Am I regretting my move to Austin? Absolutely not. I love the city, I get to see my amazing girlfriend whenever I want, and plants grow here, not just the spiky kind. I’ve moved before so I know that a new move is exciting the first two weeks, then hopelessly depressing for a month or so, and after that it’s all uphill. This knowledge should help me feel better but it doesn’t, at least not for very long. It’s like when the doctor tells you it will only hurt for a few hours. Those few hours hurt like a bitch. Knowing what to expect doesn’t make it any easier. It just means you can’t look around confused about what’s happening to you.

Phoenix was an amazing year in my life. The friends, the city, the heat, will forever be in my heart. I learned more about myself and life in general during that year than I did during my whole college career. There wasn’t a day spent in Phoenix when I didn’t understand how great it was but I also knew that it wasn’t my real home. It was a short rest stop before moving on. Thank you, everyone in Phoenix. I have never left a place with as many tears in my eyes as I did that day. If only I could have taken you all with me. I miss and love all of you. So get your asses out to Austin and visit already!

Is it presumptuous of me to believe that most people who are in a long term jobs have given up on their dreams? I’ve worked in a corporate setting and I know that most people there do not enjoy their job. Now I’m not naive enough to think that I can make money without ever having to do something I don’t want to do, but I’m not willing to work 40 plus hours a week at a job solely so I can afford the things to make me feel alive on the weekend. Some people can segment their lives into little boxes labeled work, play, fulfilling, necessary, spiritual etc. until they feel like the food pyramid of their lives has all it’s necessary requirements but I don’t think I am one of them.

What scares me the most is that everyone has probably felt and said all of this during their mid 20s. That one day I am going to lose the hope that I can be fulfilled by all that I do with my life, not just my free time, and when I do I’m going to give into the idea that a steadily growing 401k, a new car, and a house in the suburbs is worth giving up 40 years of my life to something, to a corporation, to a business model, to anything outside of my own soul and the people around me. I’m a product of all the fairy tales, all the children’s stories, all the fables that tell me to go after my dreams but as I see the world we live in, it’s like adults who tell these stories don’t really believe them. The parents’ who tell their kids that they can be anything they want when they grow up go to jobs they despise and then when the kid gets out of college they want them to get a high paying job just like them.

I guess I’m reaching the point where I have choose between surrendering to the bitter taste of cynicism or keep fighting for what I believe to be right. The real question is how do I fight this when there is so much standing in my way? Since I don’t know what my perfect life is, how do I fight for it? That’s a subject for a later blog post, I guess. I’ve rambled enough for this one.

As I sat drinking my beer, I could see this woman dancing, yelling, bargaining for drinks, and all around being belligerent. It struck me that if she had been my own age, nothing she was doing would have offended me, except for the bad breath, but that’s just always offensive. I even looked around the place and could see a few hipster kids behaving almost exactly like her but none of us at my table even mentioned them. We were more concerned with how sad and pathetic this lady was. But why?

Why is it sad and pathetic for one person to act like an drunken idiot, but not for another? Should age, wealth, or possessions like a bed or new clothes really be the difference between what we deem acceptable behavior? We don’t do this with most things. No one says that a young person volunteering at a food shelter is better than an older. Or that a young, wealthy college kid who commits murder is less offensive than the same crime done by a homeless fifty year old. I know that getting drunk on St. Patty’s day is neither a crime nor charity, it just seems to me that we place far less emphasis on the actions of a person and far too much on factors that should be irrelevant. If it’s pathetic for a homeless man to get blackout drunk during the middle of the week, why is it that someone my age can do it and most people just shrug it off, or even encourage it as blowing off steam?

Now I’m not trying to put down alcohol, I like to drink and dance and have a great time. I’m just struggling with the fact that the things I do are not concrete. If I look back at a drunken St. Patrick’s day, will it be a good memory five years from now? Will it be embarrassing? Or will it someday be a regret? Will the good things I do deteriorate the same way? Will handing a beggar a few dollars be a good thing? How about if I see a story in the news where a drunk hobo fell asleep on some railroad tracks? Will my good deed be as clean then?

