June snuck right past me. It probably had a lot to do with selling our house and starting a new job more than anything. Just the headache of both of those activities causes a person to lose a grip on time.

So I’m late to the game on ‘New Music Monday’ once again. I suppose no one other than me gets any enjoyment out of this particular monthly post. My wife has admitted to me that she briefly reads the title and some of the introduction and then blah, blah, blah. My most ardent supporter finds no value in my monthly delve into to musical review foray? Tis true.

Whatever. Onward into the next review despite the loneliness here on the information superhighway (read: dead-end backroad) of the blogosphere.

I seem to stumble across musical nuggets in a variety of places. Mountain bike movie soundtracks have filled more than their fair share of contributions to my musical library. Many a moon ago, I was absorbed by a film which led me to a new band. That band was The Gaslight Anthem from New Jersey. One could describe them as punk meets garage meets roots meets folk meets Bruce Springsteen music. As I mentioned above, they are from New Jersey so there is a very clear element of inspiration from Springsteen in their tunes.


The Gaslight Anthem was just one of many of my favorite groups releasing music. On June 15, the band released their latest studio album, ‘American Slang.’ This record isn’t a stretch in regard to sound. It’s vintage Springsteen a la nostalgia, uhh, I mean The Gaslight Anthem. I’m not a fan of Springsteen but the punkish, rootsy nature of The Gaslight Anthem is pretty compelling. Listen to any one of their releases and you will be amazed to know these dudes are in their 20’s. Their sound, talent, songwriting, and passion suggest that they are old souls.

Get it here.

‘American Slang’ is an extension of American nostalgia. While listening, the album makes you feel like you should be bellied up to the bar at and old roadside 1960’s diner. That’s not to say they have a 60’s sound. It’s Americana and the songs pay tribute to American heritage and small town values. It reminds us that there is a little bit of small town, life’s struggles and hardships, and rewarding successes in all of us. This is what I call driving music. Not driving like loud and obnoxious, but get in your car and road trip across America music. It makes you feel like you should stop and absorb the sights and sounds along the way.

Let’s talk songs off the album:

American Slang – The title track of the record kicks off the album in fifth gear. It sets the stage for a more rocking album than the last. The song is a simple beat and guitar riffs that are naked in production. The song is the metaphor for our way of life in a simpler time. It’s one part American dream (the hope) and one part American slang (the reality).

The Diamond Church Street Choir – A little jazzy guitar and a shuffling beat take you on a journey back in time in the form of the comforting memory of a church choir. It’s a vivid song filled with imagery of the past with a nod to something we can all relate to – church.

We Did it When We Were Young – An austere song which definitely reconnects this album to previous albums. It has that passion and depth that The Gaslight Anthem is known for. The echoing singing is a perfect effect to the earnestness of the message of leaving the past failed relationship behind.

‘American Slang’ isn’t forged in heartbreaking emotion and punk chords like the previous album, ‘The 59 Sound.’ That record was epic. Unfortunately, that makes you want more originality out of this record. The bar has been raised for The Gaslight Anthem. But make no mistake, lyrically and musically ‘American Slang’ is a great album that reinforces the band’s talent and storytelling. It’s much better than most of the cookie cutter poop you can hear on the radio. And while certain songs will make it on rock radio, this is American punk rock music found on a jukebox in your favorite pub in the run-down part of town. This is great music. The Gaslight Anthem is soulful punk paying homage to American nostalgia in the form of old flames, barren highways, hot rods, and memories..

A great song can easily be judged by how influential it is when you connect with it the first time your hear it and how it never grows old no matter how many million times you listen to it. It’s always relevant to you.

Last Tuesday was a big day musically for me as three of my favorite artists released records. And while this isn’t ‘New Music Monday,’ I can’t help but talk a little bit about a song on one of the albums that made me breakdown a little and think about where I’m at in my life. In a gross understatement that only my wife will get, this has been a ‘busy’ month.

So this is about a song. Listening to it has restored the value and energy I have in my faith and my perseverance as a person. Everything I do has purpose and my effort and belief will be reward despite the disruptions along the way. You see, new employment opportunities, selling the house that both of my children have always known as home, not having a new residence for a destination, and just growing up and trying to be more responsible has really wore me down lately.

Before I go any further, those of you readers who receive email updates, I strongly recommend going to the actual ourowncountry.blogspot.com to get the audible aid in the form of music. And if I can off one more piece of advice…..turn it up LOUD.

