2009 : JPB's Best Of

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I didn't write about as many discs from 2009 as I would have liked—I was busy traveling, and completing my work for the semester, and getting ill—but I thought I'd close out my writing for this blog with a quick top ten. 10. Jason Crumer, Walk With Me Restrained minimalist compositions which periodically descend into shredding noise. Read more | Listen: "Luscious Voluptuous Pregnant" 9. Fuck Buttons, Tarot Sport I prefer the less polished raw energy of their 2008 debut, Street Horsssing, but this follow-up is still an undeniably fine selection of anthemic psychedelic stomp. 8. Mountains, Choral This outfit, made up of former Apestaartje personnel, has released three fine albums of pastoral drone this decade. This newest one stayed in heavy rotation for me this year. 7. Sunn O))), Dimensions and Monoliths The boundaries of the Sunn O))) project have grown broader with each release, absorbing more and more material like some kind of black metal Katamari. This album finds them experimenting with keening choirs ("Big Church") and transcendent horn playing ("Alice"). It's not always successful, but when it works it expands their scope breathtakingly. 6. The Antlers, Hospice A staggering song cycle about death, loss, and grief. Best way to hear it is by yourself, in a slowly darkening room. 5. Freelance Whales, Weathervanes This album filled the slot that was filled last year by Natalie Portman's Shaved Head's Glistening Pleasure, and in 2005 by Architecture In Helsinki's In Case We Die: indie-pop music, made by young people, charming, charismatic, polished, and addictively sweet. A slightly shameful pleasure, but also a true and abiding one. 4. Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix This is the great indie-pop album of the year: upbeat, energetic, yet also somehow grandly sad. Read more | Listen: "Lisztomania" 3. Gregg Kowalsky, Tape Chants The idea of creating music by playing recorded matter on 6-10 cassette tape players simultaneously may sound a bit like someone trying to update Philip Jeck's turntable installations and performances. But Kowalsky's project is really its own thing, with conceptual underpinnings that differ completely from Jeck's, and just one immersion into Kowalsky's invitingly smoggy low-fi drone makes it completely clear that this is a soundworld that must be appreciated on its own terms. 2. Dan Deacon, Bromst The eleven pieces that compose Bromst mostly sound like the soundtrack an old-school videogame that you might have experienced in a dream: all velocity and candy color. But just when you're ready to dismiss them as whiz-kid geekery they open up into something lovely, possibly even holy. Listen: "Red F" 1. Jónsi and Alex, Riceboy Sleeps Beautiful ambient tracks from this side-project of Sigur Ros vocalist Jón Birgisson. Each track arranges acoustic instruments, voices, crackle, loops and hum into a kind of billowing fog that permeates directly to my brain's pleasure pathways. —Jeremy Bushnell

2009 : 13 "Drunk As Fuck [Top Billin Remix]" by Tittsworth

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Way back when this blog was covering 2000, I wrote about the Queens of the Stone Age's track "Feel Good Hit of the Summer," noting that it describes "a lifestyle so hedonistic that it would kill the majority of its listeners very quickly were they to adopt it." I also wrote that the track "evokes a special type of vicarious pleasure in the listener's head," and that this process "is one of the reasons popular music even exists in the first place." Hip-hop, of course, excels at the creation of very dense constellations of incantations and images that trigger the vicarious-pleasure parts of listener's brains: this, in fact, forms a key part of its appeal. A great example might be Tittsworth's "Drunk As Fuck," which celebrates just about every taboo one can think of: from the reeling intoxication identified in the track's title to, uh, genital torture. Anti-social? Sure. Take it seriously and it's actually disturbing. But take it as an opportunity to temporarily put on the costume of someone irresponsible and dangerous—to become "the king of all sleazy things" without any risk to one's self—and it yields a very concentrated form of ridiculous delight. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Tittsworth >> "Drunk As Fuck [Top Billin Remix]"

