Songs of the Year.

Five songs that have gotten me through a tough time (2013).

1. Pirate Blues // As Cities Burn

“Before you, your mom and your dad

Used to smoke in the Texas sun

They were young once too…”

Life has a reciprocal nature. We've heard phrases like: “Do unto others as you would have done to you”, “what goes around comes around” and “He’ll get what's coming…”. This song beautifully captures the lead singers foresight of the circular track of life. For me this year has been much like this song. It’s caused me to look back on not only my life, but the lives before me and the lives that will follow in my footsteps. I even have my "future" cryogenically frozen. It was in this perspective that I’ve found myself doubting how life will turn out. Like the deep beat of this song, my heart pounds and my thoughts race, but I've found peace. This peace has no defining features besides that it is not of my own. Who really knows what shall happen to them by the end of the night? But because time has a mind of it’s own maybe that enough reason for me not to fret.

“Oh, I wanna find out I'm wrong

And every road leads us home…”

2. Dirty Paws // Monsters of Men

Finding out you’re not alone is a bizarre experience. When this song first “clicked” for me this year I was in a friends car. We were cruising on the interstate like two single dudes do. It was nighttime. Our lectures were procured from our interactions with the alien species called "woman" and where we felt like we should be. We let the smoke collect and the conversation smolder as his iPod blared catchy tunes. Once Dirty Paws by Monsters of Men came on we fell silent. The driver did some air-drumming while I sat still feeling my way through the piece of music. The story of the song isn't mind blowing, for if you've ever listened to Murder By Death you know how stories are meant to be sung, but it was gorgeous. There’s something about the chorus gang vocals though. It feels victorious, it feels comforting, inviting and most of all as if you belong. When I found out I wasn't alone through the fight that I am currently experiencing, it felt just like this sounds. 

3. Car // Built To Spill

“I need a car, you need a guide, who needs a map?

If I don't die or worse, I'm gonna need a nap

At best I'll be asleep when you get back…”

I’ve always been a huge Built To Spill fan, but like great movies or books some albums don’t really sink in until later. I’ve always loved this song, but it’s now been a song of comfort because I feel like it understands me. If you ask my friends or even ex-girlfriends (I'd prefer you not too), you’ll find out that I often have “itchy feet”. I have a hard time staying in one place for too long, which has both rewarded and punished me. This year I’ve felt the “itchy feet” syndrome more than ever. I’ve looked into moving across country, across the sea and also just down the road a few blocks. After the diagnosis I became stuck mentally, emotionally, and literally. I couldn't drive and had to use a walker or cane to get around. Once my pelvis healed and the doctors said it was okay for me to drive I wasted no time and gingerly put the pedal to the metal. The first song I listened to was Car. I sang along with the windows down and felt movement. Whenever I’ve need movement I play this song.

4. Memories From The End Pt. 1 // Right Away, Great Captain.

“...but i

i want it all

oh i want it all

and i won't stop if i fall

cause i want it all…”

“You’re being so positive Brady!”

I've heard that a lot.

I've faked that complement a lot as well.

Some days you can barely see it on my sleeve and others I’m lying right through my teeth. I’m surprised that it hasn't bitten but only a few people. On my hardest day I try and focus on what keeps me going, what makes me happy and that I'm still here. I’m still here, my friends are still here, so why should my positivism go anywhere? Well somedays I wander off, down a dark and vacuous alleyway. It is in those dark corners where I find the foundation of my strength, hope. When death lingers not only your doorstep but also has hitched a ride instead of your body, perspectives seem to change. I remember when I was in the hospital for the first time and my sister Kelly came to visit me. She walked into the halogen lit room, stood three feet from the doorway and began to cry. When I looked upon her face I felt a hot fury well up inside of me. She was in pain, perhaps a far greater one than me and I knew that I had to smile and tell her that I loved her. Ever since then I’ve made it my goal to show those who love me that I am strong and that my strength will not fade. On those days of complete sadness I remind myself that I’ve made it this far, I have a beautiful future and I won’t stop until I fall. 

