I am assured that peace will come to me...

"…a peace that can, yes, surpass the speed, yes,
of my understanding and my need"

(A warning before you continue:  This is about to get long winded and meandering, but if you've been to Seabass Says before, you already know that long and meandering happen from time to time.  What can I say, brevity has never been a very strong trait for me.  I'm not really sure if any of this makes a ton of sense, but I felt compelled to write.)

Its amazing what a long easy drive with a great soundtrack can do for one’s mindset and general worldview. I’ve written about Josh Ritter recently, but I just can’t help myself. He’s my favorite songwriter and “So Runs the World Away” was sitting in my car, just waiting for a little road trip to stretch it’s musical muscles. After expressing a desire to get off of our butts more often and do some running, my wife and I were given a copy of “Born to Run” as a book on tape (CD, technically, but book on tape sounds better). We’d been listening to it on our trip to and from the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia to join in on a family vacation and we were finishing it up as we drove to Pittsburgh and Ohio for a wedding with a stopover to visit with family over the long Labor Day weekend.

While listening our way through “Born to Run” and hearing these inspiring and touching stories of people expressing passion, art, and joy through the simple act of putting one foot in front of another and pushing human endurance to the edge, my mind couldn’t help but wander toward big picture type thinking. Am I doing things the right way? Do my priorities need shifted? Is it really that simple? One foot in front of another and we can find peace and happiness? What is the best path to becoming a better person?

I’ll admit I’m a sap and I fall for the sentimental feelings surrounding weddings. I love that no matter how many questions someone may have swirling around in their head or how uncertain their destination in life is, one thing they are certain of when they say those two words is that they know exactly who they can rely on to help answer the questions and find the path. I always think of the song “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes and the line:

“I could go anywhere with you and probably be happy.”

The wedding we attended was for a longtime friend of mine and there was plenty of catching up to do with the assorted friends and family. Talk inevitably turned to jobs, family, and the future. A friend and I were reminiscing about our old high school and college days and wondering if we had done it all right. I expressed my regret for taking things too seriously through school and not really appreciating what I had until it was all over. We talked about finding the right balance in work and life (somewhere between doing too much and doing just enough to get by) and I was reminded of my favorite quote from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off:

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, it’ll pass you by.”

So I spent the drive between Akron and Pittsburgh rolling those thoughts around in my head and taking a step back to make sure life wasn’t passing me by. Instead of picking back up where we left off with the book on tape, we let Mr. Ritter sing us along our way as my wife laid down in the passenger seat to see if she could nap off the last few effects of the previous night’s celebratory toasts. The road was wide open and I was able to coast along and let things knock around as my thoughts ebbed and flowed with Josh Ritter’s songs. I think I’m starting to understand why there are so many songs about the road out there.

Ritter’s take on travel and movement has made its way into many of his songs and he weaves it especially well through the “So Runs the World Away” album. It’s the kind of album that can break your heart, piece it back together, beat on it a little to see if the glue is holding, and finally send it soaring off with hope. Not a bad backdrop for a bit of musing.

I think it is human nature to question things. It exposes cracks and faults when things look better than they actually are. It reinforces when things are as good as they look. It can be daunting to question yourself and give an honest answer. I guess its like taking to heart the last line from Ritter’s gorgeous “Southern Pacifica”:

“Southern Pacific, take me to meet whatever is hunting for me”

See, many of my friends and I are at a big crossroads point in our lives. Our late 20s and early 30s typically bring marriage, kids, settling down and saying “this is where and when I build my life and my family and where I intend to leave my mark.” As it usually does when I start into these different lines of thinking about life, love, change, and happiness (or for that matter, when I start to type up a blog post), my thinking was just circling back on itself. Questions lead to more questions and the answers are unsatisfying. That’s the problem with this stage of life. We’re old enough to have put school and growing up behind us. We’re expected to handle responsibility and make decisions at our jobs. We know just enough to realize there is nothing but future and opportunities ahead of us and it scares us to death. We want to figure it all out, but really, no one has the capacity to wrap their head around it all. All we can do is put it together little bits at a time and hope nothing gets missed along the way.

During my thinking and listening, something got triggered during “Southern Pacifica.” All that talk of travel with wide plains slipping past brought me back to a trip I took through Europe about 14 or 15 years ago. I remember a moment in that trip, looking out a bus window at the French countryside with a girl I had a crush on asleep in the seat next to me, where I thought to myself something along the lines of, “This is peace. This is a feeling I need to find again.” Coming back to present day, I looked at my wife napping in the seat next to me as we drove through Ohio and thought about how much better this all is than that little moment in France.

