The Nightlife Ain’t a Good Life

Strange Boys - Be Brave

The following is a piece of road-journal that I chopped a bit and tried to turn into an album write-up. Pardon its fragmentation.

It’s 1pm on Christmas Eve. I’m supine in the back of a spacious-enough Toyota Matrix barreling down the I-10 somewhere in Texas, swaddled in the scant sleeping equipment of three road-weary existential warriors. We’re about 8 hours into a 30ish-hour drive home from New Orleans. Two of us are driving in shifts, as the third chose to go her own way. We left her in the French Quarter with the end of a Jim Beam bottle and a “so long”.

Aside from a 30-minute detour back to Austin to catch one last breath in the city that made itself the highlight of our trip not a week earlier, we had no time to kill the cruise control (save for filling up and making water, of course, of course).

Anyway, I’m set comfortably enough to both enjoy the desert flowers and to nod off when the mood strikes (sleep becomes valuable in these situations). My last-legs iPod is hanging on with enough battery life to get us through one more album, and right now it’s The Strange Boys’ “Be Brave”.

With Austin on the mind and in the heart, we survivors of the Big Easy find it fitting to reach El Paso with the strained croons of Ryan Sambol and the bluesy jams of what now seems a fitting Texas death march. The band is from Austin—if I didn’t know this before the trip, the multiple incidental encounters with them in diners and bars across downtown Austin removed the doubt.

The album’s a bit different from “The Strange Boys and Girls Club” (pick that up if you haven’t yet) in that it’s slightly more placid. It’s got a sense of heart that carries the flow of things without pulling them away from you. It’s not quick enough to remind you that you’ll soon be back in California with the same problems you left there. The apartment’s still a mess, as it were. It’s sweet in that it allows you to decompress and to cope with the idea that Austin’s done for a while and that you probably won’t make SXSW—at least not this year.

“I’m sorry that I played your piano, but I just had to get somethin’ off of my soul”

It’s a slick album we’re hearing. You might call it “cool”, I guess. But the progression it makes from the playful title track at the beginning to the honesty of “The Unsent Letter” gives it a sense of genuineness that no amount of Pitchfork praise can break.

We hated New Orleans enough to cut the trip short to maybe make it home for Christmas. This drive back is reminding us of the things we didn’t get to do, and it’s showing us how small a distance we really ended up going. I think the most obvious thing to me now is that no matter how vast and countless the mile markers and rest stops and cactus flowers and shrub bugs seem, we’re still just around the corner from the things we tried to shake.

Drive in one direction for a few days, but you’ll still find yourself home on Christmas morning.

-Drew

Counting Down The Minutes - Thom's Top 5

2010 has been considered a shitty year by almost everyone I've come in contact with. As far as music is considered, it also wasn't too spectacular in my eyes. It wasn't bad, per se, just not the flurry of options and groundbreaking albums that 2009 was. There were a lot of really assured albums, some great EPs, and some very listenable stuff that just didn't resonate with being on a Top of the Year list. These 5 albums though, were listenable over and over again for me. A lot of Top Lists so far have been so nauseatingly packed with Best Coast, Gemini, Ariel Pink, Robyn and Arcade Fire (they're indie darlings, I get it, but I don't get it) that I couldn't bear to put these unneededly hyped albums onto my list. For the sake of brevity, here are my Top 5 of the year, which I hope you'll give a listen, if you haven't already.



Gil Scott-Heron - I'm New Here
The legend himself, poet, revolutionary, and, as he's not nearly recognized enough, wonderful musician. I'm New Here is a short album - a few songs, spoken words, and a history lesson, but it's a wonderful listen that's everything I thought it would be.



No Age - Everything In Between
I love No Age, have since I first had my eardrums vibrated by them back when I saw them close out FYF in 2008. I was hooked on Nouns, but I was blown away by this year's record. Their track Shred and Transcend is more than just an awesome title, it's a mantra for the whole album. As self-pious and eye-roll-worthy as a two-piece formed by LA vegans sounds, their sound is so in the moment it's global; and damn enjoyable.



Harlem - Hippies
I almost forgot this was released in 2010, because I've been listening to it so steadily it felt like I've had it forever. It's just what Harlem has always been - punky, completely unserious, fun, catchy and more replayable than Mario Kart.



