This November, we got the news that regularly featured favorites The Spider Accomplice are ending their period of web-spinning. After completing their first European tour, the band announced they have decided to pursue other goals, which means they are saying goodbye to this era.
It's been a rather eventful batch of years, and I still get a chuckle out of how it all started for me. To think I wound up writing so many words about a band I only heard because of a collaboration years earlier that never produced an actual song until well down the line. It's one of those stories that explains why music is so wonderfully weird, and how often luck comes into play when we realize how our tastes were formed.
In that short stretch of time, we were treated to three EPs and a full-length record. Like the light reflecting off of a spider's silk, every time we saw them was a different experience, as their sound was always changing color and tone from one song to the next. The constant was their dedication to not giving a damn about fitting in, as I certainly felt a kinship with their artistic predilections, even when they veered in directions I would not have thought to go myself.
When their trio of EPs was finished, I created a special award to honor the full "Los Angeles" experience, because it created a record with ambition to rise above the usual fare. Even if we weren't told the full story, the pieces dotted a trail I wanted to follow. That trail would lead us through a string of singles that showcased how diverse we are as people, with ballads opening up our pain, rockers pumping our adrenaline, and pop songs widening our smiles. They were able to do more in their short time than some bands who will remain nameless have managed over decades.
So while the news is sad, we should maintain perspective. There is that old question about whether it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all. The asshole in me is fond of twisting that into the couplet, "those who say it's better to have loved and lost/are obviously the ones love has never double-crossed", but that's admittedly me burying feelings in wry humor.
The truth is that of course it was better to have loved a band that comes to an end, rather than never having them around at all. While there's no telling what music could have been made in other timelines, I choose to love and appreciate what this one gave us. My heart will always melt a little bit at VK's little yelp at the end of the chorus in "Bromelaid", and I will always love the way certain coincidences in the lyrics made me feel like I haven't been completely disconnected from people writ large.
I will especially continue to love "Crawl", which I think stands as their defining song, and video as well. Those few minutes blended the modern and classic, the drama and the power, like bleeding neon pink onto the hem of our Sunday best black outfit. Like that contrast stitching would be the pop of color reminding us you can't fully hide who you are, The Spider Accomplice helped me to remember how much I wanted to make music as much as talk about it. That's a sad story for another day, though.
VK and Arno will continue on in other guises, which will bring many surprises, and I'm sure I'll have more to say about those as they unfold. For now, we mark the end of an era with a remembrance; we divide time into eras because they mattered, they meant something, and they were important. So if The Spider Accomplice was just an era for all of us, that means the band left their mark.
You can't be too sad about that.
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