Brock's Segue, Pt. 1

Probably one of the most rewarding (or agonizing) things for a blog reader is to have a post of enormous proportions dropped upon him/her after a week without anything. Yet, you’ll have to forgive me, for I’m about to pull a Pitchfork.
Plainly said, I’ve led a very busy life lately. A brand new screenwriting contest is on the horizon and I’ve had to put in some personal time cleaning up my script and rewriting it in time for my next submission. This semester of school is also rapidly drawing to a close. All of these things, school, the script, and a gaggle of other tedious tasks call for my attention. And as much as I’d like to blog, I’m so worn out by the time I finish other matters that I simply cannot summon the energy to post something meaningful. Quality over quantity I suppose. Or, if you’d prefer, I’ll never fill up a week with meaningless “I’m still alive” posts when I could be giving you news, links or something worthwhile.

But that’s that, and this is this. Since I last spoke to you I’ve been heavily drawn into Modest Mouse’s new CD, which I’ll get to in my next post, and I’ve also discovered some albums that I had previously neglected.
Starting with those gems, a friend of mine sent me copies of Ted Leo’s Hearts of Oak and The Tyranny of Distance. He’s getting the entire Modest Mouse catalogue in return.
Now, I’ll briefly state that I’m strongly against burning music and trading it in most cases. But these were CD’s that I had always told myself I would get but always let fall by the wayside. When I was offered them for simply copying and mailing my Modest Mouse collection, I couldn’t resist. And I’m glad I didn’t.
Ted Leo is everything you want from rock and more. One of the biggest trends in recent years has been for guitar-slinging garage dwellers to pick up their instruments and crank out shabbily produced rock tunes. The White Stripes made it a statement and the Strokes made it a standard. But none of those guys come close to the rock of Ted Leo and his Pharmacists.
This is one of the times I’m inclined to agree with Pitchfork. Ted Leo has taken everything meaningful about this medium and discarded its meaningless fashion statements into a void. Where other guitarists emulate one another again and again, Leo’s guitar thrashes along harmoniously, a distinct extension of the group’s front man/literati. And his voice…it hoops and hollers.
I’m a little late to the Ted Leo craze, but I’m glad I finally listened to his work. He’s fantastic, and if you haven’t had a chance to check him out yet, I strongly urge you to.