Maybe Today Will Be Curious

This evening I was supposed to meet up with a friend to have a hang at a park downtown. Because of a miscommunication, he didn't end up making it to the hang. It was a pretty big hike downtown for me and since COVID is still roaring, though everyone in Montreal seems content to ignore that, I did the journey across town on my skateboard. The skies opened up about five minutes after I left the house and by the time I got to Parc LaFontaine I was already soaked. The rain somehow continued to increase and eventually I got to the point where I didn't care about being wet anymore. Fortunately, out of all the things I had brought with me, the only things that stayed dry were the two joints that I had with me in my cigarette case. Smoked both, put on another album, and decided to take a moment.

Being in a hot rainstorm was comforting. The storm cleared out most of the people from the park, but a surprising amount of people hang around. There were pockets of people in cutoffs and tank tops just standing in the rain drinking beers, not caring because it was still hot out. Those types of things make me enjoy the city I live in. "Nothing will stop me from having a beer in the park. Not anything."

The skate home was much easier, since I was moving downhill away from the mountain. While I was smoking at the park, I had put on Daniel Romano's latest release Dandelion, as the psych-folk seemed like the best fit for the situation. Wearing completely soaked-through clothes with the rain clearing was euphoric.



A quick rating of Daniel Romano's insane quarantine output:

1. Dandelion
2. Visions of the Higher Dream
3. Content to Point the Way
4. Super Pollen
5. Daniel Romano's Outfit Do (What Could Have Been) Infidels By Bob Dylan & the Plugz
6. Spider Bite
7. Forever Love's Fool

Once Dan (yes, Duff and I have now ascended to the level of Romano Head where we've turned him into a mononym), ended I put on In the City by the Jam and that was an equally enjoyable thing. As much as I could, I danced on a skateboard.

Other recent enthusiasms:

Rebecca bought this book at the Drawn and Quarterly story in Montreal and immediately recommended it to me. A white guy having an interest in Jamaican culture is the most basic shit in history, but I must admit that I fall pray to it as well. My longstanding love of ska, rocksteady, and reggae was an avenue for me to learn about the vital contributions of Jamaicans to Toronto's history and culture and this book continues that. The story is about a teen aged girl balancing her overbearing relationship with her mother with her friendships and the weight of her family's needs. Great stuff.

Becks and I have used quarantine to dive into Veep and it is so insanely good. With the world falling apart at the seams around us, it's been oddly comforting to watch a show that focuses on just that. Turns out that laughing at how shitty the human race is is a good way to deal with how shitty the human race is. 

My friends and I used to wonder how long it would take for Me Too to get to wrestling and it got there last week. I would say "Good riddance dicknose", but the sad reality is that most of these pricks will end up working again and the worst shit (LOOKING AT YOU JERRY LAWLER AND SHAWN MICHAELS AND VINCE MCMAHON) won't even come to light. It honestly makes it pretty hard for me to continue to watch wrestling. I stopped watching and supporting WWE years ago, but more and more it looks like the industry as a whole is just fucked and should go away. Even the voices who I really valued for bringing more progressive and inclusive views into wrestling, like Brandon Stroud and Joey Ryan, turned out to be predatory pieces of horseshit themselves. If even the good eggs turn out to be insidious creeps, then who even is worth supporting?

Speaking with white friends, it seems like most people have gotten burnt out reading the news and trying to find ways to help against systemic racism and police brutality. It's tough reading bad news, but the reality is that everyone needs to take a breath, dig in harder, and get back to it. Never stop reevaluating yourself, what you've said and what you've done. If you are white, you are part of the problem. You have to be strongly committed to anti-racism and it has to be a thing you think about constantly, especially in regards to what you do. There's never a hurdle where a white person is finally "good". Keep it up your whole life.

The 2017 I, Musical Genius Music Revue Show

The yearly tradition continues. The order is un-numbered and doesn't really matter except for my #1 spot, which is obvious. Let's go:

Oso Oso - The Yunahon Mixtape

A no-doubt slam dunk #1 album of the year. I eagerly waited for Oso Oso's follow-up to Real Stories of True People Who Kind of Looked Like Monsters and they rewarded me with something that was unexpected in the best way possible. I've been planning a separate post that mentions everything I love about this record because putting everything here would be too much, so I'll write that next week sometime. Not only is this my favourite thing that came out this year by a wide margin, but it's up there as one of my favouirte albums I've ever heard.

Power Trip - Nightmare Logic

When your approach to music is making an even mix of Exodus and the Cro-Mags, you make it really easy for me to like your band. Their best stuff for sure.

Daniel Romano - Modern Pressure

As with last year's Mosey, I figured that Daniel Romano had already produced his best solo effort. Yet again I was floored by a distinctive, intelligent, and fully-realized exercise in making a "genre" album. A master-stroke in 60's pop. This was an early favourite this year and I can't wait for his next one.