Titus Andronicus - The Monitor
This is a close contender for first place, with it's melding of the Civil War as a metaphor for small-town boredom and bad breakups. I'm afraid if I keep reviewing I'll spill my guts out for too long, so I'll just say this - listen to it, and rally around the flag, fellow fighters.



Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
For all his bravado, asshole antics, and auto-tuning to the millionth power, Kanye has never failed be an innovator. This album is not hip-hop in the strictest sense, it's an experiment in genre-bending ear sex. This album is touted as one of the best of the year for good reason - it's fantastic. It's not the perfect 10 Pitchfork jizzed all over, but it's his best album to date. West's boasting and self-patting on the back has come to splendid fruition - basically, the Ego has landed.

Honorable Mentions: The Strange Boys - Be Brave, Warpaint - The Fool, Moonhearts - Moonhearts, The Growlers - Hot Tropics, Small Black - New Chain, Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Happy New Year Everyone,
Thom

Do you think, is it normal, to go through life oh so formal?

Smith Westerns - Dye It Blonde
The glam-garage teenagers that are Smith Westerns have grown up a lot in the last year, and this album is proof. I'm sure the Chicaho-bred miscreants are still pissing is garbage cans behind venues and fingering young fans on the reg, but their music has improved an obscene amount between last year's eponymous debut and this very assured sophmore release.

The fuzzy, sometimes just flat-out bad production values of yesteryear are gone, and this new record is crisp, clean and completely intelligible. The guitar lines are locked-in and catchy, the vocals are pleasant a heartfelt (who knew Cullen Omori could actually sing?) and the songs are so damn catchy you feel like you won't want to listen to anything else for the next month.

For once I'll keep this review short and say just download this, it's a great collection of sweet, teenage tunes to end the year on.

Merry Christmas, folks.

Gentlemen, On Your Marks...

Gentleman Jesse & His Men - s/t
After a fortnight of a recovery period due to nearly fatal science-overload, the blog is back in full health, with two new posts today! Let's get on with it, shall we?

Listening to this album, it's no shock that these gents started to spread their tunes while opening for Black Lips. It's not the abrasive, smoking in the school bathroom brand of punk Black Lips have explored so well, but it's just the same in that it takes you to a simpler time. I'm going to put this out there right away - there is nothing original or innovative about this album in any way. These guitars, these "won't you be mine"-esque lyrics, the 70s pop production - the whole sound has been done. But here's the catch, it hasn't been this well done in at least 3 decades.

Sure, there's nothing new to behold, but this album has something going for it that almost none do - every song is completely listenable, dare I say, enjoyable. There's never a reason to change the track, because fuck me, you're having too much fun listening to it. It's refreshing this day and age, which is to say, the age of electronic weirdo fuzz and minimalistic masquerade boringness, to hear a band that's having fun, and they are, it shows in every chord on the record. Let me state that I am in not disparaging experimental bands, I'm just a simpler type of guy who enjoys an album that's completely up-front and unpretentious from time to time. I record that makes you wanna drive with the top down, or if you don't have a convertible because you're logical, imagine that you could put the top down.

I know I post a lot of garagey rock and pop, but there is a purpose to this to all this throwback feel-goodery - I want you, dear readers to please, in these harsh times, have some fun - and use this album as the background music.

-Thom

If This is How You Folks Make Art, It’s Fucking Depressing

Andrew Jackson Jihad - People That Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World

We’re certainly not kids that shy away from controversial posts (see the most intense explanation of Vitamin A I’ve ever read), but I struggle to recollect a band that falls more into that “love it or hate it” niche than AJJ. I’ve heard everything from “I can’t stop listening to these catchy fucking songs” to “Those are some of the most hideous vocals I’ve ever heard” and “Not this shit again” about them, and in a way I think all of it applies.

It’s everything you’d expect from acousti-folk played through the fingers and throats of bearded (and fancifully mustached) vegans, minus the self-seriousness. The band largely consists of Sean Bonnette on the guitar and Ben Gallaty playing a feint stand-up bass. They fuck around a lot with other artists that add a lick or two when they record and perform, but it’s really sort of a revolving door. They’re originally from Phoenix or something, but I can’t piss in a circle around here without hitting two people that at least claim to be buddies with them.

Anyway, it’s a bunch of short whines strummed on the guitar like too long a silence means the bus will explode. The songs are funny, pained, and heart-felt. They’re about all of the things you swear you hate in music (politics, social ills, smoking cigarettes) but guiltily relish in.