I know that I’m over thinking this but I feel like this is something that’s ignored. We go through lives copying the actions of our peers around us, assuming they are right. It’s only if we see someone acting outside of their age group that we instantly know they are doing something reprehensible. Good deeds should not be limited by our age or circumstances and I think the same is true of bad ones as well. I honestly don’t know what the overall point of this whole rant is. You would think that after all this I would have a conclusion. It just seems to me that we need to really think about what we do with our lives instead of just moving with the pack.

As I was relistening to Actor before the show, I was worried that all the delicate intricacies would be lost in a live show. During the opening the song I could see my fears coming to life. It seemed as if the band and Annie were tense and unrelaxed. The violin and flute seemed to dance awkwardly around Annie’s voice and guitar. Luckily though, as soon as the bass and drums kicked in the entire band gained confidence and fell into place.

One of my favorite things to see at a live show is the members of the band picking up different instruments for each song. It could be that I am so musically untalented that I am amazed at people who play multiple instruments. Whatever it is, there was a strings player, woodwinds, drums, keyboard, and guitars being passed around behind Annie and it was amazing to watch. Since Annie is the main writing force behind St. Vincent, she had to find musicians to play the live version of what she had created in the studio. Having not seen the first round of touring, I can’t say whether or not they were better this time around. All I know is that this was an all around amazing set.

I tend to base my decision on a good live show based on how much energy and emotion the band puts out instead of how much like the album they sound. Being off pitch, out of tune, having bad sound equipment, or whatever can be overcome by creating an emotional experience for me. Also, if a band sounds just like the album, I get kind of bored with it. What made this show perfect is that it took the songs and brought them to a new place. Adding bits here or taking something out there, St. Vincent created a new and singular musical experience outside of my headphones that I won’t be able to hear again. On top of this, the emotion and passion the entire band put into the performance was beautiful to watch. The Rhythm Room in Phoenix is a tiny place and a band could easily ride it off as a lame gig but St. Vincent didn’t do that. They played what I have to assume is the way they play everywhere. If what they gave us was less than everything then I really need to see them play a real gig because it would blow my mind.

Also, side note for Annie Clark fans, don’t yell out “marry me” every time a song ends. It gets really old. I know Annie is beautiful and talented and if you honestly think that it’s funny to be the fifth person to say it, you are definitely not in her league.

So in summary, go see St. Vincent! I give it 5 out of 5 for a live show. About as perfect as it gets.

“The People With Smiles Painted On Their Faces”

There once was a beautiful city filled with prosperous people. The city was built near a large gold mine so nearly everything in the city was covered in gold. All of the inhabitants worked hard at what they loved and were happy.

One day a proclamation was made that the King was going to come visit the city. The people wanted to present him with gifts so they hurried to find the something suitable for a King. As the city bustled with activity, a vagrant walked into the town center. Normally a vagrant in the city would have been something strange to see but the people were too busy to notice him. He listened silently to the conversations of the people until one day he walked into the office of the elders. They were having a passionate debate over how to decorate the city but they became quiet when the vagrant stepped up to the table.

“Before you throw me out,” the vagrant said to the elders, “let me tell you how to please the King.” The elders looked at each other and silently agreed to let him speak.

“You are the richest, most prosperous city in the nation. Your opulence and beauty almost matches the King’s palace,” the vagrant paused as he looked at the pleased faces of the elders. “Do you really think that what the King wants is to see you trying to be as wealthy as him?” The elders’ smiles faded.

“I’ve been to many cities and they all try to be beautiful to please the King. They don’t understand that the King doesn’t just want you to give him the best of what you have, the best of what you love to do. He wants you to sacrifice everything for him. The King has fought wars for you, he has lost sons for you, and you believe that he will be pleased to see his people living in gold houses, playing musical instruments, and singing happily,” the vagrant voice began to rise, “No! He wants, he deserves, more than your extra, than what you can spare, more than seeing you doing what you love, more than seeing your success! The only thing the King wants is to see you give all of that to him!”

The elders shifted in their robes. They looked nervously at each other. “How do we give him that?” asked the head elder.

