I find it really hard to believe that there are people out there who don't like Neon Bible. I was hyped for months waiting for its release, and when it finally dropped I fell pretty much in love with it (despite bemoaning how terrible the final mix of the album was, and The Suburbs sounds like it, too, is going to have a terrible muddy mix and that's just what they like I guess).

I was browsing a few music blogs on hype machine yesterday and ran across some post insulting this song, the title track that has leaked, and all of Neon Bible. Even the comments on the entries were saying things to the effect of, "Yeah those first two songs sounded like Neon Bible, and that's too bad, because it's pretty clear to everyone Funeral is the only good Arcade Fire album."

Now, maybe I'm just a true believer, but I don't think Arcade Fire has released a bad album. Hell, I don't think they've made a bad song. I'm not a massive Arcade Fire fan, I haven't even gone to one of their shows, but if someone were to corner me and ask me who the most consistently great indie band working today, I'd say it was the Arcade Fire. They might not be my personal favorite, but damn, I couldn't think of a better band if I tried really hard.

I've been pretty hooked on "Month of May". The song has a lot going for it, that I'm surprised so many people seem to miss. First up, it's really easy to sing "twenty twenty twenty-four hours agooooo" during the opening bars, and that's awesome because it's almost a incidental meta-reference or something. Secondly, it feels kind of like "(Anarchist Television Blues)" which is a damn good thing, but except for channeling Bruce Springsteen this is more, well, Ramones by way of Joan Jett or something.

The way "around and around and around" loses steam and fades from shouting into Regine's soft vocal. The delayed "arms ... folded ... tight" makes me imagine that the band have arm gestures to go with the song and that just makes me want to see them live. I love the subtle violin and synth that lurk in the background of the whole song at times. I only ever subconsciously notice the ending 'freak out' section that gets all sinister, but at the end I come to and I wonder what it's all about.

Don't even get me started on the subject matter of the song, with the kids, and their damn folded arms at all those damn indie shows, and how it makes me realize in some ways I'm still just a kid, trying to lift the weight I feel with my arms folded tight. Some things are pure, and some things are right, but I'm still standing with my arms folded tight.

Anyway, despite the weirdness of the other two songs leaked ("Ready to Start" and "We Used To Wait" both featuring unique vocals), I'm reasonably certain that The Suburbs is easily going to be as good as Neon Bible and Funeral. Maybe I've somehow been brainwashed, but I'm reasonably certain that Arcade Fire can do no wrong.

I woke up really late today because I was sick, and so because I was three hours late to work I am going to give you a half-assed song post today by posting this cover of "Tonight Tonight" by Passion Pit that you've probably already heard 30 times in the last week (if you're a hype machine listener, that is).

Enjoy! It sounds suitably Passion Pit-y. I miss the string swells from the original quite a bit. Can't say I see myself adding this to my shuffle rotation, to be honest. Throw in an honest to god drum roll in there or something... just fucking build already, goddamnit? Oh, no, you're not going to? Well fuck you, you cover song that lacks the driving adventurous passion of the original! Fuck you!

I don't know how that happened but maybe it needed to be said.

I like this song a lot because it reminds me of Archie Bronson Outfit's Derdang Derdang lyrically and kind of musically, but the singer is straight up Andrew Jackson Jihad in their punkier moments. I like the song for the same reason I like all songs about longing: I am full, full, full with longing for women I can't even begin to imagine. I like to think that someday I'll meet a woman and suddenly every song I've heard about love (loving, longing, losing) will make sense.

Eureka! I'll declare. I've discovered how these guys have written these songs. I only need to imagine losing this girl and the depths of pain I experience are so grand that I can write a million love songs. "Your movement is my treasure chest," it all makes so much sense now.

But no, right now, I can only imagine what it's like to feel like that, either again, or just at all. Sometimes I'm not sure. It's happened enough times now that I've thought I was in love only to discover years later that it was only a fraction of how in love with someone I could be. How many times will this happen? Now that I feel severed from...

Oh, I'm just such a mope lately. I'm no good at this whole being single/alone thing, just no good at it at all. I miss how it used to be that in those quiet moments where I didn't have to think about anything and I was able to just stand for a second and breath a small sigh of relief, I'd feel content, happy. Now it feels like the walls are closing in on me, that I'll suffocate at any moment under the crushing awareness of all the time I'm going to spend alone throughout my life.

I've got no treasure chest.

Oh, Tilly and the Wall. Has it really been so long since I saw you perform, opening for Rilo Kiley, all those years ago down in San Diego? The crowd, it was full of teenagers, and at the time hipster teenagers were going through something of an 80's renaissance, so I got to stand there with my arms folded, and even though at the time I was only 19, I felt a bit like I was the oldest person there.

