TwoBusy

In the twilight's last gleaming

Oh, say: can you see? By the dusk's waning light? What so proudly we'd hailed as holiday spent with family - TheInLaws - had devolved over the course of fifteen or twenty hours (estimated) from a low-key Independence Day with family to a marathon trial of endurance... but at last (at long, long last) the event was drawing to a close. We'd come, we'd seen, and we'd been thoroughly conquered by endless hours of idle conversation and chasing the children around the yard and warm sunshine (a rarity, in this wettest of all early New England summers) and half-decent beers (that we'd brought with us) and a half-decent grilled dinner (that we'd cooked, using their ingredients) and then hosing the dirt off the kids and cleaning up the kitchen and grill and beginning the long, slow process of disengaging from grandparental clutches to return to our home, our native land.

In other words: it'd been a long day. And while I'd passed hour after hour after hour either throwing half-deflated playground balls at my offspring or debating the relative merits of the Sox/Pats/Celts with my father-in-law with relative ease... as the longest day drew to a close, I found my ease being joined by an unwelcome "un." Maybe it was the direct exposure to so much sunshine. Maybe it was the two beers I drank over the course of the long afternoon (that's right: two. I debated going for more, but decided to pace myself instead.). Maybe it was the half glass of cheap pinot I sipped with dinner. Maybe it was the cheap "steak" (it should have come with an -umm) that my FIL had picked up and I'd attempted to massage, marinate and magic back to some form of flavorful life. Maybe it was the fact that I'd had a light salad for lunch before leaving our house that day, and my body was reacting the unnatural presence of vegetable matter.

The point being: as we packed up and began strapping the kids into their car seats and preparing for the long odyssey back to Castle TwoBusy, I found my low-level, generalized and not at all unusual feeling of malaise suddenly begin to evolve into something more. Excusing myself from the driveway, where all parties had gathered to bid farewell and a happy birthday to America, I ducked inside to avail myself of my in-laws' facilities... and found that I was rapidly descending into a period of actual, legitimate unease.

When I emerged a few minutes later, shaken but not stirred, I felt a light sheen of sweat on my forehead. Something... wasn't right. I didn't know what, but something was awry. And all. I. Wanted. Was. To. Be. Home.

Quickly, I stepped into the driver's seat, shut the door, waved goodbye... and we were off. Homeward bound. Where my thought's escapin'. Where my music's playin'. Where my bathroom and new bed lay waitin' silently for meeeeeee.

A few minutes into the drive, TheWife asked if I was okay. Apparently, I was being even quieter than usual. "I'm not feeling great," I said. "Okay," she replied. "Let me know if you need me to drive."

I shook my head. No need. This was an easy drive - three sections of fifteen minutes on three different highways, and we'd be home. Quick. Easy. Painless. No worries. I trusted that she'd take my silence and stoicism as testimony to my immense verility and strength of character, and pressed the gas a bit harder to accentuate my point.

Fifteen minutes in, as we rode the offramp from highway number one to highway number two, I found that I had begun sighing. Not in the sense of "I am filled with ennui" sighing, or "I am so disappointed that we didn't spend more time at TheInLaws' house" sighing, or "Gosh, hard to believe that yet another Independence Day is drawing to a close" sighing, but in the sense of "there's some kind of enormous pressure building inside of me, and this sigh is an attempt to somehow release that pressure before things devolved into a Mount Saint Helens scenario."

TheWife eyed me warily. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine," I responded. "Just want to get home." I said it in tight-lipped style, like a young Clint Eastwood. A much less tall, handsome and rich Clint Eastwood, but a young Clint Eastwood nonetheless. Okay, maybe not quite Clint Eastwood. Not Clint Howard, either. I was a new breed of Clint. A heavily sighing, July 4th-celebrating Clint of uncertain heritage and moral composition hurtling down highway number two at terrifying speed. Squinting, in true Clint style. Blocking out the sun as it dropped low on the horizon behind me. Focusing on what lay ahead. Homehomehome.

