I'm a lazy blogger. I like to take breaks and vanish. I realize in the day of the feed reader it's not so important. Does anyone actually click on a bookmark to my site on a daily basis checking for updates? Just subscribe to the feed! Then you can forget I even exist except when I update on that rare, week-blitzing way I do.

In truth, I've been distracted by a new computer that has been forcing me, with a gun in my mouth (it is a young, angry thing), to play video games I didn't get to play. It is an all-encompassing thing and I have not had ample opportunity to explore new music or even think about myself much beyond panicked flashed glimpses at the bizarre timeline of my life (the computer has a gun in my mouth, remember) with only brief reprieves to go to work in order to feed the beast with yet more video games. Oh, my life, it has become a tragedy.

Like this song! This song is a tragedy. Of sorts, I suppose, if a tragedy is really tragic if it's just about one person dying. I've never killed anybody, but I imagine if the day comes that I have to, it wont bother me very much because I'll know I did it because I had to. So let that be a warning to anyone out there who wants to try to kill me or my girlfriend, I will fuck your shit up, and I wont feel bad about it after, which might be the worst part of it all. Just think about that.

I've been off-topic for the last couple days. The original objective of my writing here was to explore what the songs I post mean to me, and I haven't done that in enough time to begin to annoy myself and feel self-centered enough to propose some heartfelt apology to my legion of 10 faithful readers. So, I'm sorry, but I seemed to have mined out most of my memories. That's it. That's all I can remember. I am, deep down, a boring failure. Oh, what can I do...

This song is about what it's like to have sex with someone for the first time. I don't really remember what my first time was like, but I don't think it was anything like this song. I'm not sure if I want to have sex so good that all my rough edges were worn off and I was beaten as smooth as driftwood. No thank you, I like my edges.

This album is pretty good but there was nothing on it that made me want to listen to it again. I can't like everything, I guess! But it's Friday so I don't give a fuck, yay!

Lackthereof is that other Menomena-related solo project (the other being Ramona Falls) and this one isn't really as strong as the other. Nothing against Danny Seim, but there's something lacking in a lot of the songs on this one. It's almost like Seim took the cool Menomena drums and Knopf ran off with everything else, which I suppose makes sense because it's Seim who plays the beats and Knopf who is the skilled multi-instrumentalist.

In my post about Ramona Falls, I stated how I couldn't really see myself listening to Intuit because of how emotionally exhausting it was, being all pensive near-funeral music. Lackthereof pretty much suffers from the same thing, where overall it's just very droll and sad sounding, like someone living a ridiculously boring life and not even realizing that is the reason they're so sad.

Listening to both these solo albums really makes me realize how fuckin' amazing Menomena truly is. Seim and Knopf make pretty enough music on their own, but when you combine the two of them (plus a third party) they churn out densely atmospheric pop songs I can't stop listening to even years later. That's some Lennon and McCartney shit right there.

This album is kind of like what would have happened if Billy Joe and his fellow Green Day bandmates had not turned into mainstream pop songwriters and instead of churning out the slickly polished and completely jagged-edge-free American Idiot had chosen to do something that was both highbrow concept and punk as fuck. Titus Andronicus' The Monitor is Welcome to Paradise meets Bruce Springsteen meets The Civil War. It's pretty much awesome.

I don't know how I could keep writing about the album after that paragraph. That's all there is to it. The songwriting is awesome, the music is mostly awesome, the album is relatively devoid of low points (though there are some) and my favorite lyric is from this song: "But there's only one dream that I keep close, and it's the one of my hand at your throat."

These guys should team up with Andrew Jackson Jihad. To do what, I am not sure, but to do something awesome.

I got an email from Casey Chandler, the guy behind Galapaghost asking me to check his stuff out. He sent me a number of tracks, but the one that really stuck out to me was this b-side (not on the Neptunes EP linked above), Runnin', which starts off a little weak until the tambourine kicks in. It's actually amazing how a simple tambourine (and a foot stomp) can add so much depth to a song.

What really separates Galapaghost from a couple of the other singer-songwriters who have emailed me who have been pretty much universally terrible is that he doesn't sound like he's doing something he shouldn't be. No matter what style he adopts on a song, he pretty much nails it. None of the songs sound insincere, nor like he's trying too hard.

