Brief Reviews

Going to try the hand at some brief record reviews.

Neutral Milk Hotel

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

It is slow and commanding poetry and although there is a long list of things that have done so: this album changed my life.

The Microphones

The Glow Pt.2

It is hard to finish but only because it is enormous and personal and intimate and passionate and honest and overwhelming.

The Weakerthans

Left and Leaving

A long time ago I resolved that when I was in love and the feelings were reciprocated that we would lie in the dark, head to head like a game of lovely dominos, and we would hear this record and it would be bigger than words can contain (try as we might).

Thought of His Never Spake

A day long in the tooth at least, he thought to himself. You could think many things about it. You could count the steps you took if that was the kind of attention you paid. Or the flavor of it. Or that it had no flavor. Like an em in your mouth, keeping you from speaking at least speaking anything you wanted to say. But one thing you couldn’t say about the day was that it was damned. This was not a damned day.

Each second before piping up was like the throat of the frog, swelling with expansion. Pregnant with air, with breadth. And just as quickly gone inside to lay with the beautiful machine that even though it was crafted years ago still went without hands tending it. And each thought of his never spake. Like the thankless hero in an unpublished novel that was writ with hardened and scarred hands that knew land better than word. Hands that knew the cruel limit of the living as if it were the cruel selfishness of wood in space, the kind the dead know from inside their caskets.

A some kind of blue he’d rather not so closely identify with but does. And it isn’t until he stops for a moment, lying on his empty belly, that he realizes his sheets are that color and so is the dirty shirt lying next to the sheets and so are his shoes and so is his demeanor. A powdered blue, lacking any luster really, but making the perfect metaphor. Light enough to dismiss any serious darkness, but blue enough yet to if only in illusion suggest that this mans waveform is somewhere close to melancholy in an averaged emotional spectrum. More ukulele than trumpet he might say it like.

But news just arrived on the slipstream behind her as she enters the room. She’s got that metaphor where she wants it. And now she’s gonna eat it. Sunrise reveille. There’s that blue again just outnumbered by orange. It’s sorbet colors and in their books that’s just alright. And in this room it looks like and quacks like what poets and composers in every case fall just so short of really, truly, capturing.

Cheshire Poems

Looking for the arrow,

Wind same pitch as tea kettle,

Organic city.

Organic hearts now,

All above, aboard, C#,

Sailing in place, night.

Night up here with them,

With us all night together,

In silence the sap.

The sap just holding,

Asking us to not leave it,

Asking us with grace.

Anxious as the cricket,

Restless, just as unsure of,

Cheshire poems.

It wouldn't be right to say you saw her...

It wouldn't be right to say you saw her––no no, we're dealing with matters of the heart here, where your feelings go from felt to... inarticulate (the brain won't cooperate with the head). Which is to say, you don't see her. Her presence alone distorts the usual figure-ground relationship––surely there is something you saw. Some flip of the coin, her bright and bold patina.

You'll know it when it happens, there isn't anybody willing to deny that.

You'll be walking, you won't be running. And you won't be in a car because then you're just seeing her on TV and even if you forget you know she's just painted phosphors and glass. You'll be walking for certain. And all that is happening will twitch for a second. You'll take. Double take (if you took the first time, like you were supposed to) and still... what was it you saw? Like skimming a stranger's book case in a hurry... "The Old Man and the Grapes of Wrath"? No such book exists––right, a trick of the mind. What was it you saw? "A Traffic Light with a Silk Scarf"? No!

You'll then cease walking, lips cracking with a thirst.

It will take you roughly a minute. To inventory everything on the scene, careful not to combine any objects (or rather, the titles of any objects––a matter of the heart here). Then you will notice that, in a kind of passive meta-retrospect, whatever it was was absolutely beautiful and that it is now gone––whatever it was.