Finally back in Hanover after a very long, stressful, occasionally exhilarating couple of weeks in Oklahoma and Texas. This was the end of the season for debate, with the two national tournaments. Dartmouth made it to the final round of the CEDA National tournament and to the octofinals of the National Debate Tournament, and was also ranked as the #4 team in the country going into the NDT. One of the people on the team who won that tournament was actually my friend Aimi, who has a very nice music blog of her own: the monsters under the bed are not real, which you should check out.
It’s always weird when this time of the year hits – everything that I’ve spent the last 8 months working on constantly suddenly fades into the background, everything that I had put so much emotional investment in is concluded one way or another. This year it’s especially strange since I still have no idea where my life is going, if there’s a chance that I’ll be doing something seriously different from now on, and because I really have no plans for what to do over the next few months. On the ride back home last night, one of my all-time favorite songs came on. And while it always gets to me, it felt amazingly appropriate at that moment, because I really do have a sense of the terror and excitement of being in free fall:
Free Fallin’ – Tom Petty
One thing I can say for sure is that I’ve heard a ton of great music in the last couple months that I haven’t had the chance to write about, so I should be pretty busy with a great slate of music this spring. If you got out of the habit of coming by here while I was gone, you can start checking the bookmark again. There should be new content here pretty much every day.
For today, I’ll just leave you with a bunch of songs I’ve (mostly) already posted on, which formed the playlist that was pretty much my constant soundtrack over these weeks.
1. Goodbye – Asobi Seksu
2. 2006 – Hello Saferide
3. Bonnie and Clyde – Vanessa Peters & Ice Cream On Mondays
4. Number One – Darla Rose
5. (Antichrist Television Blues) – Arcade Fire
6. Blueprint for Departure – Bedroom Eyes
7. Reinvent the Wheel – Bright Eyes
8. Rise Up In The Dirt – Voxtrot
9. Don’t Lose Yourself – Laura Veirs
10. Past Belief – Dan Bern
11. Commencement Day – Blue Scholars
12. I Can Get Us Out of Here Tonight – Lucero
13. Smother + Evil = Hurt – The Kissaway Trail
14. Chemicals Collide – Cloud Cult
15. Samson – Regina Spektor
16. Dead Fish on the Banks – The Goodnight Loving
17. Sons and Daughters – Decemberists
18. The Rabbit and the Rooster – Lawrence Arms
19. 23 – Blonde Redhead
20. Australia – The Shins
I’ll be writing more about a couple of these soon. The Laura Veirs and Cloud Cult records, in particular, are fantastic and deserve a lot of attention. Until then, let me just recommend these two songs as highly as possible.