7/31/12

This song broke my heart five times today. And it's not just because summer lightening turned the sky lavender as I drove home in the rain, the perfect Gaslight scene.



First I simply couldn't get the chorus out of my head, because the vocal line's so beautiful. And the guitars are so mournful. Have we all not buried the thought of someone somewhere so deep that we'd never have to feel it again?

But then, it made me think of unrooted family trees, and about answers, the need to find them within ourselves, our families, our compound histories.

"And I'm not looking for your love
I'm only sniffing out blood
Just a little taste of where I came from"

So it's a beautiful song, and I keep listening to it (along with the rest of this fantastic album that I will surely bring up again). And then it really sinks in that, perhaps unlike our sorrowful narrator, I have a mom and a dad, who I really should call even if they have no idea what the hell to say to me anymore. I have so much to ask them -- what is stopping me? One day I will not have the chance. Some never get it to start. There is much about my own history I do not understand, and the mysteries are buried about 150 miles north at the state line...

"And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my heart, heart, heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Keepsake, until I'm free"
~Keepsake,
The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten

7/28/12

Surprise, surprise, she's won me over again.

Fiona Apple doesn't release albums often, but when she does, rejoice. Fiona albums only grow better with time and "Idler Wheel..." is no different....Flurried and frantic sometimes, steady and desolate at others, it sounds like nothing else out there. It took me about four listens to truly understand it, understand where it was coming from, but I love that I couldn't give up on it; I couldn't because her words were drawing me in past anything else that I wasn't getting. You will see reviews talking about private she is and how revealing her songs are and whatnot, but at the end of the day she's an artist. She's honest and weird and metaphorical, an artist we only know of because of the pop charts who produces these strange and wonderful narrations of internal struggle and external desire and just feeling.

On "Idler Wheel...." there are multiple moments of painfully bold sharp notes and bellows. She growls, she writhes, she shrieks. But then she resolves, with patience, and returns back to a decisive cleanliness...vocally, her control is phenomenal and used to convey meaning like none other, see "Left Alone" for a taste of the variety Apple can cram into two measures. She says every single syllable with its own intensity, capturing insanity, loneliness, self-doubt and self-assurance with the most appropriate vocal tone, even if they're all in the same phrase. Quivering on the right words is interspersed with whisperlike trills, and Apple hits the blues notes with just enough throwaway....there is really just something behind every syllable. Instrumentation is sparse but purposefully so, the use of space and texture is refreshing to ears used to everything electronically layered so damn close...piano is center stage sharpened by unique auxiliary (shakers, ringing bells and hard-to-identify drums are in no small number, even what appears to be nat sound of footsteps on stones), and it's expansive, so, so expansive - the intro on "Anything We Want" is probably my favorite, playful and primitive.

But delivery, and instrumentation, would be nothing without these words. She just says it....lyrics are wry and dark and often tortured but exposing all the sad, scary vulnerable bits we feel and never say. "Werewolf" and "Periphery" in particular show immense perspective wrapped in metaphors and the end result is achingly real. She puts your head in a place that's always on but rarely tuned; these songs are the result of one woman's subconscious turned inside out and the lessons to be learned, the insights to glean, the connections to forge, will give and keep giving as long as you're willing to look.

"I could liken you to a werewolf the way you left me for dead
But I admit that I provided a full moon 
And I could liken you to a shark the way you bit off my head
But then again I was waving around a bleeding, open wound 

But you were such a super guy 'til the second you get a whiff of me
We are like a wishing well and a bolt of electricity 
But we can still support each other, all we gotta do's avoid each other
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key 
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key

The lava of the volcano shot up hot from under the sea
One thing leads to another and you made an island of me

And I could liken you to a chemical the way you made me compound a compound
But I'm a chemical, too, inevitable you and me would mix
And I could liken you to a lot of things but I always come around
'Cause in the end I'm a sensible girl, I know the fiction of the fix 

But you were such a super guy 'til the second you get a whiff of me
We are like a wishing well and a bolt of electricity
But we can still support each other, all we gotta do's avoid each other
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key
Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key"
~Werewolf,
Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

7/26/12

"Paper thin conviction
Turning another page
Plotting how to build myself to be
Everything that I am not at all

Sometimes I get tired of pins and needles
Facades are a fire on the skin
And I'm growing fond of broken people
As I see that I am one of them

