octoberxswimmer

I was listening to a Stone Temple Pilots Pandora radio station on my drive to Long Island last night. They were getting into some heavy hits there. In retrospect, the 90s were so underrated. While the 90s were happening I thought it was one of the worst decades to ever exist. But isn't that the case with every generation? We're always nostalgic for the decades that precede us. I remember being obsessed with the 60s when I was little. I wanted nothing more than to wear bell bottoms and listen to The Beatles and Grateful Dead. We like to package our history up in neat little boxes with bows. It wasn't all peace, love and happiness. But isn't that what Woody Allen was getting at with Midnight in Paris? That we won't know what matters in our current time period until after the fact. He suggested we live in the present as much as we can and worry about what is canonized years later.

So I guess some time has passed since the 90s. But I still wonder why I had to come of age in a decade that had wide-leg jeans made by Jnco? Do you remember those awful UFO pants the ravers used to wear? To this day, I've never been to a rave. And that "scene" is still relevant today in whatever distorted form it is in now. Dubstep? Drum and bass? Does techno even exist anymore? The UK series Skins always depicted "raves" with Crystal Castles performing. I would be really into that. Though, I think I'll stay away from the ecstasy or MDMA.

I made a 90s Pandora radio station because one of my favorite bands from the 90s is playing a super small venue on Long Island at the end of the summer. Stone Temple Pilots. I would love to see them in such an intimate space. Even if they haven't been relevant in twenty years. Scott Weiland is still one of my favorite heroin junkies of the 90s. It's tied with Kurt Cobain and of course Courtney Love. The first concert I ever been to was Lynyrd Skynyrd and Bad Company. I was probably around eight years old. Actually the year was 1988. I was five going on six years old (thanks internet!). I remember being on my father's shoulders during "Free Bird" and I remember sleeping on the floor at some point. But the first concert I ever wanted to go to was Stone Temple Pilots and I begged my father to take me. They were playing Nassau Coliseum. It was 1996 (thanks again internet!). Freshmen year of high school. My father took me, my girlfriend and my sister. It was a good time. I remember my sister sneaking off to smoke cigarettes with someone she knew from school. Local H opened up. I became a loyal fan of theirs for awhile. My father even bought us all "bootleg" t-shirts in the parking lot. I cherished mine until the print started to fade more and more with each wash. At some point in high school I got my hands on an authentic long-sleeved shirt from that tour. I think it was an ex-girlfriend's. She went legitimately insane so she probably doesn't remember I took it. That Tiny Music tour shirt still exists somewhere. In my father's attic? In his garage? I wouldn't give that shirt up to The Salvation Army. It was memorabilia. That shirt has a lot of history attached to it. I am a very nostalgic person, who probably spends too much time in the past (sorry Woody Allen!). I like artifacts from my past. It reminds me that I do exist, that I had a history like everyone else. I sometimes feel like a ghost, leaving no impression or influence in the material world.

I saw Stone Temple Pilots play one last time. It was a radio station festival in Boston. I had some older friends who were already out of high school that could drive. With my bleached blonde spiked hair we went on that trip. My best friend would wake up in the middle of the night and piss in the refrigerator thinking it was a bathroom because she was so drunk from the night before. We didn't have general admission tickets, but that didn't stop us from jumping the barricade and getting in there anyway. It was a good time. Stone Temple Pilots broke up at some point and Scott Weiland released a solo record titled 12 Bar Blues. I was obsessed with this album. It was everything to me. I saw him perform at 92.3 Dysfunctional Family Picnic at Jones Beach. I remember a friend got me up to the front row for his performance. I was shake shaking from joy. My friends and I had tickets for a proper gig of his at Irving Plaza just a few days later. We all jump on the LIRR. Subway it to Union Square and walk over to the venue super early, hoping to catch a glimpse of Scott Weiland. What we caught was signs posted all over Irving Plaza's windows and doors stating the show was canceled. Bummed more than anything. We ask around, and we are informed that Scott Weiland was arrested for trying to score heroin. (To imagine a world without Twitter, smartphones or even a cell phone! We actually had to ask someone on the street.) Somehow we convince one of the tour buses to give us some Scott Weiland merch and they do. For free. It didn't help ease the bum factor but I would wear that shirt every day, even it was three sizes too big. He never rescheduled that show and I never got to see him play every song off that record like I wanted him to.

The other night I was listening to that same 90s station and Red Hot Chili Peppers came on. It was "Under the Bridge." To this day that song depresses me. It depressed me before I even knew what depression was. It was 1992. Twenty years (yes that was two decades ago!) later, I hear this song and I am transported back to 1992. It was all over the radio; it was impossible to escape. I remember sitting in the back of my friend's mom's van and this song came on. It was dark out. I remember staring out the window, feeling this song as best as I could. It made me feel something I couldn't explain. A sense of longing. Now, in 2012 I'm longing for something different. Perhaps for those simpler times. I'm longing for that moment of contemplation; where I could space out and watch the world pass by me while in the backseat of a van. I can't remember the last time I was able let go like that. I know at the time I didn't realize how special this specific moment was, I'm sure I had my ten year old fears and troubles running through my mind. I just remember connecting with the melody of the song. I remember connecting with the sentiment. I remember relating to its sadness. The other night when I heard this song, tears welled up in my eyes. I realized there's something about this song that pulls me towards it. It pulls at heartstrings I didn't think I had. And it's a Red Hot Chili Peppers song! This is a band you don't really equate tears and emotion with. You're even a little embarrassed admitting you like them. I haven't heard it in years and when it comes on I feel this deep sadness. This sense of longing. Nostalgic but also very present. There's something about "Under the Bridge" that affected me. It affected me in 1992 and it affects me now in 2012.

There's something about this period of time. The 90s have shaped me into what I am today. Music in the 90s captured the feeling of a generation that was so despondent, depressed and dejected. Those three Ds. But where did this melancholia originate from? Were the 80s that bad? In my hazy memory of them, it seemed to be a very narcissistic decade. Lots of drugs, neon colors, big hair and songs to dance and party to. At least Bret Easton Ellis's depiction of it in American Psycho was very self-indulgent. As a culture, was the 90s the comedown from the 80s? Were the 80s filled with lines of cocaine and bright colors and the 90s was the disillusioned consequence of too much partying? A generation of children eating up a depressed culture? HIV/AIDS was an epidemic in the 80s. Wasn't John Lennon assassinated in 1980? A lot of people experienced a lot of death. It only makes sense for a decade like the 80s to precede the 90s. In the 90s music evolved into something dark and self-reflective. We became despondent and alienated. We were listening to artists that were able to see the transition from the 80s to 90s. They were creating music from their own experiences. There were bands like Red Hot Chili Peppers or even Lisa Loeb who were writing these sad songs that were being played all over the radio. The 90s were so melancholic. There were other generations writing sad music but the 90s didn't hide its depression. It wore it on its sleeve, in the lyrics, in the sound, in the melody. It wasn't obvious either. It was an interpretation of depression. It became a prominent part of our culture.

In 1993, a year after "Under the Bridge" was released I bought my first record with my own money. It was Counting Crows' August and Everything After. Forget "Mr. Jones" think of "Round Here." "Round Here" was the song I connected with. For Christmas I asked for Nirvana's In Utero and it really struck a chord in my (sad) heart. I can still remember the video for "Scentless Apprentice" so clearly. Smashing Pumpkins released Siamese Dream that summer. How many times did you hear "Today" on the radio? This melancholia was widespread. Through many different genres of music. Think about how different Counting Crows and Nirvana are. But they were both writing really sad fucking music. The next year I remember hearing Lisa Loeb's "Stay" for the first time at Hershey Park on a Boy Scout trip. The video was playing on the televisions they have while you wait on line for one of the rides. It was a water ride. The entire day was overcast and it was just getting dark. There weren't as many people around, so the line was really short. I remember seeing six televisions playing this same video for no one. I was weaving through the maze of a line. A line for no one but me and this cute girl with glasses was singing this sad song while I made my way to the entrance of the ride. I'll never forget that eerie moment. That same year Hole released Live Through This and I remember the video for "Doll Parts" haunted me. This was also the year of Kurt Cobain's suicide and Kristen Pfaff's (bassist of Hole) death. Not only was the 90s internalizing the death and depression of the 80s but one of the artists that defined the 90s was now dead. This same year Elizabeth Wurtzel's memoir Prozac Nation came out. I didn't read it then, but in high school I did. We were becoming a nation of pill poppers to alleviate the symptoms of a culture that was depressed. We sought relief in music and drugs. We wrote songs that sounded the way we felt and not just lyrically, but in tone and melody. I blame the 80s for my depressive state. But it was the 90s who taught me how to feel. The 90s taught me alienation and distance. I was self-aware and aware of everything around me. I was the opposite of narcissistic. Whatever that is. Solipsistic? We were all trapped in our own heads, in our own neuroses.

The 90s are back in 2012. The Stone Temple Pilots show in August. I saw Bush perform a few months ago. I just saw The Cranberries play last week at Terminal 5. I'm seeing Garbage play next week. Imperial Teen has a new record out. Heck, I was at the infamous Hole reunion show in Brooklyn last month where Patty Schemel, Melissa Auf der Maur, Eric Erlandson and Courtney Love all showed up.



Here we are in 2012 and what do we hear on the radio? Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe." Change the station and it's Nicki Minaj's "Starships" serenading you with invitations to go to the beach and drink Bud Light. Are we serious right now? Is this real life? If you scratch the surface, you can actually hear a shift in what's playing on the radio right now. For the first time in years, there are "alternative" artists on the radio. Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know" and fun.'s "We Are Young" are up there in the charts. Both of these songs have a dark and depressive undertone. They also do not rely on laptops to make music, nor do they use autotune. It's a rather rare moment for 2012 but probably not here to stay. There is no rock and roll stations in New York anymore. Yes, our culture has changed. We are living in a digital culture where we can create and personalize our own radio "stations" on Pandora or Last.fm. So, it's not fair to judge the 2010s by radio alone. It's becoming more and more difficult to view a decade, or a generation as a whole. As a culture we are fragmented and splintered off. Subcultures within subcultures. Fragments fragmenting off fragments. It's becoming more and more difficult to generalize an entire generation. But I still feel as if this new generation is just as narcissistic as the 80s. It has been for awhile. YOUtube. MYspace. FACEbook. Even the language is narcissistic. I would like to argue that things are beginning to shift. I'm not sure where. But Lady Gaga has changed the idea of a pop star and what it means to be one. Her "politics" and "authenticity" is new and refreshing and will probably result in a shift in culture we still can't even imagine yet.

