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For awhile, I went to concerts all the time– at least weekly I saw some band somewhere. I don’t go nearly that often anymore, but I promised myself I’d see the Arcade Fire when they next came to town. Too often in the past a band I adored would come through town and I’d not bother to see them, telling myself, “I’ll see them next time they tour.” Unfortunately, too many of my favorite bands have either disbanded or stopped touring, and I now regret missing the chance to see them perform.

The Arcade Fire are pretty much my favorite active band, so yesterday I showed up at Berkeley’s Greek Theater without a ticket and planted myself on queue. Many times in the past I’ve had spare tickets to a show, and turned down large amounts of cash from scalpers to instead sell them at face value to regular folks. I once sold two tickets to see Hot Chip for $35 each, right in front of a scalper offering me $80 per ticket. It seemed the right thing to do, and yesterday that good will came back my way, for I had not been in line but ten minutes when a girl lined up a few spots behind me and indicated that she had a ticket to sell. She sold it to me for the face value of $46. Had I bought one online when they went on sale I’d have paid $60 due to the additional service fees, so I really made out well.

While waiting the 90 minutes for the gates to open, I befriended a few people in line near me. We played hearts to pass the time. Meanwhile, I tried to get in touch with my friend Mike, whom I knew was going to be at the show, but he was incommunicado; I think he was drunk in San Francisco at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, and barely made it out to Berkeley in time for the show; but I had made new friends, so I watched with them.

I found a great spot, dead center, about 10 people back from the stage. Calexico came on and were great– I like them enough that I’d have paid to see them by themselves, so it was an unexpected bonus to find that they were the support act. It was like the time I showed up to see Belle & Sebastian and unbeknownst to me New Pornographers were the support act. Two great bands for the price of one!

Somethin’ filled up
My heart with nothin’,
Someone told me not to cry.

Arcade Fire put on an outstanding show. They enjoyed what they were doing and it showed. By this point into their career they have four albums to draw from for material, and they pulled the greatest bits from each of them. They pieced together a set that built to a crescendo, and at times I felt as if I were at an opera rather than a rock concert. When they played “Ocean of Noise” I could feel something welling up inside me, which only built when the Calexico trumpeters joined them on stage for the songs finale. When they followed it up with “Tunnels,” my personal favorite song of theirs, I will not lie– a tear or two rolled down my cheek. Something about hearing that song brought me back to 2005, and losing Mom, and losing Sue, and what pretty much amounted to the beginning of the end of my life as I knew it then.

And since there’s no one else around,
We let our hair grow long
And forget all we used to know.
Then our skin gets thicker
From living out in the snow.

Later, as the band blended seamlessly from “Power’s Out” into “Rebellion (Lies),” I think I was the first person in the pit to recognize what song was coming on. Leave it to a DJ to identify what song is showing up next in a mix. Soon enough everyone else caught on and the entire crowd lost it.

I left the Greek in a state of hyper-aware elation, feeling spiritually moved in a way I’d expected and hoped church experiences would affect me in my younger, god-fearing, days, though they invariably failed to do so. There’s a deep sense of the real in the message of the Arcade Fire’s lyrics, and coupled with their epic and catchy music, I don’t think anyone walked out of last night’s show unmoved.

To sum it all up in layman’s terms, I had about as much fun at a concert as I have had in recent memory; I almost want to go see their encore performance tonight at the Greek.

Lastly, for are curious, here to the best of my memory is the setlist for the show:

Ready to Start
Month of May
Keep the Car Running
Laika
No Cars Go
Haiti
Sprawl II
Modern Man
Rococo
The Suburbs
Ocean of Noise
Tunnels
We Used to Wait
Powers Out
Rebellion (Lies)
-encore-
Intervention
Wake Up

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The marble clock has stopped. The curtained sun
Burns on: the room grows hot. There, it appears,
A vase of flowers has spilt, and soaked away.
The only sound heard is the sound of tears.

So, I’m going to London in March. I don’t know precisely, when, and I won’t know until Suede announces the date of their one-off reunion concert. That’s right, my favorite band is reuniting for one show at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Sadly, Bernard Butler won’t be a part of this. The other three original members will be on stage, as well as Neil Codling and Richard Oakes, who joined the band after Butler’s departure.

