So head on over and read it to discover what makes tonight's show a little bit more special than usual.
I haven't seen Jonny in years, so I'm looking forward to a late afternoon cup of coffee so I can stay awake long enough to head on out and see him play!
Rowe (a.k.a. Becky Filip) released her debut single "Tired Love" last week, and it's the kind of slinky and slow groove that finds its home deep within you. I know it's stuck with me and bubbled to the top of my consciousness a number of times over the weekend since I first listened to it.
Filip's song is borne out of the newfound freedom driven by the realization that "being alone was not the same thing as being lonely." That feels powerful to me. But also incredibly vulnerable. And those two things come together the song's bridge when Filip sings "So you can write me letters / And you can write me songs / But it won’t make it better / You can’t keep a heart you broke."
It's such a simple statement, but it's also the kind of truth that takes people just so long to truly embrace and understand. On the surface, "Tired Love" appears to be a lament, but I think that at its core it's a statement of strength through self-acceptance.
I'm curious to hear what Filip has planned next under the Rowe moniker.
I'm not really complaining, since the freeze is something you just grow used to around these parts. However we usually have a little more time to ease into it, and it really does feel like we've hit the deep freeze range of temps we are usually more acclimated to in February.
For example, most of the radiators in my apartment don't work. Or they do, but only for something like 15 minutes a day, at 5 a.m. And the two or three that stay heated longer than that do so intermittently, ad are in areas of the apartment I don't reguarly occupy (like my library or the room where my drum kit is set up). So it can get unusually cold in my place, but I tend to just wear extra layers and crawl under blankets. But last year "unusually cold in my place" didn't really manifest until, you guessed it, February. This year it started creeping toward that territory in October and is now firmly ensconced in the land of not-comfy chill already in November.
I planned on just dealing with it but my upstairs neighbor just told me that everyone in the building is having heating issues already, so maybe this year they'll get taken care of! My landlord is actually very cool, I'm just the sort of person that always just deals with these things quietly rather than bothering someone else to actually fix them. Lame, I know. But I hate feeling like I'm putting people out! I don't wanna do that.
So there you go. Another fascinating update from the Midwest on, you guessed it, the weather. Hey, I promised I'd return to writing something every day, I just never promised it'd all be genius.
Continuing the trend of current bands paying tribute to their '80s indie rock idols, and then recruiting their '80s indie rock idols to participate in some manner in that tribute, The Get Up Kids have released the video for their song "Lou Barlow," and it stars Lou Barlow.
In the accompanying press release, Barlow confirmed in an official statement that “I acted the shit out of that.”
I concur.
Also, worth noting, the album "Lou Barlow" is pulled from, Problems, is an excellent album and you should listen to it and buy it and go see The Get Up Kids live and buy all their merch and all of that, while you're at it.
When I was a kid my family would watch The Love Boat, and to my little brain the biggest draw there was the celebrity quests and the fact all there adults seemed to be having a pretty good time on that boat. After that show, Fantasy Island aired, and I remember preferring it over The Love Boat, while also being super scared of it. In retrospect the series was pretty creepy at times, even if all that spooky stuff was often in support of teaching the guests a lesson that would imp[rove their lives. But the tales themselves would unsettle my little brain and cause me sleepless nights.*
I had no clue Blumhouse was launching a film reboot of Fantasy Island until seeing the trailer for it before Doctor Sleep this weekend.** And while I suspect quite a few people who came up on the series through reruns (if at all) may be surprised to see the latest incarnation firmly rooted in the supernatural realm of Blumhouse terrors, it makes total sense to me!
Mr. Roarke never was a mortal human, and while the TV series did accent Roarke's more merciful tendencies and opportunities for mentorship, there was always a real danger lurking below his island's surface. While I don't know if Roarke will ultimately end up being a hero or a villain in the reboot, I have no issues with his presentation as a dangerous entity introducing peril into visitors' lives.
*This is probably why my parents tried to keep me away from horror films at the same time they would allow my youngest brother to take them in. I think he was always more practical about being able to separate fantasy from reality. This may also explain why he's now a very successful lawyer and I'm a creative in advertising. **Yes, I gave in and decided to see this sequel to The Shining. It was fine, but unless you're a Stephen King superfan I think you can wait for it to hit cable or the streaming service of your choice. Trust me.
I've really been enjoying the Watchmen television series, and think it's done a fabulous job of treating the source material with respect while building exciting new tales from the original DNA. Heh, that sentence could be viewed as darkly humorous given a few of the plot development s in last night's episode. But I digress.
