Strange As Angels: A Tale of Mood and Music

In 1985, at any given moment, there was some teenager in America sitting in front of their phonograph self-medicating with Pink Floyd’s The Wall. During that decade depression had yet to become a topic of national discussion; Prozac had yet to be widely prescribed—depression had yet to go mainstream. But the issue was being addressed in a genre of punk and new wave, which provided a substitute vocabulary for a generation that yet had to assimilate the language of depression. Bands like The Smiths, Violent Femmes, Tears for Fears, and The Cure spoke to emotional distress in a way that was unique to pop music and hastened the uptake of underground music by the mainstream.
STRANGE AS ANGELS is a memoir of teenage melancholy as well as a fan’s notes on a handful of bands in the eighties that were important in a way that record sales did not reflect. The narrative follows a year in the author’s life when the vagaries of first love and melancholy blurred into one—when songs had an urgency that seemed both profound and redemptive. STRANGE AS ANGELS is a semi-critical look at the ‘mope rock’ genre, a story of romantic obsession, as well as a defense of self-pity.