Maybe it’s because I recently heard Narrow Stairs, Death Cab for Cutie’s upcoming album, for the first time, or maybe it’s because I’m going through Death Cab’s discography for a piece I’m working on, but for some reason or another, I find my long-dormant appreciation for Ben Gibbard reawakening.

For those of us who grew up in Seattle, Gibbard and his bandmates have been hometown heartthrobs for just under ten years. When Death Cab hit it big, the band — and Gibbard in particular — became easy targets. Their sound had gotten glossier, they were getting attention largely thanks to constant plugs on The O.C., and with Gibbard as the sensitive frontman who’s nerdily cute in a way that also became part of the “indie mainstream,” people had a convenient poster boy at which to aim their anger over the unearthing of a once-underground community or over the tamer direction that popular rock music seemed to be heading.

There’s a good — make that very good — chance that Narrow Stairs will destroy a lot of stereotypes that have been tacked onto the band, and for that alone the wait until its release date is even more agonizing. However, it’s not as though the band has been mediocre for years and are showing talent out of nowhere, as some of the early reviews would have us believe. This isn’t a fluke — there’s talent in Death Cab for Cutie, and not just in wonder producer Chris Walla. It’s in Gibbard, too. It lies in his voice.

Ben Gibbard, “Silver Lining [Live]” (Rilo Kiley cover) (download)
Rilo Kiley, “Silver Lining” (download)

This cover of Rilo Kiley’s “Silver Lining,” from a solo gig of Gibbard’s last fall, demonstrates the charm of his voice rather perfectly. In the hands of Rilo Kiley, “Silver Lining” is a decent song but rather plain and expressionless considering the lyrical content, and they had a whole band to work with. Gibbard does an incredibly close impression of Jenny Lewis’s vocal style, but in his hands, using just his acoustic guitar and his voice, the song is much more alive and emotive in comparison (and not in the oh-so-pained emo way for which Death Cab often get mislabeled).

This song is Spring.

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, “Helplessly Hoping” (download)

It’s easy enough to point to nearly any Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and say that — “Judy: Blue Eyes,” certainly. “Guinnevere,” absolutely. “Our House,” you bet.

But “Helplessly Hoping” is it, the most Spring of any of their songs. This is it.

The opening guitar could be anything, it could be Spring showers, blossoms sprouting, skipping down the street, a gentle breeze, sunshine peeking through clouds.

It’s hope, the kind that comes from feeling warm air on your skin, packing away heavy clothes, letting your body relax after bracing against cold, being out among people again, being free from the doldrums of Winter.

“…gasping at glimpses of gentle true spirit he runs / wishing he could fly…”

It’s meeting people for the first time and seeing old friends in a new light. It’s the excitement, confusion and frustration that comes from new beginnings. It’s the senseless equations that form chemistry.

“…they are one person / they are two alone / they are three together / they are for each other…”

It’s taking chances, letting things go, daring to live.

“…love isn’t lying it’s loose in a lady who lingers / saying she is lost / and choking on hello…”

And it’s far too short, requiring your attention almost immediately before it threatens to slip into yesterday.

The first music, in general, that I remember loving and growing up with was from The Music Man — as in the movie with Robert Preston, which I would watch repeatedly, to the point of annoying my mother, when I was about four years old. But memory is a tricky thing, and a lot of the music that stuck with me until today, I don’t have memories of hearing until I was much older than my Music Man-watching age. But one of the first rock songs I remember hearing and loving, probably from the age of seven or eight, is “House of the Rising Sun.”

The Animals, “House of the Rising Sun” (download)

When I was younger, I had a really tiny keyboard piano. Really tiny. About the size of a modern laptop. It was difficult to actually play much on it, but when I had it, I didn’t really know how to play much of anything anyhow. Generally I’d just play a couple random notes, attempt composing (which usually meant coming up with four to 10 single notes in succession), or playing the presets. The presets were generally super irritatingly fast and happy numbers that sounded more like robots with ADD than anything musical. For whatever reasons, at some point my tastes began gravitating towards things that were a bit darker, a bit slower, a bit more somber — despite my early leanings towards musicals. In a case of what can only be some sort of musical destiny, the only pre-set tune that wasn’t extremely perky on this little toy piano was “House of the Rising Sun.”

What is “House of the Rising Sun” doing as a pre-set song on a little toy piano? Your guess is as good as mine. Because none of the other songs were rock songs, and the only pre-set that was a recognizable popular song was a classical piece, it didn’t occur to me that this was a “real” song. It wasn’t until someone referenced “House of the Rising Sun” in a movie that I learned that I didn’t have to run to my toy piano every time I wanted to hear it. But sometimes I still did anyway.

