Band: Tortoise
Album: Gamera EP
Best song: The title track is unstoppable
Worst song: “Cliff Dweller Society” is not as good as the title track. Still great.
It’s hard not to think about one’s origins when thinking about music and its place in our lives. My music fandom and the places to which I go in said fandom, as mentioned here and here, come from a direct line to one evening and my taping songs off the local college music station. Continue reading
Band: King Crimson
Album: In the Court of the Crimson King
Best song: “21st Century Schizoid Man” is a classic
Worst song: “Moonchild” is great, but a little long.
Progressive rock, like stadium rock, is often decried by the punk folks all too often as self-indulgent, obnoxious and overwrought. I’m not going to disagree, but self-indulgent is not exactly the worst thing in the world to me (example: this site). Punk rock — and by extension, the very essence of rock and roll — is a populist art form, born out of the notion that somewhat simple music is the people’s form. Continue reading
Band: Cloud Nothings
Album: Attack on Memory
Best song: “Fall In” is impeccable.
Worst song: “No Sentiment” isn’t the best.
There are days when I really miss the second wave of emo. In many ways, I grew up on that stuff, as my formative years were bounced between my beloved post-rock and the Urbana-soaked second wave of Braid, Seam, Sarge and outliers like Sunny Day Real Estate, Jonah’s onelinedrawing and the like. I would listen to anything on Jade Tree, Parasol and other such labels. It was all good, though little of it was great. It was akin to the old notion of sex and pizza, though my friend Drew had a better analogy: hamburgers. A crappy hamburger is still good and the distance between the best hamburger in the world and the worst is not that great. Continue reading
Band: Nada Surf
Album: The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy
Best song: “Clear Eye Clouded Mind” is the best song on the record, hands down.
Worst song: “Teenage Dreams” is boring and typical.
I prefer not to talk about my actual job here on my blog — and I’m not starting now, certainly — but I’ll simply say that my job has kept me very busy in the last month or so. Nevertheless, I apologized on Twitter for this and received a request to write about the new Nada Surf album.