Category: tunes

Music. Bands. Songs. Concerts.

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chill and bright

10:30pm and I decided to put on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks.

There was a semester in college, sometime around my third year or so, where this record was everything to me.  I can remember listening to “Madame George” over and over again.  The parts of the song that sounded like nonsense, wordplay, syllabic musical accompaniment… were the parts that most amazed me.  Never have I read a review that so closely captured my own personal emotional response to a record more than did than Lester Bangs’ famous essay on Astral Weeks.  Read it; before or after you read this – either will work.  But read it.

There were days in Gainesville in the kind of winter Florida gets where it was actually quite cool.  Even then it was usually sunny.   It’s that combination of chill and bright that seems stuck in my head listening to this song.  The little fluttery string bits about a third in, wowing and hesitating underneath.  If you’ve never heard this 1968 album, you owe it to yourself to buy it.  When you do, try and get some time to really listen.  Try headphones.  Try somewhere removed if you can.  If not I suspect it’ll adapt to your surroundings anyway.  Why, though, am I writing about Astral Weeks?

Tonight the choice seemed inspired.

Sharaun arrived in Florida after midnight east coast time.  I’m so glad she finally decided to go.  The first thing she said to me from there was a tired, teary admission, “Not being here has given me a false sense security.”  It will be a tough next couple of days being apart from her and hearing her upset.  I tried not to cry when she told me how real things have become to her since getting there.  It’s not that I want to seem unflappable or strong or brave; I think it’s more some fool man notion around conveying a sense of calm.  There will be a time when I’ll go wailing right along with her, I’m sure of that as sure as I love her grandmother as my own.  Tonight wasn’t that time though.

Astral Weeks is not a sad album.  It’s all shimmery and freckled with emotion almost giddy.  But over all it’s contemplative.  Tonight is all about contemplating.

Part of me wishes we would’ve all gone.  Not being there it truly is easy to misunderstand the gravity or reality of things.  Nothing substitutes for experience.  Sharaun said she wished we were there with her; said she thinks it’d make things easier.  Maybe so.  On the other hand I feel like her having time alone with her family is important.  It’s not an easy thing, “planning” in this regard.  Everything seems inconsequential by comparison and any rationalization feels callous or self-serving.  Start thinking maybe you shirked the one responsibility that’s clearly definitive of humankind.  Nasty thoughts, gauging what you stayed back for; not thoughts that make a body feel real good.

Tonight the end of this record feels like sad prophecy.

Goodnight.

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the pitch, the timbre, the tone

Good morning world. Welcome to blog.

O what a productive Monday! No, really. No sarcasm to be found. Dust rose around my desk as I set up then knocked down to-do after to-do. Vacation tried to make me soft, but I came back with a heat in my eyes. I left the office dizzy at five, the sun already down past the horizon in this idiotic light-deprived time of year. Ruined bodies of undone tasks cast away in my wake, nothing more than bloodied shells of their one-time threat. Work lost today.

Sometimes I slow things down and just listen to my daughter’s voice not for the words but the sound alone. The pitch, the timbre, the tone. Small and almost miniature feeling. But confident and well-versed for her age, her vocabulary seeming overmatched to the sound of her own voice.

Sometime in the earlier days of our dating relationship, Sharaun and I were going through a box of old things in her room to kill time. In there was an audiotape her folks had made of her reciting the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme around the age Keaton is now. I can remember thinking how amazing it was to have her voice on tape at that age… to be able to hear the youth of it and try to reckon it with the voice I knew at the time.

I think having heard that tape is partially why I record Keaton as much as I do. Even though we’re really bad preservationists when it comes to video, we’ve got audio and still images down I think.

Yeah I love her voice. Talking, praying, singing. I just love it when she sings.

Too bad most of the stuff she seems to parrot is the Top 40 junk Sharaun listens to. I did, however, catch her singing the hooks to a couple catchy tracks the other night and made her repeat herself for the iPhone so I could capture the verses for posterity. Here, then, is our little songbird flexing her pipes on her own takes of some popular tunes. Enjoy.

