“Everything I feel now as an adolescent is true. This is who I am. Each day that passes I grow away from my true self. Every inch I take towards adulthood is a betrayal.” - Stephen Fry, age 16
I remember feeling this way as a teenager, too. This feeling is powerful, but it can, with the benefit of the intervening years, be shown to be demonstrably false. Yet its power can be a force for good. This is partly why I love the music of the 90s, still, so much. There are good, true things that can (still) be accessed via the music one came to in one’s youth. Through it, you can remember things that truly matter: the thrill of discovery, the shock of finding like minds, the joys of love and friendship, the beautiful superfluousness of art.
This is probably why I keep writing about the 1990s. The theme of most of my music writing since about 2010 has been “guys, 90’s Christian rock was actually good.”
Many of the bands I discovered in the 90s were absolutely revelatory to me, and I’ve written about many of them over the years. I’ve found it difficult to write about Luxury, who – I hate to exaggerate but I don’t mean to – might actually be the best rock band of all time.