Pop Rock
Lent is sixteen days away and I am looking at my spreadsheet of albums I have heard this year and I am realizing that I really need to lock into high gear with my relistens. In a perfect world, I would have heard each album three times, but I am willing to compromise at a measly two listens per album. These days it is a matter of opening up that document and seeing what I cannot access according to lent and lock back in.
The snow and freezing temperatures reminded me of earlier this semester, double layered pants and being unable to feel my face. Wearing a mask so that my breath would insulate my face, shoveling the driveway, unable to build routines early on. I revisited this like the cold has revisited me, and I think it's such a masterpiece. They predicted indie rock, they predicted slowcore, and they made "The Murder Mystery" which is like nothing else. I sat in the truck for an hour and tried to code and read to little avail. I took a discrete bathroom break to clock more time.
Introducing Happiness (1994)
Indie Rock, Art Rock
There is literally nothing like this. Since this is MY website I can put the Art Rock and Experimental Rock tags without annoying my minimally tag loving girlfriend. Commuting by bus and foot back home from work, making dinner, it let me really listen to this album with minimal distractions. It is not dense so much as it is eclectic, and it is not cryptic as much as it is lyrically broad. Standout moments are everywhere, and the way that they play with rock music is actually so boundary breaking. The Roger Waters influence is palpable even if canadians seem to get so angry when it is suggested. but the last song! I have had claire stuck in my head on and off for weeks, Introducing happiness is sunshiney perfection, "Full Moon Over Russia" and "Earth / Monstorous Hummingbird" are indescribable but in completely different ways. I don't know. I have so much love for this band, and I understand their unrelenting canaidan-ness does not bode well for souther border success, but I think they really deserve more american criticall acclaim. What they do for indie music, man, I could write paragraphs.