She focuses on efficient point accumulation: jam, 12 points.

But every time I listen to Brothers, I can hear her voice.

It was a year well-lived, but glamorous only in its simplicity– I had 6 roommates, all of us year-long volunteers packed into a one story house, where minus rent and Costco we each earned only $100-a-month in stipend.

I’m behind a snow plow, tonguing salt and exhaust fumes, white-knuckling a compact car, and screaming at a hamper of clean clothes to just keep from crying. Tom Waits is with me, wailing as we swerve, any of these songs seeming appropriate soundtracks to crash quietly into the ditch with.

And oh god it’s wonderful sitting here, drinking too much coffee, eating too many pastries, and loving everything about this moment. 

Still, he wants me to keep strutting down my freak lane, says “Gucci” like “Coochie” on “White Freckles”.  

My brother always comments on how big the sky is in my little stretch of western Kentucky. We crane our necks and peer at the sickle moon, the unblinking stars.

But John Prine was bigger than memory. John was never tainted. 

Fine Line
Harry Styles
Released: December 13, 2019
Label: Columbia and Erskine
Length: 46 minutes, 12 songs

My... more

Before Sasquatch’s girlfriend got into rats, she had dogs. I don’t remember how many exactly, but a lot. One dog was called Pee Dog. Whenever I fell asleep on the La-Z-Boy, he soaked my leg

Like so many gays around the world, I remember exactly where I was when Lorde dropped “Green Light”, the first song from her 2017 instant classic Melodrama. I was in my car, on my way to work. But that’s not really all of it.

I attribute my apostasy to Michael Jackson’s HIStory

Patience is one virtue that me and Wayne both got in spades.

In jazz, woodshedding refers to the shed you sequester yourself in, as a young musician learning the craft, a private space to develop your own style, away from prying eyes or critical ears.

Nate and I were in a band together throughout high school — screamo with keyboards.

Sometimes, he gives me tips. Most of the time, it is this: “Take your time.”

As a 10-year-old boy I found ways to explore. Moisturizing with lotion helped. 

The idea that relationships are verses in the song of a life, or that grace notes can be found in ruined loves, struck a chord of latent sentimentality.

You find yourself crying on the phone to your manager, telling them you don’t know if you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship or not. That probably deserves certainty.

It was revolution by music. The world would never be the same.

Manic yet aware, a foot-stomping Nashville show, a sight to behold. They hit the road. They barely made it. They broke up. Such is life.

The song on repeat, singing to Scout, for some reason stranded, standing on the patio table, dead-center, like a reanimated roast, and my father, drunk and shirtless, passed out in a pile of mulch in the yard.

I hope you’re still unsatisfied. I hope you’re keeping your nose clean. 

There’s a complex mythology to this album, one that plunges the BÖC back catalogue into a cauldron of secret histories and magick mirrors and extraterrestrial visitors.

That chorus, the coda of “Famous Last Words,” which closes the album except for the gimmick bonus “Blood,” pretty much saved me.