A couple of the tracks on Neptunes sound like Jose Gonzales but not so I'm about to slit my wrists, which is a definite plus as far as I'm concerned. This Runnin' track sounds like everyone. Then the EP ends with Neptune, and unfortunately I don't have it sitting by me so I can't upload it to accompany this post right now (but you can listen on hypem), which adds some synthesizers and distortion to his guitar and he belts out something that sounds a lot like My Morning Jacket, and it's pretty damn good. They all sound pretty much great. Not perfect, but definitely great with a little room for improvement.

I'd say we should probably keep our eyes on this guy. (If I had to pick I hope he goes more in the direction of Neptune, 'cause that song is pretty good.)

This song takes about 2 minutes to get going, so give it time.

Dan Friel is one of the three guys behind Parts & Labor, one of my favorite bands that I've discovered in the last year or so. He's an interesting guy, armed with a keyboard and a set of effects pedals and other shit (probably one of those cool KORG boxes with the flashy light touchpad sound manipulator things) and if you're familiar at all with Parts & Labor it's pretty much immediately clear what his specialty is: crunchy electronic sounds.

On Ghost Town there is nothing but these sounds. No guitar, no real drums, no serious vocals, just an endless assault of the sounds of dying machines. It's surprisingly listenable, it never really descends into straight noise, and I like most of it. Unfortunately there's just not a lot of places to shove this kind of stuff into my daily music routine. This song is the only one that's made it into my normal shuffle rotation. The rest is just too weird, too noisy, for random consumption.

This is an album to listen to straight through, and not mixed with anything else. You gotta give yourself into the world of Dan Friel's electronic noise, which to me sounds like the world alluded to in Parts & Labor's Mount Misery (one of my super favorite songs, aww). This album is a desolate landscape filled with broken pieces of robots and a tattered remnants of civilization, and now you're dancing. Woo!

I was madly in love with Mass Solo Revolt's last album, Easy Mark (which I wrote about my feelings fairly in-depth here). Their second (or third, really) album I felt mostly lukewarm about.

Easy Mark was all punch and vibrancy, and it had a certain unpolished and rushed feeling to it that I'd liken somewhat to Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary. Much like how Wolf Parade's second album felt entirely different due to the restraint and polish poured all over it, MSR's Bend in Time feels the same way. A lot of the messy energy that defined Easy Mark is noticeably absent, and in its place there's a more controlled and maybe even paired-back sound.

It says a lot, I think, that the first time I listened to Easy Mark I just wanted to play it again (and again, and again, for about a whole week straight) but for this one, I listened once, maybe twice, and have mostly forgotten most of it. It's just not the same for me. Maybe I'll listen to it again in a few months, and find out I over-hyped myself on the idea of another Mass Solo Revolt album, and fall in love with it with a clear memory, but for now... I feel pretty feh about it, aside from this song, the opening track, which is nice (but almost a little too long).

I don't know much about Harlem Shakes, aside from liking this song a lot. I heard from my girlfriend that they broke up a little after releasing this album. I wonder why. I mean, this song is a lot of fun. I can't even remember listening to the rest of this album though. I also wonder what this song means. I want a coat of many colors. I don't think I'd sell it off online though. This post means relatively nothing, kind of like this song!

I liked this song enough to include it on my drifted away playlist which you can download for free. 23 songs for your listening pleasure, painstakingly crafted over the course of hours by me, someone who takes playlist construction possibly way too seriously, but that's for you to judge.

Have a good Monday!

When I was in middle school I developed an unhealthy obsession with Garbage. I say unhealthy because now that I'm older I realize most of Garbage's music is pretty terrible, but Shirley Manson did terrible awful things to my adolescent puberty-ravaged mind and I couldn't resist her sultry voice and her fake-red red red hair. This desire for redheads would unfortunately rear it's ugly head yet again my Freshman year of high school when I became embarrassingly enchanted with Vitamin C. I thought she was hot, and I actually listened to her music even though deep down it made me feel kind of supremely gay. (A girlfriend bought me the Vitamin C doll, which is so rare apparently that I can't find a picture of it on the internet.)

Vitamin C was the alter-ego for Colleen Fitzpatrick, a cute girl who prior to her wannabe Britney Spears days played in a power pop band called Eve's Plum which I sought out around the same time. Eve's Plum first album, Envy, was an interesting mix of power pop and snarling female vocals, which failed to make any sort of impression on MTV listeners of the day even though one of their music videos made it onto Beavis and Butthead. Their second album, Cherry Alive, traded in the snarling vocals for slick studio production and smooth vocals from Ms. Fitzpatrick and yet again, nobody gave a shit.

