Marshall Crenshaw, Miracle of Science (reissue), 2020

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

I know exactly what Marshall Crenshaw meant when he recently said, "I love it that phonograph records are popular again."

I was able to buy his first four albums, the brilliant self-titled debut as well as Field Day, Downtown, and Mary Jean & 9 Others, on vinyl when they came out. But even before 1989's Good Evening, records seemed to disappear in the United States.

Crenshaw has regained ownership of the five albums he released on the Razor & Tie label between 1994 and 2003 and is going to reissue all of them on vinyl, CD, and all digital platforms.

1996's Miracle of Science, 1999's #447, 2003's What's in the Bag?, 1994's live My Truck Is My Home, and 1998's early demos collection, The 9 Volt Years, will be released as expanded editions. Each album will include two newly recorded, previously unreleased tracks which will appear on a bonus 7" single on the vinyl editions and as bonus tracks on the CD and digital versions. The Miracle of Science reissue includes "Misty Dreamer" by Scottish indie-pop artist Daniel Wylie and "What the Hell I Got," a 1974 number by Canadian Michel Pagliaro.

It's clear on listening to the reissue of Miracle of Science (after listening to the original CD release for a number of years) that, during his Razor & Tie years, Crenshaw lost none of his talent for hooks, licks, and lyrics. Songs like "What Do You Dream Of?," "Only An Hour Ago," and "Starless Summer Sky" would have been stellar additions to his first two breakthrough albums. The co-write with Glen Burtnik, "There And Back Again," is a delight; and the reissue of Miracle of Science also includes a backwards version of the song.

Crenshaw has always included cover versions of songs on his albums starting with "Soldier Of Love" on Marshall Crenshaw. Miracle of Science includes two: Hy Heath's "Who Stole That Train" with some amazing guitar playing and a horn-filled "The 'In' Crowd."

Marshall Crenshaw's Miracle of Science reissue is out now on Shiny-Tone (via Megaforce).

(Some of) CoolDad's Favorite Albums of 2019

21 Off the Top of My Head

21 seems like a cool number. I've been thinking about what I was going to do with 2019 albums for the last several months. Long-form writing hasn't been coming particularly easily to me over the last long while, so I never bothered to review many of these this past year. At one point, I thought about picking five or six albums and giving them the review or write-up that I never gave them during the year. What I settled on, though, is just telling you which albums I spent the most time with this year. I was surprised at how easy it was for me to come up with 21 records.

This isn't the definitive list, but it characterizes 2019 pretty well for me. I'll probably think of something I missed and kick myself, but I'm leaving open the option to revise this list in the coming weeks. It's my site, and I'll do what I want, right?

Anyway...

I looked at this list, and I felt like the albums on it could be grouped into some loosely related categories. Clearly, some of these albums could move among the various categories, but I'll leave it to you to re-organize them if you want.

Friends and favorites who can do no wrong in my book. They just speak to me. Take the personal and make it universal. 

Titus Andronicus, An Obelisk
Bob Mould, Sunshine Rock
Vampire Weekend, Father of the Bride
Lowlight, Endless Bummer
A Giant Dog, Neon Bible (Arcade Fire cover)
Algebra II, Why Would Anyone Think This Goes Here?
Hot Blood, Fear of a Unified Public

Confrontational punk and post-punk. Sometimes political, sometimes deeply personal.

Fontaines D.C., Dogrel
Control Top, Covert Contracts
Priests, The Seduction of Kansas
Mannequin Pussy, Patience

Committed to an aesthetic. Meticulously on-brand. Cinematic.

Lana Del Rey, Norman Fucking Rockwell!
Weyes Blood, Titanic Rising
Orville Peck, Pony
Fascinations Grand Chorus, Presentations of Electrical Confectionery

Fresh takes on sounds I've loved my whole life. 

Tallies, S/T
Sharon Van Etten, Remind Me Tomorrow
Sacred Paws, Run Around the Sun

Nearly perfectly-executed pop and rock that kept me coming back again and again.

Ex Hex, It's Real
Joy Cleaner, You're So Jaded
Mike Krol, Power Chords

Bruce Springsteen, Western Stars, 2019

Strings Attached

By Vera Hough

Others have noted the strings.

