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The new Built to Spill album is the best album to come out in the last 10 years (when Keep it Like a Secret came out). Go buy it right now. It's a bit darker in tone than the last few Built to Spill albums, and includes the closest thing Doug has written to a Treepeople song since... well... Treepeople (a eulogy to State of Confusion's Pat Schmaljohn featuring Scott Schmaljohn - also of State of Confusion and Treepeople on guitar). The musicianship overall is top notch and probably about as innovative as I've heard Built to Spill get. A lot of the usual guest musicians are here (John McMahon and Sam Coomes both make appearances). There are lots of organs, and one song's got a horn interlude that works surprisingly well.
I went to Stan's Hot Dogs today for lunch (it's been such a long time since I actually said anything about what's up with me, but I haven't been vegan for over a month now). The food wasn't spectacular. The dogs felt a little insubstantial, and I'm still a tad hungry, which sucks because I probably just shoved 8000 calories down my throat to get to that point. On the other hand, the price is right. Instead of going there, I'd recommend the Boise Fry Company, who make the best veggie burger in town (and it's completely vegan). They also have a bison burger that I hear is really good, as well as fries cooked in duck fat with truffle salt (I hear mixed things about these. Never tried 'em, personally). Avoid the thinner cuts of fries, though. They tend to get really soggy in the grease, and by the end of your cone, they're like eating handfuls of potato flavored mush. Really gross.
So not being vegan has gained me about 10-15 pounds that I probably needed to gain. I've been fluctuating between about 135-140 for the past few weeks. Trying to work out a little more often to compensate. It's definitely helping. Living with my parents doesn't really help because they don't eat healthy in the slightest. This family probably eats about 8 cows a week. So I've been cooking for myself as often as possible.
Other things I've been doing lately:
- Eating Phish Food ice cream. Listening to Phish while I do it (fuck all naysayers - dudes can shred).
- Pretending not to enjoy Phish.
- Failing.
- Wondering what the hell Barack Obama actually did to justify giving him a Nobel Prize.
- Being totally stoked that NASA is shooting stuff at the moon.
- Wishing those clouds out my window would pour out some rain on us. They won't. Fuck Idaho weather.
- Playing guitar and banjo all the time.
- Saving money.
- Being boring.
I think there was something I was supposed to do tonight but I don't remember what it is. Probably wasn't very important.
(10:29:03 PM) Soup: Okay! Story number two!
(10:29:21 PM) Soup: The second day we were in Encinitas my parents wanted to go to this breakfast place
(10:29:45 PM) Soup: It seemed like a pretty nice place. I even put on clean clothes to go there and everything.
(10:30:16 PM) Soup: Anyway,
we get there, and the girl at the front podium tells us it's gonna be
about a 15 minute wait. So I sit down with my mom and sister in a
couple free chairs.
(10:30:42 PM) Soup: A
few minutes later, this guy whips out his iPhone, and shoves it in my
mom's face. Then he points over at me and says "his shirt."
(10:30:56 PM) Soup: He's got an English accent, by the way. Imagine that when he's talking.
(10:31:36 PM) Soup: Well,
on his iPhone screen was the definition of "circle jerk." And my mom
kind of gives him this look like, "so? It's a fucking band." Like any
reasonable person would, you know?
(10:32:15 PM) Soup: So
he's all confronting my mom and my sister about my shirt, and I tell
him basically to leave us alone and mind his own business (and I did say I was sorry he was offended, for the record)
(10:32:58 PM) Soup: and
then he goes off on this big rant about "some people like to come to
this place with their kids after church" and then onto "we have
obscenity laws in this country, you know!" and then onto "is this how
you practice freedom of speech?"
(10:33:22 PM) Soup: and
then eventually I've just had enough of this guy, and I just get up and
yell right in his face "SIT DOWN AND LEAVE US THE FUCK ALONE, ASSHOLE"*
(10:33:37 PM) Soup: And he goes to complain to the restaurant
(10:33:50 PM) Soup: who proceed to basically tell him to go fuck himself, far as I could tell
(10:34:06 PM) Soup: And then we were seated, and all was well.
(10:34:16 PM) Soup: That guy was the running joke of the trip.
*It should be noted that he used the word "cunt" loudly in chewing us out, so I doubt any of these words were anything his kids hadn't heard before.
(10:14:56 PM) Soup: First day I get there
(10:15:05 PM) Soup: we're pulling up to the condo we're staying at
(10:15:08 PM) Soup: and I yawn
(10:15:17 PM) Soup: and then my jaw just pops out of place
(10:15:40 PM) Soup: I think it's my TMJ acting up so I'm trying to rub the muscles 'til they ease up
(10:15:45 PM) Soup: But it's not working at all
(10:15:57 PM) Soup: So I take one of my mom's muscle relaxers
(10:16:22 PM) Soup: Well, after an hour of no progress being made, we decide, "well shit. Time for an emergency room visit."
(10:16:28 PM) Soup: I'm freaking out at this point
(10:16:54
PM) Soup: I mean, I'm keeping my composure, but I'm really hoping I'm
not gonna have some quack try to cut me open or something
(10:17:24 PM) Soup: So we don't know where the nearest doctor is that would be good for something like this
(10:17:46 PM) Soup: My sister actually comes up with the idea of calling the owner of the condo and asking
(10:17:54 PM) Soup: So she tells us to go to Scripps
(10:18:10 PM) Soup: we get there, and the emergency room nurse is asking me all sorts of questions
(10:18:33
PM) Soup: All of which I am completely incapable of coherently
answering because my fucking jaw is popped out and I can't move it.
