staires!

When I visited Amsterdam, my only real negative experience at a coffee shop was when I was sitting out on a patio listening to a group of very insufferable and obviously wealthy 20-something’s talking loudly about the imaginary woes of their affluent lifestyle. This was day two, after a day one where I met some very interesting people who exposed me to new worldviews, the stereotypical “sheltered American travels abroad” experience, so the shift was jarring.

I feel like this Lorde album will be very influential and important to that sort of person because Lorde sings very frankly and honestly about the experience of being one of those people. No real responsibilities, their entire twenties are just The Teens Part 2, pretending that there’s something poignant and significant in the way they looked at themselves in the mirror while brushing their teeth that morning. It’s… very annoying.

Which is a shame, because the production (or sound design, whatever the kids are calling it these days) is fantastic. This song specifically, “Man of the Year”, is a sonic journey, a tour de force. Her voice itself evolves as the song goes on, from raw to robotic. It’s stupendous. I love it. The rest of the album might not be quite as experimental as this song, but overall it sounds fantastic and no one could legitimately complain about it.

But good lord, the lyrics, sometimes my eyes are too busy rolling for me to really enjoy the music.

I think I’m probably in the beginning stages of what will pass for my midlife crisis, and a big part of it seems to be taken up by nostalgia of the glorious era of media that existed between 1996 to 2001.

If you were around back then, you know that electronic music got positively huge, and for a teenager in that time period who enjoyed staying up late at night, you got your fix from MTV’s Amp, a late night celebration of electronica.

It’s hard to imagine a single CD full of as many great songs as the first MTV’s Amp compilation, which features this fantastic mix of “Are You There” by Josh Wink, which seems to be a condensed version of the “(95 Remix)” from the 2014 compilation.

Enjoy!

You may or may not have noticed that staires.org quietly switched away from Wordpress.

Why would you have noticed that? Perhaps you are very strange.

Either way, we’re back in action and after an extended break caused by Wordpress.com being very annoying (and expensive). Expect to see more posts, more frequently, and less extended breaks? We’ll see.

HEALTH has spent the past 20 years refining their sound and craft incredible soundscapes, this song now joining the ranks of, uh, industrial dance goth bangers. I’m just going to call them industrial dance goth, you can’t stop me.

Enjoy! I have nothing else to say but I did not want to just move all the current blog posts over without posting something new.

Back in 2019, Cheekface released their debut album, a record that’s difficult to categorize without simply listening to it. It’s kind of post-punk, kind of pop, and mostly spoken-word; it’s quirky, clever, and nearly danceable.

Now it’s 2025 and Cheekface has released their fifth album—but I just don’t have the stomach for it. Greg Katz is trying to move beyond simple monotone spoken-word vocals by singing a lot more, and there’s maybe even a hint of auto-tune on his vocals. It’s… horrible.

Cheekface has a rabid fanbase, so I say this with trepidation. I mean no offense to Greg Katz—it’s not that his vocals are inherently bad, it’s just that I started listening to Cheekface for songs like “Dry Heat/Nice Town”, and a song like “Living Lo-fi” is… not like that song.

They might as well be two entirely different genres, even if they share the same core components. It’s like ordering a steak burrito and getting a carne asada plate—similar, sure, but fundamentally different.

It’s unfortunate, but sometimes a band can only extract so much magic from a single schtick. Maybe the original Cheekface formula had a lifespan of two solid albums, one decent album, and now we’re two records into the (hopefully short-lived) awkward years.

Luckily, we can always revisit those two solid albums, then jump to the last track of their third, “Vegan Water“—which I’d argue is not only the last truly great Cheekface song, but possibly their best. It’s akin to how Arcade Fire closed out their last good album with their finest work, “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)“.

Holy shit, this song is so fucking good. I don’t know what else to say about it. When I heard it for the first time, my ears pricked up, and my eyes widened. Will this already be my favorite song of 2025?

This is the kind of Vulfpeck song that I live for! When they get too soft and slow, they kind of lose me, but this song, and the rest of this live album, are a revelation. I don’t want to heap too much hyperbole onto Vulfpeck because there’s the rest of the world to do that already (and they do that already, check out this recent review of one of their concerts).

Not that it is unjustified in any way. Vulfpeck is most excellent. Enjoy!

I turned 40 this month, which, I’m told, is quite the milestone. As one of my friends said, “lots of people didnt make it that far so yeah yay it up”.

Yes, indeed, let us ‘yay it up’.

I want to feel some type of way about turning 40, but I really don’t, which, I suppose, is feeling some type of way about it. I could say that I never thought I would make it this far, but I said that when I turned 30 so it’s kind of a cop out to say it again. When I turned 30, it was pretty obvious I was going to make it to 40 and beyond. We’ve been smooth sailing for a while now.

Scott Lucas is turning 55 this year, and it’s crazy to think that I am older now than he was when I first saw Local H play back in June of 2004 (and have been for a few years). Though I suppose that is how the slow and insidious march of time works, so I shouldn’t be surprised. This day was always going to come. (And how cool is it that there is a great bootleg of that show on the internet? I love you, internet.)

I guess at the end of the day, I don’t have a lot to say about getting older. I feel the same that I did before, like I’m still in my early 20’s but for some reason there’s a lot more hair trying to grow out of my ears than ever before, and I hate that aspect of it more than anything, that I have to shave my ears now. What an indignity.

Okay, let’s just agree to pretend that it hasn’t been nearly four months since the last time I posted. I don’t want to dwell on it, you don’t want to dwell on it; quite frankly, we’re all tired of thinking about it. This is a new thing, but also an old thing, for both of us, it was bound to get going in fits and starts.

