Each summer a teacher friend of mine makes a poster-sized To-Do list with her kids, writing down all of the fun and adventures they hope to have while on vacation. Any summer lists I've made in the past have been little more than documents on my computer desktop, and instead of fun and adventures I've usually just listed jobs that really should be taken care of that I've managed to procrastinate into near oblivion during the school year.
This year I decided to go a different route and make my summer To-Do list more engaging. Since I don't have any poster paper, I did the next best thing and covered the refrigerator door in colorful Post-It notes, each with a different job or adventure or experience written on it. After the task is finished, I pull it down from the fridge and throw it away, which has been a lot more viscerally satisfying than just crossing things off a list. The fridge has been both a constant reminder of things I need to accomplish before school starts and a source of ideas for slow and empty afternoons. It's worked so well that it's likely I'll do the same thing next year. I'm even putting together plans of how I can use this same kind of format in my classroom this fall.
However.
I'm a little over halfway through my summer break as I write this, and I feel myself losing momentum. Granted, I've gone from having the whole fridge covered at the start to only most of the freezer door left at this point, but there's a lot of purple on that freezer door. See, when I started, I color-coded each of the things I wrote down. Blue Post-Its were for entertainment ("binge this series, read this book, etc.") yellow ones were for things that somehow involved shopping ("get a new bookshelf for the home office"), red were for thing related to writing ("prepare a Middle Grade Minded post for August"), and green were for new experiences or special events ("take a day trip up to St. Cloud"). The purple ones were my least favorite, since purple was the color for summer jobs -- clean the garage, get the furnace tuned up, go to the dentist...the kinds of things that need to be done at some point but are easy to keep putting off. I think that's the nature of To-Do lists, to pounce on the things that are fun and interesting and easy first, and let the boring, stupid ones sit there until you don't have any choice left but to take care of them.
August starts in a couple of days, and because of an amazing schedule this year, I'm not due back to school until just about the very end! So even though the few weeks of break we had in June zipped by and now the entire month of July is almost done, there is still essentially an entire month of summer vacation left! A couple of years ago I blogged about a New Year's resolution I had, setting a different goal to work on each month instead of trying to sustain one thing for a whole year. It worked out pretty well, but my biggest takeaway from it was just how much can be accomplished in a month when you set your mind to it.
Anyway. Because of the collaborative efforts between the writer and the teacher parts of my brain, I've developed a strong tendency to look at almost anything I'm doing in life and try to find ways to do it better. So why not do the same thing with the fridge, and remake my collection of Post-Its into something that will make August more fun than an ever-present reminder of how the school year is closing in while I still have so many things I need to do?
Some things on the current list are coming off, and a lot more will be going up. I'm going to try to stick to a few rules to learn from previous mistakes:
1 - Be specific about the things I include.
2 - Only have one item on each note. None of this "do this thing this many times," because it's so much better to rip the note off the fridge right away.
3 - Make sure some things are challenging, but not so far out of my comfort zone that they'll just be this source of stress staring me down every time I walk into the kitchen.
4 - Only include jobs that absolutely have to be done.
5 - Make sure a lot of things up there will help me to make the most out of the month of summer that still remains.
Making the list longer will keep me busy, but that isn't such a bad thing. After all, you can get a lot done in a month if you set your mind to it.
Any suggestions?
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
The Out of Context Game
My family had a big gathering a couple of weekends back. I'm not exaggerating when I say big; there were somewhere between fifty and sixty people getting together, catching up, playing games, eating great food, playing music, making jokes and laughing...the kind of weekend we're lucky to have happen every so often.
This year I kept track of some of things I heard people say that, when taken out of context, were kind of entertaining. As others picked up on what I was doing, they ask if I'd post the list. We even talked about making a game out of it so the people who were there could try to identify which quote came from which person. Even if you weren't there, this might give you a small glimpse into what our weekend was like.
Not all of them are as funny without the context, but I'd imagine that for someone who hadn't been there a few of these lines would all but demand back story. However, I think I'll just leave them as they are. (For the record, only one of these came from me, and only because someone else said I should include it. Even if you weren't there, see if you can pick it out.)
Here's the list:
"Which of these garden tools will open my beer?"
"Masculinity, I have it in spades."
"I'm his buddy as long as nobody else is around."
"It's a good thing I have a hat on to soak up the blood."
"Food is just awesome."