“If you will allow me, I will show you how to give a gift worthy of the King,” the vagrant said with a small smile.

The elders gathered up the people in the town square and allowed the vagrant to speak. His words reached into the hearts of the people who loved the King and convinced them that this was the only way to truly please him. Over the next few weeks, the vagrant went from home to home teaching the people how to sacrifice enough for the King. The first home he went to was owned by the town’s librarian.

“What do you love?” asked the vagrant.

“Besides my family,” responded the librarian, “it would be taking care of the books for the city.”

“Then the only thing that will make the King happy will be to see you sacrifice your books for him,” said the vagrant.

“How do I do that? He can’t carry them all away, it would take hundreds of carts to move them.”

“You don’t have to give them to him. You just have to sacrifice them.”

The vagrant spent all day with the librarian, explaining to him over and over what it meant to sacrifice and how it was the only way to please the King. At the end of the day, the vagrant and the librarian set fire to every book. The librarian tried to smile at the fire, telling himself that this is the greatest gift he could give the King. The vagrant just stared emptily at the flames.

The next house the vagrant went to was the baker’s.

“What do you love?” the vagrant asked.

“Well, I love to bake delicious foods,” responded the baker with a smile. He pulled out a large menu, proudly showing the vagrant his specialties.

By the end of the day, the baker had ripped his menu in half and decided to only bake bread which he would give away for free. This, he told himself, was the greatest sacrifice he could make for the King.

Day after day, the vagrant visited the people in the city. Each place he asked them what they loved and then persuaded them to sacrifice it for the King. A musician broke all of his instruments. A writer burned his paper. An athlete stopped running. Not everyone followed the vagrant’s suggestions. Some decided to keep what they loved, to give what they created to the King instead of sacrificing it. Those who did this either moved away or eventually gave in to the vagrant’s ideas because their neighbors shunned them. They were labeled as selfish, as those who loved themselves more than their King, and that they would give the city a bad name when the King visited. No matter what the dissenters said, the people refused to listen to them.

Eventually the entire city had sacrificed their greatest love for the King. Everyone’s shoulders sagged under their enormous gift. People smiled less and less but they were encouraged by each other’s mutual pain.

No one remembers when the vagrant stopped telling the people what to do. He just slowly faded away as the people started to make more sacrifices on their own. The gold covered buildings were painted a dirty brown to match the streets. This was the metal workers’ idea. Then the opera house was turned into a museum for the King which no one was allowed to go into but the King himself. This was the pharmacist’s idea. After each sacrifice, the people would look out their windows, longing for a glimpse of the King but each night they went to bed disheartened. Years went by without a word from the King. The people stopped smiling altogether. Someone, no one remembers who, started painting a smile on his face so the King would see how happy he was when he finally came. Soon the whole city had painted smiles.

Visitors would stumble upon the village from time to time, hoping to buy or trade with the inhabitants. The people in the city never bought or sold anything but tried to convince the visitors that they needed to sacrifice as they did. More often than not the visitors were beaten and thrown out on the streets. The painted smiles were warped by the frowns of the people as they screamed obscenities at anyone who disagreed with them. As the word spread, people stopped coming to the city at all.

Many years later the King went to the city. When he arrived the people were living in straw huts, wearing almost nothing but the painted smiles on their faces. The fake smiles followed him as he walked through the ruins of the beautiful city. They followed him as he visited the abandoned gold mine, the park overgrown with weeds, the crumbled walls of the opera house. They followed him to every major site in the city that they had destroyed purposely or through neglect. The King finally stopped and turned to the people. He looked at them with their hands out. He thought they were asking for something until he looked in their eyes. They were bright, shining, as if they couldn’t wait for him to see what they were about to give him.

“What happened to all of you?” the King asked.

“We have sacrificed everything for you, King,” said one of them, “we have given everything up that we loved to please you.” The people stared, silently, obediently, like a dog waiting for a treat.