With that out of the way, I proudly present to you, my most listened to song of 2023. The previous song that I posted, My Room, did end up being my most listened to song of 2024, by a country mile. So, we’re sticking with the theme, we’re going further back in time.

I really, really love this song. I’m pretty sure it was the first Hamish Hawk song I ever heard, and it feels practically designed for me in the way most of my most favorite media does. This song dabbles in magical realism, personal myth-making, crippling self-doubt, and a deep longing to connect to something greater than yourself and this world. It’s just… so beautiful.

Just the opening lyrics alone are poetry.

Back in the wretched day
I was ill-shapen clay
and suffering didn’t fit me

Is he talking about primordial, mythological or medieval times, or just what it is like being a misfit teenager? I could go on and on about what I think the song is about from there, but half the fun is sorting it out for yourself. So, go on then, what do you think it’s all about?

If the lyrics weren’t already good enough, you also get it delivered via Hamish’s voice, supported by the gorgeous instrumentation behind the song. It all works together seamlessly to craft a bizarre anthem that I’ll be singing to myself until the end of my life.

This is undoubtedly my #1 song of 2024. It’s already the top track on my Replay 2024, and I have no idea how anything could unseat it.

I’m not really a fan of Ty Segall, and I can’t say I even enjoy this album (Three Bells) very much, but this song (and one other, “My Best Friend”, paired with a video of Segall’s dachshunds) is a laser-guided missile directly into my id. I’ve listened to it at least 30 times, which is 2 solid hours of “My Room”, if you add it all up. So, yeah, I like this song a lot.

I love everything about how it’s structured, how the layers build and complement each other. I’ve been trying to make some of my own music this past year, and some part of my motivation is how insanely proud I would be of myself if I made a song of my own that I like as much as I like this song. It doesn’t have to sound like this song, I just want to like it as much.

I wonder if such a thing is possible? I feel like I’ve read so many interviews with artists who say they don’t watch or listen to their own work. (Are there authors who read their own books? Outside of when it is necessary?) On the other hand, I remember reading that one reason for the existence of The Dandy Warhols was that they wanted to make the kind of music they wanted to get drunk to.

I suppose it seems absurd, thinking about it more, the idea that some possible majority of people are making music that they don’t want to listen to themselves. You’d hope, since the act of creation is so deeply indebted to our influences (I, too, want to make the kind of music I want to get drunk to), that we’d always be appreciative of the outcome.

On the other hand, every time I hear my own voice singing, I am aghast, it does not remind me of any of my influences. But perhaps I have yet to discover the proverbial voice within me, that sounds unlike me even to myself, or at least that summons some reaction that causes me to call it “the voice” like Michael Stipe does. Oh, let’s set a low bar, shall we?

Anyway, I like this song a lot.

I’m a bit late to this one, as this album came out much earlier this year. I know about Rosie Tucker thanks to her very, very good 2021 release Sucker Supreme. I am pleased to say that her new release, Utopia Now!, is a suitable follow up and provides us with more of the same 90’s flavored indie rock, with whip-smart lyrics and a litany of “Rosie Tucker”-isms that permeate this very song. Major kudos to her and her collaborators (shout out to Wolfy), they’re consistently delivering albums that sound really, really good.

I don’t have much to say here. I can owe my fandom to Rosie Tucker to Cheekface’s Greg Katz, who promoted Sucker Supreme on Twitter all those years ago, so I consider Rosie Tucker part of the Cheekface extended universe, if such a thing existed.

I’m shocked, I’m shaken, and I’m confused that this Personal Trainer album (Still Willing) isn’t the hottest fucking thing across the entirety of the Pitchfork-reading crew of nearly-40-somethings that secretly run the internet. The YouTube videos for these songs have barely broken 1K in most cases, and how can that be?

Opener “Upper Ferntree Gully” sounds like a love song to every fantastic indie rock album I’ve listened to that predates 2010. It just makes me so happy, the shifts and turns, the pure musical adventure that the song goes through. It’s not too much, it’s just enough, and it sets the scene for an album that is so playful, earnest, inventive, and… I just don’t have enough superlative adjectives in my collection to really do it justice.

As soon as I heard it, I sent it to a friend of mine, offering it up as “like a modern Grandaddy or Pavement?” And that’s still the comparison I’d make, which seems apt as Willem Smit blatantly references Pavement, and maybe it’d be fair to accuse me of cheating–did I even think they sounded like Pavement? Or did I just hear the word “Pavement” and run with it?

Maybe I’m being too effusive. Truth be told, the album was a grower for me. I loved the opening track right away, but I haven’t listened to Grandaddy or Pavement in… nearly ever. I didn’t know how to feel about the second and third tracks, at first, because they’re not really like anything I’m currently listening to. But the fourth track, “Round”, felt good right away, with an infectious hook, a horn section, falsetto “ooh”ing, a singalong chorus–all things that I cannot live without, musical motifs that wormed into my brain and forced me to keep spinning the record again and again.

Spinning the what? You’ll learn, you’ll learn.

Yet, somehow, inexplicably, I am posting “New Bad Feeling”, which hits like a gut punch right after the jubilation of “Round”, perfectly capturing the feeling of sitting alone in your room with nothing but your regrets and the white noise in your head. The soundtrack to those moments where you’d cry, if you could, but it would be a lie, because your feelings can’t even rise to the occasion, they’re not gonna break, the feeling’s never gonna cease, and you’ll always just be the same you, in the same place you always end up.

And then the song breaks, it says no, maybe not, maybe there’s something else, someone else–someone else outside yourself that you can draw power from. Then the album slinkily slides into “Intangible”, a funky R&B groove that’d fit right in on an Yip Deceiver album.

Anyway, I don’t need to describe the whole album for you, just go and listen to it, it’s a lot of fun.