Answering a question that requires you to be asleep may just be an exercise in psychological projection, but even so it leads us in interesting directions. One might think we dream in color because that is the reality we live in, and our dreams are even more fantastical versions of that reality. Much like Technicolor when it first arrived on the scene, color would be saturated to the extreme and distort reality just enough to remind us what we are seeing was never real, but merely a created image bright enough to soak onto film.
Dreaming in black and white, on the other hand, says more about how the world is filled with light and dark, filled with shades of grey in between the extremes of tears of joy and pain. Given that we cannot truly know if we see colors the same way as anyone else without creating a machine to broadcast our thoughts, black and white is the most accurate way of capturing the dreams we conjure for ourselves.
When bands suck the color out of their sound, one of two things will happen; either they will fail miserably with the limited palate, or they will find themselves using the shadows to create shapes of emotion that can cut us deeper than the rays of the sun ever could. It is a difficult trick to pull off, but narrowing the aperture creates a deep focus that brings out the details of pain, that memorializes the cracks in our soul before they scar over once again.
I realized little of this twenty years ago, when Jimmy Eat World put out "Futures". When I initially heard the record, I was the kind of listener who was expecting more songs that sounded like "The Middle" and "Sweetness". I did not understand why a band at the height of their popularity would make such a shift in sound, would suck the shining pop coating off their candied melodies, leaving only the sour core behind. It all makes sense today, and was a brilliant way of making sure the band didn't get caught up chasing after fickle listeners who were going to move on anyway.
"Futures" is a one-of-a-kind record. The guitars are a deeper, thick wash of drop-tuned chords. The production turns down the high end to emphasize the darker and heavier tones. The songs alternate between the band's angriest and saddest reflections of chapters of life they were ready to leave behind, but whose memories they knew they would never escape. They sing about taking pills to forget, and choosing between the drugs and the people, all of which creates the image of an addict to the drama of life. Even if we have moved on, we are never free of the experiences we had, and all it takes is one trigger for us to relapse into the past.
Those chapters can reappear in our minds as historical dramas where we were cast in the starring role, or newsreels to remind us that the news has always been consumed by the worst things that happen on any given day. They are colorless playbacks of events we cannot change, that feel foreign to the current versions of ourselves, but yet circle around our memories as if an old zoetrope attached to a perpetual motion machine.
When we finally get to the line wishing to "kiss me with that cherry lipstick", it is the one spot of color in the entire album, it is the one bright spot we want to remember as the black edges of time and memory collapse in on our past. If we can remember one color, one taste, one feeling, perhaps we can remember who we were. In turn, we can remember why we are who we are today.
The genius of "Futures" is the way it plays with the darkness, using the angry punk energy of songs like "Pain" and the title track to get our blood flowing, which flushes our system with the hormone rush of the painful moments in "Drugs Or Me" or "23". The balance of tempos and tones takes us on a ride, pushing our stomachs into our throats before pulling the rug out from under us. By keeping us off-balance, the record does not let us ready for the next impact. We are hit by it, we are moved by our own memories of coming of age. Some of us are Sisyphus crushed by the rock, unable to push it off us to at least enjoy the sunshine as we toil at our futile task.
"Futures" is not a record for everyone. To truly understand the record, to feel the ways it plays with our emotions, one probably has to be a sad bastard. If you can only see your past in black and white, even through the prism of tears, "Futures" is the sort of record that is essential. The truth exists around us, but sometimes it can only be seen when we close our eyes. "Futures" may be a dream, a fever dream, or a nightmare for some people. Regardless of which option, it is a reflection of the alternate reality some of us spend far too much time living in, one building ramshackle sets atop the stage of the past.
In twenty years, "Futures" has not lost an ounce of potency, because pain never dies. It may fade, but just like running your finger over the spine of an album sitting on your self, sometimes you're just a reminder away from living that moment all over again.
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