I’ve literally listened to this song a hundred times. Each time the result is tears of joy. This is what I’d define as the reason for music. That is; music is what emotions sounds like. If you’ve been following the chronicles of my family and our never-ending life-changing decisions, you know that we once again at a crossroads. And while I have support in every corner of my life, I find that at the end of the day, the accountability for success falls squarely on my shoulders. Lately, I’ve worried greatly about letting everyone down in my house. I look at Son #1 and wonder how can mix his life up like this.


While occasionally you get to make decisions where there are clear successes and failures, typically, our life-changing decision don’t carry the simplicity of these results. They take years to truly evaluate their ramifications. But despite all of the ambiguity in these decisions, I’ve always tried to do my best to evaluate the best answers to our complex problems. And for the first time in my life, I am scared that I risked too much.

Enter Authority Zero and “Get it Right.” Succinctly, it captures what I’m feeling in sound. Twisted thoughts, contrived truths, and misled observations. Here I sit; trying to make the best decisions I can and worry about getting it right. I keep poking my head into harm’s way. I’m scared as hell that I’m going to screw this up and my family will resent the torture I’ll be putting them through. Just the other night after work, I sat with Son #1 on my lap and asked him if he trusted that I would do what is best for him and his brother. I started to break down as I muttered out the question. I couldn’t breathe and I could feel my anxiety begin to creep in to my consciousness. As I sputtered out the words in between tears, Son #1 leaned in closer to me, smiled that big cheesy smile, and said yes, he trusts me.

To cap off the emotion which is gushing like a BP oil spill in the Gulf, this song is like and old friend who knows just what to say, sometimes what not to say, and when and where to say or not to say it. “Get it Right” put a definition on how I’m feeling and how I carry along. Of course my description of the song and my emotions are somewhat irrelevant tot the reader. As with emotion, music is also extremely personal and wildly introspective. But how great is it to have something so esoteric, yet so poignant that connects with you and makes you feel a little more comfortable with the discomfort of life?


Right now, I’m just hoping someday I’ll get it right.

Over the course of the last few weeks, I feel like I've had very little time to decompress. And for the most part that is true. The rain has kept me from riding, work and transitioning to a new position has filled the tank to a maximum level of stress, and the future state of my family’s residence have kept me in a sullen state of confusion and left me with no time to formulate any synthesized thought about the aforementioned topics.

So I’ve been hoping at least one thing would settle in my reality so that a slight bit of normalcy, or whatever my altered state of reality defines as normalcy, would return and I can substantiate something of some interest to scribble in the electronic byte-like walls of this blog.

You ask and you shall receive. Well, maybe it’s not so cut and dry. But what I’ve found over the most formative years of my life is that I don’t like making single life making decisions. They seem meaningless and trivial. I like having everything completely in disarray and fucked up so that I can ultimately stress out about the manic convergence of life changing decisions on top of me at that moment. I perform best when everything is on the line. Never have I been risk averse.

So now my family joins me on the quest to discover where my professional career will take me. Philosophical questions like “What do I want to be when I grow up?” they are now entertaining. At work I have come to the realization that I am no longer challenged intellectually so I am shaking every tree to see what fruit of opportunity drop. But we don’t stop there. Son #1 is rapidly growing up and just graduated pre-school. Now this isn’t a miracle so to speak. But given the fact that his father was kicked out of his pre-school graduation, it concerns that father that no good can come of this. Needless to say, he graduated but not without drama. That is an entry in and of itself.

With his graduation, we launch in to the next educational phase of his existence. The public school system. We are in the precarious position of deciding where we want him to go to school. The neighborhood we live in sucks balls. So we decided a few months ago that we would sell this house and move into a better school district where we felt that Son #1 had a chance to be taught by real teachers who give a shit. We decided to sell our current home out right and risk living out of a box until we found our next residence. That would give me the greatest financial leverage to negotiate rather than navigate the murky uncharted waters of contingencies.

Those are the two marquee situations that we are currently evaluating. But as I said, I have a penchant for making all of my life changing decision all at the same time.


In my current professional role, my technical aptitude has been buried and I was continually being passed over for new opportunities. In the recent past, there has been the old cliché of when it rains it pours. I am in the fortunately unfortunate position of having multiple interviews for new intellectually challenging positions and will be able to choose my course. In the next week, I will begin my new challenge as a product manager for the work horse and best seller of our product offerings. It has the most threats in the market and is the most dynamic in the form of innovation. A great challenge.


