I am proud to present you, fair readers, with two very distinct reviews of our last album. First off, here’s Scott Irvine’s take from AbsolutePunk.net. This ranks as maybe the most pretentious review I’ve ever read… and I’m proud I had a hand in inspiring it. 

What passes? What mutters? What dies? What ascends? Who is in my head and what do they intend to do? Why, with newly born gusts of cathartically wayward winds stuck in seasonal transitory, am I so warm and when did it become such a timely process to articulate these questions that’ve been burning through my skull all these minutes? These laws of motion do not pertain to the psyche yet I feel so inanimately strung over century old bearings that are only just now making sense. My mind is a canvas for errant deconstruction, unbidden reconstruction, and serene destruction. Compromising with the Push and the Pull of hot sex, firefights, steamy shower bathing, or salsa dancing begets the appropriate response. But somehow this new force is oddly uncompromisable; innately tormented commentary through the subtle discordance and rupture of an underwater panorama. It dilutes the room around me as if the prospect of death through unrivaled beauty could bend space and time; graceful and uninterruptedly. Salvation rears and chokes this Push/Pull until the air supply between myself and these emotions, this religious experience, leaves me quaking to the realness of Foxhole. Lonely deaths and miraculous resurgences of hope manifest themselves in every instrumental nuance; tugging and straining the idea that no human voice is heard here, yet at the same time making it clear that trips to the moon can, in fact, be unmanned (per se). Trumpets cry and squirm throughout this Push/Pull, but it’s their fractured tenor that validates their purpose in being a reminder that not all is perfectly composed when hopelessly sinking in a chime-y mist of harmony. Peaks are formed and crescendos glaze them with twinkly, often dwelling, melodies; some of the most jarring song arrangements I’ve yet to hear rolling off the tongue as if this is all just second-nature and no one is really getting hurt in the process. It reads like a novella yet matter-of-factly sticks to a shade reserved for an epic. It blends contemporary instrumental reconsiderations with the grandeur and confidence of old sea tales that dustily made appearances in pubs over a century ago. Crashing waves and choppy regrets filter through a glorious dissonance between the earnestness of the instrumentation and the unabashed static often made the focal point of the song by the whim of brilliant production. What passes? What mutters? What dies? What ascends? Questions so general are all too specific in the context of the Push/Pull and what may remain unanswered is what gives it a beautiful mystery and flighty circumstance. 

Next up, we have a review which was written in Portugese, and I’ve translated it for you. Translated being a relative term, as it’s still hard to make heads or tails of. Anyone with any idea of what this person is saying, please explain.

This band almost finished. Pra would not go to make lack me, they made a generic post-rock to a large extent and nor guaranteed the complete hearing of the record. There in 2006 they had come back with new members, new house in the Burnt Toast Vinyl and one disquinho of little more than half hour that if did not primava for the originalidade had three factors that they made of perfect it: the baterista Jason Torrence, the use of form fan of heavy rock deliciosoa the clear, clear, limpid production and I know more how many adjective similars there.The complicated one to write on music, in special on instrument, is that I can be here stepping on in the accelerator and to deliver metaphors, poetical lines and nor to little would arrive close to the real sensation that it will cause in you, I can suggest or only induce. E I do not want to make this with this record, therefore it presents common elements to the sort that the less intent listener of bands as Explosions in The Sky and Mogwai goes to perceive. I go to abide itself by three itens that I spoke there in top:The baterista Torrence possesss one led rítimica only one, remembers the strokes of the Dave Lombardo (it is, of the Slayer) that you can listen in any place and identify. The fan of heavy rock does not act in first plan in the majority of the times, always aparando the falls of the songs (perhaps there an explanation for the heading of the record) and creating new lines that arrest the listener, making the record to fly in the phones. She creates a good sensation, pra gives will to listen to another time these faces of the Kentucky alone know if at that moment he was one ground of trumpete or the trimmed turn of the battery that called me the attention. A record that until appeared in some publications specialized in top 2006 but that as all the great majority of this type, does not arrive here.  

 Fun stuff. 

FOXHOLE: Circa 2003 

FOXHOLE: Circa 2007

I’ll be surprised if anyone’s reading my blog anymore, simply because I haven’t updated it in weeks. Sorry about that… I’m sure you’ve found something better to read in the meantime. In case of full-on Justin withdrawal, I suggest you check out some of the links on the right… lots of good stuff there.

Anyway, part of the problem has been a continually surging stress level. My right-hand at Spencer’s is being amputated soon, and I’m really anxious about finding a replacement—not a prosthesis, but a fulling-working part with good firm digits and quick reflexes. Added to that was Foxhole tour, which took us in a circle from Bowling Green to Bushnell, Ill., then to Mt. Pleasant, Mich., Cincinnati and Louisville.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=nRKxs1UiHeM]Playing music often turns out to be a real zero-sum proposition… we make some money on sales and shows, but our van guzzles gas and leaves us breaking even, at best. Meanwhile we spend hours driving from one city to the next, usually to find: a crowd of 30-80 people, many of them uninterested in the actual music; a venue that’s talked up what a great show it’ll be, only to come at the end of the night with much less money than they led us to believe; a promoter who said “I love your music!” who doesn’t take the simple steps to make sure things run smoothly, sound levels are right, and that people will actually show up.

It’s really, really frustrating, actually… I get myself pumped up for these outings, and they always sort of disappoint. I imagine a culture where artists are appreciated and are compensated properly… I’m not asking for punk-rock welfare here, just an understanding that creating and performing music takes a lot of hard work and that it’s worth more than $3 and a “good show, man” at the end of the night.

Granted, it’s a free market, and there are a few bands who can afford to pay for their meals, gas, even some entertainment with the earnings from their shows, and still have some money left over. But the market is way oversaturated and, on our end, we’re way too busy to pull some major marketing coup. It’s tough, too, for me to stay enthusiastic and to find the time to write and rehearse when all my bandmates are in Nashville; they, meanwhile, are plenty busy and aren’t as proactively minded as me, and so we tread water more often than not.

It wasn’t like this before, and I’m having a hard time adjusting. My strange day/night schedule at the newspaper was the first blow, marriage was the second and Lewis is a big one at No. 3. I’ve such fond memories of practicing and just jamming around with my bandmates on a semi-daily basis… my mind likes to forget that I was constantly down about not having a true love! Grass is always greener when you don’t have to cut it.