Guster is My Instant Happiness. What's Yours?
How a lovely moment during vacation led to this epiphany.
Earlier this month, I was on vacation in Portland, Maine. It was a gloriously blue-sky morning, and I was seated poolside experiencing a moment of contentment and peace. And I asked myself this question:
What music can I play right now that matches how I feel?
I didn’t want to take too long thinking about it. I just wanted to know that whatever I chose, the music would complement the moment before it passed.
I chose Guster. Here is the song, and here was my view:
In making that choice, that blissful feeling that extended through the rest of my stay.
Thinking back to that day, I realized that Guster has always played that kind of role for me. It’s the warmth of their harmonies, the bandmates’ chemistry with their fans and one another, and the beautiful, irresistible melodies that make me smile. Their music is the equivalent of a weighted blanket, and I can honestly listen to the same Guster songs repeatedly in the span of several hours and still feel uplifted.
I first wrote about Guster for PopMatters way back in 2008 (!). It was about how a combination of factors, including changes in audio consumption—iPods and YouTube and iTunes, oh my—had made me feel disconnected from music, something that had once been a vital part of my identity. And then how this live performance of “Jesus on the Radio” revived my connection.
The song was so raw and joyful that I experienced a visceral jolt from it. I didn’t get what they were singing about (“Jesus on the radio?”, “Yellow bucket seat?”), but it didn’t even matter. It was the way they sang it—the way their voices join together in a golden harmony, the way the lead singer raised his head and crooned heavenward.
I realized that just a simple love and appreciation for a song was all that mattered in the end—how it finds you, and how it moves you.
Guster is my Instant Happiness, musically speaking. I’m happy to have that knowledge so if I need cheering up, I can listen to one of their songs or albums in the same way someone would pull the lever on an “In Case of Emergency” alarm.
If you don’t know what yours is, I encourage to take the time to figure it out, because it can make all the difference whether you’re experiencing a challenging day, or in my case, a near-perfect one.
(Also! The bonus of writing this piece was learning that Guster just released a new album1 called “Ooh La La,” which you can listen to here.)
Pop culture recs
Nicole Byer: An Evening of Crowd Work: You probably best know Byer from her scene-stealing hosting duties on Nailed It! But if you want to experience the full-force of her talent and charm, watch this one-hour set that focuses exclusively on her conversation with audience members asking how they met their significant others.
The stories that emerge, and Byer’s reaction to them, are incredibly fun. Just writing about it makes me want to rewatch this ASAP.
“Ready to Be Bunco-fied with Lindy West and Meagan Hatcher-Mays,” Normal Gossip: Perhaps the best Normal Gossip episode ever, and the best podcast episode I’ve listened to this year. It’s about a longtime friend group and how their monthly tradition of playing a game called Bunco gets them “stuck in an inescapable Samuel Beckett style loop of scandal, gossip, rumor and orthotic shoes.”
It unfolds in such a delightful way that I wish I could relisten to it with fresh ears. Also, this story needs to be adapted into a movie ASAP.2
My favorite reads of 2024 to date, plus what I plan to read next. I’ve had such a good reading year so far! And have so many good reads ahead of me too.
This week’s fun fact
In honor of summertime and the heatwave that inevitably comes with it, this week’s fun fact is about the origin of a (literally) cool summer treat.
In 1905, an 11-year-old boy named Frank Epperson mixed together soda powder and water with a stick, and accidentally left the cup outside—with the stick still inside. The mixture froze around the stick overnight.
Once Frank realized he had made a new frozen treat, he combined his surname with the word “icicle” to name it the “Epsicle.” Eventually, it became known as the popsicle.
(My first thought after discovering this fact was that if Frank was around today, he would have been a kid-entrepreneur on Shark Tank, right?)
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading and I hope you have a wonderful, popsicle-filled week!
My books | My Instagram | The awesome novel in the photo from my trip to Maine
The sorta-irony of all this is that I’ve only seen Guster in concert once a very long time ago, and it wasn’t even intentionally. It was with the goal of seeing their opening act, Jump Little Children. Because of traffic, we mostly missed JLC but quickly fell for Guster. Why I haven’t seen them live yet is a mystery to me, but at least I have the opportunity to do so finally, hopefully, this year.
(My dream cast would include Michelle Yeoh, Kim Cattrall, Emma Thompson, Meera Syal, and Diane Keaton, and due to their maternal relationship on Abbott Elementary, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Quinta Brunson as the mother-daughter pair.)
I don't know Guster's music at all, but I strongly connected with the way you described what their music does for you. Beautifully put.