My thoughts coalesced while the CD played through “Lark” which I thought was both fitting and funny. Josh Ritter has said that “Lark” isn’t much more than a stream of consciousness type song. A collection of a bunch of fragments that come together to form a song. To me, it is a song about uncertainty and knowing that it will all make sense. The seemingly chaotic and indescribable inevitably will make sense (“I am assured a peace will come to me”) and there is a perfect simplicity to be found throughout (“the golden ratio, the shell”) if you can figure out where to look.

So there it is. The conclusion is simpler than those swirling thoughts and questions. Maybe they can’t really be answered after all. Or if they can, it’ll be too late to do anything about it. Through the chaos and uncertainty, we have to cling to what we know is good in life and know that a peace will come. In my life, I can be sure that wherever this late 20s uncertainty might take me, it’ll take me there with my wife, my family, and my friends along for the ride.

I may be shoehorning things in to fit with the music, but isn’t art supposed to be interpreted by the audience and not just by the creator? The next song on “So Runs the World Away” is “Lantern,” a wrenching and uplifting song about the truest love:

“Light and guide me through, hold it high for me, I’ll do the same for you, hold it high for me.”

I remembered the priest talking during the wedding, talking about living life for another. I looked to my wife again reclined next to me in the car and didn’t care about the questions any more

"...a peace that can, yes, surpass the speed, yes, of my understanding and my need.”

This morning, I took some of the advice from my trip.  I woke up and took my dog for a jog around the neighborhood, through a bit of woods, and around a school.  One foot in front of the other, soaking in what I could of the quiet morning, forgetting about any uncertainty, and getting home in time to see my wife off before she left for work.  I sit here in my office and look at a mile long to do list and smile as it doesn't even dent my new sense of peace.

Thanks for sitting through that (or skipping over it for the music).  Here's what little I can offer as a reward:

Josh Ritter - "Lark"


Josh Ritter and Dawn Landes (his wife) - "Southern Pacifica"


Josh Ritter - "Lantern" (performed at the Avalon Theatre, not too far from me)


Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band - "Lantern" (just because I have such fond memories of seeing this in a sold out club with the full backing band)

Does it have to be a whole month away?

(I know...2 posts in one day.  Just go ahead and give me the overachiever ribbon)

I read about this idea awhile back and was excited, got busy with something, and forgot about it.  Then my favorite radio station WRNR played a song off the upcoming album and I remembered why I was so excited in the first place.  My wife and I were pulling into a parking spot somewhere and sat there in the summer heat because we couldn't tear ourselves out of the car before "From Above" finished.

The album I'm referring to is a collaboration between Ben Folds and Nick Hornby (two people high up on the "If you could sit down and have a few drinks with..." list, especially Hornby) called "Lonely Avenue" that Ben Folds provided the music and melody for Nick Hornby's lyrics.  From the snippets included in the video below, I'm ready to buy it already, but it won't be out for another month.  "Picture Window" sounds like pure awesome carried in a bag made of fantastic (Stop making that face...of course that made sense).

Comes and Goes Like Fitz and Dizzyspells

I see a time in the near future when work will calm down (I'm trying to do 2+ jobs worth of stuff in 1 job's worth of time...but aren't we all) and the myriad of projects at home will be completed, or at least most of the big ones.  When that happens, there will be a flood of musical sharing and caring here at Seabass Says.  Or maybe if a friend or two with good taste (I promise I have more than two friends, and most of them have excellent taste...the rest have excellently bad taste...or maybe that's just my guilty pleasure CD stack or the Lionel Ritchie vinyl speaking out from the corners of my living room) offers a guest post every now and again.  Until then, we'll all just have to deal with infrequent updates whenever I find the time and motivation.  Actually, the motivation is easy to find, its the time that seems to be a bit too evasive.

Anyway, on to the music.  As you may be able to guess by the post title, I'd like to let Andrew Bird expand on the theme of fits of productivity.  I think Andrew Bird may be a crazy person, but I say that with admiration.  I think it just takes someone who's wired a bit differently to be a champion whistler, violinist, and lyrical thesaurus to do what he does.  See for yourself:

Andrew Bird - Fitz & the Dizzyspells

Maybe New Jersey ain't so bad after all

Like many people, I like to give my friends who hail from New Jersey crap for their home state.  Ragging on NJ is just the American way.  Obviously, Jersey has produced some excellent music in the past (I recently stole my dad's record collection, but have yet to throw The Boss on the turntable) and the state is staring to really get my attention.  I've been listening to the Gaslight Anthem for around a year or so and their most recent effort - "American Slang" - is proving to be just as strong as "The'59 Sound".  I can talk about the Gaslight Anthem some other time, though, because I can't get Steel Train out of my head right now.  I heard the song "Bullet" on the consistently high quality summer mix tape from Heather Browne's I Am Fuel, You Are Friends blog and just can't seem to shake it from my brain.  This is not a bad thing.  The tone of the Gaslight Anthem strikes me as a combination of regret and redemption, but Steel Train's sound seems to be at the other end of the spectrum, swelling with hope and dreams.  I would definitely pay for a concert lineup of Steel Train opening for the Gaslight Anthem.  Hope and Dreams followed by Regret and Redemption.  That may sound depressing on paper, but would sound fantastic in a concert hall.

