well, maybe i do
Last week I finally got access to the laptop ports in the University computer labs. Sure this means great things like being bombarded with e-mail or IMs, but it also means that I can finally download music. So, the first thing I did was go out and download the new Alkaline Trio and Hot Water Music split. It’s really good. The new songs are of similar quality to the overall body of work of both bands, but it’s the covers of each other’s songs that really did it for me. Then, I spoke briefly with Peter about music over IM and he told me about Billy Corgan’s new band as well as remind me of the latest Dashboard Confessional EP. How could I be so forgetful? Despite a departure from Dashboard-esque emotional music, I have awaited this release for a long time. So, I pulled it down from audiogalaxy and loaded the files into my media player. It was so good. The EP has four songs and each song is a vignette in a larger story of boy gets girl. Sure it’s acoustic and melodic, but Chris Carraba has actually managed to write a love song (actually four of them) without a lost or unrequited prefix. Some people might miss his older, angstier stuff, and I probably would have as well, a few short months ago. But it was also a few months ago that I heard some of these songs for the first time at a small show in a little fire hall in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. It was when Erin drove me four hours across state lines and, in the middle of the Dashboard set, put her head on my shoulder. So, listening to these songs is really hard because they remind me of that night, and lyrically, they remind me that beyond all the angst and the disillusionment, past all the jaded nights alone and the disappointment, things just work out. They work out in a way that can’t really be expressed with the flowery language of reckless, spiteful anger. Things work out in a way that, despite the complications of the surrounding world, is just simple and nice. So I’m listening to this nice, simple music and feeling all weepy in the middle of the computer lab. I’m walking home and the songs are still in my head and I’m hoping that someone’s back at the flat when I get home and that the hours between now and Erin’s phone call go by as quickly as the four songs on the EP.