Why I Oughtta

Several years ago I went to this Persian restaurant with my family. We ordered all sorts of kabob action and I remember getting one of those long skewers of ground beef that looks like a giant turd, but is so delicious you don't even care.

A piano player played not far from where we were sitting — and we were close to the only people in the restaurant. He had a tip jar, which was filled with $20s and $50s, which he had obviously put in himself, and watched us while we ate. He smiled the whole time — as if he had taken showmanship lessons from Gene Kelly himself and only remembered the tip: “Whatever you do, keep smiling.”

And we left without giving him any money, but that didn't stop him from smiling until we walked out the door.

The whole episode provoked my existential anxiety. Here was this guy playing in a near-empty restaurant in suburban Virginia, smiling til his face went numb and stuffing his own tip jar in the hopes that someone will think it's customary to slip the piano player a twenty.

That's the kind of shit that gets me anxious.

Fliiiiightless biiiiiiiiirds, oh just say the words…………..

Oh, no no no, fliiiiightless biiiiiiirds.

You hit two buttons
And revived my dead iPod.
Oh Christ! I love you.

Caption this photo:

I'll start –

“No, stop. Really, I just do a few squats and then call it a day. What? How hard is it? Well, feel for yourself.”

It really pains me to say it, but the new Mates of State album just isn’t that great.

I had really high hopes based on Team Boo, their previous album. I thought, “How could it get any better than this?” and then I found out that it might not. Team Boo had a giddy tunefulness about it and each song was carried by strong melodies. The opening trifecta of “Ha Ha,” “Whiner’s Bio” and “Fluke” just floored me. And last year’s “All Day” EP contains my favorite MOS song to date, “Along for the Ride.”

The unfortunately-named “Bring It Back” just doesn’t really have any zing to it. The songs are too long, the melodies don’t have any immediacy and it seems like Kori and Jason are really bogged down with heavy life stuff.

I thought this might be an album that I would just have to listen to a few times before it really grew on me. I’ve been listening to it for a while, though, and it’s just not thrilling me. Even the best songs are flawed — “For the Actor” drops the fun disco-vibe halfway through and then kind of slumps into a sugar coma. “Nature and the Wreck,” a drum-less, string-tinged ballad, is indeed very pretty, but it is the one song that could have been longer.

Each Mates of State album has a few clunkers, but this album seems like nothing but. All the elements are there, but there’s just nothing to get excited about.