Picking Locks With Footprints From The Snow

I wanted to find the perfect song to start off this blog. I wanted to mention how I had gone to see Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Times New Viking, and The Ponys all by myself at Subterrenean last weekend. I wanted to write about how guts react in an acidic goo of exhilaration and joy when a show is really good, standing around all awkward-like or not.

The problem, however, is that I couldn't find the right song to start off. I didn't fully enjoy the show simply because I felt so lonely in such a crowded place and gee, how representative of my life in Chicago. Anyway, the bands were all amazing and Times New Viking floored me, absolutely floored me, but that's not what this post is about. This is about a song.

"Libraries" by Seabear (mp3 via yousendit) is a good choice for just putting iTunes on shuffle and clicking play. I've only listened to it just now for the first time and really, it should've been sooner because, c'mon, I love libraries! So much so that I'm thinking of doing postgrad work in library sciences but that's a different subject altogether. Anyway, I enjoyed the self-released Singing-Arc EP that preceded this, back when Seabear was just some guy in Iceland and not an actual band. My roommate had purchased it and paid an exorbitant amount in shipping costs to get the handcrafted gem of a CDEP. It was what I would listen to on cold nights in a sterile room just having walked in from the blustery climate of a Chicago winter. The full-length, The Ghost That Carried Us Away, is brighter, warmer, and poppier than Singing-Arc. "Libraries", in particular, is fuller yet lighter than any of the other tracks I can remember from the EP. Have I mentioned that Seabear is a whole band now? It sure sounds like it. It's music that twinkles. This could be a problem but that aching feeling I was so familiar with from the EP flirts around the corners of the lovely little tune and the album as a whole. Lovely indeed.