first world problems.

It's amazing how quickly shit can start to suck. A few weeks ago everything was going super rad and I was like 'okay...what's the catch'. So maybe I brought it on myself haha. Either way suddenly everything feels really fucking bleak. I love playing in ex so why am I fucking up so bad every time we play? I hate my lyrics and the shit I say between songs and the way I can't play as well as the other guys are and yeah...fuck. Crushes are stupid too. Unrealistic, unrequited ones that I don't even fucking want. Why haven't I been able to accept the fact that a) I'm going to be alone anyway unless I meet someone blind or with some weird pathological attraction to ugly people and b) I'm much, much better off this way anyway? Shit. And gear worries. And my incredible paranoia acting up again so I'm there thinking that my band is seen as this huge joke to all the, fuck I dunno crusties or hesh people or whatever, all the people I've been around for so long and actually kinda consider friends or whatever; how I've always felt inferior and out of place and how I keep thinking that to them ex is 'dase's emo thing' (derisive sneer). And the fact that I've got three weeks of uni left and then I have no idea what the fuck I'm going to do. I know what I need to do (move out, work) but I'm so fucking scared. And me drinking and flying into super rages straight away that make me try to fight anyone who's a smug dick to me. And friends being in such horrible, messy, much worse places and I don't know what I can do for them. And the fact that plowing my car into concrete barrier on the way home keeps seeming like the easiest way to solve this all.

Balanced I guess against the fact that I know these days I'll never do something like that, no exactly where those thoughts are coming from and how to ignore them. And how different that is from a few years ago and how lucky I am to have survived those years.

And so what am I gonna do about it? Well I made a mix of all the embarassing music I'm sort of ashamed to admit is like my paranoia, self hatred depression music. Here it is.

1 Engine Down - songbird

2 Red House Painters - medicine bottle

3 Cat Power - good woman

4 Wrangler Brutes - sudden adult death syndrome

5 David Bowie - ashes to ashes

6 Billy Bragg - levi stubbs tears

7 Feist - lonely lonely

8 Fleetwood Mac - the chain

9 Five Eight - she's sleeping (I hate this version btw, demo is way better)

10 Frodus - 6/99

11 Pygmylush - dreams are class

12 Unwound - october all over

13 Dinosaur Jr - raisins

14 The Hal Al Shedad - ivan's devil

15 Small Brown Bike - the outline of yr hand

16 Steve Von Till - willow tree

17 Afghan Whigs - my curse

18 City of Caterpillar - maybe they'll gnaw right through

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?qog0xwtjgxf

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tgmwjghbwlq

the 90s, lulz - part 2: cabin fever

ENGINE KID - 'BEAR CATCHING FISH'

Featuring XGreg AndersonX who would later go on to fame as that guy who isn't Steven O'Malley in Sunn / one of the first people convicted and executed for crimes against the climate at the UN environment-crimes trials of 2037 for irreparable damage done to mother gaia via the continued exposure of petroleum products, specifically the manufacture of unnecessary editions of coloured vinyl on Southern Lord records (gatefold sleeve 4xLP remix available for preorder now).

You know what? I don't remember this being this good. I must've heard some other kind of era Engine Kid because this shit is actually pretty cool. Rev records post hardcore rock stuff, chuggy but with melody and a fair degree of Slint/Touch and Go worship in parts. Worth a listen at least, even for the excerable cover.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?hmounyiojfz

the 90s, lulz - part 1: grandfather clock.

Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade - Discography

I've mentioned on here before that I was reading about a lot of bands in well thumbed copies of status and second nature during the time they were around, but my only real exposure to them was through the occasional mixtape and the comps that came with a lot of those zines. Then came the internet and downloading music (for me only in the last year or so. Haha yeah. Lame). And I could finally listen to some of those bands I'd always pictured as being so amazing and so far away from whatever high school angst I was stuck in. A lot of it is music I would hate if a band were playing it today, unless I had some connection to it where I could judge it by some arbitrary standard as 'sincere' or some shit. But yeah. A lot of that music belongs in the time and I enjoy it as that. Otherwise known as 'haha...the 90s...um, yeah'.

