Another Music List

OK, so I'm real excited for this one. This will be a list of my favourite albums and I'll throw in a few sentences to summarize and kind of review each. Perhaps the most difficult thing I've put together this year, I hope it's good. Enjoy.

11. Business Up Front/Party In The Back by Family Force 5
- What better way to start than with a party? Perhaps the most lighthearted, shameless, plain old fun album I own, this has something for everybody, whether it be heavy guitar licks, catchy, rappy lyrics, or an overriding sense of childlike fun. This band is a gem.

10. Robbers & Cowards by Cold War Kids
- Just plain brilliant. This band's singer possesses one of the most unique, inimitable voices in rock music. The fusion of old-school jazzy influences with modern indie sensibilities makes for one heck of an enjoyable experience.

9. Funeral by The Arcade Fire
- Sad, yet full of life, this album is a smörgåsbord of styles, ranging from classical to ballroom to indie pop. It's an acquired taste, but for those who fell in love from the start (such as myself), there is always something new to be found here.

8. Brother, Sister by mewithoutYou
- Lyrical perfection defines this album. Love him or hate him, Aaron Weiss manages to touch a chord with listeners and his bandmates provide an excellent backdrop for his half-sung, half-shouted, half-spoken (Yes, it is possible. Shut up.) words. This is essential.

7. OK Computer by Radiohead
- I'm limiting myself to just one Radiohead album, so I'll go with this one. Although all their records are different and brilliant in their own individual right, if you put a gun to my head and made me decide, I'd say this one is best. Nobody does rock like Radiohead. I can only dream of making music like this...

6. No Sir, Nihilism is Not Practical by Showbread
- The lone screamo project to make it onto this list, Showbread does so by sheer creativity and diversity. I've never heard anything like this album. Brilliant lyrics, brilliant music, brilliant performance. If nothing, one must at least appreciate this band's fearlessness and creativity.

5. Franz Ferdinand by Franz Ferdinand
- For a long time, these guys were my favourite band and they easily are in my top five now. The mixture of pop accessibility with angular, old-school guitars and Alex Kapranos' beautiful voice makes for an almost perfect record. Sheer perfection. It's only this low on the list because of the strange, disturbing song "Michael."

4. Z by My Morning Jacket
- Called "The American Radiohead" by some, My Morning Jacket puts forth an excellent effort here. Very original, very catchy (in their own strange way), and very high-quality, I do not get tired of this. The words are excellent.

3. Ágætis Byrjun by Sigur Rós
- Just plain gorgeous, this album never ever ever gets old. It gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it. Not to hear this band's lush, string-heavy, atmospheric sound is criminal. I can't even describe it properly. It just needs to be heard.

2. The Earth is Not a Cold, Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky
- Another incredibly beautiful work, this is less melancholy than Sigur Ros and a bit more hopeful-sounding. Completely instrumental, this music can be fit to a variety of moods and maybe that's why it is the most-played album on my computer. This is the classical music of our day, and it's a shame more people don't know about them.

1. Cotton Teeth by The Snake The Cross The Crown
- This was tough to put ahead of The Earth Is Not... but since this list is off of how I feel right now, I'll put it up here, because right now, this is definitely my favourite album. I absolutely love the world-weary feel (probably because I am right now mired in finals) and often easygoing instrumentation of this album. Lots of brilliant acoustic work with a singer's voice and delivery perfectly matched to the melancholy lyrics. It sounds quite blue-collar, easy to relate to. The perfect fusion of country and rock (thankfully with rock overwhelmingly prevalent), this record is a shining light for me. It somehow manages to be catchy and unforgettable, while also deep and meaningful. Buy it and listen to it until you die.

There isn't enough I can do by myself

I was thinking about life and stuff and how some people kind of strike out or get just plain unlucky. So I wrote a poem that kind of expresses how I feel. This one's for the down-and-outs: may you never be ignored.

Squinting sadly toward the sunset

Sucking on his cigarette

He’s lonely and unloved much like his college years

The families all have moved away

Left dusty trails and unshoed bays

They never thought again of him or shed a tear

As he reaches into his coat

He pulls out a jagged old note

Wond’ring how the world so quickly got away from him

And oh, how we all knew

This would eventually happen to one of us

And we all breathed a sigh of relief

That it was Jim and not us that turned out this way

He knows just what this trail holds

Gradually just growing old

And every single time he thinks of it he cries

The bright glad sun it cheers him not

He savors every gloomy thought

Although he wishes they would all just go away

We never knew what came of him

We all just figured poor old Jim

Had done disappeared into the bitter past

And oh, how we all knew

That he would eventually lose himself

And we all breathed a sigh of relief

That we had gone through school and turned out okay

Well, you will imagine my surprise

When Jim appeared before my eyes

One cold fall afternoon around dinnertime

His beard is grey with blistered lips

Cold as wintry fingertips

He looks like something straight out of a book

Life rolls like an avalanche

Jim’s was fast approaching death

It’s a shame he never knew what it could have been

And oh, how we all knew

That life’s bounty isn’t given equally

And we all breathed a sigh of relief

When we all got a liberal portion

P.S. Brian, I want to set this to music, so you better get practicing that acoustic of yours. ;)

The Evolution of Andrew's Nickname

This is too good a story not to be written somewhere. It's kind of embarrassing for me, but whatever. I think it's funny, too.

Being a Gjefle, I've been dubbed with a number strange nicknames over the years, usually related to my unusually-spelled surname. I expected no less going into college, but what has happened this year quite exceeds anything that has yet happened. People here often pronounce my last name "jeffles," which is quite common for me. It's quite prevalent, too; it's probably what people call me more than any other name. So it was no surprise when my friend Chelsea called me that early in the year. No big deal, right? Well, my other friend, Kip, misheard her and thought it sounded like she said "chuckles." So he thought that sounded funny and for most of this school year, Chuckles has caught on and I am now called so by a good number of folks (keep in mind that none of this bothers me; I just think it's funny). Well lately, due to laziness or simply a strange sense of humor, my RA has simply shortened it to Chuck. Now this I find quite funny. My nickname has gone from a strange last name to a bastardization of that same surname to an utterly unrelated word to an actual name. Funny how things like that work.

...though I think I still would have preferred Jonny Awesome. XD

School's a Pain

So I'm stupid and stuff and found out that I have a term paper due tomorrow. Oh, and I'm only like half done with it. Hooray for me.