5. Jesus // Page France

“...And Jesus will dance while we drink his wine

With soldiers and thieves and a sword in his side

And we will be joy and we will be right…”

At the end of the day I am just a boy. Out of the billions of people in this world I am surrounded by a few, but those few remind me daily that we are created in Gods image. It is those few people that show me that God has a face like our and cares about the one boy who suffers through the hardest time of his life. Jesus by Page France is my song when I need to be uplifted. It’s the song that I need to be reminded that God loves those who are stuck in the dirt. I believe that one day I will be in heaven. I hope it’s not anytime soon, but if it is I know that I will be drinking from the Lords cup and it will be so delicious. I’ll be so intoxicated in heaven that I will sing a song for Jesus, he’ll dance, clap his hands and stomp his feet.

Honorable Mentions:

1. I'll Talk To You Tomorrow // Calibretto 13
2. Dog Days Are Over // Folerence + The Machine
3. Harrison Ford // Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
4. Scenic World // Beirut
5. Fade Into You // Mazzy Star





My name is Brady Effler and I am currently unemployed. That is the truth, but it is also not because I don't want to work, I do. I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma at the end of July 2013, and now I'm fighting the good fight. I am currently going through chemo treatments. From the advisement and orders of my doctor, I am not supposed to be working. Currently I am in the waiting process to receive social security, but that is taking it's time. If you liked what you read, please feel free to donate. I am currently trying to pay off my student loans and other bills (pills, hospital visits, etc...). I'm not going to lie to you, some the donation money will go towards gasoline, or perhaps even a cup of coffee. Anything you give is awesome. Feel free to shoot me an email too if you'd like. I can also make you a gnarly playlist.
Thanks again for reading. I'm not begging, or trying to pull the wool over anyone, just being honest.
- Brady

A Tribute.

And I will take you and leave you alone
Watching spirals of white softly flow
Over your eyelids and all you did
Will wait until the point when you let go

Circling All Around The Sun.

Back in March  I was asked by my good friend Dave to write a piece on how I found/discovered/first heard of Neutral Milk Hotel for a blog he was starting up. Dave asked me though to tell me the story of when Jeff Mangum, the lead singer/lyricist first "spoke to me". This may sound like a supremely gross hipster thing to say, because it is, but I got excited because I had the story!  Obviously I didn't dare hesitate and began to write as soon as we parted ways in the coffee shop, literally, I sat down 15 feet away from him and began to type. If you aren't familiar with the band, they started out around 1989 and broke up after 1999. I'd risk sounding like a retarded audiophile if I tried to describe how they sounded or even tried to explain their lyrics. But they are magical.

"And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see ..."

As the months have pasted I have become keenly aware of what has been important to my history. I've exhumed, from both paper and digital earth, journals and diary's from high school, Tumblr blogs from sophomore year of college, photos, letters and even the dreaded Myspace notes. These literary quarry's have inspired and become series such as the Keeping Track of History, You Already Know How I Feel: 5 Songs We Use Not To Talk. But tonight something incredibly important is happening, I am going to see Neutral Milk Hotel, live with my older sister and I can already feel the tears welling up in me. 

So pretty, so pretty, so pretty, so pretty
Please, please don't leave me here

Since the diagnosis, it's been hard for me to mentally maintain my natural relationships. I often feel like a touchable leper, or an exhausted tree house that the kids used to rough house in. Why? I can't explain it, but when you get cancer you might be able to relate. I love my family with my whole heart, and they know that but it's also been hard with them as well, but the one person that I have missed the most during this process as been my older sister Emily. Without Emily, none of my musical life would have happened. And I'm more thankful now for her husband because his love for music is toxic. So what you'll find below is some music by Neutral Milk Hotel and the story how Jeff first spoke to me.

So with out further hesitation here is my Jeff Mangum story.

