Gut Feeling: Jeff Rosenstock - We Cool?

Jeff Rosenstock – We Cool?

Quote Unquote/Sideonedummy, 2015

I swear, once a week I sit and quietly reflect upon all the music I love that I’m not listening to. I’d never heard of Bomb the Music Industry! until I took a flyer on frontman Jeff Rosenstock’s latest solo record after seeing his name pop up on Facebook. After an exhausting decade of trying to keep up with everything, my new year’s resolution was to quit reading music reviews in an effort to put a stop to the little voice inside my head that plays when I listen to music (“It only got a 5.4 on Pitchfork, hmm”). I’m a much happier person. And it makes way more sense getting clued in by people I actually like and trust. So there you go. Jeff Rosenstock’s name pops up in my Facebook feed and I A.) Know I need to get all of those Bomb the Music Industry! albums B.) Found another dude who totally nails that poppy bedroom punk sound that is maybe my favorite sound and C.) all of a sudden have a valid album of the year contender.

We Cool? is a messy and urgent examination of that late 20s/early 30s unhappiness (“Nothing makes me happy/ I’m like a shitty child”) and general ennui. A sort of “Well OK what now.” It’s not exactly uncharted territory, but Rosenstock has so much fun with the subject matter and the songs it makes for a fun journey down this well trod path. A poppier Andrew Jackson Jihad was an immediate touchstone and wouldn’t you know it, they’re cohorts (and tour mates, who just played Lawrence last night and were I still a member of that unattached late 20s/early 30s crowd I would have been there hell/highwater style). The epic power pop of early Weezer are also present, but its honestly more akin to Weezer acolytes Ozma who had a sweeter, synthier vibe. Either way, We Cool? is insanely catchy and infinitely relistenable and it’s sneakily become my go-to record for 2015. Bad day? Put on “Hall of Fame” in the car and make everything better. Feeling pissed off at everything? That drunken Ben Folds-y piano and chant-a-long chorus on “Nausea” does the trick.

I’m thinking We Cool? is exactly what I was looking for and I’m glad I stumbled across it (and Rosenstock’s own Quote Unquote records which offers free downloads of the labels albums and asks only for donations). When you go through the motions of modern music and hype and label spin on a regular basis, finding a pocket of that pure, amazing, unaffected DIY spirit is like finding a woman you want to spend the rest of your life with. So pure and good and right. For someone (like myself) particularly susceptible to that aforementioned spin, hype, and bias, this music feels like home. 

Get it here.

"Nausea"

John Vanderslice - Time Travel is Lonely

John Vanderslice – Time Travel is Lonely

Barsuk, 2001 (2009 Reissue)

Acquired: Love Garden, Used, 2015

Price: $10

Jenny got me $40 in Love Garden gift certificates for my birthday and for me, the gift isn’t the records I get, but getting to spend two blissful, allergy attack laden (the mix of dust and adorable cats brings out the worst of my allergies but so worth it) hours flipping through vinyl. Since leaving Half Price Books, I’ve quit buying records. I was beyond thrilled to go in and buy whatever the hell I wanted and make the most of my $40. First off, I found a few safe picks that I would grab in case Jenny and Rosie got done early with their thrifting. After that, I buried myself in the alt-rock vinyl and when I looked up, I’d snagged a few must haves. One was this reissue of Time Travel is Lonely, a huge album from my high school years. Transitioning from listening to nothing but punk rock to a world that was changed by Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was the greatest musical time of my life. Everything was new and exciting and I approached it all without prejudice. I’d discovered JV through the Mountain Goats and fell in love with his gorgeously photographed tour diaries. I saw him play at the Bottleneck on the Cellar Door tour. He played for pretty much no one and the young openers, the then relative unknowns Okkervil River, played for an even smaller chunk of the crowd. In addition to Time Travel is Lonely’s title track, I particularly latched onto his sonic interpretation of Robert Lowell’s “The Old Flame” (here “My Old Flame”). The consummate producer and engineer, JV’s albums are fun just to hear the man delight in crafting sonic landscapes.

My Favorite Films of 2014

The trouble with living in the Midwest is that by year’s end I haven’t had a chance to see everything  I wanted to see from the year prior. Films trickle inward from the coasts, and even then their presentation is often dubious. For instance, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice was a prime example of why I wait to put together my list and I missed it because I think it was only open for about a week. My 19 year old self would have been there opening night, but my 29 year old with three or four different hoops to jump through in order to see a movie, it takes a real above and beyond effort to see everything I want to see. An effort I frankly just don’t have anymore. I see the films eventually. I put them on hold at the library or they pop up on Netflix, but they don’t make the list! What a shame!

