Apparently there is a shirt with this on it. It is my mission to find and purchase this shirt before leaving Gun Barrel City.

That's where I am at now. At least the town is up to speed enough to have free Wi-Fi in their libraries. Gotta give 'em props for that.

A couple of recent purchases:

Less than Jake - GNV FLA

With it's title (abbrev. Gainsville, Florida, their hometown) LTJ are telling everyone that they're returning to their roots. It always kind of makes me happy/sad to see bands do this, like the return of the prodigal son, why did he even leave in the first place? It's like they're admitting that their last two albums were trash. "In with the Out Crowd" and "Anthem" are fun albums by very competent rockers. But they don't have any of the things we love about LTJ's older stuff: great horn lines, punk rock, and intelligent lyrics about growing up. Though maybe it's good they're admitting they made a mistake.

GNV FLA is an album that LTJ should have released 5 years ago. They should have accepted back then that they weren't gonna be the next big band and made records that they enjoyed as well as their fans rather than trying to reach the mainstream.

I say that they should have released it 5 years ago because there are horn lines, lyrics, and choruses that just don't have the punch they used to. I expected them to mature a little more than this.

The second track also has a great horn line intro, but after the chorus there is this awkward spot with only drums bass and guitar, and then the horns play the end of their original line. I'm not exactly what happened there, but it seems like that whole transition should have been filled with horns.

In general the songs seem flat to me. The vocals are all in the same range, the drums and bass are usually just rocking along with maybe a punk or ska break thrown in. There are a few gems ("Handshake meets Pokerface" and "Settling Son") that rise above the rest.

Don't get me wrong, I am glad that they put out this album. It reassures me that they are going to continue with this kind of music (and not rock-rock). There are many good tracks and songs that I'll be listening to for a long time, but as with Sigur Ros, mewithoutYou, RX Bandits there is a natural progression that is neither selling out or standing still, and I hope they can take those kinds of steps for their next album.

Sigur Ros - Med sud i eyrum vid spilum endalaust (With a Buzz in our Ears we Play Endlessly)

This album blows me away. It is the perfect example of a band progressing but not abandoning everything that made them good.

The first two tracks are "poppy" (like that's a bad thing), but incredibly fun. It's the perfect Summer album from a band that you would not expect to release a fun Summer album.

There are wonderful horn and string arrangements, but we would expect nothing less from this creative band. The songs build with a momentum that is common in their music. They use everything at their disposal together to drive the song, whether it's moving forward or pulling back. It's a joyous sound that very few bands achieve.

This album also has the first track that Jonsi sings in English, although it didn't matter to me the first listen since I still couldn't understand him. It makes me wonder if people in Iceland can understand their other songs.

Needless to say, they've done it again. They've made an album that shows immense progression and focus of their sound, yet not losing the aspects that made them great in the first place. It's always great to see bands do this. They're like Blade: they have all the good stuff from their old albums, and none of the bad.

1. I saw a van yesterday for "Church Pest Control"...

Now I know the Church has a lot of problems (pride, hypocrisy, lust, materialism), but I don't know what a man in a van (a...van man you might say....or even the van man) is going to be able to do about it.

2. Right now I'm sitting in a coffee shop. Just now it was me...and 6 middle aged women. Now there are two other men, and frankly I feel a lot more comfortable. I am not sure what exactly happens when this many women are together in a confined space, but I'm not sure I want to find out.

3. And because bK likes odd numbers, I'll end with this one: there are certain types of music that make everything more epic. Techno is one of those.

...I take that back. It is impossible to make coffee talk epic. It is neither awesome nor extreme. You could put the coffee shop on top of a mountain with ogres riding huge dragons spitting fire and doing battle around the windows, and it would still be women talking about scrapbooking.

Kevolendum1:
Right now they're talking about their love for jacks.....JACKS.

Xanga, meet what I think will be the next period of instrumental music: Classical Rock.

Explosions in the Sky - First Breath After Coma

....

arranged for band (or at least a minute of it)

The Original:

My Version:



P.S. I don't recommend playing them at the same time because they're in two different key signatures. But of course I did, because I enjoy pain.