Heartache With Hard Work

Reigning in the introspection and philosophizing for a little while, here’s a couple sun-drenched pop songs from the California-based Golden Shoulders. They’ve got a new EP, released a couple months ago called KIN and it’s well worth checking out.

As a reference point, I can’t help but think of Spoon, though if you know how I feel about Spoon, you would know that isn’t necessarily a ringing endorsement. Still, it’s not that I don’t like Spoon, it’s just that I’ve never understood what all the fuss was about. I like them most when they play melodic, playful songs. Which is pretty much what you get from Golden Shoulders, if you add in a little honky-tonk country rockin’ and mix it with a couple songs you would expect someone to be crooning from a beat-up piano in a dusty bar doing their best Gram Parsons impression.

Daughters

This is the highlight of the EP, in my opinion. Upbeat, bouncy, with that great piano line driving it along. And all over in about two and a half minutes.

Friends and Family

Under two minutes, but it feels like more. A little less tuneful than the others, which may be good or bad depending on your perspective. Maybe I’m the only one, but I can’t get the image of Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem out of my head when listening to this song.

Catharsis-time. I’ll begin with a song that’s older than I am, but which sounds more vital now than it ever has. It’s also my all-time favorite song, and one that I’ve been avoiding for the last week because I was worried it would be too painful. But I can’t hide forever, and I wouldn’t really want to.

Romeo and Juliet – Dire Straits

Heart-wrenching, beautiful beyond words. Mark Knopfler’s voice is torn apart without losing its coherence. The guitar is picked delicately until the minor explosions of each chorus. It’s a song about lost love, about wondering how something that was so good could fade, about betrayal and redemption. And I, like Romeo, still wonder when my Juliet is going to realize that it’s just that the time was wrong.

I can’t think of a single thing in the world that forces me to catch my breath, to feel the lump in my throat, to incite tears more than the chorus when he sings Juliet, when we made love you used to cry / You said ‘I love you like the stars above, I’ll love you til I die.’ The way the guitars and drums rise up like a tidal wave and crash into my soul, the way you can tell that his heart is breaking at the memory, and the way the music recedes into the background for the final verse, while Knopfler’s voice remains, with the slightest of echoes as he sings into the darkness:

I can’t do everything, but I’ll do anything for you
I can’t do anything except be in love with you
And all I do is miss you and the way we used to be
All I do is keep the beat and bad company
All I do is kiss you through the bars of a rhyme
Julie, I’d do the stars with you anytime…

Such honesty, such pain! And yet, he does not retreat from love. You sometimes can’t help but wonder if he wishes he could be something else. But it is not meant to be. We struggle, we strive, we fall deeply in love and give up slowly, if at all. We love because we must, because it is what gives us our humanity, our purpose, and our joy. Life is harder, and we open ourselves to such damage and pain at the hands of others, but this is as it must be.

People who live their lives on Novocaine may be free from pain but they are barely alive. Life hurts sometimes; this is an unfortunate reality. Or maybe not so unfortunate. I am not sure I want life if it doesn’t include hope, love, and beauty, and inextricably tied to all these things are risk and the potential for monumental pain. If all I have to look forward to is the opportunity to survive until the next day, I cannot say that I am really alive. Instead, I will seek out beauty every place I can, I will hope beyond all reasonable expectations, I will believe that even the worst people and the worst things can be made right once again.

Love may betray me, but I will not betray love. And in the end, that is all we need:

All You Need is Love – The Beatles

One of my 10 favorite Beatles songs. Back in May I wrote:

Maybe love alone isn’t enough, but we have to believe that it’s possible. At some point in the Anthology, one of them (probably Paul) commented that one of the great things about The Beatles is that, at their core, they sang songs about love and joy and positive things. And this is the best of them all.

We must believe that, not just when things go well, but (even more importantly) when life is hard and love hurts so deeply.

To be human is to find something worth caring about and to live it out as best we can. Indeed, perhaps it is simply our capacity to care, to struggle against all odds with no belief that it will result in change. We struggle simply because that is what it means to be human.