The problem became even more clear, during your set, Tilly and the Wall, when about 15 of the teenagers in the audience sat down on the floor while you were playing. Yes, these little shits, who were apparently oblivious to how awesome you are and how hot Jamie, the tap-dancer, was were sitting on the floor actively ignoring your playing. Certainly, a few years later, all these same teenagers became dipshit college kids who probably worshiped your later, and much worse, work. How disappointing, is it not?

As it is, Tilly and the Wall, I gave the shirt I bought from your guitarist away last year (though I still have the copy of this album that all of you signed). It seems like the only people who like you anymore are royal douchebags, and judging by your last music video from 2 years ago, you're ok with that. I mean, who could possibly enjoy that after hearing a song like "Fell Down The Stairs"? Douchebags, that's who, complete and total douchebags.

The groove is in the fucking heart, people. You don't let the beat control you.

Although I posted two other songs by Red Wire Black Wire back in September, ever since I've felt like I haven't done enough to plug them into your ears. I even included this song on the Drifted Away playlist (so you can download this song in that pack if you want), but now I feel like I must post it here, because it is a damn good song.

Red Wire Black Wire recently released a free 3 track EP thing featuring one of their other really good songs, "Breathing Fire", as well as a remix of that song and another b-side track about finding romance after the apocalypse whose lyrics are so embarrassingly high school that I felt kind of embarrassed for myself, everyone around me, the singer, and the band when I heard it for the first time. Your mileage may vary, but you're guaranteed at least one good song out of three.

Their album, Robots & Roses is kind of similar. For every cheeky William Blake reference (there's a song called "William Blake") there's a lyric that is somewhat embarrassing, like, "I wave my tentacles at the moon," which I actually like a lot but really, tentacles? Like a piece of deviantart artwork? Or there's the whole "Robots & Roses" motif... but luckily underneath it all there's a full band masterfully tweaking synthesizers and strumming away on guitars and that makes the music bearable during those few lyrically polarizing moments.

My fandom of Red Wire Black Wire is obviously not super strong, but I still think they're awesome and more people should like them. I will excitedly listen to any sophomore release because if they avoid that notorious slump, there could be some awesome shit on that record.

It's been a while since I've been truly single. A year and a half, actually, it's been. I've been with others, I've dated a little bit, but my head was always preoccupied with wondering if the one I just let go was the one who got away and I didn't take anything very seriously. You know what, I'm lying. I don't know anything at all about how I've felt over the course of the last year and half. No clue at all. To try to pretend and explain myself is to pay a great disservice to anyone who will ever read this and think they've found someone who understands them.

The truth is I've spent the last year and a half wondering if whatever little meter in my chest that measures and releases the feelings of love in me has been broken. I'd sit and tap on my chest hoping to get it restarted, but no matter what I did, I just couldn't get those love juices flowing. I still worry now, now that I'm alone, that my searching will be futile, but I manage to hold onto a small nugget of hope.

One day I'll find the perfect one for me. They will be pretty and funny at least to me. Something about her will make me fall head over heels in love, and I'll sigh blissfully and say, "Good lord, I've missed this!" and it'll lack all the things that used to annoy me about love: the fear and sometimes crippling anxiety. Instead I'll keep my clear head, my self-confidence, and I'll just be happy and in love---and I'll feel like I know what love is, because I've found it, and when people tell me about their lousy relationships, I'll laugh inwardly and think, "These poor fools, if they only knew what I had, they would feel even worse."

Course, if I meet her and she's with some other dude like in this song then everything will just suck for me, because I've never killed anyone before and I don't know how it's done... but at least I'll be in love.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out why I am the way I am. I used to do a lot of writing about it (the personal ramblings of a 18-23 year old forever archived in my MySQL database) but these days it's mostly internalized. A lot of who I am seems to come from my parents, which is annoying and kind of fucks up the whole nature vs nurture thing because I'd rather believe I managed to avoid subconsciously picking up any of their habits and instead they are embedded in my genes and are thusly inescapeable and I can easily make excuses for them: "it's just the way I am, it's in my jeans... along with my wallet, back at home, bye."

However I am an incredibly nostalgic person when it comes to people, and since my parents seem to have basically no friends nor have ever really seemed to be close to anyone in their whole lives, I wonder where that comes from. Just today I was driving to work and I passed by the school I went to while I was very slowly dropping out of high school and I thought about how I never went in to say bye to my teacher on his last day of work. Just writing this makes me feel sad. I doubt I'll ever be able to contact him, and his last day was four years ago, so if I really don't care, then why don't I just care?

I think about a couple ex-girlfriends enough that I feel like saying "all the time", though it's really just a couple times a day, and it's not like I've ever had a relationship that ended pleasantly so it just seems foolish. Why reminisce over the few good moments that existed within oceans of vitriol? Why can't I just let go?