So many times, we'd taken this road, and always been surprised by how quickly the ride had taken us from TheInLaws to our own home. My children, having grown out of their propensity toward falling asleep as soon as the vehicle set in motion, were boisterous in the back, following the already-visible moon across the horizon, reciting the names and numbers of the highways as this quick road grew suddenly slower and infinitely longer before me.

The moments stretched, and I felt myself doing the same. I imagined the Hindenberg, in the last moments as it approached Lakewood, pregnant with history and ready to burst into new immortality. My sighing grew steadier and more constant, but no longer offered relief. My expectations were evolving mile by mile, from "This is not a problem" to "I think it'll be fine" to "As soon as I get home" to "I don't know if we're gonna make it."

Offramp became onramp, and we merged onto highway number three. Fifteen minutes until home. So very close.

The debate raged in my mind for two exits, then at the third I turned off. Close to where TheWife had once worked. "There's a McDonald's up ahead," she said. I took her at her word, not thinking too clearly, focused with all the will I had in this world on the dual tasks of moving the car foward safely... and keeping myself in check. Focus. Focus. Focus. The road slowed. The miles stretched.

And then, suddenly, there it was: the promised McDonald's. We'd made it. And as I pulled into the parking lot, I realized: This wasn't going to end well. As I pulled into a spot in the mostly-empty lot, I felt something terrible rise inside of me, and I struggled to put the car into park.

I was reaching for the door handle when I felt it begin to surge.

I clamped my jaws shut.

Stepped out of the car.

Didn't even look at the restaurant, only two dozen feet away.

Stepped six feet in front of me, to the immaculately manicured grass along the parking lot's edge. So carefully tended. So lush and green, in the fading daylight.

And Mount Saint Helens erupted.

(cue stock footage: seismographs going ballistic, mountainsides exploding out and up and away with untold force, Pierce Brosnan fleeing for his life, my children rapt and incredulous inside the car as they watched me lose control as never before...)

Across Boston, families gathered together to see the rocket's red glare. Bombs bursting in the air. Explosions in the sky giving way to wonder and amazement and memories being made, then and there and forever. A holiday to remember. And in the parking lot of a suburban McDonald's, less than fifteen minutes from our home, my wife and children sat in wonder and amazement, memories being made then and there and forever, and together watched me get violently sick across the grass.

Glory, glory. Hallelujah.

Sleep of the Just

1. Okay, so first off... we got a new bed. Our first new mattress since we moved to San Francisco. In 1995.

(a brief pause, as I nostalgically remember my life without kids)

In any case, it was time. The mattress was sagging on the edges, riddled with crevasses within, and no matter how many times we flipped it our feet ended up being 6" higher than our head when we slept. So last weekend, as a kind of mutually-beneficial Father's Day thing, we went bed shopping... and on Tuesday, a brand spankin' new Simmons Beautyrest was delivered to our home. And honestly? It's fucking marvelous. I didn't realize that it was possible for humans to sleep this comfortably.

2. Speaking of Father's Day, this week the guys at DadCentric gave themselves a gift by talking our wives into writing our posts for us. If you'd like to see TheWife's handiwork, clickez-vous. Read 'em all, while you're at it.

3. In other bed-and-family related news, allow me to paraphrase the Thompson Twins: Lice, Lice, Lice... yeah! The scourge of lice has apparently been making its way through my daughters' daycare for several weeks, and yesterday it was our day in the barrel: I got the dreaded "Come get Rabbit; she has lice" phone call. Said phone call was then followed by a joy-filled pickup of one of those drugstore lice death kit packages - replete with the old checkout lady giving Rabbit a dirty look as she rang it through - and then several hours of covering the wee sweet creature's head with multiple coats of medicated shampoo, medicated goo, carefully administered showers, intricate and time-consuming fine-toothed combing adventures, nitpicking (literally! not figuratively!), and subsequent washing of everything in my fucking house that might have conceivably touched her head at any point in the past week or so.

Good times, and yes: TheWife and I are now consumed by constant, compulsive psychosomatic all-over-body-scratching. Urk.

