The Best Goddamn Albums of 2009

10. Say Anything - Say Anything -- Like I said in the Disappointments post, I hated this album on my first few listens. After I read a few interviews with Max Bemis, though, I realized that the record is still very good, it's just not what I wanted. And "spiritual..." but still. "Mara and Me" is a great song, as is "Fed to Death." "Ahh... Men" isn't as epic as it could have been, but I'm damned if Max isn't at least one of the ten best songwriters I listen to. Even if he found God and happiness.


9. Frank Turner - Poetry of the Deed -- Every album this man releases is great. The music and the lyrics are simple, but he's saying some profound things. These punx-ternt-folk singers are making some damn good music. Something about "Live Fast, Die Old" just resonates. A house with high windows.




8. fun. - Aim and Ignite -- I was so sure that I would hate this album. I saw them open for Manchester Orchestra in April and the music was just so damn cheesy live. There's still a little cheesiness in "Light a Roman Candle With Me," and "Walking the Dog" still sounds like a High School Musical song, but there's no denying that "Be Calm" is one of the best songs to come out this year. It's no Dog Problems, but it's a lot closer than I thought it would be.



7. Weatherbox - The Cosmic Drama - No one writes a song like Brian Warren. Great riffs and lyrics equal parts simple, powerful, and weird. Every song needs to be where it is. It's cohesive and complete. Mmmmm harshmellow. "Don't Say Nice Things" and "No Hands" are both great.





6. Andrew Jackson Jihad - Can't Maintain -- AJJ put on the best show I went to this year. They also released one of the best albums. They're earnest and honest and uncompromising. Plus the album is named after a Biggie line. It doesn't matter if it's with an electrified full band ("Heartilation"), a string section ("Love in the Time of the Human Papiloma Virus"), or just regular old acoustic folk punx. Every song is great.

5. Why? - Eskimo Snow -- When Pitchfork posted "This Blackest Purse" this summer I listened to it over and over again. To this day it's one of my favorite Why? songs. The rest of this album took a little longer to click, but once it did, it really clicked. The stark honesty of "Even the Good Wood Gone" and the more obvious "Into the Shadow of My Embrace" are great examples of Yoni Wolf's incredible songwriting.



4. Kevin Devine - Brother's Blood - If there's a more emotional song this year than "Brother's Blood," I don't think I want to hear it. The first true full band entry in Kevin's catalog is full of variety. "All of Everything Erased" is as simple and powerful as anything he's written, while songs like "Carnival" and "I Could Be With Anyone" showcase the different ways a group of talented people can make great music even better.



3. The Mountain Goats - The Life of the World to Come - 1,842 Mountain Goats scrobbles this year. This album only came out in October, but it's responsible for a fair amount of those. The only "loud" song on the album is "Psalms 40:2," so it takes a more active listen to really grasp the quality of songwriting in tracks like "1 Samuel 15:23." "Matthew 25:21" hits fucking hard. John Darnielle. Dayum.



2. Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything to Nothing - I got a promo copy of this back in February (thanks Jen!) and listened to it nonstop. I kind of still do. Andy Hull wrote an incredibly powerful 11 songs (I'm including the bonus track here, to the exclusion of "100 Dollars"). Their new rock band direction may have alienated some people, but there's no denying "Shake it Out" or "In My Teeth," and "The River" is the best closer to an album I may have ever heard. "I Can Feel a Hot One" shows that he hasn't lost his penchant for slow emotional powerhouses.

1. Bomb the Music Industry! - Scrambles - Jeff Rosenstock wrote the 13 best songs he has ever written on this album. Each one is just goddamn amazing. From "Cold Chillin' Cold Chillin'" to "25" to "Saddr Weirdr" to closer "Sort of Like Being Pumped," he captures the human condition of the twenty-something like no one else can. All set against a background of some of the most complex and interesting music he's put on an album yet. Best of 2009. No doubt about it.

EPs of the Year

End of the Year: Most Disappointing Albums of 2009

In keeping with my general disposition (lol) I decided the first entry in my year end roundup would be the ten albums I found most disappointing. In descending order, of course!

10. Cursive - Mama, I'm Swollen - It wasn't bad by any means, it just wasn't on the level of Domestica, The Ugly Organ, or even Happy Hollow. Evolution! Monkeys! CRAZY MONKEYS!