2009 : 07 "Lisztomania" by Phoenix

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I spent a lot of time this year listening to this song and trying to make some sense out of its lyrics. The opening couplet reveals some sense of the futility of this task: So sentimental Not sentimental, no If the underlying rhythm and melody weren't so joyous and energetic, one could mistake this tiny packet of self-canceling non-referentiality for a very compact Samuel Beckett play. The refrain doesn't exactly clarify matters: Lisztomania Think less but see it grow Like a riot, like a riot, oh Not easily offended Not hard to let it go From the mess [?] to the masses Um, OK? There's at least a noun here, relatively close to the pronoun... so... is this a song about the composer? Or about this film? Or... is "Lisztomania" a stand-in for popular manias of all sorts? That helps the "riot" lines to make sense, and maybe the thing about the "masses," but it doesn't really help with the stuff about being not hard to offend, or reveal anything akin to a point of view… And so it went. The opacity of the song (the entire album, actually) bugged me, and then all it once it didn't anymore. When I was able to accept the lyrical content as rather inspired word salad, it freed me up to enjoy the album's bittersweet, nostalgic elation, which is actually communicated to the listener with absolute clarity. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Phoenix >> "Lisztomania"

2009 : 03 "Luscious Voluptuous Pregnant" by Jason Crumer

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Jason Crumer's Walk With Me is my favorite noise album of the year: it's an almost perfect hybrid of scouring intensity and measured restraint. (The first five or so minutes of this track—an irregularly looping set of piano motifs—sounds like it could have been an early Terry Riley piece or something from an academic conservatory.) Fineness notwithstanding, it still feels wrong to publicly admire a track with a title like "Luscious Voluptuous Pregnant," sort of like discussing one's own fetish(es) in mixed company. But, uh, I actually think it's a great title—sexy in a sort of upside-down way—and a good sign that noise music (even measured, restrained noise music) hasn't lost its sense of the taboo. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Jason Crumer >> "Luscious Voluptuous Pregnant"

2008 : 20 "The Healer" by Erykah Badu

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I wasn't actually a huge fan of Erykah Badu's 2008 album New Amerykah—but this track, "The Healer," was, to my mind, the single most invigorating piece of music the year had to offer. Badu's decision to marry the concepts of healing and pop music isn't in and of itself very interesting: any number of lesser talents could take those two ideas and emerge with a garden-variety homily about the enduring power of music. The greatness of this track comes from Badu's decision to use this framework as a structure into which to jam all sorts of left-field weirdness, ending up with a salvo that's a deeply compelling mish-mash of metaphysics, resistance politics, science fiction, and what may or may not be pure nonsense: "We ain't dead," said the children Don't believe it We just made ourselves invisible Underwater stove top blue flame Scientists Come out with your scales up The lyrical content is a great fit with Madlib's stoned-sounding production, last appreciated on this blog here. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Erykah Badu >> "The Healer"

2008 : 18 "red light" by Rod Modell

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If Jacaszek's "Lament," which I wrote about not long ago, is like what house music would sound like if it emerged from a Transylvanian castle, then Rod Modell's blurred, smeary track "red light" is what house music would sound like if someone were playing it to you in an attempt to bring you out of a very deep drug-induced coma. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Rod Modell >> "red light"

2008 : 11 "Lament" by Jacaszek

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Treny, the 2008 album by Jacaszek, can perhaps best be described by saying that it's what house music would sound like if house music emerged from a pre-industrial Eastern European castle instead of from the dance floors of post-industrial Detroit. (Or you can say it's like that band Enigma, only good.) Gloomy, crepuscular, capital-R Romantic, and pretentious: this is the kind of music that puts me in touch with my sexiest inner Goth. Envision blood and candlelight. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Jacaszek >> "Lament"

2008 : 08 "Bedroom Costume" by Natalie Portman's Shaved Head

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For as much as pop music ostensibly concerns itself with physicality and sexuality, it's surprisingly rare to find songs that really evoke the particulars of erotic exchange with any degree of specificity. So when I find one, I end up appreciating it with special zeal. Remember 2001, when I posted "Love With The Three of Us," to my knowledge the world's only great song about menage-a-trois? Anyway, now we're in 2008, and here's "Bedroom Costume," which is likely the world's only great song about the mutually beneficial relationship between a voyeur and an exhibitionist. Note especially the moment when the exhibitionist finally delivers her version of events, around 1:30—it's a moment that's equal parts heartbreaking sweetness and unbearable erotic ferment. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Natalie Portman's Shaved Head >> "Bedroom Costume"