On a quick tangent here: I thought it fitting to go over some of the clever little bits of verse from the album I found amusing, but I’m too lazy and there’s really too many to name.

Bonnette’s vocals are abrasive and hard to get used to, but they grow on you like a back zit (pardon the image there, but I was trying to be abrasive myself, and the analogy really sort of fits). Listen to the 25 minutes and change of this album and whether you care for it or not, the hooks will follow you around. If you’re not functionally handicapped and can whistle, you’ll soon be annoying your friends like I do.

So it’s really an amalgamation of a bunch of uncomfortable elements that come together in a package that I’m having a hard time making appeal on paper. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, I guess you’ll feel better about yourself… Just listen to the fucking thing. Go see them, too—all of those Asian Man Records guys are pretty cool, and these folk are doin’ it right.

-Drew

QUICK SCIENCE UNO: VITAMIN A

caution: the following write up is amateur, unscientific, and downright immature. but the facts are there, and i had a lot of fun doing it.

THIS IS GOING TO BE INFORMATIVE, QUICK, DRY, AND TO THE POINT. YOU'LL BE ABLE TO SCORE THE FINEST BABE AT THE PARTY WITH ALL THIS SCIENCE-GAME YOU'LL SPIT; AND YOU GIRLS CAN MAKE GUYS FEEL DUMB WHEN THEY'RE SPITTING GAME ON YOU!



WHY DID MOM ALWAYS SAY YOU'LL BECOME A 4-EYED FREAK IF YOU DON'T EAT UR CARROTS?

STORY TIME: WWII PILOTS USED TO HAVE PROBLEMS SEEING AT NIGHT, AND IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT GIVING THEM CARROTS REALLY HELPED THEIR LIGHT SENSITIVITY. THIS LED AMERICA TO BE THE MOST BADASS CUNTRY IN THE WORLD BY KICKING NAZI AND KAMIKAZI ASS.

CARROTS, AND OTHER YELLOW/ORANGE/RED PIGMENTED FRUITS/VEGGIES CONTAIN CHEMICALS CALLED ALPHA/BETA-CAROTENES. THESE ARE JUST SOME FORMS OF WHAT WE CALLED "VITAMIN A". IN ANIMALS, THE "ACTIVE" VITAMIN A COMPOUND IS CALLED RETINOL. THEREFORE WE MUST TURN THESE CAROTENES INTO RETINOL, BECAUSE WE CAN'T USE THEM OTHERWISE.

VITAMIN A IS A FAT SOLUBLE COMPOUND. OUR BODIES CAN'T TAKE UP FAT SOLUBLE COMPOUNDS (WHEN THEY'RE IN SUCH TINY AMOUNTS), WITHOUT BIG GOBLETS OF FAT FLOATING AROUND IN THE GUT. THE SMALL VITAMINS WILL FREELOAD A RIDE INTO OUR BODIES WITH THE BIG FAT GLOBLETS, OTHERWISE THEY WILL SIMPLY FOLLOW THE ONE WAY ROUTE TO THE BATHROOM. SO EATING A BUNCH OF CARROTS ALONE WON'T GIVE YOU ALL THAT MUCH VIT A, YOU NEED TO HAVE HAD SOME REASONABLE AMOUNT OF FAT SOME TIME BEFORE OR AFTER.

SO, WE ATE OUR CARROTS, ALONG WITH A SPOONFUL OF BUTTER (OR RANCH IF UR NOT INSANE). REMEMBER, CARROTS DON'T HAVE THE RETINOL WE NEED, IT'S IN THE FORM OF CAROTENES. THESE CAROTENES HITCH A RIDE WITH THE GIANT PIECES OF FAT IN THE RANCH WE ATE. THEY HITCH A RIDE TOGETHER THROUGH THE INTESTINAL WALL, TO THE BLOOD STREAM, AND TO THE LIVER.

THE LIVER IS WHERE WE STORE AND PROCESS OUR VITAMIN A. HERE, THE CAROTENES ARE TURNED INTO RETINOL. SO WE FINALLY HAVE THIS RETINOL, BUT WHY IS IT A BIG DEAL FOR OUR EYES? GLAD U-ASK!