9. Fake Problems - It's Great to Be Alive - How Far Our Bodies Go was fantastic. Like, made up for New Wave fantastic. A lot of the instrumentation on this record reminded me of New Wave. A lot of people really liked this album, so maybe I'm the crazy one.





8. John Nolan - Height - The musical direction on this one was a little weird. There was some awkward electronic stuff and some better straight ahead stuff. In any case, this album seemed kind of tired lyrically. Same with the Straylight EP that came out this year.





7. Monsters of Folk - Monsters of Folk - Supergroup fail. "Dear God" is awful. Every other song is pretty much just OK. Not capitalizing on enormous potential.






6. Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band - Outer South - What I wouldn't give to be part of a musical community where everybody is constantly writing awesome songs... I get that Conor thinks that's what's going on here, but "Air Mattress" is just terrible. There's some good stuff on here, but it's hard to take it at face value, given what Conor has proven himself capable of.



5. mewithoutYou - It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright - If I had made a best of list in 2006, Brother, Sister would have been damn near close to the top. I understand what they were going for here and I guess it's cute, but I think this is the kind of thing you save for a side project that goes on Yo Gabba Gabba.




4. Two Tongues - Two Tongues - "Crawl" was just so goddamn good. Everything else wasn't at all. Supergroup fail pt 2.







3. Wale - Attention Deficit - Wale made a lot of hard-to-keep promises on his various mixtapes, mostly about how his major label debut wouldn't be watered down and lyrically weak. Guess what happened? He has maybe two good verses on the whole album. Consequently, it sold quite poorly.




2. Clipse - Til the Casket Drops - Ask any one of my white and jewish friends what the best rap album of the last five years was and we'll all say Clipse's Hell Hath No Fury. They had their work cut out for them and they fell a little short on this one. There are some incredible songs on here, but the middle of the album really falters. There wasn't a single weak track on Hell Hath there are plenty here.



1. Say Anything - Say Anything - When this album came out, I was talking shit about it to anyone who would listen. Is A Real Boy was so profound to me (and just about any other kid in the umbrella we call "the scene") and with every album Max releases that doesn't live up to its legacy, it's a personal hurt. I've since reconciled a lot of my initial problems with the record--SPOILERZ: it appears in my best-of list as well--but there's definitely still some filler. "Death for My Birthday" just sucks. Nothing more to say. And don't get me started on some of the religious/spiritual preachiness... In a few days I'll have nice things to say.

Next up, best EPs of the year. So exciting!

The contents of three hard drives I found in my room:

Maxtor SATA 160GB: 2GB of data. Daily Show/Colbert Report from 11/16/06 and 11/29/06, 1gb worth of music (Bad Astronaut, 2pac, Moneen), an application called Ipod Access for Windows. Boring.

Maxtor IDE 120GB: 100GB of data. The OS drive for my old desktop. My Documents contains: Old schoolwork, the WoW Burning Crusade installer, college applications, a bunch of old CD reviews. There's a miserably organized Recording folder, out of which I appear to still have everything, just organized better. Also pretty boring, although I don't know what I was hoping to find.

Seagate SATA 500gb: One Jack's Mannequin CD. BORING.

Turns out I've lead a boring life.

A second blog.

I had an idea, so I made it a blog: http://ndjtk.blogspot.com

Reasons my record is not done

I fucking love the Mountain Goats.

CARBON FUCK IT

This is the climax of the recording process. I've come to loathe these songs so much that by the time I get into the booth to do vocals it's pure catharsis. (I get knocked down, but I get up again)

So why have I come crawling back to blogger.com? Especially considering that I recently reread the old blog entries and got that awful feeling in my STOMACH that I got freshman year of college reading my since quite deleted middle school livejournal (fragment). Dunno. I like the venue for some reason; it will give my future biographers/stalkers/children something to chew on/chew on/be embarrassed of their father about.

L8r

Our continued attempts at selling out

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?izntvyoikzj

Sister City industry demos. Bomb it.

If I make this post mysterious enough, it will seem like there is something bigger than all of us.

Ellis Island Blues

We're going to be featured tomorrow on Cavalry Records' website, cavalryrecords.com. Along with an interview, we'll be premiering the demo of the first single from our upcoming album. It is this: http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?wymazujvymy

How it ended up so punx is anyone's guess.

Epiphany for June

"Hi, welcome to Wendy's, would you like to try a combo" is a recording.

