STEVE

I thought so, too, Doc. And that’s the thing – I was listening to it at what one would consider reasonable. I value my hearing so I don’t play music loud enough to do any damage.

GEORGE

So you’re convinced it’s the album proper that’s giving you this pain? It couldn’t be anything else?

STEVE

No, sir. I don’t do any drugs, I exercise, I eat well. I mean, I’ll have the occasional cheeseburger, but…you know. There simply is no other explanation for this terrible headache. I don’t even get headaches when I’m hungover. So this is quite strange. And rather alarming.

GEORGE

Could it possibly be you have this reaction to music in general? Why is this album so special – that is, why do you believe it’s this exact collection of songs that is causing you to suffer as you appear to be.

STEVE

I’m sure it’s this one. I love music, been listening to it since I was six. Never had any other album cause me pain or, for that matter, have any pain even tangentially related to hearing music. Well, there was that one time I threw up while listening to ‘The Girl is Mine’ but I digress.

GEORGE

I understand completely. So what’s so special about this album and its apparent power to cause pain?

STEVE

Well, for starters, The band’s Last.fm page lists them as “a kind of rattled-out progressive blues.” Maybe the band wrote that themselves, maybe a fan did. In either case, it’s wrong. No note found anywhere on this atrocity comes even close to existing in the same plane of reality as blues. Or anything progressive. Progressive music has a logical path of movement, the root being “progress.” These songs – if you’d be kind enough to call them that – don’t have a logical path from start to finish. This, of course, assumes there is a beginning and end to any given piece of music here. The band’s…let’s call them “music things” because, quite honestly, these are not songs. Anyway, the band’s music things basically consist of a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer all playing simultaneously but not together. It’s three musicians playing music over one another, each trying to play something akin to coherence. They fail miserably.

GEORGE

What exactly do you mean, there’s no progression to them? Or that they play over each other? One could reasonably conclude that a song necessarily has a beginning and end because that’s what a song is. It’s inherent to the definition.

STEVE

A valid point, Doc. But here’s the problem. These songs seem to have been, ahem, written on the spot in the studio, but you can’t compare their supposed jams to the Grateful Dead or Phish because the latter pair’s extended jam sessions actually go somewhere and have some structure to them. While they are improvised, it’s obvious every band member in either respective band understands that everyone else is adding to an overall aural narrative. There are rules, there is congruity. They recognize they are part of a whole. It’s not just four or five guys playing whatever they want at the same time. When you realize this, you move on to another possible comparison for understanding. Shield Your Eyes is as directionless as I’ve ever seen a band jamming in a garage for the first time. Hell, even the heroin-drenched Velvet Underground made sense! ‘Too Little Has Been Good for the Soul,’ for example, is just the band trying to play At The Drive-In-style hardcore but it more resembles a man flailing his limbs after having fallen off a cliff in an attempt to slow himself down. Every single time the band hits what could be seen as a comprehensible passage, they proceed to piss all over it in a matter of seconds.

GEORGE

And that’s when you first started experiencing this extraordinary pain? Upon first listen?

STEVE

Well, that’s when the pain started. It was just what you guys call “discomfort” at first. Then after the second spin, my brain began to analyze the alleged songs and I had an epiphany. It was this epiphany where the real pain set in.

GEORGE

And this was…?

STEVE

I initially reasoned that maybe the point of this album – really, this band – was perhaps going against the grain in every conceivable fashion. Forget skipping the verse-chorus-verse structure. Maybe these guys just wanted to be outsiders in the purest sense. Maybe they just decided to show up to a recording studio, play the first thing that came to mind, record it, mix it, master it and call that an album.

GEORGE

And this was your awakening? Or, what was it…epiphany?

STEVE

No, this is the thought process that led to it. You see, the second time around I noticed the album was broken up into bite-sized portions. It wasn’t one, giant clusterfuck. It was ten smaller clusterfucks, ranging from one-and-a-half to nine minutes apiece. Upon noticing this, I was forced to ask myself why.

GEORGE

Isn’t that how an album works? It has different ideas called songs, right?

STEVE

Yes, normally that is how records work. But since this one goes against everything we as a people have ever come to recognize as an album of music, why would this one aspect be kept intact? It was this question that developed into a Möbius Strip inside my head. My head kept repeating, “If the band’s aim was to drive on the wrong side of the road, why stay within a single lane? If all of these songs are essentially the same thing – and they are – then why split them up at all?” To break one huge mess up into a bunch of smaller messes doesn’t make it any less disorganized. If anything, the opposite is true.

GEORGE

OK, I see your point. But then why do you think this bothering to such a degree that you developed pain as a result?

STEVE

Because, if the entire point of writing and recording music is to connect with an audience, even if it’s just one person, then an “album” of “songs” that doesn’t accomplish this on any level has no reason for existing. Like, at all. Art is supposed to provide some kind of response – a tear, a smile, catharsis, whatever. But when there is none, what was the point? If you sit down and record a bunch of nonsense purely because you can, that’s not a justification. Constantly playing drum fills, as on tracks ‘Too Little’ and ‘Oliver’s Wharf,’ doesn’t propel the song forward or add anything. It shows a lack of songwriting. Simply put, it pisses me off that anyone would call a disaster of notes and shrieks a song. Maybe that’s why I’m in such pain. That, or the fact there are two passable things that could be seen as songs called ‘Pneulope’ and ‘Aves.’ The former kinda has a chorus, kinda has verses and kinda has a main spiraling riff to it. The latter is a sorta beautiful acoustic ballad. These demonstrate this band can write a legitimate song if wanted to. So why didn’t they write more?

GEORGE

We may never know, Steve. At any rate, I would bet you are simply, if I may, shielding yourself from what you probably deem permanent damage by having developed a Pavlovian response to what you see as bad. That is, your body is protecting itself from what it views as painful by causing you pain. Personally, I don’t see what you find so offensive in your description of the record. Is there a chance you misunderstood or misread the intentions of the band?

STEVE

What intentions?