"No hugging during dinner!"
"I need a Zyrtec, after all that nature."
"Men have one browser open in their brains. Women have about two thousand."
"I don't need you bragging about me, okay?"
"You're doing something right if you get the glare."
"I didn't even know it rained in Wisconsin."
"My mommy is taking me to the beer store!"
"If no one laughs at the joke the first time, it probably isn't going to work the second, third, or fourth time, either."
"Clawfoot."
"I am a wonder."
See you next summer, everyone!
This year I kept track of some of things I heard people say that, when taken out of context, were kind of entertaining. As others picked up on what I was doing, they ask if I'd post the list. We even talked about making a game out of it so the people who were there could try to identify which quote came from which person. Even if you weren't there, this might give you a small glimpse into what our weekend was like.
Not all of them are as funny without the context, but I'd imagine that for someone who hadn't been there a few of these lines would all but demand back story. However, I think I'll just leave them as they are. (For the record, only one of these came from me, and only because someone else said I should include it. Even if you weren't there, see if you can pick it out.)
Here's the list:
"Which of these garden tools will open my beer?"
"Masculinity, I have it in spades."
"I'm his buddy as long as nobody else is around."
"It's a good thing I have a hat on to soak up the blood."
"Food is just awesome."
"No hugging during dinner!"
"I need a Zyrtec, after all that nature."
"Men have one browser open in their brains. Women have about two thousand."
"I don't need you bragging about me, okay?"
"You're doing something right if you get the glare."
"I didn't even know it rained in Wisconsin."
"My mommy is taking me to the beer store!"
"If no one laughs at the joke the first time, it probably isn't going to work the second, third, or fourth time, either."
"Clawfoot."
"I am a wonder."
See you next summer, everyone!
Sunday, July 19, 2015
A Sort of Homecoming
I was out walking a few mornings ago after sleeping in (relatively) late. The sky was gray, the ridiculously humid air already had me cranky, and the day was starting off in a manner that made it seem like staying in bed probably would have been a better option. As I walked, I tried to think of a way I could turn all of this around, knowing I had a long and horrible day ahead of me if I didn’t.
I thought to the summer vacation to-do list of sticky notes on my fridge, and remembered how one said to take a day trip up to St. Cloud. This is the city where I went to college and lived for five of my favorite years (I earned a minor, an extra licensure, and had to student teach for a term if you’re wondering why it took five years, thank you very much). Over the years I’ve made a few trips back up there just to see if I could get a little nostalgia buzz from the campus or the city, but it had probably been close to ten years since my last visit. Generally I’m one to focus on moving forward instead of spending a lot of time thinking about what’s behind me, and college is far enough back now that it’s not even something I feel can relate to anymore. But, if there’s any place from my past that’s earned an occasional backward glance, it would have been there. Like I said, it was home for five of my favorite years.
With nothing else pressing going on, I decided that trip would be a good way to reboot the day. After returning from the walk, cleaning up, and eating a quick breakfast, I put together a quick playlist of one hundred one-time favorite college songs. I probably hadn’t listened to most of them in at least ten or fifteen years, but they were all important enough at one time to be tagged with very specific memories, and together they made a perfect soundtrack for the day.
The drive up only took about an hour and brought back some nostalgia on its own. How many times had I driven that same stretch of highway? How many times had I stopped at the gas station in Becker? How many different mix tapes had I played in the car, in the cheap boom box I kept on the passenger seat because the cassette player in my car always lost sound whenever I made a left turn? How many times did my sister Erin borrow my car and return it to me with greasy residue all over the steering wheel from the Doritos she and her friends had on their road trip? (To be fair, that was only once. But the memory is vivid.)
The sky was full of thick clouds, which made me think of a time when we judged the weather on a road trip by what we would see through the windshield instead of the radar image on a smartphone. As I passed through Clear Lake, I thought of the girl from there who had stomped on my heart pretty bad, but now smiled at the memory of it. When I turned off the highway right by the prison (which was the faster way to reach campus), I remembered how slowing down to drive that particular road meant I had returned to St. Cloud, and I'd always get the feeling, powerful and independent and relieving all at once, that I was back home.
