Steel and Whiskey.

Lately, I've been taking long walks after work thinking about a lot of things that do not matter in the long run. It was a gorgeous day on Monday; not humid and sticky or filled with torrential rains. Pleasant. The weather was pleasant.

It was Iron and Wine's Carousel. If the sounds of that song existed as Environment (trees, sidewalk, grass, bikes, cars, houses, cars, more cars), it was splayed out on Monday, filtered through my government-issued glasses that refract the sunlight in a way that makes the artificially sharpened edges glow. Lens flares, all of the time, I see them with these glasses in such bright daylight. Out-of-reach orbs of light.

So pleasant and deceptively serious. The song, I mean.

Quick, Speedy, Fast

Three Things:

1) Using my iPod's standard earphones is a pain. I bought headphones imported from Japan. I probably shouldn't've.
2) The past week or two, I listened to Cap 'n Jazz when I walked to and from work. Why?
3) I'm listening to Orchid right now. Yes! I played them a few times during my short venture into radio during high school. Weird. I was a lot happier in high school.

Night Windows

I'm broke. Been buying too many CDs and records and junk. Not enough time to sit down and ramble about how much I still love the Colleen album that came out earlier this summer. Because I love it. I love Colleen. I love how I hope, really hope, that it becomes hip shit because I'm sort of maybe tired of irony. Irony is exhausting. I love Colleen and I don't want to like Clipse 'cause I don't and I wore hot pink and neon green leopard print sneakers today. Oi.

Today I found my copy of The Weakerthan's Left and Leaving. My taste in music during my teenage years was far superior than the mess it has been since. Next thing you know, I'll be listening to cLOUDDEAD again. Speaking of teenage taste, Daitro and Ampere (!!!) are coming through soon. Teenage!Me would've been all over it. YoungAdult!Me hasn't gone to a show since May, let alone one like the Ampere/Daitro show which will be filled with people who know each other. I don't know anyone. On a vaguely related note (that is, if you clicked the link), Times New Viking came through town last Friday and though I am now a Young Adult, I am not yet old enough to go to bars. I'm sure it was amazing because they were stunning in the sort of fuzzy way I love when I saw them. Anyway, about half a year until I get to fully realize the alcoholic that I am. Yessss.

This Is Not What I Want to Write About

Kanye West, you are killing me. Serious. I am quite behind in the world of music (and blogs, too--months, maybe years) and recently heard the new Kanye West single, "Stronger". It's pretty much the Daft Punk track, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", with West rapping over it. Well no. Borrowing heavily from. Or samples. I mean samples, right? I feel like a sample shouldn't be so blatant but what should I know (there are, of course, exceptions, i.e. Girl Talk's spastic samples are earth-shatteringly obvious yet deceptive and brilliant that it's a work to behold). Anyway, I disliked it when Busta Rhymes sampled Daft Punk's "Technologic" for his single, "Touch It", last year. Same French duo, different song, different artist, and I still dislike it. The a cappella version floating around on the internet last year is more interesting than West's take. It feels more sincere. Dudes actually try and appear to care.



I'm not quite sure how I define sincerity, but I don't hear it often. Music or anything. It's the sort of thing one recognizes when it's there, and if it's not present, everything seems shallow and pointless. "For fun" is not a good enough excuse to make crap.

With that said, I find the track with West rapping over Peter, Bjorn, and John's "Young Folks" to be lackluster. No pop for a pop song. And let's not delve into the mess that is Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell (an aside: I have a cousin who is the spitting image of this dude), and West sampling Thom Yorke's "The Eraser". Ick. Granted, I find it the best of the three latest tunes. But that's not saying much, is it?

I really want to like Kanye West. Really, I do. I liked that first album that made him ridiculously famous. I even somewhat liked the one that came after--Jon Brion did work on it and Brion is a darling in my musically-illiterate universe. Hearing these recent tracks, however, I have a feeling that the drop out from my school is going to do like most Columbia (or any college) alums--he's going to get boring and coast.

...

I have a lot of posi stuff to write about. Swears! It's just taking some time to collect my thoughts. Or pretend to. I don't really collect anything.

An Office Job To Do

I loved it when RJD2 decided to speak up, um, I mean sing in "Making Days Longer" off of Since We Last Spoke. Yeah, that's right. I didn't mind his sing-speak. I liked it. I loved it. If I were in a band, I would sing-speak. I also loved the idea of him departing from his norm and doing a more pop-oriented album (though, if this were a Serious blog, I would contend to say that everything he's done is Pop. Alas, I am not Serious nor is this blog and it's not like I thought that out before I started typing).

There's the problem: the idea is great. Full of promise. The actual manifestation of it is really not what I hoped he would accomplish. Accomplish is not the word. "Come up with". Listening to it straight-through the three times that I have so far in the past month or so, I feel like Rjd2 could've pushed and then pushed some more to get something not necessarily more polished, but something that's much more focused, more of what we all know he's capable of.

If the breeziness of "Making Days Longer" carried over into The Third Hand, I wouldn't've disliked the album so much. Yes, I disliked it and no one is surprised. Good job at trying, but it just didn't work out. If you're going to sing-speak, do it right. Make it the focus. Make the lyrics, the vocals punchier. Sure, stay restrained but let something peek out. Anything. I bought the album out of sheer curiosity. I listened because I wanted to hear him. But where did he go?

I wholeheartedly believe that one can be timid and present at the same time. He showed us with one breathtaking track and it's there, you know, inside of all of the crud, there's a breathtaking album. The Third Hand feels like a collection of afterthoughts or maybe a rough draft for something that Rjd2 is trying to develop. I'm not sure if the album is, in the grand scheme of his career, a step backward or forward. Maybe it's not a step at all. Maybe it's an extended jump straight up into the air but so far up that the world continued rotating and the poor guy just landed in the middle of the ocean.

...

No mp3 but the randomly found YouTube video is magnificent. Beautiful and minimal. Much like the song, I thought to myself, "I can't believe I actually like this." You could also watch the related videos where Rjd2 performs the song. With a band. And an acoustic guitar. I'm sorry. Really. I apologize. I just can't seem to dig that because I'm a close-minded asshat.

Grey, Gray Sky Is Still Raining

It's dark but it's daytime still. I've just gotten out of the bath and I've dried off and dressed now, but I'm coiled up on my bed, my knees tucked in, my sheets pushed at the end of the bed. I'm listening to Lavender Diamond's "Garden Rose" (mp3 via yousendit) and it's not at all how I'm feeling, contrary to what's going on, to the lights having been turned off, to the heavily sad humidity.

I'm feeling more like "Here Comes One" (ditto); a continuation of something, a readjustment, another variation of an already existing deviation in the whole. Look, I'm gonna smile once in a while if I don't mean it. It happens, you know?

An aside: "Like An Arrow" on the same album as the two provided tracks, Imagine Our Love, reminds me of Heart. Yeah, that band. I don't know why.

Justin Long Is a Beautiful Man Who Shares My Last Name

I have given tons of money to Apple. I have an iPod now. I held off for a long time when it came to purchasing one, but I decided to just do it, gosh darn it, just get on that bandwagon already when I bought my new laptop.

So now I'm the owner of an 80GB iPod. How sweet is that?

You know what would be even sweeter? If my external hard drive with the roughly 60GB of audio files worked. That would be sweeter than the season's ripest fruit. Mango. Berries. Compound fruits are awesome.