I Swear I'm Hearin' It, How He Laughs

You may ask yourself, while the friendly lime glow if IMU reflects on you, how I could have the audacity to not write anything of substance for a month or so, and expect you all to be content with two posts that aren't much more than an embedding of some music.

Well friends, school is hard and all that reading has to get done some time. While I finish up the last of this current mountain of work, before heading onto the next mountain, and hopefully start to think about something I want to say here, join me in listening to Berryland by The Berries and thinking about everything in the world (mostly semiotics) (but, in many ways semiotics kind of are everything in the world) (weird that even the bibimbap I just ate was a sign).

Reflected on Your T-Shirt

New achievement:

Now able to listen to Paul Baribeau in public without crying.

Liberties, Vol 17

I started making this one with the goal of included upbeat riffy songs from 2019. It's raining today, so listening to Sheer Mag was a funny juxtaposition with the wet grey outside. Maybe that's why we turn morose near the end. Either way, these ones all make me throw up a thumbs up like my boy Drago on the over for one reason or another.

There Will Be No Pulling Out of Rug Beneath Your Feet

While in a strange Twitter hole, I saw someone who used to be in a band I like recommend Slaughter Beach, Dog's new record Safe and Also No Fear.

It's great thoughtful indie rock in which the world of the songs seems super lived-in. Afterwords, I found out that this is a project by one of the members of Modern Baseball, which surprised me, as this, in my opinion, absolutely pisses on everything that band did.

While listening, the delivery of the songs, especially the vocals, reminded me so much of something, but I couldn't place it. Putting the record on while I worked through OSAP forms today (FUN!), I realized that what I was searching for was Sean Bonette's Skateboarding's Greatest Hits, which I've touched on here a couple of times in the past. Knowing that now, of course I liked this record, as that EP is one of my favourite little oddities, and if we're being serious, one of my favourite things ever.

Hey! We talkin' about skateboarding?

I've been diving into Epicly Later'd again lately. The series is unbelievable, but like most things skating, it seems to be doomed to only ever be consumed by skaters. I like that, because it means we get to have something only for us, but I guess I also wish others could see it and then gush about how amazing these people and this crazy subculture are. Recent highlights have been the Girl/Anti Hero tour episode, in which a pre-out Brian Anderson's excessive drinking around his teammates, to the point that he throws up blood, is put in a new light today (also, I could watch Tony Trujillo footage forever), but the big one for me was the series on Josh Kalis, a skater who I never looked into before, but have a new appreciation for now.



Go swimming or something.

God Only Knows Where I'd Be Without You

I meant to write a post, and even had blogger open on my computer, yesterday but forgot to!

:o :o :o

Rebecca and I's summer is getting to a difficult point, where we've both had more time off than we could have imagined and are starting to feel restless and like we should be doing more important things. Being lazy and relaxing starts to feel like a waste of time and we both become convinced that any time in our apartment could be better spent *consults comprehensive mental rolodex* seeing new parts of Montreal and experiencing new things. Since it's now late-August, we'll both turn around in a couple of days and realize that our first two months here were a giant missed opportunity.

I'm aware that the previous paragraph sounds incredibly entitled and that was the point. We're both fortunate to be doing what we're doing now and I think both of us should appreciate the fact we don't have schedules to adhere to. We complain about being overworked all year, and then when we have time off in a beautiful city during a beautiful time of year, we complain about not doing anything. Millennials are we.

I find that there's always an ebb and flow to having time off. At first it's very exciting and you relish it. Then you start to worry about organizing your tasks and fitting them. Then you shut down and default to watching TV. Then things start to come into focus and you can appreciate that everything is okay. At least, that's how it seems to work for me.

The other day, I was having a coffee and reading on our back patio in the morning. It felt nice and I couldn't imagine wanting to do anything else in that moment. I try not to be a hippy, but being present is extremely important and is the key to enjoying things like that. If you can appreciate a small moment in time, it can open up your perspective on many other things.

The end of the summer is a nice time. There's still bright sun every day and we can leave the windows open in the apartment. For whatever reason, I absolutely love the part of the summer where at night you end up still having your shorts on, but put a hoodie over your t-shirt and that's a very sensible outfit. It's only like two weeks at the end of August. Maybe that's my "fall weather".

