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Reader @nickpepito sent me this album because one of his friends is in this band. He didn’t think I’d like it but sent it to me hoping for an unbiased opinion, for whatever reason, I am not sure which.

I listened to the first track (Pendergast Machine) a group of people and then immediately rushed home and pulled out $500 worth of headphone equipment—-my old pair of Sennheiser HD-580 and a custom built amp—-blew off the dust of two years of neglect, plugged it all in and together, and then lied down in bed and got ready to fall into what I was hoping would be a ridiculously awesome album.

Luckily I wasn’t let down. Track number two, Hold My Feet to the Fire, sets the tone for the whole album. It is some sort of combination of Kings of Leon mixed with Old 97’s mixed with Akron/Family and all around a really good time. (If I was to pick at one thing, the chant at the end could have been repeated five or six times, and I hope if I see them live [on August 7th in Los Angeles, of course] that they know to extend that rave-up at the very end for all the crowd’s enjoyment.) If you can listen to this song and not become excited then I don’t know what you’re doing here. (My favorite part of the whole thing, and why I am so glad I hooked up my audiophile cans to listen to this album, is how the chant at the end suddenly ends and we’re left with a softly finger-picked guitar and a whisper of a voice left still singing away in the background.)

Fourth track, What Shepherds of These Hills shows more depth than Kings of Leon could ever muster even if they tried really hard (and if they did muster, it would sound silly and insincere), a moody and unorthodox stomp with sinister lyrics and an ominous vibe, touched up with clinks and clanks that come at you from various directions and give the whole thing a Flannery O’Connor american gothic sort of vibe that makes me all moon eyed and infatuated.

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Close Every Valve to Your Bleeding Heart is an intense song. I don’t know what else to say about it, but that it is haunting and beautiful and powerful and reminds me so much of the moments where the death of hope hit me too hard.

The album as a whole—-genius title, Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South, aside—-is brilliantly paced and constructed. It doesn’t lag in the last third like most albums do, though while lying in bed So Quiet They’re Loud actually lulled me into a pleasant dream, and over all I don’t really have any complaints about it at all. If I was to assign a numerical value to this album it would be…

10.

Buy it.

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This is one of those songs that is absolutely incredible to sing along with while you’re cruising down the road. Definitely one of my all time favorite “male-empowerment” songs. “You know what, bitch?” this song says, “I ain’t going to take any more of your shit, I’m out!”

Someone on SongMeanings says this song is ya’llternative and that made me laugh pretty hard.

Nothing introspective today. I’ve never really walked out on a woman. All the times I should have I ended up staying. Poor Brad…

In six months it will be 2010 and we’ll officially be living in the future. It’s going to be crazy.

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Hey, it’s the end of the month! Kind of crept up on me. I can’t believe we’re already half-way through 2009.

I bite my tongue so much in the presence of certain people. (I’m specifically talking about these people, who I’m sitting around right now trying to write this while they attempt to distract me by suggesting that I write, “There are certain politicians who do not have the planet’s best interest in mind and we must identify them and eradicate them!” but that seems so… fucking for virginity, you know?)

Sometimes I’m not sure if this song describes the ideal woman or not. I don’t think I’ve ever known a girl like this—-she sounds like a real bitch, but also someone hot as hell. I’m just all sorts of confused on this issue. I don’t know who the ideal woman is. I know that she smells good, and when she looks me in the eyes I feel lucky.

Space’s first album is a freaky brit-pop menagerie of darkness. I discovered Space via a song they did for the Lost in Space movie soundtrack (a movie which I was unfortunately addicted to as a youth, complete with massive crush on Lacey Chabert) which was almost nothing like what this album contains. Much like what I’ve been doing here lately: this song isn’t at all representative of what is on the album, this is basically a bonus track at the end of the album.

You might remember a song called “Female of the Species” that was featured in the first Austin Powers movie (specifically, I think, turning the scene with the killer chick robots) and that song was by this band. There you go!

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It wasn’t until I realized that loving somebody wasn’t going to solve all of my problems that I started to fear commitment. For the first part of my early twenties (if you can even assign ‘parts’ to the early twenties, but for the sake of this we’ll just say this was my years 18-23) I thought I’d always be a hopeless romantic, a constant victim of unrequited love, bouncing back and forth between two types of women: those who want something from me, and those who just don’t want to be alone. Countless failed and awful relationships taught me one thing, I thought: I’ll always be the victim of unrequited love, even within a relationship.

I never understood guys who were afraid of commitment; the ones that pretty girls cry about, the ones that leave behind beautiful women. I always thought: how could you not just want to hold onto someone, no matter what?

But now I’ve got the fear in me, too.

It wasn’t a broken heart that taught me that I shouldn’t love someone. It wasn’t selfish women stringing me along for their own purposes that made me unable to trust. It wasn’t even being cheated on that made me embittered and sad. In truth, I never learned any of those things, no matter how many times the world tried to teach them to me.

It wasn’t until I stopped expecting that adding someone else into my life would fix all of my problems that I started to fear commitment. It makes sense, really: it was the constant feeling of need to have someone in my life that motivated me to want to be with someone so badly. Now that I no longer feel that I need to have someone in my life, I’ve suddenly realized that I no longer have to settle or work around someone else’s undesirable characteristics.

