5/31/12

"Got this sin in her brain
But she ain't gonna see me again
See me again, this I know
But oh, deep down I can't let go

Oh, don't let it be over, over oh
Oh, don't let it be over, let it be over, over"

~Mind Eraser

The Black Keys, El Camino


Probably my second-favorite track off El Camino after "Gold on the Ceiling." Came on shuffle when I was driving home from a 10-hour day at the office, feeling spent and confused. The drive was taking the edge off, though.

Windows down. Shades on. Smattering of clouds on a icy blue sky, stop and go traffic in the city.


Well, yes, you should remember you met me. 

It's been a long, cold minute since I was excited by meeting someone else. Of late, my affections have drifted towards the comfortable - in some cases that's brilliant, in others complete idiotic. Something about the summer, and The Black Keys, makes me think of fun, flirtation and those too-long glances that are too hard to come by.

Last summer will be tough to to beat.

But after all, have I anything to lose?

5/31/12

Tonight I feel kind of old and sad and worn and tired. I should probably be proud of myself, or feeling something that resembles satisfaction. I do a little, I guess. Things have been OK, in this new life I fell into, but it's still foreign and weird. I miss ending the day with being held by someone I love, someone who cares about me separate from the tallies of successes and failures. That typically makes it easier to deal.

Master of metaphor Brian Fallon puts it nicely tonight, with something about lions and burying faith. Amazing how we can feel so much one day, be so full of passion and life and fire, and be so devoid of it so soon down the road. This is a chorus that's hard not to relate to, and the build-up is perfect.

Amazing how I can second guess myself, even at this age, the same way I did a decade ago. Much like the love you lost, your demons never lose you.

"There are no reasons to believe

I buried my faith in an unmarked plot 

With your heart and your clothes 

When I find that I don't feel you or recall

I'll put your bones out in the yard 

Someone else to be called and called by

And I cannot hold a candle for every pretty girl 

We were strangers many hours

And I missed you for so long

When we were lions, lovers in combat

Faded like your name on those jeans that I burned 

But I am older now 

And we did it when we were young"

~We Did it When We Were Young 

The Gaslight Anthem, American Slang

All I can really find solace in is music, and just like that, we are right where we started. 

I have to tell myself: You can run all you like, but you'll never outrun those angels, or those demons.

5/28/12

One of my favorite tracks from Jimmy Eat World. One of those songs that makes me say, hey, life isn't so bad, even when you're alone and feeling older than you were a day, a week or a year before.

To me, this song says the best is always yet to come.

I don't think I've ever spent a birthday alone before, I've always had really incredible friends to go out and play with. So this day has a host of opportunity that I probably shouldn't waste. I should probably try to learn something new, or go on an outdoorsy adventure. I've never been horseback riding. That might be fun.

"Hey now, the past is told by those who win
My darling, what matters is what hasn't been
Hey now, we're wide awake and we're thinking
My darling, believe your voice can mean something"
~Futures
Jimmy Eat World, Futures

5/24/12

I am not in my hometown seeing this band right now.

If I was, you know I'd be singing my heart out to every word, entranced and blown away and in awe of how tight they probably sound during the bust at the end of "And Now I'm Nothing."

The Wonder Years ignited a pop punk spark on a scene that, previously, was fragile and flickering after the establishment grew up, got off the labels and onto a real job or whatever. Pretty much everything else after sounded pathetic and poppy, then these guys came along with fierceness and smarts, and just enough pride to tell you being sad and sorry is not the end of the world.

Once again, it was a way of life.

These boys know how to tell a story, with passion and patience and perspective. Take a lyric from this song, "looking for pizza/all we found was complacency and somewhere to sleep"...that's a poet's line, right there, manipulating a verb like that inside a scene. Well done. Throughout their catalog, metaphors are visceral, biting, while guitar lines have a wonderful way of transitioning between assault-like attacks and heartbreaking solo melodies.