[audio:MeetMeHalfway.mp3]

Keaton sings the Black Eyed Peas’ “Meet Me Halfway”
(direct link for those on mobile devices without Flash)

[audio:NewYork.mp3]

Keaton sings Alicia Keys’ hook from Jay Z’s “Empire State of Mind”
(direct link for those on mobile devices without Flash)

And yes, I do some minor editing for continuity’s sake – she’s not that perfect. But for really though, isn’t that something to hold on to? I’ve locked it away in my head as a memory, but the aural reminder these recordings may offer in ten or more years will surely be acutely appreciated. I can’t remember everything, you know. Humans fail.

Oh and before I go, a note about some small enhancements here and there to the blog. If you view any individual entry (not sure many regular readers do this, as, if it was me, I’d just be checking the homepage every so often or reading via RSS) you’ll now see a list of other entries written on the same date in the past. With more than six years of blogging-past to exploit, I figure these “also written on this day” links might be a neat window into the past.

I also tinkered last night at getting a running list of what I’ve been listening to on my iPod for the sidebar, but gave up when it proved to be too stupid to deal with. Maybe I’ll give it another go on an evening when I have a little more patience. Always looking to make this place more readable… shoot me any suggestions.

Goodnight.

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best of 2009

Internet.  It’s nearly the last day of this here year.  I let these trailing days sneak up on me…

Still haven’t managed to take down the Christmas tree, although I did get the lights off the house before the rain came this week.  Not all the gifts are properly stowed away either.  Still work to do.

Speaking of work to do…

I almost had an honest miss of 2009 with this entry.  It’s just that I usually do the year-end music list thing earlier in December, but I didn’t this year.  In fact, I forgot all about it until I today.  I was sitting at work, listening to one of the albums shown below and thinking about how much it’s grown on me in the past month or so… to the point where I’d probably rank it among the 2009 efforts I enjoyed most, and that’s when it hit me: I’d not done my list.  Spent some time today to rectify that, and here is the fruit thereof.

First up, the almosts:
(click for more info)

Honorable Mention

And now, the real-deal.  I tried to go back and write some fresh content on the portion of these records I’ve already given accolades in my halfway post, but a careful comparison would reveal at least a little blatant plagiarism betwixt the twain (hard to come up with original thoughts on the same content twice, y’know).  Even still, enjoy.

Most Serene Republic10. The Most Serene Republic – … and the Ever Expanding Universe

While not as immediately unstoppable as some of the MSR’s previous efforts (which have all, unfailingly, ranked here on previous blog toplists) – the Canuck collective’s latest release is nothing to turn away from. Still layered and dense and thickly sung by many voices, it still seems a tad bit dialed back from the all-out cacophony of their earlier stuff, and might benefit from being a little less unapproachable this time around because of it. For me, it may be that this band continues to do no wrong… but I liked this album from the first time I heard the first few seconds of the first song. Good stuff here folks; good, exciting stuff.

9. The Flaming Lips – Embryonic

Of all the records on this 2009 list, I got the least amount of time with this one. Released in October, and only really seriously appreciated by me beginning in December, it’s a squeaker. But, even with the limited exposure I knew it had to bow here. I think the last Lips album I really dug was 1999’s The Soft Bulletin. Oh sure, Yoshimi was listenable but wasn’t anything I flipped over. Then again, the band has always been hit or miss for me – maybe because they seem to approach each record as a new experiment in what they can sound like. Sometimes I like the results, sometimes not. Well, ten years have passed since Bulletin and, on this album, they have an entirely different sound. It’s a consistent new sound though: fuzzed-out bass punched-out by distorted rhythm and wandering bells, picked accents, and the familiar Flaming Lips “trippy” vocals and various random-sound accoutrement. Might be the closest we’ll get to a modern-day reincarnation of Pink Floyd, if that makes you want to hear it.

Grizzly Bear8. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

At the halfway mark I called this album “opium party music.”  I stand by that classification. Made for lounging around on satin pillows letting lethargy drive an academic listening. It’s no secret that “Two Weeks” buoys the record from a broad-appeal perspective, or that the rest of the tracks dazzle more through subtlety than fireworks – but there’s a wall-to-wall beauty of perfectionist production here that demands intent listening throughout; even after things seem to “slow down” off the high that is “Two Weeks.” And yes, I’ll admit that I just plain don’t like “Dory” at all… but that’s no reason to shun this sparkly, sometimes slow, quiet beast. With each perfectly placed strum or beat or whisper, it proves it deserves the spot.