I am excited beyond description, even more so than when I planned a trip to Paris around Jarvis Cocker’s first solo gig. That wasn’t Pulp, my other favorite band, it was just Cocker; this is the actual Suede, a band I have never had the chance to see live. Attending a Suede reunion show has long been my dream, and it seems about to become a reality.

I’d be remiss if I did not note that the proceeds from the show are being donated to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

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So Tawny says she prefers “quality reading” on Xanga, which is female code for “enough with the song lists already, buddy.” Never one to say no to a challenge, I will take a stab at writing something of quality. In case I fail, I have cooked up another song list for the less discriminating among my readership. Without further ado… some quality reading.

Whilst waiting for Batman Begins to, well, begin, I offered to procure some treats for my friend Emily and I. And me? Whatever. Anyway. What I mean to say is that I was going to head to the lobby for some snacks. A bag of the popped c, maybe some candy. I asked Emily to select a beverage– she said she wanted 7-Up.

I know of this beverage. Once, as a wee lad I took a sip of one, and did not like it. Since then I haven’t tried it again, on account of I reckon I won’t like it. But when Emily extolled the merits of said beverage, I began to wonder– do I still dislike it? I *hated* Cap’n Crunch forever. As recently as my freshman year of college I couldn’t stand the stuff, but then a couple years ago I randomly had some and liked it just fine. So maybe now I will like 7-Up. I mean, it’s possible, right? If I suddenly liked Cap’n Crunch, then maybe I will find 7-Up to be refreshing and delicious and crisp, and whatever other adjectives one uses to describe a bottle of pop; or a soft drink, whichever you prefer.

So, I intend to drink one. Soon.

The end. Just in case that was not interesting, here is another crummy song list:

Best Albums of Recent Life:

Arcade Fire – Funeral (This is so good. It is beyond good. My favorite thing I heard all of last year. It may be my favorite record ever.)

Camera Obscura – Underachievers Please Try Harder (I still listen to this all the time)

Bright Eyes – I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (I did not think this band could ever top Fever and Mirrors. They didn’t, but damn they came close.)

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I’ve been through many times when I thought I might lose it
The only thing to save me has always been music

At one point in time it would have been difficult to imagine a Beastie Boy lyric being used as the epigram for any bit of serious prose, but there you have it. Today I turn to Michael Diamond for inspiration. The above couplet resonated with me when I first heard it, and it has never rang true so clearly as of late. A while back, a groom’s request of Fifty Cent prompted me to write in semi-jest about the power of music, but in all seriousness– music has always been integral to my life (which I’m sure it is to many people’s lives), and a never-ending source of solace when circumstance deals an unexpected or difficult blow.

I think it was also Mike D. who rapped:

Life ain’t nothing but a good groove
A good mix tape can put you in the right mood

Of course, mix tapes gave way to the mix CD, which has in turn been replaced by the iTunes playlist. I’ve concocted a fair number of playlists since the advent of the mp3, and lately I’ve put together a new one. At the risk of appearing old-fashioned, I will confess that mp3 playlists always feel more than a little bit sterile to me. I’m not a hardcore vinyl purist, but I still prefer whenever possible to listen to an actual record. I often consider selling my vinyl collection– after all, most of it is languishing in storage– but I reconsider whenever I play one. A song feels so much more alive on vinyl, whether it be from the physical act of dropping the needle into the groove, or the faint crackle of dust in the background… Tangent aside, I’m here to talk playlists. The title of this one says it all– Melancholy. And before anyone chimes in with a comment advising me to avoid playing sad songs when I’m sad, let me offer this bit of, well, for a lack of a better word, wisdom.

There seems to be two general ways that one can deal with great sorrow– either hide from it, i.e. bottle it up, push it deep down inside of yourself, and try to forget about it, or embrace it and let it take you places within your psyche that you would otherwise never dare go. I am a big proponent of the latter method. It has always been the saddest times in my life that have taught me who I really am, and allowed me opportunities to improve myself. Often it seems that only by listening to my darkest emotions and visiting the farthest reaches of my soul can I get to the bottom of what ails me. Sure, my method is not a happy one. You’ll visit dark places, and you’ll suffer, but when you emerge from mourning, you are a better person for the experience. Conversely, I think the people who ignore or bury the sad feelings find those feelings cropping up to haunt them later in life, usually in altered, unrecognizable forms which take years of therapy to identify and conquer.