I've been away from this space for too long, so I'll offer up 3 Steel Train videos as a peace offering to my endless amount of readers (I hope that reads with the intended sarcasm...anyway, enjoy).

"Bullet" live in Cleveland:


"S.O.G. Burning in Hell" also live in Cleveland:


"Bullet" stripped down to just one guitar:

Living in Colour with Frightened Rabbit

Most of the time, I can't seem to understand exactly what Scott Hutchison sings through his Scottish accent, but the raw emotion laid out in every Frightened Rabbit song I've heard is enough to sell me on the band.  Every songwriting session must be laden with catharsis.  Until seeing/listening to their recent stop by the KCRW Morning Becomes Eclectic program, I didn't realize how sweeping, soaring, and darn near epic (ok, so I might be exaggerating a bit, but the point is that there's more to it than I originally thought) their live performance can be.  See for yourself:

MOP II: Josh Rouse - 1972

Funny thing about ambition is that it only really works when coupled with discipline.  Months ago, I posted something I call the Music Organization Project (MOP for short) and wrote about my rediscovery of "The Garden" by Zero 7 and I haven't really taken the time to do any laptop organization since.  Due to some newfound organizational discipline stemming from some extensive filing work around my house (yeah, that's how exciting our weekends have been lately) and my slightly diminished to do list at work, I was able to dive back into the MOP today.

The fruit of my lunchtime labor is a return to the warm and sunny "1972" by Josh Rouse.  I owe my introduction to Josh Rouse to catching a snippet of his song "Directions" while watching the movie Vanilla Sky.  I ended up impulse buying his album "Under Cold Blue Stars" and couldn't have been happier with my blind spending.  To this day, "Under Cold Blue Stars" remains one of my favorite albums and gets regular play on my stereo system, mp3 player, and work computer.  My next Rouse purchase was backtracking to his debut album, "Dressed Up Like Nebraska".  "1972" was the first Josh Rouse album I was able to get my hands on at the time of its release.  It was a little strange to hear at first, because my 2 album Josh Rouse experience had me expecting some kind of modern folk/alt-country/americana to come out of the speakers.  Instead (looking back, I can see that it was his goal), I was treated to something that could have come right out of the early 70s.  I love it when something can be both new and somehow familiar, and Rouse hit it right on the head with "1972".  I think this'll have to be the soundtrack for my ride home so I can smile my way through the inevitable weekend beach traffic I'm going to get stuck in.

Josh Rouse - Love Vibration


And because this makes me smile, here are 2 kids dancing to "Come Back (Light Therapy)" (also off of 1972)

We should always know that we can do anything

It is getting hot here by the Chesapeake Bay.  The one thing I may never get used to around here is the amount of humidity we deal with on a regular basis in the summer.  Just too sticky of a climate for me, I think.  Good thing I don't live any further (or is that farther?) south.

So anyway, getting to the musical point of the post, I love how songs and weather can play off of each other and enhance the listening experience.  I can even manage to get a smile on my face with the sun out, the windows down, and the right song coming through my speakers on the way into work in the morning.  A song that keeps popping up on my random playlist of everything I can think to include is "Go Do" off of the recent solo effort "Go" by Sigur Ros frontman, Jonsi.  Its no secret that Sigur Ros is a favorite of mine even if some of my friends and old roommates weren't too keen on their sound.  While Sigur Ros's music has this kind of epic, contemplative, dreamlike feel to it, Jonsi's solo work is all exuberance, hope, and sunshine.

"Go Do" is a perfect example of the kind of music that can take a hot, sunny day and just shine it up a bit more.  If you're a pure cynic, I don't know if Jonsi is for you.  There is just way too much hope that shines through the songs on "Go".  On "Go Do", I'm personally drawn to the Baba O'Reily-esque manic chaos of the music that Jonsi's voice soars over.  See for yourself.  Here's 2 versions of the song (one with full band and one as a duo with a peacock strutting around the stage...did I mention Jonsi is a crazy person?  Of course that makes me like his music even more).