I am reminded of a passage from Arundhati Roy’s amazing piece The End of Imagination, which I often return to in the tough times of my life:

I told my friend there was no such thing as a perfect story. I said that in any case hers was an external view of things, this assumption that the trajectory of a person’s happiness, or let’s say fulfilment, had peaked (and now must trough) because she had accidentally stumbled upon “success”. It was premised on the unimaginative belief that wealth and fame were the mandatory stuff of everybody’s dreams.

You’ve lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible, honourable, sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they are less “successful” in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead. (Prescience? Perhaps.)

“Which means exactly what?” (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed.)

I tried to explain, but didn’t do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

On that subject: a final song–another one of my favorites…

P.S. You Rock My World – Eels

The burst of sunshine at the end of one of Electro-Shock Blues, one the bleakest albums I have ever heard. It deals with the suicide of Everett’s sister and the death of his mother to cancer. But, in the spirit of redemption it is able to conclude:

I was thinking about how everyone is dying
And maybe it’s time to live

Or, to put it simply as they do in The Shawshank Redemption: “get busy living or get busy dying.”

It is not an easy philosophy, but it is essential. Life is worth living to its fullest precisely because of the constant threat of suffering. All of this simply means that beauty is real and not a myth, not a plastic creation. If love were perfect and easy, it wouldn’t be love; it would be an advertisement. When it is painful and hard and scary, it is life.

Thanks for the kind words people have sent about my break-up. Somehow it really helps to be consoled by relative strangers. I don’t really want to turn this blog into a glorified livejournal, so I’ll try not to get too emo on y’all, but part of why I love music so much is because of its emotional impact and the way it becomes a part of my life.

And for the last three years, all music has pretty much been about one person. So I’m not going to be able to not talk about it to some extent. That said, another part of why I love music is the way it can universalize emotions. So my own personal life details don’t really matter–it’s the feeling they embody. Meaning: I may talk about my own sadness, but I hope it doesn’t sound completely solipsistic and that you can find ways to relate.

Anyways, I’m still not really feeling in the mood to write too much, but even getting started on doing something here is a nice distraction. So here are a couple songs I’ve been listening to in the last few days.

A Pillar of Salt – The Thermals

I wrote about The Thermals way back in the earliest days of this blog. Snotty, charming, and raucous punk rock at its finest. They’ve got a new album The Body, The Blood, The Machine which is due out later this month. Their description of it theme: “The lyrics envision a United States governed by a fascist Christian state, and focus on the need (and means) to escape.” This is the first song out, and it’s definitely reminiscent of their earlier work, but a bit more tuneful, even melodic. I thought their second record was inferior to the first, but if The Body, The Blood, The Machine is anything like this song, it could be their best yet.

As for the pillar of salt metaphor, it brings to mind a story from one of my favorite books: Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. He is talking about Lot’s wife looking back at the ruined cities of Sodom and Gomorrah:

He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.
So it goes.
Those were vile people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them. And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.
So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes.

What does it mean? Well, for me it’s always been about the importance of the day-to-day, about the connections between people, and about those brave enough to love even when there is no reward. It’s better to be Lot’s wife looking back through salty eyes than the Deity that destroyed those cities because of a higher ideal.

It is easy to decide that we have been wronged, that others are evil and must be destroyed, that whatever is different is terrible. But we should not take God’s path: responding to that perceived difference with violence, even to the point of punishing she who simply felt sorry for them. Vengeance is appealing, but love and kindness are what makes us good, what makes existence worthwhile.

Evening Gown – Alejandro Escovedo

I’ve never listened to as much Alejandro Escovedo as I felt like I ought to. Hopefully, I will be able to rectify that in the next few months, starting with his new album The Boxing Mirror. But in the meantime, here is one song of his (a Rolling Stones cover) that I absolutely adore. I used to listen to it a lot a few years ago, but it got lost in the computer switch of aught-four, and I forgot about it. I only rediscovered it about a week ago and have been loving it again. Beautiful, melancholy, and lonesome.