What does this all mean? It means that lately I’ve been listening to a lot of sad songs. This trend has not been the result of a conscious effort; I haven’t trawled my iTunes folders on a quest for unhappiness. It was more of an organic process, but the resultant playlist, which I’ll share below, definitely has a consistent vibe to it, hence the aforementioned name I assigned to it. For me, music and poetry have long been my main access points to my inner self. I frequently find myself aware of an attitude or emotion I didn’t realize I had, or at least had been unable to crystallize into coherent thought, after hearing a similar sentiment expressed in a song.

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I wake up every day to find her back again
Screaming my name through the astral plane

Were I to list my favorite bands, nearly all of them would be bands that no longer exist, or if they do, have stopped releasing albums. Joy Division, The Smiths, Pulp, Suede– all no more. Even my favorite local band, The Aislers Set, seems to have stopped recording and touring. Were I pressed to list favorite bands still in existence I’d say Radiohead, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, and Bright Eyes but none of those bands hold sway over me quite like those in the first list. While I cannot necessarily say they are hands down my favorite band of all time, no band better represents my coming-of-age years than Suede.

Oh, but when she is calling, here in my head
Can you hear her calling, and what she has said?
Oh, but when she is calling, here in my head
It’s like a new generation calling
Can you hear it call?

Suede really did usher in a new generation of music, and were arguably the original Brit Pop band. Their success heralded a radical stylistic shift in the sound of British rock, one that had last shifted with the advent of The Stone Roses, and paved the way for bands such as Blur, Oasis, Pulp, and Elastica. Suede was Britain’s answer to American grunge rock– a throwback to the glam days of David Bowie and Roxy Music tempered by the ‘it’s okay to be an outsider’ mentality of The Smiths– and made an ideal rallying point for misfits and dreamers the world over.

Suede’s best songs, taken together, form an unending narrative of of detached lovers, sexual experimentation, drug use, and life outside the lines of traditional British society, and “New Generation” is no exception.

And like all the boys in all the cities
I take the poison, take the pity
But she and I, we soon discovered
We’d take the pills to find each other

“New Generation” is from the Dog Man Star album, a massive, larger-than-life masterpiece of epic rock and roll, and quite possibly the single greatest rock album ever recorded, at least by my reckoning. It is definitely in my top five all time, and is probably my favorite of all. It soars to heights I’ve never heard another album attain.

Though this entry is really about one song, I would be remiss if I did not say a bit about the significance of the album. Dog Man Star is a record already heavily laced with melancholy themes and sounds, and the story surrounding its release only serves to amplify that despair. After a Mercury Prize winning debut album, and a brilliant EP, Suede had fans and critics alike eager for their second full-length album. Almost at the same time as the record was reported to have been completed, Bernard Butler, the guitarist and half of the song-writing team, left the band. Dog Man Star would seemingly be the last we would ever hear from Suede.

Things grew worse– it became unclear if the album would even be released– legal matters were likely to keep it shelved indefinitely. There was never a lower point in the life of a Suede fan. (Meanwhile, bands like Blur and Oasis, formally relegated to the back burner, took the implosion of Suede as an opportunity to rise to the forefront of the Brit Pop movement, and cash in on the next wave of British musical invaders to conquer the American airwaves.) Eventually, the album was released, and it was a huge success, albeit possibly the last effort by so promising a band.

I wake up every day, to find her back again
Breeding disease on her hands and knees
While the styles turn and the books still burn
It’s there in the platinum spires
It’s there in the telephone wires
And we spread it around to the techno sound
And like a new generation rise

To complete the story of Suede, much like in the song, we fans woke up one morning to find them back again. They didn’t break up. Instead they launched a crazy guitarist search and wound up with some teenaged Bernard Butler look-alike. I will not lie– skepticism ran rampant in the circles of Suede fandom, and when it was announced that Suede was to have a new single in stores, it was big news. The song was to be called “Trash.” Would it be just that? I remember standing at the cash register of the local record shop with the single in my hand, and my heart full of anticipation. I came home and fearfully popped “Trash” into my CD player. While totally different than Butler-era Suede, it was utterly fantastic in its own right, and it instantly became my anthem for that summer.

Sadly, post-Butler Suede is remembered best today not for their brief resurgence but for their subsequent failure, and even though I know in hindsight how it’s going to end (watch out for that iceberg, Suede!), it’s still nice to reminisce about the moment in time when, to a new generation of youth, Suede had in seemingly miraculous fashion survived what seemed at the time to have been a cataclysmic loss. Perhaps there really was hope for the rest of us.