Jonsi - Go Do:

Tracking down "So Runs the World Away" and Josh Ritter's continued brilliance

Today brings what will probably go down as my most anticipated album of the year.  The new effort from Josh Ritter, "So Runs the World Away," hit the shelves and I escaped my office to go track it down over lunch.  I learned a few things during my little lunchtime adventure: Best Buy hates Josh Ritter, Borders wins the award for store of the day, and Annapolis really needs a decent music store.  Anyway, I ended my adventure with a copy of the album in hand and I was soon richly rewarded for my struggles.

In short, Josh Ritter continues to be fantastic.  I've listened to the new album thrice already and will probably leave it in my car for at least the rest of the summer.

I first came across Ritter's music via a download of a handful of live tracks from a performance in Berlin (or some other European city I haven't been to).  I think I listened to "Girl in the War" about 20teen times that day (of course 20teen is a number...it means "a lot").  Soon after, I made my way to City Lights Records and got my hands on a copy of "The Animal Years" while noting that Greg already had the album poster mounted proudly to one of the few bare spots left on the store walls.  To this day, "The Animal Years" remains one of my favorite and most revisitable albums.

Shortly after my wife and I moved to Annpolis, we bought tickets to see Josh Ritter play at not-too-far-away the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA.  I think we can both agree that it was one of the best concert experiences of our lives.  Ritter's backing band was nothing more than a side table with a lamp and a water bottle on it.  He took the stage in his best Mark Twainesque white suit and proceeded to own the room for what could have been 2 hours or 2 years.  He really was that good.  There was a moment during that set that I think solidified his place in my just now made up Pantheon of songwriters.  He started into an - as of then - unreleased song, "The Temptation of Adam," with the audience eating up every word of his witty and literate storytelling (I believe every great singer/songwriter is just a storyteller that needed something to do with their hands and managed to find a suitable instrument) and then hit us with the WWIII line (see/hear below).  I'm not doing the experience justice with my meandering description here, but it was just a galvanizing moment in the crowd.  Not so much that it was a funny line that we all "got," but that we were all witnessing something truly unique and special and mostly unknown.  Sadly, Josh Ritter still seems mostly unknown, as shown by the fact that the store that is supposed to have new albums for sale every Tuesday seems to hat him (no Josh Ritter tab at all in the 'R' section and only 1 lonely copy of "The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter" to show that the artist even exists).  I guess I'll really see how well known he has become in the years since I last saw him live, as my wife and I are catching him again this weekend in DC.  I may be setting the bar too high, but if the continued quality of his albums are any indication, the show should be a happy repeat of that last concert, but with a full band to complement Josh, instead of just a little table.

I could write for days about how much I enjoy Josh Ritter's music, but I'll just leave you with my current favorite of his, a little missle silo love story that I mentioned above.

M. Ward is too cool for school

Don't believe me?  I have proof:

She & Him - In The Sun from Merge Records on Vimeo.

The sun is out, but it's supposed to rain soon, so I'm enjoying it while it lasts with some new She & Him.  My wife and I just got the new album ("Volume Two") last Friday and "In the Sun" jumped out immediately as an early favorite.  My short opinion on She & Him: I like them.  The music is familiar and fresh at the same time, and just the right amount of sweet.  It makes me smile and somtimes that's all a band needs to do.

One more for the road: "Thieves" live on Kimmel

Getting back to normalcy

On this day of reckoning, I'm back to inject some life into Seabass Says.  Though it is Tax Day, it is also my last day of preparation for my big day long exam tomorrow.  I'm off from work, putting my suitcase full of reference material together, and trying to relax and fend off the stress.  As I'm transitioning from full on study mode back to normalcy, I'm cleaning up the stack of CDs I've amassed over the last couple weeks of reading and problem solving.  So I guess I'll just go ahead and recommend the whole stack for anyone in need of some good relaxing background music to study by, or just pass some time with.

In no particular order, here are my study albums:
Oren Lavie - The Opposite Side of the Sea
The Beta Band - Hot Shots II
Mogwai - The Hawk is Howling
Sigur Ros - með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Iron and Wine - Around the Well
Beth Orton - Pass in Time
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
The Postal Service - Give Up
Iron and Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days
Norah Jones - The Fall
Olafur Arnalds - Found Songs
Nick Drake - Way To Blue (An Introduction to Nick Drake)
Eastmountainsouth - Eastmountainsouth
Yo La Tengo - Prisoners of Love
Badly Drawn Boy - About a Boy Soundtrack
Son Volt - Okemah and the Melody of Riot
Duncan Sheik - White Limousine
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois

Bringing two of my study music providers together (from a show I missed about a year ago) is The Shins covering the Beta Band...enjoy.

The Shins - Dry the Rain