THEY CALL ME THE BUMP

I put this record on and I wanna drink whiskey and high-five pals and stomp my feet. What I am saying is that this is a great record post-bad-shit-that-looked-like-good-shit. I saw the light. And I ran like a fool. Records for me as a whole are about that booyeah moment where alone or not I wanna holler YES THANX. It is like when I was a silly fifth grader and I finally pronounced my Rs right and finally I could say Rachel’s name! You ask me if I love you. Don’t ask a question with such a funny word. That is one of my regrets, not telling that girl at age ten what was up. Also, bunkering up in my sorrow bed the last few weeks, never learning an instrument in that best period of life for such things TEENHOOD, being an idiot to my ex-wife like all the time a lot of the time. LETS ALL GO TO THE BAR. We need to admit that is okay advice sometimes. Speaking of which, I listen to this album and the lyrics are more straightforward than other Deer Tick albums and I know that is all right. Heavy is heavy. Sadscary is sadscary. And the devil is living in my basement. I’m trying hard to hide him from my wife. Hey man, the idiot was in my attic, but whatever. I get it. Sometimes, I crave for that old friend to yell STOP BEING SUCH A PUSSY in my face. Loud enough to hear! Louder please! I can’t hear. I can’t use my ears. Miss one speech and you’re uninformed to tears. This album has been unshuffling my cards for a while. not in that fix it! kind of way, but in the live it! way. Drugs and terror, which ones better? Oh and check out that cover art. Gorgeous in that rad way that screams I AM GONNA. You give me something to brag about. I said Ludacris made me feel tougher. I say Deer Tick makes me feel rambunctious and rowdy and somehow more sincere. I need that. Sometimes I’m a chair in a bar that no one sits in because it is so close to the door. I cut my way to the back of the line and I found you. I heard Deer Tick for the first time at Village Green Records, another place with a heavy door to the wind. Travis says you will like this. And I did! I’m not gonna stand around playing make believe. I didn’t buy it but yes I should have right then. I think I was hanging with my ex-wife (and already said how I behaved mondo lame, another lighter example). When I finally bought it I was hanging with another cute blond I thought would go WOW THIS RECORD but she liked that country station my dad bobbed his head to until he discovered that big classic country box set. We could be our invention, running from letting go. I think I wanna talk about this record as an example of who I am today March 8^th, 2012. I’m on a dating site and I kind of wanna write LISTEN TO THIS RECORD (along with Stale Champagne by State Champion, We Make Our Own Luck by In The Face Of War, and Recovery by Away With Vega, not to mention read these poems blah blah) to know who I am. I need you to make me shout. That line should be on there too. I’m tired of being anxious and lame and a sitter. Someone I think is the knees bees told me I was a charmer. I think she misspelled idiot. I hope she misspelled PERSON I LIKE LOTZ. Maybe GET IN THERE MAN. My therapist is making me write a list of what I want in a woman. Someone to make me warm and loud at once. Come on Miss K., wrap your lovin arms around me.

Are You Sure You Dressed For The Weather?

I’m terrible in my wrongness, in my refusal or inability or misguidedness to not let the words poetic or musical slack into the other territory. To quote Short Hand—a poet is not a musician. So I guess I’m saying the opposite too is yep. This cannot be definite (wait for it wait for it) but I can’t help myself. I know poets and I know musicians (sure sure some are both but of two body-deep places their words/songs radiate). I see poets/poems bubbling from a yearning that can’t be relieved ever or for long. Music, man, it tingles and trickles out. (both are great doh doh dom different is all, for me)

Reason one realization—Bro. Stephen is poetic, people. On that new album, Baptist Girls, (HEAR IT HERE) the tingling scratches itself raw, a cloud to huff. A heartbreak, a quivering. But listen close. There it is the yearning that knows itself unquenchable. Yet it goes. The record and its fourteen songs (two-three min range—this seems important) shiver together almost like one long song interrupted by tiny gasps—whose? (FLIP THE RECORD). What makes this record make me break my rule is Bro. Stephen and his self exuding through that soft voice, that steady guitar, those lyrics all a big old hum letting out something unmistakable yet no no you can’t touch it.



Sure sure the music I love most (clangy loud a little sloppy) can explode a body, a person, a voice and be emotion BOOM. Same for this slowcoustic stuff that Bro. Stephen is a part of. But the emotion there, at least as I respond to/see it, exists as a reason to jam that song or a string to pull the parts together. I call this poetic, more importantly I like this Bro. Stephen album lots lots because it is evident how yearning fills this fellow, a loveable searching that overrides whatever is or isn’t happening musically.

GET IT HERE

SO STOKED TO SEE Bro Stephen AT THIS SHOW