It's the main, the most noticeable, the most substantive departure on Bruce Springsteen's new and highly anticipated album, Western Stars. You'll be listening to, say, "Chasin' Wild Horses" or "Sundown," and just as you're thinking, "Well, this is just a Bruce Springsteen^TM song," the strings come in. With them, they bring the Bacharach, the Campbell, the Webb. And they soar.

It's not that we haven't heard soaring from him before. Big Man's saxophone could soar. But that was the sound of a heart soaring into dreams of escape as its body struggled on the ground. This is more like a hawk making lazy circles in the sky.

Because it's the spaciousness, isn't it, that fascinates Easterners when they fall in love with the West? Of course it's not just one thing. If it were one thing, though, it would be the wide open space -- the size. When the soaring strings come in, something happens to the song we thought we knew, the one we thought we had heard before. As Tess Gallagher says, "Then something else happens. The song gets large."

I spent a few days on my own in Big Sur last fall, and as I drove the PCH I did my usual homespun cognitive behavioral therapy.

"What's wrong, honey?" I asked myself (I'm trying to be nicer to myself). "What are you so anxious about? We're past the part where you might drive off the cliff."

"It's the parking," my anxious self said. "When I get to the inn, where will I park?" (a perennial fear).

*Laughter* "Wherever you want! This is California, there's all kinds of room!" (Angelenos, don't @ me).

I noted the others, noting the strings, because I'm a little nervous about my qualifications to review a Bruce Springsteen album. I have some of my bona fides: the first Christmas present I ever gave my father was the Born To Run LP. I got really pissed once when I was running the Spring Lake Five and someone cut "Rosalita" off in the middle of the track to play "Eye of the Tiger" on their front-yard speakers instead. "Glory Days" makes me cry.

I'm not a completist, though -- I only own a handful of albums -- and I'm the farthest thing from an expert. I have one real qualification. Like the Springsteens, my family goes way back in Monmouth County. As my mother recently mused, "Who am I, after all these generations of people, to decide to go somewhere else?" Baked into that line is the acknowledgement that there is a real temptation to go somewhere else. We rooted New Jerseyans get what's cool about California.

I realized: I don't have to be a reviewer. I'm just a fellow traveler, a sort of very distant cousin who might just think the same way about things that Bruce Springsteen does. That's how everyone feels, of course, that's his secret. It's how people felt about Woody Guthrie, how they feel about Bob Dylan (if they could actually figure out what he thinks about anything), how they should feel about Jimmy Webb if they were paying attention. (I "discovered" Jimmy Webb singing his own stuff about ten years ago, so I feel extra-proprietary about him).

Speaking of Bob Dylan, there's some genuine poetry on this album -- especially in "Stones" and "Moonlight Motel." Squinting at my phone mid-run on my first listen to the album, I thought "Stones" was called "Stories," and it easily could be, since it's about telling lies. I predict that Bruce Springsteen wins a Nobel Prize some time in the next ten years, and I further predict that a lot of people will be real jerks about it. There are some great story songs, too, like "Drive Fast (The Stuntman)" and the title track. There are some nice freight train rhythms to the guitar that opens "The Wayfarer" and of course "Tucson Train."

Then the strings always come in. They soar, and they open our cramped eastern minds up to the space they crave: the desert, the mountains, the big sky, and the Pacific, which somehow manages always to look bigger than the Atlantic, even when you're only looking at a little piece of it.

So this is Bruce doing what he always does: taking a little piece of America and saying big things. Only this time he's drawing a bow across it: tremolo, legato and all.

Hot Blood, Fear of a Unified Public, 2019

Album Review

Asbury Park punk quartet, Hot Blood, are back. With a vengeance. In the time since the band released Overcome Part 2 in 2016, let's just say a lot has happened in the political landscape of the USA and the world. In many ways, we've never been more divided as a people. There's a sense that we're all being gaslighted on a daily basis as we wonder if what we're watching can really be happening.

Over the course of 17 (18) songs in a fiery 30 or so minutes, Hot Blood touch on all of it -- from the sensitive nature of international relations to Donald Trump to the opioid crisis to mass shootings to climate change. And there are also moments when the band narrow their view to the personal and to the connections among individuals. In that way, like all of their past work, Hot Blood's anger and rage at the state of things are tempered by a sense of hope that, through work, we can effect change.

