Someday My Pain

For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver

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I was feeling slightly hesitant to write this review. I started listening to Bon Iver soon after Justin Vernon released For Emma, Forever Ago in 2008, but I never bothered to listen closely until this week. And then last night maybe I listened too closely.

Most of what Vernon sings tends to be unintelligible. His layered vocals blend words together, so that what you're left with are sounds bleeding into melodies. And this is intentional; when writing the songs, melodies were written first and words were chosen to accommodate them. When I first listened to For Emma, Forever Ago, I felt very little need to know what he was singing; I preferred making up words for the ones I didn't know if I felt like singing along, and was mostly fascinated with the expression in the words rather than drawing meaning out of them.

But last night, for reasons unknown, I suddenly decided to look up the lyrics. On the whole, Vernon knows his way around words; and yet, after reading the lyrics, I was mostly left feeling disappointed. (I'll chalk this up to me becoming extremely nit-picky as I near a musical dry spell. The closer I get to the dry spell, the pickier I become.)

"Flume", the opening track, hides behind the lyrics "Only love is all maroon/Lapping lakes like leery loons/Leaving rope burns, reddish ruse". "Lump Sum" seems to be a reference to his decision to move back to Wisconsin and his need to recuperate. Most of the songs on the album, aside from "Skinny Love", are beautifully descriptive but frustratingly cryptic. As if to explain this, Vernon's last track, "RE: Stacks" ends with "This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization/It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away".

I don't mean to imply that Vernon sacrificed meaning for sound (though there's nothing wrong with that either). Instead, these songs live in a place in between ambiguity and poetry. Though Vernon's imagery is wonderfully descriptive and poetic, their meanings weigh less than the weight of their sound deliverance.

For Emma, Forever Ago is the product of Vernon's decision to sequester himself in a cabin in Wisconsin for three months in an effort to deal with the events of the previous year. Though not initially intending to write an album, Vernon ended up writing and recording most of the songs on the album, and releasing it by himself. In this sense, having such beautifully cryptic lyrics makes sense — the album comes across as "the sound of a man left alone with his memories and a guitar". The album serves to expose those memories without actually relinquishing them.

You Used To Think Your Life Was Precious Metals and Rose Petals

I woke from my bed today and wondered what charm (or more fittingly, what curse) is keeping me anchored to it. I'm not this person who sleeps the light away; somewhere, in the recesses of my mind, I ache to go out. I want to go outside, run into flowers, just leave my body for a night.


When I was younger, my favorite thing to do was climb the rock wall in our backyard. The first time I came upon the rock retaining wall in our backyard, I felt like I had found something beautiful, as if these rocks weren't visible to the rest of the world. I spent most of my summer climbing up and down the wall, walking along the top of it, and sitting on the warm black rocks. I spent so much time on them my dad started calling me "little mountain goat".


If I had to think of the happiest moment of my life, it would not be the day someone other than my family told me they loved me. It wasn't the first time a boy I liked put his lips on my skin (Chaz McCoy, who sat down criss-cross-applesauce and kissed my arm in first grade). It wasn't my first best friend, where we promised to be just like sisters and to remain friends for the rest of our lives. It wasn't even the moment with my three best friends, throwing streamers at each other, the static balloons or using paper hearts hanging on strings like whips. It wasn't any of the playgrounds I've ever played on, the festivals I've been to, or any day in Seattle.


The happiest day of my life was the day we went down to Ocean Shores. On the far corner of the beach was a mile-long pile of giant black rocks that led straight out into the ocean, which I, the mountain goat I, inevitably gravitated towards. As I slowly and aimlessly made my way towards that far out edge that faced the ocean, the sudden thought crossed my mind to run the entire length. I turned halfways, thinking I should start at the beginning so I could say I had truly traveled the entire thing. And suddenly, doing it perfectly didn't matter quite as much as doing it at all. I took off running.