It’s like a new generation calling
Can you hear it call?
And I’m losing myself, losing myself to you

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And if the snow buries my,
My neighborhood.
And if my parents are crying
Then I’ll dig a tunnel
From my window to yours,
Yeah, a tunnel from my window to yours.
You climb out the chimney
And meet me in the middle,
The middle of the town

I’ve been playing this song over and over and over for more than a week. I can’t get enough of it, and I cannot wait for the supposedly soon-to-come album.

Currently Playing: Arcade Fire – Tunnels

I am not using hyperbole when I say that this song may be finest combination of deeply profound, poetic lyrics and a beautiful tune I have ever heard. I am fully prepared to crown this song as just that. There may well be songs with a prettier tune, and songs with even more poignant lyrics, but none that I know have both to the degree that this one does. There are more levels to this song than I can yet comprehend, and with every listen I feel I have grasped some new element of its meaning.

I’m going to try to break down some of what I take away from the song, so bear with me as I suddenly get all abstract and emotional.

But sometimes, we remember our bedrooms,
And our parent’s bedrooms,
And the bedrooms of our friends

They have hit upon something so powerful there– the bedrooms of our parents and our friends. I think I speak for nearly everyone when I say that as a child, though willing and able to run rampant through the rest of the house, I treated my parents’ bedroom with a sense of awe and respect. It wasn’t quite off-limits, but it was certainly semi-hallowed ground, and now that I’m grown-up I remember it as somehow mysterious and larger than life. Now, that alone would have been enough of an allusion to elevate this song to the “super hella profound and deep” category, but then they immediately take it one step further– the bedrooms of our friends.

If there was trepidation in the bedroom of my parents, there was a magic in the bedrooms of my friends. At that age, your bedroom is the only place where you have any autonomy; beyond how you dress, the posters with which you adorn your bedroom walls are nearly your sole expression of self. Seeing what someone else did with their tiny corner of the world always made me question how my own little kingdom looked. Today, years later, I remember those rooms with a hallowed sense of nostalgia. The hours spent listening to music or just wondering about life were all framed by the environment of some friend’s bedroom. I hadn’t thought about it before, but that one little line in this song floods my mind with memories every time I hear it.

If I had to offer an overarching meaning, I’d say this is a song about growing up unprepared for the world that we must face as adults. Either because of death, absence, or plain negligence, so many of our parents just aren’t there to guide us, and we’re on our own. We’re a generation of children in adult’s bodies, going through the motions of adulthood without ever having earned it. That is just my take on the lyrics, and I’m sure there are many other ways to interpret this song. In truth, there are certainly numerous meanings intertwined with one another. The only certainty is that it is a song charged with powerful symbolism and poetic wordplay, perhaps none so more than when the chorus comes in for the final time: it arrives with one extra line, and it’s a line that ups the ante exponentially:

You change all the lead
Sleeping in my head to gold,
As the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn,
The song I’ve been trying to sing

The song I’ve been trying to sing. That feeling or emotion that is forever in the back of your mind, and one you know, if you could just bring it forward, would make all the difference in the world; but one you can’t put it into concrete form. It remains hovering just behind your consciousness. To hear someone singing it– would that be to experience a moment where someone is able to make sense of everything in your life that has heretofore been a confused jumble? Or would it only add to the confusion, when a moment later the song is gone and you can’t remember exactly how it went, and it too ends up buried in the recesses of your mind, a haunting melody that you need to hear again but know you never will.

I’m normally a very literal, to-the-point writer, and when I try to put my emotional response to a song like this onto paper (computer screen?) I fear I am lacking. Much like the golden hymn in the song, I’m afraid that I am only skirting around what I feel because there really aren’t words that convey what I am feeling; or, if such words do exist, I do not know them.

Purify the colors, purify my mind
And spread the ashes of the colors
Over this heart of mine!

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Around y2k time I discovered this random little band called Death Cab for Cutie. No big whoop, just another random little band playing random little songs that were pretty good. Until a few minutes ago I figured they were still a random little band, but I just read an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that learned me otherwise. It seems that Death Cab for Cutie’s music was featured on a television program and their career was jump-started. Now they are a World Famous Band.