I'm one of them
I'm one of them

Oh, why must I work so hard
Just so I can feel like the nobles ones?
Obligations to my heart are gone
Superficial lines explain it all

Sometimes I get tired of pins and needles
Facades are a fire on the skin
And I'm growing fond of broken people
As I see that I am one of them

Sometimes I get tired of pins and needles
Facades are a fire on the skin
Oh, and I'm growing fond of broken people
As I see that I am one of them

I'm one of them"
~Pins and Needles
MuteMath, Armistice

7/24/11

"Do you ever stop to think 
Who built those walls around you?
Do you ever wonder 
Who all those people were?
Because the hands that give you shelter 
Are the very ones that you refuse 
And the proof of what they're worth 
Will live long after you're gone 

Ne'er do wells and woebegones
Show your face, for we were wrong 
Ne'er do wells and woebegones
Feel no shame, it won't be long" 
~Ne'er Do Wells
Audra Mae and the Almighty Sound, Audra Mae and the Almighty Sound

I could probably write for awhile about Audra Mae, about the complete richness of her voice, incredible range, and that the dead-on dark and soulful blues sound suitable for day and night. About her so not "the look" look that looks so perfect for what she's all about.

Homegirl can write a hell of a blues rock tune. You can hear these songs in a dirty bar stage somewhere, somewhere with dirty dancing in the front row and foot-stomping in the crowd and beers spilled on tables going unnoticed in the fray. You can hear her belt the long high notes with pride and passion and fury, imaging a hollering crowd cheering her on and raising their hands in soulful solidarity.

Her band, dubbed Audra Mae and the Almighty Sound, is pretty kick-ass, too. I've had a lot of fun listening to this record, as a sassy pick-me-up, or a way to liven up a dull morning or afternoon. From what I've learned of Audra Mae (since stumbling upon her on AltPress of all places) she is indeed the real thing, as a track on "Almighty Sound" proclaims --



-- music is in her lineage, and she laces in references to her clearly beloved home state of Oklahoma and her probably pretty rad Dodge Dart classic. No shame or shyness, which is so refreshing from a female singer in the age of arguably untalented scenesters who look good in front of a microphone, where laying down sexy whispers crooned over laptops counts as being a singer and all that god-awful pitch correction.

This whole album is a fun, in-your-face, modern Dust Bowl spectacular; but moreso it is the mainstream LP arrival that gets the blog mentions and magazine reviews marking and proving that yes, true talent will still find a way to surface. It's fun to sit around and complain that real talent gets buried in the masses, but those who are willing to pick up their life, pack it in a car and drive to the destination, play for free and fall on their face til they get it right...they tend to get their moment. They tend to make an impression, and that, to an artist,  is the utmost validation.

7/24/12

Someone I love told me something really freakishly beautiful once. Something about how souls are like glasses of water, and once you combine them, you'll never be able to separate them again, because if you pour them back into glasses, it's not the same glass of water you had before.

It is a different temperature. Maybe a different color. Different elements than before, added or diluted or filtered. 

"The Atlantic was born today and I'll tell you how...The clouds above opened up and let it out.

I was standing on the surface of a perforated sphere
When the water filled every hole.
And thousands upon thousands made an ocean,
Making islands where no island should go, oh no.

Those people were overjoyed, they took to their boats.
I thought it less like a lake and more like a moat.
The rhythm of my footsteps 

Crossing flatlands to your door have been silenced forever more.
The distance is quite simply much too far for me to row
It seems farther than ever before

I need you so much closer."

~Transatlanticism 

Death Cab for Cutie, Transatlanticism

For awhile I trusted in love, in fate, to tell me the difference between what is real, what is in my sad, scared head and what is worth my time....more I see, it is about choices than anything else. What you choose to love. What you choose as your fate. What you choose is right, or wrong. Even still, it's not all up to you. Something's got to choose you back.

7/22/12

Newly added to the repertoire.

"Go 'way from my window
Leave at your own chosen speed
I'm not the one you want, babe
I'm not the one you need
You say you're lookin' for someone
Who's never weak but always strong
To protect you and defend you
Whether you are right or wrong
Someone to open each and every door
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Go lightly from the ledge, babe
Go lightly on the ground
I'm not the one you want, babe
I will only let your down
You say you're lookin' for someone
Who will promise never to part
Someone to close his eyes for you
Someone to close his heart
Someone who will die for you and more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Go melt back into the night
Everything inside is made of stone
There's nothing in here moving
And anyway I'm not alone
You say you're looking for someone
Who'll pick you up each time you fall
To gather flowers constantly
And to come each time you call
A lover for you life and nothing more
But it ain't me, babe
No, no, no, it ain't me, babe
It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe."
~It Ain't Me, Babe
Bob Dylan, as heard by Fleet Foxes on YouTube

7/22/12

Nothing makes a summer night feel sexier than Minus the Bear.