Next few posts are going to be devoted to those kinda bands. Including this one, whom I never actually heard until recently. Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade. I think they did a demo, 7" and a split 7" with someone. Noisy, heart on sleeve 'emo' hardcore, very earnest and sincere. Reminds me a bit of Car Vs Driver except they have the sung, Ashes-steez female vocals. Contrasted against the noise of the music and the other vocals it sits really well. Good listen.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?zmyfonnhmzd

october all over

Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You

Finally make it out of bed several hours after you first woke up. Stand in the shower for what feels like hours after the timer's run out, head leaning against the stall, eyes closed, not thinking about anything, not noticing the hot water pounding against yr back. Pull on the same jeans and jumper you've been wearing for weeks over cleaner underwear and shirts (a friend of mine once referred to it as a 'depression suit'). Drive to work by the same route you take every day, so on autopilot you can't even recall any details of the journey. Work for hours, always returning to fix mistakes because you seem unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes at a time. Waste time posting inanities on the internet. When yr mind wanders try not to annoy yr friends by texting the same inanities. Try to push away the feelings you know are no good for you; you'd rather have a friend than romance besides who would ever feel that for you (but still catch yrself wondering as you're going to sleep what it'd be like to be in her arms). Wait for everyone else to leave the office. Eat some horrible and questionably vegan takeaway for dinner. Try to study over dinner. Read the same paragraph fifty times. Go out, maybe see yr friends and escape it for a few hours. Maybe not feel it and leave after one band, wishing you could pull yrself out of it to talk to people and enjoy shit. Go back to the office. Write down lame attempts at profundity to try and describe this feeling in songs that will never get written because you don't play guitar much. Try to get more work or study done. It takes four hours longer than it should because you can't concentrate on anything. Drive home on autopilot. Think about these travels like you'd shoot it in a movie: soundtrack of hastily strummed guitars that you think of as 'shoegaze' or 'krautrock' even though neither description is really accurate, but, you know, like that scene in Lost in Translation with the MBV song. Get home in time to sit on the couch with law and order on in the background, trying to draw or play guitar and coming up creatively bankrupt. Go to bed late enough to ensure you won't be out of bed until midday again the next day. Repeat.

That's been my life for like the last month or so, off and on. This record has been the soundtrack to it.

I can't say much about Unwound. They started in 1991 and broke up ten years later. They played that music that was the whole mix of post hardcore and indie and whatever. They used cheap guitars, effects and crappy solid state amps that would cut out in mid-song and switch back on when smacked with a flat hand or headstock. This record (their last) was made over two years at their own studio. The drummer was phenomenal and any time some guitar store douchebag is like 'girls just can't play rock drums man' play them 'scarlette'.

I've got no real reference points for this band. They're pretty fucking definitively 90s sounding to my mind but I slept on them up until like two years ago. This shit would have been life altering to me had I heard it in highschool when I was discovering bands like this. As it is now I've got a whole amazing back catalogue of a band that seems incredible in some way I can get from bands that are around now. And as I said this particular album has been the soundtrack to that weird, metronomic, repitive depression lifestyle I've had for a while now.

Enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mjzqmzyrwyi

process of weeding out

the sweat descends

I was going to post some big thing about the cylical nature of depression and loneliness and how like medication that helps me with depression makes me feel shit about my body therefore causing me to isolate myself from people and potential romance but really the whole thing could be summed up in this picture:
some crappy recordings are up on http://www.myspace.com/thisisntfknpostrock . dunno if this is ever going to be a playing shows deal or just a making songs with my eight track deal.

I don't think I could have it better in terms of awesome things going on yet hate and my self and situation more right now. Oh well.

...and I wouldn't do that

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?ltmtznznmay

Expect 'taters demo for yr downloading pleasure.