My mother isn't a hoarder, not yet anyway, but she is a pack rat. Both my parents are pack rats. They collect useless crap and apply value to it and then never want to get rid of it. They lack the ability to be hoarders, I think, because they don't have personal/social relationships. Hoarders often apply sentimental value to their pieces of junk in relation to the people in their lives. My parents are, perhaps, lucky in this way, to be spared the fuel to start the hoarder fire.

Perhaps because I have so strongly resisted the urge to collect crap like my parents that I've developed their habits in some other way: I pack rat memories of people, and I can't let go of them. I won't ever forget that night she came home drunk and actually looked like she wanted to sleep with me. I won't forget the coldness of her engagement ring on my skin. I won't forget how every time I tried to take a picture of us together she'd cover her face. These memories, even if they hurt a little bit, will haunt me forever.

So will the fact that I never said goodbye to the teacher who let me drop out of high school, and feeling bad about the kid who tried to help me at the skeeball rink by handing me the balls and I thought he was stealing them so I acted mean and then I felt bad... and I was probably 9 or 10! It's been 15 years and I still feel guilty! Jesus, was I raised Catholic and never made awares?

It's Friday!

My only prior experience with Pineapple Thief is with their 2003 album Variations on a Dream which I became briefly addicted to back in 2004. Briefly is something I literally mean, as I listened to it for one day only, but on that one day I listened to it on a loop for several hours while I packed up my things in order to move in with what would eventually be a huge mistake. I left it playing in my car as I packed it, only to find that I stupidly killed the battery. It was an omen, it was.

Even though that album had relatively little in common with Radiohead, it was easy to compare Pineapple Thief's use of mellow electronics and gentle guitars to them, though now that I listen to that album it's pretty clear that Pineapple Thief is more similar to Coldplay. Anyway, the only point I have in comparing them to Coldplay and Radiohead is to say that they've apparently changed up their influences because now they sound like Porcupine Tree and Muse, which should be pretty clear to you if you're listening to this track while reading my incessant rambling.

I think it's kind of effective. Variations' wimpy slow pieces just don't do it for me anymore, they sound contrived and insincere when contrasted against the wimpy slow pieces made by most indie bands today, so the newfound riff-based heavy guitar sound that is all over every single track on Someone Here Is Missing is actually welcome, and after an initial listen where I felt rather underwhelmed, I found myself coming back again and again. In fact, I'll probably listen to this album right now while I work.

As always, YMMV.

I always find it somewhat amusing when a band name allows you to accurately predict what the band sounds like. These days you see a band with the word Bear in it and viola! you know that it's going to be moody, laden with atmospheric reverb, and somewhat avant-garde. Same with Beach, which makes you think that the music will be sunny, mellow, and drenched in distant echoing reverb. Obviously these stereotypes are thanks to the most popular bands who used these words in their names (it should be obvious who, I say, with my nose held high in the air).

So Beach Fossils sounds like, of course, a lazy day spent lounging on the beach in cool weather, stoned, and laughing about how ridiculous life is. Are the songs about this? I don't know, I don't think I could understand the singer if I tried really hard, and that's OK. This is almost background music, a good driving album to have a pleasant conversation over.

I don't think I could be a big fan of Beach Fossils, and I kind of feel like I can't imagine anyone being a super fan or anything, but it's good music and I'm sure this summer this'll get spun at least a few times on drives into or around San Diego. I'd say pretty much all the songs on the album are of the same caliber, making this one of those rare albums that's actually good all the way through.

As always, YMMV.

Site Note: HTML5 players for iPhone and iPad users are properly integrated now and look quite nice. Unfortunately they don't work on Android phones without Flash, and I don't know why. It doesn't work in Opera either, but I figure with support for Flash and HTML5 there isn't a way you can't possibly hear the music. HTML5 player looks wonky at times on the iPad depending on your zoom level but I figure that is to be expected.

You know, I can't figure out exactly what album this is from, or if it's even from an album. De Staat doesn't have any music up on Amazon MP3, and I got this song from the DiRT 2 video game soundtrack, so all in all... I just don't know. That's why there's no album art on this post even though there almost always is otherwise.

It's fucking Friday!

I bought an iPad last night. Obviously you can't listen to the staires_!_ songs I post because this shit uses Flash. If there's ever an edition of WP-AudioPlayer that uses HTML5 to play MP3s instead of Flash, I'll upgrade as soon as I can.

I just did a little Googling and discovered a dirty hack I can use to add HTML5 support to the website so iPhone and iPad users will be able to listen to the tunes. Look for this to roll out sometime today. I can't test it just yet but we'll see what happens.

Until then, enjoy this bitchin' song about getting drunk.

