Maps & Quesadillas & Lots of Links

Today has been immeasurably boring. The two places I've been today are at the piano and the computer. More development on a song, but that's about it. i would have liked to have seen Youth in Revolt today, but i'm not quite 17 yet and too imp to sneak into an R-rated movie. alas.

I found out that Dumbledore's Army's suddenly playing a show next Saturday. This is mildly concerning to me, since a lot of the same people are apparently attending, and it's going to be more or less the same music that we played the last time we played there. Which is still majorly Harry and the Potter covers. I don't want us to stick just to being a cover band, and I don't think any of us do. But we've been finding it relatively difficult to write songs. We have one good, full-length one penned, but that's still a long way to go before we can just play our own material at a show.

I just watched half of the documentary "Walmart: High Cost of Low Price" and it left a bad taste in my mouth. That's all I want to say about that. Here's the first part of it on YouTube, you can follow the rest of it by checking the related videos.




Luckily, there's ashens to make the day suck a little less:



And there's a new video of mine to make the day suck a little more:



Maps & Atlases 2005 EP "Trees, Swallows, Houses"

8.5

While math-rock isn't really my thing (This Town Needs Guns is essentially the extent of my listening to the genre), I picked this album up because I had a few extra bucks in my iTunes account and I had heard a few good things here and there. Little did I know I was picking up a masterpiece.

Prepare to have your head spun. "Trees, Swallows, Houses" starts off with what feels like 30,000 notes being played in the span of 2 seconds. "Everyplace is a House" is technical, dynamic, and most of all, infectious. The band leads the listener from one musical thought to the next seamlessly, all the while maintaining an immense energy that is held back at points and then unleashed at others. This is more or less the way the rest of the album passes, but it's undoubtedly a great introduction of what's to come.

The album doesn't let up its ferocity until 'The Ongoing Horrible', a simple and short song that contrasts greatly from the first two. Here, Dave Davison's (yes that's his name, don't poke fun now) vocals shine as he plays an acoustic guitar in an unusual fashion and an occasional twinkling of electric guitar fills both channels. Sonic bliss. video here:



After this brief respite, the album lunges at you again for a bit, this of course being an enjoyable, fun, intense, unpredictable, exciting lunging. The great thing about this album is how consistently in-your-face it is. The most frantic part of the album shows up with "Stories About Ourselves", and this is where the musicianship between the quartet feels the strongest. In order to play a song like this, you need to know exactly what the other members are doing, and they shine in this aspect. A sicknasty bassline that puts Flea to shame and a sweet handclap breakdown makes it a personal favorite.

At the end of "Songs for Ghosts to Haunt To" the album finishes with a hush: the band exhausted, fingers cramped from incessant tapping, hands worn out from smashing drums to pieces. The band all must be on their way to carpal tunnel syndrome.

The album works so well due to its brevity. If this album was full-length it'd feel like a little too much. The songs are very similar, and repetition would start to sink in at some point. But you never feel that on this album. Instead, the ideas still remain fresh by the end of it all, and you walk away satisfied.

If you're looking for some high-energy, fast music that's not grating on the ears, you should get this album. It gets me pumped.

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On that note, I'm gonna go to bed early. I need to make sure I get 8 hours for my track meet tomorrow, and it's been taking me an hour and a half to fall asleep.

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