The Dismemberment Plan - Change (2001)

The Dismemberment Plan - Change

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there are times when you will not like the sound of my voice
there are days when a warm look from a strange face will make me forget my name
there'll be nights when you wonder where the party's at now
and you wonder why you never split this beat scene when a higher life awaits
there'll be days when you don't know how you picked the wrong life
in a second when it's over in our own minds -- and it's gone without a sound
there are fights that'll hear things that we know we don't mean
and we say 'em 'cos we don't know what we both want and we can't get to the other side

there are years that'll fly like wind across a flood plain

unaware of its own weight, free of friction, and immune to its own speed

there are weeks that'll crawl like slugs across a hot road

only moving 'cos it just don't know how to stop on a search for god knows what

and there are songs that'll make your skull ring like a dropped cup

resonating with the reasons why you worked through -- and the reasons why you stayed

for the long nights when you found a new resolve that i never knew was there

for the cold eye and the warm embrace now

for the righteous vibe that i need like the air i breathe

there are times when you'll think you've got my funny number figured out

there'll be days when I don't feel like i ever knew you all that well

and there are lines, drawn around, behind, above and over everyone

in an effort to figure out the place and time, the right, the wrong, the yours,

the mine, and i'll be damned if I feel like I will ever know anything

but if don't keep moving on that last hill,
we'll never know what's on the other side

-The Dismemberment Plan; The Other Side

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Not a lot that I need to say about this because it speaks for itself. Some of the most poignant lyrics from one of the best albums by one of the most inventive, interesting and downright awesome indie bands ever. Travis Morrison has a fantastic, very funny and heartfelt storyteller-esque lyrical style and delivers some absolute gems here. Get.

The Dismemberment Plan - Change

"This Is Bob Dylan To Me"

Just a quick one here - I've been digging Minutemen's landmark record Double Nickels on the Dime lately, and the song below, 'History Lesson - Part II', is not only one of the album's very best tracks (out of 43 contenders) but also one of the most awesome two-minute songs ever written.

our band could be your life
real names'd be proof
me and mike watt played for years
punk rock changed our lives

we learned punk rock in hollywood
drove up from pedro
we were fucking corndogs
we'd go drink and pogo

mr. narrator
this is bob dylan to me
my story could be his songs
i'm his soldier child

our band is scientist rock
but i was e. bloom and richard hell,
joe strummer, and john doe
me and mike watt, playing guitar.

The One Up Downstairs - S/T (2006)

Will I be seeing you next spring?
Well I hope so
If not, would you skip a stone in your lake for me?

This is probably the wrong season to be posting this, but whatever. The One Up Downstairs were a short-lived project by Mike Kinsella and Steve Lamos of American Football and two members of Very Secretary that recorded one 7" before American Football came into being that never really got released until 2006. The American Football LP is a really beautiful indie-rock album and one of my favourite records ever, so it's always annoyed me that I can't really find anything else by the Kinsellas that has a similarly nostalgic and reflective feel to it, besides Mike's solo project Owen which never really did much for me. The discovery of this EP, then, was a nice surprise for me, having played both American Football records to death. The opener 'Champaign' sounds like classic American Football, slowly unfolding and meandering in a kind of ponderous way. Lyrical and musical ideas come and go gently much in the way that your mind works in those beautiful moments of calm, contented reflection that come once in a while. It paints a lovely picture in my mind, like the speaker's a little tipsy after a couple of glasses of wine and is taking a walk outside in the snow at nighttime, and what we're presented with are just the thoughts in his head as they come and go.

'Rememories' is more uptempo, with a bouncy riff that almost sounds like something out of a Don Caballero song. Lyrically it deals with the feeling when you're moving from one place to another of looking forward to making more - and maybe better - memories but also hoping that you'll be missed and wondering if the people who were important to you will think about you when you're not around, which is a sentiment I can relate to pretty easily. This running theme of nostalgia for people, places and certain periods in your life in American Football's music also finds itself in this EP and is something that makes both bands so endearing for me. The last instrumental 'Franco the Bull' feels a little tacked-on at the end compared to the two songs before it but is worth a listen too. But overall, for anyone that wishes American Football had released a little more material or just digs music that deals in slow, intricate, nostalgic beauty, this EP is a really nice little fix.