As my wife once told me, the house situation and the work situation were interdependent and when one settled the other was soon to follow. Needless to say, one week after I committed to my new position, we had a second showing of our house to a couple that made as a competitive offer that was within our range of acceptability in a degraded market. To formally enter a contract to sell your home, you need a successful inspection. We were very fortunate to find only two minor things needing to be addressed. With completion of those, the rest is up to the buyers to get there financing in order with a visit from the appraiser. This still can provide a hitch in the process but we are hoping for the best.

Now we are on the clock to find a new home in the area of our choice, with the configuration we desire, and the future of memories we're going to create. We've been out three times now to look and are pretty excited to get the process going. This will be the third house we have bought in the last seven years. With any luck, we can stay in it for awhile. This decision is based on the greater good of the family and our future so I’m sure it will be perfect.




While it is stressful to do everything at once, sell a house, buy a house, change jobs, and protect your family from adversity, I welcome the adverse challenge. My life has always been like a snow globe. When the snow settles, I shake the shit out of it again.

Music is like a drug to me. One could argue that there’s some sort of chemical addiction that possesses and compels me to consume music in any form. My days of playing it are behind me, but my appreciation for its multiple forms are still very alive. Combine that with my penchant for listening to music at any stage of the day, and I’m a junkie. Consumption, entertainment, analysis, you name it, I’m hooked.

So it’s only appropriate that on ‘New Music Monday’ (a day late) that I review a record that I recently stumbled on to which is the aural listening equivalent to heroin. The damn thing is just so fun to listen to and is appropriately named considering my uncontrollable and unmediated need for musical fixes.

The Chicago based punk trio appropriately named Alkaline Trio recently released their latest studio album, “This Addiction.” And as I mentioned above, I’m hooked like a crackhead junkie. The album is infectious from beginning to end and the songs are all entertaining. The topics of the songs are nothing new or original. Relationships and breakups. But hey, that’s what makes this record universal. It’s not like they’re doing innovative but it’s catchy, fun to listen to, and not ‘heavy’ or weighted down by message or music.


Alkaline Trio has been around for sometime but for one reason or another, I’ve never been really into them. “This Addiction” is their seventh studio album in the last 12 years. That, my friends, is longevity. After hearing the first single, I thought to myself, “Self, these dudes play music you like.” So after picking up “This Addiction,” I picked up three of their older releases. Each one is great in its own right. But what makes “This Addiction” better is the fact that the band released this on their own label allowing for a slight bit more creative freedom. The result? Success and a very entertaining record in any circumstance.

“This Addiction” contains some great songs; starting with the title track linking a relationship to the metaphor of a heroin addiction. While that sounds a little dark to some of you ‘purer’ readers, consider the analogy. In all honesty, how many of us are ‘addicted’ to the significant other in our lives? Whether functional or dysfunctional, we all feed of the chemical dependency of love (or drama) in our relationships. The album is short with only 11 songs all about three minutes long. So one would think there is not much to pick from. On the contrary, picking three songs off of the album was somewhat challenging as I enjoyed them all.

Dead on the Floor – I love the bass line in this song. It’s all over the place and makes the song even more musically interesting to listen to. But from a concept, a song about a relationship failure isn’t a new topic. But as humans, we all look for someone suffering worse than us. The classic misery loves company mantra. In an ironically factual lyric about miscommunication in relationships, “When you asked me if I’d stay forever. Guess you meant just for the week.”

Eating me Alive – While only being a trio, this song has keys and some crazy below-the-radar doo-wop voices added during recording. Musically, the song is very simple and formulaic in its layout. But it’s totally the Cure meets the Talking Heads which makes it great. And this just in, another song about a failed relationship.

Piss and Vinegar – The title of this song makes it an instant classic.



As a veteran of the Vans Warped Tour, you can’t go wrong with any album from Alkaline Trio. All are great. I personally like “This Addiction” and “Agony & Irony” the best. They aren’t a super-polished pop band easy on the ears. There’s an appreciated edginess to the lead singer’s voice and the music. Furthermore, listening to it infects you with the punk edginess. As a matter of fact, we were listening to the album while making dinner the other evening when Son #1 turned to me nonchalantly and mused, “This song makes me want to jump off of the couch.” He then continues on in a more subtle whisper, “Too bad my mom is here.” Do you need another reason to listen? This isn’t politically charged or angry anti-authority punk. This is sunny-summer-where’s-my-skateboard-because-I-want-to-shred-the-local-shopping-mall-parking-lot-because-my-girlfriend-dumped-me music. Or, it’s I-want-to-jump-off-the-couch-because-it-seems-like-the-right-thing-to-do music.