RETINOL GOES THRU BLOOD TO YOUR RETINA (IN UR EYE). I'M GONNA SPIT SOME MAD SCI ON U NOW THAT UR BRAIN PROBABLY WON'T UNDERSTAND, BUT I TRY EXPLAIN...

ONCE IN THE EYE, RETINOL IS TURNED INTO SOMETHING CALLED RETINALDEHYDE (ITS A SIMPLE CHEM REACTION, DON'T LET WORDS THROW U OFF). STAY WITH ME... THIS RETINALDEHYDE IS INITIALLY IN A CONDITION CALLED CIS-RETINALDEHYDE. MOLECULES CAN TWIST AND CURVE AROUND CERTAIN PARTS, THIS "CIS" STATE IS SIMPLY AN ORIENTATION OF RETINALDEHYDE. IT CAN SWITCH BETWEEN "CIS" AND "TRANS". THEY ARE THE SAME MOLECULE, BUT IN DIFFERENT ORIENTATIONS. ANALOGY: YOU PUT UR ARMS STRAIGHT OUT WHILE STANDING UP, U R IN CIS. YOU PUT UR ARMS STRAIGHT DOWN WHILE STANDING UP, U R IN TRANS.. SO, NOW WE HAVE CIS-RETINALDEHYDE IN THE EYE. THIS COMBINES WITH A PROTEIN CALLED OPSIN, TO MAKE A COMPLEX CALLED RHODOPSIN (RETINALDEHYDE+OPSIN). RHODOPSIN IS PRETTY MUCH RESPONSIBLE FOR CATCHING THE LIGHT THAT HITS UR EYEBALL AND RESPONDING APPROPRIATELY. IT IS WHAT RESULTS IN DIFFERENT COLORS AND DIFFERENT COLOR INTENSITIES.

LIGHT PHOTONS HIT RHODOPSIN, AND HOW DOES RHODOPSIN RESPOND? IT CHANGES THE CIS-RETINALDEHYDE TO TRANS-RETINALDEHYDE (PUTS UR ARM DOWN). THIS FREES IT FROM THAT OPSIN GUY THAT WAS HOLDING ON TO IT. NOW TRANS-RETINALDEHYDE GOES THROUGH BADASS CHEMICAL REACTIONS TO CLOSE SODIUM CHANNELS, ULTIMATELY RESULTING IN THE VISION YOU EXPERIENCE.

RAD! IF YOU DON'T EAT ENUFF OF VIT A, U'LL HAVE FREE AND LONELY OPSINS LYING AROUND, AND UR VISION WILL BE SUFFERING.

SO WHAT'S UP DOC?
NM, I'M EATING CARROTS.

-PROFESSOR LYHD

Amir's TGIM Playlist: Acoustic sounds, and more

ACOUSTIC, SORTA. AWESOME, YES.(~33 MIN)
DOWNLOAD PLAYLIST HERE!

What’s He Building in There?

Tom Waits - Mule Variations

Break out your brandy and your tobacco, and get ready to grow some hair on those nudie little nuts of yours. Tom Waits emits vitality. He builds a spectacular, surreal world where shit is just plain backwards, but Jesus, isn’t that reality?

Levity is something I’ve seen so many times when I throw this album on for a virgin ear. Initially, everything about his music is absurd and, well, slightly dirty, unsettling. A stiff laugh isn’t an uncommon occurrence, nor is it unwarranted. Mule Variations opens with “Big in Japan,” which is a perfect way to meet Mr. Waits. BOOM BA BA BA!!! It's in your face and it’s silly and it’s fucking ingenious.

“I got the bread, but not the butter,
I got the window, but not the shutter.”

This album is streaked greasy, battered, and fried. Waits’ haggard voice is soaked in a wry, twisted, harrowing vintage of grit. His voice is complemented and often contrasted by bluesy guitars, haunted pianos, wailing horns, screeching violins, clomping percussion, sexy saxes, a goddamn rooster crow. Fuck, you name it; it’s in there. He has a veritable orchestra behind him, and a distinguished one, at that. Each musician guzzles the blues, hiccups from it, which intensifies the old-timey feel of the album.

Nineteen ninety-nine, dammit! is when this album was released. It’s timeless. Let me hand you a little perspective: the day Mule Variations came out, you had probably just finished snorting bubblegum pop off of your Powerpuff Girls matching pillow set. Afterwards, you probably proceeded to diddle your pubescent self whilst pondering the validity of Britney’s boobies, and all the while, the Backstreet Boys’ Millennium album gently sobbed to itself in the background.