Red Hot Chili Peppers- Under the Bridge

This is going to be a quintessential Livejournal entry. This entry will remind you of all the entries you used to read in 2002. When we were all so young. When we were all so fragile. So thirsty. So naive. We created melodrama out of nothing. Our fathers nudging us to mow the lawn. Our mothers asking us about the people we are dating. We come home from a show at the Sahara or the VFW hall and talk about the girls we saw with the tattoos up and down their arms who wore dark eyeliner. Perhaps they didn't have sleeves yet. They probably just started a sleeve. Perhaps they had the Thursday dove. I've met quite a few girls with that same tattoo on various parts of their bodies. I've also met a girl who took Geoff Rickly to her prom. This girl would soon become a really good friend. We would cuddle in her bed and I would meet her at local shows. She would dance to pop songs at gay clubs with me and I would attend her vegan dinner parties. This same girl would take her prom photos with Geoff Rickly at the portrait studio at Target that my best friend used to work at. They looked adorable. I remember getting a wallet-sized photo from her and I cherished it. This was when I was an avid photographer, like everyone else was. I would take pictures from the mosh pit of every show I went to. Getting kicked in the head or thrown on the ground for that one picture. Then there were those photographs we took in the parks on Long Island. Near dunes, oceans or trees. Sometimes we used black and white film, sometimes color. The more advanced photographers would play with color and tone in darkrooms in their parent's garage. I was never any good at taking pictures. But it didn't stop me from snapping photos of Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Finch or Brandtson. I made numerous photo albums full of concerts. No Doubt, Goldfinger, Mindless Self Indulgence. The Anniversary, Dashboard Confessional, Miracle of 86 and The New Amsterdams. I had such an eclectic taste in music. Even back then.

I took pictures to remember. I wanted to remember every show I went to. Thursday at Warsaw in Brooklyn where they sold perogies along with merch. It was one of my favorite venues and Geoff was wearing a Radiohead t-shirt. His slight robotic dance moves that were reminiscent of Ian Curtis, wrapping the microphone cord around and around his arm. I remember driving my 1987 Chrysler Fifth Avenue and parallel parking it on a small claustrophobic street in Greenpoint. I remember swallowing a painkiller on the drive to Brooklyn too. Who was I with? I'll never know. I probably went alone. That happened a lot back then. It happens a lot now. Going to shows solo. Chances are you would run into someone you knew anyway. But nothing would stop you and your music. I might have taken pictures of Geoff screaming into a microphone, sweat dripping down his face, capturing this moment of authentic pain, but I was also documenting my own pain, screaming along with him. I longed for these cathartic moments. I still long for these. In retrospect, I was a documentarian more than anything else. Not a photographer, not a scene boy, not a writer. I yearned for documentation. I longed to create a history for myself. A history I could look back on with a bittersweet smile. I longed for a story to tell my children and my grandchildren. Even if I never really imagined having children. I wanted an attic full of memories. I wanted a basement full of boxes my son or daughter could go through. In the same way I discovered by dad's Beatles and Black Sabbath vinyl. In the same way I found my mother bellbottoms, roach clips and 70s blouses. I longed for a history, a full life. A similar life that my parents lived. I longed for the 60s and 70s and despised the 80s. It was the 90s I was documenting. It was the early aughts, the 2000s I was documenting in any way I could. Photographs, or graffiti on a friend's Myspace. It was in these Livejournal entries I was documenting my living. As much as I could, I would write write write. I wanted my journals to exist in a world. I wanted my narrative, I wanted my story out there. A testament of a life lived. Evidence that I lived a life as full and rich as possible. I always imagined something tragic to happen to me. And I feared there was never going to be enough evidence to justify my death. I wanted to leave my family with a sense of who I was. I wanted to leave artifacts of struggle, pain and those glimpses of happiness. If I wasn't going to leave them with the truth about their son, brother, uncle, friend, who will? When we're alive, we find it hard to be honest with the ones closest to us. Our families are kept in the dark, kept at a distance. But once we expire, they'll learn more about us. Through journals, through our friends and colleagues. Through pictures, text, YouTube clips. They can get a genuine understanding of who we are outside of "son," "uncle," "brother," and "friend."



It's now 2012 and a lot of things have changed. There is no scene anymore. Everything is fragmented and jagged. Long Island went through its ska, punk, hardcore and emo stages. There's nothing left but remnants of all those movements of music. We get the occasional Dave Matthews or Sublime cover band. What inspired this journal entry was spending an evening at The Leaky Lifeboat in Seaford. I don't know much about Seaford, Long Island. I remember back in the 90s I met a dude of an AOL chatroom once who was from there. He picked me up and we drove around my neighborhood and we talked about Radiohead. He was older than me and had very hairy legs which was a turn on for me. Especially being a sixteen year old kid with barely any body hair yet. Anyway, I've been to the Leaky Lifeboat quite a few times. And yes, the bar is named after a Sonic Youth song. Long Island has not been this cool since Brand New was cool. So, it was a big deal that an "alternative" bar actually existed for "alternative" kids. It was a place to go, to avoid the Jersey Shore types. Guido and thugs mostly. Since there was no longer a music scene on Long Island, there had to be a place for those kids to go and the Leaky Lifeboat was it. And now we're all of legal drinking age and beyond. I don't know Leaky's entire origin story. Supposedly some dudes from a Long Island band I never listened to (The Sleeping) opened up the bar. They all seem very attractive whenever I spot them working or making out with girls outside leaning on cars. Bar is successful so they open a vegetarian/vegan restaurant next door to the bar. I'm sold on their brand. Even if the food isn't all that good. The fact that you can order vegetarian nachos and "pork" sliders at 2am on Long Island is a feat in itself. What is this Williamsburg?

So, the other night I'm there celebrating my friend's birthday. Everyone is getting drunk except for me. I guess I'm regressing back to my straight edge ways of the early aughts. I wasn't feeling well. I felt off. Emotionally, mentally, physically. All day I was trying to shake off this cloudy hazy feeling. Even now, as I type this with a cup of coffee beside me, I'm feeling just as hazy and cloudy. I feel as if I'm on the edge of something awful. I'm on the verge of tears or a panic attack. I'm yearning for the shove I need to fall. I need to collapse so I can make sense of all these feelings I'm having. None of it is making sense. I keep attempting to trace these feelings and emotions to their origins but I get lost in the fog. It's ambiguous and vague. The worst kind of anxiety. Anxiety without reason, without a label, without a diagnosis. A generalized depression perhaps. I force myself to converse. My best friend inquires about my mood and I have no answers to give her.

I'm introduced to a girl who lived in Edinburgh for a year. I imagined her living in a castle and seeing Scottish bands play every night at that Frankenstein club both G and I were denied entrance to. That trip to the UK seems like a decade ago. We had so much more passion to see what the world had to offer. How did we ever plan such an epic trip? How did we navigate everything without a smartphone? We were brave ex-lovers, spending an hour trying to open a bottle of red wine without a corkscrew in our room at the bed and breakfast we were staying at. We finally get it open and I pour each of us a glass of wine. It's disgusting. All that work for nothing. But we took pictures of our distress, of our struggle and I remember how it looked pouring the red wine in the white sink. Like a horror movie. A sink full of blood.

Edinburgh girl has a friend who is wearing a sleeveless tee, large-framed glasses and messy hair. She's one of those girls that ugly themselves up to deflect attention from themselves. Either because their really pretty or because they are you know...ugly. In this particular case I think it's the latter. And this isn't me trying to be mean. She is dressed like a lesbian, even though she doesn't like girls in that way. When she talks, she's endearing. I don't understand the muscle tee. I don't understand the glasses. But who am I kidding? I'm the one dressed like it's 1994 in my flannel and Chuck Taylors. The only thing that throws the whole look off is the Ben Sherman baseball cap. There's this other girl I've met a few times through the Birthday Girl. She added me on Facebook after the first night we met. She's sweet. Her boyfriend is hot (in the Bruce-only-thinks-that-kind-of-way) and I'm convinced he's a 'mo. I'm later informed that the dude sitting across from Hot Boyf with the child molester mustache and wearing a button-down is a dude looking to experiment with dudes before he settles down into a relationship. It makes sense why he was barking up Hot Boyf's tree the entire night.

Birthday Girl is drinking Purple Haze. More friends show up. There's this boy in the group who is adorable. I found out a few weeks ago he had cancer a year or so ago. It made him even more adorable in my head. Now all I see is Cancer Survivor when I see him. I imagine him and Laura Linney hanging out on The Big C. But then I remember that's fiction and this is real life. He always wears good jeans that fall below his waist and a pair of high-top sneakers. Someone played Taking Back Sunday's "Bike Scene" on the jukebox. The girl in the tracksuit we all eyed with glaring eyes earlier is singing every word at the top of her lungs. It's not cute. It makes me hate Taking Back Sunday. It makes me hate where I am right now. It's been ten years since that record came out. A decade. It's been ten years since those songs meant something to me. All of those TBS shows. At the Sahara at the Babylon VFW hall. I can't believe that was all ten years ago. So surreal how time passes by.

I'm in the midst of something. I'm irritable irate and cruel. I'm crushing on the bartender and I tell my BFF. She's gorgeous in that non-typical way. The fact that she's tending bar here, with those tattoos, I'm smitten. BFF tells me she also works at Ski Stop. Long Island's own ski and snowboard shop. Now I imagine her in white ear muffs, a white bubble jacket and a purple Burton snowboard. An hour or so later the Snow Bunny is no longer behind the bar but she is hula-hooping like a madwoman near the jukebox while a Foals song plays. She's throwing that hula hoop around like she owns the world it encompasses. I'm enthralled. No one in our party even notices. The BFF nudges me, while I'll stare stare stare. Can this girl get any more attractive?

Leftover vegan chocolate cake from a friend of a friend's bakery is brought in. Boys scarf it down like that scene in Nowhere with Christina Applegate. I wanted to leave two hours ago but the BFF wanted me to stick around with her. Sober Sisters. I told The Boy not to come out to Long Island because I thought it would be an early night. Perhaps it is a good thing he isn't subjected to this horrible mood I found myself in. An Empire of the Sun song comes on and I really dig it. Then J plays Alice in Chains and ruins the dance party. But I blend well with the track. It's his favorite band and it makes me like him more than I already did. The BFF feeds me vegan "pork" sliders she made in her car. She started a new business venture. A vegan food stand called Heirloom. I'm so into these pork sliders it's no joke. Our quick sabbatical from the bar is over and we're back there twiddling our thumbs while everyone around us gets even more drunk. Someone puts on Wavves. It's chill.

I start feeling strange again. Distant, detached. My skin itches and I know I need a haircut. I just want to be home, in bed, watching a bad movie on cable. But I'm here at Leaky and I'm pondering my life. Nothing really has changed since "Tell All Your Friends" came out ten years ago. This realization scares the shit out of me. I try and tell myself, "Self, only on paper it hasn't changed. You're a different human being than you were in 2002." I try to believe myself but it's really hard to convince myself otherwise. I still live in New York. I still have the same job. I'm still pining for the same things. What are those things I'm pining for? Well, I wish I knew. I guess what I'm ultimately pining for is the clarity and lucidity of being a functioning adult. I'm pining to have a goal, an intention. I'm pining for purpose, ambition, hope. I'm still dreaming of compiling all of my writing into something neat and readable. A novel perhaps. There's a humble goal. But I can barely get through writing this journal entry to ever think of the bigger picture. Band members are living their lives. They open a fucking cool bar. Bar does well. They open a fucking vegetarian restaurant. I still feel like that young sweaty emo kid dancing and throwing his fists in the air inside a Thursday mosh pit. Full of self-doubt, disillusionment and dejection. I was all about catharsis and I still am now. Seeking therapy outside of a shrink's couch and yellow legal pad. Fighting off the need to swallow a pill every single morning. I don't want that numbed life again. I don't want to feel that electric shock if I turn my head too fast. I feel stunted. I feel drugged. But it's ten years later and I'm still dealing with the same demons. They might be wearing different masks, their tactics a bit different, but their intention is still the same. Depression. I look around me and everyone seems to be living. I look withing me and I feel stagnant and fear.I still feel inferior to everything and everyone around me. It's like reading T.S. Eliot or Thomas Pynchon and then attempting to write your own work. Nothing good come from this, nothing good could come from me. Now all I hear is that Rilo Kiley song "The Good That Won't Come Out" in my head. See, I can't even refer to something original. I have to refer to another album that came out in 2002. I will end this entry with lyrics to this song because Jenny Lewis gets it.