Wild Beasts7. Wild Beasts – Two Dancers

Oh Wild Beasts, how far you’ve fallen.  Mid-year, you were #2… and here you are finishing at #7.  What happened?  Now look… this album is still super-fantastic.  It’s still seductive, slippery, effeminate, growling, dirty, teasing, young, and dripping with aural sex. It still has the same plucky harmonics, sparse woodblock percussion, and should-be-offputting-but’s-instead-entrancing female/male range of the lead singer.  It’s even still got one of the best lyrics of the year in, “This is a booty call; my boot, my boot, my boot, my boot up your asshole.”  So what changed?

Back then, I’d just then discovered the record and I was simply enamored.  As the year wore on I realized that it was merely #7 good, and that other bigger and badder records more rightly deserved the #2 spot.  But hey, a spot in the top ten ain’t nothing to cry about.

6. Islands – Vapours

I don’t know why, but I didn’t like this album immediately. On first listen, I was disappointed that it wasn’t such an instant pleasure they way all previous Islands/Unicorns records had been to my ears. Maybe this is because I read a review online that called it “safe” compared to their last effort (which also charted on last year’s personal “best of”); perhaps I let that influence me too much. But then Ben commented offhandedly that he was really digging it, and I gave it another go. Lo and behold, on repeat listens, my fondness for the sometimes slower, more plodding and deliberate Islands sound grew and grew. So yeah, maybe less wild or spontaneous in some ways, but let’s think of the new-found structure and brevity as “development,” OK? If you try this record, I’m convinced that you, too, will end up digging the plucky keyboards, marching synth percussion, and, as always, the instantly recognizable vocal styling.

Decemberists5. The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love

What can I say about this record that won’t make you automatically write it off as just some pretentious concept album? Oh, that’s right: nothing. That’s because this, moreso than any loosely cohesive so-called “concept” record of the last few years, is indeed a supremely pretentious album-length story-arc. A shamelessly complex tale starring a multi-character cast built on the foundation of Meloy’s trademark wordy, arcane songwriting. Through a hefty dose of “thou” and “wilt” and “irascible,” you’re treated to a classic tragedy involving a maiden, a shape-shifting animal-man, a wicked forest queen, and… uh… yeah…

And, as much as that whole mess above might turn you off (and believe me, Sharaun could barely bring herself to listen to this thing after I’d ranted and raved about the story and concept), the music on here is just piss-pants brilliant. Thematically tight, brilliantly instrumented, and entertaining throughout, you’ll want to hear the album if only to dismiss it as trying-too-hard smarmy art-rock.

4. Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros – Up From Below

I’m trying to recall where I heard about this record, but can’t. I do remember that I downloaded it simply because I liked the name of the band… sounded intriguing. Turns out the music sounds like the kind of stuff a bunch of proto-hippies might make if they decided to up and leave LA, move into a bus in the desert, and make music as a collaborative sort of commune-thing. Sounds like that because that’s exactly what it is. And while there’s no one named Edward Sharpe in the band, you might recognize the lead singer’s voice from his previous work in Ima Robot. Bottom line though, this is great 60s-ish roots-rock with doses of psychedelia. Worked great in Mexico in sunny warm weather, and would be a fantastic driving album. It’ll remind you of other things at times: Arcade Fire for the modernists, maybe Jefferson Airplane or even early Bowie for the classicists. See, something for everyone.

Phoenix3. Phoenix- Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

Back at mid-year I had bone to pick with the “breaker-upper” that is “Love Like a Sunset.”  Since then, though, I’ve actually learned to appreciate the turned-down track as a sort of “naptime” in between the unrelenting saccharine of this record. Phoenix has ranked for me in previous years, and back then I wrote about them that, “Every summer deserves a summery album. Like a sweet, dripping ice-cream cone, It’s Never Been Like That plops perfect little circles of melted goodness all over your favorite Hawaiian shirt.” And, aside from that being a pretty decent descriptive sentence, the underlying statement works for Wolfgang… too.