The album opens with early single "Nuclear Summer." Propulsive drums, buzzsaw guitars, and Kiley ruining his vocal chords as he screams about our obliviousness to the threat of impending doom. A  product of Catholic school and a citizen of the most religious country in the industrialized world, Kiley looks for "an education" on how to reconcile the world's misery and division with religious beliefs on "Searching for God." Humans are messy and weird, but it's our differences and imperfections that unite us on "Flaw." "...it becomes so clear that we're all the same and at the end of the game the pawn and the king sleep in the same box."

"On the Roof," when it's just a bunch of workers together on a job, "there's no backwards politics." The band offer some unsolicited advice to the president on "Donald." The surfy "Horse" only takes a minute to get to the tragedy of our country's opioid crisis: "Could've been anyone."

The title track comes at, roughly, the album's mid-point. The chorus lends itself well to fist-pumping, sweaty screamalongs during which participants can forget their differences and chant as one. The band address the toxicity of the politics of division later on "Naptime for Democracy."

Hot Blood take on other high profile issues like mass shootings on "Duck and Cover" ("Is this really who we fucking are?"), rampant consumerism on "Logoland" ("They're always there!"), and climate change denial on "Rising Tide" ("Til hell or high water but they're both showing up."); but they also focus on the personal and the little, human things that unite us -- "My Heart's Still Beating."

Those who purchase the LP version of Fear of a Unified Public also get secret (acoustic!) track "Joke." On it, Kiley gives his deeply personal take on losing friends and feeling like he's losing his mind as he watches the crumbling of our civil society.

With the exception of "Joke," Fear of  a Unified Public is relentless, hardcore punk. Kiley, guitarist Alex Rosen, drummer Billy Straniero, and bassist Charlie Schafer don't let up even for a minute as they take us through their view of American society. Anyone who's been even a semi-regular visitor to this blog can probably tell that hardcore punk isn't necessarily in my wheelhouse, but I've always been able to get behind Hot Blood. I can hear the musicality coming up through the barrage, and the lyrics are always intelligent and spiked with humorous turns of phrase. And while Hot Blood don't go easy on anyone in their crosshairs, they always offer up a sense of hope.

The album closes with a quote from Noam Chomsky that, I think, sums things up pretty well:

"You have two choices, you can say, "I'm a pessimist, nothing's going to work, I'm giving up, I'll help ensure the worst can happen." Or, you can grasp onto the opportunities that do exist, the rays of hope that exist and say, "Well, maybe we can make it a better world". It's not much of a choice."

Fear of a Unified Public is out now on Gruesome Twosome Records.

The Monkees, Good Times!, 2016

I Was There, and I'm Almost Sure I Had a Good Time

by Vera Hough

My daughter is going to college in four weeks, and we are spending a lot of time together. For one thing, there’s a lot of shopping to do. The other day, on the way to buy dance tights, we were playing WBJB (having finally become slightly, slightly tired of Hamilton) and a song caught our attention. “Me and….Magdalena…” the excruciatingly slow crawl of the RDS told us, “...The…Monkees.”

“The actual Monkees?” I asked in wonder and excitement, but the radio could not answer.

I kind of imprinted on the Monkees. In fact, I’m pretty sure when I really discovered the Beatles around fourth grade, sitting on the floor of the den poring over the album covers of Sgt Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour, I gave my father indigestion by saying, “The Beatles are kind of like The Monkees!” It’s backwards, but it wasn’t entirely my fault. WPIX was broadcasting many, many Monkees episodes on weekday afternoons in the early 70s -- which is when I was at my Grammie’s house a lot, watching the big cabinet TV in her pristine living room. I was so little when I watched those shows that I don’t remember much about them, except that Mickey Dolenz was my favorite.

When I was in high school, MTV gave the Monkees (minus Michael Nesmith, see below) a new lease on life.

Five years ago, I almost literally stumbled upon a Davy Jones concert at Epcot. I found it unexpectedly moving, and hundreds of women about ten years older than me were finding it expectedly moving:

Jones died less than a year later, and by then I expected to be moved. (Monkees+Brady Bunch)/nostalgia=tears.

Now, I learn, in recognition of their 50th anniversary, Rhino records has released Good Times!, produced by Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne. Good Times! features a mix of unreleased songs and new ones created by contemporary Monkees-adjacent artists.  It’s a good summer record, fun to spin in the car, and even offers some food for thought. Oh, and the CD comes with stickers!

