Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (Saddle Creek, 2005)
For the first half of the last decade, I was strictly a pop-punk man. Drive-Thru Records was my go-to label, every day was a summer afternoon, and anything slow was just boring. That all changed when I stumbled across Bright Eyes. I had heard the name thrown around countless times by friends and on AP.net (in my lurker days), and finally gave Conor Oberst & co. a shot when I found I’m Wide Awake… in a used record store. For a mere $3, I was presented with ten of the most soul-bearing and intimate pieces of music I had ever heard. Sure, it was a change of pace, but the slower songs were appropriately mournful; the fast ones desperate; and the vivid images of love, loss, and politics were spoken through a voice wavering in uncertainty for the future. From anti-war ballads (“Landlocked Blues”) and anthems (“Road to Joy”) to heartbreaking recounts of drug-infused nights on the town—and mornings after (“Lua”)—to love ballads that go deeper than the norm (“First Day of My Life”), there’s a maturity and an urgency in these songs that I had never heard. It expressed the very things that made me wonder, that made me hope and lose hope, that kept me up at night. It bridged the divide between high school and adulthood. And it did indie-folk well enough that I spent the last half of the last decade trying to find a record to top it. I never did.

• Key Track: “Poison Oak”

Sigur Rós – ( )
I never know what to call this album when I talk with people about it. The Parentheses, Brackets, or Untitled Album all end up sufficing, but so would The Beautiful, Captivating, Mesmerizing (or insert your own similar adjective here) Album. Regardless of the name you give it, the pieces of music within (also officially nameless, the point being that titles and labels are irrelevant and even limiting to the art they describe) play out like the score to a film about everything and nothing, or like the soundtrack to a never-ending road trip on a rural stretch of Iceland’s Ring Road, with nothing around you but expanses of gently rolling hills spotted with snow, and all the time in the world to contemplate your innermost curiosities. The relaxing ambiance of side one made it my go-to album for pre-exam bus rides to campus during college—while the lack of recognizable lyrics (the vocals are comprised of singer Jón Þór Birgisson’s constructed “Hopelandic” language with vague hints of both Icelandic and English present) make it difficult to get hung up on singing along, the flow and tempo make it easy for one to clear one’s head. This is a record that’s as easy to completely immerse oneself in as it is to throw on as background music, as enticing on a long journey as it is lying in bed with no light but that of an overcast day peeking through half-closed blinds, the last bits of light trying to hold on as Untitled #8’s final crescendo takes hold.

• Key Track: “Untitled #1 (Vaka)”

Pink Floyd – The Wall
“…we came in?” Recommending an introduction to Pink Floyd is no easy task, what with so much quality material from which to choose. For me, it came down to three. I could have chosen the classic, the go-to album when people want to hear Floyd at their best, the infallible Dark Side of the Moon. Or I could have picked what I believe is their strongest collection of individual songs, Wish You Were Here. But I went the ambitious route, and I did so because of how well the narrative in this concept album has retained its relevancy over three decades. For those unfamiliar (sans perhaps hearing “Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2” or “Comfortably Numb” out of context), the story focuses on a young rock star (variably named Pink Floyd and Floyd Pinkerton) whose life has dealt him a hefty share of trauma (from parents to teachers to substance abuse) that cause him to build a metaphorical wall around himself to prevent further experiences. Without giving it away, I will say that the rest involves some pretty wicked drug trips [slash] delusions of grandeur. While the two aforementioned songs are among Floyd’s best known, it really takes a full-album listen to understand why Roger Waters is rallying against the education system and being shot up with tranquilizers. On the surface, The Wall is a decent collection of songs; digging deeper, it’s a frighteningly poignant depiction of self-imposed retreat from the world’s threats. “Isn’t this where…”

• Key Track: “Goodbye Blue Sky”

Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
I have to admit, I’m not from this album’s titular state. I’ve only set foot inside it a handful of times, and in all but one case those feet have remained inside the confines of O’Hare International Airport. Still, I know more about the Land of Lincoln than any other state not named Ohio or New Jersey, and I can attribute a good deal of that to Mr. Stevens’ invitation to come on feel the Illinoise. Sufjan traverses through the state at a brisk pace over the course of the record’s twenty-two tracks (of which about two-thirds are proper songs), covering everything from the obvious (Abe Lincoln) to the eccentric (UFO sightings) to the just plain messed up (John Wayne Gacy). Regardless of the subject matter he tackles, Stevens shows great depth as a songwriter and performer, running the gamut of emotion miles farther than such an seemingly mundane theme would appear to lend itself to. Still, Stevens’ best moments are minimalist ones—the single-note piano throughout the opening track, for example, or the hauntingly subdued, fingerpicked guitar on “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” Even as Sufjan’s catalogue grows more expansive and more varied, Illinois retains its place at the top of the list, a mainstay for longtime fans and a jumping-off point for newbies.