The year end list is important to me for some reason. I love putting it together the week of the Oscars. It’s a ritual, undertaken merely to exercise the film loving muscle in my body that I’ve been honing since I was 16 or 17 and saw Mulholland Drive. Checked out from the library. From there I became obsessed. I spent whole summers holed up in my basement bedroom watching stacks of films. Submitting to an entire history of a medium. I had strict rule: Watch, at the very least, a film a day. I usually squeezed in two or three a day in addition to working 16 hours a week at AMC where I squeezed in movies after shifts, 11AM matinees on days off, and saw some films in a piecemeal fashion during ushering shifts. It is that good and pure obsession that I am trying to pay homage to. 

15. Neighbors

Directed by Nicholas Stoller

Obligatory new dad pick. The plot’s a little goofy, but the characters—new parents desperately trying to salvage the cool people they once were—are great and full of heart. That’s actually par for the course for Stoller, whose The Five-Year Engagement and Forgetting Sarah Marshall get to be silly, raunchy, and moving all at once. It’s a delicate craft. Sure the gags are great, but the scene where Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne’s characters are trying to have sex and their baby keeps turning around in her bouncy chair to stare at them and the characters having to abandon the act via the weirdness was one of the truest things I saw all year.

14. The One I Love

Directed by Christopher McDowell

Caveat emptor: Watching this film with your significant other is going to lead to a heavy conversation about your relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything, because watching this film unfold is a treat (as are the performances of Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss), but if you’re on shaky ground with the special man or woman in your life this incisive look at marriage might tip you one way or the other.

13. Jodorowsky’s Dune

Directed by Frank Pavich

I finally put myself up to watching The Holy Mountain this year. How I made it through film school without seeing Jodorowsky’s infamous masterpiece is beyond me. Rosie had gone to bed early and I had a couple hours to kill, pulled the trigger, and sat rapt soaking in one of the weirdest artistic statements I’ve ever experienced. It’s a brilliant and evocative piece of art that belongs in a museum. I also read Dune this year, primarily because this documentary had come out and I wanted to imagine the novels setting with a Jodorowskian palate. It was magnificent. David Lynch’s adaptation is dogshit, and really, it’s not his fault. It was the 80s and he tried. The studio interfered, but some of those effects are inexcusable and it’s all so cheesy and incomprehensible you wish they’d just abandoned it all together. Jodorowsky’s Dune plays like salt in the wound. Look upon that gorgeous and fucked up concept art and weep. Oh, what could have been! Fortunately, the film isn’t merely a glimpse of a great film we the people were deprived of, but a fascinating glimpse into the mind of a madman.

12. 22 Jump Street

Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

21 Jump Street looked funny enough, but only when looking up The Lego Movie did I put together the pieces that Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were the masterminds behind the tragically short-lived MTV cartoon Clone High. A show I watched religiously the ½ season it was on. A show that cemented the groundwork of what would become my adult sense of humor. Which is to say, a well-timed dolphin squeak will basically have me hyperventilating on the floor. These guys, Jesus Christ. I can’t even. We watched 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street back to back and I was sore the next day. From the clever usage of professional man meat Channing Tatum to the constant tongue-and-cheek lampoonery of sequels to that goddamn “Suns Out, Guns Out” tank top, 22 Jump Street is not only the year’s funniest film, but one of the funniest films I have ever seen. If Lord and Miller don’t already have the keys to the comedy kingdom (which, based on the success and overall wonderfulness of The Lego Movie, they probably do) this needs to be arranged.

11. Birdman: or the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance

Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu

This one was sort of a perfect storm of “Things that are right up my alley.” Here’s a list within the list of why I loved Birdman: One, I love all of Iñárritu’s films. Two, I love Raymond Carver. Three, I love me a good behind-the-scenes showbiz movie. Four, the acting is amazing (though I’d say despite all of the praise Michael Keaton is getting he is upstaged by Edward Norton and Emma Stone). Five, it’s a technical marvel that plays with the form of cinema in a unique and, most importantly, fun way. Six, it’s incredibly heady but also incredibly funny which makes for a deep richness. Seven, did I mention Emma Stone is amazing? She delivers a monologue midway through the film that is such a showstopper the director should have cued the film to burn on screen before correcting it. Eight, it was an experience that left me rapt in my oversized chair in the squeaky, overpriced cinema suites chairs at AMC and it’s so rare to go to the movies these days and have an actual Experience it’s worth noting here.