It was like moments suspended in flight. As I raced past the burgeoning families, the middle school lovers, the elderly couples and the picnickers, I felt like a parade, not of showy, gaudy youthfulness, but a celebration of living. Every rock I jumped, I congratulated the elderly couples for their ability to stay together throughout the years. I congratulated the middle school lovers for loving, I congratulated the picnickers for taking the day off to enjoy life. I congratulated the burgeoning families for wanting to create a family of their own, to continue a legacy or to create a new one.


For that one day in my life, I was alive precisely because I stopped worrying about living correctly. I didn't care about doing it perfectly, I didn't care if I fell down and possibly broke my leg, if I might slip and fall into the ocean.


I didn't reach the end of the rock wall. My family called me from the beach and we climbed back into the car, my legs sore and shaky from the hour I had spent jumping from one rock to the next. As we drove away, I vowed to come back and finish climbing that entire rock wall. Which never happened.


If I went back now, it wouldn't be the same. I'd constantly fear the dangers of broken bones, floating out to sea, hitting my head and drowning in a shallow puddle. I wouldn't be able to smile at the elderly couples, I wouldn't feel like a celebration of living.


I can't help but gravitate towards my bed. The million decisions of how to live is too much. I want to do the right thing, I want to do something for myself. I don't want to add more mistakes onto the horrible ones I've already made. So I climb into my bed, shut my eyes and will myself into unconsciousness. I'd rather spend my time with nightmares than with my responsibilities.


I want to remember how to live. I want to remember how to do something for the sake of doing it all, to remember the satisfaction at having tried at something seemingly impossible, and not bear the regret of failing, of mistakes, of worries. I want to remember how to be happy.

I Have Your Dreams and Your Teeth Marks

Boxer and Alligator by The National

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I first came across Matt Berninger's paradoxically deadpan yet stunningly emotional vocals in 2007, listening to Boxer and then Alligator. In a lot of ways, I'm only familiar with these two albums as a continuation of each other, which is why I decided to review both together. There is something incredibly magnetizing about these albums, in the way they feel like the product of lonely nights walking through empty city streets. Where Alligator can be considered a night isolated from the world, Boxer is in many ways like a continuation, in which the personal isolation is thrown off in favor of observing those around them (though not necessarily interacting with them). 

Both albums have been described as "growers", in that the strange turns of phrases, incredibly ambiguous lyrics and the interesting way these songs navigate around hooks can take a while to be enjoyable. On both albums, the songs are incredibly dense; the tight, precise drums are the centerpiece of each song, building tension and often magnifying the emotional distress deceptively masked by violins, guitars and horns. But the songs' density draws its source from their nearly inscrutable lyrics, purposefully murky songs whose meanings change each time you hear them.

Alligator begins with "Secret Meeting", an incredibly ambiguous song about ambiguity, the imagery (of spies, sunglasses and basements) preoccupied with hiding, though nothing is illuminated other than the secret meeting "went the dull and wicked ordinary way". "Lit Up" is the first song that most obviously points at the feeling of big city isolation, singing "So lit up, lit up, lit up alright/I try to untie Manhattan", though  Berninger also tries to "untie from your bad blood". "All the Wine" is the most introspective, with Berninger singing "I'm put together beautifully", calling himself a festival, a birthday candle in a circle of black girls, a perfect piece of ass, and finally pronouncing "All the wine is all for me". Again there is the imagery of an empty city, singing "Through the black city, night lights are on in the corners/And everyone's sleeping upstairs/All safe and sound".

Boxer begins with "Fake Empire", picking up on the imagery of being isolated from the city surroundings, singing "Tiptoe through our shiny city", though later calling the shiny city a fake empire. But the main difference between Boxer and Alligator is immediately evident in its opening track; whereas Berninger attempts to untie his city and untie himself from others, Boxer opens with a plural, repeatedly using "we", "us", and "our". In many ways, Berninger has untied his city; songs like "Squalor Victoria", "Racing Like a Pro", "Ada" and "Mistaken for Strangers" seem to reflect his opinions on society, calling attention to the corporate ladder, white-collar lifestyles, upward mobility and the "uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults". Tracks like "Green Gloves" and "Brainy" offer an illuminating view of how he untied the city; namely by observing those around him in a detached manner ("Get inside their clothes/with my green gloves/watch their videos, in their chairs/Get inside their beds/with my green gloves/Get inside their heads, love their loves").