• Key Track: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”

Yesterday, I heard Sufjan Stevens’ new record, courtesy of NPR.  ”Impossible Soul”, while 25 minutes long, is worth every second of your ears’ attention, and is in the running for my top song of the year.  Incredible on every level.

Today, I heard one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful records that has crossed my ears in some time.  Then I played it again.  And again.  And again.  I can’t remember ever playing a record four times in a row upon first hearing it.  Perfume Genius (who is really one man, Mike Hadreas) combines elements of other artists I’ve fallen in love with this year (S. Carey and Maximilian Hecker, to name a couple) and kicks them up a number of hefty notches.  This is something special.

I came to Athens a year ago.  That year was spent driving to and from work, visiting parents and out-of-town friends on weekends, and walking around uptown whenever I needed to get out of the apartment.  Throughout it all, I discovered that living in a college town after graduation can get old pretty quickly.  Then I moved.  A mile outside of the city limits was all it took to change my perspective.  While at first I was afraid that narrow, winding country roads would make less-than-desirable walking paths, I decided to give it a shot anyway–besides, my only other option was to drive into town and walk the same streets I had memorized since last fall.  So I laced up my walking shoes (which are actually my old running shoes, and are getting to the point where I need to invest in new ones), queued up my iPod to The Narrative’s self-titled LP, and set off into the unknown.

“Walk on, the dust will lift from the ground and settle into new found comfort in your empty space.”

My apartment complex lies just off a four-lane highway, but I turned the other way and headed down a nearby township road.  I was amazed at how quickly the noise dissipated and I found myself in my own world, taking strides down a lane and a half of gravel pressed into tar, lined with trees that every so often opened up into expansive fields and freshly-mowed lawns, beyond which the foothills of the Appalachians rolled into the horizon.  The roadsides were littered not with beer cans, but with pine needles and the occasional buckeye.  Over every peak and around every blind corner, new beautiful landscapes were uncovered.  The road meandered down a hill, tunneling through the forest’s canopy, and opened up alongside train tracks, those we always knew were somewhere, whose riders’ ghostly whistles wisped into my bedroom window as I lied awake in the wee hours, bringing the same nightly comfort, the same reminder that the world outside still existed, that I had felt since I first lived alongside the railroad my junior year of college.  Eventually, the road turned sharply, crossed the tracks and beelined through fields back to civilization.  I wanted nothing to do with it; I turned back and retraced my steps through the woods.

“So, baby, this is freedom.”

I returned home without feeling choked from car exhaust, without having suffered the stares and heckles of drunken undergrads.  I saw only one other walker and three drivers on my journey, and I couldn’t have been happier.

http://www.myspace.com/thenarrative

As my first year as a teacher comes to an end, I find myself feeling that same excitement.  So it’s only fitting, I suppose, that yesterday after work I revisited one of my favorite high school summer albums.

The Ataris have been my favorite band since I first heard this record a couple years after its 1999 release.  I don’t remember where I heard of them, but I remember listening to about half of Blue Skies on the drive home from Best Buy in my mom’s van, then running upstairs when we got home to finish it on my bedroom stereo.  And it became the anthem to my high school years, because the songs spoke to me like nothing else had before.  Who hasn’t had a perfect dream about a girl, only to wake up and hate even more that you’re not with her?  Who hasn’t been in the “best friend” situation, wanting her to break up with her boyfriend so you can comfort her, because he’s a jerk and you know you’re so much better for her?  The epitome of teen angst, I tell you!  And then there were the lyrics so profound (“If you think you’ve found that one / that you really love / make sure they love you back.”) that they became enshrined in the way that so many great verses did: as LiveJournal entry subjects.  Some songs even found their way into plans for amateur movies–”The Last Song I Will Ever Write About a Girl” became the soundtrack to a screenplay about broken hearts (but no blue skies) written and almost filmed by one of my best friends.  Underneath it all, though, there were some words of wisdom here that I never bothered to take away from this until now:

Don’t give up fighting ’til nothing else stands in your way.
Don’t give up talking until there’s nothing left to say
But no matter what you do.
Don’t ever compromise what you believe.  –”Losing Streak”

It’s up to you
To decide for yourself what is wrong and what is right
And know that we all make mistakes, there’s always time
To turn your life around and change
All the wrong decisions that you’ve made.  –”Answer:”

It’s strange how, retrospectively, one album can capture a particular time so well when, at the time, it was just another CD in my booklet.  There are others I listened to more often, and others I would have said at the time I enjoyed more thoroughly, but looking back on it, San Dimas high school football ruled, your boyfriend sucked, and life made no sense.  Kris Roe got it right.

http://www.myspace.com/theataris

The positive thing in all of this is that a 90-degree day with the sun beating down on treeless sidewalks calls for some serious summer tunes.

Jónsi (Jón Þór Birgisson), better known as the guitarist, vocalist, and linguistic inventor for post-rock powerhouse Sigur Rós, has gone solo, and the result is magical.  On his debut album, Go (whose title is presumably taken from a number of lines in its opening track, including the apt “go do endless summers”), Jónsi takes the blips of pop sensibility that always seemed to be desperately trying to poke through Sigur Rós’ crescendos and fleshes them out into one of the happiest albums I’ve heard all year.  And as an added twist, the Icelandic Jónsi spends most of the album crooning in heavily-accented English–something which was first presented in Sigur Rós’ Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust and on which I have yet to decide my stance.  On one hand, it’s nice to know what he’s talking about, but on the other, Icelandic (as well as Jónsi’s made-up “Vonlenska”, or “Hopelandic”, dialect) has the uncanny ability to make the simplest phrases resound with beauty.  Two tracks on the album, “Kolniður” and closer “Hengilás”, are sung in his native tongue, giving the listener a flavor of each, as well as a familiarity for those who crossed over from Sigur Rós with him.  The album can be streamed in its entirety at http://www.jonsi.com/go.

Musicians Graham Wright, Luke Lalonde, Will Curie, Dean Marino, and Jason Sadlowski (of Tokyo Police Club, Born Ruffians, Will Curie & The Country French, Ex-po, and Jay Sad, respectively) collaborated to create a project they simply call NOVELS.

The great thing about this little five song collection isn’t necessarily the music itself (although it is comprised of some wonderful little pop songs, all written and recorded in a single twenty-four hour studio session), but the story behind the record’s release.  According to the band,

NOVELS won’t be sold in CD stores, on the internet, or anywhere else.  Instead, we’ll give them away, or put them places.  Maybe you’ll find a copy sitting on a park bench.  Maybe a masked man will hand you one as he passes you on the street.  Maybe none of these things will happen.  But we’ll make sure that everyone gets a chance to listen if they want to.

They go on to invite listeners to do just that–burn multiple copies of the album, and give them to people.  Make their day with some free, uplifting tunes.  Take pictures and send them to the band, they’ll post them on their blog.  Everyone’s utility is increased.  I think I’m going to do this around Athens this summer, because heaven knows this place could use some happiness.  If you’d like to partake around your own town (and I highly encourage it), the album can be downloaded for free from the band’s website, http://www.okaynovels.com/.

Health and sensory benefits aside, the reason I love taking walks is that they allow me the opportunity to listen (and I mean really listen) to music. No distractions, just pure aural enjoyment flowing through my (hopefully soon to be upgraded) iPod earbuds. While I will sometimes revisit old favorites, most of this time is dedicated to discovering new (to me) albums. Said albums may have been highly recommended by friends, may be an attempt to expand my musical horizons, or they may simply have had cool cover art that led me to check them out. Whatever the case, I will post what I listen to here in a segment I call “While I Was Walking”. Flashy name, eh? As soon as I think of something better, I’ll rename it. I promise. Maybe.

So here goes. Episode one.

Today I listened to Béla Fleck’s album Throw Down Your Heart (Tales from the Acoustic Planet Vol. 3:  The Africa Sessions).  For those unfamiliar with Fleck, he is a world-renowned musician known for weaving the banjo into a number of musical genres.  On this album, which is more of a soundtrack to the documentary of the same name, he traveled through Africa and played with a host of local musicians while searching for the roots of the instrument he has mastered.