10. Guardians of the Galaxy

Directed by James Gunn

James Gunn may be known for peddling filth as a part of the Troma Entertainment cadre, but the way he has you both weeping and IDing with Star Lord in the first five minutes of the movie is nothing short of masterful. From there, Chris Pratt and a terrific supporting cast deliver what is easily the best, most entertaining and most emotionally satisfying Marvel movie yet.

9. Only Lovers Left Alive

Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Without a doubt, Only Lovers Left Alive was the coolest film of 2014. It was the sort of cool that only Jim Jarmusch can deliver as probably the coolest director in the business. Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton are electric as a pair of vampires living out their eternal days (or nights, I suppose) in a languid way typically associated people living in opium dens. Jarmusch cleverly sets the scene in the dying city of Detroit against the town’s rock and roll history and it’s just a marvelous film to let wash over you with its gorgeous visuals and incredible score.

8. Frank

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson

I think a lot of why I loved this movie is tied to when I watched it. I’d just had surgery, I was zonked out on hydrocodone and feeling incredibly strange. I instinctually picked Frank to watch off the Netflix queue and something about the combination of all those things made it a movie that has really stuck with me. It’s a beautiful and brutal depantsing of the kind of social media fueld hype machine that makes music so insufferable these days. Domhnall Gleeson is excellent as the obnoxious, talentless, tweeting weasel that infiltrates Frank’s band and the scorn he draws from the rest of the group is a source of great humor. Michael Fassbender wears a big paper mache head for most of the film but that doesn’t make his turn as a brilliant, mentally ill musician any less stirring. It’s a poignant look at the Daniel Johnstons of the world and the suffering that leads to that great, weird, outsider art we all love so much.  

7. Calvary

Directed by John Michael McDonagh

The films of John Michael Mcdonagh’s more famous brother Martin (2008’s In Bruges and 2012’s Seven Psychopaths) always make my year end list, so I’m not surprised that talent flows freely in the family McDonagh. Anchored by Brendan Gleeson’s tremendous performance of a good priest in a small seaside town spending a week getting his affairs in order before he is to be murdered on a beach to atone for the sins of the Catholic Church. It sounds bleak, and while there is certainly a storm cloud hanging over this film, there is a fair bit of humor and heart to balance out this magnificent character drama. 

6. Snowpiercer

Directed by Bong Joon-ho

Sometimes it’s the weird ones that really stick with you, and boy oh boy, is Snowpiercer a weird one. It’s also probably the most fun I had watching a movie last year. It also features Tilda Swinton’s best performance in a year where A.) Tilda Swinton was in almost every single movie and B.) Tilda Swinton straight-up killed it in every single movie she was in (See Also: Only Lovers Left Alive, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Zero Theorem being her other three films this year, each one featuring a totally different side of this phenomenal woman). In Snowpiercer, she’s the one keeping a ragtag group of peasant people (led by Chris Evans, in fine form here) from fighting their way through the titular train’s class system to the engine room where they plan to take control of humanity’s last salvation in the frozen and environmentally devastated remains of Earth. God bless this new wave of Korean directors bringing their insane, inventive flourishes to English language cinema.

5. Interstellar

Directed by Christopher Nolan

I’ll be honest, that this film’s central heartbeat centers around a father-daughter relationship rather than a father-son relationship is what made Interstellar so deeply resonant with me. It would have still been a fine modern space exploration epic if they’d gone the father-son route as scripted. I’m biased, with my own baby girl and all, but it’s more heartbreaking that way and I was weepy numerous times during the film’s span. It’s master stylist Christopher Nolan’s most emotionally devasting work to date in addition to being his most technologically marvelous. It’s a wondrous film to behold, and while it’s a bit all over the place prone to switch genres or throw wild metaphysical stuff your way at the drop of a hat, the not-knowing-what-the-hell-is-gonna-happen-next was a big reason I was so thoroughly entertained and moved.

4. Ida

Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski

A beautiful, transcendent, amazingly photographed film about uncovering uncovering the horrors of one of humanity’s darkest hours. Holocaust films come and go, but the  hushed and heartbreaking journey of young nun-in-training Anna discovering her Jewish heritage (and her birth name and the fate of her family) on the cusp of taking her vows tells a side of the atrocity that we haven’t really seen before. Frames of this film are burned into my brain, courtesy of the striking black-and-white cinematography of Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lenczewski, always leaving the subjects low in the frame and leaving a great deal of negative space to symbolize any number of things. The weight of history, the room to ascend to grace and acceptance, a setting where the world is threatening to completely overtake its characters. It’s austere and incredible work, punctuated by any number of times the camera comes to rest on Agata Trzebuchowska’s eyes that cut right through the celluloid and into your soul. Maybe I’m biased, having spent film school writing papers about the quietly devastating films of Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, and Seijun Suzuki, but on the strength of Ida I think Pawel Pawlikowski has earned a seat amongst those greats and I can’t wait to see what he does next.