SCENE: Wendy's on Nicholson Ave, lights out. Monday, June 15 at 1:53AM

*ADAM pulls into Wendy's, TONY and ERIC in car*

ERIC: It's closed
ADAM: Should I turn around?
TONY: Go through the drive thru anyway. You have to get out somehow
*ADAM drives slowly through the drive thru, past the dark ordering window*
WOMAN (Recording): Hi, welcome to Wendy's, would you like to try a combo
ADAM: Oh, shit! They're open!
*ADAM puts the car in reverse, ready to place order*
WOMAN (Recording): Hi, welcome to Wendy's, would you like to try a combo
ADAM: Hi, do you guys still have Frostees?
MAN: WE'RE CLOSED OGERIOGLGIKGSDFGKLNDFA
*The car erupts into disbelief, followed by silent contemplation on the drive home*
ERIC: (several minutes later) The woman is a recording
ADAM: (his world both falling apart and concurrently coming into clearer focus than he can ever remember) ...

Sister City Funks Monkeys

We played at the Brass Monkey in Baltimore last night and it was a lot of fun. We made some converts, gave out some demos, and played a bunch of new stuff live for the first time, all of which went over well. We're going to start demoing this week. I can't wait.

Sister City - The Brass Monkey - 6/11/09

Sunday Crossword Challenge
Ellis Island Blues
Some Prefer Nettles
Defense
Big and Small Words
IMPERATIVE
Seat 13A
Happy Anniversary
Reinventing Adm Linder
More Like "The End"
Boma
How Much
Going to Pinneberg

Hold Steady 6-7-09 @ 9:30 Club

Sold out show at the 9:30 Club. Great setlist. There's something about seeing The Hold Steady a couple times a year that keeps me grounded. The atmosphere and the joy and the music. It's a nice kick in the ass of my semi-constant negativity. No band makes me want to do what they do more.

Positive Jam
Massive Nights
Party Pit
Magazines
Chips Ahoy
Hostile Mass
One for the Cutters
Cheyenne Sunrise
Constructive Summer
Sequestered In Memphis
Cattle and the Creeping Things
Southtown Girls
Lord, I'm Discouraged
Hornets! Hornets!
Your Little Hoodrat Friend
Stay Positive
Slapped Actress
How a Resurrection Really Feels
-------------
Citrus
History Lesson Pt II
Stuck Between Stations
Killer Parties

You know you can't be lazy...

Tonight is one of those nights where I'm utterly convinced I'll never be creative again. There are no good chord patterns or interesting riffs. Forget lyrics.

At some point tonight I am going to get a twisted frostee for my trouble. I am also going to listen to Rancid because for whatever reason I can't not. It's like how at this point "Cooking by the Book" doesn't seem like such a bad song anymore.

If I had a twitter I'd post this there

Just wrote the best song I've written since I got home. Gnarly

Preproduction Part One

What I call preproduction you would probably call Daniel and I playing the new songs over and over again in my basement until they have weird syncopations or parts with different time signatures. In any case, that started today. We made "Ellis Island Blues" into a song any great-grandparent would disapprove of, complete with THE punk beat. After that, we spent about a half hour stumbling over the fact that the verse of "Big and Small Words" is in 11/4. It sounds like some mid 90's emo stuff or something. I think I'll pick a guitar distortion that makes it sound like Tool and then we'll really be a good band.

The last new song we worked on today was that one that everyone picked really awful names for ("How Much"). Seriously, people... Anyway, it is INTENSE. I thought I shredded my vocal c(h)ords on the acoustic demo; that was nothing.

We're going to start recording our practices so we don't forget everything and the album doesn't end up boring and tired. We will save that for our 5th or 6th full length.

Bomb the Music Industry.

I saw Bomb the Music Industry tonight in a room no larger than my ex-dorm room. Amazing. They played a set entirely of requests. Amazing. For my, and whoever else's reference, here is the set mostly not in order, except the beginning and end.

Things that I Like
Rocket-Rocket-Rocketship (ASOB)
King of Minneapolis III and IV
Hitchin' A Ride (Green Day)
Even Winning Feels Bad
Showerbeers
Side Projects Are Never Successful
This Is a Singalong
Never Trust a Man Without a Horribly Embarrassing Secret
25!
Future 86
Bike Test 123/Stand There Till You're Sober/Bike Test 123
Syke! Life Is Awesome/Know Your Enemy (Green Day)

I think that's everything. So good.