"Let's get together and talk about the modern age. All of our friends were gathered there with their pets just talking shit about how we're all so upset about the disappearing ground. As we watch it melt. It's all of the good that won't come out of us. And how eventually our hands will just turn to dust. If we keep shaking them, standing here on this frozen lake. I do this thing where I think I'm real sick. But I won't go to doctor to find about it. Because they make you stay real still, in a real small space. As they chart up your insides and put them on display. They'd see all of it, all of me, all of it. All of the good that won't come out of me. And all the stupid lies I hide behind. It's such a big mistake. Lying here in your warm embrace. Oh, you're almost home. I've been waiting for you to come in. Dancing around in your old suits, going crazy in your room again. I think I'll go out and embarrass myself by getting drunk and falling down in the street. You say I choose sadness. That it never once has chosen me. Maybe you're right. Let's talk about all our friends who lost the war. And all the novels that have yet to be written about them. It's all of the good that won't come out of them and all the stupid lies they hide behind. It's such a big mistake standing here on this frozen lake. It's all of the good that won't come out of me and how eventually my mouth will just turn to dust. If I don't tell you quick, standing here on this frozen lake."


(Yes, I took this picture)

Yeah, Go Break My Emo Heart

Download Here

01. American Football- Letters & Packages
02. Jimmy Eat World- Seventeen
03. Mineral- Gjs
04. The Promise Ring- Red & Blue Jeans
05. The Jazz June- Scars To Prove It
06. Further Seems Forever- The Moon Is Down
07. American Football- Never Meant
08. Elliott- Calm Americans
09. Nada Surf- Weightless
10. Small Brown Bike & The Casket Lottery- Riding With Death
11. Death Cab For Cutie- Wait (Secret Stars Cover)
12. Saves The Day- Rocks Tonic Juice Magic
13. Alkaline Trio- Goodbye forever
14. Alkaline Trio- Bleeder
15. Hey Mercedes- The House Shook
16. Hot Rod Circuit- The Power Of The Vitamins
17. Taking Back Sunday- Great Romances Of The Twentieth Century (Demo)
18. Sparta- Collapse
19. Brandtson- Cherokee Red
20. Pop Unknown- Half Of Ninety
21. Brand New- Seventy Times 7
22. Jejune- The Early Stars
23. At The Drive-In- Napoleon Solo
24. The Get Up Kids- Don't Hate Me
25. Death Cab For Cutie- Champagne From A Paper Cup
26. Planes Mistaken For Stars- Copper And Stars
27. Engine Down- Pantomime
28. I Hate Myself- Not Waving But Drowning
29. The Juliana Theory- August In Bethany
30. Boys Night Out- I Got Punched In The Nose For Sticking My Face In Other People's Business
31. Knapsack- Cellophane
32. Jawbox- Static
33. Jawbreaker- Want
34. Braid- Killing A Camera
35. Jawbreaker- Boxcar
36. Sunny Day Real Estate- In Circles
37. Cursive- Warped The Wood Floors
38. Kevin Devine- Cotton Crush
39. Texas Is The Reason- If It's Here When We Get Back, It's Ours
40. The Gloria Record- Tired And Uninspired
41. Thursday- War All The Time (Acoustic)
42. Taking Back Sunday- Cute Without The E (Cut From The Team) (Acoustic)
43. Thursday- A Hole In The World (Acoustic)
44. The Anniversary- The D In Detroit
45. Rainer Maria- Tinfoil
46. Inside- Stumbled On A Penny
47. Secret Stars- Some Sinatra
48. The Lyndsay Diaries- A Farewell To Autumn
49. Dashboard Confessional- The Sharp Hint Of New Tears
50. Piebald- American Hearts

I'm really bummed that Lana Del Rey cancelled her SXSW show. I was looking forward to selling my heart and lungs to get into that show while I was down in Austin. From a girl who is supposedly from New York City, she seems to never play in New York. She did stop by Easy Street Records in Seattle last week and she was actually wearing pants. It threw me off completely. To quote from Lana Del Rey's "Yayo" there "is a tunnel lined with yellow lights" to light up my mood about not seeing her perform. RAC remixed "Blue Jeans." This is a Lana Del Rey remix I can finally get behind. Everything RAC touches turns golden and this is certainly the case with RAC's remix of "Blue Jeans."

Stream it here:
Lana Del Rey - Blue Jeans (RAC Mix) by RAC

Download it here:
Lana Del Rey- Blue Jeans (RAC Remix)

Driving around Brooklyn at 4am with my iPod on shuffle:

Here comes Antony's "Another World." Things are are beginning to deconstruct. There's too much surface we're all skidding and slipping on. There must be an avalanche to surrender these frozen lakes we take part in.

"I need another place. Will there be peace? I need another world. This one's nearly gone. [...] I'm going to miss the sea. I'm going to miss the snow. I'm going to miss the bees. Miss the things that grow. I'm going to miss the trees."

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Here comes Jenny Lewis's "Acid Tongue." She's skating on the same surfaces, a self-confessed "liar." At least within this song. There are holes she's looking to fix. To fill. She goes to a cobbler. But all there is is cobblestone to trip on in Soho. Another surface to avoid truths and depths.

"There's was no snake oil cure for unlucky in love."

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Imogen Heap's "Hide and Seek" comes on to shatter the sounds we're accustomed to. But her vocals are hiding behind auto-tune in a way unlike the radio.

"The dust has only just began to form crop circles in the carpet. Sinking. Feeling."

Carpet. Another surface. This one unique to our homes. Our bedrooms. Soft. Comfortable. Made for bare feet. A luxury. An inch of distance from those hardwood floors. Safe from those structures. Those beams of wood. That sinking. That feeling. The depth of emotion. Pulling us closer to the earth. Gravity always a reminder of how real things can get. How real things are.

"Ransom notes came falling out your mouth. Mid-sweet-talk newspaper word cutouts."

Speak no feeling...you don't care a bit...

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Hooverphonic's "Renaissance Affair" is now playing on my laptop. She sings about floating and never touching the ground. But it's a metaphor for how she feels when she has that certain person within her embrace. Companionship just another distraction from the depths, from the avalanches. The chaos we try and sort and make sense of. We're all looking to organize these feelings. These emotions. Our everyday lives mapped out in seven days.

Download: Hooverphonic- Renaissance Affair

It's such a struggle to be a vampire like myself. I don't know how Bill, Spike and Angel do it. How did Sookie see Bill so often? She must have been an exhausted girl staying up until sunrise with him and then having to wake up for her shift at Merlotte's. My social life dwindles more and more. Friends fall from my daily life. We all use social media but as much as it's keeping us connected, it also creates a distance. I miss your phone calls. I miss your texts. I miss coffee dates. Pizza bagel dates. I'm working when they are partying. I'm sleeping when they are staring into computers at their desk at work sipping lattes. I can never commit to anything. Losing touch with friends. It doesn't help that people I consider best friends live in other states across the country either. At least the boy has a very flexible schedule and can keep me company at three in the morning on my nights off. But even I see him struggling to stay awake. It's three in the morning and I'm wide awake and his mind and body shuts down like a cell phone that shuts down when the battery fades to red red red. He falls asleep in my lap. It's adorable but we're in mid-conversation. I can always tell when he falls asleep because the rhythm of his breathing changes. I remember the first time I noticed it. We spent the early morning hanging out and saw the first showing of Shame in Times Square. It was around 9am. He fell asleep during Carey Mulligan singing "New York, New York." It was one of the most devastating scenes of the film and I heard his breathing transition from normal to sleep mode. It was adorable but I think he missed Michael Fassbender's tears.

SXSW is happening next week. I'll be in Austin for the first time in years. I'm quite excited. I'll be badgeless and poor looking for all the free things to do. I've spent the past week RSVP'ing. It's quite exhausting. I'm not even that stoked for anyone playing other than Fiona Apple and I can't even get into the showcases she's playing because I lack a music badge. A music badge that was going for $900. What a rip-off. I might try to find a "local" to get me a wristband. If it's even worth it. Like I said, I'm not really stoked for anyone playing. Lana Del Rey canceled her show. What's left? Charli XCX? Nicolas Jaar? Counting Crows? I did make a list of bands I wanted to see. But the thing with living in New York City. Every band tours here no matter what. I would much rather see a full set of a band I adore then watch them play for a half-hour during a showcase. I wouldn't mind catching Grimes, Imperial Teen, Anoraak, Owen, RAC, Wintersleep, Youth Lagoon and Eve 6 (if they play every song of their first record). I arrive in Austin two days into the film portion of SXSW and probably won't be able to get into any of the screenings that I want. Especially Joss Whedon's A Cabin in the Woods. To be honest, I'm just excited to get out of New York for awhile. Austin is an awesome city and I've been there when SXSW wasn't happening and my mind was blown. I can't wait to eat everything and anything there. Why is food in Austin so good? I'm excited to see good friends I haven't seen in awhile. I want to wander around, get lost, listen to bands I never heard of before. Get inspired, get drunk and smoke cigarettes with Jared. I want to make out with the boy in a different city and make friends with his boss. I want to run into Nick Stahl in a coffee shop and go to Waterloo Records. I want to possibly wear shorts and a winter hat at the same time. I found my old Livejournal entry documenting my first time in Austin. The contexts are different this time around. It will be staggeringly awkward. But what would my life be without awkwardness?



I took the picture above in a Thai restaurant bathroom because I think the lighting and mirror was kind to me. The food was delicious but a little too expensive. I was wondering if I had too much beard. I'm drinking a soy mocha with an extra shot of espresso and it's making me thirsty. I can't stop listening to this Sharon Van Etten record. My MacBook is falling apart more and more as the days go by. My external hard drive was thrown out my apartment window by my crazy ex and isn't working anymore and my hard drive on my laptop is full. Full of photos, documents and music. I deleted all of the television I downloaded so I can watch more television. I spent $2.99 on an episode of Bethenny Ever After on iTunes this morning because no one wants to upload her show to torrent sites. I thought to myself, Bethenny is totally worth the price of a cup of coffee. I think I spend too much time in my car. My androgynous Honda Fit now has 70,000 miles on it. I think s/he hates me. I'm really into this Grimes record. It makes me want to make out with with someone in just our underwear for the entirety of the album.

A Winter Without Snow Is Like Love Without Sex

Download here if you're into it!