3. The Battered Bastards of Baseball

Directed by Chapman Way and Maclain Way

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed Ken Burns’ 10+ hour long Baseball series. It’s a very informative series on the whole history of the game. It’s also stuffy and full of blowhards like George Will who will talk your ear off about the purity of the Great Game of Ball. The Battered Bastards of Baseball is a magnificent counterpoint to the Burns series, in that the legends it touts are dudes you have never heard of. Dudes with outlandish facial hair and unsavory lifestyles. It’s a look at baseball outside the establishment, and this chronicle of the short-lived Portland Mavericks cuts to the heart of what baseball really is: A childrens’ game played by grown-ass men for the sheer fun of it all.

2. Whiplash

Directed by Damien Chazelle

How Damien Chazelle didn’t garner a nod for Best Director escapes me, because there was no film better helmed in 2014 than Whiplash. The tension Chazelle builds in this student-becomes-the-master piece is so tight and so thick it’s almost unbearable to watch at times. When the whole thing crescendos with the undisputable best scene of the last year, it’s electric. Whiplash is bound to be a lasting parable of the price of greatness.

1. Boyhood

Directed by Richard Linklater

While it sure is nice to see a salt of the earth guy like Richard Linklater garnering so much praise for his most recent effort, it’s nicer that 2014 produced a film everyone could agree on. Not only did Linklater quash any notion that the film (shot over 12 years) would be a gimmick, but said “gimmick” only ended up making for a transcendent filmgoing experience unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The closest thing I can think of is Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series or Linklater’s own Before…, but where those films pick up a number of years after the last, watching Ellar Coltrane grow up in the span of three hours is magical. 

Elliott Smith - "Needle in the Hay" 7"

Elliott Smith  - “Needle in the Hay” 7”

Kill Rock Stars, 1995

Acquired: Kill Rock Stars Mailorder, New, 2003

Price: $4

I spent many hours of my teenage years analyzing “Needle in the Hay.” Like many kids my age, I discovered Elliott Smith via the wrist-cutting sequence of The Royal Tenenbaums. Because of that, and through mishearing something Wes Anderson said on the audio commentary, I thought Elliott Smith had killed himself. I found out he was still alive! And two weeks later (and two weeks after I’d acquired this 7”) he killed himself. I remember coming home from school to that. Sitting at the family computer in the living room and letting punknews.org break the heartbreaking news. That memory is firmly attached this this 7”. As is riding the KU campus bus heartbroken. And thinking lines like “Man, I’m glad I’m not addicted to heroin” but also being able to find the deep, dark humor in a line like “You oughta be proud that I’m getting good marks.” Smith is his generation’s Nick Drake (who also has a song on The Royal Tenenbaums soundtrack, committed suicide, and wrote the same sort of sad, soulful songs that get inside of you and never come out) and a national treasure bound to be discovered and rediscovered for decades, centuries, millennia.

Gut Feeling: Father John Misty - I Love You, Honeybear

Father John Misty – I Love You, Honeybear

Sub Pop, 2015

Josh Tillman’s first album as Father John Misty—2012’s Fear Fun—was a beautiful and weird examination of ego and personal mythology set in a Hollywood of drugs and debauchery delivered with pure swagger. It was my favorite record that year, and its followup, I Love You, Honeybear, is poised to be my favorite record of 2015. I know it’s early, but goddamn, Misty gone an done it again!

I Love You, Honeybear is a disarmingly romantic record. Compared to the wall-to-wall weirdness and self-indulgence of Fear Fun, it’s a joy hearing a record of songs about how much Tillman loves his wife. There’s no simpering sentiments or any of that mushy stuff, but there are plenty of moments that hit you right in the heart. Right down to the guts. It’s a record about not just finding someone to watch the world burn with, but also finding someone who makes you understand that love is a transformative process two people undergo, and openly willing to make that transformation.

It’s a photorealistic portrait of true love. There are still a lot of drugs and weird sex involved, but this time around, Misty has someone to share in the experience. On “Chateau Lobby (in C for Two Virgins)” Tillman belts out “First time you let me stay the night despite your own rules/ You took off early to go cheat your way through film school/ You left a note in your perfect script/ Stay as long as you want/ And I haven’t left your bed since” before a mariachi band punctuates the sentiment with big, brassy horns.

