love this to bits. one of my absolute favorite releases so far this year.

singing/drums (2012)

new stuff by cousins is always something to look forward to

these days seems like all i talk about is death.  selfishly, i will miss what this band could have done. on a more human note, i can’t imagine the pain reimers family and friends are enduring right now. well, actually, i can imagine and i wholeheartedly sympathize.  rest in peace chris.

in one of the very last emails my brother sent me he spoke of david foster wallace. no doubt, he would have emailed me today to talk about how wallace would have turned 50, and how crazy it seems that he is no longer here. last april my brother wrote -

 I don’t know if you can access The New Yorker digital edition I gave you a few months ago, but they ran another excerpt from David Foster Wallace’s (unfinished) novel The Pale King, called ‘Backbone.’ It was heartbreaking. I remember when he hung himself in 2008 & people in the newsroom, when I announced how sad I was, were like, ‘Who’s that?’ Sometimes I feel like you’re the only other person who appreciates the same things I do. eyeing the copy of Infinite Jest I bought a decade ago. Did you read it?

my brother was pretty devastated by wallaces suicide. after my brother died, i read something he wrote on some forum about the short story the depressed person. he claimed that  he couldn’t truly identify with the main character, as he’d never experienced depression first hand. what? that was news to me. i always figured my brothers awkward hugs and insincere phone calls were manifestations of his own deep depression. perhaps i was wrong, or perhaps he was in denial. maybe he was actually happy and i was too washed over by my own depression to notice. today, if i wasn’t so devastated by my brothers death, maybe i would be able to find it in me to be sad about wallace, and the big gaping hole he left not only in the world of literature, but in the world period. maybe no one really needs me to be sad about it at all though. i never emailed my brother back last april. i’m on page 310 of 1079, i’m reading it frank.

“clear, sunny, filthy days. there were things to look forward to afterall.”

kickstarter projects to get behind

help the very excellent BROKEN WATER make their next record by donating to their kickstarter project. a very easy decision to make.

river city tanlines want to go to europe, so alicja trout, who rules, has set up a kickstarter project.   donate to  help them get there & in the process gain a copy of their upcoming lp. a very good trade off i’d say.

wraparound shades/orange air 7″ (1994)

sam heard this 7″ for the first time tonight. his reaction – “now that’s some GOOD music!” i hated zumpano way back when. i was lost in a haze of lesser sub pop bands. not sure how i lost this 7″ years ago. i’ve sort of lost several records throughout the years though. no idea how that is even possible. how is that possible?  luckily, someone gave me another copy of this 7″, along with a new found appreciation for a great  little record. now if only i could go back in time and not walk out of a handful of zumpano shows. what an idiot i was. download it somewhere.

when we came out of the theatre after seeing heavenly creatures, he told me i looked like kate winslet. he was lying, but not joking. it made me smile. he was able to do that at times, make me smile. i can remember that moment like it was yesterday. i wasn’t even born when my mom took this picture of my brother.  my mother was beautiful, really beautiful, as was her son. i imagine her standing an arms length away from him, urging him to smile, which he didn’t, smiling herself. he was able to do that at times, make her smile. i’d seen it happen, so it was true. it wasn’t hard for him, and she welcomed it, a nice break from her usual serious expressions, but only from him, not anyone else.