Only The Wonder Years could make touring in Europe sound like a drag. That takes talent. This song has a wonderful soothing quality in its desperation and drive, making me realize and remember that everything troubling, or wonderful, tends to pass as quickly as it showed up. Felt that way about this song even before I had a place to miss.

"So you found me on the floor split open at the seams

Lights are blurring and they're right there in front of me
Tuesday we woke up at one
But it gets dark here at three
It's getting hard to believe in anything

Tuesday I called up my dad
Said 'I'm off balance and weak
Feeling homesick for things I know don't think of me'
He said 'It's gonna get lighter, son
Just wait there and see
It's getting hard to believe

Last night in Leeds
Al and I found ourselves running the city
Looking for pizza, only found was complacency
Seeing somewhere to sleep
I'm still waiting for the map to say
Home's a week away

The boys are drowning in ?
I'm amazed they can breathe
Weebles just got caught stealing a Christmas tree
We drove all the way to Glasgow
Just to watch our defeat
But the floor against the bed last night was too heavy

Last night in Leeds
Joe was talking to some barmaid
Trying to get lucky
I think it almost worked until he ran into Bobby
Kid pulled the cockblock of the century

I'm still waiting for the map to say
Home's a week away
Unless Great Britain comes to me and says
'It's not so bad if you don't look at it that way'

Last night in Leeds
The world collapsed all around me
Along with the shelf in the basement of Liv's house
By two or three, I thought we'd lost Josh and Mikey
They were skyhooking cans they hadn't emptied out

Last night in Leeds
I know we woke all the neighbors
I don't think anybody slept that night
Last night in Leeds
Things got a bit lighter
I guess my dad was right
I'm still waiting for the map to say
Home's a week away
Unless Great Britain comes to me and says
'It's not so bad if you don't look at it that way'"

~Hostels and Brothels

The Wonder Years, The Upsides

5/22/12

One great song, three great versions. Ordered in a progression of increasing sadness factor.



"Won't you let me walk you home from school?
Won't you let me meet you at the pool?
Maybe Friday I can
Get tickets for the dance
And I'll take you



Won't you tell your dad to get off my back?
Tell him what we said about "Paint It Black"
Rock and roll is here to stay
Come inside now, it's ok
And I'll shake you


Won't you tell me what you're thinking of?
Would you be an outlaw for my love?
If it's so then let me know
If it's no then I can go
And I won't make you"

~Thirteen 

Big Star,#1 Record

Is there a better feeling than falling in love when you're too innocent to know the trouble you're getting yourself into? 

5/20/12

"And after all my plans
They melt into the sand
Yeah you will be there on my mind through all
Dont want to understand why you never get older"

~Older

Band of Horses, Infinite Arms 

I'm lonely, this song exacerbates it. 

Someone come over and sing this with me. These harmonies are great.

Oh, wait. Forgot I'm lonely because of that I'm-all-alone-in-this-state thing. 

It's bad enough I have to wait for my landlord's son to come back from his fishing trip to help me move my new dressers and desk upstairs to my apartment. Don't even have someone to enjoy this beautiful day and some music with. Sad songs for sad times, then.

Everything will change when it should. In time.




"I'm fixing a drink in the morning

With the way things are,
You may have stayed too long
It's splitting apart at the seam
From the hospital call
You've known him so long

If there's a God up in the air
Someone looking over everyone
At least you've got something to fall back on

Deep in the heart of the country
Was a house I built from logs
A raven and a lady hawk

Quiet and calm through the day
See the sun burn through the fog
Approaching was a yellow dog

If there's a God up in the air
Someone looking over everyone
At least you got something to fall back on

And what are people really for?
Does any body even care?
I'll bet you get a lot of compliments down there"

~Compliments 

Band of Horses, Infinite Arms

5/19/12

"Trying to calculate, rearrange in my head for a little bit.
Well, I'm not the best at saying anything and so now,
Well so what, I can make it fit.
I'm gonna need a bigger bag of attention baby, yeah.

They said 'we'll make you right into a star, into a star.'

They said 'we'll make you right into a star 'cause it's what you are.'