The title song, and the opening cut, is a Harry Nilsson song out of the vault and features a Natalie / Nat King Cole-style (or Justin Timberlake / Michael Jackson-style) “duet” between Nilsson’s demo vocals and a new Mickey Dolenz track. It has a fun, frug-y vibe and an irresistible beat.

Schlesinger contributed “Our Own World,” a seamless Monkees / Fountains hybrid; and “I Was There (And I’m Told I Had a Good Time),” maybe the most psychedelic song and, as the last song on the CD, a fitting commentary on the project.

After we’d listened to the whole album (which isn’t very long) quite a few times, I mused, “I think this is my favorite. It’s track 11, ‘Wasn’t Born to Follow.’ Can you look at the liner notes and see who wrote it?”

“Carole King.”

Of course. Of course my favorite is a Carole King / Gerry Goffin number. And it turns out not only did The Byrds record it in 1967, but it’s also been covered by Dusty Springfield, The Sadies, and Tracy Grammer. How did I miss this? Well, now I know.

My daughter’s favorites are the aforementioned “Me and Magdalena,” penned by Ben Gibbard and sung by Mike Nesmith, and “I Know What I Know,” Nesmith-written and sung. One is always learning new things about one’s children, and now I know that my daughter is the kind of girl who likes Wool Hat best. We can still be friends, I guess. It’s been 30 years since the whole “My mother invented Liquid Paper so I don’t have to be in on the Monkees reunion” thing. And he did write “Different Drum.”

The song I expected to like the best was “You Bring The Summer,” written by Andy Partridge of XTC; and I shouldn’t really be disappointed, because it’s very Andy Partridge, but it just feels a little phoned-in. “She Makes Me Laugh,” contributed by Rivers Cuomo of Weezer, is fun, but my favorite thing about it is what I learned from Rolling Stone: that Dolenz thought the lyrics were a little too young-sounding so Cuomo added in a canoe trip and a Scrabble game.

I don’t know about you, but I find myself continually surprised by the fact that the 90s are now subject to nostalgia. I was trying to explain this to my daughter -- again in the car -- and the best explanation I could come up with is that I view all music from 1994 up to the present time as a single category of “popular music from my adulthood.” Also, I don’t remember there being a lot of “70s Nights” when I was in college. Some, but not a lot.

Anyway, it’s interesting to trace a line from the Monkees and their Brill Building underpinnings to the power pop of Fountains of Wayne, Death Cab for Cutie, and Weezer. I’ll leave it to the CoolDad readership to trace the line forward from there. I recommend Good Times!: it brings the summer.

GayGuy / StraightGuy, Shut Your Mouth and Eat Your Cake, 2016

Album Review

This one feels like its been a long time coming. And, I guess, it has. The debut full-length from Asbury Park's GayGuy / StraightGuy, Shut Your Mouth and Eat Your Cake, consists of 8 tracks spanning about four years. About half of the record consists of what singer / guitarist Nick Cucci calls his "interpretation of how the US government would talk to us if it were a human being." Think of George W. Bush saying to the nation in 2006, "I encourage you all to go shopping more." The rest of the songs on Shut Your Mouth and Eat Your Cake are less political, more inward looking, even positive. Everything is loud.

"Eat Your Cake" starts with a shuffling riff before drummer Bob Paulos thrusts us headlong into the chorus, Cucci's guitar now fierce and aggressive as he sings, "Serves us right. We're the walking blind." "Sinking Ship" and "Everything Is Perfect" are thematically linked with "Eat Your Cake," the latter a continuation of the idea of being able to turn a blind eye to the problems of the world as long as you're comfortable. Like a lot of 1990s rock, each song blends hard rock with some more classic elements like blues.

"Nashville" appeared on GayGay / StraightGuy's 2012 3 Songs EP, and the re-recorded version here is absolutely huge. The song's heavy, bluesy delivery is a contrast with its overall positivity as it calls people to experience a live show, "get some life," "come alive."

"Movement," written on a scenic drive from Phoenix to San Diego, is airy, almost ambient. After that little interlude, though, it's right back into the fray with the stomping "Side to Side," the metal-influenced "Reduce and Rebuild," and relentless closer, "Surf Puck."

