video: Lower Dens – A Take Away Show

i’m officially obsessed with this band.

I saw the Exxon commercial a few weeks ago and was really saddened by the use of the Lower Dens’ song. I know it is ultimately the bands’ decision what they want to do with their music, and I don’t want to be one of those people who accuse bands of “selling out.” I don’t even think that the concept of “selling out” is relevent anymore. It’s just the nature of the way that music has evolved and will continue to evolve– smaller bands that aren’t necessarily mainstream will always need funding in order to succeed, and where they get that funding is their business. Perhaps it’s even the nature of this entire generation of 20 somethings. We are facing a time of serious economic hardship that is not going to go away for a number of years. Young people are graduating into a world where jobs are scarce and a college education is no longer sufficient for guarenteeing employment. With that being said, I wish that Jana Hunter and the rest of the Lower Dens had done a little bit more research into some of the recent projects taken on by Exxon Mobil. The commercial makes mention of alternative energy sources, including natural gas drilling. I grew up in a community that will soon be directly affected by the process of “hydro-fracking,” the method used by oil companies to extract natural gas from the earth. This process injects billions of gallons of water mixed with chemicals that are proven carcinogens and toxins into the ground to aid the release of the natural gas deep beneath the earth’s surface. The effect of this process across the entire Marcellus Shale region of the Northeast will essentially be equal to strip-mining. It will not only destroy the ecology of this region, it will place the people living in this region in serious danger. The water used in hydro-fracking leeches into the groundwater of surrounding areas, meaning the people living in the regions where natural gas drilling is taking place will be essentially drinking poison, bathing in poison, cooking with poison, etc. In addition to the dangerous health and environmental risks caused by natural gas drilling, the people who will be affected are being taken advantage of by large oil companies such as Exxon. These are people in living in central New York State and rural Pennsylvannia, people who have been living on the same farmland for generations, and who are now being pressured into leasing their land at cut-rates to large oil companies. Not only are these people being manipulated by oil companies, they are being lied to about the affects of natural gas drilling and hydro-fracking. I worry about what the long-term impact of natural gas drilling in the Northeast and other parts of the United States will be. I wish that Jana Hunter had taken the time to worry about that as well. I know that she doesn’t feel like liscensing the Lower Dens song to Exxon was an endorsement of what they do. But coming from someone who lives in a region where what Exxon Mobil does will affect the lives of the people I love, it felt like an endorsement. It’s a battle that people across New York State are fighting every day — we don’t want our homes destroyed, and to hear that song during that commercial sounded the same to me as Sarah Palin’s too-often quoted “Drill, baby, drill.”