My Favorite Music of 2017

Well it is that time again, time for my year-end review of my favorite music! These roll around so fast, it really is a marker for me for how fast time goes!  This year, however, since I am very crunched for free time, it will be a very abbreviated entry, but trust me that I have thought about this long and hard.  I start thinking about my year-end music list sometime around March, and throughout the year roughly 6 or 7 albums at one point in time are poised to take my #1 spot, so I am always thinking about it, but the entries will be short and sweet this year. (If you are interested in seeing how the lists of previous years went, you can see them here: 2016  , 2015 , 2014  , 2013  , 2012  , 2011  , 2010 , 2009  ).  I would also like to say up front that Neil Young recently released an album which unfortunately I have not been able to listen to as of this writing.  Also if you are used to getting a year-end mix disc from me, that will still be coming, they are going out in a few days.  If you don’t get these discs but would like to get them, send me a message! I love sending them. So without further ado, the list:

But first! haha. Some honorable mentions that didn’t make the top ten.  Honorable mentions:

Fleet Foxes, Crack Up, Willis Earl Beal, Turn, The Shins, Heartworms, Tori Amos, Native Invader, St. Vincent,  Masseduction, Bryce Dessner, Sufjan Stevens, Nico Muhly, James McCallister, Plantarium, El Ten Eleven, Unusable Love, Iron and Wine, Beast Epic, and a major shout out to Sufjan Stevens’ live album of Carrie and Lowell songs, which as a live album was released this year, but the songs were from a few years ago, but it was by far one of my favorite things this year.

Now, the top ten:

10.  Grizzly Bear, “Painted Ruins”

Grizzly finally, finally live up to the blissed-out art rock potential the showed on their early releases.

9.  The National, “Sleep Well Beast”

I love the National, and I love this album, but I was expecting it to vie for the top spot, but instead I only love it and am not obsessed with it.  I want to see them evolve more.

8.  Run the Jewels, “Run the Jewels 3”

Ok so this albums was released in December 2016 but the PHYSICAL copies weren’t released until 2017, so I’m backdooring it.  Hey, if you aren’t listening to RTJ, you literally don’t know what’s going on.

7.  Father John Misty, “Pure Comedy”

A few of the songs on “Pure Comedy” are so good they’re practically transcendent; on the strength of those 4-6 songs, this album deserve all the accolades it is getting. Next time, though, we need less fluff.

6.  Godspeed You! Black Emperor, “Luciferian Towers”

End-times post-rock for the new world; instrumental dirge music that manages to be hyper political.  Godspeed is never less than earnestly terrifying, and they haven’t lose their edge.

5.  Mogwai, “Every Country’s Sun”

It’s a rare year for me when out of the two post rock bands on my list, anyone beats Godspeed, but Mogwai’s new album is a leap forward for them (which is saying something, since they have been around for like 20 years).  It is tender, and brutal, and irreverent.

4.  Real Estate, “In Mind”

This band’s entire aesthetic is about being understated and melodic.  Here they’ve cracked the code for how to do that and be dramatic, too.  Each song crackles.  Your nerves feel this album.

3. Prophets of Rage, “Prophets of Rage”

This album has taken a lot of flack, and yes, it is far from perfect.  But the bright spots–“Who Owns Who”, “Living on the 110”, “Unfuck the World”, “Strength in Numbers”, aming a few others–are so glorious (especially after repeat listens) that the downsides of this project should get a pass.  Could they have done better? Sure.  But who else is even doing anything like this? It truly is a soundtrack for the revolution.  Please give it some spins.

2.  The War on Drugs, “A Deeper Understanding”

In all my years making year-end music lists, I’ve never had a harder time deciding between two albums for the top spot.  This album is astonishing.  Rather than try to do it justice, I want to quote from a review of this album in Pitchfork which I found not only perfectly encapsulated my thoughts on the album, but was itself an amazing piece of writing:

“The band’s lyricist Adam Granduciel doesn’t create fully-drawn characters (other people are phantoms or wishes or memories in his lyrics) but there’s always a desire for connection, and he lets in just enough light to make it seem possible. The album’s first single was the epic 11-minute travelogue “Thinking of a Place,” with a glowing synth swell reminiscent of Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4 and a patient tempo that suggests a slow walk through the woods in the dark, the kind where you keep your hands out in front of you, feeling for branches. It turned out to be an appropriate introduction to this record because “thinking of a place”—somewhere where you can lose yourself, get out of your own head, somewhere else—is what the whole record is ultimately about. A different songwriter—someone like Neil Young, say—might sketch out what this place looks like, tell us about who we might find there. But Granduciel can’t, or doesn’t want to. And that lack of articulation, that inability to identify the source of pain and the path to redemption, becomes another of the record’s themes. But all that happens beneath the surface, almost subliminally; it’s the impossible sweep and grandeur of the music that tells the real story, of how a rush of sound can take us somewhere we can’t explain.”

I mean, yes.

1.  Arcade Fire, “Everything Now”

This album has taken a lot of flack in the press, mostly because (I think) it’s not what anyone expected.  It is markedly different than their previous albums, much shorter, and veers into pop sound.  But the fact is, it is just so good.  There was a point where the CD stayed in my car stereo for over three straight weeks.  The songs are catchy but artistically sound, the theme of the album well-thought out, important, and brilliantly executed.  Yes, there are two clunkers, but the rest of the songs are absolute solid gold.  Time’s going to bear out that “Everything Now” is, in fact, a rock classic.

 

This Will Destroy You

I could not be more excited to see This Will Destroy You tomorrow right here in Harrisburg! Yes, this is a band with a somewhat annoying name (until you get used to it and actually love the name) but they have gradually, over the past few years, become one of the more important bands to me in my life.

This Will Destroy You (TWDY) is what is known as a post rock band, although that term, post-rock, can be argued about at length exactly what it means or what qualifies.  The commonly accepted definition is a group of people that plays strictly instrumental rock music, typically long songs, 10 minutes or longer, with multiple sections, no refrain or chorus musically, and an intense quiet/loud dynamic, although any of these elements can be changed, and the fundamental post-rock-ness remains.

Anyway, I began to love this band about 4 years ago, right before Karla and I got together. I had heard their name here and there as I was making me my way down my post rock journey, and had just started listening to their first album when Karla and I got together. I was still living in Philadelphia and she was living in Harrisburg, and she would come to see me about every two weekends. One weekend, TWDY was playing a show in Philly, and she was coming to see me that day, but she wasn’t going to be getting in until late at night. So I left her my door key, and I went to the concert. I remember feeling amazed at the concert, listening to this music that meant so much to me, that was so intense and so profound, knowing that the woman who I already knew I was going to be with for the rest of my life was laying in my bed back in my Philadelphia apartment. Which by the way I was going to ride my bike to after the concert; I was so hip. I felt so amazing, perhaps, the most amazing I’ve ever felt in my life. When I got home that night, I slid into bed with her and woke her up and talked to her about the show, then as she fell back asleep, I put their self titled album on the stereo quietly, and I drifted off to the sounds of Burial on the Presidio Banks.

My relationship with the band has only deepened over the past few years since I moved back to central Pennsylvania. I have acquired a jewel of a collection of their vinyl albums, including the centerpiece of the my post rock collection, their “Live from Reykjavik” on three vinyl records. In addition, the very first movie that Karla and I ever saw in a theater was “Room”, in which their song  The Mighty Rio Grande is featured during what is arguably the turning point and the most intense part of the movie. See below:

 

It is arguable that I put on this band’s music more often than any others, even though at this point I still would not classify them as my actual favorite band, but it is the perfect mood music, when I’m feeling a little down, when I feel like I need inspiration, when I’m reminiscing, when I’m writing. This band’s music runs through the fabric of my life almost like no other band, and somehow, tomorrow night, they’re playing a show in Harrisburg!

My favorite song of theirs is this one, A Three-Legged Work Horse:

Willis Earl Beal’s Circular Victory

Turn.  Circle.  Sun.  Moon.

These are the four words that comprise the title of the latest collection of songs by Willis Earl Beal.  The title is not only succinct–it also could not be more apt.

(the album doesn’t have a physical release yet but can be purchased for download at this link.)

All four of the words imply a kind of motion, an orbital, cyclical, or circuital movement (in the case of sun and moon, these motions are dependent on the motions of others).  Beal–who professionally wishes you’d call him Nobody–doesn’t choose words (or melodies, or masks) carelessly.

Sonically, these songs–like much of his recent material–consist of rising and falling keyboard dirges that weave in and out of prominence, often cycling back to where they started, but just as often running like a steady current behind Beal’s  plaintive vocals.  Within the framework of this wide-open musical canvas, Beal still manages to find unexpected nooks and crannies to place his vocal rhythms–he’s suddenly jumping out at you from a corner you didn’t even see–or he’s hiding in it.  Add to this a production value of lo-fi immediacy (I often felt like I could hear him change positions in a chair) and the cumulative effect is one of urgency, despite the modest tempo of the tunes, each song still manages to make you feel as though you are in the grip of strong stuff that is racing to an end.

But to “review” this album in any typical way would be like trying to review a cloud, or dirt.  That statement sounds preposterous, I know, but there it is, just the same.  As he continues to evolve as a songwriter and musician, Beal keeps mining material that gets closer and closer to the elemental; this is art like wind, or the subliminal functioning of a gland.  One feels these songs pass through you like quarks.

Beal has often layered the vocals one on top of another, giving the impression that they rotate around one another (like, for instance, the moon around the Earth and the Earth around the Sun); it’s like Beal orbiting Beal, at first the words just one more sonic tool, one more instrument, but eventually the words start to coagulate and meaning attaches to the dirge.

They are songs of loneliness, and love, and helplessness, and yearning.  From the opening song “Stroll”, where we are taken on a midnight constitutional with our narrator contemplating the greater meanings of the universe, to the closing number “Sun & Moon” with it’s sad binary truth (“I am night/ And you are day”), I felt connected to every song; ultimately, they are deeply human.  We experience the resignation to hopelessness, but also perfect hope (again in “Sun & Moon”: ‘But I will see you tomorrow”).  As we continue orbiting and turning, we experience the push and pull of our contrary desires: to be alone, but to be loved.  To be anonymous, but to be great.  When I invested myself in these songs, I felt understood, but also complex.

In “Cowboy”, we are presented with lyrics so brazen, bold, and current as to warrant presenting some without comment: “Passing places through the mall/ Empty faces filling all/ Hear the laughter off the walls/ Birthday presents for you all/ Know resistance while you can/ Avoid incessant clapping hands/ Put your face in garbage cans/ Take the trash do what you can/Recycle all your wasted shit/ There are people trying to quit/ (You’re a cowwwwwwwwboy/Roping all your bulls.)”

In “Release” we are presented with the lyric “You must let go of all the linear victories”, which is a boy-howdy of a line; you could chew on that line for days.  What is a linear victory?  How do we let go of it?  Like the best art, the songs offer some answers, but not all of them.  However, who knows? If you let these quark-songs flow through you enough, maybe the answers will find you.

The art of Willis Earl Beal–Nobody–has been an undercurrent in my life for years now, and this album more than any others before is like a chameleon, a changeling.  As I listen to it it darts away into my peripheral vision and changes shape, form.  It’s hard to hold onto.

Currently, “Turn, Circle, Sun & Moon” does not have a physical release, but can be purchased for download by clicking this link.  If you buy it, it will almost certainly be a linear victory for you–but at the moment, that’s still the only kind I know how to get.

The Dam at Otter Creek

It’s been a few years since I used this space to write about the band LIVE.  They will always be one of my favorite bands, but like all artists, their prominence in my life waxes and wanes.  Seeing as I recently returned to the midstate after a lengthy absence and the once-broken-up band recently reunited, they’ve been top of mind lately.

As such, it also occurred to me recently that, having lived so close to the birthplace of a band I am passionate about, it is perhaps a shame I never took an opportunity to explore the landmarks they’ve created.

LIVE is, to my knowledge, the only rock band, of any era, to call Central Pennsylvania home and to also make that geographical fact an integral part of their identity.  Many bands exist that you don’t know anything about where they’re from–personally I have no idea where Queensryche or Deftones are from (and if you do, it doesn’t disprove what I’m saying, so can it) and many bands claim places like California or cities like Boston or New York, or regions like the South or New England.  But LIVE is from Central PA, and York specifically, and their (early) songs are unabashedly about this region.  Ed (the singer) mentions York often, from the stage during concerts all around the world.  So they’re not just a band from Central PA.  These are contemporary artists who have made incredibly successful art about our area; music that is sung by fans all over the world; Ed Kowalczyk crafted lyrics inspired by the very specific blend of elements present in this region and mined universally recognized themes from them.

Their second album, “Throwing Copper” was really the first that most people heard, and it was an international phenomenon.  Their fall from public favor over the years may have obscured the degree to which they were succesful at the time, but “Throwing Copper” was a truly behemoth hit.  Rolling Stone named the band their entertainers of the year that year.  And as popular as the album was in America, it exceeded that breadth in Europe (as the band continues to, to this day).  And “Throwing Copper”–the album the whole world was hip to in 1994 (it would eventually sell 8 million copies) opens with a song called “The Dam at Otter Creek”.

Most of “Throwing Copper” consists of taut, pop-inflected rock with singable choruses. Not so “The Dam at Otter Creek”.  The song opens the album with quiet melodic guitar fuzz, as if an imagined sound from far away.  Like music that had been read in a book, or dreamed. A man’s indistinct voice can be heard.  Is he on a megaphone? What is he saying?  We can’t be sure.  Slowly the sound coagulates, forms into simple repetitive chords, and, like a slow roll of thunder, Ed intones,

When all that’s left to do
is reflect on what’s been done
this is where sadness breeds.
The sadness of everyone.

