At War With the Mystics

A few weeks back I picked up the Flaming Lip's latest album, "At War With the Mystics." The album is very brilliant, much up to this band's caliber. First of all, the Flaming Lips are known for being weird and out there, especially music wise. Naturally, once you break through that first layer of "weirdness" you'll find deeper meanings to most of their songs, especially songs such as "Do You Realize" from "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" and "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" from their latest release.

I personally enjoyed this album for a few reasons: the vocals, the fantastic effect the music has on you, plus some of the songs are pretty catchy. The lyrics are always good, if even a little weird. The art is pretty cool, nothing extraordinary, but pretty cool. They have an instrumental song on here called "The Wizard Turns On (His Silver Flashlight and Puts On His Werewolf Moccasins)" which is actually pretty fun to listen to, even if there aren't any lyrics. I especially get the feeling you get listen to the songs. You feel almost like you are floating in space... until you open you eyes again.

Alright, I'm gonna end this post with a video.

Video for "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song."

Life... (again)

I decided to look at the world through new eyes. If you look at the world with a frown on your face, something makes you feel cynical and depressed. Well the reverse is true too. If you smile, and then look around you, things seem to  be a whole lot happier as a whole. I was just sitting, with nothing to do, so I decided to feel good. I smiled, and just thought of how good I have it. I have friends (at least some of them) who really care about me and who I really care about. I have a loving family with no alcoholism or adverse poverty. I every day I get farther from the possibility of someday finding myself curled up in a blanket under a bridge. I everything I need, and really, when I think about it, I would not change a thing. Okay, I would solve world hunger and poverty and disease, but none of that is in my life. So yeah, if I could I would not change one thing about my life. See what happens when you smile???

-Patrick

Switchfoot Awakening

Flashback: Mr. Wendell

Ok, today I had a flashback. I was walking out of the classroom to get a stapler from the office, and I remembered how last year, every time some one left Mr. Wendell's classroom during class, as soon the door had closed, he would make some joke about him or her. “Look at him go, that dork!” “She has no idea she looks so stupid!” and other remarks were far from uncommon. Man I miss those days. In fact I spent the rest of the walk to the office reminiscing about by-gone tragically good times. Well, Mr. Wendell, suffice it to say we all miss you… a lot!!

Band stuff

A friend of mine and I are starting a new band. Unfortunately, we can't agree on a name. In fact, the one name we did come up with that was really good, Skeptic Heart, was already taken. Yeah, now I need another name. Our current name is Nothing Once, but beware, thqat is subject to change. Enjoy the far-from-finished website.

Patrick

WolfMother

I got a new album a few days ago. It's the smash hit debut from the Australian rock trio called WolfMother! I love it. Love it, love it, love it.
I first heard a WolfMother (or "played it, as it were) on Guitar Hero II. It quickly became one of my favorite songs, with its driving beat and awesome guitar work. That song was "Woman" which won the grammy for best hard rock performance in 2007. And personally, I think it deserved it.

Anyways, on to the review. First off, the album is pretty much a throwback to 70's rock, especially in the Led Zeppelin vein. The vocals are pretty good-unique, but not annoying. Lots of "Yeah!" and exclamations like that. The guitar work is very awesome. Considering you only have one guitarist, they were probably a bit limited (sure, you can layer tracks on a cd as often as you want, but you will have to play as many of those live as possible sometime). Some songs (such as Woman), during the solo, just have the Bass player take a break from, um, bass-ing, and go on to do the keyboard solo. The drums themselves are also pretty good. The band themselves are hard rockish, so the drums contain a lot of fills to keep the song on its toes. My only complaint is that some of the songs contain extra-long bridges inbetween choruses, or verse and chorus, or whatever. However, I still love the album. I also love how they end it, with a mostly acoustic song called "Vagabond." The song is perfect, when you start it, if you turn it up, you can hear one of the band members say "This is a song about innocence lost," and then it goes on.

So, pros: Catchy guitar hooks, catchy song-writing. Somewhat good lyrics (nothing controversial or political, mostly fantasy stuff about unicorns and stuff.) A good number of tracks (13), that are never way too long or too short.
Cons: They haven't come out with another album yet.

I'll end my review with a video:

Mother's Day

I Have been gone all weekend in Seattle. Actually, a little South of Seattle in the all-but-abandoned town of Bremerton. It is amazing that this dead town could have just one living cell, that being the 2 blocks around my hotel. Well I am enjoying myself. Hope you are too.

patrick

Life...

Oh, life is so wonderfully odd. My old teacher Mr. Wendell, who I hope is reading this, is no longer at our school. We all miss him soooo... much. It's kind of sad that we don't have him anymore. Well, life will go on. I hope you like our new Title Bar. It took me for ever to create (no, not really). Also, if you get a chance, listen to Carbon Leaf they are awesome. Love Loss Hope Repeat is one great song. Enjoy your life, it is better than you might think.

Patrick

Elliot Smith

All my relatives came over last Sunday to do a joint birthday celebration between some of my cousins, my great uncle, and I. I got mostly cash, but also a target gift card. I spent it today on the late Elliot Smith's new cd: New Moon. It's a compilation of sorts... he guess he's like Conor Oberst (that guy from Bright Eyes), they both record a whole bunch of songs, and then the pick some of them to put on a new record. In this case, however, Elliot recorded songs with no real sense of which ones he was going to put on the record, and just mostly for the heck of it. He's mostly acoustic guitar, and hes got a pretty good voice. I like it so far, even though I've only listened to one track.
The CD came with a little pamphlet full of paragraphs from close friends of his. Here's an interesting little quote that starts it off:
"For a long time I made up most songs walking around at night, just 'cause I liked walking around at night. And so I saw the moon a lot. It's a really overused image, but there's always way to use overused images well. to make them new again, or at least try to. I wouldn't say that I succeeded at that, but..." Elliot Smith, as told to M. Bates, 1997.
So yeah, sounds like a pretty interesting guy. He has a pretty interesting story, on which you can read at Wikipedia.
Well, that's all for now!
-Tom

Obnoxious Lady (Part 2)

...Please Read part 1 First
So the fat lady who I bumped into, turned to give me an evil stare in the face before shoving me more than 5 rows back in the crowd. Please understand, it took more than a little work and about 25 minutes to push your way that far in a crowd this packed. The woman used more brute force than I had before imagined could be possessed by a human without enhancement, and with one shove undid 25 minutes of work. Needless to say, I was P.O.ed, and have no more sympathy in any form for this woman. And Lady, if you are reading this, I hope the same thing happens to you at a roof-top concert. Ooops, that would suck.

patrick

Crazy Life...

This weekend has been the craziest of my life. Things happened that can't be seen by the world yet. Also, I found out that my mom kissed her first boyfriend when she was 14, and that as a grade schooler, she was a kleptomaniac!!! Well, That's about it from here.