The quiet south side neighborhoods surrounding the campus looked like they could have been plucked out of an older section of Minneapolis then transplanted and accessorized with oak trees and granite. In fact, I was surprised to be reminded of exactly how inescapable the granite is in St. Cloud -- almost as inescapable as all of the apartment buildings. It is a college town after all, especially on the south side. It was almost comforting to recognize so many of the apartment complexes, including a couple I had lived in, along with the enormous old houses that would be taken over as off-campus housing when the students returned in the fall. I recognized enough of those houses to make me nervous for the kids who’d be living in them; those places had looked run-down and tentative when I was in school, so I had to think a strong breeze would be enough to test their structural integrity now.
The roads around campus had changed some, but I found a place I could park without having to worry about the minimal summer campus security tagging my car while I explored. It was astonishing to discover how many of the older buildings still smelled exactly like they had so long ago, and just as astonishing that I could remember those smells. Regardless of the buildings I walked through, there were bulletin boards up on just about any section of wall large enough to hold one. Normally they would have been plastered with overlapping flyers, but during the summer there was little more than leftover staples marking the places where those flyers had once been. College life takes place in a nice little self-contained society, a subset of the real world that offers the type of additional protection and guidance that I think a lot of us in the actual real world wouldn’t mind still having available. Back when I was a student the bulletin boards and flyers everywhere mostly blended into the background noise of life for me, but my adult teacher self now saw them for the opportunities they’re intended to be, and how each one represented a potential catalyst for some college kid changing the trajectory of their life, even slightly.
When I walked into Atwood, the student center, and saw a sign welcoming the class of 2019, I had a moment of “Back to the Future 2”-like disorientation. Atwood was as made over as any other building on campus, but there were still recognizable traces of what it had been before; it was like a glitch in The Matrix had happened, or a dreamworld landscape from “Inception” had been changing while my back was turned, and I just caught a glimpse of changes taking place behind the scenes I wasn’t meant to know about. I was hit with a random memory on the stairway of a winter day when I’d been cutting through Atwood after class and found a larger crowd than usual. Almost before I had time to wonder what was going on, Illinois Senator Paul Simon, who had been on campus for a presidential campaign stop, came through the crowd and shook my hand, calling me by name, which threw me for a few minutes until I realized it was embroidered on the old high school letter jacket I was still wearing. Oddly enough, moments after remembering this, I walked upstairs and saw a timeline of major events posted outside of the main ballroom, including Paul Simon’s visit on Feb. 18, 1988. Now I know the date.
The church bells from downtown rang on the hour to let me know how much time I had left on my parking permit (I had totally forgot they did that and was hit with a mighty nostalgia wave when it happened). I passed through other buildings long enough to recall the feel of them, then decided to make a quick stop at the bookstore (which is in a completely different building now) to buy a sweatshirt, and cut across the quad by the Performing Arts building to get there.
I thought of a group project I’d worked on there on the quad, for a required education course where we learned how to use all kinds of cutting-edge classroom technology like VHS cameras, filmstrip projectors, and microfiche readers. We were assigned to make a short video, and nobody in my group had any idea about what we wanted to do. I volunteered to think up an idea that night so we would have something to do when we met the next day. The rest of the group was appreciative and liked with what I came up with, which made me quietly happy because it felt like it played into my two biggest dreams back then -- getting a job as a teacher, and maybe someday becoming a writer. They both seemed like dreams at the time, since we were constantly being told how poor the job market was in education, and I already had the faintest understanding of what an uphill battle ever trying to be a writer would prove to be. For whatever it was worth, I took a moment on that walk to the bookstore and sent a thought back to my 22-year-old self to tell him that, as difficult as it seemed to ever reach either of those goals (much less both), they would happen someday. There would be a lot of patience and hard work involved, but they would happen. It also occurred to me that to be right where I am in life now would probably match up with the dreams of many of the students currently at my old school, which was a good reminder that regardless of whatever professional challenges or frustrations I ever have to face, I’m really very privileged to be where I am.
I drove through some of the city when I left campus, but resisted making a lot of memory tour stops along the way; in the end, the city was more of an extension of the campus for me and just the setting where life took place. I stuck to the main roads since the memory of so many once reliable shortcuts had evaporated after so many years. I was sad to see the buck-fifty second-run movie theater that had been across Division from all of the downtown bars was gone, and less than surprised to learn the Parkwood 8 theater at the other end of town had evolved into the Parkwood 17. The area around Crossroads Mall had at least 60% more businesses than it used to. I didn’t see the fountains running in Lake George, so I can only hope they were only turned off the day instead of taken out completely.