Pat Noon recorded Shut Your Mouth and Eat Your Cake at EightSixteen Studios. Paul Ritchie mixed everything at Insidious Sound, and Alan Douches of West West Side handled the mastering.

As a guitar / drum duo, GayGuy / StraightGuy will hear comparisons to acts like The Black Keys or White Stripes; and there's definitely a strain of bluesiness that runs through some of the songs. It would be a mistake to pigeonhole the sound of Shut Your Mouth and Eat Your Cake, though. The songs took shape as GayGuy / StraightGuy evolved; and the collection reflects a multitude of genres and influences from blues, to metal, to classic rock, to grunge, to whatever. Cucci and Paulos play off of each other extremely well and really explore the sonic limits of what just two people can do.

Shut Your Mouth and Eat Your Cake is available for download at GayGuy / StraightGuy's Bandcamp page. In The Clouds Records is also offering a special lathe-cut vinyl version of the album with a die-cut cover.

You can catch GayGuy / StraightGuy live and pick up a record this Thursday at House of Independents when they celebrate the release of Shut Your Mouth and Eat Your Cake. The show takes place on 5/5, marks the 5th anniversary of In The Clouds Records, consists of 5 bands, and costs $5. That's five 5s. Or 5x5 for Buffy fans... .



..but I digress...

The show. The other bands on the bill. In addition to GayGuy / StraightGuy, Thursday's bill is packed to the gills and includes The Battery Electric, The Black Clouds, Dentist, and Yawn Mower. Doors are at 7:30pm, and I hear the evening will be full of surprises. You can RSVP at this link.

Marshall Crenshaw, #392: The EP Collection, 2015

Album Review
by Henry Lipput

#392: The EP Collection is Marshall Crenshaw's first album since 2009's terrific, rocking Jaggedland.

Crenshaw showed up on the scene in 1982 with a power-pop infused self-titled debut album, which included "Someday, Someway" and "Cynical Girl." He's released a total of 10 albums of new material before this new one (including 1991's Life's Too Short which may very well be my favorite of his discs) which wasn’t supposed to be an album at all.

For the past few years, Crenshaw has been putting out a series of limited-edition vinyl EPs, taking that path rather than releasing albums. But, at some point, he realized the EPs had enough material to make an album after all.

#392: The EP Collection is made up of 12 songs taken from the EPs -- six originals (written by Crenshaw and singer-songwriter Dan Bern), six covers, and two bonus songs that include a live version of the Everly Brothers' "Man with Money" and a demo from the mid-90s. The demo, "Front Page News" rocks and could have been on his first album.

Crenshaw has always been a fan of songs written by other people. Throughout his career, he has included cover versions on his albums starting with "Soldier Of Love" on the first one and the lovely "Some Hearts" by, yes, hit-maker to the stars, Diane Warren, on 1989's Good Evening.

Covers on the new album include a straight-faced, faithful "(They Long To Be) Close To You" with a piano intro (you may very well expect Karen Carpenter to start singing instead of Crenshaw), strings, and horns; although things unravel in an indie sort of way at the end of the song. In addition to this Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic, some of the other covers were written by Jeff Lynne, John Sebastian, and James McMurtry. On Lynne's "No Time," Pink Giglio plays a Mellotron, giving it a nice "Strawberry Fields Forever" vibe.

Crenshaw plays many of the instruments on #392; and when he doesn't, he has help from, among others, the great Graham Maby, who has worked with Joe Jackson and Freedy Johnston, and, of all people, Marshall Crenshaw his own self on the Good Evening and Mary Jane & 9 Others albums. Maby provides bass stylings; and Andy York, according to the liner notes, plays "ass-kicking guitar" on "I Don’t See You Laughing Now."

By the way, Crenshaw is no stranger to playing ass-kicking guitar. He's one of the best in the business. And he brings out his axe and plugs it in for "Red Wine," (An accordion really adds a nice touch to this song.) and he turns it up and wails on "Stranger And Stranger."

It couldn't have been easy for Crenshaw to select 12 songs from the six EPs; but, in doing so, he's presented us with a terrific display of his talents as a singer, songwriter, and musician.

#392: The EP Collection is available now on Red River Entertainment.