“Why would this please me?” said the King sadly. “I have worked hard, fought wars, and lost sons so that each of you would be free to live, to love, to work and to be proud of all you have. I came here because I wanted to see the fruit of my labor but as I look around me, all I see is rot, decay, and death. You expect me to be pleased with your offering of nothing? If you want to please me, get up out of the dirt and live. I do not want to be the king of a country where my people sleep naked and are unable to smile. Live as though you are free, not as if you are slaves. Live, not because I command it but because I have fought to give you life. Live, not just to please me but because you too are pleased by it. Live, not to wake up dead but rather born anew each morning. Live, not to destroy but to create. If there is any life left in you, get up and live.”

The people with smiles painted on their faces lowered their hands. They looked at each other, not disappointed, not shocked, but with acceptance. As if they knew all along that any appreciation would have ruined their gift.

“He is not our king,” said one of the people. “We’ve made a mistake.” The fake smiles turned around and walked back towards their huts. Not a single fake smile looked up as the King walked through the town. Eventually the King left, no one remembers exactly when.

It’s not very often that I go to a show knowing absolutely nothing about who I am about to see. I tend to think that knowing the songs beforehand can make seeing them performed live a much more interesting experience. Obviously I’m saying all this to build up the fact that I went into this show knowing nothing about it and it was amazing. Not only was the performance incredible, it was an odd stormy night complete with lightning and thunder, which for those of us in Phoenix is a real treat.

A. A. Bondy walked onto the stage wearing a tucked in shirt, high rise jeans, black boots, and sipping whiskey. I knew right away that this guy was awesome. He tuned his guitar and started fingerpicking a slow melody. It was nothing complicated or new, but it had that rare quality of being instantly engaging. I’m not sure how old he is but he has the voice of a man who’s been smoking a pipe for forty years. It was deep, raspy, and felt like he had spent a lifetime in places I would never go to.

His set rose and fell in energy and drama, like all great stories. Slide guitar, keys, drums, and a bass joined in on occasion but it was his voice that really kept your attention. At times I felt like if I closed my eyes, I was actually listening to an old vinyl record in. It didn’t matter if it was just him and a guitar singing quietly or the whole band rocking out with distortion, every song was tight, beautiful, and was over before anyone knew it. You know the crowd feels the same as you when there is a long pause between the end of a song and the start of the applause. Almost as if each of us had forgotten to breathe.

If you haven’t had a chance to hear A. A. Bondy, then you definitely need to check him out. If possible, make sure it’s stormy out.

Live shows, like most things in LA, are a pain in the ass, especially if you live in a suburb of a suburb of a suburb of LA. Needless to say, I didn’t go to a lot of concerts. Since moving to Phoenix, all of that has changed. I have half a dozen venues within biking distance and most shows are around 10-15 bucks. Not bad. Don’t worry, this post is not about how lucky I am or why Phoenix is awesome, it is the first of many live show reviews that I am going to be doing because if you haven’t seen a band live then you can’t really be a fan (insert pretentious look of a hipster smoking a cigarette.)

Fuck Buttons, best band name I’ve seen in a while, played at the Rhythm Room a few weeks ago and completely blew me away, and I mean that almost literally. Rhythm Room is not a big place and when you are standing ten feet from speakers as big as you are, you feel the music as much as you hear it.

If you haven’t listened to any of the Fuck Buttons music, it’s a complete cluster fuck of sound and I mean that in the best way possible. They layer beats on top of beats on top of static on top of feedback on top of piano and on and on and on until you feel less like you are listening to a band and more like you are trapped in a wind tunnel full of noise. Your chest vibrates like a bass drum, you can’t tell if your ears are ringing or if it’s some sample they are using and the air seems to be pushing you back and forth with the music. Thank god that I brought my earplugs.

Besides the amazing sound they created, Fuck Buttons toyed with you as you listened. Since their songs slowly build off repetitive loops, there are moments where you lose focus on them playing and your mind begins to wander, almost hypnotically. Almost as soon as I lost focus, they would kick in a new wave of distortion and slap me out of the comatose state I was heading towards.

