Weltschmerz

[Henry] Koerner's painting did have the heaviness, the harsh humor and the all-pervading weltschmerz which characterized German expressionism in the 1920s.

The country was fat with peacetime prosperity, but lots of people were afflicted with a postwar funk called weltschmerz. They were depressed by what they'd seen of the "civilized" world. Soon whole bunches of people in their 20s and 30s moved to ski towns, checking out of the mainstream altogether. Their goal was no more lofty than having the freedom to spend day after endless day in a peaceful bubble, close to nature and on snow-covered slopes. Here was the weltschmerz antidote—and the birth of the parallel universe.

Execution, the band's second record, burns with intense weltschmerz, its existential crises cloaked in buoyant instrumental hooks and shimmery arrangements.