My ex, as we were breaking up with the the second time, kept saying that relationships are work, relationships are work, relationships are work, and you have to be willing to work for them. In the context of what we were having issues with, she meant that relationships are about working past the things that annoy you about your lover. “Work” is actually just willfully ignoring or letting go of the things that bug you. I found myself in a position where I didn’t feel like I wanted to work, not in the way, that a good relationship not necessarily shouldn’t be work, but at least shouldn’t feel like work, and it always felt like work to me.

I don’t know what love is, now, simply because I’ve lost all touch with what I used to think love felt like. Love was that dangerous feeling, where I felt like logic and control are slipping away from me and being absorbed by a constant feeling of need and desire. I can’t even feel this way anymore, so I feel detached entirely from emotion. Not all emotion, but what I’ve always thought emotion was, like a fish that’s jumped from one bowl into an entirely new and unfamiliar bowl and is consequently shitting his fishy pants and crying that the world he knew turned and left him there merely because he didn’t even realize he switched bowls.

Now it’s dawning on me that I’ve switched bowls, and the anxiety of no longer “knowing what love is” is waning and It’s finally dawning on me that I’ve got to figure out what is going to make me feel like I’m in love. I’m still coming from the angle of “what need can a relationship fulfill in my life?” but now instead of answering that question with things like “direction, ambition, a reason to wake up in the morning” I can think clearly of things an ideal woman would bring to my life, like “companionship, warmth, understanding, hot sexiness, cool headedness”.

It’s scary, but it’s also exciting. I feel lost a lot of the time, like I’m being swallowed by all the indecision that my newfound clear-headedness brings me, but it’s a lot better than feeling like I’m wallowing in nothing but self-pity and fear. I wonder how long it’ll be before I feel love again, and of course, melodramatically, I wonder if I will ever find it again… But until then, I’m going to be happy.

Your lesson for the day: A relationship isn’t going to solve your problems. If you think it is, then you’re going to have a lot of trouble in life.

Song Note: The Magnolia soundtrack doesn’t seem to be up for download on Amazon MP3 and I don’t talk about Magnolia here, so instead I link to a Harry Nilsson tribute album I’ve never listened to before.

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If you’re ever curious as to who is really responsible for the early sound of Elvis Costello’s records, then here he is. I like to play this song back to back with “Green Shirt” off Costello’s Armed Forces, because they are so similar.

Jesus of Cool is a terribly schizophrenic album, jumping back and forth across not only styles and genres, but mood and theme. I don’t even know what to say about it, really, so I feel kind of shitty about it.

Let’s see…

Uh…

Jesus of Cool is cool… uh…

Nick Lowe… he… hmm…

Well, fuck! Who gives a shit!

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I had the pleasure of seeing Rodriguez for free Friday night (last night, technically, but I am writing this on Monday). There’s not much I can say about the show except to say that the band that backs him is totally competent in reproducing the instrumental genius of Cold Fact and even, in some cases, improving upon the original recordings—-like in Sugar Man the normally straight-laced seeming long-haired guitarist with the googly eyes performed a raucous guitar solo complete with hair flailing and tendons in his arms throbbing while he wailed on the tremolo.

The man himself was the Mexican equivalent of Ozzy Osborne, shuffling his feet and wandering across the stage as if partially confused. The band would whisper things to him and grab his arm and point him toward the mic, at which point he’d say something only mostly confusing and laugh at himself (”I don’t trust a band that drinks… and I don’t trust a band that doesn’t drink… heh heh heh…”). The minute a song started, however, he was nothing but a professional, playing each song wonderfully and singing it just as well, as if a day hasn’t passed since he recorded his albums in the 70’s.

Cold Fact itself is just as great as any of the numerous reviews you’ll find on the internet are. Rodriguez’ lyrics are relatively simple, and at times near-silly in their simplicity, but you can’t deny his natural talent for writing good songs. What really makes the album, however, is the near flawless instrumentation across the whole thing. Every song features not only the hook that Rodriguez wrote into his song, but instrumental hooks and flourishes courtesy of a talented group of musicians you can find named in those aforementioned reviews elsewhere on the ‘net.

If you haven’t sat down and listened to Cold Fact at least a couple times, you’re missing out on one of the best albums out of the 1970’s that I can guarantee you’ve never heard.

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This is day 200! How cool! Only 165 to go until I’ve hit a whole year. This is the longest non-dysfunctional relationship I’ve ever had with anything, even my cat.

Dukes of Stratsophear are XTC indulging their utmost love of psychedelic music. The new issue of this album is supposed to have cool liner notes, but since you probably don’t get those with an MP3 copy, there’s a cool page over on Chalkhills (an XTC fan site) with the band’s description of what each song is a homage to which is a great companion to Chocolate Fireball and works on it’s own as a good introductory course to the variety of styles of psychedelia that existed between the US and EU, without even featuring a real song from the era.

There are SO MANY good songs on this record. Really! What better way to ring in my 200th day?