Sweetness, sexiness, and swagger blur into one big, unnamable emotion just like the album’s two central characters. The emotions are so large and earnest, I’ll probably shed an actual tear of Josh and Emma Tillman ever divorce. Honestly, all I want from music is honesty and when honesty is spilled out so openly as it is on Honeybear, I tend to obsess. Or maybe I’m just happy that someone finally made a record for my sect: Married Dudes Who Deeply Love Their Wives. I’ve always been an enormous fan of break up albums, but goddamn is it refreshing to hear such an artful examination of getting together and staying that way. 

"Chateau Lobby #4 (in C for Two Virgins)" - Wait for that punctuating mariachi solo and tell me you're not sold!

So Last Monday I Was Diagnosed With Thyroid Cancer

So last Monday I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Jenny says my face turned white as a sheet when my Ear, Nose, and Throat doctor broke the news, but I don't know how she saw anything because she was in tears. Rosie was there, too, oblivious to the gravity of it all. It was a surreal fifteen minutes. Deep down, as the doctor explained that fortunately, thyroid cancer is very treatable, I couldn't help but mentally pat myself on the back because I fucking called this shit.

In early November I started worrying about a lump on my neck. Not huge, just a weird, hard little lump an inch away from my Adam's Apple that moved when I swallowed. I thought it had been there for a year, maybe more, but now I don't even know. The entire history of the lump is lost to the world. But for some reason or another, I started panicking and googling "Neck Lump" on a regular basis. One night I felt my blood run cold after using the internet to diagnose the lump as an enlarged thyroid nodule (because no one has ever been wrong about their own internet diagnosis). I got into bed that night and whispered to Jenny, "I think I have thyroid cancer." She said, in so many words, shut up, you don't have cancer, go to sleep.

That's the appropriate response. I'm a massive hypochondriac and chronic worrier. In my early 20s I effectively willed my right testicle to have an inflammation called epididymitis and spent months thinking I had AIDS, testicular cancer, or some other horrific STD. As soon as the blood tests came back clean, the pain went away and everything went back to normal. Bullet dodged.

Not so much this time around. The day after coming up with this shocking internet diagnosis, I went to the doctor. "Your thyroid is down here," she said, indicating that no, it wasn't an enlarged thyroid nodule. It was definitely weird, but probably nothing to worry about. I went in for an ultrasound two days before Thanksgiving and, while they did notice a couple of small nodules on my thyroid, they weren't large enough to cause concern. They deduced that the lump was a lymph node within normal parameters and probably nothing to worry about.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief! And yet, the following Monday I got a call from the doctor saying the lump warranted further evaluation and I was being referred to an Ear, Nose, and Throat specialist. A couple weeks later I was sitting down across from a very chill and capable doctor who reassured me that it was probably nothing, although the fact that it moved meant it probably wasn't a lymph node since lymph nodes don't move. He ordered a CT scan. With the exception of the lump, the CT scan came back normal. "You're the interesting patient," he said. "You're a mystery." "I don't want to be a mystery," I said. He almost let me walk. To go on with my life, monitor the lump, and see if it got any bigger. He didn't feel right about the lump's mobility, so he ordered a biopsy to see if, once and for all, we could figure out what the fuck this thing was.

The biopsy was one of the worst experiences of my life. It wasn't painful, per se, but definitely worse than the root canal I had a couple years back thanks to the weird pressure of the needle interacting with the lump and the emotional terror of not knowing if I was going to feel a sharp stab of pain in an unanesthesized zone. I soldiered through it and a shut my mind off for Christmas. After the holiday, I went back in to the ENT who, once again, couldn't figure out what the hell it was. He said the pathology report didn't show any indication of the lump being malignant, but wanted to take the lump out in the name of thoroughness.

A week later I was at the ambulatory surgery center at Olathe Medical Center chewing my nails in the waiting room. I should note that, since these procedures spanned two years, I was guaranteed to be on the hook for $6,000 in medical bills because the American Healthcare System gotta get paid. The surgery was a rousing success. They were able to remove the lump no problem and I go to go home, take painkillers, and watch movies for the next couple of days before going back to work. Everything was healing up nicely and I felt like I'd had some black, toxic weight lifted. The lump that had caused me so much stress over the last few months was gone, and after the post-op followup where he would tell me it was a benign lump as expected, I would get on with my life.