In the original comic book, there was always supplementary material at the back of the book in the form of book excerpts, articles, and the like. For the TV series, the creators originally wanted to do something is similar, and build post-credit sequences that would serve a similar purpose. However they couldn't find a way to make it quite work within the show. So I believe that's what spurred the creation of the Peteypedia files, a collection similar in purpose to the additional material in the comics. It's the sort of thing that can expand your understanding of what's happening in there main story, but isn't essential.
Here is where you make the argument that the show must stand on its own, without additional required reading, and this is certainly true. When 14-year-old me read the original series as it was being released—I worked in a comic book store in the mid-'80s, marking me a super uber nerd*—I admit I often skipped the "boring stuff" at the back of the book. It wasn't until re-reading Watchmen a few years later, probably bored in my college dorm room and avoiding homework, that I pored over the extra stuff and realized just how much color it added to the story!
They release "new" files each week, and while they aren't essential to the central story, they do add to it, and it continues to show what a fully considered world Damon Lindelof and his collaborators have created. Everything here means something, and the attention to detail (and ability to not take everything so seriously**) really does make for fuller immersion into a world so foreign and familiar.
In other words, like the original, HBO's Watchmen stands on its own, but why not take advantage of the expanded world both versions offer in order to create an even richer experience?
*Not as much of a nerd as my coworker at the time who pegged who the villain was in Watchmen before anyone else.
In Chicago we had the season of "fall" last for, oh, a few days before we got buried in snow all day Halloween. Yesterday was downright frigid and right now the temperature is in the teens, with only a smidge of hope that'll it'll move upward much over the course of the day. This weekend we should poke into the 40s (Fahrenheit, for anyone not lodged in that temperature system) and I guarantee I'll see people walking down my block in shorts and hoodies. It's just how Midwesterners roll.
During my job hunt this year, due to the state of the Chicago market at the time, I had finally opened myself up to relocation to Warner climates after years of resisting such a move. Maybe I should have focused more on that!
Aw, who am I kidding? By this point I'm probably a Chicagoan until my death. I mean, I'm way too old to take up surfing or something like that. And I grew up in South Texas so I know what it's like to have 360 days of summer—and 5 of "winter" where people wore heavy coats as the temperature dropped to a freezing 60° F (ha!). So it's not like I've had to suffer in the freezing cold all of my life.
Plus, a move would so confuse Pickle the Kitten. Right now she's got her seasons down, as far as where she hangs out during the day: spring is when she sleeps on the couch, summer is when she sleeps on the footstool or windowsill (wherever the sunbeam is at the time), and winter is when she actually puts forth the effort to make the leap upward and sleep in my bed. I've finally got her fit enough to make that jump, so I don't want to risk it by relocating her somewhere she'll inhabit a windowsill year-round!
When I saw Beach Slang play a last-minute show at Liar's Club in late 2016, James Alex busted out "Bastards Of Young" (among a bevy of other covers) and admitted that his outfit could easily be viewed as a Replacememnts cover band. And he had no issue with that. And hey, when you're ripping off such terrific source material with such earnest love, I ain't gonna judge. It doesn't change the fact that Alex writes terrific songs and has a live presence that makes you fall in love with rock and/or roll over and over again.
Beach Slang has a new album coming out next year, and the latest taste of what to expect is ... "Tommy In The '80s." Featuring Tommy Stinson. Sounding like late-'80s Replacememnts complete with a dated synth horn blast. It should be a disaster but it's not.
How has no one else (that I've seen, yet) not used that headline for their news pieces on the latest video from The Raconteurs? Seems like a miss to me. The video was filmed at the Wisconsin tourist trap / state treasure / living fever dream that is House On The Rock, a location I finally visited in personearlier this year. Having lived in Illinois and vacationed in areas of Wisconsin over the last couple of decades, the name House On The Rock was familiar to me, but for some reason the mental image that accompanied it was always more Frank Lloyd Wright in nature. Wow. I was way off on that one.
Even crazier is that I saw House On The Rock featured on American Gods last year and just assumed they had CGI-ed the joint within an inch of its life. Again, way off on that one too.
In fact, House On The Rock is a sprawling series of buildings that takes at least a day to get through, and even then you feel as if you've rushed through and only caught a fraction of the weirdness it has crammed into its confines.
So, take in the video above, and realize that as strange as it appears, it's only barely scratching the surface of the location its filmed in. Dreams and / or nightmares for months!