Before leaving town, I stopped at the gardens down by the river back on the south side, which had been my favorite spot for bike rides during the summer I stayed in St. Cloud to work. It turns out an art fair was being held there that day, so instead of just passing through I parked the car and walked around. Enough of the flowers and plants were already in bloom to make the visit and the slow walk through both the upper and lower gardens worthwhile. All of the people visiting the art fair changed the quietly pastoral atmosphere I had always enjoyed about the place, but they also added a pleasant celebratory feel that capped off the day nicely.
I still had a lot of my playlist to get through for the drive home. The closer I got to the Cities, the more all of my present day thoughts and concerns and tasks started creeping back into my head, but I had some refreshing new perspectives to consider, and felt just a little more connected to a largely forgotten but formative time in my life. And, because of that playlist, even though it’s been a few days since my trip now, listening to the likes Bon Jovi, Poison, Janet Jackson, and the Replacements hasn’t felt so satisfying or relevant in a long, long time.
I thought to the summer vacation to-do list of sticky notes on my fridge, and remembered how one said to take a day trip up to St. Cloud. This is the city where I went to college and lived for five of my favorite years (I earned a minor, an extra licensure, and had to student teach for a term if you’re wondering why it took five years, thank you very much). Over the years I’ve made a few trips back up there just to see if I could get a little nostalgia buzz from the campus or the city, but it had probably been close to ten years since my last visit. Generally I’m one to focus on moving forward instead of spending a lot of time thinking about what’s behind me, and college is far enough back now that it’s not even something I feel can relate to anymore. But, if there’s any place from my past that’s earned an occasional backward glance, it would have been there. Like I said, it was home for five of my favorite years.
With nothing else pressing going on, I decided that trip would be a good way to reboot the day. After returning from the walk, cleaning up, and eating a quick breakfast, I put together a quick playlist of one hundred one-time favorite college songs. I probably hadn’t listened to most of them in at least ten or fifteen years, but they were all important enough at one time to be tagged with very specific memories, and together they made a perfect soundtrack for the day.
The drive up only took about an hour and brought back some nostalgia on its own. How many times had I driven that same stretch of highway? How many times had I stopped at the gas station in Becker? How many different mix tapes had I played in the car, in the cheap boom box I kept on the passenger seat because the cassette player in my car always lost sound whenever I made a left turn? How many times did my sister Erin borrow my car and return it to me with greasy residue all over the steering wheel from the Doritos she and her friends had on their road trip? (To be fair, that was only once. But the memory is vivid.)
The sky was full of thick clouds, which made me think of a time when we judged the weather on a road trip by what we would see through the windshield instead of the radar image on a smartphone. As I passed through Clear Lake, I thought of the girl from there who had stomped on my heart pretty bad, but now smiled at the memory of it. When I turned off the highway right by the prison (which was the faster way to reach campus), I remembered how slowing down to drive that particular road meant I had returned to St. Cloud, and I'd always get the feeling, powerful and independent and relieving all at once, that I was back home.
The quiet south side neighborhoods surrounding the campus looked like they could have been plucked out of an older section of Minneapolis then transplanted and accessorized with oak trees and granite. In fact, I was surprised to be reminded of exactly how inescapable the granite is in St. Cloud -- almost as inescapable as all of the apartment buildings. It is a college town after all, especially on the south side. It was almost comforting to recognize so many of the apartment complexes, including a couple I had lived in, along with the enormous old houses that would be taken over as off-campus housing when the students returned in the fall. I recognized enough of those houses to make me nervous for the kids who’d be living in them; those places had looked run-down and tentative when I was in school, so I had to think a strong breeze would be enough to test their structural integrity now.
The roads around campus had changed some, but I found a place I could park without having to worry about the minimal summer campus security tagging my car while I explored. It was astonishing to discover how many of the older buildings still smelled exactly like they had so long ago, and just as astonishing that I could remember those smells. Regardless of the buildings I walked through, there were bulletin boards up on just about any section of wall large enough to hold one. Normally they would have been plastered with overlapping flyers, but during the summer there was little more than leftover staples marking the places where those flyers had once been. College life takes place in a nice little self-contained society, a subset of the real world that offers the type of additional protection and guidance that I think a lot of us in the actual real world wouldn’t mind still having available. Back when I was a student the bulletin boards and flyers everywhere mostly blended into the background noise of life for me, but my adult teacher self now saw them for the opportunities they’re intended to be, and how each one represented a potential catalyst for some college kid changing the trajectory of their life, even slightly.