It’s available on the Down to the Promised Land compilation from Bloodshot Records.

Also, head over to I Am Fuels, You Are Friends to hear “Purple Parallelogram” a great little Lemonheads song written by Evan Dando and Noel Gallagher.

Posting may be a little sparse here for a little while. My girlfriend of three years just broke up with me and I can’t say that I’m really in the mood to do much of anything, much less post about music.

That said, I kind of started this blog in the first place because I needed something to get me through some tough times of a similar nature. And music is the constant accompaniment for tough times in my life. So once I get over the immediate shell shock, you’ll probably get a whole slew of “songs to cry yourself to sleep to” while I try and get myself back together.

In the meantime, here’s my all-time #9 favorite Beatles song, which I haven’t been able to stop thinking about all day. The original, and a cover by Bob Dylan:

Yesterday – Paul McCartney
Yesterday – Bob Dylan

Pain never sounded so beautiful as when Paul sings it. I have a feeling I’ll be counting on him and the rest of the Beatles to get me through the upcoming days, weeks, months, years while I try and figure out how I can continue to make it through the day. And while I try to figure out if the quote from Rosanne Cash in my last post (“Long after life there is love”) goes the other direction: “long after love there is life…”

Last month, I wrote about the haunting September When It Comes by Rosanne Cash. On that song, a duet with her father (the late, great Johnny Cash) from right before he died, she sang about the anticipation of loss. The theme is continued on her new album Black Cadillac but this time, the subject is the actualization of that loss.

And she has a lot to draw from. In the space of a couple years she lost her father, her stepmother (June Carter Cash), and her mother (Vivian Cash Distin). As a firm believer in the importance of music as catharsis, I hope that making this album ended up helping her through those deaths and their aftermath. It certainly sounds like it did.

Often dark, lonely, and angry (some song titles: like “Black Cadillac,” “Burn Down This Town,” and “World Without Sound”), it is also hopeful, pure, and full of grace. It would have been easy to discover easy answers to the loss of loved ones: in religion, or simply in trite aphorisms, but Cash does not look for easy solutions. She cannot say for sure that, in the end, it was all worthwhile. Nor can she be sure that their lives were lived as they ought to have been. She knows there is much that could have been said, and that, if there can be no doubt that they loved, there can also be no doubt that they ought to have loved better.

“I wish I was a Christian, and knew just what to believe” she muses on “World Without Sound.” The irony is clear, but we cannot help but feel that there is a genuine desire for the comfort that comes from faith.

And yet, she remains unbowed. For, if love never manifests itself perfectly, and if life sometimes feels bereft of purpose or meaning, it is not the end. We live cut adrift but sometimes, if we’re lucky, we experience those moments of sublime perfection when the currents bring us into harmony. And many other times, if there is no perfection, there can be comfort and beauty in discordance. Her lyrics often cut deeply, but that is what makes the fundamental optimism so powerful.

Musically, the album runs the gamut from the traditional country and western tunes to more folk-influenced numbers, with healthy dabs of soul, R&D, rockabilly, blues, and just a hint of piano balladry. In spite of the different styles, it posesses a strong underlying unity–this is an album that deserves to be heard in its entirety–but in accordance with some of its themes, much of that unity comes from the melding of occasionally dissonant parts.

The long and short of it is that Black Cadillac is her best album yet, and frankly, I think it’s better than anything her dad ever did.

It has received a modest amount of press because of the fame of her family (and the popularity of Walk the Line), but I think that misses the point. The fact that her father was famous is tangential at best. This is an intensely personal record, and would be just as affecting if I had never heard of the rest of her family. I hope that the story around it draws in some listeners who might otherwise have missed this album, but this should only be a starting point. This music is revalatory on its own terms, not necessarily as a part of the Johnny/June/Vivian myth.