Moving away from the music for a moment, Fuck Buttons setup for the show was completely nuts. It was like watching two mad scientists working to create a monster. On stage they had a large table completely covered with sound boards, keyboards, beat machines, a gameboy, and a child’s tape recorder. I’m not doing it justice with my description because, to be honest, I don’t know what half of the things were up there so I’m just gonna leave them out. While they were playing, each of them went from twisting knobs, banging on a drum, hitting buttons on the gameboy, playing keyboards, and then yelling into the children’s tape recorder microphone. It was mesmerizing just to try and decipher what each gizmo did up there.

If you get a chance to see these guys perform, do it. You will not be disappointed. Throughout nearly the whole show, I had that heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach like when you put on your favorite song and can’t concentrate on anything else. This was one of those concerts that transcended music and became a spiritual experience, where you know there has to be a god because sound could not have this effect on you otherwise. If I haven’t convinced you to go see them, then you are a lost cause and probably an atheist.

The last person I want to be is the hipster music fan who thinks that the more popular a band gets, the worse they become musically. I think radiohead and the white stripes have already proved that wrong. But what is startling to me is that millions of pre-teens and adults with terrible taste in most things artistic (I base this assumption off the fact that they are obsessed with Twilight and I don’t feel bad about it at all) are suddenly listening to Grizzly Bear, Thom Yorke, Death Cab, Lykke Li, and Bon Iver to name a few of the amazing artists featured on the soundtrack. Will the lure of Edward’s pasty skin be enough to get people to stop filling their ears with fast food music like Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert, and 3 Doors Down and start consuming heartier music?

If this soundtrack is able to spread amongst the hive mind of the preteens out there today then pop music will be changed forever. This could be a great thing, I mean, just look at places like London where the radio plays great music all day, instead of playing Kid Cudi on repeat like here in America. But there is still that empty feeling in your gut, like when your parents hear the Cake song playing during the tv show Chuck’s intro and they say, “I love this song!” and something dies inside of you. I wish I didn’t get that feeling like people are copying me but I’m not gonna lie, I do, and I think most “indie” fans out there do the exact same thing.

If New Moon launches these indie artists into mainstream, it’s only a matter of time before all of indie music does the same thing. Who am I kidding? It’s already been on the verge of that anyway even before new moon came out. It’s about the equivalent of some of the “independent” movie studios which are making 150 million dollar “indie” films.

The point of all this ranting is that we need to be prepared to say goodbye to indie music as we know it, accept the fact that our parents and 12 year old cousins are gonna be looking on pitchfork to see what albums to download, and that in spite of how much it hurts, this is a good thing. I would much rather have talented musicians on MTV than an over produced bimbo who couldn’t play “Mary had a little lamb” on the piano. It’s about time america’s musical tastes improved, it just means that us indie people will have to find some new unpopular genre to overhype. How about mariachi?

Why do people always do this? Is it that hard to just accept the fact that you don’t know every band out there? Is the fact that you haven’t heard their newest EP that just leaked yesterday so offensive to your musical ego that you have to be reminded that you know at least one fact that they don’t? Or is it just me being overly sensitive about this?

Two Dancers is a showcase of Hayden’s dual personality, his delicate, feminine voice so painfully fragile, and his deep, confident masculine side, as they dance back and forth across the album. At times the two share songs, like in “Hooting and Howling” and “When I’m Sleepy” where they rhythmically switch back and forth, like two dancers spinning around each other. In the “Fun Powder Plot” and “We Still Got the Taste Dancing on Our Tongues”, Hayden’s feminine vibrato dominates, almost floating above the music.

Even the entire album itself is split in half. The front is lighter and more feminine sounding than the back half where Hayden’s voice tends to stay lower and more commanding. Even the music matches this, the beats are overall playful or ethereal in the front but once the sixth track “Two Dancers” begins, the drums take on a firmer, more serious rhythm.

“Two Dancers” is also the first track that is completely controlled by Hayden’s masculine side. From this track to the last, Hayden’s voice guides the album from its vague, misty beginning to bring it out into the open so we can look back at the trail that we have been on.

While Hayden’s voice easily overshadows the rest of the music, Wild Beasts’ musical talent is obvious. Drums and guitars dance along with Hayden, supporting him or taking over when appropriate. It’s a delicate balance but Wild Beasts succeeds in creating a beautiful, haunting album.

I highly recommend Two Dancers, 10/10