01. Mike Posner- Rolling In The Deep (Adele Cover)
02. Nicki Minaj- Starships
03. Sneaker Pimps- Loretta Young Silks
04. John Grant- I Wanna Go To Marz
05. Kanye West- Monster (Kingdom's Nicki-Centric Remix)
06. Azealia Banks- NEEDSUMLUV
07. M.I.A.- Bad Girls
08. Xiu Xiu- Hi
09. Childish Gambino- Heartbeat
10. Chairlift- Sidewalk Safari
11. Grimes- Oblivion
12. Charli XCX- Valentine
13. Perfume Genius- Dark Parts
14. The October Country- Gloomy Planets (The Notwist Cover)
15. Ramona Falls- Spore
16. Sarah Van Etten- Serpents
17. Lana Del Rey- Without You
18. Rainer Maria- Tinfoil

Is it bad that I keep forgetting what year it is? I'm at a point in my life where I'm not counting down years until a specific event. 18...21. Not trying to squeeze in another class to graduate a semester earlier than I hoped. Graduation days are long gone. If anything, I want to rewind. Take years back. Maybe start over. There's nothing to look forward to at this point. 30 is just around the corner and for some reason the number 30 reminds me of Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette. 30s seem like complacency. It's the age where you just listen to the radio. But not "pop" radio because we're too old for that. It's all autotuned we exclaim in horror. Why is she rapping like a man? She's a woman and should respect her body. I imagine 30-something year olds saying these types of things. We need the softer jams played on those other radio stations. Easy listening, soft rock, NPR. But NPR has always been a constant. At least since college. All those long morning drives out east on Long Island. You can only listen to so much music so NPR it is. Or podcasts. Remember when that show Heroes used to be good? I remember downloading podcasts that would talk about the show after each episode. What a nerd I was back then. Now it's Radiolab and All Things Considered. My partner in crime mentioned Sharon Van Etten the other day and I just downloaded her most recent album Tramp. Gosh, this is good. It's totes my cup of tea/right up my alley. It's been on repeat all night and all morning. I don't know why it took me two years to figure it out.

I'm in need of a haircut and I'm probably going to Supercuts because if I go anywhere else they seem to ruin my style. A few weeks ago some coworkers were making fun of my "Hitler Youth" haircut. They don't get it. I think it's the generational gap. Everyone is 15-25 years older than me here at this job. I also think it's because I work on Long Island and they are only used to seeing Guido, Jew or Thug. There's no room for anything else here. In the early aughts there was a rise of alternative kids running around in skinny jeans and small tee shirts from thrift stores. But that scene has faded into really bad music. Speaking of this "scene." The other day I compiled a 50 song playlist of emo songs I used to really like back in the day. I tried to put songs that were recorded before 2001. I didn't realize how many albums came out before then that have initiated this emo moment in popular culture. Mineral, The Goria Record, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Death Cab For Cutie, Braid, Jimmy Eat World, Saves The Day, American Football and The Promise Ring. It's weird to think how far DCFC and JEW have come since then. They are no longer part of that sound. But that's evolution for you. I guess even bands and sounds must evolve. I just think if Ben Gibbard just took a look back, reminisced, or listened to Something About Airplanes he could write a really decent record. I've lost touch with Death Cab For Cutie a long long time ago. 2003's Transatlanticism was when I said good bye. That scene in Six Feet Under when Claire and her friends sing along to them was beautiful. And then I saw them play one last time at Hammerstein Ballroom and they were great. I didn't know then that I would throw in my DCFC towel but I did because that next album was just not good. I miss those weepy memories, listening to them with girlfriends in old cars that were older than them. But they are not the same band anymore. I'll post a link to my Spotify playlist. If anyone is really interested, I'll upload all of the songs to Dropbox if you're into it. It's called "Yeah, Go Break My Emo Heart." Dig in.

Yeah, Go Ahead Break My Emo Heart



Life has been all kinds of weird for me lately. It's getting harder and harder each day to bite my tongue. I'm trying to let things roll off my back. But more and more it seems like things are piling up. Debt, disloyal and distant friends. Saturday night I got a flat tire driving to work. It took all my might not to just throw my hands up to the sky in forfeit. Ask that imaginary god to just strike the life out of me. You know with a lightning bolt. Doesn't he control those things? Please, let my blood run cold. Allow my heart an eternal sleep. Sometimes I daydream of expiring. How it could happen. Would it be poetic? Tragic? Quiet? Would I leave a note to every single friend and family member? Or would I leave the world without an explanation? I can honestly say I haven't feared death for years. I'm ready when you're ready. I'm ready to not have to wake up in the morning. I'm ready to not have to fix a fucking flat tire. I'm ready to not feel these feelings that haunt my mind and body.

But then that part of my brain takes over telling me I haven't done the things I wanted to do. What about that memoir you always wanted to write? That novel you wanted to share with your friends and family. But when am I actually going to write these things? I can barely write in this blog without dreading it. Perhaps, what I'm doing now is what I'll be doing my entire life. Avoiding. Fearing. Distancing myself from the things that make me happy. I think about all of the special people in my life and how much I would miss them. I know they are all strong enough to live a life without me. Heck, months go by without hearing from some of them. This thought makes me sad. More and more time passes by without a those hour long conversations you have with best friends that live in different states and countries. There are even some friends that live just a few miles away that I haven't seen in months, weeks, years. They would get over it though; they would make excuses to not make it to my funeral. Like all the excuses they have to never get coffee with me. They would say things like, he was always attracted to darkness and he was always addicted to depression. He clings to those feelings for comfort. He was always so sad, so depressed. Too smart for his own good. Over-thinking anything and everything. They would rationalize my death. They would compartmentalize it. It would be a story they could tell their kids when they reach a certain age. Especially if their kids were falling into a similar depression. We all know life is just a distraction to these inevitable feelings. To inevitable events...like death. We all feel alone at times. The "bad" alone. Lonely. Detached. Sensitive. Dejected. Scared. Fearful. Distant. Sad for no particular reason. Gloom. Doom. Boom. It happens to the best of us. But we distract ourselves with inane conversations on various social networking sites. A venti Frappuccino. Bad sex with strangers in a parked car on a dead end street at two in the morning. Our various television programs that make us feel better (or worse) about ourselves. Like this song "We Are Fine" by Sharon Van Etten. It's about her struggle with panic attacks and anxiety. This song helps ease my anxieties, but it's just a way to cope. A way to cope through the inevitable misery that is waiting for me around the next corner. It just seems so trivial. Everything. We are just distracting ourselves from our trivial meaningless lives. So much has happened to me in the last year or so. Shit that a lot of people wouldn't be able to pull themselves through. Shit people wouldn't allow themselves to go through. But I enjoy the abuse, the pain. I enjoy torturing myself. Self-sabotage. Always looking for a way to deconstruct and destruct. I'm a ticking bomb. That blows and blows and blows over and over again. I think about my aunt who just died and how sad her children were at the wake. It all happened so fast. My uncle was there in handcuffs and chains and a bodyguard of sorts. They let him out of prison to say good bye to his sister. My little siblings were asking me why their uncle was in chains and handcuffs and I didn't know what to say. I think about my coworker's cancer scare. This wonderful amazing woman whose life is stricken with anxiety and nerves. Every day seems like a chore for her. Then add a PET scan, MRI and a biopsy. My sister's drug addiction. Attempting to fill the holes and voids she has within her with pills. My mother who has been MIA for the last few years who is probably dead. Friends who can't get pregnant meanwhile there are teenagers getting reality shows for having babies. I think about quitting smoking but I remember I don't want to live forever. Whitney Houston. Kurt Cobain. Those sad boys I see at the bar yearning to make eye contact with another boy at a bar at three in the morning. Speeding tickets. Parking tickets. Student loans. Barely able to pay minimum balances on credit cards you used to feed you and your ex-lover. S/D who would never be the boy I needed him to be. But I lingered and hoped and lost myself in the process. Hearing my thirteen year old sister call someone a "faggot" the other day. A stain on a white tee shirt. I can't help but see the glass half empty and I can't help using idioms and cliche expressions.

Lana Del Rey's "Born to Die" was released this week worldwide. It went number one in eleven countries according to her Twitter. Last week it leaked and since then it has been on constant rotation. I have not been this excited for an artist since I discovered Lady Gaga. It took me awhile to see the brilliance behind Lady Gaga. It happened when she covered Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" on a British radio show. She interjected her own lyrics into the song, furthering her thesis and critique of fame and celebrity. She sang beautifully live and played the piano herself. A true "artist" behind a pop masquerade. It seems as though Lana Del Rey is doing the opposite. An "artist" attempting to break the pop matrix. I'm still working out the kinks in her thesis but there is potential for something significant. On the first few listens her thesis might seem a bit trite and vapid compared to Gaga's but I will attempt to deconstruct it. There is a lot more going on under the surface of her pouty lips and white dresses.

"My old man is a bad man. But I can't deny the way he holds my hand. And he grabs me. He has me by my heart," Lana Del Rey sings on her song "Off to the Races." This is exactly how I feel about Lana Del Rey herself. Lana Del Rey, who I will refer to as LDR from this point forward, has got me by my heart. This is where all of my problems with her originated. I will get into this a little later in this review. But to put it simply: her songs affect me. And I feel as if they shouldn't. They have left such an impression on my heart. Her melodies stuck in my head for days. When I first stumbled upon her song "Video Games," I just so happened to break up with my ex-boyfriend. She offered a soundtrack to this sad moment in my life. A failed romance and the stinging loneliness you feel when they are gone. As she released track after track to YouTube, I fell headfirst into her oeuvre of songs. Not only was she the score to my love gone wrong but she began soundtracking new romances as well.

When I first heard "Video Games" over the summer, I was floored by the intensity of the lyrics and music. Her vocals were gorgeous. This deep drawl over a simple piano and what sounds like a harp. "They say that the world was built for two. Only worth living if somebody is loving you," she sings in a monotone voice. The simplicity is devastating. The track is meticulously produced, sounding full yet vulnerable. I imagined a seasoned singer. Someone from the 60s or 70s my parents would have listened to. Without a clue to who she was, my mind imagined the possibilities. The only thing that dates this track to the present day is the fact that she's singing about one of her lovers playing video games. What did they have back then? Checkers and chess? As the song unfolds, you realize she's longing for attention from her lover. He's distracted. Playing well...video games. He doesn't notice her obvious pining. He's too busy playing video games and opening up beers. "It's you. It's you. It's all for you. Everything I do," she sings. She's wearing his favorite perfume and sundress, desiring his affections, wanting his attention. It almost seems desperate. But after a few more listens you realize she's completely in love with this guy. "Heaven is a place on earth with you," she proclaims. She's in love and "seeing stars" when she's in his arms. There's this comfortability with loving someone in such an ordinary context. I imagine she* wrote this song while lounging around in her sundress, maybe flipping through a magazine on her lover's bed. Every so often she looks up from the glossy pages looking over fondly at her boyfriend staring into the television, thumbs frantically pushing every button on his video game controller. This is love. To be able to coexist in such an ordinary state and still feel this intense love for each other. I've felt this love with ex-boyfriends of mine as well. As sad as this song might seem on the surface, it's not all dejection.

