There can be a certain darkness to the holiday season. It’s not uncommon to feel a weight and melancholy at the end of the calendar year, when we’re plunged into darkness and reminded of happier (or sadder) times with the holidays as a stark marker of time. But that aspect of the season is not often explicitly depicted in American “holiday” pop culture, which leans heavily into warm fires, twinkling lights, abundant baked goods and carefully wrapped packages.
Still, many experience it; and the persistent months-long hum of Mariah Carey and Wham!, the waves of giant-red-bow television commercials, and the general ghosts of Christmas past can cause the gloom to overwhelm. I’m grateful to have had great memories of Christmas throughout my life; but on the night of this holiday-adjacent Murder by Death show at the Metro in Chicago, I was about to experience a brand of Christmas darkness I’d never before encountered.
This was my first Christmas season since moving from New Jersey to Chicago in the fall. My girlfriend and I lived in a closet of an apartment on the Northside which fit our lifestyle and needs (and budget); but did not lend itself to festive family gatherings. Not that we had any family or friends in the area anyway. Having only laid shallow roots in the city months before, we both traveled back to our respective homes for Thanksgiving the month prior, and we’d planned to do the same for Christmas. It seemed an easy decision at the time it was made: at twenty-three we were not adults, had neither the tool to roast a turkey nor the space to erect a tinseled Christmas tree, and so we would split up and return to our parents who knew how to execute these tasks. And we must pay attention this time, so we might have a shot on our own next year.
When the time came my girlfriend departed a day before me, leaving me alone in that tiny, undecorated apartment to listen to the ambient ringing bells from the street below. I felt a dull ache of loneliness that seemed to pierce deeper due to the season. I was grateful to be going to a home for the holidays with a family that loved me. More grateful still to be living with my girlfriend, from whom I’d been living apart and longing for just months prior. And yet, here I was now, here, tonight, alone. And I’d be without her on Christmas, so what was the point? Why did we move in together and start a life together if we were going to retreat to our separate families when it mattered most. We only had a few channels of cable. There were only Christmas movies on. I had to get out of there.
Luckily Murder by Death were only a few blocks away . The band was touring in support of their sophomore record, the dusty Western fable and Texas-Chainsaw-Massacre-referencing Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them? which was released a few months prior. But they had been on the road relentlessly for the entire year. This show on the Sunday before Christmas marked their final show of a year which saw them play over 150 shows (ten at various venues in Chicago alone), before resuming after the holiday break to attack 2004 in similar road warrior fashion.
I was enamored with the album and the band had built up a great reputation for their live show over the course of the year (which of course you kind of have to if you’re going to play the city roughly once per month and expect people to keep showing up). I don’t remember how I found out about the show but it had to be either in the pages of alt-weekly The Reader or The Onion’s “AV Club” section, both of which highlighted the best acts gracing Chicago stages each week (and sold ads for the rest). I threw on a jacket and walked to the show from our apartment on Sheffield Avenue up to Clark to the Metro. I don’t have a specific memory of my tears being frozen to my face, so it must have been only seasonally cold. I got to the box office inside the lobby and bought a day-of-show ticket at the window.
Today it’s probably the most unique stub in my stack. Most of the time DOS “tickets” were really just entry to the show. You’d pay the fee and get your hand stamped or a bracelet and they’d let you in the venue. That was the experience I’d had at Metro previously. But tonight they had rough-stamped tickets on blank “Ticketmaster” stock, the clean orange and yellow vertical lines of which were sullied by faint blue block letters bearing only the essential information: “MURDERBYDETH 12 21 03”. I ran up the stairs to the main show floor. It was close to showtime and the lights went down. I skulked to the bar for a drink through what was a pretty decent crowd. A crowd of people more mature than me, who would be hosting their own holiday gatherings at their own apartments this week, with their own girlfriends who wouldn’t be spending Christmas away from them, I imagined.
I got my drink and settled near the back of the room to the right of the soundboard. There’s a small step-up on the floor at Metro (or at least their was when I frequented the place, I haven’t been there in many years) around where the balcony-overhang started. I liked to stand up there when watching a show from the main floor so I could have a better chance of seeing over the heads of the (inevitably) taller patrons in front of me. As it turned out, I needn’t have been concerned.
The band played the entirety of the first song in complete darkness. I thought it was a cool effect. It’s been done, of course, usually with a swell of stage lights at the crescendo; or full lights coming up for the second, typically up-tempo song. It’s a nice way to ease the crowd into the show. It’s unique but not unheard of. The song ended to applause and they began the second. The stage and crowd remained shrouded in complete darkness. Were they going to play the entire show in the dark?
They were. My memory of the specifics are sparse; but I remember realizing a few songs in that the traditional lights were just not going to come up. I can’t say with certainty that there were *no* lights throughout. I remember spare white backlighting at some point, as well as intermittent bright flashes which I remember looking like camera flashes; but being squarely in the pre-iPhone era, must have been strobes. It was a haunting, perversely attention-grabbing effect. Part of the appeal of seeing a band live in an intimate setting is the visual reminder that the sounds you fell in love with on your iPod were being made by humans in a room; but these were just silhouettes at best. Faint spectres floating slightly above the others in the crowd before you, swaying in time.
I wish I could remember more about the setlist but I just can’t recall and there are no details online that I can find. I remember them playing the majority of Who Will Survive…, maybe in order? Maybe the whole album? But I can’t say for sure. I just remember it feeling haunting. It felt appropriate for the material, appropriate for the setting, and somehow soothed the ache I’d been feeling earlier that night. Christmas is, of course, the “season of light”; it felt exhilarating to turn it off and wade into a lightless pool in a group setting. An indie rock sensory deprivation tank at a time when hustle-and-bustle and light were articles of faith.
The experience made me feel better walking back to my place that night. I felt whole and sparked by the lack of light. I’d found something to pass the time and keep my heart warm while I was alone. The next day I’d fly home and have a great Christmas with my family. My girlfriend had the same with hers. It’d be the last one we’d spend apart. The following year we’d get a slightly larger apartment, we’d buy a small tree. The year after we’d hang a “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament. I’d feel grateful, and warm, and full of light.
Just a brief epilogue to note that Murder by Death released an outstanding Christmas record in 2021, titled Lonesome Holiday. It’s a collection of standards and new songs, aptly self-described as “sad and slow”, performed in the bands trademark “spooky indie western style”. Absolutely worth a listen if you can get some time alone this holiday season.