There are no weak songs, and far more good and great moments than I can discuss while holding onto any kind of brevity. But a few of the highlights:

Black Cadillac

The opening track, it begins with the disembodied voice of her father and then lurches into a bluesy bass-driven beat. And the first line sets the tone for the entire record: “It was a black cadillac that drove you away / Everybody’s talking, but they don’t have much to say.” The organ makes a number of ghostly appearances, and as the song concludes, the horns from “Ring of Fire” make an appearance. All of these effects convey the surreality of loss, the feeling that, like the “ghost limbs” of an amputee, our loved ones are never completely gone, even when they are forever beyond the veil of our conscious understanding.

I Was Watching You

I can’t think of any word that could describe this song except “wrenching.” Essentially just her and the piano, it begins with her the unborn Rosanne watching her parents wedding from some unknown place: “And I was watching you from above, cause long before life, there was love .” In the second verse, the marriage is breaking apart: “When it all falls apart, there is love.” And, in the final verse, she watches her father slip away and now it is him, watching from above: “Long after life, there is love.” Her voice is used to fine effect on this song–much like her father she is not a particularly adept singer in a classical sense, but can pack in emotion far beyond her vocal range.

Dreams Are Not My Home

One of the most rocking songs on the record, it shows that she can let loose with the best of them. Here, she clearly states that she will not succumb to false hopes, and will not let grief, or memory of past happiness, obstruct her. “I want to live in the real world/I want to act like a real girl/I want to know I’m not alone/And that dreams are not my home.”

A few other great tracks are the acoustic and jangly “God Is in the Roses” and “The World Unseen” which has much the same feel as “I Was Watching You.” Seriously, go buy this album.

Edible – Gran Bel Fisher

Here’s a track off Full Moon Cigarette, the debut CD from Gran Bel Fisher, released last week. It’s an intriguing song. In some ways, it doesn’t sound all that much different from your traditional 70s-rock-influenced alt-country fare. Which isn’t bad, but doesn’t really merit much discussion either. But then you notice the stunning range of Fisher’s voice. And then you notice that the music has a darker tint to it than you originally thought, like wouldn’t this actually sound pretty good on an early R.E.M. album? Still, I can’t seem to get kd lang’s “Constant Craving” out of my head when I’m listening to this one, and I’m not sure that’s a good sign.

Still, I like it, maybe more for the possibility of what Fisher might have to offer than because I’m that into this particular song. He could turn into a unique and truly interesting artist. Or he could turn into Coldplay-lite. One will probably be better for him commercially, but the other will make me happier. Isn’t that always the way?

iTunes problems unresolved, but I will continue nonetheless…

I’ve been thinking for a while about what I could do to commemorate finally reaching the century mark. Some of my initial ideas involved an African safari, NASA, and the 107th division of the Bulgarian Army. Then I decided maybe I should rein things in a little bit. So, instead of the “lions and Bulgarians on the moon” idea, I’m going to do a little bit of a retrospective.

I know, I know. Everyone hates those clips episodes of TV shows, when you can’t help but imagine that the writers all took their vacation at the same time and some intern had to come up with a threadbare excuse of a plotline on which to hang a bunch of old scenes. But bear with me. The difference is that I’ve been blogging since January but really didn’t have anyone reading until May. So there’s a lot of good stuff that may have been missed.

So here it is: twenty songs I’ve already posted that you owe it to yourself to listen to (in approximate order of awesomeness, though they’re all fantastic), with links to when I originally discussed them, and some short comments.

You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve – Johnny Boy

Originally discussed in I Just Can’t Help Believing. It begins with the drum beat from “Be My Baby” (easily the best thing Phil Spector ever did), and then in come the guitars, the background starts to swirl, and then: “I just can’t help believing, though believing sees me cursed…” After one time through the verse, it explodes and she sings it all again, this time accompanied by the Wall of Sound. Before the next verse, the “oh baby baby”s fly back and forth. And then, at the 2:01 mark, the whole song is set on fire. The fireworks go off (literally), and all she sings is “Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah!” but it sounds like poetry. There’s the smallest respite as it cuts back into the last verse when the music recedes, apart from the occasional firework. The verse ends, there are a couple more “yeah, yeah!”s, and then, before you know it, the song is over, and you realize you’re about to pass out because you haven’t breathed in 3 minutes.

