that's right

shut up, jerks, I totally like BANG

Dear Tom and Ryan,

Quit Googling yourselves.

Love,
Meebs

(all around the room)

It is a damp day here; the fog is hanging low over melting snowbanks and the ground where it shows through is dead-grass tan. Which is perfect weather for listening to an album - EP? What does seven songs count as these days? - full of weird, mythical, seems-to-be-about-breakups songs. I'm not sure how else to describe Bang, Empires' newest release.

Empires as a band do it the newfangled, Radiohead-type way. In December, they posted the title track as a free download. In January, “Damn Things Over” and “I Know You Know” were posted - $2. In February, “Strangers” and “Intruder” – pay what you want, with a minimum of $2. Today, two versions of the album were released, made up of the previously released singles and two new tracks, “Voodooized” and “Hello Lover”. There’s a hard-copy pre-order option as well as the digital download. The deluxe edition gets you another b-side, “Animal”, an eight-minute video and a bunch of guitarist Tom Conrad’s photography.

(Basically, for all of this, I have spent $27. A $2 single, a $5 single, the $7 + $3 shipping pre-order, and then another $10 for the deluxe digital download when I realized I’d been a dumbass and bought the regular version instead of the deluxe. It’s cool, though, $27 is actually a drop in the bucket considering how much they’ve gotten from me in the last two years.)

One of the things I’d liked so much about Howl, their 2008 release, was that each song had a separate and distinct sound. “All Night Long” didn’t sound like “Midnight Land” didn’t sound like “Believe!”. When the Howl singles dropped, I missed that separate sound. But the actual album listened to in order breaks up the solid guitar layer. “Voodooized” doesn’t smash you like “Bang”, which opens on a screaming “I’m sick of banging with your skeleton / you were gorgeous ‘til you gave out all your skin” and doesn’t stop screaming. Instead, “Voodooized” is a notch lower, a little slower, and then in the middle there’s this jangly guitar bit that made me go “Oh, hey, I have heard this live, because this is the part where the tempo is not made for dancing!”. (This is driving me nuts because I can’t find video proof on YouTube that they’ve played it. I could possibly be mistaking it for something else. ETA: Figured it out. Same thing happens in "Darko". AHA.) It moves into “Damn Things Over”, which needs an apostrophe, but we’ll ignore that. What it does have is a good audience participation part, because rest assured, Sean will make you clap before the “I keep rolling down through the world to find you / asking all the fakes and the awfully confused” verse, and lyrics that make me wonder if it’s a Orpheus and Eurydice spinoff the way that “Midnight Land” is Inferno. The speed picks up from the opening track, another step towards the smack in the face that “Bang” will be, having been moved to the third track.

This one has been around, but the lyrics were different and there was a tambourine (from the Snakes & Suits acoustic tour with The Academy Is…) and the evolution of it has been interesting. It’s not often I see a band enough to hear a song change like that. It started life as the oddly titled “Blue Crush” and I remember talking to Sean after a show in DeKalb once and him telling me it wasn’t going to stay “Blue Crush”, that he had a new awesome title for it. Then it got called “Bang” and I went “…really?”. The shouting about banging up his heart to get you is fairly new, at least new in Empires-land (where “Intruder” has been on tape since at least the end of 2008); it wasn’t like that until the single came out.

“Hello Lover” opens with this – “Hello. I love you. I’m leaving.” – and way to break someone’s heart, Sean Van Vleet. This is a definite slowdown from “Bang”, but it turns into something with just as much sound. Like how “My Poor Lover” live used to start out quiet and turn into noise. In fact, I listened to “My Poor Lover” just now to sort of compare/contrast it against “Hello Lover”, and it hit me what I’m missing in Bang - the piano. Why lose the keys? It’s like where the keys would be is instead a lot of “ooh-oohs” and such.

In December of ’08, I saw Empires in Omaha, and their SUV needed a jumpstart. In exchange for providing this, I was allowed to listen to “Intruder” and one other song that I can’t place – it might have been “Bang”, it might not. I described them to someone the next day as “something heavy-sounding, and something catchy about not being allowed in someone's home or something like that?”, and for more than a year, “Intruder” stuck with me. For weeks after Omaha I was annoyed by the sound of the chorus in my head because I didn’t really remember hardly any of the lyrics, and it was probably six months before it made it onto the set list.

Truth: It might be my favorite out of all twenty-odd official and semi-official songs that have been released altogether. I don’t know enough musical terms to explain exactly what particular moments work to make this song just - work for me, but it does. It’s my “Anywhere” for this release. The composition, the way the different pieces of it fit together.

One of my dad’s major complaints about the singles as they stood before today was that there was too much sameness. Yeah, “Strangers” and “I Know You Know” slowed it down a little, but not distinctly enough to break up the complete wall of sound that “Bang”, “Damn Things Over” and “Intruder” create. The two songs added to this final release bring that moment you can catch your breath a little more – three songs if you count “Animal”. In fact, I really like “Animal” – it reminds me more of the early b-sides we got with their homemade CDs at the first few shows, but with more polish. A little more grown up. But back to getting some space – imagine, if you will, Bang as being in the middle of a dim room packed with people all dancing until the sweat drips from them, singing along until their throats are hoarse – you can see how a moment to catch your breath is a welcome pause.

(PS: Try listening to “Intruder”, then “Under the Bright Lights”, and then “I Know You Know” – it works amazingly well.)

Roasted Cauliflower Soup & Fennel-Orange Salad

In no way do I fancy myself a food blogger, or even a decent cook, but these both turned out good, so I thought I would share.