The One Up Downstairs - S/T

Minus the Bear - Highly Refined Pirates (2002) & They Make Beer Commercials Like This (2004)

I thought it might be about time that I did something on two of my favourite records in the world. Minus the Bear are probably the coolest band ever. They write glitchy, complex songs full of lots of complex and often really gorgeous guitar tapping, but they sing about the simple pleasures in life: booze, cars, swimming pools and sex. Let's face it, if you hate them it's only because you're jealous that your life isn't that great. Because what kind of person doesn't like those things? Oh, and as a bonus, their songs are pretty catchy too.

When I was first getting into Minus the Bear with Highly Refined Pirates it was with the real hits of the record: 'Absinthe Party at the Fly Honey Warehouse', 'Monkey!!! Knife!!! Fight!!!', 'Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo' - explosive pop songs that pack hooks big enough to land blue whales. But while most of the songs on this album have an ostensibly feelgood vibe with lyrics about booze-soaked good times, there's an underlying romanticism behind it all, a nostalgic or even longing feeling for the things described in the lyrics. The real beauty in Jake Snider's lyrics is in the subtlety and the simplicity of his attention to small but beautiful little details, like in his description of an encounter with a girl in 'I Lost All My Money at the Cock Fights' where he ends on the line 'Her hair streaked her shirt with rain/and that did something to me'. Nothing verbose or elaborate, just subtle, understated beauty. Another real highlight of this aspect of his lyrics is 'We Are Not A Football Team', which perfectly captures those rare moments of comfortable silence that speak more than anything else could:

She was sitting on a swing
and dangling her feet
like the leaves of a tree
I think I heard her singing.

We're still out at 10 in the evening.

I knew her in the way that
I knew not to speak.
Quietly took a seat
and thought I'd stay for a week.

Highly Refined Pirates

'Get Me Naked 2: Electric Boogaloo' is one of the record's real highlights. On the face of it, it's just about someone struggling with a lifestyle filled with stress, anxiety and sleep deprivation. The way that it's delivered, though, means that the listener can relate and fill the gaps themselves, giving the song a much deeper, more personal meaning. The chorus is the most poignant bit:

You said, "My life's like a bad movie"
I said, "That's true of all us"
You said, "I've got to wake up so fucking early"
And I said, "Maybe the director's turned on us"

The album's closer 'Let's Play Guitar in a Five-Guitar Band' took a long time to creep up on me but is currently my absolute favourite on the record. Jake sings about an encounter with an ex-lover who has left him emotionally fraught, maybe his "one that got away". It's all described very simply: he sees her through a shop window, which evokes fond memories of him when he was with her "just having sex and listening to jazz/and that was the life", but he tells himself not to involve himself with her again and to move on, nervously lighting up a cigarette as he walks by. The real ache of the song is in the longing of the repetition of the last few lines "I should go back to/see if she's still there/standing like a statue". Perhaps this is just me relating to a feeling that I've felt a lot, but that final repetition is really emotionally exhausting. The feeling of knowing that someone who's passed you by was special, but that sometimes you have to move on and leave those memories behind. The simple power of the images here mean that the song doesn't need any over-the-top embellishment to be hauntingly powerful.

They Make Beer Commercials Like This

The follow-up EP to that album, They Make Beer Commercials Like This, is similarly brilliant and summery, with Minus the Bear's most danceable song 'Fine + 2 Pts' and several other great songs, but I'm mainly posting it because of my love of two songs: 'I'm Totally Not Down With Rob's Alien' and 'Houston, We Have Uh-Oh'. The former doesn't really need a lot of explanation, just resonates with me a lot as one of the most relaxed and beautiful songs I've ever heard. 'Houston We Have Uh-Oh' has a real sense of underlying melancholy to it that makes it one of Minus the Bear's best songs, albeit oddly one that was originally just a b-side. Anyone who's ever travelled much will be able to identify with this song: it captures the isolated feeling of being a tourist, of being separate from your surroundings, and the kind of subtle disorientation and loneliness that can bring up. As someone who's spent a lot of their life moving between places and, more recently, revolved their life around relocation and travel, this song means a lot.

people used to live here
and lived their lives on this ground
raised them in these fields
and lost them in the future
and we just take pictures
of hearts that stopped beating

sometimes you're a tourist with a camera
stealing souls for scrapbooks
sometimes you've got a life back home
sometimes you're really alone, you're really alone

Minus the Bear - Highly Refined Pirates
Minus the Bear - They Make Beer Commercials Like This

The Van Pelt - Sultans of Sentiment (1997)