(10:18:49 PM) Soup: Eventually, they sort of figure out what's up.
(10:19:10 PM) Soup: I end up in this little triage room I'm pretty sure they use for childbirth
(10:19:27 PM) Soup: and, you know, pregnant medicine
(10:19:35 PM) Soup: That sorta thing
(10:19:41 PM) Soup: I guess the actual ER was full
(10:19:48 PM) Soup: I'm waiting for a while
(10:20:05 PM) Soup: after about another hour from when I left the condo, they finally get to me
(10:20:11 PM) Soup: Which is impressive, actually
(10:20:17 PM) Soup: This nurse walks up
(10:20:30 PM) Soup: "Hi, I'm Brian. I'll be your doctor... I mean, I'm not a doctor."
(10:20:38 PM) Soup: I'm getting scared of this guy
(10:20:44 PM) Soup: he seems a little... overzealous
(10:21:12 PM) Soup: Anyway, the real doctor comes over, tells me my jaw is straight-up dislocated
(10:21:49 PM) Soup: and Brian, the nurse who doesn't know his fucking place is all like "we should take an X-ray."
(10:22:08 PM) Soup: The doctor shoots down this idea, and he's just like... "but I like taking X-rays..." Real disappointed like
(10:22:17 PM) Soup: So he leaves. I don't know where he's going.
(10:22:35 PM) Soup: the doctor pulls another doctor aside, and they discuss how best to deal with this situation
(10:23:03
PM) Soup: The doctor wraps her thumbs in gauze and just sticks 'em in
my mouth and kinda pushes it back. Real slow. Doesn't hurt a bit
(10:23:08 PM) Soup: and my jaw pops back into place
(10:23:27
PM) Soup: Brian comes back with two syringes. "Yeah. I brought some
vicodin and morphine. I wasn't sure if we'd need 'em or not..."
(10:23:51 PM) Soup: Needless to say, I declined both and let them take my vitals and got out of there.
(10:24:02 PM) Soup: That was my first night of vacation.
http://electricfields.tumblr.com/
I've been writing a lot of new music. All of it is on guitar for now. I haven't written any lyrics in a while. I need to change that.
Alex and I went up and wandered around in the hills for a while today. We watched Barbarella last night, too. Waiting on the next James Bond movie to come in to the library so we can continue those movie nights.
Uh... what else... really, a whole lot of nothing is going on lately. Installed openSUSE 11.1 today. Didn't really dig it that much. It was better than Fedora 11, but not great. Then I switched to Ubuntu 9.04 and it's probably the best Linux distro I've ever used.
Anyway, it's late. Time to sleep!
Death in June has never been any stranger to (mostly unfounded) controversy. Starting life as a post-punk band after Douglas Pearce left the leftist punk group, Crisis, everything about them has fallen under constant scrutiny. Over the years, their aesthetic obsession with Nazi symbolism as well as Third Position philosophy and neopaganism, has led to everything from show cancellations to full-on protests to this album actually being prohibited for sale to minors in Germany. And their actual music has taken them all over the world (including Israel). Rose Clouds of Holocaust is probably their most popular album and a good representation of Death in June's neofolk sound.
The intro, "Lord Winter" features spoken vocals (the lyrics to the track, "Luther's Army") read by Max Wearing, over an almost industrial lead-in to the first real song, "God's Golden Sperm," which, like most of the album, exercises a jarring vocal restraint with a sort of upbeat but dreamlike musical approach. Keyboard and melodic percussion underscore a low-mixed acoustic guitar. "Omen-Filled Season" follows a similar musical path, with the keyboards providing a certain breeziness to the sound. Douglas Pearce's spoken/sung vocals work well within their limitations. The album as a whole shows an almost hallucinatory lyrical style, as evidenced by "Jerusalem the Black" ("Babylon awake and laughing/Jerusalem asleep and smiling/Someone I know, he holds a gun/And shoots with his heart in Jesus"). "Luther's Army" is more of a traditional post-punk styled thing, vocally. More attention is paid to rhythm and in the right hands I could see it remixed into an awesome industrial dance track. In Douglas Pearce's hands, however, it's much more interesting, with horns and keyboards providing ominous drones below the acoustic guitar. "13 Years of Carrion" features more prominent horns, providing their own melodies rather than just droning. "The Accidental Protégé" features some of the most beautiful lyrics on the album ("I thought I found paradise/But, paradise came and wept/Like the wind through the winter's woods/It cowed and took a breath"). The vocal delivery and instrumentation on this song is nearly perfect, with sad, understated vocals and the horns replaced by what sounds like a melodica. Some of the guitar on this song reminds me of (and may well have been performed by) David Tibet's playing. The title track, "Rose Clouds of Holocaust," is probably the second biggest departure here. It's probably the fastest song on the album with the most pronounced and - dare I say? - catchy vocal melodies. The biggest departure, however, is the last track, "Lifebooks." With tremolo-warped chords and muted spoken vocals, it seems to serve as more of an outro than anything. I think I hear David Tibet in there providing a vocal counterpoint to Douglas Pearce's sort of subdued vocal style with his own oddly enthusiastic delivery. The most legible audible words are a repeated hissing assurance that "it's a dream" followed by a demand to "wake up." That's Death in June in a nutshell.
Anyway, this is an incredible album that I would highly recommend.
