Five Things

Dog days of summer.  The D Man recently enjoyed Weezer as noted below.  Ryan Adams is rolling into town on Monday, so looking forward to that show.  Life is abundant.

• Sturgill Simpson's A Sailor's Guide to Earth is the best "country" album of the year.  A modern blend of country ballads, root rock, and Southern soul, the album is a life-affirming collection of songs conceived as a series of letters to Simpson's newborn son, with advice ranging from the spiritual ("God is all around you") to the practical ("Motor oil is motor oil / just keep the engine clean).  It's sort of like listening to Waylon Jennings, Elvis, and your wizened veteran Uncle (Simpson served in the Navy) drop necessary wisdom against gorgeous strings or saxophone root downs.  The opener, "Welcome to Earth (Pollywog)" is a stunner, giving me chills in its early crescendo: But the answer was so easy! Because the track is not up on the web, Simpon's video for his brilliant cover of Nirvana's "In Bloom" will suffice.
• Freetown Sound is a must listen and Dev Hynes is our post-colonial pop prince, with plenty of nods to the Purple One.  "Augustine" is an ode to his immigrant parents arrival to the Big Apple: timely, emotional, and sparkling.
• Need a lazy late-summer jam?  Band of Horses' "Whatever, Wherever" is backyard lemonade, authentically sweet and satisfying.
• Dinosaur Jr. still dishing out the blistering fuzz after all these years.  "Tiny" is a gem.
• In the spring of my eighth-grade year, I was up past midnight watching MTV's 120 Minutes, a long-running haven for alternative and/or obscure music videos.  The cut for "Undone (The Sweater Song)" premiered and I was instantly dumbstruck and smitten.  A very short time later I was one of the only junior high kids in Utah to own The Blue Album, jamming to the record for months before it finally received mainstream airplay, which was back when that meant a big audience, as something of a musical monoculture still existed in America, and a still hanging-by-a-thread rock narrative at that.  Produced by The Cars Ric Ocasek, The Blue Album's ten guitar tracks were recorded in a single day by the prolific Rivers Cuomo, reinforcing the spontaneously classic garage/surf rock sound that bubbled to the surface in the wake of grunge's slow decay.  Cuomo's songs encouraged masses of nerdy teenagers to embrace their doodled journals, D&D date nights, and stilted girlfriend dreams.  Such earnest but acne-riddled resentment culminated in the band's follow-up Pinkerton, which essentially became one of the first me albums and, while under appreciated at its release, grew into a ridiculous phenomenon that cemented the band's second classic record.  Since then, with many ups and downs, Weezer has evolved into an uneven but much loved musical institution.  "My Name is Jonas" is the band's first-ever opening track, and it is still the bomb.  Got a box full of your toys!  My cousin Jamis (an attorney, mind you) named his first-born son Jonas.  Why the hell not?  So when Jonas was there at the show with us, riding on his father's shoulders, as Cuomo sang into the night sky, it was something of a metaphysical and nostalgic moment that is difficult to describe.  The workers are going home!