Well, almost nothing, anyway.

"Coins I could drop shake in my pocket,
They shake like you do
Steps that you take bend and they break,
They break like I do

Running out of excuses
When we know what the truth is
I'm into you
When you hear this song,
You'll say you knew all along,
You're into me too" 
~Excuses
Minus the Bear,  Omni

This record ceases to be irrelevant, it may be my favorite of theirs, despite the fact "Highly Refined Pirates" won me over first. Of course, their next tour is stopping at Water Street in Rochester, and nowhere less than 90 minutes from Harrisburg. 

Too bad. They put on a suitably sexy show.

7/19/12

6 a.m., my favorite time of morning. Turn on the songs I can't get out of my head, plug in machines for coffee and straight hair and air conditioning. Another day begins with little promise except the knowledge that it, too, will end.

Sometimes outstretched hands belong to the most surprising of arms. Sometimes not. If the adage is true that some things never change, why bother with denial? What haunts late at night is still there in the morning.

We know how this ends.

"Let it out, let me in, take a hold of my hand
There’s nothing like another soul that’s been cut up the same
And did you want to drive without a word in between?
I can understand, you need a minute to breathe
And to sew up the seams after all this defeat

And we waited for the sirens that never come
And we only write by the moon
Every word handwritten
And to ease the loss of youth
And the many, many years I've missed you
Pages plead forgiveness
Every word handwritten"

~Handwritten 

The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten

7/16/12

Uhmmmmmm, this?

Or the best version of this I could find pre-release, anyway...pretty killer sound for live, guitar is incredibly clear....it's the much-anticipated "Handwritten," who cares?!


"Who else can say that about you, baby? 
Who else can say that about you now? 
Who else can take all your blood and your curses? 
Nobody I've seen you hanging around."
~Biloxi Parish
The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten

This was a good day to hear this album. Good day for something new and yet familiar.

This album is striking me really well, definitely a summer album. Too soon to tell if it surpasses "American Slang" but it does effectively tear my heart out. Same themes, music and mortality and near-fatal romance...while critiqued as repetitive, I wouldn't expect or desire anything else than something this polished, melodic, impassioned. 

Starting with the already-classic "45" giving you just a taste of the hooks to come, in its entirety Gaslight has stretched its best qualities to the limit: it's visceral, sensory and sing-a-longtastic, there's guitar lines that cry and then sob, and vocally Brian Fallon has never sounded this good, or this much like a rock star. Lyrically, it all feels somehow sadder than the past albums, less hopeful, more desperate. 

Title track, in true TGA form, is also amazing.

"And to ease the loss of youth and the many, many years I missed you
Pages plead forgiveness, every word handwritten"
~Handwritten
The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten

And, like past albums, "Handwritten" ends on a soft, sad acoustic note with "National Anthem," nostalgic and aching to recover..."I already live with too many ghosts."

Sidenote: Getting a little tired of every-single-fucking-reviewer comparing TGA to Springsteen. Own. Band. Decades. Later. And E Street has sax. Do we HEAR any sax on this? No. Did E Street do double-time? No. Get. The. Fuck. Over it.

7/15/12

Have I not written about mewithoutyou before? Tragic, I love them so much, their out-there poetic phrasing, eerily silky guitars and tension building drumrolls capturing insanity and paranoia and all the scary things most people are too afraid to be bold about.

One of the weirdest and coolest, to be sure.

The first time I heard them was at a live show, so I was nothing but sold. That being said, mewithoutyou is one of those bands that you have to get in and understand to really appreciate, a brand of thinking man's post-hardcore, maybe?

Their latest effort, a wrecked circus train concept album, progresses their catalog well. There's a little more melody and a little less shouting, but all together it's really quite as brilliant as "Catch for Us the Foxes," in it's own way.