Of course, there is the subject of love songs. For Alligator, these love songs mostly seem terribly defeated. In "Karen" there is a sense of regret, Berninger singing "I've lost direction, and I'm past my peak/I'm telling you this isn't me", finally singing "Karen, believe me, you just haven't seen my good side yet". By "Looking for Astronauts" it's already "a little too late for this"; Berninger sings "Bye bye bye/We know we're gone" and gives up with the lines "You know you have a permanent piece/of my medium-sized American heart". As if in reflection of the relationship, "Daughters of the SoHo Riots", Berninger asks "How can anybody know/How they got to be this way", though he admits "You were right about the end/It didn't make a difference/Everything I can remember/I remember wrong". "Val Jester" is the most blunt song on the album, in which he expresses remorse for letting her go. By "City Middle" Berninger has only one thing to say about Karen: "I have weird memories of you".

The love songs in Boxer, on the other hand, seem mostly concentrated in "Slow Show", "Apartment Story" and "Start a War". Almost like a three-song narrative, "Slow Show" begins with the desire to "hurry home to you/Put on a slow, dumb show for you/And crack you up/So you can put a blue ribbon on my brain". The song ends with the incredibly sweet "You know I dreamed about you/for twenty-nine years before I saw you". However, "Apartment Story" immediately follows, where "everything we did believe/is diving diving diving diving off the balcony"; he summarizes the relationship with the lines "So worry not/All things are well/We'll be alright/We have our looks and perfume on". The three-song narrative ends with "Start a War", with the admission "We expected something, something better than before, we expected something more", but ends with "Walk away now and you're gonna start a war".

There are few albums that manage to be so perfectly honest and personal, yet ambiguous enough for the listener to have room to grow with the album. Instead of choosing easy lines, both Alligator and Boxer are intricate albums whose meanings manage to change with time. Though considered "grower" albums, when these albums finally reach you, they really hit you. It's easy to consider these albums as emotionally dark, but perhaps the biggest surprise is the amount of humor, hopefulness and willingness to love that can be found in the album, even when love itself may be resigning and not exactly what you expect. 

Do It, Do It, Alright

Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team

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There are few albums that manage to legitimately encapsulate the raw action power of classic Saturday morning cartoons (just think: Kid Cudi's Man on The Moon; for all the narration and "plot", it falls utterly flat in so many ways). It has been nearly impossible for me to think about writing about Thunder, Lightning, Strike. It's hard to find words to describe something when the only sentence going through your brain is "Just listen to it!"

Thunder, Lightning, Strike was the debut for The Go! Team (created in Ian Parton's kitchen, of all places), first released in the UK, re-released a year later in the US, a slightly modified version due to issues with certain samples featured on the tracks. But either way you get it (the original or the slightly remixed), it's impossible not to start grinning ear to ear.

The album starts off with "Panther Dash" (and yes, all the other tracks have equally awesome names), which sets the mood for the album, each track building off of the previous. Songs like "Ladyflash" and "The Power Is On" feature ample use of samples, creating music that combines guitars, horns, double dutch chants, old hip hop and movies.

It's easy to understand the motivation behind making such a record; Parton decided to take some of his favorite things and make music out of it. The fact that most people would never combine Sonic Youth guitars with 1970s car chase music is what makes it so incredibly endearing. The Go! Team's ability to cohesively create music that recalls the nostalgia of our most beloved action sequences in film and animation automatically makes Thunder, Lightning, Strike one of the best albums of the year.

"Junior Kickstart"

Don't Call Me Incomplete

Neon Golden by The Notwist

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Most people are familiar with the story of The Notwist's transformation: "gloomy grunge misanthropes reborn as laptop-pop romantics". I first started listening to The Notwist when they had already finished their transformation, stumbling upon The Devil, You + Me in 2008. While enjoyable as background music (ouch, sorry!), it generally didn't make much of an impression on me. I barely even remembered listening to The Devil, You + Me when I found Neon Golden as a relatively high ranked album on most Best Of lists.