This is an example of why I have fallen so hard for LDR. She has this harmonious balance between sad and beatific. These two emotions are always at constant battle with each other. It's like when someone asks if I'm happy and I can never give them a straight forward answer. In general, I am a melancholic person. I experience brief moments of happiness, but they are as fleeting as the lyrics of "Video Games." One lyric/moment I feel exultant and the next I'm desolate and yearning for something more. I know this is sometimes unbearable for the people who love me. They want to see me happy; they want to see me overcome this dreary darkness. I imagine it's difficult to love a girl like Lana Del Rey. Especially now with her impending fame.

But let's not forget, LDR is not all melancholic. The entire time she's singing the "blues" she's batting her eyelashes at us. Especially when she sings, "I heard you like the bad girls honey, is that true?" She already knows the answer to this question. It's rhetorical. She is the type of "bad girl" he wants. We know this as we follow her narrative of songs into her self proclaimed "wild side." She calls herself a "gangster Nancy Sinatra." Not to mention her hyper-stylized "image" portrayed in her music videos, live performances and promotional material. She's beautiful and she wears her clothes well. Her hair destined to make every girl envious of those locks. She must have the best stylists providing memorable looks each time she steps on stage. But the difference between her and say someone like Lady Gaga. Her look is "clean" and straight-forward. There's no real gimmick there. She wears beautiful clothes beautifully. She's hot and there's no denying that. But it seems most people are concerned with at what price did she pay for this beauty. Rumors that she's had plastic surgery and uses botox to pump up those luscious lips are just the beginning of the critiques with her "look." I'm not interested in this part about her. I think everyone has the right and free will to choose how they want to look. Everyone should create their own image. Rhinoplasty, Chanel dress, botox, nail polish. We all create an "identity" with the clothes we choose to wear. We choose what direction we part our hair, etc. There's nothing wrong with crafting the face you want with a surgeon or some makeup. Lana Del Rey is gorgeous and I could care less how that came to be. What really saddens me is the misogynistic take on these critiques. You would think at this point in our culture we would stop ridiculing female artists for how they look. The "fat jokes" about Adele, the seemingly unnatural lips of Lana Del Rey. These critiques should not be ignored, but they are irrelevant when it comes to the actual music.

Once "Video Games" was added to a playlist the song became my own personal anthem. I always caught myself skipping other songs just to get to it. I broke hearts with that song. Putting it on for anyone and everyone that sat in the passenger seat of my car. I remember playing it for Gabrielle while driving down the BQE back to Greenpoint. She was just as floored as I was when I first heard it. Eventually I had to google her name and this is where my problem with her commenced. All of these blogs were expressing their disgust with Lana Del Rey. They were calling her a hack and believed she was an empty manipulative puppet. Before she became Lana Del Rey she was a singer-songwriter known as Lizzy Grant. She released an album two years ago, that went unnoticed and is now unavailable to purchase anywhere. Supposedly her father Rob Grant is a millionaire investor who is behind her success. She's a rich girl who grew up in upstate New York and went to boarding school in Connecticut. As listeners, connecting with these beautifully sad songs like "Video Games" and "Blue Jeans" we are put off by her rich girl past. She sings songs about living in a trailer park in New Jersey and doing "party favors" at parties when she's sixteen. We want our artists to come from nothing. We want our artists starving. We want a narrative that supports their collection of songs. Also, this sly effort of her father to erase Lizzy Grant we feel swindled. We feel manipulated; we feel cheated. What makes all of this worse is the fact that her "audience" is not used to being cheated. We are very aware of this manipulation. We** praise ourselves by seeing through the pop illusion. We all know Katy Perry is just you know...Katy Perry. We all know Ke$ha is a puppet. We know she can't sing. That's why all her songs are all overproduced and auto-tuned. But who cares. Ke$ha is singing songs about having a "water bottle full of whiskey in [her] handbag." She is an ordinary girl who likes to get drunk and hit on dudes at the bar. She is a representation of a certain type of female. Say JWoww or Snooki of Jersey Shore fame. We would never call Ke$ha an "artist." She's a pop star. The difference with Lana Del Rey is that we refer to her as an "artist" because she isn't writing pop songs for the masses. We were introduced to her as a pining singer-songwriter, longing and mourning love. She was being compared to artists like Cat Power. Her songs are drenched in 60s and 70s nostalgia. Her songs have a trip-hop vibe, even sometimes a hip-hop one. But her songs are usually sad. Slow, slightly off in melody and tone. Her vocals deep and dark. These songs have no intention of ever making it to radio. And if they had such high expectations, they would ride on the Adele and Robyn waves that are crashing on pop's shores. So when we as a supposed "counterculture" who passionately deny the merits of popular music find out that an "artist" like Lana Del Rey is actually a hoax, it hurts. It stings more than usual, because she already won our hearts with "Video Games." We were duped. We were punked. We recoil remembering our initial (emotional) responses to that song. She brilliantly acquired an audience like us with her video. Faux-70s shots. Styled perfectly to look like home videos from back in the day. We all love pastiche. It's a postmodern tenet for our generation who is lingering on the fringes of it. The music video was an Instagram filter for the moving image. She looks beautiful. She sounds beautiful. But the facts about Lana Del Rey/Lizzy Grant began to appear on the web. Hipster Runoff leading the pack of bogs. Lana Del Rey is signed to major label Interscope and is being muscled by big business and smart expensive marketing.

I can honestly say she is not a puppet. As my friend James said, "She is not quite a puppet. But she isn't human either. She's basically a muppet." She is attached to many strings. Lawyers, publicists, stylists, Interscope record executives, etc. But "Lizzy Grant" still exists within these songs on "Born to Die." She mimics human bodily movements swaying on stage, playing with her hair. There is a person, there is an artist within this Lana Del Rey character that has been cultivated for her. We all have dreams of being the person we want to be. We all have this "ideal" we strive for in our every day lives. But most of us don't have the (financial) means to do so. With these puppet strings attached to every limb and word that leaves her mouth, Lana Del Rey is able to become the "gangster Nancy Sinatra" she always wanted to become. Gaga did it. Lady Gaga wasn't always Lady Gaga. She was just an average looking Italian girl who went to an expensive high school in Manhattan. On the surface she might have seemed ordinary, but the girl she wanted to become was hidden within her. I believe Gaga was always there. Her pop fantasies yearning for liberation.

The problem with Lizzy Grant is that her transition from Lizzy to LDR happened too fast. She wasn't ready. She had dreams of becoming a gangster Nancy Sinatra but lacked the history and experiences needed to pull it off. She purchased this road to fame, without actually earning (and by default learning) it. Maybe she doesn't deserve this, maybe she does. Maybe her father pushed her to leave behind those quiet Lizzy Grant songs for something more marketable, something more interesting. I've heard some of her earlier work and it is rather boring. Perhaps LDR needed a few more years of playing empty clubs and bars. In regards to her songs, she has lived. She has lived through painful romances. She genuinely seems like an "old soul" and her songs prove that. Perhaps she is still a codependent love starved teenager. She probably suffers from borderline personality disorder. Adopting identity after identity, searching for the one that actually fits. Her codependency and addiction to love prevented her from seeking the life of an artist. We all have experienced a relationship that swallows you whole. Your artistic ambitions crushed with every melodramatic episode. I think this is where Lana Del Rey is at. I just wonder what will happen next. Will she ride these waves of critique and ridicule and smile and pout until her face turns blue? A year will pass and she will hibernate for a few years. I feel as if the next incarnation of Lana Del Rey, will be much more precise and put together. The cracks in her image and identity have been clearly shown on live television and all over blogs. I think these cracks will be glossed over. Perhaps some surgery is needed. She needs to heal these pop wounds. She needs to immerse herself in her work until she can prove to the world that she is indeed an artist and not just a pretty face. I can't wait for that Lana Del Rey. Just don't take six years like Fiona Apple and Courtney Love. Thank you.

Despite the dribble above I am hooked on Lana Del Rey. My few month love/hate affair with Lana Del Rey is getting deeper and deeper with every day. I have never loved and hated an artist as much as her. When I first discovered her deceit, I denounced her. I tweeted and Facebooked my disgust. I felt cheated. But underneath and within all those tweets and Facebook updates I was linking videos, performances and songs that were still tugging at my heartstrings. I'm trying to pinpoint the exact moment I became an advocate for her. I think it was the night of her Saturday Night Live performance. My twitter feed was drowning in LDR hate. Half of the people I follow were attacking her...brilliantly so.

Jonathan Bender: Piranha Del Rey: The Video Game (for Nintendo Wii).

Liana Huth: Well, at least it was a nice dress.

Rachel Dratch: Ok, I know I said this about Robyn too, but this musical guest is yet another Wiig character.

Liz Feralcat: Hair flip, sway, hair flip twice, sway, breathe, hair flip end scene.

Juliette Lewis: Wow watching this "singer" on SNL is like watching a 12 year old in their bedroom when they're pretending to sing and perform. #signofourtimes

I found myself replying to these people and sticking up for LDR. It was futile task because these people were not going to change their minds. Juliette Lewis was the only one who deleted her tweet and the next day tweeted, "I woke up singing a Lana Del Rey song! Such great haunting melodies. Regardless of my own taste LIVE she's a #FreshandYummy songwriter. Period." Lana Del Rey is not a great performer. She even expressed this in interviews. She is awkward and nervous. The same way that Cat Power and Fiona Apple aren't and they both built careers on that same shtick. Plus, it's interesting to see the "act" of nervousness mixed with genuine nervousness. We all know Lana Del Rey is a fiction. She's a puppet (or muppet rather). She's Ke$ha for an Urban Outfitters crowd. We must remember Lana Del Rey is not destined for pop stardom. As much as Interscope might want her to be. She will work on the sidelines of pop. She can find a place at a table with Fiona Apple. Her performances of "Video Games" and "Blue Jeans" on SNL were vocally off. She added words to lyrics and her tone was all over the place. But it made her human. She gave her best. As for the lack of stage presence, I think LDR was offering something simple. She's not here for theatrics. She's not Gaga expressing her "art" through stage design and choreography. I feel as if she wanted her songs to stand on their own. The only problem with this is there was nothing to distract us viewers from her vocal trippings. It was just Lana Del Rey in a long white dress standing there awkwardly. She also chose to sing two songs off her record that are actually really difficult to sing. They reach heights and lows most singers would avoid all together. If she decided to sing a song like "Born to Die" which stays very monotone she would have killed it. Or maybe if she sang "Off to the Race" which is very hip-hop in sound and she basically raps through all the verses she would have had a better reception on SNL.



But here I am head over heels for Lana Del Rey. I can't stop listening to "Born to Die" and this is the point where I will attempt to review all of the songs off her album track by track.

Born to Die

The title track IS Lana Del Rey. Everything you needed to know about LDR is within this song. The movie score orchestration. The whispered and haunting "What? Who me?" when the song starts disturbs the orchestration. Things are not what they seem in Lana Del Rey's sonic world. Underneath all of the orchestration and dark vocals is a beat reminiscent of trip-hop artists from the early-mid 90s. Think Portishead. These trip-hop beats show up in almost every song on the album, keeping all the songs linked together in some slow, hypnotic haze. Lyrically it's depressing. Singing about love and loss, a reoccurring theme throughout her album. "Sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough, I don't know why," she sings. Simple, yet effective. When she sings "let's go get high" I can't help but think of Oasis's "Champagne Supernova." I can't remember the last time a song referenced getting high in a nostalgic, let's-forget-about-everything-I-only-want-you kind of way.