This is not the typical stuff of radio rock.  This is a song about not living in the past–a common theme, for sure, but not presented in a typical fashion.  For the rest of the song, Ed makes a very bold decision as a lyricist.  In the first stanza (the one above) he presents to us his thesis: if all you think about is the past, that is some sad shit. But then instead of just presenting more lyrics about that idea, he tells us a story, about a time “the guys” built a dam at Otter Creek, and a man dove into the deep water and died.  It is up to the listener to decide how this story relates to the thesis.  Then, after the story, Ed treats us to the wailed refrain:

Be here now.

Of course, if you simply remove the story about the boy at Otter Creek, you have this:

When all that’s left to do
is reflect on what’s been done
this is where sadness breeds.
The sadness of everyone.

Be here now.

So that is a fairly neatly encapsulated philosophy: live in the moment, living in the past is sad.  BUT the “Be here now” line also interplays with the Otter Creek story; is Ed asking us to place ourselves in the shoes of an observer, on the bank of the Creek, watching the boy get carried out in the stretcher?  The listener can make choices about how they want to hear this song; Ed has left some of it in our hands.

Musically, the song builds to an unforgettable crescendo as Ed implores us to Be here now in a vocal rhythm that can only be described as highly unusual.  As a teenager, I had to consult my liner notes to figure out what he was saying.

Before I go on, I will present the complete lyrics and a YouTube of the song itself:

“The Dam at Otter Creek”
Ed Kowalczyk

When all that’s left to do
is reflect on what’s been done
this is where sadness breeds.
The sadness of everyone.

Just like when the guys
built the dam at Otter Creek
and all the water backed up.
Deep enough to dive.

We took the dead man in sheets to the river
flanked by love.
Deep enough to dive.
Be here now.

We took him three and three
in a stretcher made from trees
that had passed in the storm.
Leave the hearse behind.
To leave the curse behind,
be here now.

 

A few weeks ago, it occurred to me that I live awfully close to York, and so I probably live awfully close to Otter Creek.  So I started researching it.  Where is the creek, where is the dam?

Well, it’s a thorny question to ask.  A lot of people on the internet have a lot of answers.  Where the creek is is simple enough–it meanders for a few miles in the rural farmland outside of York, eventually emptying into the Susquehanna near a tiny place called Airville.  But the dam?  Some say there used to be one, some say there never was, others that the song tells a true story about kids who made their own dam.  Ultimately I decided I’d go see for myself.

There is a famous picture on the back of “Throwing Copper” that shows a sign for the Otter Creek Recreation Area.  This is that album art:

 

I was able to figure out quite easily where this was.  This is a parking lot that belong to the Otter Creek Campground, but is open to folks who are not campers at the campground.  The interesting thing about this parking lot is it is RIGHT AT the spot that Otter Creek empties into the Susquehanna River, AND it is in a spot that there is a river island about 150 yards from shore, making the Susquehanna look very small, so people pulling into the parking lot might be confused as to what body of water they are really looking at.  It’s, quite frankly, a little confusing.  Here is a picture I took of this confusion:

Alas, the famous sign from the album art has been changed, as one would imagine it would be after 25 years.  Here are the sings there now:

While the sign has been changed, after having been there, one can clearly tell it is the same parking lot as the one in the album photo.

Here are a few more pictures I took while in the campground parking lot:

Interesting, right? Given the lyrical content of the song. However, this is ALL Susquehanna River right here. If one dove here they would not be diving into Otter Creek,

One immensely interesting takeaway here is that the creek emptying into the Susquehanna finally sheds light on the lyric “They took the dead man in sheets to the river”.  What a perplexing line that has always been for me! I’d often wonder if we were talking about a creek or a river, and why/how do you take a dead man from the place he got hurt…to the place he got hurt?  But standing there, I can see that they would be moving him from the small creek to the large river.  Now…why they might do that would still be a mystery.  Also, this geography coupled with the lyric almost makes it certain Ed’s lyric is about this very specific spot.

And so, voila, that being the case, I will tell you, there is no dam there.  Maybe there was at some time, of that I have no idea.

Yes, some people will say this: there is a dam on the Susquehanna about a mile downriver.  I’ve seen some folks say THAT is the dam in the song.  That’s clearly poppycock.  Admittedly, it would be more clear if the song was “The Dam ON Otter Creek” instead of AT; the at does leave room for interpretation, but it is my assertion that the line “we carried the dead man in sheets to the river” authoritatively places the story at the confluence of Otter Creek and the Susquehanna River, dam be damned.

After I spent some time in looking around the confluence area, I got back in my car and drove for an hour or so around the country in the area, criss-crossing back and forth over the creek as many times as I could, looking for more access points; maybe secretly hoping for signs of a dam, but also just vibing in the origins of LIVE and remembering there are things about the midstate that are worthy of high art.  Yes, it is beautiful, serene, and contemplative, but as Ed is aware in plenty of other songs, it can be dark, derelict, and sinister.

That being said, here are a few other shots I took of the creek at other points on my drive:

Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes
by Sun Kil Moon

Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes. He got amped up on speed and broke into houses, bludgeoned people to death, wrote shit on their skin and left them. They finally got him and he went to San Quentin. His last murder was south of San Francisco. A guy named Peter Pan, from the town of San Mateo. The little girl in the tenderloin was his first, and in the laundry room he took a dollar from her fist. His last free days were at the Bristol Hotel. I was reading “Nightstalker” when I went and rang the bell. The doorman buzzed, said, “You’re just like them all.” He gave me a key and a black cat led me down the hall. I had a flight today from Boston to Cleveland. Got a death in the family, gotta do some grieving. Lost my baby cousin and it’s eating me up. And I’m achin’ real bad and I need a little love. Richard Ramirez died today of natural causes. These things mark time and make us pause and think about when we were kids, scared of taps on the window, what’s under the bed and what’s under the pillow. And the Jim Jones massacre got in our heads and the TV headlines, “Elvis Presley’s Dead”, and the Ayatollah Khomenei hostages and Ronald Reagan dodging bullets. One day I’m gonna stroll through the old neighborhood. Rick Stan’s my age, he still lives with his mom when he’s not in jail from menacing and stalking, writing bad checks and cocaine charges. Mark Denton had such a beautiful smile, always sat on the porch passing the time, and drinking a beer and smoking a pack until one day poor Mark had a heart attack. My friend Ben’s got a good job as an electrician, his sister married the pool shark Jim Evans. And my next door neighbors whom I love so, and they love me too, but they passed long ago. And if you walk just a few blocks down Stahl there’s a house that was the scariest of them all, a cute little palm with a sign “For Sale”. For those Sexton’s kids, life was Hell, and I’m telling the truth and if you don’t believe it, pick up Lowell Cauffiel’s “House of Secrets”. Had to fly from Cleveland to SFO. I got 3 months off until my next show. Gonna spend time with my girl, make a record this summer, fix my kitchen up and hire a plumber. The headlines change so rapidly. Today I came to the studio to work on something pretty, then I saw the news on James Gandolfini while I was eating ramen and drinking green tea. The “Sopranos” guy died at 51. That’s the same age as the guy who’s coming to play drums. I don’t like this getting older stuff, havin’ to pee 50 times a day is bad enough. I got a naggin’ prostate and I got a bad back, and when I fuck too much I feel like I’m gonna have a heart attack. I woke up today, I saw the headlines, an airline crashed and 2 people died, and I’m at a barbecue in San Rafael, and everybody’s drunk and feelin’ pretty well. At 53 years Richard Ramirez died but in ‘83 he was very much alive. He was the scariest killer in the band. He had a pentagram in the center of his hand. And everybody remembers the paranoia when he stalked the suburbs of Southern California and everybody will remember where they were when they finally caught the Night Stalker. And I remember just where I was when Richard Ramirez died of natural causes.

 

Have Yourself a Melancholy Christmas

For many years, I have posted the below clip of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to social media around the holidays.  It is far and away my favorite Christmas song.  For the decade-plus that I spent living and mostly being alone, the melancholy twinned with optimism in the song struck a special chord within me.  The song seemed to harken to a nostalgia of lovely, warm, joyous holidays, while acknowledging the fundamental hardship of life–of being alone, of losing track of people, or long, dark, cold winter days and memories that slide through your fingers (please note I refer here solely to the original lyrics made famous in this Judy Garland version, not the bastardized, senselessly happy remakes to come after it).  Today, I played it in the background while passing a lovely lazy day with Karla and I immediately began to choke up; the song was a companion in melancholy with me for so many years, the tears came like a Pavlovian response.  Of course, life is happy beyond my wildest dreams, exquisitely so–but that doesn’t necessarily mean the end of melancholy.  My love, the boy, and our dog make life glorious–but there are still long, dark, cold winter days, and friends I’ve lost touch with, and memories that slide through our fingers like the water in the swimming pool on Parsonage Street when my sister saved me from drowning when I was six years old.  Someday soon, we all will be together–if the fates allow.  Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.

Merry Christmas everybody!  Life truly is grand–melancholy is the proof of it!

My Favorite Music of 2016

It’s that time of year again, oh friendy friends!  Time for my favorite music of the year blog!  For those who haven’t slogged through these before, allow me to get these perfunctories out of the way:

1. All music on this list is NEW music that was released in calendar year 2016.
2. A mix CD of songs from my list can be easily obtained by messaging me and asking.  Those on my “mailing list” will receive one without asking.
3. I am not saying this was the “best” music of 2016.  I used to say that but people got their undies in a bunch.  I’m just saying it’s my “favorite”.
4. If you’re interested in lists from years past, they can be found here:
   My Favorite Music of 2009My Favorite Music of 2010My Favorite Music of 2011

   My Favorite Music of 2012

   My Favorite Music of 2013

   My Favorite Music of 2014

My Favorite Music of 2015

And before I proceed with this year’s list, I’d like to address what was probably my biggest disappointment of my music listening life: this year’s Band of Horses release.  When I heard of the album, and learned it’s title, and saw the artwork and read the tracklist, I was perhaps the most excited I’d been for a new release since the height of my Pearl Jam fandom.  I fully anticipated making it the number one album on my list this year.  Instead, it does not even appear.  The reviews were very mixed–some were ecstatic whereas others reacted quite like I did, and many were very neutral.  So obviously it can be heard many ways.  I personally, after listening about ten time during it’s first month of release, may never listen to it again.

I’d also be remiss if I did not mention Prophets of Rage, a supergroup combination of Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, and Cypress Hill.  Again, many detested it and many loved it; I loved it and thought it was beyond the bee’s knees.  However, for the most part, it was not new music, and it does not make the list, but it formed a very important part of 2016 for me.  In addition, Neil Young+Promise of the Real released a live album, Earth, that felt as fresh and vibrant as a new studio album and I listened to that thing like crazy, but again: not really new.  Now: my list!

15.  Explosions in the Sky, “The Wilderness”

14.  Ray LaMontagne, “Ouroboros”

13.  Public Enemy, “Man Plans God Laughs”

12.  Kiefer Sutherland, “Down in a Hole”

11.  DJ Shadow, “The Mountain Will Fall”

10.  A Tribe Called Quest, “We Got It From Here…Thank You 4 Your Service”

The Tribe’s triumphant return was well worth the wait, with lyrics poignantly reflecting the temper of the times and thankfully light on misogyny.  And the beats are dope.

9.  M83, “Junk”

M83’s new album is a kind of throwback space funk jam-off, like a ride in a technicolor elevator, with purple felt walls.  Impossible to dislike.

 

 

 

 

 

8.  Warpaint, “Heads Up”

Warpaint have now built upon the dark, groovy introspection they created in their first two albums with more intricate jams and a subtle pop sensibility; their musical landscape is now a universe all their own.

7.  Mexico City, “When the Day Goes Dark”

This powerful Australian band hadn’t released any new music for six years.  Their return was worth waiting for, as they morphed from terrific bar band into a piledriver of country and blues rock.  A potential classic.

 

 

 

 

 

6.  Jim James, “Eternally Even”

The mastermind behind My Morning Jacket didn’t connect with me on his first solo album a few years back, but this year’s “Eternally Even” tickles my Jacket bone.

5.  Paul Simon, “Stranger to Stranger”

Simon is never bad.  But as he ages, I seem to keep thinking he is getting better and better; his lyrics become more adventurous (from The Werewolf: “The fact is, most obits are mixed reviews./ Life is a lottery, a lotta people lose./ And the winners, the grinners, with money-colored eyes/ they eat all the nuggets, and they order extra fries./  But the werewolf is coming.”), his music more modern, playful, daring.  “Stranger to Stranger” is a delight from start to finish, but especially for those familiar with his full body of work; his evolution is a bewildering achievement.

 

 

4.  Emily Wells, “Promise”

Wells is an astonishing talent, and “Promise” proves she’s an artist worthy of canonization.  Eschewing her previous catchy violin hooks and hip hop undertones, here she digs deep–the level of introspection at times becomes hard to watch.  But ultimately, while not an album of happy, singalong songs, “Promise” proves instead to be a key addition to any music library concerned with–frankly–the meaning of life.

3.  Radiohead, “A Moon Shaped Pool”

What’s still to be said about Radiohead?  They are as good as everyone says, as is this album.  Including a studio version of “True Love Waits” (re-worked for piano) nearly broke me in half.

2.  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Skeleton Tree”

Cave’s son died tragically while the band was recording the album, and it can be heard in every sound.  It’s a quiet, low-tempo, mostly spoken-word collection of songs, and it is not for the faint of heart.  It is brave, and it is terrifying, but it does not wallow.

