Hi everyone. I am still alive and this site is still functioning.

I have hit a period of disheartening. I've also seemingly realized that a lot of the music I like is total shit.

I'll be working on my Best of 2010 and slowly rolling it out over the next weeks, and it'll include music I've featured already this year and a couple things I haven't written about individually.

The website might change in scope for 2011, I am not sure yet. Originally this site was meant to be a place where I could write about personal stories relating to what the music I like is about, but after the first year it seems like I ran out of stories, and worse than that, it seems like most of the music I listen to and cover these days isn't actually about anything, and it's kind of pissing me off.

So much songwriting these days seems to be made out of laziness. I don't want rant too much here because I am still thinking about it, but I am starting to understand what people like Elton John mean when they say "most modern music is rubbish these days". They're not just talking about popular music. They're also talking about indie music.

Stuff like The Dirty Projectors is technically interesting and even emotional, well constructed, but the actual songwriting is rubbish. They write songs about having people move in with them places, or silly female empowerment anthems, and sing them in ways that makes the songs sound interesting and powerful but the actual conceit behind the song has the depth of a puddle.

A good song should be structured like a story. (Weezer's Pinkerton has several songs that are properly structured this way, to cite a popular example.) The first verse should set up the basics and/or create a problem describing what the gist of the situation is. The chorus can be the generic emotional peak, or the central conceit of the song. The second verse should either elaborate or change the situation, there should be a progression of sorts, and each verse that follows should further that story.

Too many people don't give a shit and just sing nonsense that structurally means nothing but out of context sounds like it could be emotionally powerful. Michael Penn, one of my favorite singer-songwriters, is incredibly guilty of this. He writes, by and large, poetic nonsense. Individual lines sound good, but the whole of the song is completely meaningless and there is no actual movement or meaning to it.

So from now on, I think I might end up being a lot harder on the music I talk about here.

I'll also be diving more into my own musical pursuits since I am slowly learning guitar and starting to record things on my iPad. If you're interested in what I have been doing, check out username amiantos on SoundCloud. In the descriptions I try to map out what I was doing, what went wrong, what I'm happy about, and what I used to do it. Hopefully by tracking my own experiences in trying to make music in this high technology DIY era we're in, it'll help you in your own pursuits and help you analyze the things you like about the music you like.

Anyway, it's clear that my friends are electric---as in my iPad, my guitar, and this website. Thanks Gary Numan.

See you all soon.