fuck the pain away.

this is not a music blog. it will never be a music blog and i hate music blogs. however, i have some things to say re: music i've been listening to as of late.

first of all, i'm usually the last person jump aboard any new hip music thing. i get overwhelmed by so much pretention and buzzwords and internets, so i generally just wait for my friends to bring it to me. then i listen to it on repeat, usually in the car on the way to richmond (a perfect drive for getting a real feel for an album) and decide whether or not i'm gonna buy in.

this begins a multipart series on sounds that are pleasant.

1) jeremy enigk
here's a perfect example of me being the last person to know about anything. apparently this is the guy from sunny day real estate. i listened to diary a good bit back in my weepy emokid days, but i was too busy fronting like i really listened to blood for blood and punched things to pay attention to the names of people who sing in pussy bands. anyway, so after hearing this name dropped peripherally around me for a while and hearing him spring out of my speakers from a friend's myspace page, i decided to rip him out of the blogspaceweb and put him in my car. i bought the album "world waits" and took off southways.
this album makes me think of 2 things. no. 1: it's a makeout album. something about the tempo and his ethereal voice and the gently noodling guitars and a smattering of pretty piano music makes me want to go to second base, especially in "cannons". i feel like this is the music i'm supposed to kiss other twentysomethings to, after prince has become hilariously predictable and long after the heyday of the getup kids in the backseat of yr mom's car ("don't worry... i'll catch you"), but long before i go on dates with guys who put on marvin gaye and are serious. there's something very comfortable and sweet about the noise this guy makes. bringing me to no. 2: it borders on the "adult contemporary" genre. i know that sounds like an incredibly disparaging remark, but it isn't meant to be. it's like jeremy was with me in the car with my mom; it's 1994 and i'm 10 years old on the way to school and listening to the inoffensive pop station in the minivan. he took all my favorite little guilty pleasures from all those songs, mixed them together, added some actual talent, and then said "by the way, lest we forget, i was in a legit indie band in the mid 90s." the result is something that, eversoslightly, harkens back to the brilliant balladry of bryan adams and his contemporaries (check out that organ solo in "been here before," or the falsetto at the beginning of "burn" and tell me otherwise). that said, i loved bryan adams when i was 10. remember that song he did for robin hood? the duet with rod stewart? epic. jeremy enigk just made it okay for me to be 22 and sorta hip and like it openly.

coming up:
the spectrum of femininity: joanna newsom, peaches, and why i want to be them.

also coming:
why drinking a bottle of red wine alone at midnight is rarely a good idea.

maybe i should learn the harp.

i think growing up is hardest when you realize you've done it and you weren't paying attention. like, when you look yr old self in the face in a sweaty room full of drunk kids wriggling around to ironic 80s music desperately trying to impress someone and you hate hate hate it. you know yr not better than it; you just don't get it any more. i don't know when that happened, but i feel like a pompous shithead in most social gatherings these days.

also, i feel a little like a teenager these days. i can't remember having such an identity crisis since i was 14, shedding my black eyeliner and marilyn manson t-shirts and asking my mom to take me to the mall so i could get $80 khakipants at abercrombie and fitch. man, i sure didn't belong on either side of that spectrum. thank god for the the indierock kids. but i mean, c'mon, i'm 22; i've psychoanalyzed every aspect of my dumb ass every day since i was 12. i've been to 3 seperate rounds of counseling. how much more can there possibly be to figure out? why can't i sit myself down and say, "here, do this thing because it'll make you happy"? i feel like it should be a lot easier than this. too bad i can't just drain my brain of all the catastrophic thinkjuices in there and just do something. i need to logically explain to myself that not everything needs a logical explanation.