My initial reaction was simply that of surprise. Death Cab for Cutie was merely one of a hundred or more random little bands that share rotation-time in the soundtrack of my life. How had they, of all bands, found mainstream success? I felt the same as when I’d discovered that Nick Drake’s records were selling like hotcakes. As he didn’t even need a television program to launch him to post-humous stardom (a car commercial sufficed), imagine the heights to which my Death Cab boys will soar. They will be selling out arenas within a month!

Some people revel in the fact that the bands they like are unknown to the masses, and relish every chance to extol the virtues of an obscure act. When one of their random little bands hits the big time, they are quick to parade around bragging “I’ve been listening to them for years,” while simultaneously lamenting the fact that “everyone is listening to MY band now.” While that is comical in its own right, that isn’t the point of this post. If anything, I’m actually kind of glad they have become famous, as I think their music is better than most of what is popular right now, and I’m hoping they’ll get a foot in the door for other bands I like. I for one would be ecstatic if the music I listen to supplants the currently popular genres.

Speaking of other bands I like, here is a song from another of my random little bands. Maybe their presence here in my blog will bring them great fame and platinum records. Have I the same pull as The O.C.? Does a shout out on Divisione di Gioia equate to a massive spike in record sales? I hope so! Are you ready for the big time, boys?

Currently Playing: Wilco – Far, Far Away

The same article that told me that one of my random littles are now World Famouses mentioned that many television shows now have a person whose job is to seek out random little bands to include in programs in order to up the cool quotient of the show. That seems kind of lame to me. No, not the job– that actually sounds like an easy, and fun, occupation, and if anything, it’s probably my ideal line of work. The lameness is in the fact that a television show can purposely select obscure music from random little bands and not only will viewers become fans of the bands for no other reason then that they saw the band on their favorite show, but the show will take on a reputation for being somehow cool or cutting edge simply because they chose bands based entirely on the fact that they’re obscure. That is wrong on more levels then I could ever touch upon in a blog, and plus it is like 7:00 am and I haven’t slept yet.

Today’s Question: What is your favorite random little band?

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I have covered but two of my three favorite songs in previous blogs, even though I’ve been writing for more than a year. As I promised long ago to introduce you to all three of them, I think it is high time I finished the job.

So slow down, slow down,
You’re taking me over

And so we drown, sir we drown,
Stop taking me over

Currently Playing: Suede – The Drowners

The opening drum hits are hypnotic. It’s rare for a drummer to do anything terribly melodic, or memorable, or even at all original, but Simon Gilbert managed to accomplish all three of those feats in the initial four bars of this, the band’s first single. And then comes Bernard Butler’s guitar. He is hands down my favorite of all the Brit pop/ indie rock era guitar heroes, ranking above even Jack White, and his solo in “The Drowners”, which you can hear beginning at about 2:25 if you click the above link, is my favorite thing he ever recorded.

I can’t listen to Suede without feeling at least a little bit melancholy. In many ways, my “grown-up” musical life began with my discovery of Suede. I was utterly bored with modern music. Rap had begun to suck, and American rock was all about grunge. Nirvana achieved something amazing, and I was definitely into that sound for awhile, but a year or so had passed, and the music industry had begun to find ways to again co-opt something brilliant, and in the process ruin it. Then I heard “The Drowners” and my life changed. Everyone has that one band, or song, or moment, where music altered their perception of the world, and Suede was it for me. Theirs was the perfect combination: in lead singer Brett Anderson, Suede had the perfect mixture of the sexual mystery of Bowie and the literate swagger of Morrissey (though perhaps more importantly, a singer who realized that a truly great pop star is often a provocatively ridiculous character; but the band had the ability to kick ass, thanks to aforementioned guitar hero Bernard Butler.

Suede was my band. They soared to great heights almost immediately– they were named Britain’s band of the year before they even released a single– their debut album won the Mercury Prize (Britain’s top musical honor), released hit song after hit song, and then, they imploded. Butler left the band, and the release of their second full-length album, Dog Man Star, was in doubt. Its release was among the most bittersweet moments of my life; it was better, much better, than their already-amazing debut– perhaps the best record I’d ever heard. But that was it. No more Suede. Or was there? I’m getting off-topic. I’ll continue this narrative someday in a future blog.

Enjoy “The Drowners,” and try to see if you can figure out what the lyrics mean. Hint– they are hella gay.