 

I have no fairy tale or a series of isotopic events that magically linked me to Jeff. Nor was there a chemical fire or an act of truancy, evading some mystical life lesson, Jeff simply just happened. You could have said that years back, because of sibling love and relation, I met Jeff at a party with my older sister.

Emily was my beacon of insight, the poster of nonconformity, she was the prima donna during the most important years of my life, the years when one actually begins to think about what is being poured into his soul via rhythm and tone. But what did I listen to? 

Tragedy.

Pure, unadulterated tragedy. I had recently purchased Britney Spears second studio album, Oops!... I Did It Again and also in my collection, sitting upon my night stand like a turd left by an oversized rodent, was Creed’s “Human Clay” on tape. Granted I did have some Metallica albums and also Live's Throwing Copper, but quiet simply, I was tunneling my way pucca shell necklaces and dock shoes. As a great teacher told me once, “What ever is worth doing is worth doing… poorly” and inspiration certainly did start out poorly.

It was a breezy Tennessee night and two California kids where locked inside their parents keep. Emily was in her overly sized bedroom, painting on her largest wall, meticulously completing her mural one oddity at a time. If the Berlin Wall was a symbol of art and freedom, it would have looked like Emily’s wall. It was littered with quotes, ranging from Green Day to Lisa Lobe. There were large portraits of the Cookie Monster and Big Bird from Sesame Street followed by elegant drawings of peacocks and traced hands. Emily was the artist and the move from California to Tennessee had been the hardest for her, so my parents aloud her to express that, I was to much of a little turd at the time to have any sort of "artistic medium". 

I was in my 4x4 cellar complete with an overly sized TV and the latest video game system. My walls were bland, maybe a Star Wars poster that could have come from a cereal box and models up on dusty shelves. There was sticky shit on the tape player and collared shirts scattered the floor like a river flowing from the closet. The collared shirts... signs of a dress coded school. 

That school was hell on earth. 

But that's besides the point.

It was past ten at night, the quiet hour were the wardens slept soundly but gingerly. Then I heard it, footsteps from downstairs slowly and delicately climbing the stairwell, then I saw the shadow past by underneath my door heading for my sisters room. I had deduced that from the sounds of the worn squishy converse and that who else would be going to Emily's room that night, it was John-Michael, the boyfriend was here.

If my parents had been right angles, JM was certainly the bevel. His contoured mental state came at a wide birth, where as my parents… an acute opening. There was never a dull moment when he was here, so I quickly followed. As I opened the door I could tell that Emily was mildly discomforted that I had appeared. She didn’t want father to know he was here and I was a liability. 

Emily beckoned me to leave at once but in my younger years was I was very firm, I would not leave or else I would tell daddy. 

I was a little shit.

JM eventually told her that it was ok for me to be here, but I could still see Emily’s discomfort, like a cat her hair was still raised. JM, hoping to diffuse the situation pulled out a cd from one of Emily’s large jewel case stacks, placed the disc into the boom-box and clicked the play button. It was her favorite cd, but I had never heard her say that before. How had I not known what her favorite was? I was agitated… I was supposed to know. 

The speakers popped, cracked, came to life and then it happened; strummed fuzz, organic hums and a manilla nasal voice crooned. 

What was this shit?

Emily and JM just began to talk, talk over the music and talk over my face exploding from the inside out. I had once thought that every song was about sex. “Danger Zone” by Kenny Logins is about fornication, right?! “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac is completely about sad coitus, duh. The Mortal Kombat theme song is about nerdy relations, I mean come on?! Every Beetles song is about the birds and bees just like every rap and/or pop and song in a Memorex commercial was about copulation. It was all about SEX!… But for the first time, my roasting puberty and 14 year old intellect couldn’t imagine a girl naked.

My sister was telling JM some story where she was at a party with Davy Havok (the lead singer of AFI) and how he made out with her friend. (I still don't know if that's true to this day...but) I couldn’t follow a thing they were saying. For the first time in my life I felt like a fraud. I didn’t know anything about music. And that’s where I met Jeff. 