2008 : 05 "Time to Pretend" by MGMT

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Let's make some music Make some money Find some models for wives Earlier this fall, I sent the following to Twitter: OK, it shouldn't surprise anyone that the song isn't really about marrying models--the title alone gives that away. But it should still be possible to write a song about pretending to be a huge success that would be a sort of free-wheeling celebration of lavish fantasy, and that isn't really what this song does either. In fact, on one level the song actually functions as a critique of the imagination, presenting it ultimately as a withdraw from the pleasures, sensations and interpersonal connections provided by existence: I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world I'll miss my sister and my father, miss my dog and my home I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone And yet the song's crowning touch is its assertion that, even despite these many sacrifices, total withdraw into insular fantasy ultimately remains preferable to bearing the disappointments of reality: Yeah its overwhelming But what else can we do Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute? The song takes a familiar rock-star fantasy, and by looking at it from a slightly different angle, reveals the suicidal ideation at its heart. This is genius at its bleakest, a glossy, upbeat anthem that seems intended for blasting on infinite repeat as you prepare your overdose. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: MGMT >> "Time To Pretend"

2007 : 38-39 Aught Music Roundtable: Love Is Simple by Akron/Family

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Roundtable Part One: "Ed Is A Portal" When this album was released, I wrote that Love Is Simple is "[t]he latest entry in the attempt to write the great American psychedelic folk roadtrip album, and one of the most successful I've ever heard. This album is the triumphant album of experimental folk-rock that acts like Califone, Wilco, and the Flaming Lips have been almost-making for a decade now (and that Camper Van Beethoven were almost-making 20 years ago), but it also breaks from that framework periodically, expanding into ecstatic mind-expanding jams—jams that locate the choice middle ground between the sloppy, shambalic, "No Neck Blues Band" type and the more polished, technically-efficient, "Phish" type, and consequently are more effective than either. Mystical in orientation, singular in vision: at its best, it's like a backwoods Americana version of the Boredom's Vision Creation New Sun." I don't actually think that I have anything to add to that, beyond saying that this track, "Ed Is A Portal," nicely sums up what I'm talking about. You can spare the seven and a half minutes. Trust me. —Jeremy Bushnell Roundtable Part Two: "Phenomena" Phenomena, phenomena, phenomena. There are two kinds of songs that get stuck in your head, the kind that you can't wait to get rid of and the kind that you want to stay there stuck for as long as you can. "Phenomena" is in second category for me. I love the kind, flowing sound of the instrumentals and the dreamy tone of the vocals. It really makes me want to sing "Phenomena" over and over again. I found Akron/Family's third album Love Is Simple because eMusic suggested it to me. Love is Simple is the perfect title for this album. I can hear a love for the music and a simple approach to making the music. The songs on the album have a deep, rich sound without sounding over produced. This album really caught me by surprise when I first heard it. Phenomena, phenomena, phenomena. —Rich Thomas Listen: Akron / Family >> "Ed Is A Portal" | "Phenomena"

2007 : 37 Aught Music Roundtable: "Paper Planes" by M.I.A.

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First Pass Back when we were covering 2005, I wrote that M.I.A. might be the Artist of the Decade, in part because she was the living embodiment of a number of important trends that defined music in the Aughts more broadly. To see that logic continue to play out, one need merely examine the rise of "Paper Planes." It was released on M.I.A.'s second album, Kala, in 2007, but wasn't the lead single. (That was the likably weird "Boyz.") This track lay dormant until used as the backing track for the Pineapple Express trailer in early 2008, whereupon it blew up in a big way, permeating the culture until even the people who are arguably the biggest musical superstars in the world had to pay tribute. It's easy to see why: the second "Paper Planes" starts playing (about a minute in) is the exact moment this trailer starts to become cool: Once upon a time it may have been possible to keep your categories separate: movie trailers over here, viral YouTube clips over here, music videos over here, commercials over there. But the Pineapple Express trailer neatly collapses all of these categories: I'd say that it single-handedly sold more copies of "Paper Planes" than any commercial could have, except that it actually is a commercial, for both the movie and the song. Except that it isn't. Except that it is. One might see this as dispiriting: straight-up evidence that capitalism continues to mutate and evolve, spawning ever more pervasive forms. (The fact that the explicit topic of "Paper Planes" is the circulation of capital can be read as a crowning irony.) Or one might see it as a symbol of the unpredictability and ultimate richness of cultural cross-transmission. Probably it's a little of both, but the fact that a simple dance track can invoke these kinds of questions pretty much exemplifies the enjoyment that I derived from M.I.A. this decade. —Jeremy Bushnell Second Pass I fly like paper, get high like planes If you catch me at the border I got visas in my name If you come around here, I make 'em all day I get one down in a second if you wait There is something about this song that just captures me. Maybe because it is violent, but sung by a woman. Maybe it indulges the part of me that likes to watch gangster movies. Maybe it is because I like to sing along with the part about murder as I am at the gym. Maybe it is because I want to think the song is about running a lunch truck like the YouTube video. Anyway, I love this song. It totally sucks me in, like an action movie. This song is total escapism for me. This is one of the best work out songs on my iPod. Some some some I some I murder Some some some I let go Some some some I some I murder Some some some I let go —Rich Thomas Listen: M.I.A. >> "Paper Planes"