The first time I heard Neon Golden, I was laying in bed trying to find something to fill up the silence. I had tried listening to the album before, but it couldn't grab a hold of me. Given a moment with no distractions, the house at rest and my mind completely blank, I was immediately surprised by how familiar the album felt.

Most noticeably, for someone who loves lyrics as much as I've recently begun, it only struck me to try understanding the lyrics after the fifth or sixth time I had listened to the album. Markus Acher's voice is completely entrancing; Acher could call you a freak but somehow you'd keep smiling and nodding along, attracted to the way he texturalizes his words rather than caring about the meaning. And in fact, Acher does call you a freak, more than once in the course of the album. The opening track, "One Step Inside Doesn't Mean You'll Understand" ends with the line "Don't call me incomplete/You're the freak", while "One With the Freaks" repeatedly asks "Have you ever been all messed up?" and eventually states "All of a sudden/You are one with the freaks". When I finally looked up the lyrics, I was almost amazed that I had never even caught it.

While most lyrics can easily be construed as romantic (nearly every song is sung about a "we"), truly the most enrapturing aspect of the album is simply the music. Whether it is the percussion and rhythmic drums, the plucking of strings, or the many different electronic gurgles, crackles and static washes, the album is noticeably spaced and comfortable. Even the most driven tracks, like "Pilot" or "Pick Up the Phone", manage to still feel spaced in the sense that every sound is necessary, uncramped, and in its right place.

Strangely, the opening track perfectly describes my inability to write comprehensively or assuredly about the album: "One step inside doesn't mean you'll understand". 

Happy Late March 1st

Lazy, lazy, lazy.


Another month has gone by, and soon a quarter of the year will have already passed. It's surprising how incredibly slowly I feel like I'm winding through this project. What can I say, I lead the life of a procrastinator.


The excuse this month? I haven't been sleeping enough.


Here's to hoping this March I can actually make a sizable dent into my album list.

For Your Love's Better Than Wine

I've been feeling defenseless; you wield your well-forged sentences like a gun, those finely premeditated words hitting me like bullets, hitting the core of every insecurity I ever bared to you.


I can't shape my words to make the sentences that will match yours blow for blow. I lower my head, I take the brunt of your words and let you convince me that I am lowly, rotten, worthless. In my mind you are still the sunshine boy that sat on the grass, smiling shyly in my direction, and I simply cannot push him away.


But I remember that no, I am not defenseless. I may be horrible, worthless, treasonous, but I was never defenseless. I inherited the black rage of my drunken ancestors.


Yes, I used my anger as my only defense; when his words barely brushed my deepest insecurity, my arm rose and slapped him across the face. When the sting of his lazy lies lingered in my ears, the irrational desire to push him to the ground overwhelmed my bloodstream. I stored a notebook full of well-sharpened sentences, ready to use against any person.


How can I blame my mother when she slapped me over and over again, until I was on the ground? We are the same person; where our ancestors' anger with their life's disappointments was cut loose with alcohol, our anger is cut free by our love's vicious words. We share moments when the anger in our bloodstream thunders through us like an earthquake bent on bringing our skeleton down, the anger about to destroy us from the inside.


I carry around my wounds in my chest like a tiny baby, and like a mother's protective rage the violence swells in me, to defend the small inner child in me that will not suffer another harsh word. I can understand, and empathize, I have rationalized why my dad hit my head against the washing machine. But I can't bear the burden of this sadness, this type of defense makes as much sense as nuclear warheads.


So I'll take every bullet you sling me. I won't use the words to cut you down, I won't mimic my ancestors with their penchant for brutality. I will be defenseless, because I would rather feel miserable than carry the weight of our mutually assured destruction.

