Tunes Consumed: the Poutine Silver Platter

This album is fantastic.

From the very second it entered my earphones: John screaming “Holler!” met my ears and my world started to break anchor; at its very onset the drums crash, and the guitar reverbing is already at such a high plateau that you have to wonder where it’ll go from there. You soon find that it’s nothing like your typical build-tension-&-chorus formula, and it has a quality that blocks from the mind these drab flourescent walls, and the damp murky day that awaits beyond them. Even the ache of my growing wisdom teeth is (gratefully) lost somewhere in this noise.

The emotional core of the music will lead you inward, sit you down in a corner of its tangled web, and then toss streamers to the air that sparkle and tint whatever it is your mind might be occupied with. If I were somehow to not have all these duties to work, school, family and friends, I imagine myself sprawled out on the floor enraptured in this & in some kind of trance. Days, weeks would pass by, the world wouldn’t stop spinning by any means, but that wouldn’t matter to me.

I remember this feeling, and I think it was sometime in the 90s, when music was a new phenomenon to me. I’m not ashamed to say that at the time it was Marcy Playground and Radiohead that would take me places, and not that I’m trying to draw stylistic parallels here, but it brings me back to that feeling. Those were the days when there wasn’t a thing on my mind that dwelled outside my small hometown; those truly were weightless days.

Confession: It’s not always easy maintain this blog, constantly ebbing and flowing between excitement and boredom, yet always searching for the next great tune to indulge in and then pass on. It’s sort of my duty (and passion) now to keep on the fringe, and sort through the mess of new music. I’d say probably 90% of the time that I feel like a kid at a candy factory, and the rest of the time I feel kind of off-put asking myself all sorts of “whys” and “what-fors”.

Now, I do a lot of baking & cooking (stay with me here), probably more than the average 21 year-old college student, but I only cook when there’s an absolute need, a desire that burbles up from my gut. When I do cook, I like to cook up the most elaborate dishes, and Alley helps quite a bit with that and her worldly cuisine. I can make the meanest German chocolate cake, but I imagine sometimes that if I were to cook always, daily, and without that inner tension, would it just be a job, and would flavour start to fade from everything I taste?

I sometimes get that fear with music, the sweetest of all candies, by merely writing in this space. When I find something like this music here, and it really makes me feel something; it takes me both backwards and forwards, then I really know what I’m in it for. It’s the delight, the pleasure, the feeling, and to write about it, as hard as it is to express sometimes, I’m thankful for that too.

I wonder, who else has to go through this, too?

Holler, Wild Rose! has this CD, you know? How about you check out this sampling of my favourite tracks from Our Little Hymnal, and then go buy it in September if you like it. You can keep up to date over at their home on the web, even.

indulge?
Holler, Wild Rose! - Mercy Beat
Holler, Wild Rose! - Holler, Wild Rose!
Holler, Wild Rose! - Captive Train