The reality is that in three months, when we're covered in snow and it takes like 10 friggin' minutes to put on boots and a coat to take the dog out to pee at night and I've just submitted an essay I hate, we'll both think back on our summer without responsibility and how much we miss it. I should try to access that feeling now, rather than putting myself down for doing what I want to. I'll probably never stop beating myself up over small things, but I can try to remember that doing that is pretty selfish and masturbatory and I would be better served to know that I'm doing fine and am not the piece of shit I believe myself to be when I let my mind run around in circles.

Slow Down, Feels Like You're Rushing Away

This finally comes out this week and brother, I am JONESIN' for it.

Bonus extra cut for you on a warm Sunday night in Montreal.

How I'm Never Gonna Fight That

At first, I thought this post would be just an embed of a skate video I watched yesterday, so I have to lead with that right?




Unbelievable stuff. While the direction is slick and amazing, don't let it distract you from how crazy the skating is. The super quick vertical pole jam into 50-50? The fast nose manual/nollie out in the tiny hole. Additionally, it's amazing to see a completely different style of skating from the Asian members of Addidas' team. Everything is precise and their ollies are go vertical and then horizontal in a way I could watch all day. Can't way to see more.

Rebecca and I have been on a trip to Ontario since last Tuesday. We originally planned this trip when we moved and thought that seeing our friends and family would be a needed break from our solitary existence in Montreal. It ended up sneaking up on me and it kind of felt like we were jetting off right as I was starting to get settled in our new home. Part of my head felt like we had more things to do and that staying in Montreal would make us more comfortable in the city. I think that was mostly me being anxious about the trip though and I now recognize that coming home was a good idea. It's not like we had anything concrete to be done. Going on a week-ish long trip where we relax, have fun, don't worry about doing anything and see our friends was good. Crazy, right?

The trip has felt strange, though not in a bad way. It's taken me back to places I used to live and seeing them again has brought a bunch of different feelings in me. Rebecca and I being back in downtown Guelph, which is where we spent the first two years of our relationship and where we fell in love, made us remember why "Guelph" continues to stick in our minds and why living there will always be something we dream on. Coming back to Kitchener-Waterloo always reminds me exactly why I left; growing dissatisfied with the city, having to drive to get to anything worthwhile, and greater professional and academic opportunities existing elsewhere; but also exactly why leaving was so hard; a beautiful group of friends who live together and welcomed me into their scene and city. Sitting with people who I am so close with and just talking for hours in the house I used to live in and being surrounded by like-minded punks is something that I crave at all times. I don't realize how important it is to me and what I'm missing so much until I'm doing it.

In the middle of this trip, it feels like I'm attaining some level of clarity, so I offer the following demandments for myself, shouted into the void to keep me motivated:

1. Put a little more elbow grease into making things, whether they be short stories, blog posts, songs, or zines.

2. Challenge your body and remember that you need that.

3. Get a job Bobo.

4. Eat things that you like.

5. Think a big scheme, no matter what it is.

Everything I Said, I Practiced in My Head

You would think that a summer "off" would provide an opportunity to stretch my writing and work things out, start new projects, finish lingering ones, but just the opposite has happened. I've been caught up in the transition of moving and working on writing has only barely crossed my mind. Maybe that will come once we've finished painting the new apartment. Maybe school will start and I'll complain about how I didn't do enough this summer.

Rather than forcing a post, I'll just mention a couple recent enthusiasms.

I went to the Vans Park Series this past weekend at Parc Olympique, just up the street from my house. It's easy to forget how hard skateboarding is when the main way you consume it is skate videos, where everyone is landing tricks. Seeing it live reminds you that each video is only the tip of the iceberg, and behind each 5-second clip of someone skating a rail is two days worth of slams, roll ups, breaks to smoke joints, and screaming at yourself in frustration. I haven't been able to skate since late April when I got hit by a car (listening to this song after seeing them live the night before), but at the comp, I was feeling inspired and bought the new deck I've so sorely needed for the past year or two from a local shop, Empire.

Something that I've always valued is how insular skateboarding can be, in a good way. The true heads protect the community and fight against big businesses and brands that try to move in and get a piece of the industry. Supporting your local shops and building communities around this thing that we all love is always valued. Thinking about those things made it extra special when I was buying my first pro deck from Hogtown (RIP) in Toronto and seeing how different it felt from something like West 49. That's why I wanted to get a shop deck and why I'll always ride shop decks. Stay local.

On that note, here's a brief, but sweet doc about a shop in Austin from Thrasher. These places are everywhere if you look for them.




This past year at TCAF, I bought two books.