Vivid and descriptive and as out-there-as ever, this may be mewithoutyou's most accessible effort. See: chord progressions that borderline on happy ("Cardiff Giant," "Fiji Mermaid") despite accompanying thoughts on mortality that we've come to know and except. "Fox's Dream of the Log Flume" feels the most like a toss to their earlier work, with never-ending verses into a guitar-centric breakdown, only Hayley Williams' harmonies are there for added flavor.

One thing that hasn't changed: Some of the best vocabulary you'll hear in post-hardcore. If the scene was a high school English class, mewithoutyou is the mousy kid who doesn't need to show up to pass and tries to dress like the beatniks.

Listening to "Ten Stories" for the first time on a cross-county drive, I found myself getting lost in its peaks and valleys, finding it had more to do with my head than my heart. While past efforts were borderline soul-crushing in their sadness and despair, "Ten Stories" has more to do with mystery, chance and the experience of the present moreso than lamenting the past.

"What from the air now calls to water on the land?
What from my seclusion does this charlatan demand?
What to do now with my best-laid eremitic plans?
I’ve been to the Arfaks where the Sicklebills fly,
seen Tangier’s acrobatics nine stories high
I was there at Appomattox back in ’65 when the General arrived
But I’ve never been in this room before..
All untied, by and by!
That same old dream’s trapped in my mind
All  united, by and by
I’m bound in ropes, and on the firing line
All united, by and by
Well, I wake up disappointed every time
I wake up disappointed every time"
~Nine Stories,
mewithoutyou, Ten Stories

Additionally, someone buy me a Telecaster stat. Time to plug something in.

7/11/12

If Jimmy Eat World can capture one feeling with unmatched purity, it's the pang of lingering affection. Also, they have a tendency to fill an album closer with all the best things: heart, tension, poignant lead guitar, and the delicacy of the final fingers brushing away from the last and grasp. "Dizzy" measures up on both counts.

Sidenote: Audio is surprisingly awesome for what looks like a cell phone vid. Thank you, Internet.

"All talk and not a lot to think, we were living dreams

And shame never crept close to our naked feet
If there's something left to lose,
Then don't let me wear out my shoes
I'm still walking.

I tried, but it rang and rang, I called all night
On a payphone, remember those from another life?
If everything I meant to you,
You can lick and seal then fold in two
Then I've been so blind.

Respectfully, so honestly I'm calling out
Do you hear the conversation we talk about?
Back away to the safety of a quiet house
If there's half a chance in this moment
When your eyes meet mine, we show it off."
~Dizzy
Jimmy Eat World, Chase This Light

7/9/12

"If I told you a secret
You won't tell a soul
Will you hold it and keep it alive?
Cause it's burning a hole
And I can't get to sleep
And I can't live alone in this lie" 

Here we have underrated British pop-rock, at least in the stateside music circles I run between.

Hypnotic in waltz time and infused with bells, this song is standard Travis - never too happy, never too sad, embracing instrumentation.

I love the mystery in this song, there's something about it that shrouds the directness of the underlying message which is, really, about facing the fears of love.

File that one away under "things that never change."

"If the world isn't turning
Your heart won't return anyone, anything, anyhow...
So take me, don't leave me
Take me, don't leave me
Baby, love will come through 
It's just waiting for you"
~Love Will Come Through
Travis, 12 Memories

7/8/12

Woke up in my childhood bedroom. Needed to hear a song. Picked this one.

It's soothing, with a cyclical melody, gentle picking, vivid descriptors.

"The boat that failed it's only sail
is burning in the river
It's heating up the water mains
while the rest of the house just shivers
It's sinking fast
straight through the grass
A buoyant mask
A medical grasp
And that....

Was all I had to give her

But I will take my hand's mistakes
Stay afloat in
this flushing river
With the smell of your soul
and fix the bridge that bowed
from the blows that age delivers

But I fear collapse
as your weight will pass
You know I love you more than you will know

Something
is coming for us
It's coming through the vents
For the worst and best.

And so it seems,
Like old beliefs,
We're struggling in the water
Fishing for a fish that knows
A way to save the other

Don't turn blue it's turning the room
As it spins the violence
Coats the walls in bother
Carousels and comet tails are somewhere in this river
Lonely as lost my mind"

~The River 

Cassino, Kingprince

Closing out what's become one of my favorite albums of post-college life, this is a song I play to steady, to center, to grab onto. Tonight, after this time-warp trip full of friends and alcohol, the need to get over myself is less than normal. Too worn out to care. 