Won’t someone give me a gun?

Oh well it’s for my brother

Well he writes the line wrote down my spine

It says “Oh, do you believe in love there?”

If you write a line down someone’s spine, where do you end up? Exactly.

Today’s Question: Do YOU believe in love, there?

My favorite part is towards the end, when Anderson is repeating the line “you’re taking me over,” and then shifts to “stop taking me over” as the music opens up one last time. Good stuff.

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It is not often that a new song is released that I instantly decide is one of my all-time favorite songs, but since I first heard this song in January I’ve not been able to stop playing it. Now, with but a click of the mouse, you can experience my new favorite song:

Currently Playing: Franz Ferdinand – Take Me Out

Here’s the amazing part– even though probably no one in the room besides me had heard this song, when I played it at a party the other night, it FILLED THE DANCE FLOOR. I mean to say, people who were already dancing kept dancing, and people who weren’t dancing began doing so. I have never, ever, not even once, seen that response to a song that was unknown. It was not as if I had played a Michael Jackson record, mind you– people didn’t flood onto the dance floor and go bananas– but there were definitely more dancers by the end of the song than there had been at the beginning.

I attribute the attraction mainly to the main guitar riff; in part because it sounds vaguely reminiscent of something from the 1980s, though what I cannot say, and I’m pretty sure it has no direct antecedent but rather is crafted to sound as though it does, and in part because it is so utterly infectious. After the third listen one feels morally compelled to crank one’s air guitar up to eleven and rock out.

Then there is the unrelenting stomp of the beat. This is not uptempo electronica, this is good old-fashioned rock ‘n roll, with a heavy beat thumping along at a tempo designed for head-banging and body-moving, but it subsumes the ethic of the dance track. It’s New Order masquerading as AC/DC… it’s the Black Sabbath work ethic applied to the Duran Duran sensibility… it’s… it’s…. it’s in a category all its own, and its unwaveringly awesome. Alternative/ Indie rock has at last produced a legitimate floor-stomper. It remains to be seen if the song can cross-over and win mainstream appeal, but the fact that 30-something preppy-yuppie types were willing to dance to it, sight unseen, is encouraging.

The lyrical conceit of the song is a clever one, seeming to liken rejection to being shot:

So if you’re lonely
You know I’m here waiting for you
I’m just a crosshair
I’m just a shot away from you
And if you leave here
You leave me broken, shattered I lie
I’m just a crosshair
I’m just a shot then we can die.

As painful as a gunshot, or a breakup, can be, it’s better to experience the quick and unambiguous sting of one than to linger in a confused limbo. If you have to die, better by gunshot than a slower method; if the one you adore is not interested in you, better to find out sooner than later.

An alternative interpretation of the song is hinted at by the band’s very name– Franz Ferdinand. If you were paying attention during history class, you know that it was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand that precipitated World War I. When he was shot, his wife Sophie was shot, too, and they died side-by-side. Perhaps this song is Ferdinand’s plea for release into the afterlife; he’s already been shot, and is on the verge of death, his beloved wife has been murdered in front of him, or is also on death’s door, knocking loudly, and he knows his life is over, figuratively if not literally. Now he is begging for that literal end to come quickly.

I know I won’t be leaving here with you
I say don’t you know?
You say you don’t know
I say take me out.

Or maybe it’s just likening a breakup to a bullet in the head. Either way it’s a damn catchy song, and is already firmly entrenched amongst my all-time favorite tracks.

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Fizzy and I will celebrate our anniversary a couple days late this year. We are going to Pop Scene, a night club, to see The Dandy Warhols perform. We are both pretty fond of this band, and are looking forward to hearing them play live for the first time.

Currently Playing: The Dandy Warhols – Bohemian Like You

If you don’t know the band, a good place to start listening to them is their Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia album. My favorite song of the bunch is “Bohemian Like You,” a super-catchy, danceable track. They are hard for me to categorize, but I guess I’d compare them to the Pixies, but maybe with a bit of a ’60s psychedelic edge to their music. Whatever they’re doing, I like it, and I hope you will, too.

The lead singer has a great sounding voice. I don’t mean so much the way he hits the notes, but the actual sound of his voice. It just works well for the sort of songs he sings. My favorite parts of this song are the places in which he does his woo-hoo’s and hey’s.