Getting a car was a bit of a long process for me. In actuality, it probably wasn’t that long, but when you’re 17 and most of your friends have cars, anything short of buying a car the minute you see it is “too long.” There was a bit of a debate over the Pontiac Sunfire I wanted because it wasn’t exactly a safe car. Naturally, I didn’t care as much about safety; I just liked that it looked cool, and even though it was used, it was new enough to have a CD player (the downside for my friends who got theirs early is that a lot of them had to install one, an amenity that I doubted would have happened for me otherwise).

Like any teenager with a new car, when it was finally mine, you couldn’t get me out of it. So, even though my school was close enough that I could reasonably walk (it was a little less than a mile away), I drove. (I didn’t feel that bad about it, though, because one of the school princesses, who got a very cool car just as soon as she could drive, lived two blocks away and still drove. And there were never enough parking spaces!)

For my senior year of high school, I cultivated the ever popular “I don’t give a shit about this place or anyone here” attitude. I spent most of my time listening to Seattle indie bands, talking more in class than I had for the three years prior (when I went to them), and dreaming about getting into a school in New York City. The car became a reminder of how good life was — or could be.

This time coincided with my love of a Seattle band named Peter Parker. Their second album, Semiautobiographical, probably took up 80% of my music listening that year. Because I thought I was so damn cool, I decided at some point that I needed “entrance music,” a song that I could play every time I drove into the school parking lot. It became a very easy choice. While driving into school one morning, my arrival at the threshold of the school parking lot just so happened to coincide with the beginning of the drum beat of “Barcelona (Das Ist Alles)” that kicks in at the 56 seconds mark. It felt like a sign. This had to be my entrance music. (more…)

The best thing about St. Patrick’s Day - aside from that whole drinking thing - is that it’s a day to be especially proud about redheadedness.

A long time ago, the Seattle alternative weekly Tablet had a feature called something like: “what it’s like to be…” and had someone write a short paragraph about what it was like to be, for example, a garbage man, or a transplant to Seattle. They also had someone write a paragraph about what it’s like to be a redhead that was the most accurate thing I’ve ever read. It more or less said: “if you’re a redheaded woman, you’ll be forever harassed by older and/or creepy men obsessed with redheads and your looks won’t be more widely appreciated until you’re older. If you’re a redheaded man, your life will be harder than the women, and you’ll likely be mocked except by the very rare redhead obsessed woman.”

Redheads have it rough. As a non-redhead, you might scoff at this, but just look back at history. Redheads were thought to be children of Satan, morally denigrated and hostile. In movies, bullies, enemies, and other sorts of “bad” people are often portrayed by redheads. And let’s not forget the whole “ginger kid” prejudice thing, as pointed out by “South Park.” (Although, luckily for American Redheads, the real thing is far more prevalent in the U.K.)

Bruce Springsteen, “Red Headed Woman” (download)

That’s not to say that being a redhead doesn’t have its positives, it surely does. One of them is this song. I was a Springsteen fan long before I heard this song, but you’d better believe it made me like him even more. The redhead praise aside, it’s fun to hear him be so blatantly sexy and raunchy for an entire song.

This is the perfect day to follow suit after the Boss. After you’ve had your Irish car bombs, your Irish coffees, your Bailey’s, your Jameson, your Guinness… do something nice for a redhead. We could use it!

[Taylor's note: My friend Clay makes the best mixes of anyone I know. He’s also one of the best writers I know. His words are fluid and natural, with a powerful grace and natural excitement. Naturally, I asked him to write a guest post for me about music, of his choosing. He selected My Bloody Valentine’s “Sometimes,” and these are his words to go with it. When you’re done reading, tell him to hurry up and update his food blog.]

My Bloody Valentine, “Sometimes” (download)

When I was little, there was this hope for the urban. This dream for the city. This wish that through the dense black of trees there were whole worlds made of lights. Swirling, dizzying, beautiful lights. Ascending high, up towards the stars, and plunging deep through the ground, to the realm of trains and myths. I would sit in the window of my parents’ home, especially on rainy days, and look for any sign that the city might be coming my way. Buildings never sprouted and colorful electronic billboards never appeared, but in my imagination’s eye, I saw everything that I knew the city could be. I heard freight trains through the woods, and I knew that their destination was always the city.

Fifteen years later, in my early twenties, I finally made it to the city. And while some people’s dreams crumble under the veracity of reality, mine did not. It turned out that urbanity was everything I had always imagined it to be. Buildings towered high filling up the night with a wondrous human light. Cars darted through streets leaving behind orange and red trails. People hurried and rushed everywhere. Always moving. Always going. The noise was incredible, the most perfect soundscape. I found it comforting in ways that cicadas and whippoorwills never could be.

At night, I would move through the city as if it were a cinematic space. On the metro, on foot, in a car. I would move through that harlequin mosaic filled with awe. Every window, every sign a different beacon. A signal of a human presence. Even when flesh and blood could not be perceived, there would be light. Whimsical, magical, electrical light. A sea of terrestrial stars.

