Hi all,
'Talking Shits', my short-running series where I just copy and paste bits of what other people wrote instead of writing my own stuff, is going on a brief hiatus. It's not cancelled (yet) but I need to think a bit more about how to do it properly.
In the meantime, let's just do a quick post about my horrendous music preferences.
I may have mentioned going on a brief road trip in May. As I wrote in my ridiculously formatted (but otherwise excellent) second post, I try to get albums from the library anytime I anticipate more than two hours in a car.
I estimated I would require about six hours of music for this trip. Six hours works out to around eight albums. However, my 'library request' skills were rusty and I forgot how long CDs take to reach the reserve shelves. Of the eight I asked for, only three came in on time to make it into the car.
These five albums did not come in on time for the trip:
Fever To Tell by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Lake Street Dive by Lake Street Dive
Shallow Grave by Tallest Man On Earth
Omega La La by Rubblebucket
Survival Sounds by Rubblebucket
The list is not an exact reflection of where things stand in my 'band of the year' race. Still, so far in 2017, I've enjoyed few bands as much as Lake Street Dive and Rubblebucket, a fact reflected in their appearances above. Fever To Tell is an album I've always liked; The Tallest Man On Earth is a five-foot-seven Swede who opened a few shows for The Head And The Heart on their last concert tour.
Chvrches has been the 'new' group in my 2017 music rotation (1). They've been around since 2011 and I've been aware of them for at least a couple of years. For whatever reason, it took until May of 2017 for me to come around and listen to a few of their songs. The key moment, I think, was a Muse cover of their song, 'Lies'. I liked the song and decided to see what the original sounded like. And as a result, the band's debut album, The Bones of What You Believe, made it into the car for the trip.
The other albums I checked out in time were The Wild Hunt by The Tallest Man On Earth and Bad Self Portraits by Lake Street Dive. The Wild Hunt was fine; Bad Self Portraits was among my favorite albums before the trip and only solidified this status on the long road between Boston and Waterville.
I made the trip up with a friend. And what are my friends for? To listen to the music I like, of course. The ride up was an extra-important occasion as it was my friend's birthday.
We stopped halfway through Maine. I treated him to an extra-special birthday lunch: Chicken McNuggets, some french fries, and a vanilla shake. Once sated, it was back to worshiping Chvrches.
If I was any better of a friend, I would have to be twins just to handle it.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Typo!
Chvrches is spelled with the 'roman u'. We in modern society often refer to this as a 'v'. Oh well...
In the past, such a move might be described as pretentious. I would not necessarily agree with the label (but I at least would fully understand why someone would say this). However, in the search-and-click world of The Good Old Interwebs, such a move is pragmatic. The mystery to me is why anyone bothers to spell anything correctly at all anymore.