All Apologies and Smiles, Yours Truly, Ugly Valentine – Carissa’s Wierd

Originally discussed in Promise Me You’ll Be Perfect. This song is easily in my top 10 of all-time, and (depending on my mood) is probably in the top 5. It was this song that inspired me to search long and hard for everything else the band had ever done (which was sort of tough back in the misty days of 2001). It’s one of those great Thunder Road-esque songs that start out slow and just keep building and building and building until it’s almost unbearable. It’s walks the line between despair and joy more perfectly than any other song I’ve ever heard. Depending on my mood, it can bring me to the edge of tears or can make me smile with delight. Or, sometimes, do both at the same time.

Elevator Love Letter – Stars

Originally discussed in Top 20 Albums of 2005. It’s difficult to imagine a better song than “Elevator Love Letter.” Shimmering, tender, lovestruck, and just about the prettiest thing in the entire world. My favorite song by a country mile from one of my favorite bands of the last few years. Who has a better voice than Amy Millan? No one as far as I can tell.

The War Criminal Rises and Speaks – Okkervil River

Originally discussed in Where I’m Forgiven By Time. This song places us in the room with the war criminal as he tells his side: “Does the heart wants to atone? Oh, I believe that it’s so, because if I could climb back through time, I’d restore their lives and then give back my own.” All this time the tension is rising, the music begins to pound on the brain and Sheff’s voice crackles with intensity, it bends and breaks and shatters but still keeps on going. He makes no excuses, he cannot even cry, but it is clear that the mistake of 30 years ago has haunted him for every second of his life since. He does not ask to escape punishment, he only asks that those reading and watching to understand that he is not really any different from them, and for the hope that somehow he can be forgiven for falling into the abyss.

Trailer Trash – Modest Mouse

Originally discussed in So much beauty it could make you cry. My favorite Modest Mouse song, and the inspiration for the name of this blog. The song contains one extended verse which bleeds into something of a chorus, and is then repeated. Over this, the pace slows and while Isaac initially sounds emotional, maybe even a little tortured, by the end, he is just speaking the lyrics over a drum beat, and the guitars have almost disappeared. You can almost feel the burden of life pressing down. Then, however, the prettiness and weariness of the first half explode into the chaos of the second half. The drums go crazy, and the guitar riff dances around. There are no lyrics, just the commotion of the music. All weariness is forgotten, and if you’re not quite sure where things are going, you do know that it is exciting. I like to think that’s sort of how life works.

Years Ago – Super Deluxe

Originally discussed in I Lost My Heart To You Years Ago. This is the song that, for a couple months, captivated the greater Seattle area my sophomore year in high school. It’s not hard to see why. It’s acoustic, stripped down to just Braden and the guitar, and is almost stunningly beautiful. (As an aside, I know I’ve been gushing a lot, and that will probably end once I stop reviewing songs that are among my absolute favorites. But for now, you’re going to get gushing). This is just a love song, but it’s about as good as a love song can be.

Life Goes On – Modest Mouse

Originally discussed in Sometimes Life Works Out Okay. Yes. I know, I know. Putting two songs by the same band on is lame. But I’ve just got to share this one, too. It’s an early version of “Float On” from a show that I went to in Seattle right before Christmas, 2002. They played a number of songs that would end up on “Good News…” but this was by far the best. It’s significantly longer, with a lot more verses and more Isaac mumblings. It still has the same unbelievably catchy riff, but has a little bit less of the pop shine. Basically, it rocks out a little more: it was from the encore so Isaac’s voice is a little raw, and it’s live so it’s less polished. Which is part of what makes it so much fun. Don’t get me wrong, I like the final version of the song a whole lot; I just like this one even more.

