I Think It's Official

I'm Obsessed With Dance Gavin Dance
All Their Stages
Are Things I Want To Listen To!

Oh Emo

I really like Senses Fail. Yes, I really do. The CD Let It Enfold You is one of the greatest emo CDs of all time. Just thought I'd stop by and say that.

The Timbre of a Voice

I do have many things to talk about in music. Though I don't really know how to connect them all. Firsssst.
Well, let's take the best voices in music (save maybe Anthony Green) and make them all do harmonies together. Yes, Jonny Craig, Craig Owens and Vic Fuentas all sound fantastic together. I want a fully produced and finished E.P. I demand it.
Jonny Craig. Jonny Jonny Jonny. What an amazing vocalist. He's emphatic and passionate. His solo project's CD should be good. I'm really digging the song Istillfeelher Part III. Let's hope the rest is just as good. It's also too bad he messes up bands.
This CD is amazing. Jonny here isn't the main focus, rather an intricate part of the entire package. He's so amazing. Yet Jonathon Mess's screaming is also standout and incredible here. So good.
Speaking of Isles and Glaciers, this CD is also very good. I can't wait for the new one.
Speaking of really good CDs, this one is fucking amazing as well. The lyrics are happily insightfully angsty. The music is fast and fun. I need to listen to more things like this. Let's talk about the stuff I'm listening that's bad.
Bad Romance is a catchy song, what can I say?

A Day To Remember

ADTR put this out yesterday. It has two songs that I wanted, Homesick and Another Song For The Weekend in acoustic versions. I downloaded them and I have to say that they are fantastic. I enjoy listening to them. I also have been glued to A Day To Remember lately. I just downloaded For Those Who Heart and I realized, it's just as good as Homesick, if not better. I really really liked Homesick. The album means a lot to me because of the time of my life that I found it. I'm just as pleased to find out that their older outing kicks as much ass and is just as catchy. It's nice to know.
But for all that I've been listening to them, I've also been into Radiohead. This time, I'm not listening to In Rainbows. Instead I'm listening to the Pitchfork album of the decade. It's good. Really good. The song National Anthem is a song you should, as declared by me; yesterday. Anyway, the keyboards, the voice, the haunting noise. It's album about noise sounding good, as Thom Yorke won't publish his lyrics.
But all this other music is distracting me. I should be listening to Between the Buried and Me. The Great Misdirect is a fantastic album, don't get me wrong. I've just been distracted. I need to listen to it more. I'm just starting to learn the album and being able to appreciate it for how awesome it really is.
People are saying it's not as good as Colors. Colors truly is a godly album. Is this one too? I can't tell yet. I'd like to make my own decision about it though.

Warped Set Lists!

Hey, this was a good concert....

You know what?

This CD is pretty damn good. For a brutally and unabashedly metalcore CD, with breakdown after breakdown. Yet, something has to be that CD.

For Those Who Have Heart

Just picked this up from the internets. I have to say, it's not fair how catchy A Day To Remember is. Just, it's bad music, but it's so entertaining to listen to.

The Great Misdirect

I haven't been this excited for a CD since Adelphia. And I haven't been this blown away since As the Roots Undo.

Jonny Craig

Ha, since I haven't been working, I spend a lot less time writing about music now....Anyway. I've been listening to a lot of Jonny Craig lately. Emarosa, old Dance Gavin Dance, and his apperence in that MikeyWhiskyHands track, which really sparked this whole thing.
He just delivers so much emotion through every word he sings. It's pretty incredible. The song "Set It Off Like Napalm" is a real highlight of his vocal abilities, as well as a good outing from his supporting band members.

Summer

Well summer in San Francisco is drawing to a close and I would feel amiss if I didn't at least nominate some CDs and songs for awards that I feel they deserve. I listened to a lot of music this Summer and it will probably be remembered as such.

Song that Will Represent Summer 2009
If It Means A Lot to You - A Day to Remember

Simply the actions that happened when I was listening to this song and the things that it means will memorialize this song for me.

Runner up: A Crater to Cough In- Circle Takes the Square.
Best Hardcore Song
A Crater to Cough In- Circle Takes the Square.

