Been Wrens binging. Fell in love with The Meadowlands sometime in the spring when I was in a bit of a dark place, and listened to Secaucus and Abbott 1135 for the first time this week. Suffice to say, they're way closer to a Meadowlands level of greatness than they have any business being. The songs that leaked from…

Melvins: Saw them Friday night, which was just fucking incredible. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of their catalog, but I really couldn't help but enjoy myself. They're loose when they need to be but still tight as hell as a band, and I'm not quite sure how that's possible. I also think Dale Crover's mid-show…

All are pretty recent discoveries except Leaves

Technically doesn't count but I saw Lou Barlow twice-Dinosaur Jr and Sebadoh once each.

My best friend and I saw Spiderman: Homecoming. Theater was totally empty and it was his third time seeing it, so we could talk amongst ourselves the whole time without feeling shitty. That being said, I was more invested in it than I thought I'd be. The high school setting works really well and the Vulture's a pretty…

Rediscovering Pavement and the Pixies, the former especially. Wowee Zowee is a classic and I'm not sure anyone has as high quality a rarities output as they did. I seriously have no idea how someone could write "Frontwards" and "Sensitive Euro Man" and then think "Those aren't going on the album."

If it makes you feel any better, he's in it twelve minutes tops

Agreed. Greg Sage is probably my favorite guitarist ever

Yeah, ranking their catalog is honestly hair splitting at this point. Their records and shows cement them as one of the best punk bands of all time.

I like the Monitor better, no question, but I put Tragedy on my record player for the first time in what myst be forever. What struck me is, for a record hellbent on capturing the emotional roller coaster that is mental illness, how goddamn catchy the songs are. Half of it is the best power pop album ever written.…

Really good, I think. The last track is bit more on the experimental side and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, but other than that I really like it.

Wolves in the Throne Room - Diadem of 12 Stars
Mogwai - Ten Rapid
Titus Andronicus - The Most Lamentable Tragedy
Buffalo Springfield/Neil Young - "Flying on the Ground is Wrong"
Lync - These Are Not Fall Colors
Wipers - Is This Real?

I was at freshman orientation for the first half so I didn't get to do a ton, but I watched Sing Street and re-watched Mulholland Dr. before I left. Sing Street was fun enough, but the ending took it from a 8/10 to a 7 for me. With Mulholland, I definitely need to watch it more before I can really pretend to wrap my…

Very jealous of you for being a socialist (I'm assuming?) in the right place at the right time. The Corbyn episode is gold.

Stuff I scored on vinyl:
Replacements-Let It Be
Agalloch-Ashes Against the Grain

Took a bit of a break from delving into black metal to reacquaint myself with Belle & Sebastian and Los Campesinos! The beginning of "Broken Heartbeats" might honestly scare me more than 99% of the skinny guys in corpse paint ever could. That stuff's just as great as I remember it, not to make it sound like a ton of…

My dad and I both grew up on the Replacements, so we were gonna see them live my sophomore year of high school as a bonding experience. They were still going strong on their reunion tour and I figured they'd be better live now having gotten sober, but they cancelled the show the day before. I knew something was up…

Hmm…. if they still play "Night" I'll definitely have to see them

I've thought about seeing them just because their first three records, plus Building Nothing Out of Something are some of my all time favorite albums, but they seem kind of stingy about playing their early material.

That's more or less how I feel. I can handle Mark Kozelek being just an all around shitty person and bands like *Motorhead flirting with Nazi imagery. I'm not cool at all with any, especially the latter, but they're not deal breakers for me listening to somebody's music. When you start looking genuinely and willingly…