4. One not-entirely unfortunate byproduct of said infestation is the fact that we now have an excuse not to go to New York this weekend for a wedding that - to be honest - we weren't entirely psyched to attend in the first place. Not that we didn't want to see our friends who'll be there, but more because our ability to attend was predicated on another stay with our in-laws... and their giant dog. Probably just as well that we're staying home.

5. Coincidentally, yesterday was also the date of the girls' 4yo pediatrician checkup. Which comes complete with 4 shots at the end. For those of you doing the math: 2 girls x 4 shots = yikes. Rabbit (newly-cleansed of lice) was pretty brave, and cried only a bit at the end. Butterfly? Sweet, sensitive, brilliant Butterfly? With God as my witness: she started LAUGHING when the fourth needle was stuck in her arm.

The girl's a f$#%ing supervillain-in-training.

6. A coupla things worth checking out, should you find yourself with a bit'o'time and curiosity:

• Woman in a Window brings the thinky
• Jessica has the kind of nudity/funeral party experience you thought only happened in movies
• cIII waxes lovely about summertime
• Suzanne Finnamore adds some insight to her fantastic novel Split (which you should read) (after you finish her two earlier books) (seriously)

7. Finally, I leave you with a little music from the late and much-lamented Aerogramme. It kills me that I didn't discover these guys until 2 1/2 years after they broke up... why didn't you tell me about them? That's right: I know you knew. I know you were holding out. And I will have my vengeance... in this life, or the next.

Fours

Happy birthday, monsters.

  

Floaters

They moved silently, at almost imperceptible speed. Slowly, achingly slowly, infinitely patient, they drew closer to the ground as night grew deeper and the darkness grew thicker within the house. Hours passed, and as the air grew chilled and noble gases escaped the weak prison of permeable membrane, they rejected the inexorable pull of heaven and together began their downward spiral, intertwining and colliding, weaving a tangled web of bright color unseen and unseeable in the gathering dark.

Somewhere, far above, great waves of air and torrents of wind cycled and recycled into funnels of kinetic motion, spreading outward and away like ripples fleeing the watery splash of stone.

The house was silent, sleeping, lost to thought and dream but for the endless slice of blade through air. Behind closed doors, children twisted into sibilant curls around plush tokens and invisible animal spirits. Our door, as always, remained open — to greet the cooler airs of night, to welcome weary dreamers, to avail us to those who would drift into our fleeting world of heavy slumber.

They came to the stairs. Eleven of twelve, crawling above and across each other in soundless, infinitesimal stampede, brushing against the wooden steps with a touch lighter than feather, gentler than love. And they began to climb, as if drawn up and into the stairwell by some new form of gravity that lifted them from the warm embrace of wood and into a new world of moving airs and Morphean figures.

(I imagine them: moving at a speed only possible in dreams. A stop-motion flurry of wet earth giving rise to sprout, flower and bloom in the blink of two eyes, as they move from place to place without ever seeming to be in between. They move in a way that does not seem right for this world.)

They rose as if they were tide drawn to shore, up the stairs, around the bannisters, drawn higher, ever higher, until they gathered by the frame of our door. Four feet and a million miles from where my wife lay, sleeping, dreaming, unaware, they gathered. Sliding against one another. Jousting for position.

And then one of them pulled free — slipped from the surly bonds of earth and soared into the heart of the maelstrom.

In an instant, the house was alive with a fury of motion and sound, a terrible pounding of yielding body against unyielding solid, a terrible and vivid drumbeat that echoed through the hallways and stairwell and foyer and filled my sleeping ears like water flooding into chasm and LIKETHAT I shot awake and aware of that sound that pounding that terrible, relentless crash and I knew IknewIknewIknew that it was one of my children, one of my girls, up and confused in the middle of the night, suddenly falling into the darkness and down the stairs and breaking apart in a hundred final and awful and unfixable ways and without even knowing it I began screaming "NO! NO! NO! NO!" as I leapt from the bed and launched myself into the hallway desperate and terrified and my heart exploding from my chest and not even fully cognizant of facing the unfaceable reality of what I was hearing, what it meant, what it...