Here, surrounded by ballerina calendar photos and the wrought iron crosses all I can think of is who I used to be, and how I feel so much more myself at home. Home's not here anymore; it's not anywhere exactly, but it's not here, the place I ran from the first chance I found.  

7/5/12

"So, is that what you call a getaway?
Tell me what you got away with.
Cause I've seen more spine in jellyfish.
I've seen more guts in 11-year-old kids.
Have another drink and drive yourself home.
I hope there's ice on all the roads.
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt,
and again when your head goes through the windshield.

And is that what you call tact?
You're as subtle as a brick in the small of my back.
So let's end this call, and end this conversation.
and is that what you call a getaway?
well tell me what you got away with.
cause you left the frays from the ties you severed
when you say best friends means friends forever

So, is that what you call a getaway?
Well tell me what you got away with.
Cause I've seen more spine in jellyfish.
I've seen more guts in eleven-year-old kids.
Have another drink and drive yourself home.
I hope there's ice on all the roads.
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt,
and again when your head goes through the windshield.

Everyone's caught on to everything you do 

And I can't let you, let me down again"
~Seventy Times Seven
Brand New, Your Favorite Weapon

A decade's worth of friendship....everything we went through, the late nights, the breakups, the funerals.....and I don't even get a phone call?

There's a reason you keep people around who knew you when. To keep you grounded and smack you in the face before you do something stupid. To pull you back on your feet when fear drags you down. To remind you why the hell you're doing what you're doing anyway.

When you've been that person for someone for a long, long time, it's a more than a little disarming to hear they've moved across the country without a phone call. Here's hoping it's a rumor.

He was the last person I said goodbye to. The first person I wanted to see.

7/4/12

The Weakerthans, always.

I will say I prefer the version of this song from Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre, but still one of my favorite songs from them. Plus, I've already posted "Pamphleteer" even though that's what I woke up with in my head this morning. 

Pretty much all music from The Weakerthans sits perfectly at the intersection of story and song, and for that, it is some of my favorite to get lost in. 

"My confusion corner commuters are cursing the cold away
As December tries to dissemble the length of their working day.
And they bite their mitts off to show me transfers, deposit change
and I can't stop finding your face in their faces, all rearranged
And angry like you never were...

And I ease us back into traffic
Dusk comes on and I wonder why I'm always remembering you,
In civil twilight

For the most part I think about golfing and constantly calculate
all the seconds left in the minutes, and so on, et cetera
Or recite the names of provinces and Hollywood actors;
Oh, Ontario! Oh, Jennifer Jason Leigh!
This part of the day bewilders me...

Streets slow down and ice over,

Dusk comes on and I struggle to stop to stop to stop thinking of you,
In civil twilight

Hey, every other hour I pass that house,
Where you told me that you had to go
I wonder if the landlord has fixed the crack,
That I stared at, instead of staring back at you...

My chance to say something seemed so brief, but it wasn't.
Now I know I had plenty of time
Between the sunset and certified darkness
Dusk comes on and I follow the exhaust from memory up to the end
The civil twilight"
~Civil Twilight
The Weakerthans, Reunion Tour

7/3/12

Sigh. Sleep doesn't feel like an option tonight. There is too much see, too much to know, too much to wait out, keeping me restless and relentlessly aware.

I have listened to this song four times today. I was nine years old when this album came out.

Let us never forget how many songs Third Eye Blind has that are way cooler than "Semi-Charmed Life." This is my favorite example. It starts so simple, existing solely for the build before going right back to the start.

It starts alone, and it ends alone. It brings the story right back to the start. Well done, Stephan Jenkins. This album and these songs will prove timeless for many a kid who grew up in the 90s, though we didn't understand what they meant until much, much later.

"Visions of you on a motorcycle drive by
The cigarette ash flies in your eyes
And you don't mind, you smile
And say the world doesn't fit with you
I don't believe you, you're so serene
Careening through the universe
Your axis on a tilt , you're guiltless and free
I hope you take a piece of me with you
And there's things I'd like to do
That you don't believe in
I would like to build something
But you never see it happen
And there's this burning
Like there's always been
I've never been so alone
And I've... I've never been so alive"
~Motorcycle Drive By
Third Eye Blind, Third Eye Blind

7/1/12

A longtime favorite:



"All of the experts say you ought to start them young,
That way they naturally love the taste of corporate cum 
God bless the Indian Summer 
God bless the Indian Summer"
~Indian Summer
Pedro the Lion, Control