But seriously, I love this album because, under all the stench and all the grit, something complex and really rather raw bubbles its way to the surface. When the pace slows, I feel like I can breathe. Waits can capture a feeling, or moment in time, and convey it through any vessel he desires. He has in him the ability to use his words, his piano, his guitar, HIS VERY WILL to manipulate the chords of the heart, a most favorite marionette. Mule Variations is simultaneously real and ebbing on insanity. There is an unusual dark quality to his music; he won’t waste your time dressing his words with unwanted sunshine and sparkle bullshit. “Like a moth mistakes a light bulb/For the moon and goes to hell.” My God, that’s fucking beautiful, riddled with tragedy. I could go on all day about each of the feelings he radiates, but I couldn’t possibly do them justice.

So, whenever your testes feel that chilly draft a bit too easily, put this album on and man up, ya big pussy.

-Megan Smith (Guest)

Too Rare to Die: French Puppets and Nightmare Figures

Guignol - S/T

Recall that dream you had—you know the one:

It’s the one that looks an awful lot like a pastel painting. It’s dripping, dark, frantic. You make your way through a harsh maze or set of mazes in a some kind of circusy mess, dilapidated with cluster-fucks of brilliant and soft color, like an eight-year-old just got a new art set. Tents grow tall and shrink down around you, breathing almost more heavily than you do. It’s dusk, or seems to be. The sky is orange and black of an uncertain ash (colors rip right through it), and you start running—without an inclination as to why or from whom. The colors spin together in a dizzy terror, while you trip by rusted metals and broken mirrors.

Making your way through the endlessness of the odd objects surrounding you, you begin to hear the pulsating wail of an accordion, and lone drum beats. It starts getting louder, faster. It joins wind instruments and percussions ever picking up louder, faster. It’s the melody found in a lack of melody. The time is strange—but then again, everything is strange. It’s slick, what you’re hearing. You’d like it if it didn’t frighten you to the bone, but you still don’t really know what to make of it. Regardless of which direction you move, it just gets louder.

There’s a man in a hat, but you don’t know which man. He’s holding something (or maybe nothing). You move on, but he doesn’t leave you, not really. You’d swear he’s staring at you, but you can’t see his eyes. The sounds you hear swell and shrink like the objects in your periphery, like one long breath from a very large lung. He’s making you aware of the sad looking hand-puppets at your feet. They’re broken and like everything else in this place, a macabre impression of a sad operatic clown.

You move on, for lack of any more comforting action. Things pick up: it gets more dizzy, they start melting together. You can feel it, the crescendo of the piece—if this is art you swear you’ll never lay eyes on another piece again. The things spin you into the distinct feeling that you can’t see or that you can see too much and it gets harder to move. The man is gone now and you realize too late that he may have been a good thing. Something strikes you still, silent, and you have the distinct feeling of falling but it’s hard to say in which direction you fall. The music picks up and becomes disjointed and now seems to control your destiny. You plead to it, as if to make your case, but nothing gives. The images and sounds blend together in a very colorful strait-jacket as you finally give in to the gravity of whatever this is. The hyperventilating couldn’t possibly get worse, or at least that’s what you thought. You’re choked and scared until tears blur what little and bizarre sight you had. You make one last grandiose grab at something before realizing it’s really too late, and you’re played off by one accordion set to one marching beat. You savor it, because for lack of anything else it’s contact by collision, and you’ll take it.

Waking up, you can’t really shake the feeling of terror. Even if it wasn’t real, it’s hard to say what is. You still have the dizziness, which frightens you, but the world is no longer moving with you, and the colors and surfaces and faces and floors don’t bleed together anymore. You wonder why and how that was manufactured by your rather healthy imagination, but it’s not something you want to think about. You have no choice but to move past it and keep moving, and you find it hard to elude the feeling of being watched, at least for now.

Come to think of it, I guess you could call it a nightmare.

-Drew

Too Rare to Die: Charles Manson

Charles Manson - LIE: The Love and Terror Cult

Yeah, Charles Manson... sorry, blog's credibility. The thing is, it's a kind of cool freak folk album. Although back when Charlie recorded these songs freak folk wasn't a thing, so it's basically folk music filtered through the mind of a maniac. That's got to be worth something.

