New Countdown!: September 2020

 

Alkaline Trio

 Well this episode was just full of questions, wasn't it? Aren't you excited to listen? Could you possibly answer the first question if the second one was applicable? Can you believe we're almost caught up to current??

Countdown #421

***Featuring***

AJR

Alkaline Trio

All Time Low featuring blackbear

Bastille featuring Graham Coxon

Dayglow

The Head and the Heart

The Killers

Machine Gun Kelly 

Matt Maeson

Metallica

The Strokes 

twentyonepilots

Wallows featuring Clairo

Weezer

Special Countdown: 12 Years of Last.Fm (Part 3) (#30-#21)

Rise Against

It's the end of the month, so that must mean that it's time for another installment of 12 Year of Last.fm. It's a great episode with a wide range of music. Enjoy!


12 Years of Last.fm (Part 3)

***Featuring***
Alkaline Trio
Bad Religion
Dar Williams
Elliott Smith
Frightened Rabbit
Pearl Jam
Rise Against
Sublime
Sufjan Stevens
Thrice
Vampire Weekend

One Year, 100 Albums: #77 Alkaline Trio - Goddamnit!

Alkaline Trio Goddamnit!, 1998

This is the album I would hand you if you asked me what kind of music I listened to in college. It skews a little raw and loud and unproduced, but it's nevertheless pretty accurate.

I  love the way that you can almost picture them recording it. I love the fact that, even though it was recorded in 1998, it still has the structure of a vinyl record (5 electric, loud songs and then 1 acoustic song per side (Dan's is on the first side "Enjoy Your Day", Matt's is on the second side "As You Were")) and the lyrics are raw and unbridled. Like the sonic equivalent of tonguing the socket where a tooth used to be, and there's still a little bit of a nerve there.

It should show you how much I like about 75% of this album to tell you that I generally want to skip the first 2 songs and then one song in the middle. The rest of the album is SO fantastic that it makes those weaker songs pale in comparison (though I would like to know the story behind "Cop" because I've never been so angry at a policeman as Matt seems to have been when he wrote it)

The violent imagery IS a little dramatic and maybe if you're coming to this one new, you'll find it to be a little "college open mic night" in terms of the lyrics, but even when they're at their darkest and goriest, I love the way this band turns a phrase on this album.

Here's a video of one of my favorite songs on the album taken from the first DVD I ever bought at a music event (Warped Tour....2002? 2003?) and perhaps the only one since.

Man, I love that song. Here are two more of my favorites from that album

Alkaline Trio - Clavicle
Alkaline Trio - My Little Needle

You can buy Goddamnit! at Amazon MP3 and iTunes

Creepy Love (A Poem and Two Songs)

A reading of this poem came up on my iPod this evening. It goes from "almost uncomfortably intimate" to "maybe I should call a cop..." but the intimacy never leaves. Some of the imagery is pretty horrifying, but also pretty great. I feel good about these three works being in the same post.

Lovesong
by Ted Hughes

He loved her and she loved him.
His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to
He had no other appetite
She bit him she gnawed him she sucked
She wanted him complete inside her
Safe and sure forever and ever
Their little cries fluttered into the curtains

Her eyes wanted nothing to get away
Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows
He gripped her hard so that life
Should not drag her from that moment
He wanted all future to cease
He wanted to topple with his arms round her
Off that moment's brink and into nothing
Or everlasting or whatever there was

Her embrace was an immense press
To print him into her bones
His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace
Where the real world would never come
Her smiles were spider bites
So he would lie still till she felt hungry
His words were occupying armies
Her laughs were an assassin's attempts
His looks were bullets daggers of revenge
His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible secrets
His whispers were whips and jackboots
Her kisses were lawyers steadily writing
His caresses were the last hooks of a castaway
Her love-tricks were the grinding of locks
And their deep cries crawled over the floors
Like an animal dragging a great trap
His promises were the surgeon's gag
Her promises took the top off his skull
She would get a brooch made of it
His vows pulled out all her sinews
He showed her how to make a love-knot
Her vows put his eyes in formalin
At the back of her secret drawer
Their screams stuck in the wall

Their heads fell apart into sleep like the two halves
Of a lopped melon, but love is hard to stop

In their entwined sleep they exchanged arms and legs
In their dreams their brains took each other hostage

In the morning they wore each other's face

This is also called "Lovesong":
The Cure - Lovesong from Disintegration (buy) (or on MP3)

But this poem feels a bit more like:
Alkaline Trio - Nose Over Tail from Goddamnit! (buy) (or on MP3)

Round 1a!!! and something of an actual update, too!

Ok everyone. We're starting. This is the real deal. The first two match-ups of the first round are:

1. Barenaked Ladies vs. Alkaline Trio

Barenaked Ladies - What a Letdown from Are Men
Alkaline Trio - Back to Hell from Crimson

2. Green Day vs. Pearl Jam

Green Day - American Idiot from American Idiot
Pearl Jam - Nothing as It Seems from Binaural


In other news, we are putting the hammer down when it comes to buying a house. It's a big scary process to buy your first house, but we have a kickass support system and things are looking good on that front. I'll post here if anything big happens (after the family knows), so check this page for all my incredibly interesting adventures in real estate.

Also, has anyone heard the new R.E.M. album? I'm hearing really really good things about it and I'm seriously considering picking it up. They can be hit or miss, but when they're hitting, they hit HARD. Automatic For the People is one of my all-time favorite albums and if you haven't heard it, you should check it out. Here's a great song from it to whet your whistle.

R.E.M. - Ignoreland from Automatic For the People