Ok, so here I am listening to the new Death Cab album. Here's a little background: the boys and I had a little falling out right about the time of plans, although it kind of started before that. Anyway, I've spent the past few years saying nothing will ever make me excited about Death Cab for Cutie again. Then something does. It's a new album, recorded entirely on analog. Described "dark, scary, with lots of reverb." The First single (8:00 minutes), whcih burns itself right into your skull, and snakes around like a Rudyard Kipling cobra before flaring its hood into an honestly gutwrenching plea, beyond the regular Gibbard-crooner faire. Quite a feat. I'm excited.

I can honestly say I would have expected slightly less from them for redemption, even though at the time I set the bar awfully high. I can't seem to find that place to press "pause" in the album so you can conveniently do some menial task.

Ben Gibbard gets personal redemption for proving not to be a Kerouac fan just for fashion, and capturing the hallucinogenic ether in which I experience Big Sur, and condensing it into a shoegazing dreamscape of guitars, bass, and drums. If you get it, you get it, so I won't bother trying to explain it.

There's some truly creative spots on this album. I guess I should give Ben Gibbard a little bit more credit (I always just assumed him to be the cutesy face whose songs Chris Walla rescued). A personal favorite moment is the straight up Kevin-Shields-guitar rip in Talking Bird, twisted around Death Cabified™ into a new slurry. Right after that, it spins us around and confronts us with a marching-beat pop song. Then, before the WTF-factor even begins to wear off, it flows into one of the most striking songs on the album, Grapevine Fires. I can't help feeling that it sounds kind of like the Eagles, if there were a good way for Death Cab to sound like the Eagles (I fully expect people to think I'm crazy on this one).

Speaking of things people will call me crazy for, I get a distinct Fugazi and/or Pinback vibe from
Your New Twin Size Bed.

The point is, expect more than a couple curved balls your way. Relax. Go with them. If you fight it, you'll have a bad trip. There's ones I won't even allude to here. You get to find them all yourself. Now go and do it so we can have something to talk about.

I AM IN UR USED RECORD STORE
SCORIN UR RARE COCTEAU TWINS EPS FOR 2 DOLLAZ

ZOMG NEW HELIO SEQUENCE!

Seriously. Zomg. The amazing drone-rock-y-ness of it makes my head swim. It will definitely be a divisive album among us old-school fans, though. They're definitely turning over a new leaf ... sort of a hybrid of classic Modest Mouse and Jesu, as sung by the Helio Sequence. I don't know how to explain it, but I know I like it ... it's in the mail from Sub Pop as we speak. I'll write about it when I get the physical CD and can devote some time to getting stoned and lying on the floor with my headphones on listening to analyzing it.

So today I went to CD World to pick up Field Manual, Chris Walla's solo album. I'm listening to it right now, and I can already tell you I'm not sure how I feel about it -- but more on that after I've given it a fair shot to sink in, and I'm motivated by more than a terminal case of "What the fuck? This isn't Marten Youth Auxiliary!" Anyway, I seldom go to the place, because it's a bit of a drive from where I live, and I happen to be more a fan of House of Records for selection, ambiance, and amiability. While I was there I decided to dig through their bargain bin on the outside chance that a mislabeled Mission of Burma bootleg would have slipped in, or something else made of equal amounts of win.

After a minute, I had concluded that I needed to talk to the person who picked albums for it and ask them one simple question: Are you fucking crazy? My Bloody Valentine? (Loveless, none the less) Dinosaur Jr.? Hüsker Dü? Built to Spill? Modest Mouse? (Before they sucked ... the first time) Bad Religion? Lou Reed? UGH! WHY do you do this to me?

Their response to my question would dictate one of two actions by me. If they responded with a knowing smirk and a wink, I'd probably walk up and hug them -- or maybe even, if they were so fortunate as to be a cute indie girl or effeminate man -- give them a nice friendly kiss on the cheek and bum-groping. I'd then walk out a happy man. But, if they just stared at me blankly with a little bit of drool dribbling from their lower lip, they'd earn a nice quick punch in the balls. I'd then walk out a happy man.