2007 : 23 "Sexfaldur" by Amiina

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If M.I.A.'s Arular was the first album I ever bought on the strength of tracks downloaded from MP3 blogs, then Amiina's Kurr was the first album I ever bought on the strength of hearing tracks through a streaming music service, specifically Last.fm, one of those websites that builds up a profile of what you've listened to in the past and then puts algorithms to work all in the name of figuring out what else you might want to hear. You liked Band X? You might like Band Y. That sort of thing. The fact that these services exist still strikes me as quite amazing. Some virtual bot somewhere is hard at work identifying patterns in some vast torrent of data, just waiting for me to query it as to what it thinks I'll like? Even if the outputted results were crap, this would still qualify as a sign that we're living in a piece of science fiction. The fact that the outputted results are good— that a band like Amiina was among the first results the service ever gave me —is even more stirring: it fills me not just with wonder but also hope. We're in the future, and it isn't totally broken! Amiina is a group comprised of four women, best known for their occasional service as Sigur Ros' backing band. Their music has all the elements that I admire in Sigur Ros— mystery, grandeur, icy beauty —with very little of the (masculine?) showboating that I sometimes detect in Sigur Ros' work: consequently, they're pretty much a perfect band to serve my way. There will be some people who lament a culture in which people get our music recommendations not from other people but from robots. That may, in fact, be why you're here, reading this. So this is me, a fellow human, telling you that I think you should buy this record. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Amiina >> "Sexfaldur"

2007 : 11 "Superheroes 2007" by The Toxic Avenger

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In the last years of the decade, I went back to listening to a lot of electronic dance music. Dormant since the late 1990s, this love was re-awakened by my discovery of terrific European techno acts like Daft Punk and Justice. Try as I might, I just can't resist this kind of music: my response to it, in fact, borders on the Pavlovian. Give me some fat synth lines and some dance-floor-destroying beats and my brain automatically responds by flooding my mesolimbic reward pathway with massive amounts of dopamine. Shameful, really. Perhaps my reaction can be best illustrated with an audio-visual aid. Here's a video of myself dancing (in disguise no less!) to "Superheroes 2007," a track by The Toxic Avenger, an act who's less well-known than some of the other French techno practicioners, but every bit as fantastic. (Special thanks to K. for introducing me to him.) (part of the Top Secret Dance Off) I believe that my rubbery, blurry flailings say everything there is to say that's good about this music. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: The Toxic Avenger >> "Superheroes 2007"

2007 : 04 "Friday Night at the Drive-In Bingo" by Jens Lekman

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Euro heart-throb Jens Lekman has an outsized personality, and that personality seems sometimes to be an equal mix of arrogance and self-deprecation. This is a combination that understandably makes him hard for some people to take, but to dismiss him too fast would be an error: he has unquestionable gifts as a song-writer, and his best tracks are characterized by sharp wit and a precision of observation which remains all too rare in the indie-pop scene. Night Falls Over Kortedala, the 2007 follow-up to his well-regarded 2005 album Oh You're So Silent, Jens, misses as often as it hits, but it ends on the great "Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo," a track which trenchantly sketches the way urban hipster youngsters like himself think about small-town life. Lekman points out the way that he/we cheerfully fetishize half-imagined "quaint" qualities of "the country," while simultaneously imagining ways that we can transform it into something more hipster-friendly, a process that would annihilate whatever sense of difference drew us there in the first place. Clever, insightful, and spry: it's songs like this that draw me to Lekman and keep me coming back. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Jens Lekman >> "Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo"