1.  Bon Iver, “22, A Million”

I haven’t said much about this album online, as I grew into it slowly, and it came out shortly after a few albums I’d been talking about at length, so I figured I’d stop clogging up everybody’s feed with my music stuff.  But as I kept listening, and listening, and listening, it became clear this album was not going to go away. It is an album of absolutely confounding elements–it incorporates so many genres, styles, and influences, it’s amazing it is coherent.  And it sometimes approaches unlistenable, as vocalist Justin Vernon simply sings through a synthesizer without any music for long lengths of time.  But ultimately it’s not about being catchy, or easy, or even “artsy”.  The album is a true experience, and one that is deeply felt.

 

Favorites, 2016

Back in the old days of the Notes, I used to write a lot more about music, movies, and books, and I would every so often post updated lists of my absolute favorites of things.  Not due to any pressing interest from the public, of course–mostly just because it’s fun for me, and also because having such a blog post can be quite handy during discussions online; I can just link someone to the entry to aid in a discussion of favorites.

Of course this is not to be confused with my annual “Favorite Music” list, where I detail my favorite music released in the previous calendar year; these lists detail my current all-time favorites, which are (like yours, of course) constantly changing.

Looking back at my entries, it appears as though I haven’t done a big posting of lists since 2012, so I’ll make this one fairly comprehensive.  All of these lists have changed since 2012–some very little, some quite dramatically:

My top ten favorite poets

10.  Jane Kenyon
9.   Robert Creeley
8.  William Carlos Williams
7.   Sylvia Plath
6.  Billy Collins
5.  Denise Levertov
4.  E.E. Cummings
3.  Philip Levine
2.  John Updike
1.  Philip Larkin

My top 10 favorite film directors

10.  Federico Fellini
9.  Sidney Lumet
8.  Alejandro Inarritu
7.  Christopher Nolan
6.  Paul Thomas Anderson
5.  Alfonso Cuaron
4.  Stanley Kubrick
3.  Werner Herzog
2.  Alfred Hitchcock
1.  Terrence Malick

My top ten bands

10. This Will Destroy You
9.  My Morning Jacket
8.  Godspeed You! Black Emperor
7.  Radiohead
6.  Seven Mary Three
5.  Hey Rosetta!
4.   The National
3.  Band of Horses
2.  Modest Mouse
1.  Arcade Fire

 

My top ten music solo artists

10.  Tracy Chapman
9.  Ray LaMontagne
8.  Father John Misty
7.  Leonard Cohen
6.  Jim James
5.  Nina Simone
4.  Willis Earl Beal
3.  Emily Wells
2.  Paul Simon
1.  Neil Young

My top ten favorite (non-documentary) movies

10.  Citizen Kane
9.  Night of the Hunter
8.  Fitzcarraldo
7.  Magnolia
6.  The Trouble with Harry
5.  Children of Men
4.  Where the Wild Things Are
3.  The Thin Red Line
2.  I’m Still Here
1.  The Tree of Life

My ten favorite novelists

10.  Malcolm Lowry
9.  John Steinbeck
8.  Isaac Asimov
7.  Ernest Hemingway
6. Oscar Wilde
5.  Kurt Vonnegut
4.  Mark Twain
3.  David Mitchell
2.  Don DeLillo
1.  Dave Eggers

My top twenty favorite books (any genre, fiction or nonfiction)

20.  “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
19.  “Slade House” by David Mitchell
18.  “The Terror” by Dan Simmons
17.  “You Shall Know Our Velocity” by Dave Eggers
16.  “Point Omega” by Don DeLillo
15.  “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell
14.  “Fallen Founder” by Nancy Isenberg
13.  “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde
12.  “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding
11.  “Under the Volcano” by Malcolm Lowry
10.  “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers
9.  “The Sun Also Rises” by Ernest Hemingway
8.  “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut
7.  “Dubliners” by James Joyce
6.  “Letters From the Earth” by Mark Twain
5.  “White Noise” by Don DeLillo
4.  “Endurance” by Alfred Lansing
3.  “Your Fathers, Where Are They?  And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?” by Dave Eggers
2.  “Into the Wild” by John Krakauer
1.  “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck

My top twenty favorite albums

20.  “Funeral” by Arcade Fire
19.  “Nobody Knows” by Willis Earl Beal
18.  “High Violet” by The National
17.  “The Battle of Los Angeles” by Rage Against the Machine
16.  “Swamp Ophelia” by Indigo Girls
15.  “Mirrorball” by Neil Young
14.  “Dis/Location” by Seven Mary Three
13.  “Abbey Road” by The Beatles
12.  “Graceland” by Paul Simon
11.  “Bitches Brew” by Miles Davis
10.  “‘Allelujah!  Don’t Bend!  Ascend!” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
9.    “Kid A” by Radiohead
8.   “Strangers to Ourselves” by Modest Mouse
7.   “This Will Destroy You” by This Will Destroy You
6.   “Time Out” by the Dave Brubeck Quartet
5.   “Secret Samadhi” by LIVE
4.   “Infinite Arms” by Band of Horses
3.   “The Suburbs” by Arcade Fire
2.   “RockCrown” by Seven Mary Three
1.  “Into Your Lungs (and Around in Your Heart and On Through Your Blood)” by Hey Rosetta!

 

My top five composers

5.  Philip Glass
4.  Cliff Martinez
3.  Hans Zimmer
2.  Felix Mendelssohn
1.  Carl Nielsen

My top ten painters

10.  Edgar Degas
9.  George Bellows
8.  Mark Rothko
7.  Johannes Vermeer
6.  Mary Cassatt
5.  Maurice Prendergast
4.  Thomas Eakins
3.  Henri Rousseau
2.  Andrew Wyeth
1.  John Sloan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Badass Harrisburg, Media vs. Trump, Eraser, Alexander Supertramp

It has now been over a year and a half since we moved to Harrisburg. Like every time I’ve made a large move, it’s been interesting how at first there is a large amount of culture shock, and then just a few weeks or months later, it’s almost like you’ve always lived there. It’s hard to imagine there was a time that I lived in Philadelphia, or Erie,  or Carlisle.  It’s hard to imagine there was a time when I actually could not imagine moving back to Central Pennsylvania. Did I ever actually move away from here? But also, the first time I lived here, I couldn’t have imagined living in Harrisburg, but now it seems the natural center of this area. Harrisburg gets a bad rap from many people, for those are people who are afraid of it, or have never spent much time in it. Granted, it is a city with its troubles, both financial and otherwise. There are plenty of areas that are downtrodden, poor, and wanting of many of the services that the surrounding areas take for granted. But there is a lot to love here, and plenty of neighborhoods that you can feel safe in, and with nice modern housing. There’s more than enough to do, more than enough beautiful views, and a vibrant arts scene. In fact, there are more things that we have not been able to do than those we have been able to do. And it seems clear to me that the city is still on the move. I know there have been lots of stories over the decades about the revitalization of Harrisburg, but this time it does seem legitimate. The independent music scene, hipster coffee shops, art galleries opening all over the place. Even a vegan coffee shop close to the state capitol building! There’s a lot to love here, and although there are certainly times when I’m riding my bike down a side street here that I miss being right in the middle of traffic on Broad Street in Philadelphia, there’s also something to be said for walking out of my job every night, looking to my right, and seeing the beautiful Capitol Dome less than a mile away, or walking my dog six blocks and being along the Susquehanna River Trail, almost always as the sun sets.

 

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The fact is, the system IS rigged against Trump, in the sense that the media (hold up; did I say the MEDIA?? You hate the media, don’t you? [I’m probably not talking to YOU here, but to about 30 people on my Facebook who bitch more about the media than the atrocities they report on}  But what is it you are talking about, when you say “the media”? It’s an institution with hundreds of thousands of outlets, platforms, and systems, and it’s actually one of the best things about our country–one of the things that really DOES keep us free. But see, you gotta do some work, too. You have to sift through some things, figure out what sources you trust, the nuances of how to best receive information from the media, and where and when you receive it. You have to READ things. Hey, quick–who’s your favorite columnist? Don’t have one? How do you HATE the media when you’ve never really consumed it to begin with? Stop being lazy. The American freedom of press truly does set us apart–and I’m not one for “American Exceptionalism”. But yeah–most of the media operates by making a profit, so be careful, and above all READ things. And it does make a difference if it’s printed on paper; it’s harder to trick your eye into only reading the “interesting” stuff or items you already agree with. Just read the news. Hating and callously dismissing “the media” is just active laziness. And memes are not the media. FYI) are not obligated to report on an aspiring despot who would end the American experiment like it was no big deal. The “media”–contrary to what many seem to think–are not obligated to be neutral observers of facts only at all times. They are to report facts, yes–but also interpret them (again, this is where understanding media nuance will serve you well: there ARE places you can go for just fact, and places you can go for opinion, and places you can go for analysis. If you go to one place expecting it to be something it isn’t, you might think it’s corrupt, when in fact you’re just a novice). So yes, the media are biased against Trump because they are reporting on a man who would destroy our nation–and harm the world. And it is not their DUTY to remain neutral. The media IS biased–but not against Trump; they’re biased against evil.

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I wasn’t ready for Thom Yorke’s solo album, The Eraser, when it came out in 2006.  I was baffled by it, listened to it twice, and put it away–not knowing if it was bad or I was daft.  I put it in on a whim today and it turns out I am ready for it.

 

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Two nights ago, I got to meet Jon Krakauer, an author who is currently among America’s top 3 or 4 nonfiction authors.  I’ve admittedly only read two of Jon’s books–“Into the Wild” being his most famous book and a work that has touched my life very deeply.  In it, Krakauer tells the story of Christopher McCandless, who left a very comfprtable and promising life, wandered the country with little to no money and no contact with anyone for over a year, eventually hiking into the Alaskan wilderness where he would eventually die.  Chris’s story is complex and multi-layered–it can’t be reduced to one single element.  When I was at very low points in my life–still drinking and in deep depressions–Chris’s decision to disappear and walk into the wild until he died appealed to me.  Later, sober and happy, other elements of Chris’s philosophy and his journey resonated with me.  Here is an excerpt from a letter he wrote to a man he met on his sojourn across the country.  The man–who had been deeply affected by a month or so he spent with Chris–received the postcard after Chris died:

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” –Christopher McCandless

While it was McCandless whose story has so impacted me, Krakauer’s decision to tell it, and the respect he gave the story, resonated.  In the many years since “Into the Wild” was published, Chris’s story has become of major import to a growing legion of people who find something inspiring about him, and Krakauer does not shy away from his role as a steward of the story.  It was an intense honor to meet him.

****************************************************************************

The sun goes up, the sun goes down. The wind begins to whistle through branches now bare with late months.  The sky grays, the wind grays, everywhere color mutes, curls into itself.  Even the insects look at you with worry.

 

 

 

My Favorite Music of 2015

It is again that time of year, for my year-in-review favorite music blog post.  Again, those of you who usually do will get a sampler CD in the mail.  If you’d like to join the ranks of these lucky people, just let me know.  I think it is fair to say this year’s CD will BLOW YOUR MIND.

A quick display of links, if you’re curious to see previous year’s lists.  It’s interesting looking back to see errors I made in retrospect (2010? I love Grinderman but not more than Arcade Fire!!! Man Man beating out Srcade Fire AND The National in 2013!?):

My Favorite Music of 2009

My Favorite Music of 2010

My Favorite Music of 2011

My Favorite Music of 2012

My Favorite Music of 2013

My Favorite Music of 2014

 

Now, my favorite music of this year! I’m keeping all the entries short and sweet, I just don’t have the energy for this like I used to!

15.  EL VY, “Return to the Moon”

Supergroup consisting of members of The National and Menomena manage to actually merge the two groups disparate sounds into a new kind of sullen quirk rock.  It works surprisingly well.

14.  Matt Vasquez, “Austin”

Delta Spirit frontman’s debut solo feature sounds actually very little like Delta Spirit and very much like something new; experimental, riff-heavy, ponderous.

13.  Alabama Shakes, “Sound and Color”

The sophomore effort from super-hip soul/Americana group expands their sound into something more jammy and trippy, to pleasing effect.

12.  El Ten Eleven, “Fast Forward”

Post Rock/ Math Rock looping duo deliver the goods with fifth studio album, somehow find a way to keep the formula fresh.

11.  Marilyn Manson, “The Pale Emperor”

Yes, that’s right: Manson is back and, while maybe not sounding exactly current, manages to make relevant, personal, haunting album.

10.  Will Butler, “Policy”

Arcade Fire guitarist Butler lays down a solo album full of guts, gusto, and deliciously surprising moments.  And he’s not a half-bad singer!

9.  Jennylee, “Right On”

Warpaint bassist Jenny Lee Lindberg drops a solo album (recording as simply Jennylee)–the album is brooding, shadowy, thumping.  This is dirty music.

8.  Sun Kil Moon, “Universal Themes”

Mark Kozelek (recording as Sun Kil Moon) continues his tradition of unexpectedly blunt “blog rock”; although “Universal Themes” fails to live up to his previous album (his masterpiece “Benji”), there are enough disarming, disquieting moments to create a memorable work.

7.  Deerhunter, “Fading Frontier”

The quintessential art rock band’s newest effort surprises at every turn, mostly due to a very unexpected dose of pop and hooky melodies. The styles mesh better than expected with the fuzzy unformed feedback the band is known for.

6.  Willis Earl Beal, “Noctunes”

Beal could not have turned in a more different album from his debut than he did with “Noctunes”: literally songs to fall asleep to, I recommend staying awake–secrets and revelations are tucked away inside the lullabies.

