There is plenty of rock optimism to counter this, of course, from Bruce Springsteen’s insistence on overcoming through labor to Tom Petty’s slick nostalgia as a survival tool. But when you grow up with punks, the kind of kids who listened to Richard Hell records and then found more like that, it’s easy to feel some distance from the kind of optimism that we’re taught to lean into during difficult times. Even now, I’m not as invested in things getting better as I am in things getting honest.
