Matt: January 2007 Archives

I seem to be tired all the time. Tired of making the 50-mile round trip commute to school and work seven days a week. Tired of only working for 2.5 hours after driving half an hour to be there and walking away with $25 in my pocket. Tired of being sick. Tired of classes and reading and grades. I need a vacation.

But at least the music's good.

The new Panda Bear album, Person Pitch leaked. I thought the Bro's 12" that came out a few weeks ago was outstanding, like a 21st century Beach Boys on (more) LSD. Almost every song on the album is just as good. Lots of people really love the more abstract noise-folk that the Animal Collective offers up on their albums. I've always been a bigger fan of their poppier and more accessible songs (obviously you'll never find an actual pop song from AC), like "Chocolate Girl" and "Winter's Love." That must be why I love Panda Bear's solo stuff so much, he really is the pop backbone of the collective.

Plus how cool is this album art?

Explosions in the Sky's All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone also leaked a while back, though I never wrote about it. It's good, and continues with the more restrained Explosions we've come to know and love since The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place though are no real standout tracks like "Your Hand in Mine" or "Greet Death."

Woodpigeon is a quiet, folky, indie-pop outfit from Calgary that I was turned on to by Said the Gramophone. I listened to the songs on their myspace and then bought the album on iTunes (thanks for the Christmas gift cards, everyone). Excellent album, especially "Home As a Romanticized Concept, etc." that you can hear on their myspace and "Feedbags."

Ok, I'm done.

I've come to realize more and more that one of my favorite things about music is all the great parts of songs, and not necessarily always songs as a whole. That is, a song can be good or middling, but if there's a brilliant bridge or maybe nothing more than a particularly powerful chord I'll love the song and listen to it like no other. I might make this a recurrring feature on this blog, but I'll just post up a few illustrations right now.

David Pajo - Ten More Days
Time: 0:00-0:12
The opening nine seconds are great, but that single strum at the nine second mark is the best part of the entire song. It somehow reminds me of taking road trips with my family as a child and listening to James Taylor. The rest of the song is somewhere between mediocre and pretty good but at least I can just keep hitting back and listen to the opening over and over again.

Joanna Newsom - Sawdust and Diamonds
Time: 4:48-6:10
The entire song is fabulous, but that part smack in the middle of the song, the "why the long face" section...oh my God. It's a horrible cliché, but I literally get goosebumps every time I listen to it. And that's a lot of times.

The Wrens - 13 Months in Six Minutes
Time: 5:05-6:50
This one is only worth it after the payoff of listening to the rest of the song first. The song tells the tale of the disintegration of a relationship due to little more than apathy, and the regret that follows. Heartbreakingly good song. But the final section, when the band drops out leaving the single hestitantly strummed electric guitar to be overtaken by a propulsive and, basically, totally different 45-second song is not only one of the most awkward transitions I've ever heard but one of the best.

I was just going back and reading a couple older entries, and saw this one in particular. I realized that my "X-Mas wishlist" of a Wii and a French Press turned out to be exactly what I got. Woo, go mom and dad! So either they know me really well or they have high reading comprehension. Either way, sweet.

Phew, that was close. I thought I might have lost my site there for a second. I tried upgrading MovableType to version 3.3, something went awry and suddenly I had no more access to my blog. Luckily I had the foresight to back up all my entries, but all my templates and comments would have been lost. Thankfully I fixed a few permissions here and a Perl location there and things seem to be hunky dory again.

It's been a busy couple weeks, Christmas, then New Years, then school starting again and all the while workingworkingworking. It's nice to be busy, but always an adjustment after several weeks of a relatively sedentary lifestyle.

I like my classes this quarter. Advanced Desktop Publishing promises to be the challenge that Beginning Desktop Publishing never was. My American Literature survey hasn't seen the most interesting reading material yet—for some reason I haven't ever been able to enjoy Colonial American Literature—but the professor is fascinatingly dorky and ridiculously enthusiastic about the material and is really making class fun. And I'm also enrolled in a wine tasting course, which is already fun and we've barely got into the real meat of actual tasting of different wines yet. I'm really looking forward to actually developing a palate for wine like I have recently for beer.

God, I love the unrestricted elective requirement.

And now for something completely different. Have you ever found yourself feeling almost sorry for the makers of the relics of your childhood, as if yours was the only generation that could experience those things? Also, it's almost embarrasing to find out that they're still being made. For example, did you know that they're still writing new Berenstain Bears books? When I see that I almost feel bad for poor Stan and Jan Berenstain. Don't they know my sisters and I no longer read them? I feel, even while realizing how foolish it is, that there couldn't possibly be kids who actually read Berenstain Bears, that it was strictly a c. 1988-1993 phenomenon. And I'm pretty sure I felt morbidly embarassed for R.L. Stine the exact second I decided to stop reading Goosebumps books.

It's like the first time I saw Jimmy Eat World when I was in high school, before they got on the radio, and I worried that my friends and I would be the only ones in the audience, and wouldn't that be embarassing. Somehow, in my subconscious, my enjoyment of a piece of media is necessary for the continued success of that media. I think this might be a common phenomenon, but then again I might be alone here. If so it probably speaks volumes as to my sense of self importance, and my future therapists will do well to visit this blog.