I want to bring this album back in time with me when they invent the machine; use it as the soundtrack to the saccharine over-emotion of a tweenage bout of puppy-love. The smiley songs could bounce along like a mirror image of my infatuation-fueled heartbeat as we held hand for the first time. Does that make you want to hear it? It should.

Mew2. Mew – No More Stories/Are Told Today/I’m Sorry/They Washed Away//No More Stories/The World Is Grey/I’m Tired/Let’s Wash Away

Mid-year to year-end and Mew jumps four spots to take the silver medal.  Quite a move.  It’s a well warranted uptick for this record, however.  As the year went by, I realized more and more what a frontrunner it was.  I’d find myself going back, back, back… over and over again to delight in the wash of keyboards and guitars and that oh-so-indie falsetto.  But what are you, reader, going to hear if you go snag this album?  I’ve heard the style of music called “space pop,” but I have no idea what that means.  To me this is something like “modern prog.”  The stuttering tempo of the peppier tracks recalls classic Yes, ELP, and King Crimson, while the dreamier slower stuff sometimes reminds me of the downtempo full-chorus stuff turned out by Canadian mutli-player collectives like Broken Social Scene or Most Serene Republic.  But maybe that’s just me.

Oh, and, after writing my own reviews of these albums, I always go to some “respected” music site to read and compare  my thoughts with their formal review.  I was quite happy this time around to see Pitchfork name-check King Crimson in their someone-got-paid-to-write-it review.  I promise I didn’t cheat.

Animal Collective1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

What more can I say about this album?

People have written about it to death this year.  So have I.  If you’re not an Animal Collective person, you’ll likely never share my appreciation for it.  Sometimes I even wonder to myself, “Heck… am I really an ‘Animal Collective person,’ or am I just caught up in the internet lovefest for this band?”  But, be it true love or crowd-influenced love, it’s most certainly love.  More than any other effort from 2009 I find myself coming back to this one again and again and again.

I understand you might think it’s not “music.”  It’s too experimental; too repetitive.; too dense.  Yeah it’s all that, it really is.  It’s out of my comfort zone too.  So really, I don’t know what happened with me and this album.  Perhaps it is some sort of mass hypnosis, but it was fully seeded and completely germinated in my brain if so.

I’m not even going to talk about the music.  It’s been done enough.  Hands-down, though, this is it.  #1 for 2009 beyond a shadow of a doubt.  I drank the Kool Aid; you should think about it.

And that’s it folks.  If you haven’t heard any of these records and want to, go buy them.  I recommend using Amazon’s MP3 store over iTunes, as you get DRM-free downloads you can take with you and load onto any device in the years to come.  Or, head on over to your favorite pirate downloading spot if you feel like risking prison rape.

Hope you’re setup proper for 2010.  We’re as ready as we can be.  Ten years married and a second youngling on the way and we’re pointed heavenward as much as possible from this cluttered Earth.

Goodnight.

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something about christmas songs

There’s something about Christmas songs. Well, the traditional ones.

By “traditional,” I guess I mean the ones you’d expect to hear in church. Songs like “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “What Child is This,” “Angels We Have Heard On High,” and, most of all, “Silent Night” knock something loose inside me. If they’re sung right, these songs can illicit the most striking, unbidden, emotional response from me. Especially “Silent Night.” A well-done version of that song and I’ll have trouble holding back tears. I don’t know why this is, or how the association got made in my subconscious, but it’s for-sure there. This Sunday at church they did a run of mostly these holiday tracks and my chest swelled as I sang along. There’s just something about Christmas songs.

Ahem… do I get to keep my man-card? OK, moving on then.

We’re supposed to get our car back Wednesday, but if things aren’t looking good I’m going to rent a vehicle to get us through Christmastime while my folks are here. Something of comparable size to the out-of-commission Acadia, on the off chance we want to do something as a family while my folks are in town (in my head I see us doing a whole lot of nothing, but you never know). The bill came to $6,000 or so of damage… although it was all superficial and the body shop says there’s nothing wrong with the underlying chassis of the vehicle. All the same, I’d rather it never had been in an accident, let alone just a few months after we’d gotten it. But, such is life. We can roll with it.

