Michael Silvestre's Super Sincere Blog

onemanbandstand:

I wrote about the time I tried to kill myself for The Rumpus. It was a pretty intense time, as you can imagine. No album has ever stunned me like Cash’s American IV, it obsessed me so entirely. And then it left me, it became a stand-in for this entire period. To this day, I haven’t listened to it again. I’ve tried listening to individual songs, but can’t get through them without breaking down in tears. Maybe someday I’ll listen to it again, and write about that. This felt really good to write.The ability to put a narrative on a traumatic element of your life is one of writing’s greatest rewards.

This was really special to read. The Legend of Johnny Cash might be one of those “albums that saved my life” and it’s really great to know someone else has a similar experience with Cash. While I also wouldn’t say listening to his music took me away from the negative space I was trapped in, Cash made those feelings more digestible. I have a particular fondness for “A Boy Named Sue”, if only because it showed some laughing wrinkles on Cash’s beaten down face and, supplemented with “Ring of Fire”, provided a figure for me that I could observe both living and engaging with the darkness in their life.

(via likeapairofbottlerockets)

likeapairofbottlerockets:

attackondemand:

There’s obviously something in the loudness and pulsing rhythms that makes Japandroids’ songs so visceral and energetic, but I think what really gets me going about their stuff is the way their songwriting is so trance-like and repetitive (and might I dare say, ruminative). I sometimes think that Japandroids have more similarities with regard to electronic music than the rock past their songs salute. They take a really great lyrical hook andreplay it through the majority of the song, and as tedious as this might sound, they can always make whatever words they write feel incredibly empowering (and ultimately irrelevant). I guess this is something I’ve thought a lot about lately when I hear “Get Lucky” on the radio. Those lyrics are incredibly stupid, but hearing them becomes this borderline mystic experience. I wonder if “we’re up all night to get lucky” means anything to Pharrell at this point.

This is something I don’t hear people say a lot about “garage rock” or similar music, that it’s less about watching some guys “jam” badly on guitar, or even about catchy songwriting, and more about losing yourself in the music, which is why being at a garage rock show of a decent band isn’t too different from being at a rave listening to a decent DJ. Maybe there are different substances involved and a somewhat different atmosphere but they both serve the same purpose: getting out of your head and into your body and forgetting about whatever you need to let go of. 

(Source: Spotify)

There’s obviously something in the loudness and pulsing rhythms that makes Japandroids’ songs so visceral and energetic, but I think what really gets me going about their stuff is the way their songwriting is so trance-like and repetitive (and might I dare say, ruminative). I sometimes think that Japandroids have more similarities with regard to electronic music than the rock past their songs salute. They take a really great lyrical hook andreplay it through the majority of the song, and as tedious as this might sound, they can always make whatever words they write feel incredibly empowering (and ultimately irrelevant). I guess this is something I’ve thought a lot about lately when I hear “Get Lucky” on the radio. Those lyrics are incredibly stupid, but hearing them becomes this borderline mystic experience. I wonder if “we’re up all night to get lucky” means anything to Pharrell at this point.

This song is a perfect example of all this, and I love how it never makes any obvious movements. It exhausts the same lyrics and keeps to the same rhythm pattern through the entire song. When progression is made, it occurs during subtle developments: the echoing anguished vocals, the ebb and flow of the drums. Once they reach complete chaos at the end, you don’t even realize how soft the song started.  The song ends abruptly during the song’s clearest “payoff” and once it stops, they completely obliterate this brooding environment they’ve constructed. Such an excellent teasing of “the drop” couldn’t have come without some serious electronic music listening.

(Source: Spotify)

Never would have thought this would become a go-to comfort album for me…

(Source: Spotify)

likeapairofbottlerockets:

thelastgreatpoolparty:

When was the last time you heard this song? Do you remember how good it is?

Yes this album is so great. 

(Source: Spotify)

That time I graduated from college and the commencement speaker closed his speech by quoting “Ignition (Remix)”.

"You mean the generation that paid three times as much for college to enter a job market with triple the unemployment isn’t interested in purchasing the assets of the generation who just blew an enormous housing bubble and kept it from popping through quantitative easing and out-and-out federal support? Curious."

When comments are better than the article, Atlantic edition (“The Cheapest Generation: Why Millennials arent’ buying cars or houses, and what that means for the economy”)

GPOY: explaining to my confused mother about how purchasing a house is literally the last thing I care about ever doing.

(Source: bostonreview, via angelawublog)

he’ll yeah

(Source: thedorseyshawexperience, via likeapairofbottlerockets)

likeapairofbottlerockets:

this is life/this is living/this is life/this is living

This album gets an automatic reblog always forever.

(Source: Spotify)