And found myself standing in my hallway, four-thirty in the morning, ten semi-deflated mylar balloons circling my ankles and calves like sharks circling prey. Their long, colorful ribbons trailing across my feet like tentacles. The eleventh, ensnared in the ceiling fan, pounding a syncopated beat against the plaster.

"Jesus fucking Christ," I said, as my wife stepped from the bed to look at me and what she had presumed was something, someone, coming loudly up the stairs.

I reached over, and turned the fan switch off. Unraveled the tangled ribbon from the fan, then gathered the eleven intruders together. Walked downstairs, where I discovered their missing brother - purple, sheepish - floating alone near our front door. Pulled them all into our dining room, next to the pile of new gifts and bags of crumpled wrapping paper from our daughters' birthday party the previous afternoon. Tied them securely to a chair. And then stood there, for a moment, trying to will my heart back into my chest.

There would be no more sleep, that night.

(The next morning, I brought them into my kitchen. I set the purple one aside, and then took a knife to the rest. I watched impassively as the helium fled their broken skins, and they collapsed into wrinkled husks. Eleven of twelve, one by one.)

Twenty Five: Part 5

5. The Brother Kite: Lay Down Your Burden
I'm running out of ways to describe these songs. What can you say about a band like The Brother Kite, or this song in particular? If Brian Wilson created teenage symphonies to God back in the '60s, then maybe Lay Down Your Burden is a modern-day adult's symphony to the heavens: luminous harmonies, soaring melodies, rising/crashing/beatific walls of gorgeous sound that pour over you like some swirling force of nature, elliptical lyrics about loss and acceptance delivered in Patrick Boutwell's impassioned, choirboy voice, the whole thing cycling upward and upward and upward in ever-more dizzyingly ecstatic spirals...

It leaves me breathless with wonder every time.

4. Catherine Wheel: Salt
I've written about this before, and I don't know that there's much I can add to it:

"...every time I hear Salt, I flash back to a time when - for about 2 months - I listened to virtually nothing but this song, over and over and over again. Not to get into details (because, primarily, it's not my story to tell), but someone I know died, and the way I dealt with it was to get lost in the great soaring waves of yearning and pain and anger and regret that, to my ears at least, weave their way throughout the fabric of this song."

Yeah. I think I'll stick with that.

3. Sea Stories: All You Said
A heartbreaking piano and cello lullaby from a wonderful, forgotten Australian band of the early 90s. I don't know what more to say about this song without sounding trite and prosaic: it is lovely, and it is sad, and I could not possibly treasure it more.

2. Kitchens of Distinction: Prince Of Mars
I loved this song fiercely the first time I heard it, but now I cannot remember why, because now I cannot hear it without thinking of my son. I understand that the song suggests very different circumstances - a loved one, wasting away, losing sense and memory, the growing confusion as the time grows close, the mounting desperation in Patrick Fitzgerald's voice - but I cannot help but think of my own son as he tries to find his place in a world where he is, in some sense, now and forevermore, a beautiful alien.

"What happens when you know the answer/but they're so used to you being wrong," Fitzgerald sings. "Oh, my prince... answer please. I'll get the pencils: we'll draw ourselves a new world." And then Julian Swales plays the most lyrical, emotive two minutes of guitar music ever recorded - this is what it sounds like; raging against the dying of the light - and in those two minutes I find a catharsis that I wish would go on and on forever.

1. American Music Club: Blue And Grey Shirt
My wife says this song makes her think of me. And that is why I love her: because she knows me.

"Where's the compassion
to make your tired heart sing?"

If man is five then the devil is six

1. Please click posthaste and enjoyify last Thursday's DadCentric post, in which I reminisced about my first Father's Day. For which, you know, I qualified.

2. I went to see Up yesterday! In a theater! Like real people do! Brought the whole family, in fact! And then, two minutes into the previews, Rabbit jumped on top of me, curled up into a ball, and started screaming in terror! "I want to go I want to go I want to go!!!" So I walked her out into the lobby to calm her down! And 10 minutes later we went back into the theater, but before we could get halfway to our seat she started crying again! Four subsequent attempts were no more successful! So I ended up spending almost two hours sitting in the lobby while my wife, son and other daughter watched the movie! And paying $50 for the privilege! It was fun! In the sense of "the exact opposite of fun!"

