This week on Perfect Songs Forever, Rudy Fischmann and I talk about one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful and desolate songs I’ve ever heard: “Unfinished Paintings” by The Aislers Set
When I picked this song, I had no idea Rudy actually had a personal connection to Amy Linton (Now A V Linton), the songwriter and singer behind this incredibly melancholy, gloomy, lonely.. masterpiece. That revelation led to a lot of laughing, and me joking that maybe the song was actually about Rudy.
We both knew it wasn’t.
But “Unfinished Paintings” has always felt intensely personal to me. I think it’s one of the greatest breakup songs ever recorded and now 20 some years after it's release it kills me even more.. In my opinion the Aislers Set are one of the most remarkable and underrated indie rock bands of the early 2000's.
The Aislers Set had everything I loved: one part ’60s girl group, one part garage rock, one part desolate singer-songwriter, throw in a trumpet and some bells to make it a little psych pop and it's all wrapped up in this beautifully imperfect reverby lo-fi production. There was something so romantic and mysterious about them.
The first time I saw them, I was 19 years old at Gabes in Iowa City. It was 50-cent draft night. The Essex Green, The Masters of the Hemisphere and Beachwood Sparks were also playing.. still maybe the greatest lineup I’ve ever seen.
It was also the night I met Devin Frank, who would eventually become my bandmate in The Poison Control Center.
Devin and I absolutely fell in love with The Aislers Set that night. I also developed a pretty serious 19-year-old schoolboy crush on Alicia, their bass player.
Because it was 50-cent draft night and apparently the bands got those already ridiculously cheap beers for half price... things got a little loose. At one point later that night I remember seeing Alicia and Amy lying on the floor near the girls nasty Gabes bathroom.
Devin and I went on to see The Aislers Set several more times, including opening for Yo La Tengo at Grinnell. But one show in particular became part of the mythology of our friendship.
The Aislers Set were coming back to Gabe’s. A huge winter snowstorm was coming too.
We lived in Ames, two hours away. I didn’t even have a driver’s license at the time because I’d accumulated too many speeding tickets.. most of them, appropriately enough, from driving out of town to see bands.
So Devin drove my blazer. We absolutely should not have gone. Of course we went.
The show was incredible. We met the band, talked with everyone, they gave us posters, and they were just unbelievably sweet to us. We loved them so much.
Then we started the long drive home through the snow and Ice.
We put on The Beatles’ White Album.
Somewhere along the way, the Blazer hit a patch of black ice. The car started spinning.
And for the first and thankfully only time in my life so far, I watched my entire life flash before my eyes. It actually happens like they say it does or they show in the movies.. It happened to me. I swear!
I saw my mom. My dad. My sisters. and My brother.
The Blazer was headed straight for the ditch, and I genuinely thought for a moment that this was it. Then we stopped. We were in the ditch. And we were okay.
The song playing on the stereo was The Beatles holly jolly.. “Honey Pie.”
Devin and I eventually came to the only logical conclusion: we survived because the universe simply could not allow us to die while listening to the goofy showtune and quite possibly the worst song on the White Album, “Honey Pie.”
Years later, Devin and I would somehow end up in another ditch together while The Poison Control Center was on tour. That time we were both safely in the back seat while our bass player Joe was driving. Joe, coincidentally, had also been at that first Aislers Set show.
The very first song on The Poison Control Center’s first full-length album is called “Driving.” And it’s about that night.
Recently the Aislers Set just reunited for a festival in San Fran.. I wish I could have been there...I actually ran into Alicia, the last time I was in San Francisco in 2019 at a Dear Nora show. We talked, I got a picture with her. Still the coolest!
The Aislers Set are still one of my all-time favorite bands.
And I still don’t know if I’ve ever heard a breakup song more devastatingly beautiful than “Unfinished Paintings.”
So, of course, I had to talk about it with Rudy.
This episode ends up being more funny than I thought it would..
Listen to the new episode of Perfect Songs Forever now on Discograffiti