The Roadside Graves, Acne / Ears, 2015

Album Review

It was a game time decision for me today. I haven't been running in months, and I've been telling myself every day that I would start again. As I sat in my office this morning, I'd kind of put it out of my mind, resigned myself to another day vegetating in front of the computer. Then I checked the current weather: still only 76 degrees. I still had 90 minutes until my next meeting, so I put on my shorts and my shoes, grabbed my headphones, pressed play on Roadside Graves' Acne / Ears, and headed out.

I started out slowly as John Gleason sang over some quiet guitar, "I don't expect you to understand where I came from. I'm just happy you're listening" on "Acne / Ears." A perfect sentiment for the opening track to a record that covers so many personal moments. As the "Acne" portion of the song -- a high school misfit with literal and metaphorical acne scars -- changed to the "Ears" section, I felt myself getting kind of choked up -- and speeding up -- to the faster, louder, bathed in guitars and synths "Ears were meant to be destroyed by boys in basements makin' noise."

That continued through "Clouds," a more direct callback to some of Roadside Graves' earlier Americana folk rock. I bounced along with the song and its refrain, "I got faith. I can't give it away. Lord knows, I'm gonna die someday." I'm out of shape, so I was kind of spent at this point.

"Endangered" gave me a little break as I lumbered past the houses on Winding Way. I told CoolDaughter #2 yesterday that Labor Day always makes me kind of sad because I love summer so much. Even though it was brutally hot, I started thinking about fall as Gleason sang, "The weather affects me more than you'll ever know."

"The Whole Night" carried me through the first part of mile number two. As Gleason sang about the death of his father, I thought about my parents, each of whom lost their fathers before the age of 10. I thought about the very specific and sometimes grotesque memories -- flashes from early childhood really -- they had of those terrible times. And I thought about how lucky CoolMom and I are to still have our moms and dads, and how lucky we are to have this time with the CoolDaughters. All as I turned onto Lippincott.

Time to pick it up again for "Body." Some more weird and wild synths from John Piatkowski, and I'm starting to heat up. For a second, I thought the lyric was "Tell me if my body's too light," which makes no sense in the context of the song (It's "loud"). I thought, "Geez, I obviously don't have that problem," as I huffed and stumbled along.

"Donna (Reno)" is another slow burner. Almost like spoken word over that kind of muted, distorted guitar that reminds me of some classic rock song I can't place. The song contains some of the best single lines on the record. In the context of my particular situation -- sweating, dying -- I identified immediately with Donna's, "I wanna feel lower temperatures. I wanna see fields of green." I also identified with the self-consciousness in statements like, "Laughing always worries me. It makes me think I've done something wrong," or "I don't wear sunglasses. I'm just afraid somebody might think I'm an asshole."

What I thought was my last gasp of energy came during "Contact High Alumni," it's opening school bell indicating that we're in high school and giving a melancholy feel to Gleason's "The friends I have, you see, I will have 'em forever." I still have some from that time in my life, but not many. It's a fun song overall, though; and hello Renee Maskin: "Blue balloons, red ballloons, white balloons, pink balloons, black balloons."

Let's just say that, at this point -- through the wide-open sounds of "I Thought We'd Last," the 50s vibe of "City," and the short party that is "Saturday Night" -- I was just about done. I started walking as "Gospel Radio" began, but as the "Hallelujahs" came around, I started running again. "There ain't no static on Gospel radio" saw me spending my last reserves as I ran past the mailbox at the end of our driveway.

"Surfin'" closes things out. It's a slow one that expresses the envy we all feel for people who surf (or play rock music or, generally, just do whatever they want) free of the responsibilities of adulthood and everyday life. They just sit and wait for the next big wave to come around while we all plod along waiting for the next metaphorical one.

By my calculations, I did about 12-14 minute miles. That's a far cry from the days when I was doing half marathons and regular long runs, but it felt good. We've been going through a lot of changes here at CDMHQ. Professional changes. The kids are constantly changing. They haven't been negative changes for the most part, but change still brings lots of uncertainty with it; and it's all just felt like a weight bearing down on top of me. As I ran and listened to Acne / Ears with its songs about life's moments and changes, I felt that weight lifting. I'm not lying when I say I felt a lump in my throat more than a few times. The combination of these songs and just the feeling of getting back out there was kind of overwhelming, I guess. In a good way. I miss listening to albums this way. I hope I can keep it up.

The Roadside Graves' Acne / Ears is out now on Don Giovanni Records.