My heart was floating in glass.

He lingered in my mind from that day on, slowly becoming a parable of youth. Like the song “Two-Headed Boy” I felt as if Jeff was listening to where I was. As if to touch a moment of present purity and offer solitude. A patience to a confused youth, a yielding and cuddling truth, whispering that all-time is truly a moment to be free. Temperance for tranquility, something much deeper than any intimacy I had experienced. When ever the trumpets sing, like that hollow breeze, I am transported back to a time where I knew nothing… and what a comforting feeling that still is.

The End.

My name is Brady Effler and I am currently unemployed. That is the truth, but it is also not because I don't want to work, I do. I was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma at the end of July 2013, and now I'm fighting the good fight. I am currently going through chemo treatments. From the advisement and orders of my doctor, I am not supposed to be working. Currently I am in the waiting process to receive social security, but that is taking it's time. If you liked what you read, please feel free to donate. I am currently trying to pay off my student loans and other bills (pills, hospital visits, etc...). I'm not going to lie to you, some the donation money will go towards gasoline, or perhaps even a cup of coffee. Anything you give is awesome. Feel free to shoot me an email too if you'd like. I can also make you a gnarly playlist.
Thanks again for reading. I'm not begging, or trying to pull the wool over anyone, just being honest.
- Brady 

5 Songs We Use Not to Talk. Pt. 2

#2 The Fragmented Sentence.

Built To Spill // You Are

"Everybody knows...

Everybody knows...

That you..."

It was early September of 2011, during my last full semester at Lee University, when the trees had just begun to malt -- shearing colors of gold and orange. The wind was perfect, as if the breeze was a tiny little boy who had happily gotten lost in an open air super market, dashing from side to side clustering my hair. It was perfect. I was happy, I was content and I was looking forward to the future. I wasn't day dreaming like any normal 23 year old dude at the time. Instead of thinking of ways to pull pranks on my friends, what kind of beer I wanted that evening or if it's to early to call my girlfriend to make out -- rather I was thinking about a career, my upcoming semester in England and if Target had any gnarly sweaters on sale. (or pea-coats! I love pea-coats!) But then my phone rang, it was father on the other line. He sounded pensive and serious, but this wasn't far from the norm so I said "Hey/What's Up" and he responded with "Poppy died...".

I attacked the phone receiver with a battalion of untrained soldiers equipped with the standard edition rifle tears. These are my tears, there are many like them, but these are mine. Each sentence was more whimpered than the last. My eyes had contracted a fever, and it wouldn't go away. That day, like my grandfather, I couldn't leave the same way I came. I needed my car and roads I had never seen before. My tongue was riding as fast at it could on the phone, but when silence is your best friend... it's not very fast at all. I don't know how many phrases I belted out on the phone, there are so many that one seems to use when dealing with death that it get's annoying fast. So I'm sure you might be able to relate to my list, contracted like a disease:

• How did it happen?
• But why? 
• I just saw him!
• I don't fucking believe...
• Is Mom alright!?
• I'm coming home right now.
• ...shit 
• What should I do?
• I... I ... Are you okay?

After I hung up the phone I thought about running, just running. To my car, I don't know, perhaps. Any direction will do. Motion, it seemed like a good idea, a much better idea than standing in the middle of a christian campus swearing like a sailor and craving a cigarette. If I just ran to my car, maybe I could... maybe I could... I don't know but maybe I could just fucking... do something, but what's the point, he's dead and it's not like we had a dinner reservation.
So I just walked.
I popped in my head phones and started slowly. My feet felt like fat slippers soaked in kerosine as I tromped to my vehicle. All the trees seemed so repugnant as if it's not a big deal to have an arm full of dead droppings. The hot sorority girls laughing on the corner looked fatter and I could feel the lack of depth permeate from their skulls, as if they were empty boxes of soggy light. God that walk sucked. It wasn't until I got into my car that it really hit me, I need to call my girlfriend.