This is probably because it's ridiculously gay. I can't stomach the shit anymore, (especially the song Jesus Loves You (Not As Much As I Do) which makes me want to drop kick kittens into outer space whenever I hear it these days). I fondly remember Colleen Fitzpatrick these days as the incredibly sexy but ultimately sadly discarded redhead vampire from Dracula 2000.

The most unfortunate thing about Frightened Rabbit's new album is that there aren't any songs on it, not a single one, that packs the emotional punch of just thirty seconds of The Midnight Organ Fight. They all sound good, but that's all there is to them. On Organ Fight the lyrics carried a lot of weight and the music elevated that weight to even weightier levels (you know what I mean...) but on The Winter of Mixed Drinks the music bears all the weight and the lyrics are just kind of there.

Swim Until You Can't See Land, the song you've all heard by now I'm sure, is prime example of this. It's a pretty song, and it sounds good, but listen to it a couple times and try to tell me what it's about. You can't. You can guess, "Something, something, being a man is hard, wahh wahh," but what is that? The songs on Organ Fight each told a story, and they were all stories most of us could relate to or understand in some way. On Mixed Drinks there aren't any stories, just songs that are relatively meaningless.

Thankfully on the supposed Deluxe Edition (which I think exists only on torrent sites because even by Googling I couldn't find any mention of a deluxe edition anywhere else) there's this song, Fun Stuff which sounds and feels like it could have fit in just fine on Organ Fight. It's about sex, sorrow, and longing, the things Frightened Rabbit does best, and it's just... beautiful, in that "beautiful is synonymous with sad" sort of way. I love it. I just wish the album itself was this good.

It's easy to romanticize our memories of childhood. When you were a kid you never just went outside on a sunny day and walked around and thought about how novel it all was, you dashed outside and jumped on your bicycle and rode on it really fast darting into driveways and ramping off of curbs and you felt the wind in your hair and sometimes you felt so awesome and free that there was no way for you to realize how awesome and free you felt until you're old and reminiscing over what it was like to be young, awesome, and free.

By albums end, Fang Island's music sounds like what it feels like to remember what it was like to feel young, awesome, and free.

This is one of those bands that's best described to people who haven't listened to by rattling off other similar bands that the person probably hasn't listened to, which is to say that Fang Island is one of those bands that will totally baffle and amaze first time listeners but pretentious douchebags like me will sit there and tear into the seemingly endless list of modern bands that seem to influence them.

So, to get on with it, Fang Island sounds like a loving combination of Yeasayer, Ponytail, and Parts & Labor, which is to say that it's noise-math rock with some subtle world music influences. I kind of love it. I've never been the kind of person to think a band sucks just because it sounds kind of like everything else, and for the most part Fang Island doesn't sound like everything else just because it sounds like so many different things that it is undeniably itself.

There are bloggers out there who say things like "Fang Island doesn't sound like anything I've heard before" to which I say you really need to listen to more music. Seriously. That's just sloppy and sad. This is a fun record, gorgeously textured and just a joy to listen to... but it's not something new, it's just a different combination of existing styles that relies on the emotion of its music to really grab you, and there is no lack of it on any of these tracks. For that I can't help but recommend it.

Hard as Nails is one of those songs that when you hear it for the first time it sends chills right up your spine.

Peter Wolf Crier's debut album isn't due out until May, but until then you've got this song and Crutch & Cane to listen to, and you're lucky, because based on what I've heard I am pretty sure this is going to be one of the first new bands of 2010 to really inspire awe in a lot of people.

If the rest of Inter-Be is as good as these two songs, I'm pretty sure come May I'll be shitting myself over a different song and posting one then, too. Until then, enjoy this song.

Note: There is an advance copy of this album currently floating around various file sharing sites, do not download it, it is a messed up and very sloppy encode and for your own sake, don't listen to it. It will spoil the experience of listening to it for the first time. I promise.

Site Note: I am still fiddling with feed settings as such. As of today I'll just be linking directly to the MP3s via the song titles in my posts and including handy WP-Audioplayer links on the site. If you're browsing via RSS you should see mp3 enclosures allowing you to play the songs. If I get sued I'll have to undo all this.