He performed here last year alongside some of the African musicians on this record, and after hearing this album I regret not attending.  There’s some gorgeous instrumentation on this record, and it’s made me more interested in branching out into the various realms of world music.

http://www.belafleck.com

http://www.throwdownyourheart.com/

This blog is called “Road Signs and Rock Songs” for two reasons: (1) I was listening to the song of the same name by The Ataris when I decided to start it, and (2) I envisioned writing, aside from poetry and prose, about two things. Namely, music and travel. Aside from one poorly-drafted road trip diary and a smattering of music posts, that vision hasn’t seen any daylight. My attempt at actually doing that begins now.

Today I present two songs by The Rural Alberta Advantage, a band that I really got into last year when I first heard their debut full-length Hometowns. I was drawn to their sound by a number of things: the carefree (but certainly not careless), off-key, Jeff Magnum-esque vocals; the lyrical imagery of exactly what one would expect from the band’s name; the a capella bits(!); and the helter-skelter, almost jazzy (and never, ever forgiving) rhythm section. Re: the imagery, rural Alberta sounds like a wonderful place, and while they seem sad to have invariably left it, nostalgia makes great tunes sometimes.

The first song opens the album and would be, I suppose, their signature, the history of the RAA finely condensed into a three-and-a-half minute ballad. It’s the first song I heard by these guys, and the one that drew me to have high expectations for the rest of the record (which were overwhelmingly exceeded). The second has been on repeat every humid evening since I first heard it (with the exception of when I’m playing The Hold Steady, but that’s for another post), and showcases the RAA’s more reserved, albeit no less idealistically reminiscent, side. Musically enticing and lyrically concise, this record brings together a sense of longing, of the highs and lows of a place you once knew, into neat little pop-folk packages. The only thing that irks me about it is the way its thirteen songs seem like nine or ten; the best ones are far too short and a few toward the end run together. Nonetheless, it’s become one of my newer favorites and has earned a pretty frequent rotation spot in my collection.

“The Ballad of the RAA”

“In the Summertime”

http://www.theraa.com/

50		Ryan Adams Heartbreaker (2000)
49		The Lawrence Arms Oh! Calcutta! (2006)
48		Josh Ritter The Animal Years (2006)
47		The Fray How to Save a Life (2005)
46		The Starting Line Say It Like You Mean It (2002)
45		Damien Rice O (2003)
44		Something Corporate North (2003)
43		The Format Dog Problems (2006)
42		Cauterize So Far From Real (2003)
41		Rise Against Siren Song of the Counter Culture (2004)
40		The Movielife Forty Hour Train Back to Penn (2003)
39		A Wilhelm Scream Ruiner (2005)
38		Nightmare of You Nightmare of You (2005)
37		Copeland Beneath Medicine Tree (2003)
36		The Juliana Theory Love (2003)
35		Stars In Our Bedroom After the War (2007)
34		Modest Mouse Good News for People Who Love Bad News (2004)
33		Panic! At the Disco A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out (2005)
32		Iron and Wine The Shepherd’s Dog (2007)
31		Alkaline Trio Good Mourning (2003)
30		Saves the Day Stay What You Are (2001)
29		Brand New The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (2006)
28		Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)
27		Yellowcard Ocean Avenue (2003)
26		Taking Back Sunday Tell All Your Friends (2002)
25		Say Anything …Is a Real Boy (2004)
24		Minus the Bear Menos el Oso (2005)
23		Jimmy Eat World Bleed American (2001)
22		The National Boxer (2007)
21		Blink-182 Blink-182 (2003)
20		The Postal Service Give Up (2003)
19		Белые Флаги Зажигайте Медленно Даже если пролетариат возьмет власть в свои руки, весна все равно достанется нам, а цели войны останутся целями войны (2008)
18		Bright Eyes Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)
17		Emery The Weak’s End (2004)
16		Dustin Kensrue Please Come Home (2007)
15		Death Cab for Cutie Plans (2005)
14		Thrice The Artist in the Ambulance (2003)
13		Sundowner Four One Five Two (2007)
12		Fall Out Boy Take This to Your Grave (2003)
11		Brand New Deja Entendu (2003)
10		Jack’s Mannequin Everything in Transit (2005)
9		The Weakerthans Reconstruction Site (2003)
8		Mae The Everglow (2005)
7		Sufjan Stevens Illinois (2005)
6		The Hold Steady Boys and Girls in America (2006)
5		Thursday Full Collapse (2001)
4		Bon Iver For Emma, Forever Ago (2008)
3		Death Cab for Cutie Transatlanticism (2003)
2		Sigur Rós ( ) (2002)
1		Bright Eyes I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005)