Off to the Races

I guess this is where the gangster Nancy Sinatra displays her rapping skills. I'm down. When this song was released along with her Lana Del Rey EP (which magically disappeared on iTunes) I was hooked. The lilt in her voice when she sings, "I'm your little scarlet starlet. Singing in the garden. Kiss me on my open mouth" is indeed infectious. Who wouldn't want to kiss her on her open mouth? She references her "tar black soul" and the mystery and elusiveness of "Lana Del Rey" continues to deepen. Smitten. When she sings about being the "Queen of Coney Island" I wonder who would actually want to be the queen of such a place? It's dirty. Sketchy. It reminds me of pushing a used tv to a pawn shop like in Requiem for a Dream and getting "raped" for my $20 for throwing darts at balloons when I was sixteen. I'd ride the Cyclone with her in the first car, but other than maybe stopping by Nathan's for a hot dog I won't eat, you won't find me in that part of Brooklyn. What sold me on this track is her reference to Nabokov's "Lolita." She uses the novel's opening line "light of my fire, fire of my loins" a few times during this song. This is the first of a few references to Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" that appear on her album. Anyone who references this novel in more than the usual way (i.e. creepy old man falling for a young girl, or the films) is a keeper. Lana Del Rey is a keeper and she can pout and frustrate the listener just like Lolita herself did.

Blue Jeans

The second song I ever listened to by her. I didn't like it. But then I heard the live version she did at The Premises and I developed a new appreciation for the song. She's singing barefoot in a pair of Daisy Dukes, looking adorable and sexy simultaneously. Then I met a boy who I developed affections for and the lyrics started jumping out at me like some spiritual epiphany. He was the one to actually point it out. "You were sorta punk rock. I grew up on hip-hop. But you fit me better than my favorite sweater. And I know that love is mean. And love hurts. But I still remember that day we met in December." I was the punk rock kid. He was the thug. I just ended a crazy relationship a few months prior. He might or might not have said something like "Love you more than those bitches before" and I believed him. This song even references "chasing paper." Who puts a line like that in such a sad song? Lana Del Rey. And maybe The Weeknd (who LDR has undying affections for. She posts links to his videos on her Facebook).



Video Games

Please refer to the third paragraph in my introduction on my thoughts about "Video Games." It was my introduction to Lana Del Rey and will always make me cry no matter how many times I listen to it.

Diet Mountain Dew

The problem with this song and a few others is that you get so used to listening to the demo versions that appear on the internet that it takes listen after listen to warm up to them. I never really liked this song. Even the demo. It's probably my least favorite song of hers. I guess this is another "hip-hop" track that repeats itself over and over. Baby you're no good for me...

National Anthem

A demo of this song leaked on the internet a few weeks before the album released. It quickly became my favorite song. It was the first time I actually heard the "pop" song that Lana Del Rey insinuated she had in her catalog. I imagined it blowing up on the radio this summer. A fourth of July anthem. I imagined it being the perfect song. Fitting right in, awkwardly of course. The lyrics are complete nonsense. Self-absorbed rich kids partying in The Hamptons. Reckless abandon. Upper echelon. "Money is the reason we exist. Everybody knows it. It's a fact. Kiss. Kiss." Lyrically this song is as vacant and empty as they come. That's why I thought it would be perfect for radio. She's the "indie" hip-hop female artist that can sing about reckless abandon that's not as abrasive as Nicki Minaj or Lady Gaga. Aren't most hip-hop songs about just that? Narcissism. Living the life, etc. Along with her references to drugs and love, there is one lyric that really stands out to me and brings this vain song from the cloudy pop world back to the grounded lovelorn landscape we have come to know from singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey. It goes: "Blurring the lines between the real and the fake." It's hidden within a verse about drinking and driving. LDR is blurring the lines between the real and the fake. It is exactly what Lana Del Rey has been doing her whole "career." Fake it till you make it. Perhaps, she has been sloppy with her ambitions but that is what makes her so human. It shows us a glimpse of "the real." Her pop seams are busting open with this song. But then the album is released and the demo we all have been singing along to is not the same song. She slows it down. She LDRs it up. The song drawls and drones on. It sounds medicated. As if she slipped it a Xanax. It's not as abrasive and epic. It's over-produced and cloudy. My dreams of this song taking over radio are now foiled and I can't imagine any other song on "Born to Die" to ever grace the airwaves. Oh well. I didn't really want her there anyway.

Dark Paradise

Another ballad which is what Lana Del Rey does best. I can imagine this scoring a movie trailer for one of those indie flicks where two lovers pine for each other from different "countries," huge bodies of water keeping them apart. I put "countries" in quotations because I'm actually referencing the Shakespeare "undiscovered country." It seems as though LDR is pining for a lover that may have or may not have died. With lyrics like these what are we we supposed to think: "And there's no remedy for your memory. Your face is like a melody. It won't leave my head. Your soul is haunting me. And telling me that everything is fine. But I wish I was dead." And in a different verse she goes on to sing, "I'm scared that you won't be waiting on the other side." The whispered "dead dead dead" underneath all that orchestration and beats is haunting.

Radio

The trip-hop beats are in full force during the chorus of this song. And there's just a touch of a swarming dubstep "noise" spinning in the background. It's effective.The lyric: "Now my life is sweet like cinnamon. Like a fucking dream I'm living in," is a bit trite but as the song continues I forgive her. Especially when she rhymes cinnamon with vitamin. But this is song where LDR gets ahead of herself. She sings, "Baby love me 'cause I'm playing on the radio. How do you like me now?" and I can't help but wonder did she really think this song would actually make it to the radio? Or is "radio" used loosely here? Her songs are bathed in nostalgia. Perhaps singing "radio" sounds better than singing YouTube. Maybe "radio" really means internet, YouTube, iPod, Pandora radio stations. If that's the case, yeah she's made it and that boy must regret breaking her heart.

Carmen

I've been arguing with a particular someone about this song. He said it's his and many other people's least favorite track on "Born to Die." I disagree immensely. Just last night, a friend of mine said "Carmen" came on Pandora and she loved it. Each time she sings, "she laughs like God" it terrifies me. It's haunting and evocative. I'm terrified of this seventeen year old Carmen. I'm also terrified of Lana Del Rey.

Million Dollar Man

Here, Lana Del Rey steps away from her usual sound. There's more piano and her vocals all over the place (in a good way). All I hear is Fiona Apple Fiona Apple Fiona Apple. I can imagine this song being on Fiona's new album due out this year. Imagine if these two sang a duet together? Hearts would be all over the floor of every apartment in every city. It has this old-time bluesy feel and I'm totally digging it. So, is why my heart broke?

Summertime Sadness

Leave it to Lana Del Rey to feel this deep sadness during the summer. Of all the seasons of the year, isn't this the one where we throw our hands up in the air and forfeit to the warm summer air? Skinny dipping in the ocean, driving around town with our windows rolled down? This song begs for a remix. Perhaps we can hire Calvin Harris or Grum to do the tweaking. This song needs a lift. The chorus yearns for it. Best lyric: "I am feeling electric tonight. Cruising down the coast going about 99. Got my bad baby by my heavenly side. I know if I go, I'll die happy tonight." There's something so charming and loving about that lyric. That's devotion baby.

This is What Makes Us Girls

This is probably my favorite track. I get visions of Catherine Hardwicke's film Thirteen. Where Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood wreak havoc all over their town and the people that live in it. They don't care about anything because they put "love first" as Lana Del Rey sings. A demo of this song leaked along with "National Anthem." But unlike "National Anthem" this track actually sounds better produced and cleaned up. That swooping trip-hop "noise" is back on this chorus and it sends chills down my body. It's perfect. This song needed an LDR makeover. A Vicodin and some red wine.There was too much Lizzy Grant on the demo. The whispered "Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice" line makes me cringe every time I hear it but she makes up for it on this line: "The prettiest in crowd that you have ever seen. Ribbons in our hair and our eyes gleamed mean. A freshmen generation of degenerate beauty queens." It sounds like every bad girl teenage movie you ever seen. Jawbreaker. Mean Girls. Heathers. Pretty Persuasion. That line is pitch perfect and I can imagine these girls in my high school or that "cinematic high school" that doesn't really exist. I have a feeling Courtney Love would approve of this song.

Without You

Lyrically this song is far superior than most of her songs. The opening line: "Everything I want I have. Money, notoriety and rivieras. I even think I found God in the flash bulbs of the pretty cameras. Pretty cameras. Pretty cameras. Am I glamourous? Tell me, am I glamorous?" She used this line in her Twitter bio. For some reason it reminded me of Gaga's quote about her fans. "They're a giant disco ball--thousands of tiny little mirrors," she once said in an interview. In Lana Del Rey's Twitter bio she changes the lyrics to "I think I found God in the flash bulbs of YOUR pretty cameras." She changes THE to YOUR. I think this is rather clever and further illustrates her dreams of becoming a pop star like Gaga. Not to mention, that every time this song starts playing LDR sounds exactly like Tori Amos. The first and only time I thought so. In this song, LDR continues to play the female rag doll. "I can be your China doll, if you want to see me fall," she sings. The fractured heroine. A broken girl. "Gold and silver line my heart. But burned into my brain are these stolen images. Stolen Images, baby, stolen images. Can you picture it? Babe the life we could've lived?" I can't help but think how much this lyric stands out. I know she's singing about lost love but what about the "stolen images" she has stolen herself? The old film footage that are weaved through her music videos. The "artificial" images she uses of herself within these nostalgic images. It puts a bad taste in my mouth. But she makes it up with this last notable line: "We were two kids just trying to get out. Lived on the dark side of the American dream. We would dance all night. Play our music loud. When we grew up, nothing was what it seemed." And I think this is where Lana Del Rey really is a "sign of our times," as Juliette Lewis tweeted. This is where she becomes a martyr for our generation. She is a truly American (musical) testament. Her contentious rise to "fame" and the many incarnations of Lana Del Rey that have appeared. Her album is saturated in Americana. From the 60s and 70s to the 90s and early-aughts. I even hear something very 80s or 70s disco in one particular song ("Lucky Ones"). When was the last time an artist has actually acquired all of these decades into their sound? Blues, folk, trip-hop, hip-hop. It's all there. Lana Del Rey is the culmination of Americana past and present.

Lolita

I got so used to the demo of this song that its album version doesn't seem as genuine. Spelling out Dark. D...A...R...K...is adorable. I'm confused it's not part of the album proper. Along with the other songs that only appear on the deluxe edition of the album. The Nabokov reference goes without saying, it's in the title of the song.

Lucky Ones

This is the only song I can't pin down. In the beginning it sounds like some western song. Americana. But then it turns into some ballad that reminds me of Bif Naked's "Lucky." Then it twists into some late 70s disco. Or perhaps something 80s when the last quarter of the song comes in. Cyndi Lauper? "It feels like...It feels like...falling in love for the first time..." This is the only song I don't quite get and perhaps that is the reason why it exists as a bonus track on the deluxe edition of the album.