There Are Powerlines in Our Bloodlines

Picaresque by The Decemberists

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I was first familiarized with Colin Meloy's love of storytelling in middle school with Castaways And Cutouts. Though enjoyable, the album was largely overshadowed by "A Cautionary Song". Enjoyable and clever as Meloy's songwriting may be (and as theatrically thrilling as the Decemberists' music is), for the majority of my life I enjoyed the more humorous side of the Decemberists. Picaresque derives its name from a type of fiction that depicts the humorous adventures of a roguish hero who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society, so my interest was definitely piqued.

True to the Spanish roots of the "picaresque", the album opens with the track "The Infanta" which narrates the coronation of a Spanish princess. Meloy immediately showcases his command of words, managing to use "palanquin", "pachyderm", "phalanx", "folderol" and "chaparral". Though Picaresque doesn't tell the story of a single roguish hero, it features several irresistible characters; in "The Bagman's Gambit" a government official narrates his love affair with a spy. "The Mariner's Revenge Song" is a 9 minute tale of, believe it or not, revenge at sea.

But storytelling aside, The Decemberists are easily just as capable of writing love songs, which they do in bounds. "We Both Go Down Together" details the relationship of star-crossed lovers, while "From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea)" uses the common "Mr. Postman, do you have a letter for me?". "The Engine Driver" is sweetly insecure, with Meloy finally telling his lover, "And if you don't love me, let me go". As if in a type of answer, "Of Angels and Angles" is a promise to go down together, singing "There's a tough word on your crossword/There's a bed bug nipping a finger/There's a swallow, there's a calm/Here's a hand to lay on your open palm today".

Clemente:  AND THATS THE END OF THAT CHAPTER

You Must Be An Illusion (Can I See Through You?)

"Human interaction is fucked up".


I try to stay hopeful, I try to stay "beautiful". I try to take comfort in the fact that the words I write touch other people; there's a possibility that someone I've never met may remember me for the words I've left behind.


So what words have I left behind?


Human interaction is fucked up. I've told the man who took care of me he wasn't my father; he told me I was worthless. I've told the woman who created me she treats me as if she found me in a dumpster; she told me she could have abortioned me.


If I could collect every word in my life, I'd rearrange them into an apology. Or perhaps I'd rearrange them into "I love you".


A girl with a backpack, who carries around tissues with giraffes on them, who writes notes to strangers on the bus. The truth is, she is beautiful, I am not. What notes have I been giving out?


I want to take every word in my life and rearrange them into a house for you and me. To protect you, to keep you warm. I'd use my words for firewood (we'd burn "You're worthless", "I hate you", etc), we'd eat "I love you" soup every night. We'll pull blankets of "You're safe with me" over our heads. I'd stitch "I'm sorry" into all of your clothing. Every morning you'll bathe in "You're beautiful" (the soap "Have I ever told you that?").


That I could never utter a cross word again. That human interaction is fucked up, beautifully fucked up.


I know the truth in your words, now. And I am smiling.

Some Firecrackers Blow Up In Your Hand

Night Falls Over Kortedala by Jens Lekman

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Sometimes it's hard to be sincere as an artist. The first time I listened to Night Falls Over Kortedala I kind of thought his music was cheesy; the strings, harps, his baritone, and strange lyrics all seemed incongruent (what exactly are "babies of snow"?). But sincerity is something that Jens is not short of, in the least. There is a rare kind of honesty in the way Lekman takes his life and transforms it into music, unabashedly turning his time spent in Kortedala into an album of pop songs.

The album opens with "And I Remember Every Kiss" and "Sipping on the Sweet Nectar", two songs that seem to be of the same thought. In "And I Remember Every Kiss" Jens sings "And I would never kiss anyone/Who doesn't burn me like the sun/And I remember every kiss/Like my first kiss" over a crescendo of strings, horns and timpani. As if a continuation of a thought, in "Sipping on the Sweet Nectar" Lekman sings "Remember your first kiss?/Well how can I forget" but regrets it, singing "I see myself on my deathbed saying/I wish I would have loved less". But after coming to the resolution of sipping on the sweet nectars of his memories, the album launches right into those memories.