3. This was even more superduperfun in light of the fact that I'd been up since 4:30am, for reasons that will be explained in a subsequent post but which are tangentially related to the fact that my daughters' BIG FANTASTIC SUPERDUPERFUN FOURTH BIRTHDAY PARTY SPECTACULAR was on Saturday. It actually went much less nightmarishly than I'd feared, despite the presence of +/- 20 4yo kids, plus a number of unexpected extras ("Do you mind if my 7-year old participates in the party?" "Uh... sure.") and a goddamned Disney Princess sheet cake.

That being said, their actual birthday isn't until next week. Which I think we'll celebrate with a pizza and some popsicles.

4. So... d'you remember that job that I interviewed for a couple of weeks ago? Then interviewed for again more recently? Totalling about 7hrs of interview/grilling? Yeah, well... I didn't exactly get the job. For the fourth time this year, I was told "Everyone was really impressed... your qualifications were... we think you could make a tremendous... blahblahblahBUT we're now rethinking what it is, exactly, we need right now, and so we're going to go in a different direction."

(head exploding)

That being said, they liked me well enough to engage me as a contractor — which may or may not be a test drive to determine whether/not they actually want me for the job I actually interviewed for. In any case, I've worked it out so that I'll finish my current contract gig in mid-July... and start my new (and higher-paying) contract gig the following Monday. I guess this means I'm not (technically) unemployed anymore, although to be honest I still feel a little ambivalent about the whole thing.

(wanders off, muttering and swearing about the new economy...)

5. In case you haven't seen this yet: y'all are familiar with the Real Housewives of New Jersey, right? Horrifying-but-you-can't-tear-your-eyes-away TV at its best, right? Well, our pal Jonniker sent along the following, in which one of the NJ Housewives preps for her wedding... and it's fucking apocalyptic.

6. I'll be finishing my Top 25 of the Last 25 Years later this week. Watch carefully for the surprise appearance of Boyz II Men.

Twenty Five: Part 4

10. The Blue Nile: Downtown Lights
If you've never heard this song before, chances are you're going to watch/listen to the first 30 seconds and say, "Dude, WTF? Synth washes and three sad-looking Glaswegians? This makes your Top 10?" To which I answer: yes, and yes, and yes. Because nobody - repeat: nobody - ever did 3am, staring at the reflection of stars in street puddles, lost in melancholy and regret with more sublime beauty than the Blue Nile. Hearing this song for the first time back in 1990 was a legitimately life-changing moment for me, because before that moment I'd never heard music that captured that specific mood with such crystalline precision. From the vocals of Paul Buchanan - a thing of haunted wonder, then and now -  to the way the song builds over the course of 6 1/2 minutes (less on the video edit) to such a sustained swell of shimmering, lovely ache and yearn... all these years later, it still makes my chest feel tight with emotion and memory and wonder at the beauty of it all.

9. Ghost of an American Airman: 1955'er
In which a young band from Belfast somehow weaves together a love story, the death of James Dean and Dodge McKay's powerhouse voice into a song for the ages. Turn this one up to 11, because when it all kicks into full gear at about the 2:20 mark... damn. That's just two dozens kinds of wonderful right there.

8. Sigur Ros: Glosoli
I have nothing to say about this song other than that the release of Takk in September, 2005 coincided with some other events in my life, and I will never be able to hear this song without flashing back to that time and thinking of how I listened to this song then, over and over and over again, and how it reduced me to rubble and inspired me to keep going, all at the same time, and how when I finally saw the video it seemed even more pertinent and appropriate and - for several years - left me weeping almost uncontrollably by the time I reached the end.

Sigur Rós - Glósóli from sigur-ros.co.uk on Vimeo.

7. Hüsker Dü: Celebrated Summer
Despite - or really, perhaps because of - its bittersweet undercurrent, this is one of the most joyous songs I know. And when Bob screams, "Is this your celebrated summer?" and then his guitar and Grant Hart's drumming click together into a groove that gets faster and sweeter and move lovely with each passing second and you imagine yourself accelerating right along with it, giddy with new freedom and ready to take flight...