This Song is one the greatest songs I have ever heard. The musicianship that went in to this song is astounding. It builds slowly, with a four minute instrumental that lulls you into some sense of peace. Then it builds into the vocals. The music shifts perfectly from slow to fast in about 5 seconds. The double bass pedal is used perfectly in this song, highlights the most intense parts in the song. It rides like a roller coaster, with the song ending in a crescendo of sound and music, perfectly concentrating everything that Circle Takes the Square is into 30 seconds of perfect music. This song kicks ass.

Runner up: When The Sun Sleeps- Underoath

Best Indie Song
In a Tree- Priscilla Ahn

The song's sweetness and tenderness really is amazing. It came at a perfect time and refused to get out of my head for the longest time. Plus, she preformed it perfectly live.

Runner up: Titus Andronicus- Titus Andronicus

Best Rap Song
Stuntin' Like My Daddy- Lil Wayne and Birdman

Bitch I'm paid, that's all I gotta say.

Runner up- A Milli- Lil Wayne

Best Punk Song
Patient Ferris Wheel- The Gaslight Anthem

This song is a good song. It moves quickly and almost everything in the chorus can be a catch phrase. Fun Song.

Runner up: Incomplete- Bad Religion.

Best Out of Place Song
Meet Me At Fantasy Island- Super Mash Bros

This song's mash up is one the most perfect I've heard in the realm of mash ups. It blends Creed perfectly with Nelly and then Blink 182 and Nelly. Then brings in A Milli at the right time. It works very very well.

Runner Up: Paparazzi- Lady Gaga.

Artist that Will Represent Summer 2009
A Day to Remember

Simply the amount that I listened to Homesick this summer will make ADTR the artist that I think of when I think of this summer.

Runner up: Underoath

Best Hardcore Artist
Circle Takes the Square
How could this not be the winner? As the Roots Undo is such an amazing CD that I would be hard pressed to really give this to anyone else.
Runner up: Underoath
Best Indie Artist
Titus Andronicus

This band was introduced to me mid way through summer and I really enjoyed their CD. It's chalk full of literary references (Titus Andronicus. Cmon) and fun puns (Arms Against Atrophy). It makes for a good time and a fun artist.

Runner Up: Animal Collective.
Best Rap Artist
Lil Wayne

This dude sucks, but he makes some catchy songs that do make you feel much cooler than you are. To me, that's what rap is suppose to do.

Runner up: MikeyWhiskeyHands
Best Punk Artist
Gaslight Anthem

No question about it, these guys rock. They are like if Jack Kerouac played music.

Runner up: Bad Religion
Best Out of Place Artist
Super Mash Bros

These guys rule the mash up scene. They are up there with Girl Talk, though Girl Talk still manages to be better. But this is about new artists, not old ones.

Runner up: Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Best New Artist
Circle Takes the Square
Surprised?

Runner up: The Gaslight Anthem

Best Old Artist
A Skylit Drive
Somehow, these guys stay relevant to me. They make catchy music that somehow still has meaning after all this time.

Runner up: Underoath
CD that will represent Summer 2009
A Day to Remember- Homesick
Again, surprised at all?

Runner up: As the Roots Undo- Circle Takes the Square
Best Indie CD
The Airing of Grievances- Titus Andronicus

If you didn't see this coming, I feel bad for you.

Runner up: Hospice- The Antlers

Best Hardcore CD
Besides As the Roots Undo:
Lost in the Sound of Separation- Underoath

This CD is an amazing CD. It's instrumentals wind around the vocals and help it deal a real blow to the listener. It swirls in and out of desperation, hopelessness and then finally redemption. This is Underoath at their finest.

Runner up: A Skylit Drive- Adelphia
Best Rap CD
Tha Carter III- Lil Wayne

This CD has some solid singles on it, but nothing to much else. Supposedly it's really good, but I haven't listened to enough of it to judge that. Rap doesn't strike me as the kind of music with entire CDs.
Best Punk CD
The '59 Sound- The Gaslight Anthem

I'm rather boring, actually.