5.  My Morning Jacket, “The Waterfall”

The Jacket return with a concept album that sets its sights as high as possible: an album about lost love and a desire to completely stop time (time is “the waterfall”)–the grandiose vision isn’t quite accomplished but nobody but MMJ could have even got close.

4.  Father John Misty, “I Love You, Honeybear”

Mr. Misty–who has also recorded extensively as Josh Tillman and is a former member of Fleet Foxes as well as Saxon Shore–has finally fully arrived with “Honeybear”.  Sporting dreary, catchy songs with take-no-prisoner lyrics (“She says, like literally, music is the air she breathes/
And the malaprops make me want to fucking scream/
I wonder if she even knows what that word means”).  This album is a game-changer.

3.  Foals, “What Went Down”

From huge, sprawling anthems to ponderous, labyrinthine quietude, “What Went Down” set my head spinning and lead me to devour this band’s entire catalogue in a week.

2.  Sufjan Stevens, “Carrie & Lowell”

A delicate album of intensely personal proportions.  I was not prepared for what the words and melodies here would do to me.  It lived in my car’s CD player for almost a month.

1.  Modest Mouse, “Strangers to Ourselves”

Picking this #1 was not even a debate for me.  Not only hands-down the best album of the year, probably the best rock album of the decade.  “Strangers to Ourselves” is not a very intimate, personal album–no songs about lost loves or your good old days–this is a “feel bad” album that attempts to uncover the nasty truth of the universe and comes to the conclusion that humans are pricks, the world doesn’t care about us, and everything, everything dies.  But it also rocks like a motherfucker.

 

 

 

My Life in the Church of Nobody

Approximately three years ago (the time period of my life when I was living with my mother in South Jersey), I was driving my car listening to NPR. I was listening to the show “All Songs Considered.”  I had tuned in about halfway through, and was listening to a conversation with a musician whose name I never caught. He was a very serious man, he took his music very seriously and everything he said was heavy and dense, laden with meaning, a man many people might label as over-serious, and off-putting to some. But it was just the kind of talk I like, because I like art  that is discussed with reverence. At the end, him and a small band played a song, the title of which I didn’t catch, although I caught some of the words. (it was “Nobody Knows”, although I have yet to find a recording of a live version that rivals the one I heard on NPR that day). The performance was absolutely haunting, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Unfortunately, I had still never heard the man’s name, or even the name of the song. Eventually I Googled some of the lyrics, and I did manage to find out who he was: Willis Earl Beal. I YouTubed him, watched some performances, and fell quite in love. Not only was his music amazing, his lyrics were literature, and his voice had a bluesy-country-rock quality I’d never heard anywhere before; he sounded like God would sound if he was slightly drunk.  But on top of all that he had a philosophy to his entire oeuvre, a philosophy of nothingness, of him being nothing, of channeling the universe, and all of us also being nothing. It’s a pretty intense philosophy, and more than I can really explain here in this blog, and maybe more than he could even explain to you, but something about it, somehow, connected deeply with me. I bought his debut album, Nobody Knows, on vinyl as well as CD, and even bought two extra copies on CD and sent to friends of mine who I thought might appreciate his music. I dove deeply into some of his online videos, they were not music performances but helped to fully flush out his philosophy, The Church of Nobody. It would be fair to say that for a short time at least, I was a disciple. Being interested as I am in tons of things, he slid off my radar a little bit after a few months, but would always pop back up here and there. I would say not two months will go by without me going to a small Willis Earl Beal  phase.

Willis isn’t famous by almost any definition in America. You’ll never see him in a magazine, (although you might see his name briefly mentioned Rolling Stone). But there are a few circles in which he is very famous. Some of the alternative music press covers him extensively, treating him almost like the next Bob Dylan, with the positives and the negatives that might come from that. He appeared in the much lauded independent movie, to vehemently mixed reviews. Music and culture critics are very torn on how to take him and how serious he is, and his philosophical approach to music, which some say is absolutely brilliant, and some say means almost nothing. Following his debut album, Nobody Knows, he put out an album the next year, Experiments in Time, which I must admit even I was not a big fan of. It was too aimless and meandering, seemed thrown together in order to put an album out. It was also markedly different than the album prior, and if nothing else, I had to respect his change in direction.

Flash forward to yesterday. I work at a nationally recognized coffee chain. I was sitting out in my lobby, doing some work on my laptop, when I looked up and saw what I thought at first was a kind of hapless man, walking around with a cell phone, looking for an outlet to plug it into so he could charge it. I had to snicker because of how fairly helpless he looked doing it, but there wasn’t much I could do to help him as none were open at the moment. I went back to my work. A few minutes later something caught me out of the corner of my eye. I looked up to see the same man, who was with a woman about his age, at one of my outside tables, apparently having trouble with a bee. He was trying to shoo it away from his table with a magazine. He was up and running around, and the woman he was with was laughing at him. I chuckled to myself, and then did a double take. The man was wearing a Willis Earl Beal T-shirt, that has his Nobody logo. My first initial thought was, holy cow, a Willis Earl Beal fan! It would have literally been the first time I had encountered such a thing. But then I realized the man I was looking at roughly matched Willis’ description. I looked at his face, and it was him! There was absolutely no denying it in my mind.  Willis Earl Beal was at my place of employment. And before I knew it, I also realized that I was getting up to going talk to him. I can’t really describe the surreal nature of this, especially since I now work in a suburban Harrisburg, Pennsylvania store, not exactly the sort of place independent artists travel through frequently.  But there was never a moment of hesitation in my mind, or any rehearsal of what to say, or even a moment of nervousness. I just said to myself, I’m gonna go talk to Willis Earl Beal . And that is what I did.

I walked out the front door, turned the corner, and cognizant of the fact that they might not want interrupted or bothered, I said, “I’m sorry, but are you Willis Earl Beal?”  He definitely looked startled, as did the woman he was with, and he said, “yes I am!” The exact wording of what followed kind of escapes me. I thanked him for the music, and he expressed some shock that he had been recognized. Even though he is a large figure in some critical circles, he’s not a man who gets recognized often. We quickly began speaking very much like equals, like two people who were just talking to each other. It was one of the most surreal, electric experiences I’ve ever had. Now, while I’m a fan of Willis Earl Beal , I can’t say that he is absolutely one of my favorite musicians. That would be misrepresenting the case. He would not make my top 10. Would he make my top 20? Absolutely. I am passionate about a whole lot of things, and Willis Earl Beal  certainly falls into that category. So all of a sudden, I go from working at my job in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to sitting across the table and speaking quite frankly and candidly to Willis Earl Beal. This is the sort of thing that simply does not happen.

After a few minutes I admitted I had not heard his latest album (Noctunes), and he offered to sell me a copy of it on vinyl out of his car. I quickly ran to the neighboring  supermarket to get some cash, which I overpaid him for by a little bit in appreciation for his artistry. He signed the record for me, and him and his girlfriend (who is the woman he was with) did not appear to want to stop speaking to me. The three of us had a good rapport, so I just continued to sit there and talk to him. We spoke a lot about the nature of creating art, and how one’s voice and talent evolve over time, and how  some of your earlier stuff can become unrecognizable to you. I told him about how I dabble in writing, and we spoke about that craft as well as the craft of music, me admitting I know nothing about creating music but my intense appreciation for it. We spoke about what it is like in our culture to become known like he is, but still struggle financially, and what is like to have people you don’t know recognize you, and how that changes you as a person. All in all, it was only a 20 minute conversation, but it was very real, and a very intense experience for me. I daresay in some ways it seemed to be a pretty intense experience for him too, not only to be recognized, but I think he rather enjoyed the conversation, as did his girlfriend,

I excused myself even though I had much more to say and didn’t necessarily have to get back to work, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. I went back to my laptop, and looked up periodically every few minutes, to the astonishing sight of  Willis Earl Beal sitting outside the window. He was there for about another hour, when I watched him and his girlfriend walk off and get into his car. Another astonishing fact that came out of this meeting was the fact that he is playing a show here, in Harrisburg, tonight! How such a thing slid under my radar, I won’t know, but you best believe I will be there. I quite some time ago stopped hero worshiping people, thinking that the famous or semi famous people that create the things I love are somehow different or more elevated than me. So I definitely do not have a feeling that I was in the presence of a different sort of person in this experience, but the infinite level of statistical improbability of what happened, coupled with the ease with which the two of us fell into conversation, and the depth that we reached, cause a sensation in me but I don’t even have a word for.

Some Stuff I Want

It is lately the generally accepted wisdom of the masses that one should not covet material items too much and you should spend your excess money on having experiences.  At least, this seems to be the generally accepted wisdom of my Facebook feed.  And I think I do fairly well with that; while there are certainly items I not only want but crave, I also spend a lot of my life having pretty great experiences.

All that being said, there remain some persistent bigger-ticket items that just call my name like a siren at sea, and I won’t deny it!  Perhaps it is an illness of our consumerist society, but dammit, there’s some stuff I want!  I thought it might be fun to put them here in a blog.  Please note this is just a fun exercise for me and not a veiled Christmas list.  As an adult I have never taken any joy in making out a list of things for people to buy me.  Some of these things have been bouncing around in my head as items I want for YEARS; I thought it might be therapeutic to get them out in the open.

In no particular order:

–OK, maybe in a SLIGHT order, just because this is definitely number one: Neil Young’s Mirrorball on vinyl.  It’s not my favorite album but it contains my favorite song.  Used would be fine but what I salivate over is the idea of a new, factory-sealed copy.  New copies on eBay generally go for about $100.

–I’m dying for a high-quality Philadelphia Flyers zip hoodie that goes light on the orange (but still has orange) and is heavy enough to wear for all but the coldest winter months.  Turns out all those criterion result in an expensive item.  Basically, I’m talking about this.  This would give me hoodies for all four Philly sports teams, but I don’t want to rush it and get a cheap version.  Hence, I’ve been sitting on this desire for almost two years.  I mean, who has $70 bucks for a hoodie?

–OK, I admit I have some fairly expensive interests.  I’ve been dying to get my hands on some first printings of collections of Philip Larkin poetry.  Now, this is a pretty specific area to deal in.  I am in no way talking about books actually called Collected Poems.  I am talking about the individual collections of poems AS THEY WERE PUBLISHED.  I would only be interested in them if they were FIRST PRINTINGS, which would mean they are hardcovers, usually being shipped from the UK somewhere, published in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.  These titles would be:   The Less Deceived (1955, generally sell on eBay for $60-$150), The Whitsun Weddings (1964, goes for about $150), High Windows (1974, $90-$180.  This is the most desirable one).  There are some lesser collections: The North Ship being the most notable.  I do have a second printing copy of The North Ship, for which I paid $55 in a moment of weakness some years ago.

–I really want a pair of high quality Bose earbuds.  Please note earbuds, not headphones.  I like the crazy colors, too.  Specifically these.  I will never have the cojones to shell out the money for these.

–You might not guess it to look at me, but I love shoes.  It’s just that the shoes I love, which are very specific stylistically, can usually be bought very cheaply at many local retailers.  But it turns out, there are expensive versions of the shoes I like (apparently they are Chukkas), and I will never, ever be paying for them.  But look at them. Look how pretty they are.

–I don’t often feel a need to add many DVDs to my collection nowadays, although I will still add one here and there as I see more movies I fall in love with or as classics become available.  However, there is only one movie that I feel is causing a gap in my collection by its absence.  That movie is They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and it has been out of print on DVD for so long that new copies are very scarce.  Here look at this: a new copy of the DVD (not Blu Ray) on Amazon costs $100. You can see at that same Amazon page that used copies start at $20, but those are listed in acceptable condition.  I certainly do not mind used copies of DVDs but I balk at acceptable.  Some second-party sellers are offering New copies for $50.  Worth it but of course I can’t spend that on a single-disc, non-special edition DVD, no matter how badly I might want it.

–I love using the Roku to stream entertainment to my television.  In fact, we already own two of them.  However, in our new home, our wifi is terrible and it is a problem we don’t seem able to solve (we have been relegated to streaming Netflix via our Blu-Ray player, which is Ethernet cabled).  The thing is, I love Rokus, and the ROKU 3 has an Ethernet port.  Would this be an item of great excess?  Yes.  But I neeeeeeeeed it.

–My art book collection would basically be complete (for now) with the addition of a HIGH QUALITY, comprehensive, hardback book on Henri Rousseau.  I’m having trouble finding one to link to online, but the kind I’m thinking of is generally not cheaper than $60.  Failing that, I would settle for a framed print of The Dream (no smaller than 32×24) or The Snake Charmer (preferably 40×30).

See, I don’t ask for much!  I also like experiences!

We’re the Sexiest of All Primates!

Like many people, I have many favorite bands that come into and out of prominence over time.  I’m not shy about blasting my opinions about these bands online, so many of you are probably at least slightly tuned into my current obsessions. There are some bands that have what I would call themes; they don’t just write songs, but their entire body of work represents a specific worldview or thought process; others bands just sort of write songs.  I like plenty of both kinds of bands.  For instance, I love My Morning Jacket, and while I could say quite a bit about their musical themes, I’d be hard pressed to make a statement about what the whole of their songs say about a specific worldview.

 

My favorite band, Hey Rosetta!, has a very distinct worldview that is expressed in nearly every song: they believe in the lifting-up of humanity–of rising above our base and dreadful selves into a state of grace, be it secular or otherwise.  I believe in this worldview and embrace it.  I’m an unashamed atheist and I don’t think this concept is anathema to atheism; joy, redemption, and existential victory are just as (if not more) possible secularly as they are with religion.  As such, the content of the songs of Hey Rosetta! speak to me greatly.