*I write "she" for continuity purposes. But I think we need to question who actually wrote this song.

**I must explain this "we" I'm referring to. Lana Del Rey's "audience" are the alternative types. The people who don't listen to the radio. And if we do listen to the radio we're listening to it in either an ironic or discerning way. We are aware of all the pop confections. We are aware of the manipulation. We can see through the guise of pop. It's all an illusion. We see/hear/feel the reality within the fabrications. We won't deny the creativity and brilliance behind the pop craft. But we tend not to call the singers and bands on the radio "artists." We are the alt-types: hipster, punk, queer, different, contrarians. We tend to think our artists are full of authenticity. Sincerity. Ingenuity. We take pride in the artists we hold close to our hearts.

"Impossible," I keep telling myself. How in the world can I compile a list of the best movies I have seen this past year? Every January comes and I both dread and look forward to the task. I love movies. I absolutely do. I would rather sit in dark movie theaters rather than live my life. Call it escapism all you want, but it's more than that. Yes, I'll watch horrible action movies like Killers or The Tourist and maybe I'm escaping reality while watching them. I'll sneak into the theater to see Red Riding Hood because I know it will be pretty and I know it will have a good score. I still have affections for Catherine Hardwicke. I saw Thirteen three times in the theater back in 2003. She wrote something very real and authentic there. Evan Rachel Wood and Nikki Reed were girls I grew up with in the suburbs of New York City. I still can't get that creepy dance to Fever Ray's "The Wolf" out of my head from Red Riding Hood. It was wonderfully eerie. It's scenes like that that pull me to the theater. There's always something redeeming about a particular movie, even if as a whole it's a complete mess. Images, scores, soundtracks, a particular actor's facial expression during an emotional scene. I think part of the reason why Drive worked so well was because it lacked dialogue. The images stood for themselves. The soundtrack and score pulled you through the darkness within each of the characters. Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan conveyed so much through their eyes and body language. I realized the less dialogue a film has, the less chance it has to go wrong. This isn't true for every movie but it is for Drive, Shit Year and Shame which all made my top ten. We go to the theater to not only escape our seemingly mundane lives, but we also go to the theater to see "ourselves" in other people, in other characters. We're all performers. We're all actors in our own lives. Like Charlize Theron's Mavis Gary from Young Adult hints at outside of a dive bar in her hometown. She says something along the lines that we're all cast in our own movies. But it's in slow-motion. These marriages and romances will all end but it's stuck in molasses. She wants to fast-forward to the part where she can take home her high school sweetheart and live a life happily ever after. It's desperate and unbelievably sad, but she's a young adult fiction writer and spends most of her days watching reality TV like Keeping Up with the Kardashians. She's used to these short "narratives" that always seem to have a beginning, middle and end. Why can't life be like that as well? She doesn't understand gray areas; Mavis doesn't understand ambiguity. Even if we think we're sitting in the theater to forget our own lives, we're doing just the opposite. We're reminded of our own lives and we're relating to these characters and comparing ourselves to them. We watch as they struggle with our same struggles. I found myself connecting with one movie more than any other this year on just these principles. Andrew Haigh's Weekend. I couldn't help but see myself in these well-developed and realistic characters. These were men I knew. I found myself identifying with both Glen and Russell. I wrote a review of the movie here which I go on about about the politics of living life as a gay male in a heteronormative society. Without movies depicting, reflecting and deflecting life, we would all be lost. It's within these narratives we get a better understanding of our lives and the lives of others.

It seems a bit trivial to put numbers beside these films. They are all so different. They all have enriched my life in some way. And let's not mention all of the films I didn't get a chance to see this year. Including but not limited to: The Artist, Restless, Another Earth, Dirty Girl, Ceremony, Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty and Lars von Trier's Melancholia. I'm sure all of these movies and more would make this list. But there's only so much film one can consume in a year. And without further ado here is my list of the Best Films of 2011.

BEST MOVIES OF 2011

30. Crazy Stupid Love


29. Super 8


28. Like Crazy


27. The Adjustment Bureau


26. The Descendants


25. Take Shelter


24. Attack the Block


23. Insidious


22. The Tree of Life


21. Source Code


20. The Skin I Live In


19. Red State


18. The Future


17. Midnight in Paris


16. Contagion


15. Young Adult


14. The Muppets


13. Beginners


12. Bridesmaids


11. The Perfect Host


10. Hanna


09. Margaret


08. Drive


07. Last Night


06. Martha Marcy May Marlene


05. Kaboom


04. Shame


03. We Need to Talk About Kevin


02. Shit Year


01. Weekend

"Hello heaven. You are a tunnel lined with yellow lights. On a dark night."

These lyrics. The way she sings this verse just slays me. Lana Del Rey is still pulling at all the right heartstrings. Pulling my heart to the ground and caressing it with the heel of her shoe and her raspy lilt in her voice. She released "Yayo" a few weeks ago to the internet and I have been smitten ever since. It has this lounge-y feel and actually portrays her voice in a way I never heard before. Despite the drama surrounding her authenticity, I'm officially hooked. She'll appear on Saturday Night Live in a few weeks and I couldn't be more excited. She tweets and Facebook's songs off of The Weeknd's newest mixtape. Is it possible she is this cool? Can she look that good and actually listen to The Weeknd? Maybe. Maybe. Should I just let it go and let her manipulate me? Isn't that what we do for all art? We suspend our disbelief and go for the ride. Whether it be a movie, song or painting. Why was time hating on it? Let's just love Lana Del Rey and it won't be so hard when she takes over the world. Because she will. Demos of "National Anthem" and "This Is What Makes Us Girls" leaked to the internet a few days ago. The former is the first song of hers I think could take over the radio. I'm ready for this self-proclaimed "Hollywood pop" and "sad core" to take the pop world into a dark introspective place. I'm ready for The Weeknd and Lana Del Rey to inform the mainstream of a different kind of sound. Gaga left her mark on the pop consciousness, but she never pulled at heartstrings like this. Her music videos and interviews gave her songs meaning. Her songs never stood for themselves. They were pop confections. Abel Tesfaye, the R&B mastermind behind The Weeknd and Lana Del Rey are the next generation of musicians who fill in those confections with a little more substance, with a little more grit and I'll be here cheering them on.



I'm feeling a bit sick for the second time this winter. The weather has been a bit schizophrenic here in New York. One day it's fifty degrees with only a sweatshirt needed to leave the house in. Then three inches of snow falls on us during the early hours of the morning. I love how quiet it gets during these early morning snowfalls. Of course, I'm at work during these hours and I sometimes sit in my car on my breaks. It was beautiful yesterday morning. Oh so quiet. I'm not one to take medication, but tonight it was necessary to pull me through my shift. The new Perfume Genius album "Put Your Back N 2 It" has been scoring my shift at work. It will probably be my winter soundtrack. Perfume Genius and Lana Del Rey will be the albums that pull me through these harsh low temperatures and devastating winds. I love snow and I'm glad we finally got this second snowstorm of the year. I was a bit jealous of Seattle and their "blizzard" in the Pacific Northwest. All of my friends were posting pictures of the snow, working from home and generally distressed over the winter storm. It was adorable. This DayQuil is the only reason I'm able to think in complete sentences. I don't know why I always make myself suffer with just vitamin C, echinacea and green tea. I can suppress these symptoms with pharmaceuticals. I think I have given up hope on my health since I started smoking cigarettes a year ago. What's the point of caring if I keep polluting my lungs with all of these toxins? I do need to stop but I just don't want to. I hate feeling so dependent on something so toxic. There's nothing better than sipping hot coffee and pulling drags off of a Camel.



"I will take the dark parts of your heart into my heart..."

Mike Hadreas of Perfume Genius is slaying me with his song "Dark Parts." When he sings those lyrics, I genuinely believe him. If he could, he would take the dark parts of someone else's heart and insert it into his own heart. He would take the darkness that plagues someone else into his own heart. The same way that someone says "It should have been me" when a young person dies of leukemia or in a car accident. He would rather struggle with their darkness. We all know that he's no stranger to darkness. His first album is plagued with tragedies and personal demons. On this second album he has created a successful outlet to express this darkness in a hopeful and sometimes hopeless creative way. Perhaps this person he loves can no longer keep afloat in these seas of darkness that life is a small island in. Life is fucking stormy and this one lyric in this one song shows how much strength Perfume Genius has acquired since his last album Learning.



I still carry around that seashell I found on the beach that time we decided to drive over two bridges to get to Robert Moses. It was autumn and freezing but the sun was shining as if it were summer. We walked on the sand in our sneakers and stared out into the ocean from the shore. I keep the shell in my jacket pocket, so every time I stick my hand in there I'm reminded of you. This little memento, at such an early incarnation of our relationship. Even the word relationship seems weird to write out. Meeting you and loving you, it all just kind of happened. With my bruised heart, I was still capable of feeling feelings. I spent two years keeping myself from a nervous breakdown. Two years, I was attempting to protect a heart at battle with another lover. Feelings you were offering. Feelings I felt I wasn't able to reciprocate. But it always happens this way. Love, unannounced, unexpected. It always appears when you're not looking. It's frightening. It's scary. You doubt, struggle and push it away. But it still returns with that beautiful stupid smile. That one that shows your adorable imperfect smile. How can you deny something that feels otherworldly? It doesn't matter if I spend one hour or forty-eight hours with you, I never want you to leave. Pathetic, dangerous and unbearable. This feeling only validates, it only authenticates the words I refuse to use. Those three words that I hold in such high regard. Those words that will never leave my lips unless I genuinely mean it. I hate people. I love being alone. So why do I constantly crave you by my side? This rarely happens and I keep trying to fool myself that this is just something fleeting, something transient. Only a few moments we chose to string together in some linear fashion. Moments we chose to cherish to create a "something" out of "nothing." It's what we do, as humans. We create "meaning." Nothing has meaning unless we assign it with such a thing. We imply. We signify. We intend. We valuate every significant and insignificant moment in our lives. What if we both happened to construct the same narrative? Using each other as our own editors. Where's the objectivity? We've both tried to destroy it. We both tried to ruin it. We're self-destructive creatures. I question if my unusually high empathetic levels are getting the best of me. I can't find love again. It isn't fair. I've been too lucky. I've already fallen in love before. I've been blessed and afflicted with the best and worst of what it has to offer. This can't be happening again. Am I really in love with your teeth? Am I really in love with your neurotic tendencies? Am I really in love when you go on tangent after tangent about a particular topic? Sometimes I just want to cover your mouth with my lips just to shut you up about your relentless affections for Adventures in Babysitting and how underrated you think it is. We all know Elisabeth Shue is severely underrated that's why Gregg Araki casted her in Mysterious Skin. Only people who watched that movie would understand how underrated Elisabeth Shue really is. They knew it before the movie and then have it confirmed after watching it. I have friends that haven't experienced this feeling before. [LOVE]. They're not sad about it. Some of them don't even realize they are missing anything from their lives. I don't deserve this; I don't deserve you. Even if my last relationship pulled me into dark times and I am now more bruised than I have ever been before. I've literally and figuratively fractured myself in that relationship. I loved and I loved hard. Sometimes with a fist and sometimes with just a kiss. I'm not even sure I'm capable of a healthy love. The kind of love that you're offering. Like someone close to me said, I'm the villain and that's my role in life. I'm going to hurt you. But we've talked about this. How I'm Serena van der Woodsen of Gossip Girl breaking hearts without even realizing it. I'm much more dangerous than Blair Waldorf. But you're a self-proclaimed "monster." So who knows. Maybe we're even. Perhaps we both have surrendered. I think we've resigned from those wicked ways. I think we've forfeited awhile ago. When exactly? I'm terrified...fucking terrified of this and I guess it would be weird if I wasn't. So go on, drive your lesbian mobile and let's talk for hours blasting the heat in your car. Roll those dials that heat the seats and play Lana Del Rey until our hearts burst. I'm ready to take a drive with you. Somewhere far that requires a lot of miles on your tires and more than a few dollars at the tollbooths.