Runner Up: Document 8- Pg.99
Best Out of Place CD
Merriweather Post Pavilion- Animal Collective

Now, this CD is hipster garbage. But it's good and interesting hipster garbage that seems to keep being good somehow.

Runner Up: Fuck Bitches, Get Euros- Super Mash Brothers

Best CD of the Summer
As The Roots Undo- Circle Takes the Square

Was their really any doubt? This CD is the best CD I have ever heard and the amount of praise that I heap upon this so regularly is absurd. I've said everything that I can about this CD so I'm going to say anymore.

Runners Up:
The '59 Sound- The Gaslight Anthem
Eingya- Helios
Lost in the Sound of Separation- Underoath
Adelphia- A Skylit Drive

Addiction

Crowquill

Nothing's so lucid as the promise of dreams, but these pills we found just make me sleep.
The promise of dreaming is a quite an alluring one, however, this man can only sleep. He can't dream and he wishes he could.
There's nothing quite so pure as the written word my dear, so lets have ourselves a little poem.
Written word has finality and authority. This line is pretty self explanitory anyway.
Until the will to speak loses urgency.
He's writing to put his thoughts on paper and doesn't think he'll write until after he's got all them out.
Our animal indecency in print is so blase.
When written down, who we are isn't so bad.
Its about the bell tower, at the golden hour.
He's looking at the high point of the town, at mid day
Angel of the spires climbs here steel cage staircase spine, angle of desire.
It's a beautiful building. There's again this imagery of heights and jetting off into the sky.
Ascend the wrought iron, one by one, wrung by wrung.
He climbs up and up.
Is it the rising roof line that makes me feel so swallowed whole,
He's completely committed to killin himself. He's just engrossed with the action right now.
or the way my body barely pricks the sky,
He's feeling small
the same as a century's worth of virgin's blood that's passed through my longing veins,
? Maybe he's saying that this need is pure and wholesole. This is unclear
scheming to convince my aching mind that pleasure's got nothing on the miracle of need.
He's trying to convince himself that killing himself is the only right answer, and that staying alive is pleasurable but not what he needs to do
Nothing's so purile as meter and rhyme when you can't see the ground from that ledge and this perch is so far, far from the nest.
Things like literature and music are so inconsequential when death is upon you.
Gravity doesn't grant me the privilege of failure my bough never breaks
If he jumps, there's no turning back. His bough (a large tree branch) may be referring to his large moral convictions.
I don't stumble into anything
He is surefootted in his life and has a plan
so I climb and I carve my initials in the bark with that feather I found but its all so contrived.
He's signing his suicide note. The bark is an Synecdoche (when one uses a part to represent the whole) for paper. He doesn't like this whole concept of the note though.
My genes didn't bless me with the foresight of a sage but I know how this will end, in apologies and ink on the page.
He's no wise man but he knows where this is headed.
A slowly constructed crow quilled confession of my spirit to all of you,
His suicide note
black waterproof ink scars the board, so hot-pressed, pristine and pure.
Vivid imagery of this note.
A slowly constructed manifestation of "to tremble",
How he carefully contructed his argument of why he's ending it.
as base as a bridge in a song and less like the poem that I promised you.
He's saying his note is much more lyrical than a poem, like it has intrinsic beauty in it much more so than written word
Nothing's so lurid as haiku-detat on sidewalks in white outlined chalk,
This is a juxtaposition of the first set of lines. Notice how lurid is very close to lucid. This line means something like "nothing is so horrifying as the outline of the jumper"
all I've got is this ink smeared lines.
All that's real to him is this note.
With our voices in harmony, the offering, of a crow quilled threnody.
This suicide note is his own eulogy.

This song is pretty obviously about suicide. The perverse theme of heights and notes in this song make it pretty clear that this man is about to take his own life. However, the overlying theme here seems to be that his death was inevitable. He planned this whole thing out and he needed to do it. He almost has a notion that this suicide was noble and tragic. His note was a thing of beauty and purity. So, he jumps.

More CTTS

New CDs!

I got some CDs sunday. Here they are.



Since Circle Takes the Square is the best screamo CD ever, I don't need to get any other ones.
I also bought some CDs from Ameobia.