 

However, there is a flip side, and that side is Modest Mouse.  Modest Mouse also has a worldview, and I believe in theirs, too, despite how different it is from Hey Rosetta!’s.  Modest Mouse’s worldview is that the world is a painful, pointless collection of atoms; we spring into existence and consciousness by accident and then after a short time, we stop existing.  Their music explores what it’s like to be trying to make sense of the damned mess during the brief period that your carbon gains awareness.  I find this worldview to be unassailably true; however, when coupled with Hey Rosetta’s philosophy, it meshes into my own cohesive idea of the world: we’ve sprung from nothing and we end up as nothing, but it can be beautiful and inspiring while you’re here.

 

Modest Mouse (which nowadays really just means Isaac Brock, the main lyricist and songwriter) have just released an album that I think could not possibly better encapsulate their theme.  The album, Strangers to Ourselves, digs deep into not just the whole “everything is pointless” concept but examines more closely American problems like urban sprawl, screen addiction, gun control, anhedonia, climate change;  the things that serve to separate us from our experiences, rob us of our individuality, and kill us early–in a universe where there are no second chances. The music on the album is completely immersive: huge, sweeping, danceable yet dirty, like Death come to visit for a playdate, or like a syphilitic disco ball.

 

But the real accomplishment here are the words. Isaac Brock has always written wholly unique lyrics; only a man with such a sideways twist on conventional rock lyrics could successfully tackle the topics he has (I hesitate to say he is the best current rock lyricist; I don’t know who is but their name probably rhymes with Gibbard).  But on Strangers to Ourselves, Brock’s goal has finally become crystalline, his thesis fully formed.  This album is his doctoral dissertation.  And like any great work of art, it is so bold and cunning that the flashes of brilliance are accompanied by other moments that seem daft or even silly.  This is the nature of a rock and roll record that aims, ultimately, to tell us big truths about the entire universe. Here now, a selection of some of my favorite (or more interesting) lyrics from Modest Mouse’s Strangers to Ourselves:

 

“Well the Earth doesn’t care, and we hardly even matter–we’re just a bit more piss to push out its full bladder.  And as our bodies break down into all their rocky little bits, piled up under mountains of dirt and silt: still the world, it don’t give a shit!”

 

“How lucky we are, that we are so easy to forget.”

 

“Well fear makes us really, really run around.”

 

“Pack up again, head to the next place, where we’ll make the same mistakes.  Burn it up or just chop it down; this one’s done, so where to now?”

 

“The world’s an inventor and we’re the dirtiest thing it’s thought about, and we really don’t mind.”

 

“This rock of ours is just some big mistake and we will never know just where we go or where we have came from.  These veins of mine are now some sort of fuse and when they light up and my mind blows up my heart is amused.  So this heart of mine is just some sort of map that doesn’t care at all or worry about where the hell you’re at, but you’re right there.”

 

“We don’t belong here, we were just born here.”

 

“We get dressed as ghosts with sheets taken from the bed, inside our socks we hide Traveler’s Checks, we are tourists of the dead.  So let’s pack up, let’s go!”

 

“Pack a lunch, wander ’round, toss the map on the ground, it is inaccurate anyway.  We’ve been getting away (we’ve been getting away), we are strangers to ourselves.  We sneak out, drip-by-drip, through papercuts on our hands.  Day by day, nothing’s quite the same, we are tourists in our own heads.”

 

“These Western concerns: hold my place in line while I take your turn.”

 

“We all led the charge, till we ran aground in our party barge, and every little gift was just one more part of their grift.  Oh yeah we know it.  The best news that we got was just some dumb hokum we’d all bought.  Let’s go reckless feeling great, we’re the sexist of all primates, let’s let loose with our charms, shake our ass and wave our arms, all going apeshit!”

My Favorite Music of 2014

Here we go again.  This yearly list is one of the last remaining rituals from when this blog was much more focused on reviews of and discussions about current art and media; I used to post frequent movie and music reviews, and slowly over the years it morphed into a much more personal blog.  Early on, I posted multiple year-end “favorite” lists (I avoid calling them “best of” lists, but only because it seems to piss some of you off).  One year I went as far to make a Favorite Poetry, Favorite Television, Favorite Magazines, Favorite Movies, and Favorite Music lists!  The last 3 or so years, I have only made a music list.  I still like to closely follow new-release movies, but I can no longer make a pointed effort to see enough of them in a timely fashion to make a comprehensive yearly list.

If you have any interest, you can see past year’s music lists here (they did go even further back, but they were on MySpace blogs that have unfortunately disappeared):

Favorite Music of 2013

Favorite Music of 2012

Favorite Music of 2011

Favorite Music of 2010

Favorite Music of 2009

As per usual, if you are a person who routinely gets mix discs and other neat stuff from me in the mail, a mix disc featuring a selection from all of this year’s listings is already in the mail on it’s way to you.  If you are not one of these people and want to be, leave a blog comment/ send me a Facebook message/ text me/ call me/ hit me up on Tinder (huh?) and I’ll put you on the list!  Now, the winners:

This was an especially fertile year for music for me; I’d estimate I listened to approximately 80 new-release albums this year, and really loved about half of those.  This was by far the most difficult year I’ve had when it comes to narrowing down my selections!  Some of my favorite artists had no releases this year, so it was easier to not play favorites and just judge what moved me the most.  Here are the top fifteen, in order:

15.  Modest Mouse, “Lampshades on Fire”

This is the first time in the history of my lists that I have included a single song instead of an album, but I didn’t see as I had a choice.  Modest Mouse’s new album doesn’t come out until March 2015, but this lead single, which was released about 3 weeks ago, has been almost the only thing I’ve been listening to since it came out.  An absolute piece of snarling perfection.

14.  Real Estate, Atlas

If you have any idea what “shoegaze” rock is, and you haven’t heard this album, may I suggest you stop being an idiot?

13.  Phish, Fuego

Finally a return to form after a number of disappointing releases, Fuego finds the band weaving tight, crisp jams over sparse but giddy lyrics that start to hint at the pains of being post-middle age, with a little bit of supreme confidence thrown in for good measure.

12.  Parquet Courts, Sunbathing Animal and Content Nausea

This New York post-punk-post-pop-pre-rockabilly (huh?  Here I am just joking; the music media loves to label Parquet Courts in so many ways it is ludicrous; they just make “rock” music, albeit kinda…punky?  Amateury?) really hit their stride this year, releasing two back-to-back masterpieces (the second, Content Nausea, being released by their alter ego band, Parkay Quarts).  These taut, coiled, short screeds blast at you like beautiful insults; they are loveable songs that you want to run from.

11.  The Orwells, Disgraceland

The Orwells steamrolled onto everybody’s radar this year with this unforgettable performance on Letterman.  That song (called “Who Needs You”) also features some truly daring lyrics: “You better count your blessings/ kiss your ma and pa/ You better burn that flag/ ’cause it aint against the law!/ Listen up forefathers:/ I’m not your son/ You better save the country/ You better pass the flask/ You better join the army/ I said: no thank you, dear old uncle sam!”.  When their full-length album, Disgraceland, was released shortly after the Letterman appearance, it didn’t much matter that it was a disappointing collection of small-talent noise rock: “Who Needs You” was a song debut good enough to buy them a few years of grace period.

10.  The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream

These home-grown Philly boys blew me away with the first track on this album (while not their first album, it’s their first ‘major’ album, and the first I’d heard).  The album is aptly titled, as, if I had to name this genre of rock, I’d call it Dream Rock.  Standout track “Under the Pressure” was my anthem of early summer this year, and provided a soundtrack on repeat for my visit home to Central PA and my friend Michael’s wedding.  I have a clear memory of sitting in my dad’s car after arriving to her wedding, blasting the air conditioning, listening to “Under the Pressure” on repeat, and waiting to get out of the car until I saw someone I knew.

9.  El Ten Eleven, For Emily

One of the more unique “post-rock” outfits in the biz, this duo utilizes looping and custom instruments to create full, intensely emotive sounds.  For Emily is just a 5-song EP, but it is far from a toss-off and there is zero filler.  The production is crisper and cleaner than I’m used to from these guys; I can hear the guitarist’s fingers on the strings, a pleasant departure from the more clinical sound of their earlier (and still amazing) records.

8. Willis Earl Beal, Experiments in Time

The supremely “artsy” blues-psychedlia-R&B crooner of last year’s exquisite Nobody Knows came back right away with a solid follow-up; however, Experiments in Time lacks the urgency and necessity of his previous efforts.  Still, Time succeeds where most artists fail: every moment of this is something that could only have been made by Beal.  Everything he does is unmistakably his, a quality that is more and more rare these days.

7.  Hey Rosetta!, Second Sight

Those of you who have followed my blog for years now may be surprised by this band’s new album ranking seventh on my list this year (they’ve released two albums since I started making lists, each one ranking #1 on their release year).  I continue to maintain Hey Rosetta! as my favorite band (although it keeps being by thinner and thinner margins) and my discovery of them about 6 or 7 years ago remains a defining event of my life; alas, nothing stays perfect forever.  There are lots of moments to like on Second Sight, and a few of these songs would turn up on mix CDs I might make of the band; however, the breathless, emotion-drenched moments I crave from them are a bit too infrequent, and the times the band tries to stretch and evolve often sound too under-developed.  Nonetheless: solid, earnest, and soulful.

6.  Mono, The Last Dawn and Rays of Darkness

The premier Japanese post-rock band has finally made their masterpiece in these two simultaneously-released twin albums; Dawn explores the light, uplifting possibilities of this genre, and Darkness its depressing underbelly. Both albums are instant post-rock classics; when listened to back-to-back, it can be a damn-near enlightening experience.

5.  Delta Spirit, Into the Wide

Finally this band, who I have always loved, completely lets loose.  They get big and epic.  These are songs about hearts as big as prairies, unchecked regret, the loss of innocence, and the decay of America.  The tales are told through booming guitar loops and underlying synth structures, long atmospheric intros and cacophonous crescendos.  Singer Matt Vasquez’s voice breaks in just the right places, just the right amount of times, like a pubescent boy finally learning to control the caged beast within.

4.  This Will Destroy You, Another Language

This year, This Will Destroy You entered the small league of BANDS THAT ALWAYS MESS ME UP EMOTIONALLY.  This intense, emotive post-rock group from Texas (where else have we heard of a Texas post-rock band?) started out my year amazingly, as I worked my way through their back catalog and they made my life better.  I was caught off guard late in the year by the release of a new album!  Another Language doesn’t often reach the sublime levels of their early work, but some standout tracks (“Newtopia”, “Dustism”, “Serpent Mound”) can make a comfortable home with their best material.

3. Stars, No One is Lost

This band just keeps on growing on me.  They are wholly unique.  They fuse an indie/alternative vibe with a pop sensibility and then throw in melancholy, defeatist lyrics for a sound and feeling you simply cannot get anywhere else.  No One is Lost absolutely has to be their best album yet.  You leave it dancing your ass off, but with no idea what to feel.  The emotional confusion that Stars provokes is completely intentional and positively riveting.

2.  Warpaint, Warpaint

The album is self-titled, but it isn’t their debut album (it’s their third).  This album slithered under my skin from moment one.  It is sinister, sexy, and deliciously complex.  It is bombastic, mathematical, dynamic, coiled.  It punches, swerves, licks, plays.  The four women in Warpaint refuse to make “chick rock”, but they also do not ignore that they are women; this is rock music made from a woman’s perspective, but for everybody.  It’s not about being a woman, it’s about the experience of life, of living in bodies, the depth of feeling, the smell of smoke, the touch of a raindrop, barely felt.  This album is a sensual gut-punch.

1. Silver Mt. Zion, Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything

This is not music for everybody.  This band–and especially this album by this band–is a pretty unhappy affair.  It does not focus on the good things in life.  It’s about dirt, pain, rot.  It is, at times, about rising above these things, about triumph–but it is about triumph as afterthought, as happenstance.  This is perhaps not a complete and accurate portrait of life: but it is not a perspective without its truth.

This downtrodden thematic perspective is accompanied by the band’s usual lengthy, repetitive, droning postpunk post-everything mess rock, but with a little (a little) more typical song structure than usual.  Like I said: this isn’t for everybody.  But you know who it is for?  Me.  While not a single song on this album could ever come even remotely close to being played on the radio (I think most radio stations would pay money to keep it away) it is, to me, one of those rarest things in modern music: true art, worthy of museum display.

 

 

Winter Songs, #4

Not only does “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes remind me of winter, it is about winter; or at the very least, it involves a memory that takes place in winter.

I listened to this song, and the album it is on, very frequently during the first winter I spent in Erie (a very unique time for me, here are lots of entries about it).  This song will always evoke, in my mind, the images, smells, and feel of driving the pot-hole filled Erie streets in the dead of winter, with ice and snow filling my wheel wells, and a particular afternoon where I drove to a cemetery which sidles a bluff overlooking Lake Erie, and while this song played in the background, I looked out over the vast, frozen lake, and felt sorrow as well as joy.

The song’s simple lyrics go thusly:

“I was following the pack
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied round their throats
to keep their little heads
from falling in the snow,
and I turned round and there you go!
And, Michael, you would fall,
and turn the white snow red as
strawberries in the summertime.”

 

Winter Song #3

The winter before I moved away from Erie, I made this video on a wintry, snowy trip out on the Presque Isle peninsula.  It showcases the song “Jetstream” by the band Doves; this is a really amazing song that I come back to for a week or two every year, but the day I spent with the song making this video (the song starts a few minutes into the video) will forever tie this song to cold weather for me.

