“Pin Your Wings” by Copeland, Tuesday, October 25, 2022 + In Motion track by track

Let's take a look at one of my favorite fall albums, Copeland's 2005 sophomore record In Motion. I consumed the first three Copeland albums around the spring and summer between senior year and college. 

I think that Beneath Medicine Tree was on sale at Best Buy so I picked it up maybe around April. Then I picked up In Motion in the summer and Eat, Sleep, Repeat in the late autumn. I always associate Copeland albums with the seasons in which I listened to them. And like the brown leaves on the album cover of In Motion, I'd like to talk about a short memory with each song.

 

1. "No One Really Wins." The album opens with grungy guitars, a sound that Copeland would soon abandon in later albums. The song also sets the album up with a spiritual theme--the fight between "heart and mind" and "grace and pride." The message of the song is to "change if you want, but don't . . . change for me" which was something very different from the sermons I grew up with. 

2. "Choose the One Who Loves You More." I thought that this was a Jars of Clay moment on a Copeland record. The "rainy," relaxed pace of this song slows down the moment of In Motion and the track feels a little long. It would often be the song that I would skip in the car.

3 "Pin Your Wings." I remember watching the music video to this song on TVU. I thought the song was catchy like the song for their first video, "Walking Downtown" on Beneath Medicine Tree, but I didn't think it "Pin Your Wings" was anything special. The song returns the album to it's post grunge '90s rock musical theme. Lyrically, "Pin Your Wings" feels like the most immature, high school emo song that Copeland has written, not that that's a bad thing. 

Music video:

Read the lyrics on Genius.

4. "Sleep." I included this track a few months ago in my Dreaming playlist. I think that this is one of the first times that we can see Copeland turning to experimental sounds rather than simply organic instrumentation. The hypnotic piano riff makes the song a little bit sleepy even along with Aaron Marsh's calming vocals. 

5. "Kite." Probably one of the most bizarre Copeland songs, "Kite" feels like a European folk song from an old recording. 

6. "Don't Slow Down." The chorus is one of the most beautiful moments on the record. Marsh's harmonies are flawless. The dissonance in the melody of the verse is completely resolved with the chorus and the guitar fill.

7. "Love Is a Fast Song." I think this is the heaviest Copeland song. Last week, Marsh said on social media that they wanted to start including their heavier songs in their set lists again. 

8. "You Have My Attention." After the heavy guitar solo of "Love Is a Fast Song," the quiet moments of "You Have My Attention" begin with Marsh's calm vocals backed by an acoustic guitar and some kind of light percussion like a cymbal. This song feels like it was recorded in a church. Aaron Marsh has talked about his relationship to Christian music and faith, saying that there are "no Christian Copeland songs," and the only times that Copeland gets spiritual is when Marsh is singing about his grandmother. But to me, In Motion feels like a very spiritual record, and "You Have My Attention" is perhaps some kind of spiritual thesis to the album. Whether that thesis is spiritual or secular, the album clearly uses religious imagery to convey its point.

9. "You Love to Sing." In Eat, Sleep, Repeat, Copeland started to tackle a Burt Bacharach  sound along with old timey Hollywood musical sounds.  "You Love to Sing" feels like a predecessor to their later more elaborate work, only in the form of a slow moving rock song. "You Love to Sing" is a perfect roadtrip song for me. It keeps me focused on the road, and the time just slips away.

10. "Hold Nothing Back." The final track on In Motion is a little underwhelming. It sounds like it was recorded in either a park or a busy food court. A simple acoustic guitar is the basis of the song, but eventually other instrumentation is added. The message of the song is the dichotomy between freedom and security in a relationship. The speaker tells the listener "Do what you want" and "Go where you want, but I won't be too far." He leaves us with this thought: "If you fall in love . . . hold nothing back."