The Bleeding Heart Show – New Pornographers

Originally discussed in Top 20 Albums of 2005. I think the word infectious was coined to describe the New Pornographers. Either them or the flu. “The Bleeding Heart Show” might be my new favorite song by them. It’s not quite as overwhelmingly great as Letter from an Occupant but that makes the payoff at the end that much better. It slowly builds until just after the 2-minute mark when the guitars kick into gear, the pulse quickens, they go up one more notch, and then Neko Case belts out “we have arrived too late to play the bleeding heart show.” The last half of the song is definitely two of the best minutes of music this decade.

As Cool As I Am (live) – Dar Williams

Originally discussed in Is it how she moves, or how she looks? The first Dar Williams song I ever heard and still one of my favorites. It has a great sound, but what really does it for me is some of the best lyrics out there. This is a live version, which I might even like more than the original. It has a little quicker feel, since the driving instrument is the cascading guitar instead of the didgeridoo. But both are very good.

Balcony – Birdmonster

Originally discussed in I’m not yours but I’m everything. A song that has felt like my anthem for a good part of this year. It’s the type of song that makes you want to get up and dance around until you just collapse, panting for breath. The softer, quieter moments are interspersed to give you a chance to cool off, but it’s only a temporary respite until they send you whirling around again.

This Year – Mountain Goats

Originally discussed in Top 20 Albums of 2005. The best song from the very good album The Sunset Tree. The highlight is the chorus where he declares “I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” The uneasy defiance, the resignation that refuses to give up hope, the way he sounds exhausted but willing to suffer anything in order to survive, it makes for a touching and powerful song.

Fall Apart Again – Brandi Carlile

Originally discussed in Alone is the last place I wanted to be. What a voice! She can do soft and tender. She can do light and peppy. She can do the sustained note that bends and sways around the music. She can do highwire act between a cracking falsetto and an alto that cuts like a knife. Anything else you want, she’s probably got it somewhere. It’s been many moons since I’ve heard a record as fresh, carefree, and beautiful as this one. It’s primarily acoustic, but still manages to rock pretty hard, proving once again that rock and roll is all about attitude, not about amplifiers.

Let’s Get Out of This Country – Camera Obscura

Originally discussed in I feel like getting confessional. It’s been beautiful here for the last week or so, and “Let’s Get Out of This Country” has been the constant soundtrack. It’s the kind of song that deserves to be played on a sunny day when you throw all your cares to the wind and just enjoy yourself.

This Conversation – Submarines

Originally discussed in You’re going away but I’m not giving up. My favorite song from my favorite album of the year. Simply beautiful.

Reason to Believe – Aimee Mann and Michael Penn

Originally discussed in Looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me. A great Springsteen song, made even better when covered by Aimee Mann and Michael Penn. The harmony created by the two singers gets at the heart of the song in a way that Bruce, by himself, simply cannot. The connection, the perfect interlinking of voices, is the ideal for which we strive. When the song is simply Bruce by himself, it feels like a simple song about a few people. With Mann and Penn together, it still feels incredibly personal, but it also hints at a broader allegory that applies to all of us.

Nate B – Slapstick

Originally discussed in Let’s go to the art show where we’ll mope around and then we’ll brood. Slapstick is one of my favorite bands, and this is my favorite song by them. They broke up almost a decade ago, but they have a self-titled CD that compiles virtually all of their songs, and is well worth a purchase. This song blew me away an absolutely perfect horn riff (almost identical to one from Simon and Garfunkel’s “Fakin’ It” incidentally). It’s not really “ska” except for the horns, but those add just enough flavor that it sounds like much more than a strictly punk number.

Revelry – Sea Ray

Originally discussed in Now I’m free, I feel no revelry. A bubbly guitar opens the song, then the strings move in. After a slow buildup come the vocals. The singer doesn’t have a particularly amazing voice and I find it a little annoying on some of their songs, but it fits very well with this song. There is an extended instrumental period in the middle and then a short final verse as the song trails down.

Goods – Mates of State

Originally discussed in There was a time we lived in truth, let’s bring it back. Last year’s EP All Day, despite only being four songs long, may have been their best record to date. It included one of the most infectious melodies of the 21st century on this song. Check out that moment at 22 seconds when the first “waa-ohh!” bursts out. And then bounce and bop your way through the rest of the song.

