may • june • july

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Sorry this is a little late. I'm tired.

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twenty years later and it's all okay, aug 04

Could Well Be In - The Streets, A Grand Don’t Come For Free
This is an amazing, amazing record; it fills up the first couple weeks of the month. His flow is all kinds of… British… and the beats are pared down, to say the least, but his storytelling and sense of narrative is utterly compelling. You’ll talk about it an embarrassing amount with Kel, who will smile politely and nod and most of all listen. You’ll realize, as does she, that these are the rules of the Married Exchange, or at least, the Matt and Kel exchange, the politeness protocols of the blahdiddyblah. It’s good being married.

Get Over It - OK Go, OK Go
Xtop sends this over when you confess you can’t stop listening to The Streets. You think this song is a couple years old, vague memories of hearing it in Harold’s car percolate in around the edges. Big, stadium rock Queen drums kick it off. It seems like a perfectly passable summer song, the kind of thing bound to show up in a Teen Sex Comedy at some point in the near future. If it hasn’t already.

Every Moment - Rogue Wave, Out of the Shadow
Laurenn’s sister’s boyfriend’s uncle’s roommate’s landlord knows a guy who knows a guy that saw this band or something. This song drives you crazy with how familiar it feels. You listen to it again and again, trying to place it.

Bang Bang - Hanzo Steel, Hanzo Steel, Vol. 1
Kill Bill, Vol. 2 comes out on DVD, which you liked, and liked a lot more the further away you got from it. As opposed to Vol. 1 which you hated and hated more. Watching them both back to back, though, actually almost works. It’s like a video store idiot savant’s Magnolia.

Time of the Preacher - Johnny Cash, No Alternative
Fluxblog posted this, maybe. Dates weirdly, is very of its time. Still, it’s a killer song and it gets wedged in for a few days here and there. Remember back to when Preacher first came out and how impossible to find the first issue was. You played rock-scissors-paper with Olivia over it; she won. Does the book opens up with a few lines from this song? Pretty sure it does. Last few days of film school at NCSA, that was. Harold comes to visit, fresh out of his first year at KCAI. You become extraordinarily broke there at the end. Skip goes off to god knows to be a genius. You and Darin head off for high drama & low rent. Ten years, almost. Fucking Christ.

Ingrid Bergman - Billy Bragg & Wilco, Mermaid Avenue
The Italian movie poster calender you got Kel has Stromboli for August; she hung the calendar right by the front door and every time you walked past it the song would pop in your head. At Janey Pancakes’ engagement-announcement-thing at the Flea Market you find it on the jukebox and subject a barfull of Nickleback-lovin’ daterapists to it, and Blitzkrieg Bop.

Shade and the Black Hat - Jeremy Enigk, Return of the Frog Queen
How have you gone this long without listening to this record?

Blame Canada - South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut
Dad tells you to bring your passport and you think he’s fucking crazy. It’s just Canada. But you do it anyway, because, well, he’s your old man and when he tells you to do shit you tend to do it. And thank god, because you wouldn’t have gotten in. 911 and all that.

Whenever something goes weird, you or Bakes’ll sing “It’s not a real country anyway,” under your breath.

Village of Love - Detroit Cobras, Village of Love 7”
Gets in your head on the flight up to Canada. You try to write what hearing it sounds like. It goes okay.

I’ve Been Tired - Pixies, Come On Pilgrim
Oh the richness and complexity of your subconscious mind. Oh the mysteries and enigmas it contains.

Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl - Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It In People
Hotel bathroom mirror, now you’re all gone got your makeup on and you’re not coming back. It’s early and you can’t see straight and you still have to buy a new bag because yours finally obliterated between customs stops.

Sloop John B - Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
Again, I refer you to the richness and complexity of your subconscious mind. Although anticipating SMiLE has an awful lot to do with this, too; loading all that stuff onto the iPod and listening a bunch. You know you’re gonna buy SMiLE, and you know you’re gonna listen to it and you know you’re gonna have more than your fair share of ‘ah-ha!’ moments as it finally comes together, but: well, the Wondermints guys just aren’t Dennis or Carl Wilson, or fuck, even Mike Fucking Love. Even more to the point: how can SMiLE ever be better than the idea of SMiLE? Can anything of that kind of legendary, albeit obscure and fairly ridiculous, magnitude actually transcend its own character, its own legend? On some very real level you don’t want to hear it. What would all those Kennedy conspiracists do without their little conspiracy? Pop’s biggest question mark is about to get replaced with a full stop.

Between the Bars - Madeline Peyroux, Dreamland
Oh, oh god. This is perfect, just perfect. Like Cash’s cover of Mercy Seat, this song is just owned forever. When you get home from the trip, Kel has cleared all the boxes out of the office and put the bookcases in and the books up and set up your desk and everything. You have a functional place to work and it’s the best present ever. Hook the speakers up and just pace around in the space, listening to this on repeat. It’s the end of summer and this is last call.

The Song Was Right - Old Canes, Early Morning Hymns
Ho-lee Crap, there’s a local band that’s pretty kick-ass. Make sure! Listen to it again. This time louder.

Drop - Thee Michelle Gun Elephant, Casanova Snake
Kel finishes the adaptation of Matsumoto’s Blue Spring. You watch the movie, and then again when the R1 version comes out. There’s different stuff, better translations, a commentary track. It’s a great movie, scored almost entirely with Thee Michelle Gun Elephant songs. Which is also great. This is the closing tune. It sinks into Kel, too. Kel, who’s not a huge music person at all really, gets obsessed with TMGE and listens to them. A lot. Which is funny; the last music she binged on was the soundtrack to Funny Face. The movie of course infuses the song with an emotional weight you can’t entirely ignore, but it can give you the shivers.

Every time he screams “Drop,” you seriously want to take him up on it.