According to the band, Guerilla Toss' new EP What Would The Odd Do? was driven by singer/bandleader Kassie Carlson's recovery from opioid addiction and open heart surgery to remove a blood clot caused by said addiction. So you would think the music resulting from that experience would be either loudly harrowing and disturbing or quietly claustrophobic. I mean, right?
Nope!
Instead What Would The Odd Do? Is a swirling, giddy, danceable concoction that skirts genres. I'll take the band's word for it that the album deals with a post-addiction mindset, because the lyrics are largely elliptical, creating poetic impressions that avoid specificity. Carlson comes across as more interested in creating moods through rhythmic constructions of her words, and this leaves an impression of cohesion from a distance. But if you dig into it line by line, you could get lost in the maze of phrases that double back on themselves to create a vertiginous rush.
It's one of the more weirdly enjoyable things I've heard this year. I plan on digging into their back catalog and am curious if that stuff will be just as enhancing and life-affirming as What Would The Odd Do? feels to me. Only one way to find out!
On this day I always revisit the thoughts my brother Sean put together for my dad's funeral 15 years ago. Wow, that seems like forever ago, but at times it also feels like yesterday. I could've really used my dad's perspective and advice over the last 2 years, since some of the things he struggled with at times probably most closely approximated some of my own struggles.
This is one of those posts that has gone through a bunch of different variations since I started writing it after waking up this morning. So here are a few snippets that survived, that didn't end up being too depressing, or self-centered.
In some ways we were very, very different people, but as time has gone by I am often struck by parallels in both history and actions that can't be denied. My dad was the first to teach me parents are human and fallible, but that only gave me perspective on life and never stopped me from looking up to him, no matter what our differences were.
Losing a parent sucks. Since my dad left I've seen plenty of other friends lose parents and I'm always tortured by the understanding that there is nothing I can do or say to lessen their pain, aside from letting them know everything they are feeling is valid, and terrible, and crushing, and that while it will never disappear, the pain will grow more manageable.
I'd still like to think that at my darkest moments over the last few years, he was the one looking down on me and offering me the tiny pushes that kept me from completely giving into the abyss. I certainly took his example of perseverance, no matter what life throws at you, to heart. He was human, but he always did whatever was needed to keep our family afloat, even in the most financially challenging times.
Sean's piece quotes something I wrote that year, and it still does a really good job of encapsulating my feelings, even 15 years later. So go read that, and help me celebrate my dad for all the positive impact he had on his family and friends. I'm no longer sure at all what kind of legacy I'll end up leaving behind—too much is still in flux for me, and I'm kind of starting over from square one—but I hope whatever I end up leaving behind would make my dad proud.
I could've sworn it was an R.E.M. "anniversary" release years ago triggered a salty post from me years ago, but no amount of digging through my own archives or the pages of Donewaiting has uncovered it, so that means it's either a) in my own head or b) actually ran in my weekly email newsletter that predated this site. Either way, I've long been suspicious of "deluxe editions" as far as expanding the historical record while simultaneously finding myself unable to resist them.
In plain terms, in my head special editions are often good only for superfine and pointless otherwise. Mostly. There are exceptions! And that list of exceptions has grown and grown, so I do believe we're moving past the point of these reissues being simple each-ins for labels or bands trying to extend their catalog's lifespan. Hell, one of the first series of remasters I remember making a real difference were when The Who re-released their whole catalog and you could suddenly hear Keith Moon's drums so much better on everything pre-1972 in the band's work. And there bonus tracks actually expanded the story. And and and ... I could go on and on, but suffice to say that series began to soften my stance.
As years have passed the number of special editions has spiked, and most are still pathetic cash grabs but the ones that actually try and make a case for their existence can be tremendous gifts.
Monster is often viewed as R.E.M.'s reaction to the 1994 "grunge" explosion.* That's because it was. And because of that I think lots of people didn't give it a fair shake at the time. It didn't hurt the band's popularity at all, they would mount a massive tour behind the album that did really well, but the album itself was often derided, especially in "cool" circles like the snobs I hung out with. However I liked the volume of "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" And spent a few hard-earned bucks from flipping burgers and DJing to get my own copy of the CD. And I liked it enough. I certainly did not not like it. Little did I know would be the last great R.E.M. album recorded as an album, if not the last great R.E.M. album, per-se.**
History has been kind to the disc. The band's reintegration of distortion always felt more glam than grunge to me, and I think the intervening years have served to support that opinion. The songs are solid, and there are even a few tearjerkers in there. If you don't get at least a little misty in response to Michael Stipe's plaintive wail on "Let Me In" you need to loosen up and, um, let 'em in.