I'm like a timebomb rushing around, rushing around, 

I'm like a timebomb rushing around
They said 'we'll make you right into a star cause that's what you are.'"

~Timebomb 

States, Room to Run

This was a great week to listen to States. Weather was good, I woke up pumped to go to work, then pumped to go home at the end of multiple ten-hour days. I wanted to hear Mindy White's sassy, beautiful voice in my head as I told myself  "You got this, chill out." The more I listen to this album, the more I fall for her lyrical style, full of comebacks and calling out commentary without loosing the kind of vulnerable realness indie rock has come to know and embrace and love. So it's fitting with the scene, I suppose, but wrapped up in its whole own sound, and I'm totally sold on it.

This song, "Timebomb," the opening track on their completely kickass and delightful "Room to Run," is particularly great at getting stuck in my head. What a chorus to run through your head all day, it takes ahold of a great metaphor and gives great momentum with zany synth sounds and those real playful guitar licks in the chorus. What I especially love about this song is it exudes confidence with a fierce actualization without being totally devoid of perspective, there's a birds-eye view going on here that's ever-so-important to remember...

Albumwise, "Room to Run" is loaded with those little rock moments, and lots of killer hooks....when I heard the singles I wasn't sure it was going to hold up to "Line Em Up" because it seemed like a departure and I loved that so much, but now that I've purchased the album and given it loads of listens it's been in heavy rotation. Mindy White is truly an amazing singer, full of jazzy influences but a great punk-inspired belt....I belt she's killer live. Lyrically, she's straight and to the point, reflective and great with rhymes and wordplay inside a phrase...basically, I want to pick her brain and probably her closet.

"Room to Run" definitely tells a story, and the best albums always should.

5/16/12

And the award for my favorite meme goes to...

Although, given the lyrics, wouldn't it make more sense if the arrows were pointing to the two circles? Whatever.

5/15/12

This is a song that makes me want to write every feeling in the world ten times over, while simultaneously feeling like I will never come close to being half as beautiful about it.

Probably one of my favorite songs about growing up. Also one of my favorite songs from The Weakerthans, which is a tough list to make. Definitely some of my favorite lyrical phrases. Dusty school yards, elegant plumage, wet cement....phrases I should know enough to be able to emulate in my own writerly way. All I can tell myself is these things take time, practice, and getting up each morning to try again.



"We emerged from youth all wide-eyed like the rest/Shedding skin faster than skin can grow/and armed with hammers, feathers, blunt knives words, to meet and to define and to but you must know/the same games that we played in dirt, in dusty school yards has found a higher pitch and broader scale than we feared possible and someone must be picked last, and one must bruise and one must fail./And that still twitching bird was so deceived by a window, so we eulogized fondly, we dug deep and threw its elegant plumage and frantic black eyes in a hole, and rushed out to kill something new, so we could bury that, too.

The first chapters of lives almost made us give up altogether. /Pushed towards tired forms of self immolation that seemed so original, I must, we must never stop/watching the sky with our hands in our pockets, stop peering in windows when we know doors are shut. /Stop yelling small stories and bad jokes and sorrows, and my voice will scratch to yell many more,/but before I spill the things I mean to hide away, or gouge my eyes with platitudes of sentiment/I'll drown the urge for permanence and certainty; crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement."~Sounds Familiar
The Weakerthans, Fallow

5/14/12

One of the prettiest songs about one of the worst feelings. I've felt it before. I hope I never feel it again.

Maybe I'm just in a haze lately, but all that seems to stir me is loud pop punk, mixes from high school or really sad folk. Or maybe that's just how I always am, and I'm trying to flatter myself. But yeah, this song, cut and dry. The pangs of moving on, emphasized in chromatic notes, gorgeous harmony and the wavering-just-so,  barely-there-vibrato of the amazing Joy Williams. Her voice after the second chorus sends chills through my entire body that just make me want to make music, or collapse and never get up until someone I love picks me up. Maybe both.