 

 

Winter Song #2

I was really into this song for just about two weeks in the winter of 2009.  It remains a notable winter song in my mind because once, I had to drive home at night in an HUGE snowstorm (from York, PA to Carlisle, PA) and I had this song on repeat.  The storm was so bad, I didn’t dare take my eyes or concentration off the road to turn the music off or take it off of repeat.  It’s a GREAT song, but now, it is simply, to me, all about that horrible, terrifying wintry drive:

Winter Songs #1

As winter nears, I being to again turn to the songs that I most associate with this most dreadful of seasons.  We all have different ways we experience music, and our own unique ways we have them tied to specific sensory sensations or memories from our own pasts.  Many of “my winter songs” have little to do with winter; I was just listening to them heavily during winters, or maybe even just once during a very winter-specific moment.  Of course, the same goes for “summer songs”, etc.  Over the next few weeks I’m going to post a few of the more prominent of my own winter songs; usually without personal commentary, but sometimes with.  In the process, I’d love to hear about some of your own “winter songs”!

This first one is one I listened to a lot during a winter, but is also thematically about winter.  “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” by Arcade Fire is an almost wholly unique song in the rock world, at least lyrically.  It tells the story of two kids (who are next door neighbors) whose town is subjected to an enormous, almost apocalyptic snow storm.  They dig a tunnel from one bedroom to the other, and then escape to the surface (supposedly their houses are actually buried) and they begin a life by themselves in this new winter world, eventually almost forgetting the details of their past, and their “skin gets thicker/ from living out in the snow”.  Using very few words, lyricist Win Butler has crafted a song with layers of intense meaning and emotion that I can only begin to write about in this space.  Interspersed with this tale is the love story of these two kids…and perhaps your love story, with the person you love.  Perhaps YOU are the couple living alone in the barren white world.  For my money, you don’t get a more romantic line than

“You change all the lead
sleepin’ in my head to gold.
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn:
the song I’ve been trying to sing!”

If you watch the video below and really like the song, there is a BADASS live version if you click  here.

 

 

 

And if the snow buries my neighborhood,
and if my parents are crying
then I’ll dig a tunnel from my window to yours.
Yeah, a tunnel from my window to yours.

You climb out the chimney
and meet me in the middle of the town,
and since there’s no one else around
we let our hair grow long and forget all we used to know.
Then our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow!

You change all the lead
sleepin’ in my head.
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn.

Then we tried to name our babies
but we forgot all the names that,
the names we used to know.
But sometimes we remember our bedrooms
and our parent’s bedrooms and the bedrooms of our friends.
Then we think of our parents.
Well, what ever happened to them?

You change all the lead
sleepin’ in my head to gold.
As the day grows dim
I hear you sing a golden hymn:
the song I’ve been trying to sing!

Purify colors. Purify my mind.
Purify colors. Purify my mind.
Spread the ashes of the colors
in this heart of mine.

 

 

Sack Races Can Blank My Blank

1.  It should be noted that, a mere two days ago, I did in fact participate in two sack races at a picnic.  That’s right, on some occasions, folks are still doing sack races.  But the important part:  I totally owned my competition both times.  I won by landslides.  I say this to gloat.  Because it is a rare moment indeed in my life when I find myself vanquishing opponents in any physical competition whatsoever–including leisure sports like pool and bowling.  So yeah.  Apparently I rule at sack racing.  However, it should also be duly noted that even now, 48 hours later, my lower abs hurt like crazy!  And I have been working my abs in workouts for a few weeks, so it’s not just from using unused muscles…there is something about sack races that MURDERS the abs, but especially, like…the very bottom ones.  I’m a scientist.

2.  You know who reads a lot?  Homeless people.  I’m not making some tasteless joke here, I’m serious.  At least in Philadelphia, whenever I see homeless people, I would say 50% of the time, they are reading something, and not always a newspaper, but often books.  I hear what some of you are about to say: They sure have plenty of free time to read!  Well sure, and I’m not sure what my point is with this, but it seemed like an observation worth making.  I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

3.  So there are these two bands I like (don’t stop reading yet, this isn’t actually about the bands).  The bands are The War on Drugs and Sun Kil Moon.  Both bands are fairly recent discoveries for me.  Over the past month, a very odd “feud” has developed between these bands (who, while both “indie” bands, are not bands that would typically be grouped together or thought of at the same time).  The were both playing the same festival, on different stages, at the same time, and apparently War on Drugs’ sound was drowning out the sound of Sun Kil Moon.  Now, Sun Kil Moon is basically one guy, Mark Kozelek, a very outspoken eccentric who often makes waves in the indie community.  Kozelek writes great songs, then gets other folks to play them with him and calls that band Sun Kil Moon.  The War on Drugs is just a band.  Anyway, so War on Drugs is too loud for Mark Kolezek and he gets pissed at them, for some reason, and he says something like this onstage: “This next song is called ‘The War on Drugs Can Suck My Fucking Cock”.  Now, to make a really long story somewhat short: the indie music press loves feuds (who doesn’t?) and reported on this idiotic stage banter promptly, and Kozelek being the guy he is, he just kept making the problem worse and being extremely mean to War on Drugs for months now; for their part, War on Drugs has stayed mostly silent, seeing as they did truly nothing.  Sun Kil Moon went as far as to release, last week a song called “War on Drugs: Suck My Cock”.      You can read very interesting reporting from the feud as it went down here, or here, or here.

ANYWAY, here is what I want to talk about:  the very first time I read that story, I winced at Kozelek’s choice of words.  Suck my cock, while a slam I may have directed at many a male friend of mine over the years, is not a way I would choose to talk to today.  I don’t want to say I am evolved or enlightened, but I think it would be fair to say I am certainly MORE evolved or enlightened about this topic than I used to be.  The topic, as far as I can generally state it, is men using subtle violence and aggression in every day life to perpetuate the patriarchal society we’ve all come to inhabit; even as women gain a more visible foothold toward equality, men still casually sit with their legs wide open on trains, depriving women of proper legroom (your cock isn’t that big, guys), we use terms associated with the female anatomy to mean negative things (what does it mean when you so viciously call another person a pussy as if it is the last thing on earth you’d like to be?).  Men gawk at women as they walk past on the street as though nobody can tell–or that nobody should care.  And men like Mark Kozelek–ostensibly a very artistic, extremely intelligent man who skirts the edges of our culture in a way that one would assume means he’d be more enlightened–uses the language of male aggression to another man; the suggestion of this language goes deep (NO PUN FREAKIN’ INTENDED) and does more than hint at a latent hatred for homosexuality, not to even begin exploring what a mean-spirited “suck my cock” says about the speaker’s opinion about the women who, one would assume, have done so to him willingly.

Look, I know this line of thought seems “out there” to some people, maybe a little too new-agey. Being a male in today’s culture isn’t easy.  We still want to treat women nice and be chivalrous, but it’s tough to do that and play the equality game.  I get that.  We’re not always going to be perfect at it; ours is a culture in the middle of change, and it’s tough to keep up with that as individuals.  But really, at core, it’s easy.  Treat everyone correctly, and realize that language is also action.  The things couched in what you say are real and have meaning, not just academically, but to your listeners.  Realize that your actions in public, even if they seem benign–looking, where you sit or stand, things you say within earshot–can still reek of male supremacy.  Go ahead and hold the door open for your sweetheart (unless she’s told you to bugger off with that shit), but make sure you’re both standing beside each other at the Starbucks register.  Don’t be a fucking asshole.  What are your thoughts?

 

4.  As much as Mark Kozelek has pissed me off with his War on Drugs feud, his song (as Sun Kil Moon) “Richard Ramirez Died Today of Natural Causes” off this year’s new album Benji, is one of the best songs I’ve heard, not just this year, but in years:

 

5.  I like a lot of stuff.  I think I have made that fairly clear over the years.  And most people know that I love backscratchers.  But nobody has ever bought me a really good backscratcher.  #justsayin

Fizzy Waterfalls & the Haircut Bigots

Have you ever filled a big cup up about halfway with a carbonated beverage, and when you go to take a drink of it, you can’t really breathe?  What’s the scientific process going on here?  Is the inside of the cup all filled with carbon dioxide?

Since I buy a lot of music on vinyl that I already own in another format, I keep ending up with a lot of “download cards”–these little guys that come in the vinyl records that also let you download a free version of the album–basically a way to try to convince you to spend money on music in any form at all.  Anyway, for awhile I tried to match up these cards with friends I thought might enjoy the specific music the most, but it’s gotten difficult.  If you legitimately think you might enjoy discovering new music that is the kind of music I like, let me know, the first person to say so just automatically gets all my download cards from here on out.

It seems about every six months, some bigot from the middle of nowhere says something atrocious, gets fired from his high profile job, and all the other bigots start freaking out about the First Amendment.  Now, I know I’m not the first to point this out, so I’ll be brief:  the First Amendment protects your speech (and not even all of it!) from the government.  Not from companies.  And the thing is, the people who want the jobs of these rich hate-mongers saved are the same exact people who are always the first to try to get a waitress fired for next to no reason.  Yeah, let’s keep the job of the rich bigot who definitely doesn’t care about you—because the Constitution!—but let’s fire our actual brethren who are down in the trenches with us because your steak was burnt.  I can only imagine what you’d want if that waitress said something you didn’t like!

I’m currently obsessed with the Kay Ryan poem, “The Niagara River”.  Watch the video below to see me tell you why:

The Niagara River

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice–as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced–
the changing scenes
along the shore.  We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.

 

It’s kind of difficult to rate your senses, isn’t it?  I was just sitting here thinking, gee, smell has to be the best sense!  But then I thought, oh there is no way smell can compete with touch!  But then I remembered sight.  And on and on.  Senses rule!

I’m getting tired of cutting my hair.  Does this really just have to keep happening?  I mean it’s every couple weeks, for, like, life.  I mean, I get it, body.  You’re good at growing hair on my head and, increasingly, everywhere else.  We’re all very impressed.  But consider your point proven.

My new deodorant smells like soap.

Look at this picture I took:

 

 

We Forgot All The Names, the Names We Used to Know

I had big plans to write my first big concert blog in a long time after last night’s Arcade Fire show.  I long ago ceased writing lengthy concert reviews when I realized nobody really cared (not your fault!).  But last night’s show was SO different than any rock concert I’ve been to, I had big plans.  But the need to go to work in between the concert and the blog has taken the wind out of my sails, so allow me to make a long story somewhat short.

So the music media has made a big fuss over this tour.  Arcade Fire has, in the past year or two, become an immensely popular band, but not in the usual way.  They don’t have any radio songs.  Their music doesn’t necessarily appeal to the average music consumer.  And yet millions and millions of people like them.  They are a band with “indie” or “hipster” appeal, and when a band such as that decided to play arenas, a lot of people cry foul.  I understand this argument.  To make music from a distinctly artful, non-populist place and then play immense buildings whose construction was underwritten by public tax dollars and then named after banks and beer companies, well, it’s weird, but also: that’s life.  What ya gonna do?  They’d have to play ten times as many club dates to allow this many of their fans to see them.  And I have no problem with talented artists getting rich.  So anyway.  There was also the thing I mentioned earlier in my blog about them requesting formal wear and costume.  So yeah.  A lot has been said and written about this tour (known as the Reflektor tour).

The band obviously has done all it can to silence these critics.  From the moment I entered the building I never once thought about the fact that I was at an arena rock concert.  Not once.  Not everyone was in costume or formal wear, but well over 50% (my guess would be 70%) were in one or the other.  Enough so that I never once felt self-conscious about my mask.  There were many and various interesting things set up and taking place throughout the concourses that added to the effect of being somewhere other than a rock show–I don’t have time or space to detail them. The house lights were kept off for the entire duration of the audience being in the building.  This is actually unheard-of.  What this means is, once we left the concourse area where you buy your beer and t-shirts and went into find our actual seats, the lights were off.  Like, even before the opening act.  The lights stayed down during the opening act.  Of course there were the lights from the stage, etc, but the big lights, the “house lights”, stayed off.  This added a major effect of otherworldliness (although admittedly also was in many ways a pain in the ass).  The lights stayed off when the opener was done playing, in the wait period before Arcade Fire came out (the house lights always come up between acts!).  but most surprisingly, the lights still stayed off even after Arcade Fire was done.  This almost seems like a safety concern!  But it was worth it.  It was the first thing, aside from our own costumes, that immediately changed our expectations of this event.

The modern-day rock concert is very predictable.  It moves with a certain pace and certain things always happen on cue.  Nothing was to be like that at this show.  I swear I’m trying to hurry this story up.

The opening act: Dan Deacon.  This man is an electronic musician (he makes music by himself using, well…electronics).  Again, right off the bat, just not what this audience is expecting.  But I must say, his music does compliment Arcade Fire’s rather well.  The big deal here is that Dan didn’t play from the stage Arcade Fire was going to.  He was on a stage at the other end of the arena.  This was genius.  See, the folks in the first 20 or 30 rows against the stage (they are not in assigned seats like me but are General Admission) are not going to do any dancing or moving, because they are concerned with their placement by the stage.  But Dan’s position at the other end brings the General Admission folks who were too late to get a good spot at the main stage over to HIS stage, and he proceeds to do amazingly interactive things with them; dance contests, “high five walls”, all kinds of neat stuff that probably is pretty run-of-the-mill at electronica shows but is all-but unheard of at a rock show.  The audience was interacting.  On a large scale!  AND, on top of all this, this unique and terrific activity made those of us in the stands rapt with what was happening.  Let me break that down: a bunch of hipster rock fans were rapt with attention at an electronic musician opening act.

So that was kind of neat.