2006 : 45-46 Aught Music Roundtable: Remember That I Love You by Kimya Dawson

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Roundtable Part One: "Loose Lips" So if you wanna burn yourself, remember that I love you And if you wanna cut yourself, remember that I love you And if you wanna kill yourself, remember that I love you Call me up before you're dead, we can make some plans instead Send me an IM, I'll be your friend I bought Remember That I Love You because in 2006 I was in the middle of my K Records buying frenzy. Yeah, at that time I would buy any album that K Records put out on eMusic. That is who I was for a while. I guess I was coming to the Kimya Dawson party late, but at least I got there before Juno. Remember That I Love You is an amazing, heartfelt album with a lo-fi production that fits very well. Listening to the album, you feel like you are getting to know Kimya Dawson. There is a part of me that wants to draw comparisons Between Kimya Dawson with Daniel Johnson and John Darnielle, but I feel any comparison won't give Kimya her full due. She is making different music than either of them and she should be seen as such. This album has little nuggets of happiness, pain, fear and optimism. Back in 2006 I could not stop talking to people about this album, but I am not sure anyone listened to me. —Rich Thomas Roundtable Part Two: "I Like Giants" In 2009, I learned every word of this song, as part of a plan to sing it from memory. Unaccompanied. In public. Memorizing it wasn't all that easy: the song has a lot of words. It also has an unusual verse structure, with a lot of irregular repetition that proved tricky. But let's set the diabolical aspects aside and look at what else this song contains: a fable, an autobiographical narrative, a vision of religious practice that is both attainable and open-ended, an injunction against suicide made by the suicidal, and a prescription for how to move in the world meaningfully. When I sang it successfully I got a standing ovation. Listen: Kimya Dawson >> "Loose Lips" | "I Like Giants"

2006 : 41 "Once Again" by Girl Talk

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I hesitate to say that 2006 was the year that mash-ups "grew up," because a youthful insouciance—even a brattiness—is really central to a good mash-up. It's not a form that can really be said to "mature." But 2006 was the year, it seems to me, that a few people began to realize that if they wanted to stand out they were going to need to do more than just line up a vocal track with a backing track that kinda fit with it in some kinda funny way. They were going to need to do much more. They were going to need to take it to a whole new level. Of the people who tried to complexify the form, the most impressive, for my money, was DJ Gregg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, whose average track combines not two but dozens of culture's most memorable hooks, utterances and incantations. I wouldn't ever have thought that I'd buy an entire album of mash-ups, but Gillis' Night Ripper (2006) provides a pleasure-yield so concentrated that it easily qualifies as one of my favorites of the decade. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: Girl Talk >> "Once Again"

2006 : 31 "Georgia...Bush" by DJ Drama and Lil Wayne

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I still have a difficult time writing or even thinking coherently about Hurricane Katrina and its impact. I remember spending hours online in 2005, reading the news reports, my sensation of horror growing wider and deeper as the disaster unfolded. I strained to get a mental handle on the full scope of it, but never quite managed, certainly not enough to develop anything meaningful to say. Fortunately, other people persevered where I quailed, and we now have our share of relevant statements on Katrina. If I were going to pick one song that "says something" lasting about the disaster, I'd choose Lil Wayne's "Georgia...Bush," a track that serves as quality evidence of Chuck D's famous assertion that hip-hop is the "CNN of Black America." In just under four minutes, Wayne discusses governmental incompetence at both the national and local levels, logistical difficulties for returning residents, conspiracy theories about the levees, and 1965’s Hurricane Benson. Wayne's political invective is satisfyingly inflammatory, but ultimately his verses provide no catharsis: he lingers on images of misery and death, leaving a lasting sensation only of irreperable harm, a thing that his anger—and ours—can't erase. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: DJ Drama and Lil Wayne >> "Georgia...Bush"