I'm going to be listening to this song for the rest of my life, and feeling this way every time it plays.

6. Snow Patrol: An Olive Grove Facing The Sea
Regardless of how you feel about Snow Patrol and their tremendous success, it's hard to deny that they have produced some lovely songs over the years. This song - off one of their earlier albums, long before anyone knew or cared who they were - is several steps beyond lovely. It's beautiful in a transcendent fashion, aching to soar but infinitely heavy with the weight of emotion. "I would do anything... don't want to wake up... don't want to wake up" Gary Lightbody sings, clinging with palpable desperation to a love he feels slipping away with each passing moment. And then the dawn arrives, and it all begins to fade, and somehow even the inevitability of that loss becomes kind of beautiful, too.

Twenty Five: Part 3

15. Ride: Dreams Burn Down
There is a common misconception about shoegaze - common, in the very limited sense in which shoegaze is ever actually thought of or discussed - that as a musical genre, it's all about gossamer threads of ethereal something or other drenched in moody echo and blah blah blah. To which I say: meet Ride. One of the original holy trinity of British shoegaze back in the early 90s (alongside My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive), Ride were always a much more noisy and aggressive beast. Dreams Burn Down, from their watershed album Nowhere, illustrates this as well as anything they ever did, from the Moby Dick-style drums that begin the song to the insanely dense wall of guitar, feedback, echo and fury that kicks in just past the two-minute mark.

One thing I feel necessary to make clear: if you listen to this song at anything less than what can legitimately be called "loud," you're going to miss the crux of the experience. The power of this song isn't a matter of nuance; it's a function of sheer sonic impact that demands volume in order to really work. So... turn it up, dudes. Turn it up, and get swept away.

14. Richard Thompson: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Some of you are probably going to find this obvious, because if you love Richard Thompson and have to choose a single song of his to play for other people... it's gonna be 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. And there's not a thing in the world wrong with that: it's an instantly enchanting fusion of Thompson's incomparable guitar expertise (check the video of this live performance to get a feel for what a feat playing this song must be) with his characteristic melancholy/deadpan vocals and a peerless song-story about a bad boy, the redhead who loves him... and the motorcycle that brings them together. If you can't find room in your life for this song, we have nothing further to talk about.

13. The Magnetic Fields: Born on a Train
I first heard this song in 1994, and it's been in my head ever since. The truth is, I could have picked any of a half-dozen equally wonderful songs off of The Charm of the Highway Strip for this list - in fact, up until about five minutes ago I was still flip-flopping between this and Long Vermont Roads - but the point is: there was a time when The Magnetic Fields were weird and fun and absolutely unlike anything else in the world. When listening to them was like being in on a strange and fascinating secret that nobody else knew. When someone like me could lie on a thin futon mattress in a tiny little room in a long-ago first apartment on a summer night, blinking away the sweat, waiting for sleep to come, soaking in the lyrics and lovely melodies buried amidst the tinny synths and faux percussion, wondering if a girl who might someday become something more than just a girl might like listening to it, too.

The Magnetic Fields-Born On A Train

12. The Sheila Divine: Opportune Moment
A lot of people - in particular, indie music snobs who decry any hint of commercialization - are quick to condemn the use of songs they like in advertising or marketing. Personally, I think that's absolute bullshit: it's damned near impossible to make a decent living as a musician, and if someone like The Shins or Tugboat Annie or Mogwai can make a few bucks by licensing their music to McDonald's or Monster.com or Levi's or whatever... more power to 'em. Obviously, there are times when the disconnect between the song in question and the subject matter being advertised reaches absurd levels (see Lust for Life as cruise line theme, minus the lines about liquor, drugs and "I'm just a modern guy/of course I've had it in the ear before;" also, the bland cover of Morrissey's Every Day is Like Sunday to promote the NFL, minus the repeated request to "Come, Armageddon, come..."). But when it's done correctly and appropriately, it can be just as interesting (and even moving) as an actual, full-length video.