In Which I Get my Desaparecidos On

This one probably won't be on the next Sister City album.. it may not even be a Sister City song. One day I'll get to murder my folk career just like Conor did!

http://www.box.net/shared/kp31egj8hv

"Work Socks"

I've got so much knowledge
And a big fat fucking wallet
You should see my family
Take a good look at my trophy
She's inspired me to stop
Smoking like a chimney
But I sneak one when I get lonely
And watch my college days
Just fade away
Like prozac down the drain

I've figured out the meaning
While the world around me's teething
I'm an an influential person
Since I got my life in order
And bless her heart
My wife doesn't say a thing
When I come home from the bar
And I know I smell
Of stale regrets
But I get so stressed
So I tie a couple on

I'll put you down for lunch
But I'm a very busy man
I've got a family to support
We all just do the best we can
I fucked up so much when I was young
You wouldn't understand
But I'm a new man

I've got a lion in my voicebox
And a thousand pairs of work socks
I've got 26 feelings
That I should keep believing
That my blood pressure
Is rising for a reason
I'm a rabid wolf when payday comes
For the envelope
I would sacrifice my soul

I've got some time on Friday
I'm a very busy man
But after work the ring comes off
And happy hour begins
I fucked up so much when I was young
That's the past, you understand
Now I'm a new man

I trip over my words when I am talking to the coed
I met outside the planning seminar
And I slip my past my convictions when I stumble through
The bible when I feel guilty enough to go to church
And I kneel like everybody else for what it's worth

I've got no time for this
I'm a very busy man
I had the gift of foresight
So I have always been ahead
I've done so much since I was young
And I don't understand
How I'm an old man

Cartoon Movies

http://www.box.net/shared/5dta354trd

Living breathing human beings
Inhabit my periphery
In glorious passivity
I am surrounded
All of them have names and faces
Loving friends and close relations
Secrets kept in sordid places
Don't you tell a soul

Living breathing human beings
Are sucking all my energy
With coughing fits a eulogy
Will be in order
With blame alive like crooked teeth
The gaps aflame with subtlety
And men on trial for sodomy
We're moving backwards

Oh the kitchen sink
Will bring together everything
Oh the bathroom floor
And who could ask for more

Living breathing human beings
Are walking, running, hurrying
On paper routes and studying
We're so much smarter
Adding to our knowledge bases
Learning facts to get us places
Building our own brand new nation
Let my people go

Oh the kitchen sink
Will bring together everything
Oh the bathroom floor
And who could ask for more

Living breathing human beings
Are passed out in pools of anything
Drowned in words and cycling
Through cartoon movies
I remember everything
That anybody says to me
So I burn CDs to give for free

Oh the kitchen sink
Will bring together everything
Oh the bathroom floor
And who could ask for more

I've been trying pretty hard to be good.

I built a computer from scratch a few days ago and it went well. I was tilling in the silicon fields all day and then I got thermal paste all over my fingers. I wrote five songs in ten days, six if you count that ITS Theme Song.

Oh Jesus...

Turns out I like Christian metalcore now.

Sister City LP2

Will probably look like this:

1. Move-In Day
2. Bricks and Beams
3. I Always Appreciate the Irony
4. Ellis Island Blues
5. Reinventing Adm Linder
6. The Entrepreneur
7. IMPERATIVE
8. Fuck that Guitar Shit at 3AM
9. Laurels
10. Playing Peter
11. Going to Pinneberg
12. How Much

With these songs being recorded for other things:

Slapstick
Hearth
I love you and stuff
I can still write songs
The Last Song
And Time is slipping through your little fingers
Some prefer nettles
Faith Healer
Big and Small Words

I cannot wait to do this.

Chelsea

Adam Duritz was using autotune before T-Pain even owned a top hat apparently.

Four minutes and thirty nine seconds: http://www.mediafire.com/?ywyewnixmmd

OH CRUEL WORLD!

Yesterday, at the Ice Cream Factory outside of Peppercorns, I was confronted by a wicked set of circumstances. Their specialty sundaes (saturdaes as they call them (my faithful readers can probably guess how I feel about that)) are all named for Worcester landmarks and schools. There's the WPI. There's the Holy Cross. And there in front of me was the Clark Cougar. Chocolate ice cream, peanut butter cups, and hot fudge. It's not my favorite combination of things to put in a sundae, but it was the closest thing on the menu. So I chose Clark. Again. Obviously I finished it. Who wouldn't finish ice cream?