Sometimes it's truly wonderful discovering new music. It's been a while for me, but sometimes you discover a band (or two) that turns you on so powerfully that you just have to collect all of their material. Years upon years upon years ago this happened to me with Olivia Tremor Control, and I spent a small amount of money on Ebay collecting all their albums. Yes, actual physical copies of their albums. I even have a "first edition" of Dusk at Cubist Castle.

I digress, however, and must cast my attention toward Black Moth Super Rainbow and The Octopus Project, two fabulous bands that I've since collected the complete works of, who join forces on this album to make something that I think is pretty much legendarily awesome as far as near-pure instrumental albums go.

I've never been a fan of post-rock, which is basically the only instrumental music you ever get in the whole genre of indie rock, there's something so seethingly pretentious about the whole tone of post-rock---like it's the score to some overwrought historical action drama no one would ever want to watch. Luckily groups like The Octopus Project and Holy Fuck play instrumental music that's more concerned with giving you a beat to move yourself to, either to dance or just to get shit done and please your ears while you do it.

This, The House of Apples & Eyeballs, is a marvelous chill out record that I would recommend to everyone. It's not entirely out of this world and hard to stomach, it's just some smooth tunes.

From the age 17 to 21 or so, I always weighed 125. I'm 6 feet tall or so, so I've always been really skinny. When I was doing meth at 18 I got down to 115 I think, which freaked me out. Are there enough numbers in these two sentences? 4 8 15 16 23 42.

For the last couple years I have been stuck at 135 and have been struggling to gain weight, at one point getting myself to 145 via a combination of rigorous exercise and loading myself up with an extra 2,000 calories of protien shakes every day. However if I stopped the exercise and protein shakes for even two days I'd be back down to 135.

It's easy, perhaps, to be sympathetic toward a fat person. You don't call them fat to their face, you don't make fun of them for it, but skinny people are different. Can you really be insulting a skinny person by making fun of their skinniness? Come on, they're skinny, they should be happy, right? To me, that's kind of like saying that men can't be raped. I mean, if the cock is hard, they must be enjoying it, right? Let's go with distant analogies for 500, Alex.

In short, I've always been sensitive about my skinniness. I've never been called unattractive by any member of the opposite sex who has seen me naked, but that kind of comes with the terrain: fat people might be unattractive, but no one is going to doubt their physical capability; skinny might be the attractive norm to a certain extent, but if you're a skinny dude you open yourself up to a whole world of emasculating bullshit.

Being a skinny white kid sucks, especially in a middle school and high school full of fat Mexicans who fancy themselves gangster; I was called a fag so often I'm surprised I don't have a cock in my mouth right now, as I am writing this. Even as an adult, and though it doesn't really hurt or anything it still leaves a mark, I can't tell you how many women said they felt like they'd "break" me while fucking me. Even at my job, I got told I would be expected to put in a "full man's work" as if I might not be capable of it just naturally as I am.

A lot of factors in my life have left me with the perpetual feeling that I need to measure up; my skinniness is one of them. Often I have no idea what I am trying to measure up to, and in recent years it has just turned into me setting some sort of knee-jerk vague opinion of what the high point is and shooting for that. I've been trying to gain weight, but I didn't really have a goal in mind. I assumed I'd just put on the weight in a controlled manner by building muscle and that would be it.

Apparently when I turned 25, however, my body decided it had other plans in mind. As of yesterday, without weight building exercises (I just unicycle a lot) or supplements, my body weight went over 150 pounds for the first time in my entire life. I have a little bit of a tummy. It's kind of scary and weird, but for the first time I don't really feel anxious or overly self-aware about my weight. My physical appearance, sure, but having low weight? Not so much. It's kind of cool.

Well, aside from the whole being fat thing. I guess I better start exercising and get myself back down to a svelte 135 pounds...

I don't know how many relationships ago it was, maybe it was just the last one, (and the one before that and the one before that and the one before that) but I can remember telling myself, "You know, no matter how unlikely it seems that you will ever be loved or love anyone ever again, it'll happen, and you'll look back on this and you'll think, Damn, that was silly to be so sad." The marvelous thing about this is that no matter how many times you tell yourself this, it's never really a comfort.

Even now that I can practically hear my own voice in my head from the past saying the words it doesn't make me feel any better. Sure, obviously after whatever relationship was particularly hard I moved on and found someone else---but what if this time is different? What if I never find anyone ever again and when I go crawling back to my current girlfriend she's no longer there for me and I just must spend the rest of my life crawling around in the gutters, love bankrupt and broken? A life lived condemned to carnal pleasures performed only by my hand. Oh, the horror.

It's been years since I started faking confidence and it's still hard to keep the guise up. I'm confident! I am! I swear! I just don't want to die alone. But I'm so confident I will never die alone because people like me... people like me... I'm a driver... I'm a winner... things are gonna change, I can feel it.