Sooooo, let's just agree Monster was a fine album. Is a fine album. But does it warrant a super duper deluxe reissue? It breaks down into fur primary components:
The original album, remastered
Demos from that time period
The original album, remixed, presumably now to producer Scott Litt's satisfaction
A live concert in CHICAGO!***
So, let's be honest and take these each separately.
The remaster is just fine, if not really necessary, since it sounds almost identical to the original release. But hey, you can't add that "super" to "deluxe" without remastering something.
The demos are interesting, though you'll probably listen to the once and never again. As always with these things, they're snippets of ideas or half-baked thoughts that offer insight into what was going on behind the scenes. But again, more of historical interest, IMHO.
The remix is where the value-add starts to be obvious, though it's the sort of thing you will wither love or find super annoying. It's basically a whole new album, akin to viewing the original from an alternate dimension, opening things up and adding in different takes and basically rebuilding from the ground up. I've listened to it a bunch of times and I still find the alternative presentation fascinating; a re-imagining of what might have been, if you will. It doesn't change the way I feel about the original album one whit, and it doesn't expose or fix any weaknesses of the original recording, but it's an interesting exercise. And I think it's a valid way to re-approach the material. It's probably only of real interest to superfine, but by this point there are plenty of R.E.M. superfine to support this release. Even if most people I know barely seem to remember R.E.M. any more.****
And the live concert. It's a live concert. I do remember watching the Road Movie concert film they released from this tour (also included in this box set) and thinking the band was in viciously fine form, and this recording does nothing to change that appraisal—though I had forgotten how delightfully loopy Stipe's between song banter has always been. Again, it's the sort of thing I'll listen to once or twice and probably never again. Maybe you're different.
It occurs to me that by this point my thoughts on this super deluxe primo box set seem less than glowing. The fact of the matter is that I think it's pretty great, but I'm trying to process it the way an average consumer would, and give the facts based on whether or not that person wants to lay down a bunch of dollars for this. Do you need it in your library?! Do you really need it?
If you are the average fan, I would lay out the dough for the two-disc version that has the 2019 remaster and the new Scott Litt remix, since I do think that's required listening and something you might play over and over again. Who knows, maybe the remix will become your favorite version of Monster! But two discs should keep you covered.
If you are the above average fan, then by all means grab the deluxe set. You are the type that will listen to the demos over and over again. And dig into the video content (which is content I have not. Covered here outside the Road Movie mention, since it was not included in my review download). And you will play the Chicago concert recording over and over again in hopes that it's transmission might draw the band back to a stage near you. It won't, but you gotta dream. But dreams or not, the reality is that you'll love this set.
*Look, I'm not gonna argue over the use of the word "grunge." If you were in college in the early '90s we all called it "grunge," revisionist history be damned. You know what I'm talking about.
**New Adventures In Hi-Fi was recorded on the road and felt more like a really great odds and sods collection more than an "album," though I think in the grand scheme of things I still rate that as the last great R.E.M. album, with Monster coming in under it, quality-wise. Anyway.
***I didn't realize until recently that until Monster the band hadn't done any touring since I saw them in 1989. For some reason I thought they were always on the road, but I guess despite the massive success of the intervening albums Monster was the one that got them back out there? Weird. In my defense, I was living in a Central Illinois college town so most of my news came from discussions at the bar or the record store, or Rolling Stone and Spin, when I could afford them.
This is what happens when you post every single weekday for over 16 years and then switch to sporadic updates. That regular posting schedule, putting something up no matter what, helped keep the gears greased. It also kept me from double-thinking or getting in my own way when it came to my creative output here. That ended up being a double-edged sword once I hit a period in my life where perhaps authenticity and sharing of my feelings were best kept to myself. It took too long for that to really register, but once it did the gates slammed down and I decided to suspend the daily regimen in favor of less frequent posts focused more on the exterior world than my interior one.
It was the right move.