"Haven't you seen me sleep walking?
'Cause I've been holding your hand
Haven't you noticed me drifting?
Oh, let me tell you, I am


Tell me it's nothing
Try to convince me
That I'm not drowning
Oh let me tell you, I am


Please, please tell me you know
I've got to let you go
I can't help falling
Out of love with you


Why am I feeling so guilty?
Why am I holding my breath?
Worry 'bout everyone but me
I just keep losing myself


Tell me it's nothing
Try to convince me
That I'm not drowning
Oh let me tell you, I am


Please, please tell me you know
I've got to let you go
I can't help falling
Out of love with you


Won't you read my mind?
Don't you make me lie here
And die here
Please, please tell me you know
I've got to let you go
I can't help falling
Out of love with you"
~Falling
The Civil Wars, Barton Hollow

I don't want to give up the best love I've ever had. But do you have to give up something you love to get the rest of the world? How do you know what's worth holding onto? I don't think you ever do...rather I think that's a decision you make for yourself...but, sometimes, what you're holding onto is slipping away and there's nothing you can do but let it happen, and feel the pain as you feel your heart change.

5/13/12

Embedding is disabled on this beautiful Tom McRae performance but it's stunning. A haunting song. A "stay-here-in-fear-and-die-or-run-in-fear-and-live" kind of song. I like it.

"Change the locks on the door.
Put out the light in the hall.
I do not live here anymore

Put the world in a box.
Turn the sign to the street.
Aim for where horizon and blue skies, meet

But all I know is
I'm not ready yet
For the light to dim
Got a suitcase, got regrets
But I'm hopeful yet

I've been a gifted thief
Stole everything for the cause
I never had fingers as light as yours

So wake up pretty girl
See the hope in small things
Disappointment can wear you thin

But all I know is
I'm not ready yet
For the light to dim
Got a suitcase, got regrets
But I'm hopeful yet And I'll raise this glass of wine
And I'll say your name...

So let's be killers babe
Make the great escape 
From all the bitter words 
Of every crowded street and empty heart
It's Christmas Day, Brooklyn in the rain
But I am safe inside a better world of hope and memory
Drunk on velvet wine, southern cross for light
Deal your cards and hope that I can play a better hand this time"
~Got a Suitcase, Got Regrets
Tom McRae

I haven't made the best choices. Haven't made the worst ones, either. I've hurt the right people sometimes, and put the wrong ones on pedestals, more times than I care to share on both regards. I've also loved harder than I ever thought I could, or would dare to.

When it came down to it, the suitcases were easier to carry alone than the regrets. Sharing the past with someone makes nostalgia that much less lonely. But, like the suitcases, it takes a little more time to unpack when alone.

5/6/12

I keep a couple dozen old burned CDs in the center console in my Saturn. There's plenty more where these came from in a big and dusty faux leather binder that I spent around $25 on back in the day - which felt like a lot. But when I got the Saturn this past fall, with the first car CD player I'd ever had, it was a chance to rediscover the CDs that used to spin in my Discman on a daily basis.

Some are mixes, some are albums. Some are labeled in Sharpie, some are decorated in swirls and stars and colors with little pictures accentuating words in album titles. Some are not labeled at all. They're all a nice daily reminder of who I am, where I came from, what I stand for, etc. It's also a nice way to spice up what I'm listening to on my drive in, as there's always a surprise or two to be found.

So today I pull out a disc at random on my way to the grocery store and laundromat, and it's Something Corporate, "Leaving Through the Window." OK. I'll take that. From the opening bars of "I Want to Save You" I'm suddenly a sophomore again, and all I want is some boy with shaggy hair and kind eyes and a killer CD collection to hold my hand and wear my hair ties and rubber pink bracelets on his wrist.



