Gustavo - Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle

Gustavo - Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle

I came across this song courtesy of Mojo Music’s Best of 2013 covermount/freebie album. I have to admit, I didn’t buy the magazine, it was a gift that Christmas. Over the last couple of years a couple of the songs from this album have stuck out, but none more than Mark Kozelek and Jimmy Lavalle’s Gustavo.

It must have taken at least a year of Gustavo cropping up on shuffle before I really listened to it. At 6:56 (7:11 on the original album version) it’s not exactly short and this definitely put me off. But the song has really captured a sense of melancholy that I have been feeling over the course of January/February. The opening synth melody is rhythmic and with enough gain to add a grainy texture to the sound without actually distorting or muddying the notes themselves. This is complemented by an excellent choice in percussive timbres. The percussion is lo-fi, spacious, and varied, with a tasteful amount of reverb that drops in and out as the synth builds. Combined, they create a fantastic, pensive, platform for the song’s lyrics.

A couple of other reviews I have read noted that the album, Perils from the Sea, is more a collection of short stories than an album of songs - the shortest track is 5:16. And with Gustavo, you get a true folk song, the story of an illegal immigrant, known only as Gustavo, coming from Mexico to work. Told from the perspective of a man who hired Gustavo to work on his new house, the lyrics add a sense of melancholy to the music. Gustavo is deported and at this point comes the lyrics that have always stuck with me:

‘He called me collect from a Tijuana pay phone

Asking man, could you wire me money?

twenty five hundred for a border coyote

He needed work and he missed his family

But I hung up and I said I’m sorry

But I hung up and I felt uneasy

I hung up and my heart was heavy

I hung up and my back was aching’

To me this captures the essence of the song. These were the ones that resonated and made me come back for another listen. In these verses comes the focal point of the song. Up until this point, the speaker seems like a nice enough guy. He doesn’t do much, sits on his couch, goes out with Gustavo and his friends when he gets bored, and he lets them crash at his house. But at this genuine request for help, the opportunity for a true act of friendship, he balks. Suddenly he doesn't seem so nice, and as a listener you question his motives.

The whole tone of the song is based on this moment. The song reflects how the speaker feels, uneasy, slightly guilty, when he thinks back on that moment. This is where the song really hits me - we all have these moments from our lives. The moments that we don’t like to look back on. Not necessarily because they are painful, wrong, or traumatising. It’s because we consider a choice we made and wonder whether we did the right thing, and in the back of our mind, we know we probably didn’t.