When I walked into Atwood, the student center, and saw a sign welcoming the class of 2019, I had a moment of “Back to the Future 2”-like disorientation. Atwood was as made over as any other building on campus, but there were still recognizable traces of what it had been before; it was like a glitch in The Matrix had happened, or a dreamworld landscape from “Inception” had been changing while my back was turned, and I just caught a glimpse of changes taking place behind the scenes I wasn’t meant to know about. I was hit with a random memory on the stairway of a winter day when I’d been cutting through Atwood after class and found a larger crowd than usual. Almost before I had time to wonder what was going on, Illinois Senator Paul Simon, who had been on campus for a presidential campaign stop, came through the crowd and shook my hand, calling me by name, which threw me for a few minutes until I realized it was embroidered on the old high school letter jacket I was still wearing. Oddly enough, moments after remembering this, I walked upstairs and saw a timeline of major events posted outside of the main ballroom, including Paul Simon’s visit on Feb. 18, 1988. Now I know the date.
The church bells from downtown rang on the hour to let me know how much time I had left on my parking permit (I had totally forgot they did that and was hit with a mighty nostalgia wave when it happened). I passed through other buildings long enough to recall the feel of them, then decided to make a quick stop at the bookstore (which is in a completely different building now) to buy a sweatshirt, and cut across the quad by the Performing Arts building to get there.
I thought of a group project I’d worked on there on the quad, for a required education course where we learned how to use all kinds of cutting-edge classroom technology like VHS cameras, filmstrip projectors, and microfiche readers. We were assigned to make a short video, and nobody in my group had any idea about what we wanted to do. I volunteered to think up an idea that night so we would have something to do when we met the next day. The rest of the group was appreciative and liked with what I came up with, which made me quietly happy because it felt like it played into my two biggest dreams back then -- getting a job as a teacher, and maybe someday becoming a writer. They both seemed like dreams at the time, since we were constantly being told how poor the job market was in education, and I already had the faintest understanding of what an uphill battle ever trying to be a writer would prove to be. For whatever it was worth, I took a moment on that walk to the bookstore and sent a thought back to my 22-year-old self to tell him that, as difficult as it seemed to ever reach either of those goals (much less both), they would happen someday. There would be a lot of patience and hard work involved, but they would happen. It also occurred to me that to be right where I am in life now would probably match up with the dreams of many of the students currently at my old school, which was a good reminder that regardless of whatever professional challenges or frustrations I ever have to face, I’m really very privileged to be where I am.
I drove through some of the city when I left campus, but resisted making a lot of memory tour stops along the way; in the end, the city was more of an extension of the campus for me and just the setting where life took place. I stuck to the main roads since the memory of so many once reliable shortcuts had evaporated after so many years. I was sad to see the buck-fifty second-run movie theater that had been across Division from all of the downtown bars was gone, and less than surprised to learn the Parkwood 8 theater at the other end of town had evolved into the Parkwood 17. The area around Crossroads Mall had at least 60% more businesses than it used to. I didn’t see the fountains running in Lake George, so I can only hope they were only turned off the day instead of taken out completely.
Before leaving town, I stopped at the gardens down by the river back on the south side, which had been my favorite spot for bike rides during the summer I stayed in St. Cloud to work. It turns out an art fair was being held there that day, so instead of just passing through I parked the car and walked around. Enough of the flowers and plants were already in bloom to make the visit and the slow walk through both the upper and lower gardens worthwhile. All of the people visiting the art fair changed the quietly pastoral atmosphere I had always enjoyed about the place, but they also added a pleasant celebratory feel that capped off the day nicely.
I still had a lot of my playlist to get through for the drive home. The closer I got to the Cities, the more all of my present day thoughts and concerns and tasks started creeping back into my head, but I had some refreshing new perspectives to consider, and felt just a little more connected to a largely forgotten but formative time in my life. And, because of that playlist, even though it’s been a few days since my trip now, listening to the likes Bon Jovi, Poison, Janet Jackson, and the Replacements hasn’t felt so satisfying or relevant in a long, long time.
