Context – reading Brand New reviews

This is a heavy, heavy album.  I mean any album that opens with “Death is real, someone’s there and then they’re not” is going to be.

Except the folksy approach to songwriting featured on Mount Eerie’s A Crow Looked at Me doesn’t give you anything to hide behind.   Sorority Noise’s You’re Not as ___ as You Think You Are at least has enough aggression and emo/screamo elements that you can distract yourself from how heavy the subject matter is by getting lost in the rock-n-roll of it all (or at least as much rock-n-roll as is allowed in emo music, your mileage may vary).  With A Crow Looked at Me this is all just upfront and begging you to reckon with it.

And so I didn’t, I distracted myself by reading reviews of Brand New’s new album to see how my own lined up.  Seems the music scene is pretty happy with it.  I don’t know if this decision was rooted in “I’m too distracted to give this Mount Eerie album all my attention” or “this is too sad I can’t engage give my brain anything else to do”, but either way I haven’t fully embraced everything this has to offer.

It’s really fucking good though, so I imagine I will at some point.  But not today, dear reader.  Not today.