The weather is starting to turn here in Portland. You can feel it in the city. People are starting to spend more time in the park across the street, the temperature is creeping upward, and this week has been ideal to break out this pop-punk gem from last year. Reminding me of the best parts of Sum-41 and early Blink-182, with a fresh youthful perspective, this is easily one of my favorite pop-punk releases in a long time. A worthy addition to not only one of my favorite genres, but my favorite summer albums playlist as well. (And once I saw this t-shirt I knew I had to order it. Could that be anymore me?)

Brian Fallon has long been one of my favorite lyricists, with dozens of classics under his belt, but there’s a line on the new Gaslight Anthem album that I keep running over and over in my head. Midway through “Autumn” he sings, “I wish I could do my life over, I’d be young better now,” and that lyric has haunted me ever since I first heard it. Such a damning description of growing older, looking back at life, and reflecting on the passing of time. At its core, ‘History Books’ feels like an album full of reflection, rejuvenation, and grace. It’s an album I was unsure we’d ever get, but one that sits proudly alongside the band’s storied catalog.

Sitting here by the fire on another Sunday evening, music softly playing, and thinking about a future where I’ll look back on today as when I was younger. I find it easier to start each week with that as my perspective.

Congratulations to @blink182 on another number one album! My two variants have arrived and I’m just as happy with them as I am the album itself. Beyond my wildest dreams of what I could have hoped for when we heard Tom was coming back.

My full review is up on the website and the feedback has been a little overwhelming. Thank you to everyone for the kind words and for sharing with me how much this band has meant to you over the years. I had a good feeling I wasn’t the only one that felt the way I did, that grew up with blink-182 and experienced much of life soundtracked by their music.

With October coming to an end, I realize how little I’ve posted here over the past year. Not for lack of record buying. 😬 I guess I should try and step that up over the next few months and share some of the new additions.

#blink-182 #blink182 #vinyl

I remember turning 20. I was a sophomore in college building the website that would, in many ways, define the next two decades of my life. It was 2003. And while countless albums from those years left a mark on me, it’s often Fall Out Boy’s blue painted ‘Take This To Your Grave’ I think about the most. They blow up. My website blows up. And so begins a two-decade ride of following this band’s career. And it’s over these years that I find myself intertwined with the songs. Each album holds a special place in my memory for where I was when I first heard it, who I was with, and the person I was, even if that wasn’t the person I wanted to be. Those early albums became the soundtrack to my stumbling twenties. And when I turned 30 in 2013 I wrote about the band’s rebirth in a way that looking back was not so subtly partially autobiographical. So, it’s only fitting that I turn 40 a week before the band releases another album. In many ways, the perfect cosmic bow tie of coincidence. In others, the exact music I need to hear as I’m evaluating the person I am now, the life I lead, and the future ahead of me. Ever since I first listened to those early demos, there’s been something about how Patrick thinks about music that aligns almost identically with what my brain craves. The way he crafts melodies, uses syncopation, starts, stops, speeds up, and builds songs has been soul candy since the beginning. And it’s why from the moment I first hit play on their new one a few weeks ago I’ve had a massive smile on my face just thinking about the songs and what they created. It’s an album that wears obvious influence from each era of the band. And it culminates in arguably the band’s most cohesive and ambitious album since ‘Folie.’ I grew up listening to Fall Out Boy. If there’s a band that can define where I came from to where I am today it’s hard not to think of this one. And at the precipice of middle age, of no longer being able even half to pretend I’m not an adult, I find comfort in turning to this old friend once again. A boy on a couch with headphones, typing away about the music that moves him. I am, as I ever was, me. God damn, what a band. God damn, what an album.

Sunday evening, a brief moment before the wheel of the week begins again. It’s here where we lean our shoulder against the hour hand, hoping to prolong a weekend bliss, holding onto the seconds before the inevitable churn of the week ahead swallows us in her seas.

And it’s here that I often find myself reaching for the albums that make me feel motivated, the ones that can pull back the weekend haze and prepare me for the job ahead. Lately, that’s included coming back to Anberlin’s ‘Cities,’ an album that still has the same propulsive drive and polish to sound as fresh and modern as the day it was released. I’ve found myself starting the week with this at the top of my playlist, and my Monday’s not seeming so daunting.

“They lied when they said the good die young…”

#anberlin #vinyl