As predicted, work has slowed considerably this week. As the holidays approach there are less and less cars in the parking lot each morning. By Thursday the place will be a ghost town. All this makes for and environment that’s 1) very quiet, uninterrupted, and work-conducive as well as 2) hard to stick around long in, even being super productive. The desolation and thoughts of everyone else being at home enjoying family or a good book just makes a man want to cut-out early and call a few hours work “good enough.” Maybe, since things come so easy in the silent solitude, I can justify a few hours work as equal to a busy interrupt-drive day’s full eight hours? Yeah… that’s the ticket.

Goodnight.

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high-definition audio on an ipod

Hello, Def.

After I wrote all this mess, I decided to break it out from the regular day-to-day stuff that makes up the bulk of sounds familiar, just to spare the typical audience from something they likely wouldn’t be interested in.  But for those who may get down with the music/audio/technical junk, here’s some.

Well folks, I thought I had it all.  A while back when I got the new 2009 Beatles remastered catalog in lossless FLAC format I figured I had the best sounding version of the stuff to be had by humans. I was even super happy that I was able to losslessly transcode the FLAC files into Apple’s own lossless audio format for pristine playback on the iPod (I know, no comments about my 6G iPod Classic’s crappy DAC or sound quality in general here, please).  Anyway, put short – I was pleased that, on my portable device, I had the best-sounding versions of the Beatles’ records you could get.

Then EMI (not Apple, and the subtle distinction is important here for Beatlemaniacs) goes ahead and releases the entire catalog again in digital format, via a special USB key, and this time they offer a “24 bit”  lossless FLAC option.  What does this mean?  I dunno… not a lot unless you want me to get way technical… oh wait, you do?  If you wanna skip the techy stuff, move forward to the very last paragraph here (“Goodnight”) and just know that the 24 bit version is, for some scientific reason, better than what I had previously.  For the smarty-pantses out there…

Regular readers tuned-out?  Gone?  Good.

See, normal, CD-quality tunes have a bit-depth of 16 bits per sample (a sample being sized as 1/44,100th of second).  Higher-definition audio, such as DVD-quality audio, often comes at at an increased bit-depth of 24 bits per sample, and a smaller sample size (sometimes 48 kHz, sometimes 96 kHz, sometimes as much 192 kHz).  If you’re nerdy, you can think of it as an analog-to-digital thing, trying to take enough discrete points of digital data to accurately represent a continual analog sound.  The more often you “record” the analog sound, and the higher “resolution” in which you make the recording can be thought of, respectively, as sample-rate and bit-depth.  (And for the real nerds those last two links are to a couple far-better explained Wikipedia articles on the subject.)

Anyway, EMI’s straight-to-digital release upped the Beatles catalog ante by offering the lossless files in 24 bit format (albeit still sampled at 44.1 kHz, which some maintain is akin to a cliffhanger ending in a summer blockbuster… leaving open the door for yet another “upgrade” to a higher quality version of the set at a later date).  Oh great; this now means that my heretofore “best quality” 16 bit files on the iPod are, in fact, now trumped.  And while folks will argue with me about an iPod’s ability to, with any noticeable difference in sound quality, reproduce 24 bit audio… I of course want to get these new recordings on my trusty portable device.

Problem is getting 24-bit FLAC files converted over to 24-bit ALAC (m4a) files – using Windows – hasn’t historically been the easiest thing in the world. At this point in time, it’s rather trivial if you’re in the MacOS environment, but quite a bit more tricky in a Windows environment (especially if you prefer open-source stuff or you’re not overly-anxious to spend money on a pay-for piece of software to do the task).  If you’re a Mac person, you’ve got XLD or Max at your side and’ll have hardly any issues getting high-def stuff onto your iPods (provided you’re stubborn like me and want to do it regardless of whether or not the playback quality warrants it).  If you’re a Windows user, you’re options are significantly more narrow.