Interesting sidenote: As I write this, Murder by Death is incessantly singing that "there's still time to start again."

Some Prefer Nettles

There are times when I am happy
Smiling in and out of phase
My teeth are stained
But I am not embarassed

There are three words I would say
To any doubting thomas I meet
Lick my wounds and feel my breath
I am alive

What does it mean?
Please forgive me
I didn't mean to get
All existentialist
But these things sneak up

There are times I am a child
Armed with chalk and endless blacktop
But we both know
I'm not cut out to be an artist

More and more I am an adult
Living life like you can win
Or more importantly
Something you can lose

What a story
We will have to tell
Our children's children
All the things we actually felt
But they won't see it

There's a formula I follow
I guess it's possible you've picked up
But you should stick like glue
To what or who you know

Who am I to give advice?

What bears repeating
Is something I'm not sure
I've got a good grip on
So what right do I have to put a chorus in my songs

Sing along, sing along
With egos proud and voices strong
Sing along, sing along, sing along

Ways FDR and I are different

1. I don't and probably will never have polio
2. He was good at spider solitaire.

It is a good thing I don't believe in profundity. It's 2:12 AM and I have been trying to arrange two deck's worth of virtual cards into numerical order by suit. It is maddening and I am giving up and I am blogging about how it is maddening and about how I am giving up. There is something to be said for banality, specifically when soundtracked by nice headphones in turn soundtracked by Cursive, Okkervil River, and Margot & the Nuclear So and So's. Someone should say something.

This song needs a title

http://www.mediafire.com/?jym3wtijqwq


On the cloudiest night through a satellite's eyes
You can see it
The people below throwing stones
Sleep in attics and basements
There's a war we all know and we're scared
That we'll have to go fight it
So for several years we have done all we can do to spite it

The final frontier has been cleared
Now it's closed so we're clinging
To what we've got left
Our few honest attempts at a living
And halfway around the world
People are dying
And on birch street the leaves on the trees
Laugh but look like they're sighing

I want to know
Where you think you are going
And god help your soul
If that's what you believe
For a couplet I sold
What was left of my integrity
And I don't have goals

But I will have an apartment
In a city full of people
And a subtle, sinking feeling
We're all equals

I wouldn't expect to hear those words from you
So I bid a fond farewell with this excuse

I want to know what I don't know
I want to know what no one knows
I'll learn to swim so I will float

Or I will tread water and gracelessly sink below
Like death is a puzzle and I learned where the pieces all go

So on every goddamn cloudy night through every eye of every satellite
I am foaming at the mouth
And with every stone you people throw at bleeding hearts and broken bones
I am laughing
And that war we'll one day have to fight is as visceral as a synapse fired
I am waiting
I shook the hand of father time I spit in my own and I looked him in the eye
I am not sorry

I am the only one who thinks I'm going crazy

Today was a showerday which was a good thing because my hair was sticking up in ways that would have made my seventh-grade self green with envy. In addition, even though I use the Official Deodorant of the NBA (TM), I feared I would begin to smell. How do they even know the formula works the same on a near seven foot black man as it does on an overweight white kid? I probably sweat less than him in any case.

Either way, that's not what this post is about. It is about shampoo; specifically, it is about Head and Shoulders Anti-Dandruff shampoo. Last time I showered, I ran out of the shampoo I like to use, which smells like citrus, which is good because people love when people peel oranges and clementines in their general periphery. I was forced, then, to use my back up bottle of shampoo. I wet my hair, which is, in full disclosure, a fairly new showering habit. I squirted some of that sweet stuff into my hand and it felt fucking bizarre. I've never touched that slime that snails leave behind when they snail around, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say the textures are one and the same.

Alarmed, I checked the expiration date. This needlessly sent me into an existential crisis. My shampoo expired in November of 2007. This meant, among other things (like why it felt so weird), that I bought it -- well, my mother bought it -- before I left to come here. Dubious hygienic practices aside, it dawned on me that these 40 fluid ounces have watched maniacally from the top shelf on my closet everything I have done since August 23rd, 2007. It has borne witness to every blowjob and every breakdown, every friendship and every failed friendship, every time I've made a bad decision and every time I've made love. There's more alliteration and parallel structure where that came from, but you get the point.