Now that I have returned to the country, I dream of the city again. Next to windows on rainy days; inside books that whisper those urban abracadabras: New York, Tokyo, London; and on railroad tracks that have been overgrown. But never more do I dream of the city than when I am out under night sky, enveloped in that starlit black, amidst water and trees with highway beneath my feet. Out there I can see everything I remember the city was, and I can imagine everything that it might yet be.

One of the most astounding things about art, and especially music, is the way a self-centered thought or experience contained in a medium can ignite a chain reaction of independent yet similar thought, ironically turning the originator’s selfishness into a wide-spread and no-longer singular experience. It is this ability to tap into a well of personal history that makes something like Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” a respected work, though it still gets dubbed a guilty pleasure more often than it deserves.

Bob Seger, “Night Moves” (download)

Seger said with “Night Moves” he was aiming to capture what it was like growing up in his “neck of the woods.” In doing so, he captured what it’s like to grow up in general, the urgency of youthful passion, being bold, reckless and impatient. Through touching on something so intensely personal, he touched on something universal: memorable firsts. First kisses, first loves, first… you know.

It’s nigh impossible to listen to Seger reminisce and not do the same — similar to how, in person, if someone brings up their first time, the desire to share the sordid details of one’s own sexual rites of passage circles around the room. Like a young Bob Seger, the song possesses a straightforward charm that almost masks its forceful brutishness. That same smirk-like smile pushing its way, almost unconsciously, to the face of the listener, unable to avoid the mental path it has set us all on.

In sixth grade, I was very good friends with a guy named Gabe. He came into our private school rather late in the game — most of us had been in classes together for years — but we became fast friends because he lived near me. I lived far outside the standard reach of our Montessori school, so living close to one of my classmates rarely happened.

Male and female friendship being what it is, we spent a lot of time teasing and harassing each other. Usually we were just teasing each other about our crushes (unpredictable as we were, I liked the “most popular” guy and he the “most popular” girl — not that that meant much at our tiny school) or fighting over what we were going to do that afternoon. As the girl, I had the upper hand - let’s face it, few guys ever pull out the same arsenal on their girl friends that they do on their guy friends. I didn’t like to abuse the power balance, so things generally ended with bartering (”Okay, fine, we can watch Cutthroat Island, but only if you walk to Bartell Drugs with me so I can get some Jujubees”). But when I was in a particularly feisty mood, I wasn’t afraid to use my nails (he caught me tying his shoes together in class once and I dug my nails into his knuckles so hard that if left a scar for quite awhile), or force him to sit through some god awful girlish movie or music video (and I rarely actually liked those kinds of things, I just used them when I wanted to annoy him).

Ultimately, though, Gabe knew he had one signature move he could rely on when he wanted to get back at me: Bone Thugs ‘n’ Harmony’s “Crossroads.” (more…)

The Anniversary’s “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” is exactly the kind of song that I began “Lost MP3 of the Week” for. However, it’s a music journalist’s nightmare.

The Anniversary - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

This is partly because I’m not sure how I came across the song. It was, in all probability, something I heard from a friend or a website when Emo was in that awkward stage between what it was originally — more angry, more screamy, an unsurprising descendant of punk — to what it became known as when it sparked the explosion of pop-punk bands that sound like Blink 182 forgot to take their Prozac. Around the time that people first heard about emogame.com, and before bands like My Chemical Romance. Don’t be put off by the term “emo” — like any other genre, it’s an umbrella term, and there’s a lot that fits under that umbrella.

The other part of it is that I can’t pinpoint why, exactly, I like it. The lyrics, particularly the opening line, “the muscle and bone / they encase my heart but never touch my soul,” are full of the wistfulness that emo has come to be known for, but coming from veterans like the Anniversary, it’s at least earnest with appeal instead of feeling forced. And it’s got that gritty, not perfectly produced sound that I like sometimes. But overall, the song just has that indescribable something that’s made me include it on a lot of mixes, play it when people are around, and return to it year after year, just because it’s good enough that I wanted other people to hear it. Sometimes, that’s all that really counts.

Among the many reasons why I love Two Gallants, one of the most prominent is the way their songs feel alive, as if they posses minds of their own. Guitarist/vocalist Adam Stephens recently told Sentimentalist, “I’m constantly changing things in the songs, even live.” It shows, in both live and recorded versions of their work. The more I go to shows and listen to the songs in their different stages, the more each song seems like a person, growing and evolving in its own ways.

A stunning example of this is “All Your Faithless Loyalties,” which was first released on a compilation by Saddle Creek called Lagniappe: A Saddle Creek Benefit for Hurricane Katrina Relief. It was released shortly after the band had signed with the label. For a long time, it was one of my favorite Two Gallants songs, and I continually hoped they would release it as part of an album.

(more…)