Amazing and Thank You

Luxury (Tooth & Nail Records)

“Hello, we’re Starflyer 59.”

In November 1995 some friends and I saw the Starflyer 59/ Morella’s Forest tour on back-to-back nights in Birmingham and Atlanta. I’m not sure why we felt it was necessary to drive a couple hours to see the same bands again, but we were bored, financially-irresponsible, music-obsessed college students.

Joe Christmas was added to the Atlanta show as it was their home state, so that added some appeal. (They had recently released their 1995 debut album, Upstairs, Overlooking.)

But it was another surprise Georgia band that ruled the evening. The frail lead singer may have have ironically introduced his band as the headliner, but considering all that had transpired since his band’s previous show five months prior, it was probably hard for Luxury’s Lee Bozeman to find the right words.

Luxury’s performance of “Solid Gold” that night was a stunning seven minutes of music and emotion. It was the lone song they played, but it was one more song than they had played since July. All four members of the band were injured in a catastrophic car accident in July of 1995, and Lee had been hospitalized for weeks. As his fragile vocals began over his brother Jamey’s guitar strumming, it took me to a place I had never been taken by live music.

Amazing and Thank You, Luxury’s debut album, was released in early 1995. It is a dichotomy of sorts: half of it is short, fast, intense rock songs. But it was the other half that drew me in: long, epic, quiet ballads that were unlike any of the music I was listening to at the time.

After the aggressiveness of album opener “Pink Revenge” and the groove of track two, “South,” the opening of the album’s third song, “Champagne,” could not have been more shocking. It was as if the band had been transported into a tiny, smoky jazz club in Paris. The song was uncomfortably quiet. The lyrics echoed the instrumentation: “Hey love/these days are like champagne/unexciting in every way,” Lee whispered.

The album reverted back into rock form with “Bitter, Once Again” and “Vanity” before reaching its peak volume and intensity with the sixth track and possibly the most well-known Luxury song, “Flaming Youth Flames On.” This time the lyrics — not the dynamics—made me uncomfortable. As a shy, never-been-kissed teenager, I was surprised to hear sex sung about so openly on an album I purchased in a Christian book store.

Another rock song, “The Luxury Theme,” followed and then the album slowed almost to a halt with the eighth song, “I Know What You Think About Me.” Despite its tempo and quietness, it’s an intense song about betrayal: “Oh, I’ve been stabbed even more than Julius Caesar by your hands, my friend/And, yes, I know what you think about me.” Toward the end, a female voice chimes in and the song ends abruptly mid-sentence: “How does it feel to be — ”

The album concludes with two epic, seven-plus minute songs: “Kill the Famous” is followed by “Solid Gold,” a gorgeous, unconventional love song. It immediately became my favorite Luxury song when I first heard it, and my adoration for it was taken to another level when the band performed that night in Atlanta it as their first song since the accident. Many of the songs’ lyrics now had a dual meaning for Lee Bozeman (for example as he sang, “Nothing’s the way it was yesterday”).

When I first heard Amazing and Thank You, when I saw the one-song concert later that same year, and as I listen to the album today, one line from “Solid Gold” has the most lasting impact: “So what do you expect from life?”

The members of Luxury did not expect to be in a wreck that nearly killed them, and Lee Bozeman did not expect to be impotent for the year that followed the accident. Three of the four members of the band did not expect to become Orthodox priests in the decade that followed. I also doubt they expected to be releasing their 5th album this year, 20 years after Amazing and Thank You.

Luxury’s 5th LP, Trophies, will be released this summer. Guitarist/filmmaker Matt Hinton is currently is raising funds through Kickstarter to produce a documentary on the history of the band. Please consider pledging money to pre-order both the new album and the documentary here.