It's my backup bottle of shampoo. It knows it will never be the most loved, but it knows it's the one I'll come crawling back to when my sweet citrus has died at last. So it waits. And it remembers.

My hair was wet and so I bit the bullet. Washing the shampoo out of my hair gave way to one of the more disgusting textures I've ever felt, but war makes people do terrible things.

True Fact

True Fact: If I never shave again, eventually I will have a FULL BEARD

Spring Break (Part One)*

Spring break 2009 began yesterday for me, and here I am writing from Cancun, Mexico, already drunk and working on my tan. The weather has been beautiful, as have the bitches. Woohoo!!!!!!

Spring break thus far:
-I went to DSW with my mom and got new shoes. They are made by Mark Ecko. I'm 1/4 Cuban, so I'm comfortable with the choice. I will try to find my camera and take a picture of them. The tips of the shoes (BRAIN FART!!) remind me of a duck-billed platypus. You will see in the picture if I post it
-I have downloaded an album by every band on the first two pages of my Last.FM recommendations. Here is where I promise I will post my thoughts on them; you and I both know that won't happen.
-I am watching what will likely turn out to be the entirety of the Adult Swim series Home Movies. It is funny like "haha."

I leave you now with a passive aggressive riddle/paradox.

Given:

1. Sister City is clearly not a real band (make up your own reason for this)
2. The University of Maryland Baltimore Campus is having a Battle of the Bands for which thirty (30) bands entered and only eight (8) can compete.

Here is my question:

If Sister City is not a real band, how did this happen?! Don't the judges know it's just a Bright Eyes rip-off? Jeez...

Wish us luck!

*A note on the tone of this text: MOSTLY SARCASTIC

The Goings-On or RANDOM FACTS LOL SO RANDOM

Fact one: It is Sunday, February 1st and it is five minutes to 3PM. I am in pajama pants.

No, but wouldn't it have been so annoying if I made this one of those Facebook things people have recently been doing? They aren't random facts if you're taking precious time to decide each and every one of them. You're not fooling anyone into thinking that you're interesting. Or maybe you're fooling everyone else as desperate for attention as you are because then THEY get to make one of their own!

Now if you'll excuse my diatribe against people who do things for attention, I'm going to write a new blog entry.

Today is the first day of February and every February a website called RPM issues a challenge to songwriters to write and record a full length album in one month. I signed up last year and I ended up with five solid songs. I'm going to try again this year and possibly submit my short story project by the end of the month, assuming I've got enough songs done. As of now I've got a song about "Young Goodman Brown" and a song about "The Cask of Amontillado." I'm going to try to make it into the studio within the next few days to record them; I'll post the MP3s up here once I've got them.

In other musical news, Funion is taking over the world, or at least the quad. Our newest song has been winning awards left and right. A little birdy might have mentioned something about a Grammy for best spoken word/Latin/children's toys hybrid... It's ours this year, Costello!

Who knew?

I wrote that last blog and I was like: "That is a very long blog."

It turns out that it looks way longer in the text editor than it does on the page. Carry on.

Expansion, like the frontier kind

Hello, blogosphere--a word the Firefox spell check will certainly be amended to recognize soon enough (its suggestions for me are: "biosphere, heliosphere, lithosphere, and photosphere").

Long first sentences aside, I've rethought the point of this blog a little bit. It will have GRAVE CONSEQUENCES. This used to be (for three weeks) a blog where I discussed only other people's music. Now I think I will discuss my own as well. This blog is where I make promises for Sister City and other music projects that don't get fulfilled. Too many times have I promised the hordes of internet fans of my band this or that project and it does not happen. Now I will do it here, if only just so there continues to be written record of my false promises one way or another.

I'm taking a class called Short Stories this semester. We read short stories out of a book called THE STORY AND ITS WRITER. Since I have little to no school-related drive this semester for whatever reason, I decided the other night that, to keep myself interested/reading, I will write a song inspired by each short story. This will kill a proverbial two (2) birds with one (1) stone as I am also trying to be less picky about songs that are "BAD IDEAS." BAD IDEAS can turn into GOOD IDEAS sometimes, so this project will speak towards that.

This is the thing: I have actually already written one of these songs. That is a lot farther than most of my ideas come. Whether that means I'll see this project through to completion or not remains to be seen. I do plan on documenting its progress on this very blog(!), though. The first song is inspired by Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," and takes its name from a line in the story: "A Grave and Dark-Clad Company"

Until later.