I did neither though. See, lately my bank statement has been looking sort of like a sunburned zebra (penguin covered in jam? Menstruating newspaper? Portland Jail-Blazer game? Ah, whatever), so I decided I would hold off until AFTER I had thoroughly pillaged the bin on payday. CD World, expect to see me Wednesday. I'll have a wheelbarrow. Guard yr nutsack.

Once upon a time, I experienced real heartbreak.

Not that kind of high school “Omigawd I love(d) her, look what she did to me” sort of heartbreak … the kind that leads you to clod around the house barefoot for four days, wearing the same sweater and ripped pair of jeans you wore the day before, because you just don’t see the need to do laundry. The kind that makes you start of the morning with Irish coffees … the kind that makes you lie in bed for three hours after you were supposed to leave for work, because you just don’t see the need to get up. If you’ve been there, you know it. If not, you’re lucky, but it will probably happen at some point (I’m sorry). In hindsight, I can’t help but think that if I had this album, things might have been a little bit easier. Not any better, mind you. Nothing helps when you’re feeling so lost. It might just have gone a little bit … easier.

Judging from the Mountain Goats’ 2006 release “Get Lonely,” John Darnielle has experienced this too. So much so, that he wrote an entire album about it. Centered around the weeks following what seems to be an failed marriage, each track represents a day-in-the-life of a guy who’s trying to just make it through the days, one day at a time, while everything around him just serves as a reminder. It’s different than the usual lo-fi indie-folk fare, though, in that rather than saying “you’re depressed? I’m depressed too,” it seems to say “let’s be depressed together … I understand.” There’s in inescapable feeling that, even if the details of the situation are foreign, you know exactly what he’s talking about. Someone who I greatly respect once said that “the pain of life is in the details” … OK, so maybe that person was me, but it doesn’t change the profoundness of it.

The lyrics on “Get Lonely” are all about the details. The ache of driving by the movie theater and, for a second, looking to see if there’s anything you want to see before realizing that you have no one to see it with. The feeling of such intense loneliness that you go find a public place and walk around just so that you feel like you’re with people. The kind that makes you want to spend time with family you may otherwise try to ignore, because … well … you don’t really know why.

“On the morning when I woke up without you for the first time
I felt free and I felt lonely and I felt scared
And I began to talk to myself almost immediately
Not being used to being the only person there

The first time I made coffee for just myself, I made too much of it
But I drank it all just cause you hate it when I let things go to waste
And I wandered through the house like a little boy lost in the mall
And an astronaut could've seen the hunger in my eyes from space

And I sang
Oh, What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
What do I do without you?”
- Get Lonely

(Ouch.)

“I will rise up early and dress myself up nice
And I will leave the house and check the deadlock twice
And I will find a crowd and blend in for a minute
And I will try to find a little comfort in it

And I will get lonely
And gasp for air
And send your name off from my lips
Like a signal flare

And I will go downtown, stand in the shadows of the buildings
And button up my coat, trying to stay strong - spirit willing
And I will come back home, maybe call some friends
Maybe paint some pictures, it all depends”
- Get Lonely

(Double-ouch.)


“Saw you on the crosstown bus today
You were reading a magazine
I turned my face away
And I shut my eyes tight
Dreamed about the flowers that hide from the light
On dark hillsides in the hidden places

The brakes howled and the bus pulled up near my house
And I got off at the corner
Pulled my sleeves down over my hands, over my hands
And I wished I was someone else
And I wished it was warmer.”
- In the Hidden Places

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoracotomy)

Perhaps what saves this from falling into that dreaded realm of “emo” is that there’s that certain hint disconnect and humorous irony in the music that keeps you from feeling too bad about yourself. Darnielle is writing about events – not feelings. In doing so, he unmasks the darkness within, and shows that it really has no power over us … oh, Jesus, I’m going high-school goth on us now ... I better cut this short. I mean, after all, if this guy lived through it, why can’t you? Good question. Thanks, John. Yer a good guy.