Something about this one typifies 1990s indie-rock for me perfectly. The title of the album kind of hints at its prevailing mood: The Van Pelt are one of those bands that, a lot of the time, ooze that lovely kind of bittersweet sentimentality that seems to be practically unique to '90s American indie-rock bands; bridging the slow, tempered grooves and spoken word approach of Slint with the nostalgic beauty of American Football, sometimes cutting their teeth in a bit of off-kilter distorted riffing. The guitar playing on this album is great, mostly revolving around intertwining clean guitar lines that never show off more than they need to but always complement the rhythm section perfectly. Frontman Chris Leo makes this band pretty special: most of the time he employs a spoken word delivery, going from cool and collected to very impassioned at the climaxes of songs. His wordy and literate lyrics are sometimes ponderous and whimsical, sometimes political, and sometimes, well, downright sentimental, but always great. The album finishes on a really high point with 'Do the Lovers Still Meet at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial?', a brooding ballad that, over the same three chords, conjures up beautifully bittersweet images: ghost towns of lost youth, empty bottles and empty dancefloors, and the times that we wish we could take back. Sure, its melancholy brand of romanticism might be almost cloying to some, but it's the kind of stuff that I eat up every time. Sultans of Sentiment, though destined to always remain on the margins, is an indie-rock gem that should not be overlooked.

let's make a list so we can feel like we're accomplishing something, so we can feel like we're working together. let's sit in a circle adding to the list as we move around the room one by one, as you make a suggestion begin sternly - you take no shit - to give credence to your semi-constructive argument. tomorrow we'll wonder where this generation gets their priorities from. tomorrow my heart will skip a beat as it does every morning nine months of the year. it has to do with this list. before the bells even ring. before the hair is even combed. will the approach ever change or will it begin as i've said and end with a lighthearted twist to prove we're all adults? it has to do with this list, which we'll put in our pockets to throw away at a later date. it has to do with this list, which makes me feel more uncomfortable than i've ever felt, more apple pie than i've ever been. we are not housewives, executives, or entrepreneurs. we are teachers by trade, complainers by role.
-The Van Pelt; 'Let's Make a List'

The Van Pelt - Sultans of Sentiment

Versoma - Life During Wartime

One look at the curriculum vitae of Versoma's members (the group included past and present members of Hot Cross, Transistor Transistor, Anodyne, LickGoldenSky, Orchid, Bucket Full of Teeth, Saetia and Wolves) and you'd be forgiven for immediately forming the preconception that this is some sort of screamo supergroup. Well, you're not entirely wrong, but this is not the kind of well-trodden emoviolence you might expect - Versoma's glorious racket is as informed by 90s indie-rock as it is grounded in the passionate catharsis of emo. The ghosts of My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Fugazi all lurk within these six tracks, something that is immediately obvious as the noisy tremolo guitars of opener 'Gods and Queens' hit your speakers. Most songs on this 18-minute EP blend the dark aggression and heart-on-sleeve nature of emo and hardcore with the melodic sensibilities and guitar styles of the aformentioned masters of indie and shoegaze, creating something unique and fascinating as bludgeoning riffs meet desperate vocals and shoegazing guitar wizardry. 'November 2004' is an obvious highlight: opening with a major-key plod reminiscent of Pelican, the song is propelled by its urgent drumming and superb vocal performance towards an emotional climax before dissolving in a wash of MBV-esque guitars. The following track '4.' serves mainly as a segue but is an interesting departure in its own right, sticking to more ambient sensibilities as sheets of noise and clean guitars are layered up with yearning yelps. The song this gives way to, 'Black Train', is the most obvious indication of the sound of members' previous projects, mostly sticking to dark hardcore riffage layered with subtle noise experimentation. The intro of closer 'Come In Alone' could almost be that of a My Bloody Valentine song (I wonder what brought that band to mind - maybe the impossibly blatant reference in the song title?) but the song morphs into a perfect crossover between hardcore punk and 1990s indie-rock that really sums up what Versoma is about.

I need to order this from the Robotic Empire webstore sharpish because, while not able to find the lyrics anywhere, I bet that if they're anywhere near as good as the music on this EP, this record is a keeper. It's just such a shame that this, along with the demos of this release that can be downloaded from Robotic Empire's rarities blog, represents the only material that Versoma ever recorded before their premature split. However, ex-members are currently making great music in projects such as Tombs and Gods and Queens, both of which follow similar ideas, so be sure to check those out if you enjoy Life During Wartime.

Versoma - Life During Wartime