But he told me it was thyroid cancer. My brain frosted over as he explained everything. The lump had a malignancy stemming from those little thyroid nodules from the ultrasound. "They're so small, I wouldn't have even biopsied them," he said. He then went on to detail the treatment, which Jenny had him write down because jesus christ, when someone tells you you have cancer you're going to be useless for a little while. He assured me that they had a very successful treatment plan in place for thyroid cancer. They would schedule me for surgery the following week to remove the offending gland. A few months after that, I would take a pill of radioactive iodine and hole up in isolation at the hospital for a few days because my body would literally be emitting radiation. The radioiodine targets any thyroid cells left in my body (he referred to it as a "broad leaf killer") without damaging anything else and, assuming they get it all, that's that. After that I follow up every few months until I get sick of coming in to have them tell me everything's fine.

Currently, everything is not fine. The last week has been spent both not trying to think about it and go about my life business as usual, the other half has been trying to cope with the idea of not seeing my daughter grow up. That's all I care about. They say children make you cope with your own mortality, and that's true. When Rosie was born Jenny and I became her secret service. Any parent who wouldn't take a bullet for their kid should probably have their kids taken away. That's just what you do. Your life exists as a supporting role to the child. The only reason I give a shit about my own life anymore is because I know I need to be there for Rosie, and the thought of not being there for her, of seeing her grow, of watching her make breakthroughs and mistakes is the realest horror I've ever known.

Surgery is tomorrow at 8:30 AM and while I'm not so scared of the surgery, I'm scared of what they'll find. The trend of going to the doctor a dozen times and getting inconclusive and ultimately, bad news has my dread sensors tingling. A week after the surgery I'll go in for a post op and get the pathology reports from my dear, departed thyroid and I'm bracing for the worst because that is my natural way of thinking. The biggest thing I've learned from this experience is that the universe in no way gives a single shit about any of us. It is cruel and it is chaos, and there is something beautiful about that. That's the only way I was able to get to acceptance.

Acceptance came quickly. It was an unseasonably warm day and we took Rosie for a stroll on the Indian Creek Trail after the appointment where Jenny and I tried to make sense of this. Was it all the dental X-Rays I've had over the years or just shit luck? Bad genes? It didn't matter, because it was happening and the only thing to be done was whatever the doctor ordered (both Jenny and I scoffed loudly when he said, while he didn't approve, if we wanted to try a homeopathic approach that was our choice).

There's that thing they say about how atheists will change their tune when they're staring down the reaper, but if anything my tune has even more clearly tuned in on the idea that there is no God. I've become more spiritual over the years and wouldn't technically classify myself as an atheist because I'm open to there being something transcendental and completely incomprehensible waiting for us after we die, but all Gods seem preposterous now more than ever. Though I ironically adopt a fatalistic worldview with a karma-based moral code, I understand that shit is just totally fucking random. Any meaning in life is the meaning we create. It's in the relationships we forge in defiance of nature's will. The fact that I can even write this blog post is a natural miracle.

Humans evolved, and evolved imperfectly in a way that one's organs and glands can turn into ticking time bombs at a moment's notice. I look at pictures of myself from the last few years and wonder when the cancer was present, or if it had always been there. Something uncontrollable and eventual that was to be met with anger, confusion, and despair but ultimately, something that could only be accepted. And that's where I've been this past week, but I'm still scared as shit because this shit is scary. Still, to paraphrase one of America's greatest poets, the waiting is the hardest part. That's where the despair breeds. In the Schrodinger's Cancer that is either an easy enough fix or something much worse.

It helps that I have an adorable, perfect daughter to keep me positive. I have to be positive for her, and watching her learn how to drink water on her own and learn how to stand on her own have been little reminders of why I fight. I don't know how you fight cancer, that's something they like to show you in movies but it seems preposterous that one person could be more of a fighter than the next. Regardless, I feel like a fucking gladiator or some shit, ready to deal with whatever poking, prodding, scanning, and radioactivity they can throw at me. Because I have to. Because Rosie needs a dad and Jenny needs a husband and besides, we haven't even finished having all of our kids. It's just amazing how much the stupid bullshit you're used to stressing out about fucks right off when you find out that your body is actively trying to kill you like a self-contained kamikaze pilot.

Jenny is making me healthful juices and we're going whole ham on organic foods and I'm getting rid of all the plastics, and I feel like a more positive person. More grateful to be alive. More grateful for Rosie's little toothy smiles and screeches. More at peace with my infinitesimally small place in the universe with the knowledge that terrible shit happens, but also that, to quote MPLS rapper POS, "worse things have happened to better people."I stop feeling sorry for myself when I see those bald six-year-olds on the commercials for children's hospitals and pediatric cancer research. At the present, I've had 29 years to be a fuck up, to fall in love, to sire an heir, and to devote way to many hours of my life to video games and way, way, way too many hours of my life to music. Over the next few months I plan on turning this tale into a graphic novel as a coping mechanism, and I can't wait to chronicle the radioactive iodine therapy because as far as I know, no one has ever written about that in a literary fashion and a title like "Radioactive Dad" is too good not to use. It's been embarassing to tell people about this, I don't know why. Calling my mom to tell her was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. It's so much easier to dump it here in a blog post. The whole, sordid tale of how sometimes, even though they say you should never, ever diagnose yourself via the interent, you can scare yourself enough to take action and get weird shit checked out. Check your lumps, people. It's worth a $30 copay to find out whether or not your body is plotting against you.

