Now and Then

And after a monthish of putting this off, here is my #1 album of 2011...

1. Andrew Jackson Jihad - Knife Man

This album should not be as amazing as it is. It's full of ridiculous self referential lines like, "I hate whiny fucking songs like this, but I can't afford a therapist. Sorry guys, here's a solo," and they play a solo in the track "Distance". Then in the very same album there is something so fully and completely human and sad like in the song "People II: Still Peoplin'" (yep, that's the spelling) wherein they sing about homeless drinking mouthwash to get drunk it dawned on me that this is something special. It is in that track that the best line of the year is uttered, "hope is for presidents and dreams are for people who are sleeping." It's so damn catchy and sad and true all at once. I just realized that I haven't even described what genre this is. Well imagine Folk-punk with an added emphasis on pop-punk (but in a good way), in the sense that there is a very strong Neutral Milk Hotel vibe, but with some piss and vinegar (and whiskey) mixed in. Just give these tracks a listen and if you enjoy it, but think there's just a little bit too much electric guitar check out their earlier album People Who Eat People Are The Luckiest People In The World.

"Distance"


"People II: Still Peoplin'"


And my top track of 2011, "Hate, Rain on me"



In other news, I did the college educated, middle class equivalent of a pilgrimage and finished watching The Wire. It took me about half a year to burn through the series and even though it's been a few weeks since I've finished it, I can't help but feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself just for watching a tv show. Everything about the show was perfect from the casting to the characters, (if I could be McNulty for Halloween and have anybody recognize me I would be him in a heartbeat. Fuck I'll do it anyways), to the setting, to the dialogue, it's all perfect.

It was a series that built upon itself in each of its 5 seasons and was about so many things. It was about urban decay, the underclass, institutional racism, the drug trade, backroom politics, assholes like McNulty not giving a damn about anything but the end game, but the show was really about Baltimore. I've never been there, and I can't say I ever want to go after seeing the series, but the city itself was the staring character. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's the best I can articulate it. It really is the best show I've ever watched and I've watched Mad Men, I've watched Battlestar Galactica, and Dexter, and Doctor Who (more coming up in a future post), and The Walking Dead, and Weeds, and the original The Office, and Arrested Development... Well... It might be tied with Arrested Development. The point is, The Wire was a masterpiece painted in an infinite number of shades of grey. There were no good guys, not even the cops. There were no bad guys, even the crooks had redeeming factors. Just watch it.

What else... Because god knows I probably won't update until April at the earliest. Well, the new Every Time I Die album, Ex Lives gives me hope for the future of music. The band has been around for a decade and they somehow created their best album yet. The best way I can describe it is imagine ZZ Top doing 20 lines of coke with The Dillinger Escape Plan and then partying with a bunch of high school kids. It's kind of like that with all the positive connotations and none of the negative ones. Check it out. It's thus far my top album of 2012.

Ex Lives Stream - http://soundcloud.com/epitaph-records/sets/every-time-i-die-ex-lives/s-KSLFB

Last note of this post... I'm really not a fan of Pandora radio at all. And I mean at all, I've been a last.fm man for life, but... but. I was shown that if one listens to Gorillaz radio it's pretty damn magical what comes up. Just check it out.

Check this out, too. Fuck, if you've made it this far with the post you owe it yourself to finish it out.