I made a terrible mistake the other day. I called this album "good". Now, I'm going to posture completely dishonestly here and say that it's not at all like me to make mistakes (it is) and that it's even less like me to cop to them (it isn't) but today things are going to be different. Today, I'm going to set things right.

This album isn't good.

It's not even great.

It's pretty much totally fucking awesome.

I started off the post for their song "The Body Without Any Eyes" with one of the many unfortunate things you can encounter in music, and another is an occupational hazard: sometimes there just isn't enough time to listen to an album as many times as it takes to fall in love with it. I wonder sometimes how many albums were just one or two more listens away from becoming awesome, it has to be a lot.

The Harvey Girls struck my ear last week and since then I haven't been able to shake it. When I'm faced with silence and I need music, my immediate reaction is: put on that Harvey Girls album. It's been working great as background music to my endless hours of Minecrafting. It's awesome in the car, when I'm stoned, when I'm sober, at work, when I'm sad or when I'm happy. A song like "Puss" soothes the soul. "A Letter To Bees" is pensive and driving while still feeling lose and lovely---with a lyrical hook that sounds like something I wish a woman, any woman, would have told me throughout my life, "Stop thinking and start saying..." (I always worry I am getting the lyrics wrong when I write them out on here, like Pitchfork fucking up the "Lisztomania" lyrics.)

But it's "Monster", which I played on repeat about six times in a row yesterday, that really floors me. I can't decipher the entirety of the lyrics, which might make it even better, but it seems to be a song about missing someone. I'm pretty sure I could listen to any song these days and feel like it's about missing someone, because my head is just in that place, but listen to those chord changes, the flow of the music, and don't tell me it doesn't sound like you're swimming in nostalgic, optimistic woe. This is one of those songs where I feel kind of like it was written just for my head, like the husband and wife duo behind The Harvey Girls thought "What is the best way we can worm our way into Stuy Parker's head? Let's write this song about monsters..."

And it was good. Really good. So good they get two posts in less than a week so that I can correct the terrible mistake I made in writing so few words before. This album is great through and through (well, actually, to be honest, that last track is pretty dreadful and totally harshes my mellow and I wish it didn't exist but luckily the rest of the album is so good it's possible to completely forget about that 9 minute mental sludge at the end of if like I just did). Listen to it!

DO IT NOW.

Don't be like me. Don't risk overlooking greatness. You're not me, so you don't have to listen to something new every single day otherwise you start to feel like you suck and you're not doing your job, which is strictly volunteer work, but still feels like a job because you love it so much that you feel like you have to do it. Wait, maybe you should be like me. Having a hobby kicks ass!

It's unfortunate that sometimes a band may get overlooked because they named themselves something that doesn't sound at all like what they are. The Harvey Girls are one of those bands. Maybe it's because I live under a rock, but when I looked at "The Harvey Girls" the first thought that came to my head was: oh, this is probably some horrible poppy girl-group bullshit (like, say, The Dum Dum Girls, no offense to dum girls). Then I saw the album title: I've Been Watching A Lot Of Horror Movies Lately, which also sounds like something a group of obnoxious woo-girls would name an album. Like, "Ya know, I've been watching a lot of horror movies lately, heee!" It just sounds like that, to me, all of it.

So imagine my surprise when I put on the album and instead I found some moody and creative folky jams in the vein of early Akron/Family. In fact, now that I've made that comparison, this album sounds a lot like the first Akron/Family album with a little dash of These Were The Earlies. It's almost like this album comes from a different time---through time, perhaps, from a date somewhere around the time those albums came out---through the eons this album has traveled, the five long years since 2005, and now here it is, in 2010.

And it's good stuff. I don't have much else to say besides that it's good, and it sounds like Akron/Family at their least noisiest. Check it out.

P.S. I am getting into the bad habit of telling bands that email me that I'll go ahead and post one of their songs, and then I never get around to it. If you're one of those bands and you're reading this wondering where your music is: I'm sorry. I can only motivate myself to write about things I feel a connection to and for some reason 85% of the music that is emailed to me I just can't get fired up about. I'm still trying to listen to your material and eek out some words or inspiration but you just can't force this kind of thing. Well, you could, but then I'd just be a big fake and whatever I said about your music wouldn't mean a damn thing and then I'd probably stop sleeping so good at night because I'd be kept up by all the terrifying thoughts that there is someone out there, right now, listening to bad music because I recommended something I didn't have my heart in. I'm sure you understand, or at least if you hit the bottom of this giant paragraph you may have some sort of idea, or at least you're just annoyed.