About a millions years ago, Opportune Moment was used in an ad for Cambridge Soundworks (a Boston-based speaker/stereo equipment company). The commercial opened with a split screen: two apartments side-by-side, with a wall in the middle. On the one side was a normal guy, just sitting on a couch or something. On the other, a beautiful woman walked into the frame, pushed a button on a stereo, and - as this song started - began to take off her clothes. 

The guy hears the music, stands up and walks over to the wall. (Meanwhile, she's taking off more clothes.) Then the shot changes so it focuses exlusively on him, where we see him pull a picture off the wall to reveal a hidden hole beneath. The look of excitement on his face is strong and palpable, and you can't help but think of Porky's as he leans in closer to the wall, bringing his face nearer and nearer to the hole. And then, at the very last second - just as the song explodes into the chorus, with Aaron Perrino howling "It's my liiiiife" - he turns his face so that his ear is pressed against the hole, and a look of absolute wonder and fulfillment spreads over his face as the scene fades away...

11.Talk Talk: I Believe in You
You know what? I had trouble - real, honest-to-god trouble - deciding which Talk Talk song I wanted to include here. There was never a question that they were going to make my Top 25... the question was: which version of Talk Talk to include? Everyone knows It's My Life, the Roxy Music-inspired breakthrough that first garnered them international airplay (although, clearly, far more people know it because of/in spite of Gwen Stefani's more recent cover version). Many people still remember fondly the follow-up Life's What You Make It, as lovely and haunting and life-affirming a song as I know. But after that... Talk Talk changed. A lot. They evolved into a vastly different creature, integrating near symphonies-worth of instruments and a wide-open approach to composition in which mistakes were treasured as much as carefully constructed results, alongside Mark Hollis' ever-fragile vocals and fragmented, lovely lyrics, creating music that still - more than 20 years later - defies easy description.

In the end, I chose I Believe In You. Because it is pure and pained and beautiful a piece of music as I've ever heard. And because I wanted to share it with you.

In unrelated news

a) Check out this week's post at DadCentric. That's all I have to say about that.

b) When you finish checking out my stuff, check out some of the other posts. The quality of writing at that site is getting ridiculous — see Whit's gorgeously still evocation of midnight and Jason's bittersweet birthday observation for examples. Given which, it's clear that it's only a matter of time before they boot my ass out... so I'd better start using my DadCentric discount card before my account is frozen. That 15% off at Denny's isn't gonna last forever.

c) In spite of all of this DadCentricity, I have to admit that the single most badass thing I saw on the interwebs this week came courtesy of The Velvet Blog, who blew what's left of my mind with this... well, the word "travesty" comes to mind, but I'll let you reach your own conclusions.

d) In case I haven't been clear, YOU'RE ALL TAGGED FOR THE MUSIC MEME. ALL OF YOU. Yes, even you. Especially you.

e) I finally saw Waitress this week, which is every bit as charming and enjoyable as I'd read it was, and which is subsequently every bit as heartbreaking a story as I feared it would be.

f) Tuesday's 4ish hours of interviews seemed to go reasonably well, and I'm supposed to hear back from them early next week. At this point, I've learned to take nothing for granted... but to be honest, I'll be disappointed and a little bit surprised if this doesn't work out. (And yes, I realize that I've just jinxed myself. I suck.)

g) Yes, I finally had my conversation with my Ex-Prez earlier this week... and yes, the conversation sucked donkey ass. Was there any apology for - or even acknowledgement of - the fact that he completely fucked me over last October? No, of course not. It was, instead, basically a 20-minute attempt to 1. paint himself as the victim in my ex-company's collapse and eventual crash/burn; and 2. network in order to build his new business.

