no destination: bieber fever

now that my fabulous editor jeremy larson has instructed me on the prober spelling of bieber, i am ready to tell you about my new column at consequence of sound. it’ll be published the second tuesday of every month. click here to read it over at CoS and please leave some feedback so i can keep making it better.

bahamas: barchords review

Oddly, one of the most notable things about Barchords is how much silence it contains. In an effort to create space for the songs’ sentiments, Jurvanen has taken quite the stripped-down approach to instrumentation, favoring vocals high in the mix and at times leaving long moments of silence between his phrases.

pacificUV: weekends review

Weekends, pacificUV’s latest release, is a concept album: A painstaking examination of drug abuse as self-medication to the pain of heartbreak. Rather than tell a story, Weekends is more of a snapshot of an emotional state. With its combination of catchy-yet-understated vocal melodies and guitar lines languishing in delay pedal limbo, Weekends captures the ambivalent mélange of feelings that makes it damn hard to leave the couch after a crushing break-up.

the duke spirit: bruiser review

hey people.

been off the radar, due to moving, not having utilities in the new house, starting two new part-time jobs in the same week, etc. but i’ve been writing in the meantime. like this guy:

Listeners wade through half an album of ballads (“Villain,” “Don’t Wait”) and catchy-yet-bland alt-rock (“Cherry Tree,” “Procession”) before stumbling upon anything particularly edgy or interesting in “Bodies’” sexy, driving bassline and ethereal vocals.

bakery jam

was working yesterday on a story for the local paper, the herald dispatch, about a local open mic event. here’s some snaps from that.

here’s albert perrone playing an original tune!

here he is with douglas eye. together, they are dr. strange and professor love.

john van kirk plays some mean harmonica.

and he sang some pretty sweet covers with art stringer, too.

jamz.

paul brill: breezy review

i wrote it! read it in full over at paste.

… collection of nicely polished, if a little vanilla, pop songs whose stated discomfort with their own sunniness makes Breezy a much more compelling alternative to the rose-colored glasses worldview of Brill’s “laid-back bro” peers such as Jack Johnson and Jason Mraz.

richmond

went to richmond to see cousin greer and her boyfriend, who looks a lot like jesus, if jesus had been white.

we went to the river to explore this old building.

we were joined by a special guest.

greer.

what’s in there?

mystery hole!

lookin’ good.

caught this programmer coming out of the mystery hole. he wouldn’t tell me what he was doing in there. found out later — he was peeing.

investigative journalism?

bruno

been taking a wee break from producing lately, mostly reading, rewatching deadwood, listening to hours of terry gross interviews, listening to music. trying to replenish the creative stockpiles inside. thinking on what photos from the european adventure should be submitted in an application to take part in some gallery show in kentucky. making tentative plans to become a gypsy with a few friends. determined to become an ubermensch. hero-worshipping david chang and pining for the ingredients to make all the dishes in the momofuku cookbook i was gifted this christmas.

chief among the piddling tasks i’ve been occupying my days with is spreading good art around, thinking about why i like it, why i think certain other people will like it. wanted to share this with whoever stumbles upon this blog. a small excerpt from nicole krauss‘ the history of love, a story about a man who hid in the woods from nazis for years to escape the holocaust before coming to america. various factors in his life have led him to feel as though he perhaps might not exist at all. he signs up to model for a figure drawing class because it will afford him the opportunity to be seen. here, krauss writes the scene in which the narrator, leo gurtsky, is reunited with a childhood friend.

Bruno and I were friends when we were boys. When I came to America, I thought he was dead, and then one day I was walking down East Broadway and I heard his voice. I turned around. He was standing in front of the grocer’s asking the price of some fruit. I thought, You’re hearing things, you’re such a dreamer, what is the likelihood — your boyhood friend? I stood frozen on the sidewalk. He’s in the ground, I told myself. It’s fifty years later, here you are in the United States of America, there’s McDonald’s, get a grip. I waited just to make sure. I wouldn’t have recognized his face. But the way he walked was unmistakable — skipping along like a bird. He was about to pass me. I put my arm out and grabbed his sleeve. “Bruno,” I said. He stopped and turned. At first he seemed scared and then confused. “Bruno,” I said. He looked at me; his eyes filled with tears. He touched his hand to my cheek; with the other he held a bag of plums. “Bruno.”

something about that scene has stayed with me for years since i first read the book. the detail about the plums, the mitigation of this man’s profound loneliness. i was in tears, and it was only page six. if you’re looking for reading material in the new year, this is my top recommendation (after everything david foster wallace ever wrote, of course). it only gets lovelier as you read on.

unbest!

my pal and former editor at paste magazine, rachael maddux had a really, really good idea this year to make this website called unbest, where people who think year-end best-of lists are silly can write about music that simply meant something to them over the year. i wrote something, and it went up today. you can read it here.

teddy the tape pile

headed to grayson lakes in kentucky on saturday with my new friend, ian, who teaches painting at marshall university. he also happens to be a fabulous painter himself. he’d accumulated an enormous pile of tape over the last year, so we decided to take it out and make an art project out of it.

we were going to take it swimming, but it was too coooooold.

so instead we found a variety of ways to make it look interesting while staying dry.

oops, it looks like a heart.

a broken heart, because ian threw poor teddy away at the end of the day.

goodbye, majestic tape pile.