Magnetized – Laura Veirs

Originally discussed in Riding into the sun on a raft made for one. This song is almost painfully beautiful. It begins quietly, just her and her guitar. Only in the second half do the layers appear. And even then, it’s only two layers of quietly strummed music, the primary vocal track, and harmonies in the background. Contrasted with the pure simplicity of the rest of the song, it adds some depth, but does not fundamentally change the attitude or feeling of the song., and it’s not until halfway through that the piano and strings make an appearance. By the end, it feels like a hymn.

Orange – The Exchange

Originally discussed in Just listen to the trees. They’ve got a pretty nice indie guitar/piano combination going on. Maybe this is Death Cab if they were way more into Weezer, or mid 60s pop songs, or Journey, or Jimmy Eat World back before they became parodies of themselves, or something. I realize those things aren’t exactly the same as each other, but there’s a bit of all of them here. There’s some of the “la la la” background vocal thing going on, and I can’t really think of any way to describe this song except “warm.”

And that’s it. Here’s to another 100 posts…

My computer locked up this evening and when I restarted it and opened iTunes, it said my music library was damaged. So now, all of my playlists, all of my play-counts, all my information about when I actually downloaded the track (which is pretty important, since I mostly listen to the most recent stuff I’ve downloaded and keep iTunes organized by that function more often than any other) is gone.

So basically it’s totally devastating.

I had planned to do something a little special to celebrate the 100th post on Heartache With Hard Work, but I’ve got a lot of other music-stuff to deal with so that might have to wait a little bit.

In the meantime, if anyone else has had this problem and knows of a solution, I’d love to hear it.

It’s My Way of Staying Connected – She, Sir

It’s not too often that I’ll hear to something and instantly love it–usually it takes a few listens before I really get into a song–but this song by the Austin-based She, Sir is one of the rare ones that absolutely blew me away from the first second.

Shades of My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai, and pretty much any other band known for creating layers of sound, but there’s something beyond that. This is not your typical fare; this is what would’ve happened if shoegaze was around when Bach was growing up. “Intricately crafted” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Every sound has its counterpoint, every note is in place. You can almost hear the mathematical precision. But it is not cold or lifeless. It reminds me of a quote attributed to Douglas Adams: “Mozart tells us what it’s like to be human, Beethoven tells us what it’s like to be Beethoven, and Bach tells us what it’s like to be the universe.”

Seriously. That’s the kind of music we’re talking about here.

Or another Douglas Adams quote, this time from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (another part of the same chapter I quoted from a few months ago when talking about Laura Veirs):

Music of any complexity (and even “Three Blind Mice” is complex in its way by the time someone has actually performed it on an instrument with its own individual timbre and articulation) passes beyond your conscious mind into the arms of your own private mathematical genius who dwells in your unconscious responding to all the inner complexities and relationships and proportions that we think we know nothing about.
Some people object to such a view of music, saying that if you reduce music to mathematics, where does the emotion come into it? I would say that it’s never been out of it.
The things by which our emotions can be moved – the shape of a flower or a Grecian urn, the way a baby grows, the way the wind brushes across your face, the way clouds move, their shapes, the way light dances on the water, or daffodils flutter in the breeze, the way in which the person you love moves their head, the way their hair follows that movement, the curve described by the dying fall of the last chord of a piece of music – all these things can be described by the complex flow of numbers.
That’s not a reduction of it, that’s the beauty of it.

The feeling of rain on your skin, the 59th decimal point of Pi, the way it smells right before the first snow of the year, the swirling of the cosmos…it’s all here. In the last 24 hours, I have listened to this song a dozen times, and every time I notice something new. I suppose eventually it will get old but I’m guessing not for a while.

Anyways, “It’s My Way of Staying Connected” is on the EP Who Can’t Say Yes, which is scheduled for release sometime this fall. When a more exact date is released, and it goes on sale, I will let you know and (strongly) encourage you to buy yourself a copy. In the meantime, check out their myspace page to listen to some more.