However, I’m here to report my personal success in the hopes that others out there may share in it.  See, just last week the venerable application dBpoweramp released a version of their great conversion software that supports encoding of 24 bit Apple lossless files.  What’s more, the software does the conversion in a batch format, from the original directories, in mere seconds, and it’s completely free for a 28 day trial period – no strings attached.  Wonderful.  And, as a check, the final files imported into iTunes show 24 bit / 44,100 Hz as expected (and I’m sure would match the sampling rate on a 96 kHz file as well).  Losslessly perfect!

For what it’s worth, as long as you can get files encoded into an Apple container, an iPod classic will indeed support 24 bit playback (I have the 6th generation 160GB, your mileage may vary).  And, even with the internet, it’s pretty hard to nail down the sampling-rate limitations… but from experience I can tell you my 6G classic has no issues at all with the 24 bit / 44.1 kHz Beatles ALACs.  Apparently, however, the iPod does have a sampling-rate ceiling of 48 kHz, and reportedly trying to load anything sampled at a higher rate than this onto your iPod will cause iTunes to spit it right back (yet my Apple TV is able to play 24 bit / 96 kHz files via the optical output, which is fantastic).

So for me, I’ll ignore the audiophile mantra of “you’ll never be able to tell on the iPod anyway,” delete my old 16 bit ALAC files from the iPod, and go with my newly-FLAC-transcoded 24 bit / 44.1 kHz ALAC versions of the Beatles’ catalog for portability.  I mean, even amongst all the stuff I read online about the quality of the iPod’s DAC, there’s reason to believe you might be able to tell a difference.  But at home, I’ll try loading the ALACs onto the Apple TV and playing them back via optical to the surround system for the “best” listening… (since I don’t want to have to buy one of those mega-expensive iPod DAC bypassing docks/transports anytime soon…).  Anyway, I’ve said it before: I’m no audiophile.  I obsess about it, but, when it comes down to it, I can’t hear the difference.

Anyway, if you’re a Windows user and dBpoweramp worked for you, you’ll likely end up like me and buy it despite doing all you needed to do with it long before the free trial expires… I mean, it’s worth it  – and down the road when more stuff comes in higher-definition format you’re gonna want to be able to re-encode on the fly anyway.  Drop me a line if you had luck with it, or go buy it… whatever.

I got some Beatles to go listen to…

Goodnight.

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aw hecky naw

No harm meant.Happy Wednesday folks.

Night’s nearly over now; at leas the part I’m typically awake for.  And Thursday’s coming… right around the corner from now.  After that, Thursday will beget Friday and Friday Saturday.  Then, we’ll pile into one of those flighted metal cigars and zoom-swish! away to Mexico.  While there, I will try and do my typical vacation-style writing, which consists chiefly of pictures and short sentences about the awesomeness of our stay.  Look for it; it’ll be a happening.  A-list.

For a few months now, Keaton’s expressed interest in picking up and holding our cat, Keeper.  Until recently, however, she’s been unable to find a way to 1) do this without the cat running away from her, and 2) muster enough strength to physically lift her.  This all changed in the past couple weeks when she figured out that she could reliably lift Keeper via an under-arm bearhug style hoist, and also that she’s now strong enough to ferry her around in this position.

It makes for some hilarious moments, because, despite being incredibly docile about the whole thing, the cat clearly dislikes being carried around this way.  Out of the back of the house somewhere Keaton’ll come, her arms encircling the poor cat’s body just under her front legs, squeezing her tight to keep her grip. This makes the cat’s head look all squanched up into her body… as both try to succumb to gravity.

She lets out these little half-meows (probably can’t get enough volume of oxygen to make anything appreciable) and we’ve told Keaton that this is her way of saying, “OK, I’m done now; please let me down.”  We’ve told her she has to listen to kitty when she “talks,” or else she might get scratched or bitten.  But, in the end, I don’t think the cat has the balls to do anything.  At this point, I think she’s been bested by the three year old… and she’s submissive.

As an aside… I’ve decided I don’t want our cat anymore.  I think I’ve evolved into a “no animals” kinda guy.  Not that I don’t like them, but I’m done with all that.  When we wear this one out, it’s over.  Is that heartless?  Whatever.