The remaining ten songs on the album span a varying range of situations that Jens makes comically endearing and surprisingly relatable. In "The Opposite of Hallelujah" Jens narrates his (failed) struggle to convey his unending sorrow to his sister, while in "A Postcard to Nina" Jens finds himself in Nina's apartment, posing as her boyfriend and having dinner with her Catholic father to hide Nina's secret relationship with her girlfriend. Jens also describes accidentally cutting off his finger in "Your Arms Around Me", singing about "Shirin", a hairdresser from Iraq, vowing silence (and flirting with a deaf girl in sign language) in "It Was A Strange Time in My Life". Though I'd rarely find myself relating to any of these situations, it's hard to not relate to hearing someone say "It's the opposite of being you/You don't know what I'm going through", or to not be seduced by the encouragement of "Don't let anyone stand in your way". The album ends with "Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo", a place that Jens worked in for a short period of time (before immediately deciding he'd rather write music than be on hiatus working in a depressing bingo).

There is no shortage of sentimentality, either. In "Into Eternity" Jens unabashedly admits "If I had to choose a moment of time/To take with me into eternity/I'd choose this moment with you in my arms". In "I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You" he admits he's not in love, and sings "I'm so sorry I couldn't love you enough". "Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig" (meaning "Maybe I'm In Love With You") is easily the sweetest song on the album, in which Jens describes his awkwardness in trying to impress a girl he believes he's in love with, finally singing "I think I'm gonna drop my cool now/The best way to touch your heart is to make an ass of myself".

Nights Fall Over Kortedala is fearlessly sentimental, refreshingly honest and bravely adventurous. Musically, Jens blends an extraordinary range of genres and instruments, from doo wop and motown to beach-party disco, using anything from samples to horns. Though its hard to believe that someone can sing "We could start a little farm with little white bunnies/Just cause watching them copulate is very funny", it's hard not to enjoy it.

Morning Music

I wouldn't exactly call these songs a morning playlist, but there are some songs that I keep returning to. This morning I've been listening to these tracks, in order to start my day off correctly.


Beach House - "Real Love" and "Take Care"
Yeasayer - "O.N.E." and "Madder Red"
Hot Chip - "I Feel Better" and "One Life Stand"
Okkervil River - "For Real" and "Song of Our So-Called Friend"
Devendra Banhart - "A Sight to Behold"
Joanna Newsom - "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie"

The System of Strings Tugs on the Tip of My Wings

I buried your memories last night, words whispered into soil. I walked away, and your phantom didn't follow.

Tonight I remembered the beauty of entropy, the knowledge that just because you exist you affect the universe. I'm gaining confidence, that perhaps if I pluck the strings in my heart I will eventually hit the right chord that will resonate with you.

I can't pretend these wounds aren't here; your vicious words still bite. I can't pretend to forget the sight of my scarf around your neck, you around her.

But I remember when I felt whole. I can keep fumbling to keep myself together, I can let go of this hole in my chest.

I can't love you, but I can love the bit of sidewalk where I came to a standstill and began to cry. You can't be here, but I can still sit next to you on the docks, watching the waves crash against the embankment. I can't remove the scars, I can't make your words go back into your mouth. I can't pretend I didn't use a sharp tongue, that I didn't push you away when we needed to be closer. But every sharp word was only an attempt to hit your sympathy strings. Each stab we took at each other was only another misplayed string from our heart, an attempt to flush out the right chord that would suddenly make us resonate, that would remind us we were two violins in the same room, trying to play the same chord.

I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay just to lift your long face

Ys by Joanna Newsom

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I'll be honest, I chose to review Ys thinking that the small amount of tracks would make it easier. And then I discovered nearly every word in Ys is wrapped in meaning. The album title itself is based on a myth of a seaside town, swallowed by the sea as punishment for its debauchery and sin.

While there are only five tracks, each is based on real events in Newsom's life, dressed up in poetry, references, and cryptic imagery. Each song is amazingly dense; to read lyrics and attempt to decipher the true meaning would require much more than just one listen and reading from the CD booklet. 