She picked up the phone

"Hey! What's up?"

"My grandfather just died..."

"The one out in California?"

"Yeah... Poppy."

"Are you gonna be okay? Do you need to see me?"

"No, no... I'll be okay. I just needed to hear your voice..."

The conversation didn't last much longer than that because unlike my feet, my tongue couldn't put one foot in-front of the other. It was stuck in a suffocating pattern dryness, sealing it's self to the roof of my mouth.When I got to my parents house later that day it didn't get any better. I had no words, just... just a mouth full of pythons and a fist that needed to placed properly in a door. I kept on trying to comfort my Mother, but I couldn't say anything good. The next day passed and the funeral arrangements where being made. The family decided that my mother and my sisters would fly out to California to be at the small family gathering where they would spread his ashes in my grandmothers garden. The night I found out I wasn't going I cried like a child who had seen his blood for the first time. As We Were Promised Jetpacks would say, it was a far cry from all that was dead inside. I couldn't go because I had "exams", so I had to write a letter to give to my grandmother. My condolence letter. My hated for school spiked significantly that day.

My girlfriend at the time, who was much younger than me, tried her best at comforting me but it just wasn't working. She was lost in the torrent of choice-less words and my hot-n-cold comfort zone. I had no way of communicating. It was like I was deaf and trying to tell her that I was having a heart attack, it was useless. After the deluge of "I'm sorrys" and "is there anything I can do" I left her place. I went home to write that letter.

I dug through my iPod while it was on shuffle, pecking the skip button and getting pissed after every track. Sometimes I think I torture my self for no good reason and love it.
I would scream at it,
"No. I don't want to listen to Damien Rice right now you twat!"
"What! No! Frighten Rabbit and Copeland are OUT of the question!"
I was secretly hoping it would jump to Guernica by Brand New because I wasn't going to pick it my self. That song always upset me, and I wanted to be the distorted hum of one sad and lonely alcoholic. And if the fate of the shuffle wouldn't pick Brand New then my second wish was that it would land on Pedro The Lion's "Suspect Fled The Scene". I just knew from the the bottom of my heart that if I picked those songs on my own that I'd be inflicting a ridiculous amount of pain on my heart, so I was hoping fate would do it for me. When your as sad as wordless poet, you don't argue fates cruel and provocative hug, you just accept it with a pinch of poison. But then shuffle did it again, it saved my soul. It landed on the one song that I usually associate with the moment when the prettiest girl smile, the whole "cat's got my tongue" thing, where she's just to beautiful to look at. The sliver rectangular angel started to play "You Are" by Built To Spill.

 The fragmented sentence, an iota of tangibility, the mouthful of crumbs that came dribbling out of my face and my figures began to scoop them up like puzzle pieces. I played the song over and over and over and over and over and over. I sent it to my friends, my girlfriend and anyone that would listen. I felt like a seventh grader trying to tell his parents that he got shoved in a locker at school yesterday. I wanted to shout the guitar patterns, break windows to the drum beats and steep in the memory of my grandfather while the guitar solo painted every memory I had with him. This hot sense of odd pleasure drove me to room for hours.

There are only five words in the entire song. "Everybody/knows/that/you/are" but the way it is sang invokes an irresistible amount of feelings. Doug Martsch, the lead singer goes in rounds as if he knows, this is all he's got and this is all he can say and it's the only way he can tell you, so it's odd, but it's perfect.

It's perfect.   

And it was perfect.

Here's a small portion of the letter that I wrote: "...throughout my childhood Poppy played a key roll in my developing years. I couldn't think of a memory that encompassed what he truly meant to me. Poppy was much more than a memory to me. He was a legacy of ideals. Ideals that started me down the pathe of being an artist, an artist that encapsulates mystery in truth and love through nobility. Poppy was an artist and now so am I. He gave me the inspiration to play each key with fervor and integrity. Each string to be strummed with an intimate passion and an ear to always listen closely to my heart... Poppys brush strokes have painted the most beautiful foreground and now it is my duty as his grandson to take up the brush and make something beautiful for the world to see and for the world to feel..."