For the record, I kept my cool throughout the conversation, and while my abject indifference to his attempts at sympathy and networking would probably be taken at face value by most people... I'm not sure he's perceptive enough to recognize any of it. Honestly: I'd just as soon kick him in the fucking skull as ever speak to him again.

h) Alright... you know what? There was some other cool-ass web stuff I read this week that needs to be shared:
    • Mamatulip samples hot sauce. Funny. As. Hell.
    • Xiobhan shares a special moment with the US Secretary of Education. And Heather Locklear.
    • The Weirdgirl gets all meta and thinky about social media and marketing. She's wikkid smaht.
    • Actually, this FADKOG post is from about a month ago... but I still find myself visiting it every couple of days because it's one of the funniest damned things I've ever read. Hell, even the title tags for the photos make me cackle. "Beefy." (cackling)

i) New Caspian coming soon! I'm so excited. And I just can't hide it.

(tell me that doesn't set your skin tinglin'...)

Twenty Five: Part 2

(If you haven't already done so - and really, if that's the case? Shame on you. Shame shame shame. - read and listen to this first.)

20. The Wonder Stuff: Here Comes Everyone
For those of you who think that the only music I listen to is the kind that makes you want to wrap your lips around the tailpipe of a bus - and you know who you are - I offer this as counterpoint: a deliriously joyful exercise in fiddle, drum and exuberance, where a bittersweet lyrical undercurrent disappears beneath the frenetic rush of Miles Hunt's guitar strum and passionate, energized chorus. If this doesn't give you the joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart... I don't know what to tell you.

19. Dambuilders: Shrine
For a lot of people, the definition of a great song is something you can imagine coming on the radio when you're out driving and its summertime and the windows are open or the top is down and the sun is blazing and the wind is blowing your hair around and the veryinstant you hear the first notes you reach down and crank up the volume and for the next three minutes you're singing along as loud and proud as you can and its summertime and its magic. Shrine fits that description perfectly for me — 2:57 of pure musical adrenaline in a song about love and the love of rock and roll. (FYI: YouTube doesn't have the video, but if you'd care to watch the Dambuilders acting goofy on a beach, feel free to click here.)

18. A Northern Chorus: Skeleton Keys
For years, the alt rock cognoscenti have been wetting themselves over the brilliance of The Arcade Fire... and frankly, I've never gotten it. I mean, they're fine, but there's nothing I've ever heard by them that wasn't reminiscent of something done far better by another Canadian post-rock collective: Hamilton, Ontario's late, lamented A Northern Chorus. Skeleton Keys - taken from their final, brilliant album The Millions Too Many - brings it all together in 3:48 that somehow feels at least twice that long: fascinating if somewhat cryptic lyrics ("Your will is proof that we are not just servants to some unseen god"), eclectic instrumentation, and a slow build towards the kind of sustained, ecstatic crescendo that first bounces your knees, then closes your eyes and then bursts you out into a wide, unrestrained grin as the crashing, soaring music and close harmonies lift you up and away to somewhere else...

Man. I don't know about you, but I could have used another 20 years of music like this.

17. Lullaby for the Working Class: Inherent Song
If you know Lullaby for the Working Class, chances are you know it as the precursor to the less obscure/more renowned Cursive... but LftWC were an infinitely more subtle and thoughtful animal, one that blended alt country and sadcore into something obtuse and often fascinating. Inherent Song is, for my money, the best thing they ever did: a prairie symphony with jaw-droppingly imagistic lyrics - "As an old man bangs upon a newspaper dispenser, mimicing a drunken heartbeat..." - which fuse together with intricate, gorgeous instrumentation to produce an experience for which beautiful seems an inadequate description. 

16. Afghan Whigs: Debonair
Hope this rings a bell for you, because this is about as mainstream as my list is gonna get. I love me some Whigs, oh yes I do. Greg Dulli's song characters were much more than unrepentant assholes: they were toxic and vicious — and sexy as hell, all at the same time. (Seriously, other than Whipping Boy's Fearghal McGee, who at his best was every bit as supremely unnerving and who very nearly made this list with this song, does anyone else even come close?) Debonair is the Whigs at their terrifying best: rhythmically complex, lyrically dark, fiercely catchy, and all of it centered around a ferocious chorus groove where Dulli's promise of "Tonight I'll go to hell/for what I've done to you" lodges itself in your head and refuses. To. Let. Go.