But now enough time has passed that I've been trying to return to a daily schedule again, and I'm having a hard time doing so. There's a new inner wariness to my output that I'm grappling with and trying to figure out how to deal with. For instance, this post you're reading has been started no less than five times in the last week, only to have each draft trashed. I keep starting to go down one path of ideas or another and then I freeze, worried that what I'm saying could be taken the wrong way. This is a ridiculous response to have when you're writing about a song you like or a movie to check out or even the Halloween decorations in your neighborhood, but I think I've gotten so gun-shy that it causes me to overthink every single word. And that's even dumber because, in the end, people read what they want to read into whatever they're reading. Once you put it out there, it's free game for interpretation, right? It's a central part of the compact between creator and participant, ferchrissakes!
So I'm making a pact with myself to return to daily writing and get over this inner blockage. That may mean some days I'm back to just posting a video or sharing some music, and others ruminating on more personal reflections. But, to me, the most important thing is returning to that regular schedule since I think that, for most of the time I've been writing publicly, that's the secret to keeping my mental gears well-oiled and turning. And while I never ever take you, dear reader, for granted, this is definitely something I'm doing for me more than I'm doing it for you. Hopefully you'll reap some benefits—even if it's just mild enjoyment or the occasional new cultural discovery—but I'm the one that'll benefit the most.
Thanks for your patience, and most of all for sticking around. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
There is no hidden meaning to this photo. It is just a random shot that's been sitting on my phone and I have had no idea where to use it, so here seemed as good a place as any.
I was at the gym the other day and out of podcasts, but far enough along in my workout that I didn't want to start listening to music since I knew I'd be in the mood for a full album without the time to give it the proper attention before it was time to go home. This was on a weekend. So I could've started listening to an album, but I'm weird and it just didn't seem like the right time. So instead I dug through one music writer's podcast I found via mailing list, and upon discovering the episodes ended with a discussion of "best of" 2017 records I reckoned said podcast was now largely defunct. But I also knew this particular writer considered themselves a rabble-rouser, so there was a good chance their focus on "best" music would either be darkly entertaining at worst and illuminating in the manner of introduction to bands unbeknownst to me at best.
As a whole, the podcast was both the best and worst at times.
This is all a long winded way of saying that the one act this discussion did introduce me to that was worth my time was Dark Thoughts. I can see from the internet that they are from "Philly" and they are "punk rock." Neither of those "facts" matter—the "punk" bit is not so much a fact as it is a weak genre assignment, though I'm assuming the "Philly" bit is—and I admit I have little interest learning of their motivations, belief systems, or even what they look like. They seem uninterested in all that as well, which is totally cool with me.
The album the podcast recommended was titled At Work, and I enjoyed it. It was fun. It is fun. And it is below and available to you for free, though I'm sure their little punk rock hearts would throw in a few extra pitter-pats were you to kick them a few bucks for the download. I'm actually surprised I've never heard of this band since their label compares them to Dear Landlord, and Kip loves that band so he must know about these cats as well. And he never told me about them? The nerve!
I've also included Dark Thoughts' latest single, which is also free, since it was released this month. It appears they are playing a release show for the 7" on November 1 at Boot And Saddle. Since they are from "Philly" I thought it would be safe to assume that Boot and Saddle is in Philadelphia, and a quick Google search proved that to be correct. If you live there, go to the show, and let me know how Dark Thoughts are live and in concert. Please, and thank you.
The 2017 album that started my interest in the first place!
The 2019 single that proves they are still an ongoing effort!
There is also a self-titled debut, but if you want that I'm going to ask you to please click through to their Bandcamp. What? Do you think I'm gonna hand you every single thing n a silver platter? C'mon, do a little work!
I am slacking this week, but for once I have an excellent reason—I started a new job Monday!
[Insert cheers, crowds doing the wave ‘round and ‘round a massive stadium, puppies and kittens rolling around in bright green grass in delight.]
This is terrific on a personal level, but not so great when I realized I am a week behind reviewing the memorable Starcrawler show I saw last week, and the ebullient Miss June show I saw this Monday. Tonight. Tonight I swear I’ll chain myself to my computer to get those thoughts out and up over on Third Coast Review. I swear!
Until then, I feel the need to share something with you, so lessee. Hmm, I actually just recently listened to the new Saint Motel EP—the first of three they're releasing in the next few months to create a full album, though if that's the case why not just release the album? It's not like they're Robyn or anything. Anyway, I dig the EP, but there's no good embed to share (I hate Spotify and their Soundcloud cuts each tune after 30 seconds, so, meh*) so instead let's just jam out on their initial hit from a few years ago, all prettied we're groovy spies, and get down and have some fun. The weekend is almost here!
*Seriously, why doesn't everyone just use Bandcamp already?! It's the best.