Wage Slaves is an autobiographical comic (or am I supposed to call it a graphic novel to give it that extra esteem?) by Daria Bogdanska about organizing your work place and fighting for more from your employers. Black and white autobio comics are like catnip for me, but this one hits a lot of spots for me, as it touches on issues I care deeply about and the characters listen to the Modern Lovers a lot. The book is a valuable look at what you can accomplish if you try. Speaking from experience this year, organizing is possible if you work at it. It will be hard and it won't go as you expect and you might not get exactly what you wanted, but it will be better than it was before. They're scared of you caring. Don't forget that.

On the other end of the spectrum, BTTM FDRS by Ezra Clayton Daniels and Ben Passmore is a sci-fi comic about gentrification and issues of race. It's equally influenced by 80's John Carpenter and Atlanta, and is a head on collision between two artists with similar tone in their writing but completely different visual styles. I'm not finished yet, but can already tell it's one of the best comics I've ever read and is incredibly prescient in the way it weaves together class and race while making it thrilling, funny, and thought-provoking. I saw the two artists/authors give a panel at TCAF and they mentioned that the book has already been tapped to become a movie or TV show, and I swear that everyone will be gushing over it when that happens.

While we were unpacking, I found the above zine. Not much to say other than if you know, then you know.

Wouldn't Want to if I Was in Your Shoes

I was listening to Saves the Day's fourth, and unjustly maligned, album In Reverie today for the first time in ages. Like pretty much everyone else in the world, I can agree that the album which preceded it, Stay What You Are, is miles better, but I can also see what they were going for on the follow-up. In Reverie leans a little more into contemporary rock territory than the light classic rock feel they dabbled in before and you would think that would lead them to better performance on rock music charts, but it didn't. Chris Conley used a very different singing style on the record because of vocal chord problems, but that can't be it, can it?

Anyways, this post is not about that album. It was only to introduce it! What a sneaky cold open!

After In Reverie finished, Saves the Day's Self-Titled started playing automatically in my iTunes.* I don't really have much of a bond to the record, but it does take me back to a time when they were one of my favourite bands and I was absolutely all-in on everything they did.

*I actually think this album is okay. There are a couple of pretty fun, poppy rock songs ("In the In Between", "The Tide of Our Times", "Stand in the Stars") that almost make you believe the band is on some next level late-career renaissance shit, but there's also enough slow boring stuff to convince you they should hang it up. All told, it's at least a good creative direction for a band who's been active for over 20 years. I can respect a band for still trying new things and "doing it" as opposed to just rehashing their most successful sound in a pandering way, like blink did on California.

I saw Saves the Day play at Pouzza Fest in Montreal the summer before Self-Titled came out. They played a new song at that show and I remember being pretty stoked on it, but that can also be chocked up to me seeing one of my favourite bands for the first time and having an all-around amazing time. Later that summer, they released "The Tide of Our Times" and my hopes were high on them putting out a solid follow-up to Daybreak, which I loved. As a fan of the band's entire discography up to that point, I was convinced that this would be another addition to a storied career. When it did come out, I gave it a decent amount of listens, but eventually found that it just didn't resonate with me like all of their past material did.

However, the feeling of anticipation I had before the record came out is exactly what I chase as a music fan. Watching an artist operate at the best of their abilities and put things out that matter to you is special. It's even more special when it's a lesser-known band and you get to have this relationship privately, just you and the music. I know that Saves the Day is a huge band, with singles that are a touchstone for the genre and nine full-length albums, but I got that feeling a little bit while waiting for Self-Titled to come out.

Today, I started to think about who I'm currently "all in" on. The obvious first one is Oso Oso, who I won't spend another post gushing about right now (I will take an opportunity to link to their newest single though, it's great!). Tony Molina is another. Since Bay Dream came out, I would say I'm getting there with Culture Abuse, as their "Police on my Back" cover, "Goo", and "Wartime Dub" have all been excellent.

This brings me to Baggage, the new(ish) band of Jono Diener, who was the drummer and one of the songwriters in IMU sentimental favourites The Swellers. So far, they've put out two excellent EPs that continue the 90's alternative/punk hybrid that The Swellers were moving towards on their last two albums. Maybe Jono's vocals were the secret sauce to me loving that band? Highly recommended!



Baggage recently signed to Smartpunk Records and are going to release their first full-length album later this summer. So far, they've released two songs from the record, "Horseshoe" up above and "Misophonia" below, and I find that I've been looking forward to the record more than many others that will come out in 2019. In terms of being all in, I'm not sure if I'm there with them yet, but a good record for me to blast while I'm all alone in a new apartment in Montreal will almost certainly put them there. Here's to hoping.

