js_thrill | This Year 365 songs: February 18th-25th

February 18th: The Only Thing I Know
February 19th: Duke Ellington
February 20th: Against Agamemnon
February 21st: Full Flower
February 22nd: Orange Ball of Pain
February 23rd: Blood Royal
February 24th: Going to Scotland

Of thew first four tracks, I am mainly going to write about Against Agamemnon. I liked the first two pretty well, but don't have much to say about them. Against Agamemnon has both the Mountain Goats sound that I like, and the annotations do a nice job of situating the classical reference (Sophocles's Ajax, in which the titular figure is tricked into thinking he has slain his foes but has only been battling sheep, and kills himself from the embarrassment, and Darnielle's reflection on how he is not that tragic figure, but only by dint of maturing a bit more than Ajax got a chance to.

Orange Ball of Pain is fine, especially compared to Blood Royal, which is doing discordant things that are really not working for me. Going to Scotland feels too cutesy, I think, but it may just be that I am trying to catch up on 8 songs at one go. If I had done this song by itself, I'd probably have liked it just fine.

February 25th: Going to Reykjavik

Watch on YouTube

Okay, this is a song I genuinely am enjoying. Serendipity that it is the last song, and it sort of confirms my judgment that Going to Scotland was too cutesy. I still probably would have liked it better if it was on its own. But this song is landing very well, even as the eighth song of the day.

I am glad I am not a music reviewer. Sometimes I have the thought that I like reading books, wouldn't it be great to get paid to read books, but then I think about what that job would actually be and I realize I am very lucky that I am not a professional book reviewer or slush reader or anything like that.