So Dan Deacon got done and we waited for the main act. The lights stayed down which was creepy and awesome and annoying.  The wait wasn’t as long as normal.  After about 20 minutes, with very close to no warning, the main stage throbs with sound and light, the curtain gets yanked up, and suddenly Arcade Fire is playing “Reflektor”, the title track from their new album.  I was really far away but this is what it looked like from closer.  It happened with so little warning, I can’t find a video on YouTube that actually caught the beginning:

So then they rocked our faces off for awhile, which I won’t bore you about.  There were tremendous things throughout to really set the show apart: confetti and lots of it from the rafters, lots of glow in the dark things, incredible stage presence with jumping and dancing and twirling of strings and people wearing many different masks and just all kinds of oddities.  But mostly just really incredible, intelligent, emotionally-charge artistic rock music that can’t be beat.

I regret there is not yet quality video of their performance of “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”, a song that is constructed like a swelling rock anthem, but is a story about two children whose town gets completely buried in snow, but they climb out their chimneys and survive, eventually reverting to more bestial ways and forgetting much of their past civilized lives, while also falling in love with one another. It exists as a wholly unique song in the pantheon of rock.  It has always moved me with its sideways and unexpected approach to deep human themes such as fear of loss, longing for love, and desire for the unexpected.  And yet, as unconventional as it is, as the song began to play, 20,000 people sang, quite loudly, along with me, lines such as

“Then we tried to name our babies,
but we forgot all the names that,
the names we used to know.
But sometimes, we remember our bedrooms,
and our parent’s bedrooms,
and the bedrooms of our friends.”

We were singing these unconventional lines like it meant something to us, like it was important.  Like they were secrets.

On their most recent album, they have a song called “We Exist”, which is about the pain of teenage gays “coming out” (so far as I know, everyone in the band is straight).  A great moment for me was Win’s introduction of this song, which can be seen in the video below, and then the absolutely terrifyingly gnarly version of the song they proceed to play.  What isn’t visible in this video is that during this song, the “reflektor man” came out and stood on Dan Deacon’s stage, as spotlights

“Reflektor Man” on the opener’s stage during “We Exist”

bounced beams onto all of us, as Win sang, from the vantage point of teen gays, We exist! It added yet another layer to the complicated, thrilling, and admittedly academic theme of reflection, twinning, and identity that is explored on the new album.

So the band ended it’s “main set”.  Here is one of those conventions of the modern concert industry I was speaking about.  The main act plays for about an hour and a half and walks off the stage, pretending the show is over.  We all know the show is not going to be over, that there will be an “encore”, regardless of whether it is asked for.  It is expected (one way we usually know this?  The house lights stay off, which of course means nothing to us now).  Well, literally the SECOND Arcade Fire walks off the stage, the openers stage again (which is closest to me) rises up in the air, and there are “The Reflektors”…this is an “alter ego” band that Arcade Fire has used throughout promotion leading up to this album.  This alter ego band looks like this:

The Reflektors are normally Arcade Fire wearing exaggerated masks of their own heads (get the exploration of identity and reflection????) but clearly this group that just popped up on the second stage was not them.  After claiming to be the true “great band here tonight” and trying to get us to chant “Arcade Fire Sucks”, a recording of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” started playing and The Reflektors pretended to be playing it.  About halfway through the song, Arcade Fire came back out on the main stage (never a moment of us having to cheer really loud for under some guise we were “trying to get them back out”, no long moments of interminable waiting…just straight-through unexpected oddity).

So.  The encore.  They played a four song encore.  The second was a cover of BoyzIIMen’s “Motown Philly”.  They’ve been playing geographic-specific covers at every show so far, but I honestly was not prepared for this! Watch this amazement by clicking here.

The next-to-last song was the Haitian-music inspired “Here Comes the Night Time”, which featured by far the largest blast of confetti I’ve ever seen.  Click here to see it.  Start watching around 3:30 to be in good shape for the confetti blast.

They closed, of course, with their raucous heartwrencher “Wake Up”.  If you watch only one video on this page, you should make it this one.  Look at and listen to the crowd in the great video this person took.  This rivals the best crowd moments I ever had at a Pearl Jam concert.  Here are 20,000 grown people have an absolute, without-a-doubt, joyful cathartic moment together.  I should have expected that moment when they let us do the singing but it took me by surprise and shook me up. Watch how, after the drastic tempo change about 3/4 of the way through the song, the entire arena turns into a huge dance party.  And seeing the big frat-boy-esque lugs beside me just belting out lines like “I guess we’ll just have to adjust!” was a perfect illustration of what makes this band so great, and also so unconventional.

Setlist:

1. Reflektor
2. Flashbulb Eyes
3. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
4. Rebellion (Lies)
5. Joan of Arc
6. Rococo (with snippet of Lady Gaga’s “Do What U Want”)
7. The Suburbs
8. The Suburbs (continued)
9. Ready to Start
10. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
11. We Exist
12. No Cars Go
13. Haiti
14. Afterlife
15. It’s Never Over (O Orpheus)
16. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

Encore:

1. Normal Person
2. Motownphilly (Boyz II men)
3. Here Comes the Night Time
4. Wake Up

Who Needs You to Shovel

My neighbors are obsessed with shoveling snow.  Every time it snows more than an inch, there is continual shoveling going on on my street, in the immediate vicinity of my house, for approximately 36 hours straight.  I am talking about perhaps my ten closest neighbors.  The shoveling NEVER.  STOPS.  Shoveling, scraping, pounding of ice in cracks.  It’s like they need to dust for some fingerprints on the concrete.  And listen, each one of these houses has approximately a three-foot-wide sidewalk that stretches the length of their house…maybe 20 feet.  Every time it snows, I shovel my sidewalk, as completely as would be necessary on a street upon which nobody travels, in about five minutes as soon as I get home from work.  After working ten hours.  And riding my bike two miles.  I’m saying: it’s not hard to do.  Now, don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not “complaining” about this.  I know I’ve got a reputation for “complaining” about things (I interpret it as “having opinions”, which comes from “being super fucking intelligent and awake to the machinations of the wider world and structure of reality”, but whatever, if you think I’m a complainer, I’m a complainer), so I don’t want to be seen as particularly complaining about this.  It’s whatever.  You want to shovel your sidewalk ten times after it snows, go for it.  More than anything I just find it peculiar.  Are they just bored?  Or is it a situation of trying to out-do the Joneses?  Plus it is SO COLD right now.  You KNOW I’m a trooper with weather but no way would I be going out repeatedly into that cold just to get my sidewalk–which in all likelihood only the mailman and my own family will walk on—perfect.

I know we don’t live in a world anymore—if ever we did—in which a significant amount of people care about the performances of musicians on late night talk shows.  For quite a few years (as should surprise almost nobody) I was such a person, one who actually paid attention to that world.  I knew the performance lineup from all the shows, almost every week, for about 4 years, I stayed on top of that.  Although lately that world has faded from my attention.  But last week, a band called The Orwells (I can only assume named after author George Orwell)

I hate to seem like a bumpkin, but this is a picture from my very first (solo and sober) cab ride yesterday…I think I’m finally a city boy.

performed their new song “Who Needs You” on the David Letterman show and it was a pretty authentic, impassioned performance, which made some waves big enough that it made its way to my attention.  Now, there was nothing especially outrageous about this performance (other than the lyrics to the song, which nobody seems to have noticed, which include lines like “You better burn that flag/ Cause it aint against the law”…and for the record everybody…it isn’t against the law), except it wasn’t a cookie-cutter, “Let’s nail this!” performance.  It was just a little quirky, a lot impassioned, and fairly off-key.  I like it, but they’re probably not going to become a favorite band of mine (although I have put their album on my “to-buy” list). Although I don’t want to take too much away from the legitimacy of their performance; it WAS reminiscent of the early days of some great bands (who would later, inevitably, lose steam and passion) like the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, or The Doors before Morrison died (take note: I hate The Doors).   The more pertinent point of discussion, for me, is: what kind of artistic culture have we fostered where a band simply playing with a bit of abandon on a talk show makes the front page of Rolling Stone‘s website?  How neutered has our art become?  How boring are we?  Watch the performance here, and make sure you stay all the way to the end to see how unexpected Dave and Paul found the performance:

My Favorite Music of 2013

It is time once again, fair blog readers, for the last remaining “year-end” list that I still do: music.  I’ve been making these lists since 2007, but the first few were on my MySpace blog, which has been destroyed, but you can see past Notes From the Fire music lists here:

Favorite Music of 2009

Favorite Music of 2010

Favorite Music of 2011

Favorite Music of 2012

If you are a person who regularly receives CDs from me in the mail, you’ll be getting a mix disc representing this list.  Don’t get discs from me and want one?  Drop me an e-mail/ text/ blog comment and I’ll send you one.  Oh, and just to be clear, this is my favorite music that was released in 2013, not just the music I loved the most during the year.  That list would look a bit different.

I had to make it a top 11 list, I was unable to take any of these artists off the list.  So, without further ado, in order, the albums I liked most in 2013:

11.  Elvis Costello and The Roots, “Wise Up Ghost”

What seems like an unlikely pairing when you first hear about it turns out to be something that seems like it should have happened all along.  All snarl, no filler.

10.  Editors, “The Weight of Your Love”

These British whiners just keep finding ways to whine that feel like they’re punching you in the goddamn throat.  And they keep building on previous albums and boldly evolving.

9.  Kings of Leon, “Mechanical Bull”

We’re obviously never going back to the shit-kicking jambalaya balling rock of the band’s youth, but this new, outsized punching bag swing will do just fine.

8.  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Push the Sky Away”

An album a little short on excitement, but 100% dripping in atmosphere, as well as what this band does best: the saddest sex songs on Earth.

7.  Deerhunter, “Monomania”

The creepy indie shoegazers are back, and NOT weirder than ever! Bradford Cox and company get a little more structured on this disc, which suits them just fine.  Have four minutes?  Watch this.  All the way through.

6.  Kinski, “Cosy Moments”

The little-known drone-rockers (I just made up that term) get all vocal-y on their best album yet.  Unlike anything you’ve ever heard.

5. “Oblivion” soundtrack by M83

The French electronica duo M83 have here crafted the most jarring, emotionally resonant film score since Hans Zimmer’s “Inception”.

4.  Willis Earl Beal, “Nobody Knows”

Willis Earl Beal

Probably the most thrilling, humbling, disquieting debut from a solo artist that I have ever been witness to.  Please get on the Willis Earl Beal train.  His music is soulful, disturbing, beautiful, and pummeling.  In addition, he’s a personality with clear potential to ascend to the next level in the cultural zeitgeist.  Get on the train early, you heard it here first.  Plus, watch this.

 

3.  Arcade Fire, “Reflektor”

 

Perennially one of my favorite bands, most years this album would have taken my #1 spot, but the competition was stiff this year.  Like their previous outings, “Reflektor” is a true work of artistic genius, both analytical and guttural, not afraid to come at modern topics through academic approaches, and canvassing world music and deep rock history for influences, resulting in a rounded, eclectic-sounding collection of contemplative ass-kickers.

2.   The National, “Trouble Will Find Me”

 

If I were to, right this moment, make a list of my favorite bands, The National would almost certainly be #1.  Matt Berninger’s wickedly free-associative lyrics uncover profound things within me, and the band’s perfectly balanced approach to squeezing life through a hole in a tomato aligns precisely with my temperament.  This album (the first new one to come out since I became a fan of the band) was no disappointment.  I’ve listened to its melancholy bathtub bleedout tunes hundreds of times this year.  Click here to watch the lyric video I made of my favorite song on the album, “Don’t Swallow the Cap”.  It references the Beatles and Nirvana’s “Nevermind”.  You’ll like it, but listen to it twice in a row.

1.  Man Man, “On Oni Pond”

 

Man Man are a band like no other.  They are most often termed “experimental”, but some of the more memorable labels that have been adhered to them are “Viking swing”, “carnival rock” and “voodoo funk”.  They must be experienced to be understood.

While I am always excited for a new Man Man album, they have always been more about the live experience for me.  I do believe this is even the first time one of their albums has made one of my year-end lists, let alone topped it.  I was never expecting “On Oni Pond” to blow me away the way it did.

Here the band actually attempts to “mature” while maintaining their signature quirkiness.  It works in ways I wouldn’t have thought possible.  Honus Honus (the moniker lead singer Ryan Kattner goes by) sings in turns about seemingly silly things like “pink wontons” or Wolf Blitzer (in the song “End Boss”) and then turns around and gently reminds us “nobody knows/ where the time goes./  nobody knows” (in “Fangs”).  The combination of calculated buffoonery and genuine affectation left me wanting more, dancing around my living room.

 

Behemoth

Godspeed You! Black Emperor at Union Transfer, Philly, 10/16/13

Setlist:

1. Hope Drone
2.  Mladic
3.  Gathering Storm
4.  Terrible Canyons of Static
5.  Moya
6.  Behemoth

Notice they only played six songs.  Well, that took three hours.  I thought they were going to play all night!

Here is the video of their set-closing, bone-crushing barnburner, “Behemoth”, from the show I was at Wednesday night.  Even if this kind of music isn’t your thing, I implore you to just watch a minute or two to get an idea of just what in the world this band is all about:

The Echo of an Axe

There is, of course, no stronger force in the universe than the passage of time, regardless of what the scientists say.  Enough time, stacked up, has more power than the gravity of any star, more gusto than the hugest electromagnet.

