oh the push and pull of everything

let's see if i can hit at least one post a week. the thing is, i see so much music that i would like for you all to have, but i always feel like it needs to be special if i'm going to blog it.

well, here are a couple of links that fill that requirement:





Tilly and the Wall.   Willd Like Children (full album).

oh the push and pull of everything
oh this nightmare of electricity
we are the living dead, yeah the living dead
that's the way it is
that's the way it's always been
that snake slithered past my house today
oh i heard he caught you on a dark highway
and no the clouds didn't pour
they just grew into a storm
i can still hear the sound of the rolling thunder

god put down your gun
can't you see we're dead?
god put down your hand
i'm not listening
god put down your gun
can't you see we're dead?
i said god put down your hand
we're not listening
oh we never were

i wanna fuck it up...

and i feel so alive...


this album bottles the awkwardness of youth perhaps better than any other i have ever heard (but only dimitri martin captures the awkwardness of the double hawk!) unlike some artists who attempt to recapture their gawky years, and come up ringing untrue (think later dashboard) tilly and the wall are the kids table.

now, if you look them up, the thing that will always pop to the surface will be the fact that they have eschewed classic percussion in favor of a tap-dancing  girl. this sounds like a gimmick, and maybe maybe it was at some point, but it works so damn well. she dances on wooden boxes and street signs to get the tones she wants out of her feet. i would that i were a better writer so i could capture what this odd aesthetic move accomplishes...but, alas, i'm not. for me, it moves many of the songs into a sepia tone.

tilly and the wall are the flagship of connor obherst's label, team love (which gets an awful lot of flack for its saccharine name.) two of the members of tilly were in a highschool band w/obherst before he became the emo-god bright eyes.

i read somewhere that each song on this album could be described as "indie band X with a tap dancer," and that this wasn't a bad thing. well, that sounds like an insult to me, but it is kind of true. if you like lo-fi indie rock, especially from the midwest, this will sound familiar and wonderful to you. they blend a bit of alt-country and a little bit of 60's pop into their indie rock cocktail.

so many kids who listen to "indie rock" just love all of these midwest emo bands. i am not one of these kids.so, i was surprised by how much i liked tilly. give it a listen. why not? it's free.







Sufjan Stevens.   Index of Complete Albums.


i know that i really should write something epic for this man, given the epic scope of his projects and talent. however, i've written about him at least twice before, and i am getting hungry, and i don't have to dammit.

if you don't know sufjan yet, you are failing. if you truly don't know him, go get michigan and illinois right away! both albums can be found at the index above. you are only cheating yourself if you let these pass you by. unless, of course, you absolutely hate creative and (dare i use it again?) epic folk music. sufjan is symphonic and fascinating. these two albums are the first in his project to make an album for each of the 50 states. how's that for epic?

epic.


 

for once i want to be the car crash and not just another traffic jam...

this is going to be uncharacteristically short for me as i have to leave for Brianna's bd, but i wanted to share the brightest moment of my day with you.

i enjoyed nacho libre. many folks didn't, but i did. i am one of the only people i know of who didn't really like napoleon dynamite...it was funny, but i found it all a little too sad to be amazing. i left having laughed quite a lot, but a little sick to my stomach. nacho didn't do this to me at all. i cracked up during most of the film.

now, i do believe that one thing, more than anything else helped my appreciation of the movie's humor: the music absolutely slayed me (lord knows it didn't hurt that i was sitting between two completely adorable girls who were in enough of a giggly mood as to be funny themselves.) by the end of the credits, i was already in hysterical laughter. this primed me for the rest of the movie. there was a whole to-do about the movie's music (which you can read about at wikipedia if you are curious) but all that mattered to me was that it was hilarious and impossible to find w/o file sharing (which i don't use.)

tonight, at the end of a day where i felt older than i have ever felt before (more on that later) i finally found the song i had been looking for! what a fantastic song. so, here:




Mr. Loco. Religious Man.





(art courtesy of matt. and i didn't ask to use it. sue me.)

greetings!

this blog has grown out of my myspace blog of the same name. it is primarily a music blog where i share links to mp3s and full albums, though i hope to start sharing some of my photographs here as well.

currently, i am still doing my posting on the old site, and i hope to maintain both. below is a link to the 40 or so posts on myspace (which i may even xfer over if i get surprisingly motivated):

why are you staring into outerspace?

enjoy!