25-12-2013

Study break

I have a Christmas break from school. Ideally I spend all my time right now studying the things I didn't pay attention to in the last few months. And I am doing that. Just at a mediocre pace and level.
The best part about these weeks is I get to spend entire days in my room, drinking coffee, studying shit and listening to records. I get to revisit old records and check out new ones, or records I'vde been neglecting a bit. So let's go over the last few days.

Right now I'm spinning The Get Up Kids' Something To Write Home About. It's on pink vinyl. It's beautiful, aesthetically and musically. There's a case to be made for Four Minute Mile but Something... is by far my favourite Get Up Kids record. A plunge into the pop pool without diverging too much from their early emopunk roots. You know, I love pop music. I love clear-cut, well-produced, high-fidelity music. And that is part of why Something... is my favourite. I can sing along to almost every word, I've seen 'em 3 times now and I am well aware of the fact There Are Rules kinda blows. I remember wearing my way-too-small-but-I-still-wear-it-all-the-time TGUK hoodie to a Shai Hulud show and talking about them to their lead singer. He agreed that Something... is their best record. Why wouldn't he?

There are a lot of records that just pass the table and I put them back pretty swiftly. But those are also of importance. I hadn't listend to The Few And Far Between by Jason Clackley in a big while, but it's a good record, you know? I hadn't heard that Chinese Telephones record for so long, so it's a blast to hop along to those tunes again. But, there's a reason I don't listen to those records all that often. It's cause I have preferences. I have some go-to records and I have some records that are plain better than others so sometimes I just put them on the turntable. That makes sense.

One of those go-to's is Squirtgun's Fade To Bright. Dangerously underrepresented, underrated and underappreciated. Dangerously good. Their lyrics will blow your mind. I only found out recently Matt Hart is actually a poet. So for the songs he wrote, that makes total sense. This record is fantastic start to finish. Mass Giorgini, who plays bass on this and produced/engineered it, actually produced the first Copyrights record that same year (2003) and got those guys to sing on Never Fit. Those are fun facts that I like about music. This album is amazing.

The Dopamines. Everything by the Dopamines is basically go-to material. That basically means I'm not feeling all too shabby, but they help a lot. Vices is their best and I listen to that one most. But I listened to their self-titled this week and it still stands, man.
Similar remarks for the Hextalls discography.

I put on that Good Luck record, Into Lake Griffy, again. I mostly wanna hear both versions of Stars Were Exploding/Bringing Them Back To Life, but every song on it is top-notch musical pleasure. They're amazing musicians (check out everything Matt Tobey (Matty Pop Chart, Abe Froman, stuff with Kimya Dawson) and Ginger Alford (One Reason, Traveling, High Dive nowadays) do. I don't really know what their drummer does.)

Fuck, I re-visited One Year Later and the No Love Can Save Me EP by The Carrier. One of those melodic hardcore bands that were super popular some years back. Rightfully so. Amazing songs, hits hard as fuck.
In that vein, but on the opposite side of the polarity continuum: Death Is Not Glamourous. Holy shit they are good. That last record, Spring Forward, is the best not-youth-crew-sounding youth crew record of all time probably.

After Somethign To Write Home About finishes in a minute, I'm gonna listen to Defeater's Travels, and who knows what's gonna hit the deck? The Dauntless Elite? Mean Jeans? Punch? The Mars Volta? The Toasters? It's gonna be so much fun.

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