I can’t stop buying old postcards at antique shops.  That may sound made up, but I’m serious (I’ve blogged about it before here.)  The more and more I look for them, the older ones I am capable of finding.  I’ve found a few from as far back as 1904, with messages written on them that sound like they could be from yesterday, but they’re from over a hundred years ago.  The person who wrote it is dead.  Their vacation, however marvelous, has been vacated from the scorecard of life.  Their fun in the sun is now just a scribble.  The postmarks have remained almost the same all this time, though.  That’s kind of amazing when you think about it.  One hundred years.  That’s a long time for anything to remain unchanged.

I write postcards to people, too.  Someday my vacations will be vacated by the steady march of inevitability, as well.  So it goes.

I like to buy vinyl records.  This is no secret.  For most of my time as a vinyl hobbyist, I’ve actually bought new music that is released on vinyl.  But recently, I’ve taken a shine to the older stuff.  When I pull that big black circle out of a deteriorating cardboard sleeve that smells of must, I imagine what it may have been through: maybe owned by ten different people, maybe just one who treasured it their whole life, maybe sold to three different used record stores, maybe a yard sale or two.  But what strikes me the most about these old records (I recently bought a record of Russian composer Dmitri Khachaturian’s Concerto for Violin and Orchestra from 1942 for a buck from a Goodwill store) is how they seem to be stranded in time, holding their precious music in their grooves, waiting inert over the years for someone to pick them up, pull them out, and take the important final step of actually setting a needle down on them to unleash their precious cargo.  The music is always on there, but it can wait fifty years to be released.  It could wait longer if it had to.  I don’t understand where the music is when the needle isn’t down, but it’s there somewhere.  The record owns it, holds it tight to its chest.

If a historian or biographer were so inclined to write a book on my life and they chose to write about the period when I actually had love interests or “girlfriends”, one would find, I suspect, despite having had many trysts, you could narrow down my “major” love interests throughout my life to just three.  An argument could be made for a fourth, but you really don’t care about that.  I am now 35 years old, and all three of those major love interests have been over for a long time, and all-but forgotten, by myself and them too, I’m sure.  But somehow, the world conspired for two of them to get married last week.  The chances of it happening seem astronomical, and I’m sure they are.  I didn’t attend either wedding, though I was invited to both, but only because work and distance kept me away.  Too much time has passed for there to be any heartbreak involved for me in such ceremony.  But the way that such an event made me feel time was the real cruelty.  To make me go simultaneously back to both those relationships, and force my mind into tracing the arc of time from then to now…I have a great life, don’t get me wrong, but time is so long, it frightens me.  Like looking at the ocean from inside the basket of a very high hot air balloon.

I’m in my cardboard sleeve, holding my music close to my chest.

My Third Favorite Song of All-Time

I will probably die alone.  Like, in the typical sense that phrase conjures: no wife, no kids, no standard genetic legacy.  Sure, I have always had plenty of great friends and family, and hopefully still will when my final ticket gets punched, but I’ll still be shuffling off the mortal coil “alone”, for what it’s worth.

Remaining a single and childless (so far as I’m aware) man was a decision I made gradually over the last ten years, and, make no mistake about it, it has absolutely been a decision I consciously made.  Now, I really don’t understand myself well enough to know what about my inner workings makes me a happier, more satisfied man when I’m not beholden to a woman or needy children of my own, but there can be no mistake about it: I am not meant for relationships.  Not only am I better off this way, but any woman unfortunate enough to get swept up in my path is now much better off this way.  Please, forget about commenting something like “You still have lots of time!” or “You just need to meet the right woman!”  No, I don’t, and No, I won’t.  I’m not “normal”.  I might seem kinda normal because I don’t have facial tattoos and I have a pretty normal job and I don’t get arrested or paint mermaids on my car, but trust me, I aint normal.  But, one thing I am, is generally really happy.  So there’s that.

But all that being what it is, doesn’t mean this decision and reality doesn’t, on the rarest of occasion, make me sad.  I remember my younger days, and being in love, and part of a unit of two; that is a very special feeling.  I miss that elevated sensation of existence.  But more so than anything, I am saddened by this reality when I consider what life will be like once my parents are gone, and half of my friends and maybe even some of the women I loved when I was younger, when they are dead, too.  And then maybe I will get some terrible nameless disease, and I will be laying there in a hospital bed, in pain and afraid of the end, and nobody will be there to watch me die.  Can there be a much worse thought in all the world?

“What Sarah Said” by Death Cab For Cutie addresses this fear in such a pitch-perfect fashion, I am often emotionally afraid to listen to it.  Of course it is masterful, just as an artifact of such a talented band, but beyond that, it is an emotional juggernaut that should be preserved for whatever species populates our planet after us.

Lyricist Ben Gibbard spends almost all of the song describing a hospital waiting room, while interspersing the description with nuggets of intensely insightful wisdom:  “And it came to me then, that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time.”

“And I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all.”

“It stung like a violent wind, that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our mind.”

And then, after building up such a heartfelt picture of someone waiting in a hospital for a loved one who is obviously in very bad health and probably close to dying, Gibbard’s narrator suddenly says that what he’s actually thinking about is “what Sarah said” (there is no mention of a Sarah before or after)…what Sarah said, apparently, is “Love is watching someone die.”

Let that sink in for a second.

And he closes the song with a repition of this refrain, that, due to my feelings I talked about up above, moves me beyond belief: “So, who’s going to watch you die?”

“What Sarah Said” by Death Cab For Cutie

And it came to me then
that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time,
as I stared at my shoes
in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409.
And I rationed my breaths
as I said to myself
that I’d already taken too much today.
As each descending peak on the LCD
took you a little farther away from me.

Amongst the vending machines
and year-old magazines
in a place where we only say goodbye,
it stung like a violent wind
that our memories depend
on a faulty camera in our minds.
But I knew that you were a truth
I would rather lose
than to have never lain beside at all.
And I looked around
at all the eyes on the ground
as the TV entertained itself.

‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room.
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news.
And then the nurse comes round
and everyone will lift their heads,
but I’m thinking of what Sarah said,
that “Love is watching someone die”.

So, who’s going to watch you die?

My 8th Favorite Song of All-Time

“Wake Up” by Arcade Fire

I fell in love with the band Arcade Fire via their debut album Funeral around 2007, a full two years before their song “Wake Up” (from the Funeral album) would be used to much ballyhoo in the trailer for the film “Where the Wild Things Are”, which would be my favorite movie of all-time from 2009-2011.  My point here is, “Wake Up” has been a major force in my life even before that famous trailer (one of two trailers to be able to move me to tears by force of trailer alone…the other one was this one).

“Wake Up”‘s lyrics are, admittedly, a little sophomoric.  They talk about how much it sucks to grow up (which it kinda does), and lyricist Win Butler may approach the subject just a bit too simply, but the emotion-drenched music and delivery transform the simple words into a towering screed of sorrow and triumph.

I have included only the live version, because it is all you need:

My 10th Favorite Song of All-Time

First, let’s recap everything that has come before:

100.  “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something
99.  “Jack & Diane” by John Mellencamp
98.  “Hotel California” by The Eagles
97.  “American Pie” by Don McLean
96.  “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough” by Michael Jackson
95.  “Nuthin’ but a G Thang” by Dr. Dre
94.  “Bushwick Blues” by Delta Spirit
93.  “For the Workforce, Drowning” by Thursday
92.  “Fish Heads” by Barnes and Barnes
91.  “Shimmer” by Fuel
90.  “Rubber Biscuit” by the Blues Brothers
89.  “House of the Rising Sun” by The Animals
88.  “Asleep at the Wheel” by Working For a Nuclear-Free City
87.  “There’s an Arc” by Hey Rosetta!
86.  “Steam Engine” by My Morning Jacket
85.  “Scenario” by A Tribe Called Quest
84.  “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane
83.  “Fits” by Stone Gossard
82.  “Spring Flight to the Land of Fire” by The Cape May
81. “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” by The Postal Service
80.  “Sober” by Tool
79.  “Dream is Collapsing” by Hans Zimmer
78.  “Why Don’t We Do it in the Road?” by The Beatles
77.  “In This Light and on This Evening” by Editors
76.  “Lemonworld” by The National
75.  “Twin Peaks Theme” by Angelo Badalamente
74.  “A Comet Appears” by The Sins
73.  “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” by The Decemberists
72.  “Pepper” by Butthole Surfers
71.  “Life Wasted” by Pearl Jam
70.  “Jetstream” by Doves
69.  “Trieste” by Gifts From Enola
68.  “Oh My God” by Kaiser Chiefs
67.  “The Righteous Path” by Drive-By Truckers
66.  “Innocence” by The Airborne Toxic Event
65.  “There, There” by Radiohead
64.  “Ants Marching” by Dave Matthews Band
63.  “Symphony 1: In the Barrel of a Gun” by Emily Wells
62.  “The Best of What’s Around” by Dave Matthews Band
61.  “Old Man” by Neil Young
60.  “Cumbersome” by Seven Mary Three
59.  “Knocked Up” by Kings of Leon
58.  “Machine Head” by Bush
57.  “Peaches” by Presidents of the United States of America
56.  “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones
55.  “Fell on Black Days” by Soundgarden
54.  “The New Year” by Death Cab for Cutie
53.  “Call Me Al” by Paul Simon
52.  “Real Muthaphuckin’ Gs” by Eazy E
51..  “Evening Kitchen” by Band of Horses
50.  “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand” by Primitive Radio Gods
49.  “Top Drawer” by Man Man
48.  “Locomotive Breath” by Jethro Tull
47.  “We Used to Vacation” by Cold War Kids
46.  “Easy Money” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
45.  “Two-fifty” by Chris Walla
44.  “I’ve Got a Feeling” by The Beatles
43.  “Another Pilot” by Hey Rosetta!
42.  “Revelate” by The Frames
41.  “Wise Up” by Aimee Mann
40.  “Sample in a Jar” by Phish
39.  “Spitting Venom” by Modest Mouse
38.  “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow” by Nice & Smooth
37.  “I Shall Be Released” by The Band
36.  “When I Fall” by Barenaked Ladies
35.  “East Hastings” by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
34.  “Terrible Love” by The National
33.  “Jolene” by Dolly Parton
32.  “Sometime Around Midnight” by The Airborne Toxic Event
31.  “This Train Revised” by Indigo Girls
30.  “Mad World” by Gary Jules
29.  “White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes
28.  “Once in a Lifetime” by The Talking Heads
27.  “Growing Old is Getting Old” by Silversun Pickups
26.  “Brian and Robert” by Phish
25.  “Is There a Ghost?” by Band of Horses
24.  “Be Safe” by The Cribs
23.  “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” by Judy Garland
22.  “Ashes in the Fall” by Rage Against the Machine
21.  “We Laugh Indoors” by Death Cab For Cutie
20.  “Dondante” by My Morning Jacket

19.  “We Used to Wait” by Arcade Fire

18.  “Oceans of Envy” by Seven Mary Three

17.  “This is How We Do It” by Montell Jordan

16.  “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

15.  “What a Good Boy” by Barenaked Ladies

14.  “Styrofoam Plates” by Death Cab For Cutie

13.  “Hard to Imagine” by Pearl Jam

12.  “Everything In Its Right Place” by Radiohead

11.  “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles

…and my tenth favorite song of all-time is:

“Rattlesnake” by LIVE

I have written extensively already here on this blog about the song “Rattlesnake”.  I talk about it a lot in this blog entry about why you should love LIVE, and then I posted a lot of pictures inspired by the song, here and here and here.  If you don’t feel like clicking on all that shit, let me sum it up for you: LIVE is from the same place, roughly, that I am from (and that place, roughly, is this).  This song directly addresses being from this area, but feeling a disconnect with the general culture here.  It also happens to address these things during the band’s creative peak.  Musically and lyrically it is as artful, un-obvious, non-cliche as a rock band of their stature is going to get.  A lot of people I know actually make fun of this particular song’s lyrics; they might seem truly random, silly, or meaningless to some.  But I beg to differ, and think he’s working on on higher level than just about any songwriter ever, on this song, and the whole Secret Samadhi album (for a more detailed breakdown of my opinion of the lyrics to “Rattlesnake”, click the link above about why you should love LIVE).

And there is just some very special feeling, upon hearing those foreboding, badass few chords, and the slow rock creep that starts out the song, in knowing that sound is designed to thematically represent the life we live here in Central PA, and the thoughts and feelings of not being a hunter or truck driver, and not “skinning hunted deer”.  In another place, in another time…

Do yourself a favor, Chachi, and watch the live performance video after the studio version I’ve embedded here.

“Rattlesnake” by LIVE

Let’s go hang out at a mall,
or a morgue, a smorgasbord.
Let’s go hang out in a church,
we’ll go find Lurch,
and we’ll haul ass down to the abbey.
Is it money, is it fame?
What’s in a name? Shame?
Is it money, is it fame
or were they always this lame?

It’s a crazy, crazy mixed up town,
but it’s the rattlesnake I fear.
In another place, in another time,
I’d be drivin’ trucks, my dear.

Let’s go hang out in a bar.
It’s not too far.
We’ll take my car.
We’ll lay flowers at the grave
of Jesco White, the sinner’s saint.
The rack is full, and so are we
of laughing gas and ennui.

It’s a crazy, crazy mixed up town
but it’s the rattlesnake I fear.
In another place, in another time,
I’d be drivin’ trucks my dear
I’d be skinning hunted deer.

 

 

 

My 12th Favorite Song of All-Time

is:

“Everything In Its Right Place” by Radiohead

A song whose tone and tenor will forever be, to me, about early recovery, the first snow of the year, smoking delicious cigarettes in freezing cold cars, and the hottest sex imaginable.

“Everything In Its Right Place”
by Radiohead.

Everything in its right place.
Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon.
Everything in it’s right place.
There are two colors in my head;
what was that you tried to say?
Everything in its right place.