Naturally, I wouldn't be a proper music junkie if I hadn't already started cobbling together a mix for this terrible journey. But I've got one I've been playing on repeat like a call to arms:

28 Days of Christmas: Frightened Rabbit - "Boxing Night"

Hope everyone had a great Christmas! Now here's some beautiful Scottish glumness for those who celebrate Boxing Day!

28 Days of Christmas: The Pogues - "Fairytale of New York"

Name a better, more affecting Christmas song and I'll give you a dollar. Seriously, go on, do it. I dare you. Life ain't always sleighbells and reindeer. It's messy and dirty and frequently beautiful and full of joy in the darkest places. Merry Christmas everyone!

Bonus! Because it's Christmas here's the No Use for a Name cover, which introduced me to the song many years ago. Tony Sly duets with Cinder Block from Tilt and it's so so so so so great (and has more muted power chords).

28 Days of Christmas: Low - "Just Like Christmas"

Low may be best known for their gorgeous, moody slowcore, but when they add the sleighbells and up the tempo for the standout track from their Christmas album, it's just pure Christmas magic. Though it doesn't cover your traditional Christmas fare (the last line of the first verse is, after all, "It wasn't like Christmas at all") it captures the essence of the season perfectly.

My Favorite Albums of 2014

2014 was an year with an overwhelming amount of good music, but getting down to it, and thinking of the albums I truly devoured this year, it feels like I’m forcing it a bit. I started with 30, then 25, then down to 20. Now it’s down to 15 and I’m thinking, “Do I really need to put those extra five records on a list is constructed purely for my own personal enjoyment? This isn’t Pitchfork or Rolling Stone, but a survey of one nerd’s habits. In putting together this list I realize how set in my ways I am, and how that is never going to change. All I did this year was watch the baby, not sleep, work, and drive. That’s it. Pete Holmes’ “You Made it Weird” podcast replaced music in the car, and I don’t know where I found the time to listen to records. Some of the quieter ones I listened to when I was staying up all night and Rosie was sleeping on my chest, but most of these I squeezed in when I was doing the morning deposit at work or whatever.

2014 was a year where it was easy to make a Best Of list and hard to make a My Favorite list. There was a great amount of innovation to be had this past year, but then, when isn’t there great innovation? We got to see artists take their crafts to new heights (St. Vincent, Angel Olsen, Owen Pallett, Mac DeMarco) and workmanlike lifers contribute rock solid records to their already rock solid catalogues (TV on the Radio, Fucked Up. I listened to way more rap than I have ever listened to, but entirely shunned anything remotely electronic. It was a year of listening to great songs, sneaking them in whenever I had a free moment (of which there were very few). I spent more time listening to Crooked Fingers’ complete discography than any one record this year. And now the list feels exhausted at this point, as these are the fifteen albums I listened to the most, pretty much in order. And I just cut it down to Top 10 because that feels right.

Despite only listing ten albums, I gushed over many, many more that made the Best of 2014 tag. Tons of good stuff this year, but then again, there's tons of good stuff every year. 

10. Open Mike Eagle – Dark Comedy

So much wit. So much wisdom. Open Mike Eagle’s gift is sharing a worldview that very much lines up with this album’s title. It never feels like joke rap, even when he enlists a professional comedian (Hannibal Burress) on one of the album’s best tracks (“Doug Stamper (Advice Raps)”).

9. Cloud Nothings – Here and Nowhere Else

 

Goddamn it’s wonderful to hear a band with such an affinity for pummeling its audience with guitars. Dylan Baldi’s best record to date (because of course, as his back catalog is nothing but great records smothered by greater record) does an excellent job of never letting you off the hook. It’s impossible to skip a track, and at 30 minutes it’s nothing but pure, unfiltered indie rock played at blistering volume. Lines are repeated over and over and while I usually give shit to bands content to repeat chorus after chorus to make a mainstream radio single five minutes long, Baldi finds a way to use repetition as a way of ramping up intensity.

8. Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire for No Witness

Burn Your Fire for No Witness plays like a bonfire at 4am. Everyone has either gone home, or they’re all still sitting there getting high or drinking or smoking cigarettes, maybe occasionally looking over at the fire and being surprised that it’s still burning. It’s a smoldering record. There’s really no better word for it. Full of white hot intensity that sneaks up on you, listen after listen, firmly affixing itself as a staple in your go-to records for years to come.

7. Frontier Ruckus – Sitcom Afterlife

Not content to rest on their laurels after releasing last year’s sprawling epic Eternity of Dimming, Matthew Milia and crew return with a terrific follow up no one asked them to deliver on such a short turn around. And by no one, I mean HOW DOES NO ONE KNOW ABOUT THIS BAND?! It baffles my mind. Even on short rest, Frontier Ruckus found a way to push their sound into new, poppier terrain and maintain the standard of quality in the magnificently detailed songwriting that is right up there with the John Darnielles and the John K Samsons of the world.

6. Sturgill Simpson – Metamodern Sounds in Country Music

I don’t know if there’s a better example of an artist coming to grips with his craft than Sturgill Simpson’s sophomore album. It’s an outlaw country record displaced from time. Some of it is straightforward (“Life of Sin” and “Living the Dream”), some of it is out there (“Turtles All the Way Down”) and some of it is savant (Simpson’s cover of When in Rome’s “The Promise” breaks the song in half, turns it into this song that slow burns and slow burns and slow burns until he cracks it right open at the very end and it’s one of my favorite musical moments of the year). It’s a record for everyone who says they listen to “anything but country” (and if they aren’t believers after this one, then fuck those people, because Sturgill Simpson is the real goddamn deal).

5. Cymbals Eat Guitars – LOSE

Cymbals Eat Guitars third album is erratic in the best possible sense. You can glean the whole scope of the universe CEG have crafted in the lovely, epic opener “Jackson,” which drifts from a dialed-back slow-burner to a big, clattering cacophony to wailing guitar solo over six minutes. It’s a mighty hook, and the rest of the album manages to slip around the entire spectrum of indie rock while keeping its claws firmly implanted in your person. It’s an unassuming classic, and my favorite pleasant surprise in a year of pleasant surprises.

4. Cheap Girls – Famous Graves

Famous Graves is immediately satisfying. It’s a record so good the bonus track would have been a lesser band’s lead single. There were more innovative albums released this year, but none of those albums were my car stereo’s designated hitter i.e. the album I love so much I burn to a CD-R and flip to whenever I don’t want to put on a podcast. It’s a great honor; it really is, in my little car world. As a result, I listened to Famous Graves an insane amount of times considering this was a year when I had so little time to listen to albums all the way through. The album is a reminder that not everything has to blow your dick off to be great.

3. Sun Kil Moon – Benji

Despite its depressing nature (not one, but two of Kozalek’s relatives die via exploding aerosol cans in front lawn garbage fires), Benji is firmly associated with the sweetest time of my life. I got a month of paid paternity leave when Rosie was born, and I spent a lot of that time staying up til 6AM with her sleeping soundly on my chest. It was the only way. To pass the time, I played FTL on the iPad and listened to the quietest music I could find so as to not wake the baby. I would listen to Benji at least twice a night, and each and every time I found something new to love. It’s nothing but heartbreak (with a little levity in the end with “Ben’s My Friend”) but through all that pain there’s a record that feels like a living, breathing representation of the human condition.

2. The Hotelier – Home, Like Noplace is There

This is album stayed on my iPhone (in its entirety) the longest this year. It became a go to when I wanted the capital A Album experience. It’s a big, emo-fueled (in the best way) concept album about loss and heartbreak and putting everything back together again. It’s an album made up of a series of intense moments. Of dramatic vocal turns, big builds, bigger drum crashes, and straight-outta-the-diary heart-on-sleeve confessional lyrics that are so sincere you almost feel uncomfortable looking that deeply into someone’s soul.

1. Andrew Jackson Jihad – Christmas Island

When it comes down to it, the most important trait a songwriter can have is conviction. Sure, there were a lot more beautifully arranged and technically competent records released in 2014, but Sean Bonnette is like the football player who, while not as physically built for the game as other players, makes up for it in heart and determination. During the album’s most heartwrenching and outwardly gorgeous track—“Linda Ronstadt”—Bonnette sings “I think I like my pretty pretty ugly,” and I keep coming back to that sentiment every time I listen to this record. It sounds like it was recorded in a dumpster, it is frequently ugly sounding and raw and rough, and it is the most exciting, emotionally satisfying, and soulful record I had the privilege of listening to this year.