Saturday, July 4, 2015
The First Half of the Year, Musically
Now that 2015 is a few days beyond being half over, I feel like taking some time to think back on the better moments of the new music I've discovered this year. Everything on this list is a 2015 release -- I've bought older albums this year, as well as some new releases that didn't make my top 10 cut off, but these are the ones that I feel represent the best of what's new that I've been listening to this year. In no particular order:
American Beauty/American Psycho - Fall Out Boy
I understand that expressing either enthusiasm or distaste for Fall Out Boy is about ten years out of vogue now, but I didn’t follow them so much when they were peaking. I bought this in the winter, when I really needed something energetic to propel me through the coldest and ugliest days, especially in the mornings. For about a month, this album was what I would play on the way to school just to give myself a little extra kick start.
The Grand Experiment - The Neal Morse Band
It’s billed as the Neal Morse Band, but, much like any other band Neal Morse has been a part of, it’s very recognizably his album. (You either know exactly what that means or you don’t.) Every song on here is at least good, other than the ten-minute cover of “MacArthur Park,” which is just head-scratchingly odd. Still, the overall album didn’t connect with me as much as his work usually does. This will be one in coming years I’ll dig out from time to time and have a lot to rediscover.
Dope Machines - The Airborne Toxic Event
This gets the nod as the weirdest marketing effort. “Dope Machines” has an uncharacteristically electronic-driven sound, and was released at the same time as a surprise album from the band, “Songs of God and Whiskey,” that is far more acoustic. Two very different albums, both with high and low points, but the I think the high points on this one are better. Plus the other one was originally only available for download from the band’s website, and as a package deal with “Dope Machines,” which I’d already gotten from iTunes and wasn’t about to pay for twice.
Hand Cannot Erase - Steven Wilson
While I’m still holding out hope that someday Porcupine Tree will reform and release a proper album of new music as a band, having new Steven Wilson to listen to is almost as good. There are moments on here that are poppier than usual for him, though there’s still plenty of music that’s ambiently progressive and quite a bit darker. Not a cheerful album by any means, but a great one for when you’re in the proper mood.
Toto XIV - Toto
I won’t say much about this since I already wrote a whole post about it not long ago. But after that post I saw a two and a half hour long Toto concert on Palladia, and was impressed enough to get this back out and give it a few more chances. I still think most of the world will never know it exists, but that doesn’t keep it from being a well-made album. Even if I still hate the soft-jazz feel to parts of “Chinatown.”
Live from the Woods - Needtobreathe
This is the best kind of live album. You get just as many album tracks as you do “hits.” Many of the songs, while still being recognizable when compared to their original versions, have been changed or added to in ways that take advantage of the live performance. The singer has enough stage banter (maybe even a little too much, since some moments stretch into being speeches) to show a connection to the audience. The songwriting and the musicianship of the band is well represented here. This will safely be one of my favorites of the year.
Wilder Mind - Mumford and Sons
I’ve already posted about this one as well. In the time since then, the album has grown on me considerably. Even though it has very little connection to the musical stylings of their earlier albums, it’s still a strong and emotional album all on its own. I really like it.
At Your Service - Sammy Hagar and the Circle
This was a surprise when I saw it turn on up iTunes. The band is made up of Sammy, Michael Anthony (formerly of Van Halen), Jason Bonham, a journeyman rock drummer who’s father was John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, and some guitarist I’ve never heard of before who plays well enough to get the job done. It’s a live album that chronicles the different eras of Sammy’s career with some Led Zeppelin covers thrown in. Nothing new or revealing here, but it’s a great classic rock sounding album to put on for some noisy background music.
The Desired Effect - Brandon Flowers
I was looking forward to this since I really enjoyed the last album by his band, The Killers. This is more pop and dance music than rock, but it still has enough of what I enjoy about The Killers to make it worthwhile.
Drones - Muse
This is a good throwback to Muse being more of a rock band while relying less on showy electronic effects. I think it’s one of their stronger albums overall; usually a Muse album will have one or two or three, or sometimes four, songs on it that just don’t work. This isn’t entirely a surprise since they're so heavily influenced by Queen, and having a few oddly subpar songs on each album was almost a Queen trademark. The album is also vaguely conceptual, and since most concept albums are not based around happier themes, there’s a darkness to it that doesn’t necessarily match up to the openness of summertime for me. I think this will be one for me to like well enough now on the surface, and develop more of an appreciation for later on.