Though Newsom freely admits each song is based on her personal life, their "true" meaning is often masked. In an interview with Pitchfork, she states:

Basically I wanted to undertake the task of writing songs about a particular year of my life. Not the task of telling that story in a linear way, or in any way that would make the story explicitly knowable to a listener, but rather, to tell the story to myself. I was starting to see a lot of connections, and I wanted to make them more substantial to myself, or at least explore them. Writing these songs was a way to organize my brain and organize these events and how they had affected me. There were four very big things that happened in my life in this particular year, and so four of the songs are about these things. The fifth song, "Only Skin", was an effort to talk about the connections between the events.

The album is marked by its obvious dedication to detail; every song is perfectly crafted to remain true to Newsom's personal vision and story.


Though many may view the album as decadent, or the common argument that Joanna Newsom's voice is annoying, there are those who will enjoy attempting to puzzle out the meanings, look up references, and study her poetry.

Burying Pennies Underneath Our Windows

I'm living with phantoms. Every day I kiss your phantom lips, the ghostly shadow of your cheek resting on mine.

But I'm beginning to forget. I forget the feel of your teeth on my neck, I forgot how it felt when you grabbed me too hard. I forget the times when my body loved you so strongly I knew another piece of me was dying, and the tears that flowed down my cheeks were mourning my death, rejoicing in loving you. 

I don't remember why I ached, why my head would spin every time you walked away. I don't know why it was always the same, happy to have another piece of me die to give room to love you more. I don't remember why I'm still living with your ghost.

I don't want you here anymore. Your ghost does nothing for me but make me more like you. I carry you around with me wherever I go, this ghost that does nothing but pull me down, pull me away. How can I ever let anyone in when you're still breathing down my neck? I can't even be happy with your memories, what memories of ours were ever happy?

Why is your phantom still here? You're at the Redmond library, you drag me around Seattle, you walk past my street every night. Don't stain my city, please.

When we were together all I had of you was your phantom.

I pretended you were there with me when I rode the bus, as I walked among the bookshelves you've never seen. It was your hand that pointed out the books that I wanted. When I walked myself home, you were right next to me, guiding me across the street. When the flock of maple seeds transformed into moths, beating violently along the wind, it was you carrying them along to greet me.

Will you come and fetch me?

But alas, you're only in my mind. I live as though I'm not alone; but where are you, really? I can't chase you in dreams, I can't cross this sea.

In your absence I build you up, until you're no longer you. I have to let you go, because you'll only ever be a ghost to me. I don't want to be in love with a phantom. I don't want to turn you into a phantom either (I whisper, "Don't cool off, I like your warmth").

I'll bury pennies underneath your window frame, so that when you tire of this view and tear it down, you'll see how I wished only the best for you.

Dreaming Seamless Dreams

My Maudlin Career by Camera Obscura

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I first listened to My Maudlin Career on a bus heading towards the University of Washington; at the time, I was desperately trying to come out of a two year musical dry spell. The person I cared about most (at the time) was on a plane, flying out of my life, and suddenly Campbell was singing "You pull my heart out and then you run away/From Chicago to Cleveland you leave me pain" and my dry spell was over.

My Maudlin Career is a cleaner, slicker follow up to Let's Get Out of This Country, with the same compelling emotion, sentimentality, and enjoyable, awkward sweetness. Campbell's talent for writing so compellingly about heartache is once again a strong point for the album, with a recurring emotion of not being able to control how strongly she loves someone — in "French Navy" Campbell sings, "I wanted to control it/But love, I couldn't hold it", while in "Honey in the Sun" she elaborates, singing "I wish my heart was as cold as the morning dew/But it's as warm as saxophones/And honey in the sun for you". Though there is a wide variation in the setting for each song, the emotion is much more specific, narrating Campbell's many struggles to stay out of love. In "The Sweetest Thing", Campbell finds herself "going on a date tonight/To try to fall out of love with you/I know I know this is a crime/But I don't know what else to do".