This is what procrastination looks like.* There's a show preview I've had percolating n my head that I keep putting off, and there's a show review that I have tons of notes on but just can't bring myself to crank out. I have a post on "how to survive being unemployed" I have a personal deadline of Friday to finish. I have most of my "favorite albums of 2018 (finally!) list that I just need to finish fleshing out and formatting. It's just that there's a bunch of really exciting stuff going on in my life right now, and I think that's contributing to my inability to focus on these things.**
There's a difference between writer's block (nothing is coming! what should I write?!) and this. This is not a terrible problem to have. But it is a problem and one I've gotta lick in the next 12 hours. So while I tackle that, here's a song about young love that feels very real, if a little dark. I imagine this is a reasonable facsimile of what goes on in the head of one struck by that almost crippling infatuation that accompanies the first handful of romantic partners. It also manages to showcase both the vulnerability and the sometimes overpowering paranoia that state tends to cultivate.
It's also worth noting this is one of my favorite brand new bands of the moment.*** Which reminds me, I've gotta write a more robust piece about them in the future as well! Oh well, back at it...
*No, not the photo above this line. I just picked that because I like it. Funny thing about the photo is that it's a fine detail of a larger image I plan on writing about at another point of time as an example of beauty in unexpected places, but that's really beside the point. All this writing is what procrastination looks like. But you knew that.
**What could it be?! I'm not telling ... yet!
***Funny, how when you avoid writing you sometimes end up writing despite your initial intentions, huh?
Les Savy Fav played the Frenchkiss Records 20th anniversary party over the weekend, and to promote it the band got together to play "Let's Get Out Of Here" on Late Night With Seth Meyers. Why "Late Night" in particular? It certainly didn't hurt that the 8G Band's Syd Butler is also the bassist in Les Savy Fav and the founder and owner of Frenchkiss Records. Synergy!
Their appearance reminded me of a memory I had largely forgotten. Years ago Les Savy Fav was playing a street festival in Wicker Park, at a time when indie bands I actually liked were just starting to infiltrate and take over those bills from the usual regional cover bands. During the set, singer Tim Harrington ran through the crowd towards the open door of the building right next to the stage I happened to be standing next to, and as he passed me to run through that door he handed me his microphone. I stood there confused for a half second before deciding I wasn't going to pass up this opportunity and immediately started to improvise vocals over the vamp the band was doing as Harrington ran rampant. Eventually he popped out of a window of one of the apartments on the second floor and everything went completely bonkers. I kept singing until he finally came back down to collect his microphone and they finished the set.
And I was left with a pretty fun story about "that one time I was the singer for Les Savy Fav."
I admit I went back and forth with that headline. The joke was just too easy, so I hope you'll forgive me.
So, People Years. The four gents in the band are based in Birmingham, Alabama and apparently each member plays in a bunch of other bands as well. I've never heard of any of the other bands, but that's not surprising—I'm not really well versed in the Birmingham scene. But if People Years' debut single is any indication of what the Birmingham scene is producing, I need to get far more familiar with it.
"Roadkill" takes it's sweet time to build up over the course of its six-plus minutes. Things start out spacey until the drums kick things up a notch at the 45-second mark, and then things get even more interesting as a David Gilmour-esque guitar line that would fit right in on Pink Floyd's "Breathe" continues to suggest a spiraling inner journey that tugs against the brisk beats. Dreamy vocals kick in around 2 minutes later, and then the tune dips and grooves swoons and crashes into a thundering crescendo. Just strap in and listen—the lyrics are minimal so this is really one of those compositions that's pretty wide open for you to create your own space within.
The band's debut album is still in the works and isn't due until early 2020—assuming we're all still around by then—but this should wet your whistle for what's to come.
If video is more your thing, then you can watch the accompanying video below. Personally, I prefer it when my mind runs free on songs like "Roadkill," but to each their own!
We were trying to remember a show from last winter we were both at, and K kept telling me, "You know their name. They're your favorite band! You played them all the time when we were in my car back then!"
We finally remembered the band in question was Charly Bliss, and based on how much I have listened to them over the past few years, K categorizing them as my "favorite band" seems accurate, even if at the time my brain immediately leapt toward the groups with longer histories I'd usually jump to based on that description.
Charly Bliss recently stopped by the NPR studios and today they've released their own contribution to the excellent Tiny Desk Concert series. So, everyone, enjoy this unconventional show from my favorite band!