Setting Fire to Our Insides For Fun

01. Chairlift- Sidewalk Safari
02. POLIÇA- Lay Your Cards Out (feat. Mike Noyce)
03. The Dø- Too Insistent (Trentemøller Remix)
04. The Weeknd- XO / The Host
05. Lana Del Rey- Yayo
06. Daughter- Youth
07. Perfume Genius- All Waters
08. Inspired and the Sleep- Running
09. Lana Del Rey- National Anthem (Demo)
10. Skrillex- Summit feat. Ellie Goulding (Aylen Remix)
11. Scissor Sisters- Shady Love
12. Azealia Banks- 212

I uploaded this playlist here if your ears are eager for some good tunes.

It's always a difficult feat to compile a list of the best records of any given year. Last year, I avoided it all together, despite having a very clear Top 5. A lot of people were disappointed by my lack of a list, but the burden and stress it involves kept me distant. I was also dating a crazy person and he hijacked all of my emotions and time. So, I blame that boy for never getting around to compiling a list. So, here we are, 2011 coming to a close. While I took a look through some of the other blogs out there, there seems to be a consensus about the year 2011. Indie rock fell into the background. Ed, from Grizzly Bear even tweeted that it was a weird year for indie rock and I completely agree with him. This year seems like the year of pop and hip-hop. More than any other year, it seemed the radio had hijacked my ears. If it wasn't NPR I was listening to in my car, it was either Katy Perry or Rihanna that got me through the traffic on the BQE. I can't think of one record I listened to that distracted me from red brake lights. Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a little here. Most of what appears on this list were albums that were played during contemplative moments. Those moments in the car, when there was no one else on the road and your thoughts hitched a ride with the crescendos of Explosions in the Sky because you didn't have to worry about yielding to traffic or avoid Sunday drivers.

Those moments spent laying around your apartment in just your briefs because New York summers are brutal and you would rather pay the electric bill for running your Bose SoundDock rather than your air conditioner. At first I thought Bon Iver chose the wrong season to release his sophomore record, but after a few listens I realized this wasn't a sequel to For Emma, Forever Ago, he has written an entire new novel, with new stories to tell. I dreaded scoring tickets to his Prospect Park show over his United Palace gig because I feared the acoustics of a park. I wanted an enclosed space where the sound and emotion would fold into themselves and create this claustrophobic emotional experience. Little did I know Bon Iver's new record was about expanding his sound, applying layers and layers to his fundamental guitar and vocals. Hearing the beginning of "Perth" while standing alone in the park with hundreds of strangers, I knew I was in the perfect location.

We were on the edge of our seats when Gaga released "Born This Way" to the internet and we all sort of sighed after listening to it. The Madonna references took the blogs by storm. It felt off. It wasn't the incarnation I was hoping for. "Born This Way" became a running joke on Twitter for weeks. Everyone blaming their mistakes and regrets with the hashtag #bornthisway. Using #bornthisway as an excuse for all their problems. It's why I never really believed I was born any particular way. A neutral setting if you will. I'm a constructionist; I was born a malleable soul and body and my environment pushed and shoved me into who I am now. Anyway...Gaga goes on to put the word "transgendered" in a pop song that is listened to by millions of people and educates and contextualizes an underrepresented "community" (gosh I hate the word community). Despite how much the song lacks, this reason alone is genius. But something seemed so off about it and the video did little to make it better. but tha thought of my dad shopping at a supermarket and listening to this song, humming the verses and chorus without even realizing he is doing so is enough of a reason for Gaga to make the Top 10 of my list. For the words transgendered, gay and lesbian to infiltrate a pop song so slyly is so smart and so awesome. Ke$ha's "We R Who We R" tried to rally the same kind of self-acceptance theme, as some kind of anthem for LGBT "communities"(shucks I used that word again!) but it didn't work. It was just as trashy and catchy as all her other songs. Gaga was able to craft it perfectly, I just didn't like the song. It wasn't until Gaga's entire record was released that "Born This Way" made sense. And after listening to the whole album, I actually started to like "Born This Way" as a single. The record as a whole put all the various singles into context. I cringed when I first heard "The Edge of Glory." But when I discovered it closed the album, I understood it. And must I remind you of the story behind the song and the piano version she did on Howard Stern? Every non-single off of Born This Way is pitch perfect. From the Marilyn-Manson-like scream on "Bloody Mary" to the lyrics and beat of "Heavy Metal Lover." I haven't lost faith in you yet Gaga. Just pick better singles and bathe the radio in your brand of weird, dark and dance.



But like any other year, there were bands and artists that didn't actually release albums in 2011 that I got hooked on. It is rather sad that I cannot honor them in the list below. A friend on Facebook posted lyrics to a Jessica Lea Mayfield song and from reading those lyrics, I knew, I just knew, without even listening to the song that I'd fall hard for her (if it was even a she to fall for). After I did some investigating I realized that I actually like her earlier work more than I like Tell Me. So, it was difficult to find a place for an album I didn't enjoy as much as her other albums. Then there's the case for demos, remixes and singles that were released, that were not part of a larger work like an album. So, I'm stuck dancing to Calvin Harris and Elite Gymanstics remixes but no way to place them on this list.

Then there is the case of Lana Del Rey. The songstress I love to hate. "Video Games" was released to the world over the summer and it wasn't until my friend Antwan posted his end of the summer playlist that I actually caught on. She would come on shuffle and with each listen, I fell harder and harder for her. A little investigating proved to me why I stayed so distant. She's manufactured, signed to Interscope, even though her songs are drowning in indie sounds and her look so hipster-chic it almost seems straight out of a fashion shoot for either an Urban Outfitters catalog or Nylon magazine. A few other songs are released to the internet and I'm hooked. But I feel manipulated and cheated but I still listen to her songs on repeat again and again because there's something dangerously intoxicating about her: those lips, the lilt in her voice when she sings, the awkward stage presence. But her album doesn't drop until the end of January so that means her record will drop in 2012 and will not make this year's list despite me being completely enamored with her.

There's only so much one person can listen to in any given year and I still have not got around to a lot of albums. St. Vincent, Zola Jesus, Kate Bush, Coldplay and the new Field record. Then there are artists I just can't get into like Real Estate, Metronomy and Beyonce. I still didn't get around to listening to the new Antlers record or really dove into Feist's new record either. "Pumped Up Kicks" was a great song and those dudes are total babes, but I still haven't listened to their album in full. Los Campesinos! had an awesome track "By Your Hand" but I still neglected the album it was released from. The new Rosebuds album was rather lame and so was Thursday's No Devolución except for that one song where Geoff is counting. I'm completely lost on Patrick Wolf all together as well. Why can't I listen to any of his new stuff? I need a new external hard drive for 2012. I can't let this many albums pass me by next year. It's not fair to my ears, heart and mind.

Looking back on 2011, I remembered seeing Explosions in the Sky in Seattle during the Capitol Hill Block Party when the sun was setting. Or when I stood in Nuemo's watching Yuck play in the sweltering heat. Seeing Bush for the first time ever, even though I've been a fan since I was in middle school. They even played on Long Island at the new venue in Huntington. Gavin Rossdale was not depressing and still a stone-cold fox strumming his guitar with his muscular arms. I saw M83 for the third time at Webster Hall and they blew my mind. It will probably be my last time seeing them because their following has become mindless twats. The same goes for Beirut and Iron & Wine who I saw both play at the awful Terminal 5. I rocked out to Saves The Day and The Get Up Kids with old and new friends at the Crazy Donkey on Long Island. I was being watched on television while I watched The Naked & Famous play. I then saw them the next day at Webster Hall. I went to the record release party for An Horse at Knitting Factory and swooned over them. Low played a sold-out Bowery Ballroom and my heart skipped every other beat during their entire set. Mount Eerie had me by my throat on Kent Avenue one night in October.

So, here it goes. My Best Records of 2011. I've consulted my iTunes, iPod and Last.fm accounts. I viewed how many times I played a certain album or certain track. I thought back to 2011, reflectively and remembered the moments I first heard a particular song. All those shows I went to, all those walks through Manhattan and rides on the subway. Those moments in the car with no one there dancing along to Calvin Harris's "We Found Love" and rediscovering old gems like Hayden and K's Choice on random mixes I made years ago for my best friend. Those drunken nights spent at Metro or in bars in Hell's Kitchen. The desire to dance to songs off the radio. I remember the first time I heard "We Found Love" was at Splash. Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" will always remind me of Gay Pride at Duplex. I remember driving over the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan drinking Four Loko while listening to Adele's "Someone Like You" last winter with the ex-boyfriend. We belt out every word while smoking out the windows of my car. It was before the song became a Hallmark greeting you hear all of the time. And it was before I realized that the guy from Semisonic actually wrote the song. So here's my list of best albums of the year. Please remember that this list is subject to change at any given moment. The numbers beside the albums are just numbers and don't really reflect their merit. All of the albums listed below are awesome in their own way. Enjoy.

Best Records of 2011

30. Twin Sister- In Heaven


29. Iron and Wine- Kiss Each Other Clean


28. Youth Lagoon- The Year of Hibernation


27. Psychic Powers- Infinity


26. Oh Land- Oh Land


25. Jessica Lea Mayfield- Tell Me


24. Nicolas Jaar- Space Is Only Noise


23. Florence + The Machine- Ceremonials


22. Austra- Feel It Break


21. Martin John Henry- The Other Half of Everything


20. Radiohead- The King of Limbs


19. PJ Harvey- Let England Shake


18. Tennis- Cape Dory


17. Class Actress- Rapprocher


16. Drake- Take Care


15. Widowspeak- Widowspeak


14. Elite Gymnastics- Ruin


13. Thao and Mirah- Thao and Mirah


12. Wild Flag- Wild Flag


11. Adele- 21


10. Lady Gaga- Born This Way


09. An Horse- Walls


08. Beirut- The Rip Tide


07. Explosions in the Sky- Take Care, Take Care, Take Care


06. The Weeknd- House of Balloons


05. M83- Hurry Up, We're Dreaming


04. Ellie Goulding- Lights


03. Low- C'mon


02. Yuck- Yuck


01. Bon Iver- Bon Iver



If you're into it, I compiled a list of tracks on Spotify from my top 20 albums.

http://open.spotify.com/user/octoberxswimmer/playlist/3LeADuGlpUvpndDLlZk7yP