Nearly every reason Let's Get Out of This Country deserves to be on a best albums of the decade list applies to My Maudlin Career. Aside from some refinement and growth, both albums stand as awkward, sentimental, witty and charming albums.

I Don't Want To Be Sad Again

Most days my words are unfaithful; as much as I would love to be caught up with this project, and not be blowing through all of the day offs I've allowed myself to take, most days I seriously question my ability to write something worth reading. Surrounded by better writers, I feel almost bashful trying to assert that my words are worth reading.


I honestly don't want to use inadequate words to describe possibly life-changing albums.

Dear Sylvia

"...Delight in life. Ahead is a large array of blind alleys. You are half-deliberately, half-desperately, cutting off your grip on creative life. You are becoming a machine. You cannot love, even if you knew how to begin to love. Every thought is a devil, a hell — if you could do a lot of things over again, ah, how differently you would do them! You want to go home, back to the womb. You watch the world bang door after door on your face, numbly. You have forgotten the secret you knew, once, ah, once, of being joyous, of laughing, of opening doors."        — Sylvia Plath

Beginning when I was four, my family used to take annual trips to Eastern Washington to look at the tulip fields. Large plots of land, stretched out along the highway; red, red, yellow, red, yellow, purple. Walking through acres of flowers chosen for the hidden virus in their gene.


We walked side by side, pretending our arms were made of wax. I'd shape your arm and you'd hold your position like a faithful mannequin. You walked ahead of us, his arm wrapped around your waist, stealing the bulb of a tulip that caught your eye.


It's spring soon, and I know we're not going back. The polaroids are gone, tucked away from the sun, tucked away from our eyes. I know you don't remember the gel in his hair, his toothpaste commercial smile; the sunglasses are off, he hasn't shaved in weeks and all you see is the disappointment you've buried for the last ten years. I know you don't look at the bright lipstick, her dainty clothing so carefully picked out, her hair meticulously styled so that not a strand will be out of place; instead there stands a woman whose constant demands you never seem to meet, whose disappointment in you has gotten so tiresome you can't even care anymore.


In my dreams, everything exists on parallel planes. As you sit in that dark, stifled room, straining your eyes to read those stupid numbers, in my mind you're still walking hand in hand. But I know that you're also in your truck on Christmas Day, racing towards Minnesota. I know you're standing at the doorway, watching the cops escort him from our house. The suitcases are being packed twelve different times, on twelve different nights. He's sleeping in four different motels. She's sitting in her too-big armchair, crying until she's nearly blind, too many times to count.


We're trapped in our ways. As a family our love has aged, fermented. The smell of the dirt, the abrasive wind, the slowly dragging hours are all costs too high for the old skeleton of our love to hold up. In my mind the fields are frozen, the bulbs are sleeping. I'll pretend the tulips aren't in bloom, waiting for us to return.

It's Alright, The Camera's Talking

Give Up by the Postal Service

Insound

There are certain albums that will forever be linked to sleep with me: Fall of Troy's Doppelganger, The Shins' Chutes Too Narrow and this album here. I don't mean that these albums put me to sleep; rather, there were a particular handful of albums that I enjoyed listening to in detail. Laying in bed, with nothing else to distract me, it was an opportunity to grow with an album, something that feels especially rare considering how disposable songs or albums feel today in this download culture (Ed Droste knows what I'm talking about).

Most people are familiar with the Postal Service's background; a collaboration that produced "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" evolved into a full-fledged album. Tamborello and Gibbard recorded their portions individually, and mailed them back and forth, leading to the name, The Postal Service (and saving this name from later legal trouble by allowing the U.S. Postal Service to use their music for their commercials).

Understandably, this album is necessarily popular for its more romantic lyrics; "Such Great Heights", "Nothing Better" and "Brand New Colony" are obvious heart-warmers. The strongest part of the album, however, is the consistently solid melodies Gibbard provides, and the enjoyable glitches Tamborello contributes. 

And just in case this review is as badly written as I think it is: Pitchfork.