CD-Tessie by the Dropkick Murphys
If you're a fan of the Boston Red Sox, you must be pretty disheartened by the fact that they haven't won the World Series in about a million years. The Dropkick Murphys sure are, so with Tessie, they're doing their part to get the Sox on a winning track.
Here's some background: way back in the early 1900s, the Red Sox won an impressive five World Series over the span of 15 years, spurred on by their diehard fan base, the Red Rooters, who used to mock the other team by jokingly bellowing the Broadway hit "Tessie." This became a fan tradition - at least until 1918, when the Rooters fell apart and "Tessie" was forgotten. Sadly, they haven't won a World Series since.
With their rousing updated version of the song, the Dropkick Murphys are hoping to change that. They've reworked the lyrics to relate the history of the song, and added rocking guitar, bagpipe-y goodness, and a handful of Red Sox players singing backup, making a track that's born to be yelled at top volume by a stadium full of drunken fans.
If you're not so big on sports, there's still something for you on this CD. The band sounds like they're having an awesome time mixing up traditional Irish strains with thick power chords and gravelly-voiced yell-along vocals. On "The Burden," a live acoustic track, they take an unexpectedly laid-back break, focusing on a soft, strummed melody and vocals reminiscent of Alice in Chains.
If you like the Red Sox, great, but if not, don't let the baseball scare you away from this short but enjoyable listen.
-Melissa Price
CD-Matchbook Romance/Motion City Soundtrack split EP
Whoa, it's, like... half-clear, dude! This EP offers quite the challenge: it takes serious effort to stop staring at the cool-ass album art and actually get the CD into some sort of playing device. Thankfully, this ridiculously difficult task is imminently worth it - the disc doesn't just sit there and look pretty, it also holds four solid songs from two of Epitaph's shiny new additions.
Matchbook Romance starts the program with the gentle "In Transit (For You)," which begins as a dreamy lullabye, but soon breaks into a crashing climax that half-buries singer Andrew Jordan's drifting voice. The second song, "Playing for Keeps," is a bit unremarkable, but the standard mopey lyrics ("Let me take the wheel and I'll crash this car/Do you have to make this so hard?") are balanced out by interesting guitar work. Jordan has a decent but somewhat generic voice; he can work a poignant line well, but these days, that's a dime a dozen.
Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack, however, has a voice that hits you like an ice cube down the spine about 20 seconds into "When 'You're' Around." Sharp, high and nicely airy, it floats along beside a glowing guitar bit over steady backing strums. And just when you think he's going to crack on the high notes, he throws some throat into it to roughen it up. Add this to the tangles of guitar, bass and drums, and you've got a couple of interesting, complex pieces of music.
-Melissa Price
Book-Around the world in poetry: Notes on Leaving by Laisha Rosnau
People get to know each other in fragments. We gradually collect people's stories, memories, and thoughts, fitting them together until there are enough pieces to make up the substance of a person. In Laisha Rosnau's first collection of poems, Notes on Leaving, she presents the reader with these pieces and then turns away to let us sort them out on our own.
Notes on Leaving reads like an abstract autobiography. The poems act as vignettes, offering snapshots of the past or scraps of a relationship. With sharp, clear imagery, Rosnau describes small but crucial details of the scenes: lake weeds twisting around ankles, stolen cigarettes, tangled sheets that still hold the scent of people who have left. As a whole, it forms a collage of the moments that make up a life and the people who come and go but always leave some trace behind.
The themes of transit and transition pervade the writing; the poems span cities, countries and decades, from riding bikes through the Okanagan Valley to hitching a ride through Australia in a sweaty van. Rosnau's recollection drifts through the places she's lived, stopping here and there to give a disordered sense of a life spent searching around this world to see what it has to offer. Her voice is consistent throughout, however, so the narrative remains strong and never seems disjointed.
Notes on Leaving provides a history of enduring images, which when combined leave you with a sense of a night spent sharing memories and getting to know someone better. Rosnau has a talent for building a complete atmosphere in a few simple but sacred-sounding words. They are definitely worth a read.
-Melissa Price