2006 : 19 "Morning Tones" by M. Rösner

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It's easier than ever to be a completist. The Internet makes it easy to track down a band's complete discography, and digital distribution hubs like the iTunes Music Store make it easy to cherry-pick far-flung tracks from B-sides, undesirable soundtracks, or weird compilations. But the completist bug never really bit me. There are lots of artists that I like, but no artist that I like with such intensity that I've felt compelled to track down everything they ever released. I did, however, feel glimmers of that completist feeling in my relationship to a record label in the mid-Aughts, specifically Apestaartje, a Brooklyn-based electroacoustic label with an unweildy name (I'm still not sure how it's pronounced). Apestaartje's release history began in 1998, and by 2006 they were essentially my favorite label: I owned most (but not all) of their back catalog, and I would unquestioningly purchase any new record that they released. M. Rösner's Morning Tones appears to be the label's final release (it came out in 2006 and nothing new has appeared since). Inasmuch as there can be a fitting way to close up shop, this album is it: it encapsulates everything that the label does well. Specifically: it arranges sounds that are clearly made by computers (sustained drones and busy chattering) next to sounds made by what I consider the most lovely of the acoustic instruments (acoustic guitar, piano, violin, and what may be an accordion). Specifically: it is minimalist, delicate, vaguely pastoral, a little bit sad. Even the title works as something of a small manifesto for the label, in the way that it uses the humble everyday beauty suggested by the adjective morning to humanize the slightly cerebral and abstract noun tones. I’m sad to see the label disappear, and sad to feel my nascent completist impulse come to an end, but every morning I wake to a playlist that contains most of the Apestaartje records, and I can confirm that they make a very satisfying set of morning tones indeed. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: M. Rösner >> "Morning Tones" PS: As I wrote this post, I used time-lapse screen capturing software to record my writing process. It may entertain some of you to see the thing claw its way into sense:

2006 : 03 "Pieces of the People We Love" by the Rapture

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For a short time in the mid-Aughts, I read a blog called "Teaching The Indie Kids To Dance Again." I don't read that blog any longer (it's been defunct since 2006) but the phrase that the author used for his title struck me as nicely zeitgeist-y at the time, and has stuck with me as a useful little sense-making tool, one way to reveal a pattern in the ebbing and flowing of trends over the course of the decade. Viewed through its lens, the long-ago 90s began to seem like a period when "alternative" or "indie" music lost touch with the kinesthetic impulse, surrendering the domain of repetitive beats to rival genres (electronica, hip-hop). If we accept that, then the Aughts begin to seem like a period wherein indie musicians reclaimed these pleasures, all at once remembering hey, moving your body? It feels good! As a sense-making narrative, this one, like all others, simplifies some things and leaves others out, but it's not without its share of explanatory power, helping to put early-decade developments like the "electroclash" movement and Peaches' embrace of the banging 808 into a context that also includes dance-punk acts like !!! and the Rapture. The Rapture's most lasting contribution to this story may have come early, with the cowbell-happy "House of Jealous Lovers" (2003), but their 2006 album Pieces of the People We Love represents a very fine extension of the energies therein, and it blows off the torpor that afflicts your average hipster at least as well as any other full-length rock album from this decade. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: The Rapture >> "Pieces of the People We Love"

2005 : 50 "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" by the Hold Steady

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A few years back, I did some writing on the Hold Steady, noting that while their 2005 album Separation Sunday rarely strives, on a sonic level, to provide anything more than old-fashioned bar rock, it lyrically functions at a very high standard, ultimately emerging as a song cycle that rivals The Mountain Goats' great All Hail West Texas. The characters on Separation Sunday are born-again Christians or people struggling with drug addiction, or both, and all activity on the record is permeated by an air of dead-endedness, although one punctuated by moments of clutching, desperate hope. See, for instance, this moment in "Your Little Hoodrat Friend": Your little hoodrat friend's been calling me again and I can't stand all the things that she sticks into her skin like sharpened ballpoint pens and steel guitar strings she says it hurts but its worth it tiny little text etched into her neck says "Jesus Christ lived and died for all our sins" she's got blue-black ink and it's scratched into her lower back says "damn right he'll rise again" —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: The Hold Steady >> "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"