Before: I don't think that name has even passed within an acre of my ears.
After: Huh! Very unexpected!
I think they're foreign. (After research: They're not.) And the supporting sounds are like a blizzard with snowflakes whose edges are icy sharp. This is rock, right?
The singer sounds like a jeep wibbling and wobbling over an uphill gravel path. In the dark woods. In a serious, intense place like South Dakota. Or Minnesota. Up there.
I like how unexpected the songs are- the length of one I just heard must've been less than 2 minutes long.
"Perfect Example" has the perfect mixture of chords and whispers to transport me to another place. It reminds me of R.E.M. (now that I've read their biography, ...duh!) but covers me with a musical embrace not unlike Radiohead or the Goo Goo Dolls. For that moment, I felt the 90's punk sound just lift me up into a sensitive state. That was very unexpected. But it was so nice, so dear, in the way that honestly connecting with a new friend can feel. Or how it feels to crack a barrier into vulnerability.
Here's my "Perfect Example" fantasy:
I'm a girl and he's a boy and we wear a lot of black. We feel an acute confusion and sadness (but not anger) stemming from lack of acceptance in society and furthermore instability because we are so unsure about who we are and where we are accepted. We listen to this song while we're sitting side by side at some neglected bus stop and feel the reverberations pulse through our tortured teenage souls. Then, when the majority of the song has been absorbed by our pale skin, we raise our lowered heads incrementally until we see each other's eyes and observe the other's face for a minute. Not judging, just looking. Then we leave the bus stop without a word, walking in step, our loneliness trailing in our wake because we've found each other and understanding is more abundant than air. Then some (very monochromatic) indie romance ensues. The end.
"Books about UFOs" made me chuckle even before I heard lyrics because the sound was so much more jovial than the previous songs. Come to think of it, the songs definitely morphed from an aggressively edgy feel to a more welcoming tone. The rock aspect is maintained throughout the album although the layers closer to the surface vary. Huh, haven't thought of music quite like that yet.
Their influence on punk was pretty major, so once again I'm grateful I was able to learn about musical history.
One more thing: I doubt I'll ever reach the #1 album- this project is too enormous, too time-intensive to even think about truly completing. But for me, it's not about that. It's about learning as much as I can, not about becoming a music historian.
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