Before Manson was a wiry spectre haunting the Hollywood Hills, before he was one of the most notorious cult leaders of all time, he was a struggling musician trying to make it big. There was one problem: everyone thought his music was terrible. I don't see why, either - I mean, this was the late 60s, where tons of terrible music thrived in the acid-fueled music scene of the time, and Manson's stuff was good, if not a little dark and vague. Those bands got record deals, they got to play Woodstock, Charlie didn't. I'm guessing that didn't sit well with Charlie.

Am I saying that his music getting cold-shouldered is what led to Sharon Tate and others getting brutally slain years later? No, his crippling paranoia and psychosis are to blame for that.

These songs only saw the light of day once Manson was accused of planning multiple murders. Friends of his pressed 2000 copies of the album, of which only 300 sold, to help fund his defense. Charles Manson may be a horrific human being, but once upon a time, he wrote some pretty good songs. The sound may be familiar to some, since the 'new weird america' folk scene is catching up to the insanity Manson recorded decades ago - basically, Charles Manson was Devendra Banhart before Devendra Banhart was Devendra Banhart.

-Thom

Too Rare to Die: The Falling Idols

The Falling Idols- s/t EP


Sunny Southern California. We've been itemized by the likes of Best Coast and Wavves, as weed smoking, shorts wearing, taco eating, beach bumming peoples. On one hand, these generalizations are often true, but to make it a stylistic trend that even landlocked people and east coasters start sporting, well there's something utterly strange and lame about it. The point I'm trying to make is what SoCal is now being sold as has been around forever, just not so superficially accessorized. I'm going to use this totally radical Long Beach punk band from 1982 to drive the point home.

The Falling Idols are pretty much a no name outside of very small punk circles in Socal. I only know about them because Sublime popularized their very awesome surferelic instrumental titled "Falling Idols":



In 1982, they recorded a 5 song 12'', hand painted the covers, made 500 copies, and got it out as far as they could (which probably didn't extend far past LA and SD). This is their only real release, although there is a compilation later put together after the band's breakup. These songs find you in a dingy garage in Long Beach, beer cans lying around, garage door open halfway letting the sun peer in to keep reminding you you've been day drinking again...

These are just kids, probably towards the end of their teens, absorbing all the punk rock that's been going on in the world, riding out the wave of the local hardcore scenes, and sticking to their roots of the sand and sea. Guitar, bass, drums, and all the lazy suburban angst your little bored heart can handle.
love, Amir

Maybe We're Not Strangers After All

The Dutchess and the Duke - She's the Dutchess, He's the Duke

There’s something warm about sitting in a room full of friends drunk from solidarity, singing along to simple songs played on an acoustic guitar and set to the kind of grab-bag percussion a room full of drunks might produce. It’s that sort of intimate and free-flowing moment when guards are down just enough to enjoy yourself, just for this one small chuck of time.

This album is in many ways an extension of that moment. It’s the moment you can’t seem to catch but by memory. It’s a cancerous feather from a neighborhood pigeon, stopping for just an instant mid-air, but ultimately just delaying its trip to the sidewalk. You sit in that room, present for the moment, gripping for dear life at something real before it floats away.

It’s a short LP of gritty, pained songs, largely acoustic and bisexually duetted by two very tired people. The songwriting conjures dark images of notable alarm and the guitar lines mirror that slight gypsy-psych picking I wish I heard more often (a la “Paint it Black”, or something). In fact, the very first thing that comes to mind with this album is that it sounds like Mic Jagger started making good music again.

Anyway, the album serves as a respite for both musician and audience from the true nature of the problem. We’re huddled together to escape the rain, “but the clouds keep moving on in”. It’s an honest look at things that aren’t touched upon enough—the second track, “Out of Time”, is specifically about people having the gall to tell you everything’s going to be alright. It feels good to recognize a sentiment like that, for once, but it is like all of these things fleeting. They recently stopped making music, and it only seems fitting. This was never something to fix the problem, just a way of telling it to fuck off for a little while.

Think of it as a mobile version of our drunken sing-alongs. Put it through headphones and see if your foot doesn’t start tapping. Take it with you on a long, sunny drive. It’s comfort by way of words that people don’t write on greeting cards—anything but cold.

-Drew