And that takes care of the first half of the year. While I'm anxious to see what's still on the way in 2015, this gives me a lot to listen to and enjoy for now.
American Beauty/American Psycho - Fall Out Boy
I understand that expressing either enthusiasm or distaste for Fall Out Boy is about ten years out of vogue now, but I didn’t follow them so much when they were peaking. I bought this in the winter, when I really needed something energetic to propel me through the coldest and ugliest days, especially in the mornings. For about a month, this album was what I would play on the way to school just to give myself a little extra kick start.
The Grand Experiment - The Neal Morse Band
It’s billed as the Neal Morse Band, but, much like any other band Neal Morse has been a part of, it’s very recognizably his album. (You either know exactly what that means or you don’t.) Every song on here is at least good, other than the ten-minute cover of “MacArthur Park,” which is just head-scratchingly odd. Still, the overall album didn’t connect with me as much as his work usually does. This will be one in coming years I’ll dig out from time to time and have a lot to rediscover.
Dope Machines - The Airborne Toxic Event
This gets the nod as the weirdest marketing effort. “Dope Machines” has an uncharacteristically electronic-driven sound, and was released at the same time as a surprise album from the band, “Songs of God and Whiskey,” that is far more acoustic. Two very different albums, both with high and low points, but the I think the high points on this one are better. Plus the other one was originally only available for download from the band’s website, and as a package deal with “Dope Machines,” which I’d already gotten from iTunes and wasn’t about to pay for twice.
Hand Cannot Erase - Steven Wilson
While I’m still holding out hope that someday Porcupine Tree will reform and release a proper album of new music as a band, having new Steven Wilson to listen to is almost as good. There are moments on here that are poppier than usual for him, though there’s still plenty of music that’s ambiently progressive and quite a bit darker. Not a cheerful album by any means, but a great one for when you’re in the proper mood.
Toto XIV - Toto
I won’t say much about this since I already wrote a whole post about it not long ago. But after that post I saw a two and a half hour long Toto concert on Palladia, and was impressed enough to get this back out and give it a few more chances. I still think most of the world will never know it exists, but that doesn’t keep it from being a well-made album. Even if I still hate the soft-jazz feel to parts of “Chinatown.”
Live from the Woods - Needtobreathe
This is the best kind of live album. You get just as many album tracks as you do “hits.” Many of the songs, while still being recognizable when compared to their original versions, have been changed or added to in ways that take advantage of the live performance. The singer has enough stage banter (maybe even a little too much, since some moments stretch into being speeches) to show a connection to the audience. The songwriting and the musicianship of the band is well represented here. This will safely be one of my favorites of the year.
Wilder Mind - Mumford and Sons
I’ve already posted about this one as well. In the time since then, the album has grown on me considerably. Even though it has very little connection to the musical stylings of their earlier albums, it’s still a strong and emotional album all on its own. I really like it.
At Your Service - Sammy Hagar and the Circle
This was a surprise when I saw it turn on up iTunes. The band is made up of Sammy, Michael Anthony (formerly of Van Halen), Jason Bonham, a journeyman rock drummer who’s father was John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, and some guitarist I’ve never heard of before who plays well enough to get the job done. It’s a live album that chronicles the different eras of Sammy’s career with some Led Zeppelin covers thrown in. Nothing new or revealing here, but it’s a great classic rock sounding album to put on for some noisy background music.
The Desired Effect - Brandon Flowers
I was looking forward to this since I really enjoyed the last album by his band, The Killers. This is more pop and dance music than rock, but it still has enough of what I enjoy about The Killers to make it worthwhile.
Drones - Muse
This is a good throwback to Muse being more of a rock band while relying less on showy electronic effects. I think it’s one of their stronger albums overall; usually a Muse album will have one or two or three, or sometimes four, songs on it that just don’t work. This isn’t entirely a surprise since they're so heavily influenced by Queen, and having a few oddly subpar songs on each album was almost a Queen trademark. The album is also vaguely conceptual, and since most concept albums are not based around happier themes, there’s a darkness to it that doesn’t necessarily match up to the openness of summertime for me. I think this will be one for me to like well enough now on the surface, and develop more of an appreciation for later on.
And that takes care of the first half of the year. While I'm anxious to see what's still on the way in 2015, this gives me a lot to listen to and enjoy for now.
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