In the world as it currently functions — replete with near-forced information overexposure, algorithmic idea siloing, and digital acceleration — even the most novel or contemporary ideas can so quickly seem to become rote and antiquated, sometimes within days. It’s no wonder then that all forms of nostalgia, even vicarious nostalgia for times we never experienced, become ubiquitous coping mechanisms. We collectively seek out the stability, warmth, and comfort of home — often homes we never inhabited in the first place. There’s a Welsh term for this: hiraeth, which describes an awareness of the presence of absence itself, a sweet ache for a sense of belonging, a wish to return to a place we can no longer access — or maybe one that never existed in the first place (anemoia is a similar term that was coined in 2012 as part of John Koenig’s collection of neologisms, Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows).
Nostalgia was coined in the 1600s by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer to describe the extreme homesickness felt by mercenaries; it was considered a medical condition that caused depression, sleeplessness, and even hallucinations. With the benefit of a few hundred years of hindsight, Hofer’s observations may now better be described as identifying post-traumatic stress injuries than some novel form of homesickness. It was likely the experiences soldiers had endured that led to their ailments rather than their pining for the homes from which they were displaced. Much like those soldiers probably were, we use the experience of longing for home to soothe our individual and collective trauma; we imagine ourselves in a time and place that nurtured our sense of self, allowed us to feel connected to each other, and encouraged prolonged exploration of our surroundings and influences.
This pleasure-seeking process is less like the sensations of grief Hofer originally attributed to nostalgia and more akin to the Japanese concept of natsukashii, which describes the comfort one draws from experiencing or encountering something from one’s past. Nostalgia, natsukashii, anemoia, and hireath are not purely internal processes. We rely on tools to trigger these feelings and to draw out the grief, longing, sentimentality, or other latent emotions we want materialized. Sometimes these tools don’t just trigger feelings, but instead cause us to reexperience the raw, inner, felt qualities of our mental states themselves — the qualia of our conscious experience. Vehicles like scent and music don’t just make us miss home or feel bittersweet romantic longing; they lead us to reflect on the experience of having those feelings. We don’t just feel nostalgic smelling the petrichor when rain hits hot asphalt; we experience ourselves feeling it. We don’t just feel comforted by the music of our youth; we revisit the texture of the time in which we experienced it.
I’ve written about London-based artist Casha Mour (real name Daniel Alan Smith) before, including already posting a couple of the tracks from his new EP, Modern Relics. The EP deals directly with these aforementioned shades of retrospection. It feels like a comment on accepting that we can’t help but lose touch with the touchstones of our youth, and simultaneously, an exercise in refusing to stop grasping at them. The title itself appears to be a reference to the speed at which we lose touch with ourselves and our histories in the current accelerative landscape. Life post-social media is fundamentally intertwined with immediate nostalgia, from Instagram’s original filters and Polaroid logo, to the normalization of TikTok fast-forward time, to the reliance on LLMs that are trained on what they can absorb of our past, but pose as capable of novel thought and analysis. Before we’ve even had the chance to live the present moment, it becomes imbued with the consistency and texture of the past. The presence and currentness of our now lasts only for a fleeting second before it’s rapidly consigned to the accumulated heap of history.
Modern Relics‘ song titles and contents are no less direct references to these feelings and qualia: “Homing” is running fingers along the brick walls of a childhood home, bedtime storybooks covered in dust; “Save Me/Erase Me” is ephemera personified, a face lost in a crowd, goosebumps that subside as quickly as they arise; “Thirteen” is the amplified heartbreak and premptive fatalism of a teenager who has yet to even speak to the object of their affection. For all of its aesthetic understatement — each song is built from just a few elements, and usually a shoegazey guitar is central — Modern Relics lands like a bellowing call to the bittersweet. It’s a muted and largely restrained record, but is nonetheless concentrated and insistent. I’ve previously focused on the varying shades of drunkenness in Casha Mour’s music, and that continues to be apt in this record’s warble and haze. But to follow that conceit a little further, aren’t the last ones at the bar always the ones rapturously recounting past glories and slights? Isn’t it always the drunkest friend who, in their pursuit of personal detachment, seems the most keen on recapturing who and what they’ve lost?
Like any vice, we can use nostalgia and its triggering tools to heal or hurt. Its bittersweetness can equally be a means to dissociate from our immediate trauma and overstimulation, as it can be a salve that reminds us what’s important enough to pursue. As with any intoxicant, we can get lost in it. On Modern Relics Casha Mour treads that line elegantly.
Modern Relics is out now for streaming and on bandcamp.