George Orwell's original preface to "Animal Farm," which was censored by the publisher. There's nothing for me to say here. He already did it all for me. Just read it: http://www.orwell.ru/library/novels/Animal_Farm/english/efp_go

It isn't that I hate football, per se, so much as people who like football. Subtle difference: hate the player, not the game. I wouldn't even say that I have anything against the concept of a herd of highly-trained genetically engineered mutants bashing each other's skulls into the ground ... it's a lot like a frat bar only with brighter colors. No; I hate professional sports because they have become an exercise in caring.

But unlike any civic duty, society gains virtually no benefit from its exercise. Clusters of testosterone-swelled Neanderthals paint their bodies in the colors of their tribes and make their pilgrimage to chest thump against the opposing tribes.

Believe! Obey! Fight! MOYC* is Always Right!

Repeatedly, I overhear 20-something males bragging that they only cry when it's acceptable ... namely, when their Team loses. That is the unmistakable lesson to the American male as he grows up: Be tough. Emotion is weakness. Weakness is not manly. Man is power. Power is good. Be good for your nation(/team).

Now. Perhaps I'm one of those intellectual, post-hardcore, drone-loving, pre-apocalyptic renaissance men; but I think there are plenty more acceptable reasons to show emotion. For example, the sense of emptiness that fills you after the loss of a loved one. For example, the empathy of watching someone you care about go through heartbreak. For example, getting your penis stuck in a sliding glass door. All things that suck.

In fact, one of the things I don't think is worth showing emotion over is something as completely pointless as less points being scored by a group of strangers who you for some arbitrary reason align yourself with. So, why do we care?

Is it our first indoctrination into Jingoism? Is it our way of breaking our social world into smaller spheres so that "We" can feel a part of something and feel superior to "Them"? Is it that we're so emotionally bloated, that we'll take some reason -- any reason -- to care?

Don't ask me. I don't get it either.



* MOYC: (prop. n. - m-oy-k) Mascot of Your Choice. A politically correct phrasing to evoke whichever sports mascot is preferred by the reader

Thurston Moore's name may have become synonymous with ear-piercing walls of feedback and distorted wankery, but his newest solo release "Trees Outside the Academy" proves the old adage that distortion doesn't make the man. Even after trading in his Fender Jazzmaster for an acoustic dreadnaught, he creates a sound that will ring familiar to Sonic Youth fans.

What does it sound like? Think Neutral Milk Hotel fronted by Moore. Probably the best comparison would be Elliott Smith to his punk rock group, Heatmiser: all of the elements you know and love are there, just in a slightly retooled fashion. Truth be told, any of these tracks would have sounded at home electrified on the Youth's last album, "Rather Ripped" -- but here they are wrapped up in lush instrumentation that allow Moore to show is more ... erm ... intimate side.

Squeaking violins and heavy uses of sampling replicate the usual SY dissonance, allowing his trademark hipster drawl to shine through as we have become use to, and the electrified moments of the album are provided by the J Mascis -- fucking LEGEND extraordinaire (and trust me, you know the instant he enters.)

Probably the most pleasing thing about the album, though, is the exception job of pacing. Most rock albums seem to have their tracks arranged to provide a strong intro and finish, but often lead the listener to press 'Skip' a couple times towards the middle. Not so here. No sooner is Moore done with a so-earnest-his-eyes-bleed track (see: "Fri/End" or "Never Light"), than the tempo picks up and we're thrown into a full on punk number like "Wonderful Witches." It's these songs that provide the most rewarding spans on the album, when we're reminded that, even though his band would be fully capable of playing in the midst of a power outage, he's still an utter badass -- and we best not forget it.

There's more than a couple cuts from the album up for free download on the website of his self-run label, Ecstatic Peace! ... so stop reading and go listen, already.