Speed On

As a person, I am very bad at evaluating the worth of what I'm currently doing. I tend to think all the things I've done in the past are miles better than what I'm currently working on and I immediately start to wonder why I've gotten so lazy and less motivated to produce writing and do cool stuff. I know that a lot of this is nonsense and is mostly just me idealizing the past, but I also rely on it to keep me working on things. If I don't beat myself a little bit, then I won't keep writing. It's just how it is!

Something I've done in the past is talk about the space that specific songs have carved out in my mind. I did one on "Motown Never Sounded So Good" by Less Than Jake and one on "Chicago" by Big D and the Kids Table.* Maybe there's more! I'm not going to check! I wouldn't say that either of those songs is an absolute tattoo-the-lyrics-on-my-arm favourite of mine, but they are tied to specific memories and do stir something inside me each time I listen to them. Maybe that does make them an all-time favourite. I don't know. When you've been consuming music for 20 years it gets harder to delineate your favourites like you did when you were a teenager and discovering the Arrogant Sons of Bitches.

*Most of IMU's titles are lyrics from songs. Oddly enough, neither of those two posts use lyrics from the song they're talking about it. Seems like a layup, no?

While remembering that series, I was listening to "Motor Away" by Guided by Voices, another song which will live in my brain forever, and bam, the next IMU post was born.



I had seen Guided by Voices name-checked in online music journalism many times in my youth, but assumed they sounded much different from their name. Since I was so deeply in love with punk music in my late teens and early twenties, I thought that indie rock was death and strictly for poseurs. Spacey, grandiose, and esoteric bands like the Arcade Fire (whose first record I now like) convinced me that any musician who deigned to think themselves an artist was clearly way too pretentious and not worth my time. This changed a little bit when I started to listen to Pavement and Superchunk, whose riffing and quasi-punkness showed my that there is good in the genre, but it's really something that stuck with me a while, and still kind of does (Animal Collective fucking blows ass bro).

The way that I discovered Guided by Voices was through a collection of covers by Sean Bonette of AJJ. I've for sure written about this release before, so I won't go deep into it, but it's a collection of lo-fi versions of his favourite songs from skate videos. It's great stuff and has stayed in constant rotation for me since its release.

http://quoteunquoterecords.com/qur076.htm

Among the songs he does is "Motor Away". Even though I knew a couple of the other songs, "Motor Away" had an immediate impact and I got that lightness in your chest and slight shiver when a song shoots right to your chest. I looked up the original right away and was shocked to find a trebly and fuzzy song that was in the middle of a 28-track album of 90-second songs. This was not what I expected Guided by Voices to be at all. I thought they were a, like, 6-part band from Scotland who used glockenspiel and shit, not a rough rock band from Ohio who ferociously put out songs.

I tend to really love bands who focus on output rather than meticulously crafting records. I think it stems from Bomb the Music Industry!'s early output, when Jeff Rosenstock was making everything himself on a laptop and putting out an album per year, having a deep impact on me as a teenager and that informing the way I look at all music now. When somebody has each song be just the execution of one idea and not fussing over it, it screams DIY to me in the most encouraging way. Rather than reading it as "the song isn't finished", which I guess some (I'm looking at you Duffer) could, I see it as valuing the process over the product. The art lies in all of us trying to do it and putting it out there. It's why I'm head over heels for Tony Molina right now.

What I find great about bands like GBV and BtMI! is that when the songs hit they really hit. The idea behind the song is so simple and complete that it doesn't need anything else, and that is beautiful. "Motor Away" is basically just two chords for most of the song, with simple guitar leads over that. The lyrics are just poetic enough to stir up images and ideas in you, without getting up their ass. A perfect song.

When I discovered Guided by Voices and "Motor Away", I was living in Kitchener. I had just started writing my thesis and Beat Noir was starting to work on Sovereignties. Rebecca and I were just past the one-year mark in our relationship and that was becoming more obviously one of the most important things to ever happen to me. I was living with Mark, Colin, Duff, Erik, and Jeff still, but commuting to school where I was on my own. I was becoming more independent and still doing some important thinking about who I was.

When I listen to "Motor Away", I see myself sitting on my bed in Kitchener with the door open and the song playing. Everyone else is home, but I'm doing my own thing in my room for the moment because I have school tomorrow. Maybe the seeds of me moving to Guelph and then back to Toronto, moving in with Rebecca, finishing my thesis and starting at the gallery are there and that's why "Come on, speed on" hit me so hard.