music goes in circles, we all know that. I’m really excited there’s a new Rural Alberta Advantage album out soon (that’s the people above your screen). I’m happy with the new Twin Forks record and it made me think of Dashboard and the old days.

My old days of America. I use to sometimes go with some other college kids to see a math-rock band. Sometimes we’d go to a cd shop. On one such visit I picked up a cd because it had a nice cover of a dolphin on, and the little record shop in hipster town Chapel Hill (North Carolina) only had the best stuff. It was where I got into joan of arc too.

Anyway. Imperial Teen. They blew me away, I had that cd playing in my college dorm every day and night, I played it trying to impress American arty girls but it never worked somehow. Still, I was amazed by the funny wordplay and the despair and arrogance of the singer. Every single lyric here made me feel like I was listening to a modern day Holden Caulfield. “We’re living in the cloisters where out subtext is out plot…back in your life (but) we can’t even mess up right”. Of course I got the gay references and the Kurt Cobain stuff, but somehow that just made them more cooler because I knew not everyone would get them and I thought that was cool (I was a teenager back then and was into the whole outsider art thing!)

Imperial Teen made sense to me. Music is awesome guitar pop too. I love it when intelligent lyrics and guitar pop burst with this much energy.