Oh yeah, just before I go… I wanted to mention how much I enjoyed Pitchfork’s “Top 500 Albums of the 2000s” feature (not to be confused with the”Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s” feature I wrote about a ways back).  Particularly, and I’ll try not to ruin it here by telling you where this review lands just in case you want to read it in order, I loved the review of the Arcade Fire’s incredible album Funeral. I’ve written about Funeral myself more than a few times, professing my profound love for the record, but the reviewer on P4K captures my hindsight thinking perfectly:

Will there ever be another album like Funeral? …

… besides being a turning point for indie rock, Funeral was one for the indie community as well. Whether it’s due to increasingly fractious listening habits or the increased ability for dissenters to be heard, Funeral keeps on feeling like the last of its kind, an indie record that sounded capable of conquering the universe and then going on to do just that. The consensus hyperbole that met Funeral resulted in any record that threatened to reach that level becoming met with severe scrutiny or even outright derision. And still, we wonder if there will ever be anything quite like Funeral — something tells me that as music becomes even more readily available to us in the next decade, we’ll still go through it all in the hopes we can find something with the unifying force and astounding emotional payload that only albums like Funeral can provide.

Yeah.  Really.  When do we get the next Funeral?  I think a record that good ruined me for everything else.  C’mon someone, do it again.

Goodnight.

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sunset on her breath

Tesnus.Busy nights Monday and Sunday, no time to write. Or, more accurately, writing eschewed in favor of other things.

I’m busily working to get two weeks of work done this week, in eager anticipation of our coming week getaway in Mexico, which begins Saturday. We’ll be jetting off with friends for a stay in an all-inclusive beachside joint, where our week is sure to be filled with early morning poolside chair-claiming, umbrella drinks, tacos, and lots of time spent doing nothing. Well, something… reading, dozing, playing with Keaton, swimming, lounging… but really a lot of nothing. It’s not been a particularly hectic week at work, so I’m not dying to get there… but, as always, the prospect of a surf and sun vacation has my mind drifting ahead in time.

Back in real life, Sharaun returned home from her weekend away with girlfriends in Florida (must be hard for her, going from a Gulf beach to a Pacific one over the course of a week). I managed to keep Keaton clean, fed, and happy while she was gone… single-handedly dispelling literally hundreds of dad ineptitude stereotypes in the process. She was greeted home by a clean house, empty laundry hampers, and a very thankful husband and daughter.  And, while we had fun just Keaton and I, it was a welcome homecoming for us too.  Moms do a lot, y’know?

It’s nighttime on Tuesday now, Keaton and I are watching Alice In Wonderland… the smoking caterpillar is on.  Keaton thinks Alice’s name is Alison Wonderland, first and last just like that.  A pretty reasonable misconception if you ask me.  After I put her to bed (which I just did) I plan to put some music on (which I also just did) and listen to it while I write (which I am doing right now; time and tenses get really messed up as I write in bits over the course of the evening).

Anyway, I’ve got the newish record by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros on.  I grabbed it a month or so ago on the band name alone (I do this somewhat often), and, at the time, ended up digging about 50% of the tracks and filing it away as something with prospect.  For whatever reason I spun it again yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to hear it aged very well, and I think I may have judged it kinda low originally.  Been listening with gusto today, and I like what I hear.  After looking up the band (which is one of hose Polyphonic Spree style two-digit member cult kinda hippie collectives) I found out that the lead singer is a dude from a band Ben and I used to like called Ima Robot.  Small world, this LA indie music biz… small world.

At work the other day I booked a coming trip to China and Taiwan.  My first travel to the Orient in nearly two years.  Not sure how I’ve managed to not be there in all that time, but I guess I tend to offer the international trips to the troops moreso than take them myself these days.  Will be good to get back to Shanghai and Taipei though, I do miss the frequency at which I used to visit both those fun cities.  And it’ll be good for me to re-invest in my work network while over there.  Oh and of course there’s the excellent food.  November comes the day I’ll take off; and I’m sure I’ll go into the whole pre-trip “I don’t wanna gos” here on the old blog about one week prior to travel… look for it.

Goodnight folks.  I wrote.