Pet Symmetry - Vision

A common trend this year was albums surpassing my humble expectations. I deeply loved Pet Hounds, so I tried to be measured in my first listens of this one, but found it to be fresh and different from their first album, but still with plenty of hooks and riffs. Great bass playing on this one too!

Incendiary - Thousand Mile Stare

I would love it if more bands would combine beatdown NYHC riffs with socially conscious lyrics. IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE PRODUCT IS, THE PRODUCT IS YOU.

White Reaper - Greatest American Band

Between Sheer Mag's effort this year, Crying's album last year, and this album, I am more than here for the growing influence of arena rock in punk. Great riffs and great vocal melodies on this one.

Sheer Mag - Need to Feel Your Love

If you don't think a lo-fi punk band playing poppy Thin Lizzy songs is right up my alley, then you don't really know me at all.

Alvvays - Antisocialites

A fantastic follow-up to their celebrated self-titled debut. They try out some new styles on this one and I love it. Put out catchy, dreamy pop forever, please.

Vince Staples- Big Fish Theory

TELL THE GOVERNMENT TO SUCK A DICK BECAUSE WE ON NOW.

OTHER THINGS:

Some movies I enjoyed: The Big Sick, The Disaster Artist, The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected), Get Out, Personal Shopper, The Fate of the Furious, Landline, and Ingrid Goes West.

Some TV I really enjoyed this year: Master of None, Fargo, Twin Peaks, Nirvanna the Band the Show, Love, Easy, Bojack Horseman, Vice Principals, Crashing, Rick and Morty, and Epicly Later'd.

See you soon folks.

Your Ugly Human Heart

Full disclosure: I actually started writing this post a week and a half ago, after thinking about writing it for a week, before promptly leaving in my "drafts" (pulling back the curtain for you a little there). Anways, I badly need to write something and finishing this seems like the best way to accomplish that. Here you go:

Something that really, for real, happens to me is that after I’ve put up a bunch of longer posts in a row, I begin to think that every post has to be that way. I convince myself that only long posts are worthwhile and that if I’m not making some profound examinations about life, then it’s not worth doing any writing at all.

The reality, of course, is that I can write whatever I want, about whatever I want and put it up here because I am the “auteur”.

I was thinking about all of this on my lunch today because I was having trouble coming up a topic that would be suitably "big" to explore for a log post. The reality is that I can really talk about any topic I want. Putting a healthy amount of pressure on myself to write things "long" and "big" is good, because that I will write better things more often and it keeps my critical thinking active, but I also need to be wary of killing my writing drive by placing my expectations too high. It's a delicate balance.

After realizing that I am in fact the author of this blog, I decided to focus on a simple topic and write about music.

Every year, for the first six months of the year, I am convinced that I am not checking out enough new music and am so behind on what's going on in punk. I worry that I am losing touch and am in the process of losing my interest in music. Do I spend too much time listening to podcasts? Is that curtailing my music intake? AM I LOSING MY IDENTITY!?

But then, every single year, a whole tonne of new music comes out in the summer and it clicks with me really well and the problem is averted.

This year, I worried about the absolutely phenomenal Yunahon Mixtape by Oso Oso (Get it! It's free!) and Nightmare Logic by Power Trip being the only two releases of the year that were really sticking with me. How could my year-end list be two releases long?! Come on!

And then I got Vision by Pet Symmetry and Modern Pressure by Daniel Romano on the same day. Everything is okay. Flashing red light and blaring horn alarm have been turned off.

I loved Pet Hounds by Pet Symmetry so much; it was one of my favourite releases of 2015; so I was eager to see how the band would follow it up. Pet Hounds was a tight and compact power-pop album that was just banger after banger. Vision changes that up by adding some more experimental elements (keyboards, noise, a lot of different effects), a few longer, softer, and slower songs, a hardcore-ish number, and a WAY different and more distorted bass tone. This may just be me speculating, but I feel like Evan Weiss wrote this album on bass, as it figures a lot more into the backbone of the songs, whereas I feel like that last album was written on guitar. Cool stuff.

I am a pretty big Daniel Romano homer. I LOVE Attack in Black. His country albums range from "I like this" to "I listen to this with the lights off while I'm sad". Mosey was a wonderful departure in his style and sound and it made me wonder what type of 60's music he was going to pastiche next. Modern Pressure follows Mosey and is, somehow, even better. Romano moves into a mix of roots rock, country, and folk that, to me, sounds a lot like Music From Big Pink filtered through Romano's musical past. The bass playing is insane, the lyrics are wonderful, and the arrangements are sublime. Also, the various artworks are wonderful. Though I don't know if anything will touch Yunahon, this is making a pretty serious run at it. Amazing album.