The fragmented sentence is one of the most powerful songs we can express to an individual. It's the moment when words aren't enough, we've lost the ability to even define our selves and the situation, so we let our most powerful form of express take control -- for me, the music. As a young man I find my self in phases in my life where I am left with nothing but the music, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Whether it's the death of a close relative, the lowness from exiting a relationship or the metaphorical Triton in the road, because let's be real, these days it's no longer a fork, and we are left with invisible character defining art. In these phases our internal soul cries out to others in ways that we can not express. We might even feel guilty or angry because there's an unfulfilled tension that is created deep within our psyche, but there's a way out. Don't say it, just play it.

Now when ever I hear this song I think of two things. The first is that sometimes in life the best way to tell someone that you love them is through art. The second thing is this: your art will inspire, cultivate and move people in ways that you never knew and perhaps will never know. I never told my grandfather that I started playing music because of him. I never told my grandfather that he taught me to look for beauty in all things. But I told him I loved him and I'm sure that rolls over into heaven. 

What's your fragmented sentence?

 

Mùm

(I encourage you to press play before reading)

Welcome to the dark side of the Postal Service.

During my senior year of high school the banana-pancake Jack Johnson phase was exploding for the wannabe art kids and "accidentally  to-public" potheads, along side with that "hot fuzz" buzz by The Killers. For the band nerds and pre-teen goth kids it was AFI and The Black Eye'd Peas, peeling their way in with the sounds of emo-skunk grime. Needless to say I was apart of both of these groups, but I was also secretly keeping some music to my self. I'd drive to school listening to the local college radio station, relentless hoping that when I got to school I'd get into a verbal argument over economics or some war about "terror". But then there was Death Cab For Cutie. 

Ben Gibbard -- my nightingale. He'd let me have a good silent cry. I always felt I was long over due for an angry "dead-journal entry", so that came in handy too, but once I discovered the Postal Service, all those raw emotions and 'goofy feelings about girls' clicked. I was satisfied being melancholy but yet synthetically bubbly -- in the trendy way Lite-Brite could have been, but damn-it, it just was art!

Now that I'm in a post-graduate life, I found that I had sat down my Postal Service record sessions a long time ago (but not in a galaxy far far away...). Life had taken its course and I had gotten older. Like anyones life, there had been a series of up's and down's or "life altering" experiences/people. The shift of adulthood wasn't something I had noticed immediately, but when friends began to move away and letters from crazy ex-girl friends weren't fun to share anymore, I felt the heat of the water that had been boiling for sometime.

When I discovered Mum, I really took the time to sit down and listen to them. I don't recall the day I found them, but I'm certain that my ears felt like cellophane and my craving for a vintage smoke rocketed to it's highest potential. Their soft patterns of electro glitch beats, and kitchen noises are tucked into a whirlwind of emotion. The piano sounds like its being hit by a mallet made of silly putty, and the bass and percussion are recorded through a walkie-talkie... or gramophone. Their whole sound just screams, layers!
I felt like I did in high school when I found the Postal Service. I chanced upon a band that completes a small niche in my life. I listen to them in the car, walking to class (rain preferably) and in bed when I should be writing. 

Glass Fractal

The Album, We Finally Are No One, essentially sounds like rainy day emotion wrapped up into a glass fractal and set in front of a candle. I honestly have nothing to say about their cord progression, beat-choices, or lack of unintelligible singing, because I feel like I just can't. And like I said, its the dark side or adult version of the Postal Service. Meaning just that, its not something many people would catch if they are consumed in rotisserie pop music, regurgitated every year.
There is a work of genius here, and I suggest you listen to it.
If you like Mum you should check out: Seabear, The Album Leaf and Broadcast.