"She drives away, she's feeling worthless 
Used again but nothing's different 
She'd stay the night but knows he doesn't care 


Home by three, a deafening quiet 
The porch light's off guess they forgot it 
She'd cry herself to sleep, but she don't dare" 
~I Want to Save You
Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window

I keep listening as I go through my day and I remember how this album as a whole is still so, so good. It's real, it's raw, it's driving. It's part of the original class of pop punk that arrived at an early-decade apex right when the kids were really starting to pay attention and start screaming for more. But it's never too angry, and there's slower moments, hinting at the heartfelt sentiment Andrew McMahon would continue to shape on "North" and with Jack's Mannequin. He talks about skin and limbs and veins and cars as was the way back then, but it's never for surface value, it's just the poetry of it. Combine the lyrics with piano-driven melodies and key-change choruses, and you make an album that was as classic than as it is today.

Ask almost anyone who graduated high school between 2004 and 2007. They'll tell ya.

One song, "The Astronaut," was never a favorite in high school, but today it made more sense. That chorus kicked in and I kept driving, silent, onto my destination. Today it felt inspiring. Today it reminded me that if you're going to worry about any road, it should be the one before you, and what you saw on the way there is right where it needs to be, namely behind you, but also in memory.




"i've been sleeping with ghosts 
i've been watching stars 
crawling out of the sky 
and i've been hoping 
i'm close to the space man movies 
i call my life 


and i've been climbing ladders through time 
i've got tunnel vision 
but i'm doing fine 
and i've been 
watching stars coming off of the wall 
and maybe if i'm lucky i can catch them 
before you fall 
and you are not alone 


calling out to the astronaut 
i need some of what you've got 
i need to be high 
crawling out of the world she brought 
calling out to the astronaut 
i need to be high"
~Astronaut
Something Corporate, Leaving Through the Window

5/5/12

I shouldn't be surprised, that I always seem to end up in the same place. And I don't like saying "always," because nothing is ever truly permanent, but it's startling to me how easily I fall into the same traps. How the unreachable becomes a beacon. How often I mistake conflict for comfort - what a mess that can make.

Other things reoccur, too. Like how what I have and who I am is never good enough. And how I can't just let myself relax. How I can never decide if I made the right decisions, if I kept the right people around, or if I let the wrong ones go. These are secret traps of my mind, and when I fall down the chute it is difficult to climb back up. But the uphill climb is getting faster. With age comes certain types of agility.

This song makes me think of those loves that never die, the kind that I remember when I'm in a difficult place, like I am feeling tonight. It's entirely simple but entirely beautiful, with a slowly building structure that erupts into vivid glimpses of what makes up love and feeling and life. An ode to the best parts of life we all get to live out in one way or another. It will be enough. And the turn of phrase at the end - the following love home, to love following you. It's one in the same, isn't? Don't we carry our love with us, wherever we go? It may feel, often, that we're alone, that we've left and it's gone but it's all still there. In our fragile, selfish, scared heart. You can sense it in those places you know too well.

Something tells me this guy pours it all out on a stage.


"I will follow love all the way home 
I will follow love all the way home 
Though it breaks my back and leaves me all alone 
I will follow love all the way home 


Though I'm sad you've gone away 
I hear love, it goes by different names 
Though your parting dims the day 
Nearly put me in my grave 
I will follow love all the way home 


Home- where the bedroom smells like clean clothes 
Home- where it's alright in the cosmos 
Home- you don't think so, but you're so close 
Home- if it's not balanced, then it's almost 


I will follow love all the way home 
I will follow love all the way home 
Though it breaks my back- and leaves me all alone 
I will follow love all the way home 


For those afraid to die alone 
Think of all the friends that you have known 
And every blade of grass 
Every face that kissed you back 
All the sunsets and pouring rain 
Every joy and holy pain 
Every kiss and bloody stain 
Ah, the proof that we have lived
In no beginning and no end
Every flash of light you've seen
Every color, every dream
Will be forever singing on 
In the holy mind of God
The immortal burning sun with 
Every person that you've loved
And I swear it will be enough. 
And you'll be there 


And Love will follow you all the way home 
Love will follow you all the way home."

~I Will Follow Love All The Way Home
Tyler Lyle, The Golden Age & Silver Girl

5/4/12

"Happiness hit her like a bullet in the back"
~Dog Days Are Over
Florence + the Machine, Lungs