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to be kinder to my body, and since my body is all "wtf dairy?" lately, when I have some, that means eating more vegan meals. Not to mention, I know that I feel better physically when the majority of my diet is fresh fruits/vegetables, and I need to get back to that.



Roasted Cauliflower Soup

* 1 small head cauliflower, chopped in medium-sized chunks
* 3 cloves garlic (I had 5 tiny ones from the inside of the bulb)
* 1/2 onion, cut into large pieces
* 1/2 bulb fennel, cut into large pieces
* 1 wedge lemon
* 2 tsp. olive oil
* 2 tsp. sesame oil

Toss above with olive/sesame oil mixture and squeeze the lemon over, then roast in 400 degree oven (with the wedge of the lemon) until edges are browning.

* 1/4 c. white wine
* 1 large bay leaf (or 2 small)
* 8 c. water
* bouillon cube, your choice flavor (I used vegetable)
* small pinch saffron threads

Add to soup pot with 1/4 c. white wine and bay leaf, and heat on medium until wine has almost all sizzled away. Add eight cups water, saffron and bouillon cube. Bring to boil uncovered, making sure the cube is dissolved. Reduce heat to simmer and taste your broth. Add salt if needed (mine needed it, and a few cracks of pepper). Simmer, covered, for 30 minutes.

At about 10 minutes remaining, stir in -

* 1/4 tsp. dried tarragon
* 1/4 tsp. dried rosemary
* 1/4 tsp. dried herbes de provence
* 1/2 tsp. dried parsley

Return to simmer for the remaining time.

Remove bay leaves and the lemon wedge, and puree with immersion blender. Alternately, blend in small batches in a blender or food processor. Taste again and add more salt/pepper if it needs it (mine did). I turned the heat up to medium-low here for a few minutes to get it hot again before I had some.

Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds to serve.

Note: I added 2 tbs. soy creamer while I pureed, but that could be an optional thing. Also, I'm a loser who missed one of the bay leaves, so it got pureed in. Still good!


Fennel-Orange Salad

* 1/2 bulb fennel, sliced as thin as you can
* small amount of thinly sliced white onion - it was maybe a tablespoon's worth, if that
* 1 orange, sectioned
* 2 tsp. sesame oil
* 1 tbs. orange juice (could squeeze it out of what's left of the orange)
* pinch salt

I put all the ingredients in a Tupperware container and shook it to mix them. I also let it rest in the fridge overnight.

To serve, I sprinkled toasted sesame seeds and a little black pepper.

Note: If you don't want to mess with sectioning an orange, 1/2 a cup of canned/drained mandarin oranges would probably work well.

Nuts & Seeds Egg Salad

I'm going to be eating vegan again after New Year's, and I had eggs in the fridge to use up this week. So this is my good-bye to eggs, I guess. I have an aversion to mayonnaise about 99% of the time, so this is mayo-free. I liked it - just remember that it's more of a salad than a sandwich spread!

Nuts & Seeds Egg Salad

- 5 eggs, hard-boiled and peeled

- 2 slices of lemon, one squeezed (zest too, if you like it) - hang on to the other
- 1/4 tsp. balsamic vinegar
- 2 tsp. white wine vinegar
- 1 tbs. olive oil
- 1/2 tsp. mustard (or more or less)

- 1 tbs. sunflower kernels
- 1 1/2 tsp. sesame seeds
- 1/2 tsp. poppy seeds

- 1 tsp. dried parsley
- pinch tarragon
- generous sprinkle paprika
- salt, pepper & red pepper flakes, to taste

- any other veggie add-ins you desire (I used a heaping tablespoon of finely chopped onions and half an avocado, diced to the same size as my egg pieces)

I hard-boil eggs by placing them in a pan of cold water that just covers them up, putting a lid on it, and bringing it to a boil. Once the water reaches a boil, turn off the burner and leave it there for fifteen minutes. Then run cold water over the eggs or place in an ice water bath until they've cooled.

Chop eggs how you like. I'm not a big yolk fan, so I only used one and a half of the yolks. Yeah, for five eggs.

Whisk together mustard, vinegar, olive oil, and lemon juice from one of the slices. Squish yolks into the dressing if you want (I did).

Dump seasonings/nuts over eggs/veggies, then pour over dressing. Fold to combine. It might not seem like you have enough of the dressing, but here's where you squeeze over the other lemon wedge.

Taste to see if it needs more salt (or even if you want more lemon).

I ate some immediately with Wasa Crispbread, but I'm guessing the flavors would intensify with a little time spent in the fridge.

(fast to the midnight land)

The crowd watching Empires at Summerfest, 06/26/2009.

(it's gonna redefine you)

Yesterday afternoon I got to see a band that I've been a fan of for nearly a decade (close enough!) perform the entirety of one of my top five albums of all time. I almost didn't go, but I also knew that I would be sad in my soul if I played the loser card and stayed home.

The me of eight years ago, when I was really into The Posies, would have flipped at being directly in front of Ken Stringfellow. The me of eight years ago would have freaked out when he jumped off the stage and then climbed over the barrier next to me, to lead a handful of us like the Pied Piper over to where he and Jon Auer sold their merch, kneeling on the concrete. The me of eight years ago would barely have been able to look at them long enough to buy the vinyl of Nice Cheekbones and a Ph.D., much less say that I was glad I'd finally gotten to see them. Because the me of eight years ago would never have driven to Chicago to see a show alone, at all. Period.

Strangely enough, I never would have realized they were playing Taste of Randolph if Empires hadn't posted about performing at an after-event, because then I went "What is this Taste of Randolph thing?" and looked it up.

That was only on Tuesday. Sometimes the best things are the ones you find out about at the last minute.