burn, piano island, burn


so, for the second time is as many years, the end-ish of a year also marks the end of one of my favorite all-time bands, the blood brothers. it was october of 2006 when i waxed as poetic as i could about what i didn't know at the time would be the brothers' final album. the album couldn't have been a better and more consistent listen from the first track to the last. the last song on the record is called 'the giant swan'. i now wonder if they were prophesying it being their swan song. maybe they weren't at the time. maybe they were. who knows.

two years ago it was bearvsshark that called it quits. if i were to put together a list of my favorite bands of the last ten years (the period in my life that is more defined by music than any other span), it would go like this. 3. bearvsshark 2. brand new. 1. blood brothers. through attrition, brand new is the only one that remains. as weird and disconnected as brand new's frontman can be, it wouldn't suprise me in the slightest if i heard tomorrow or ten years from now that brand new was calling it a day.

i don't know if my ramblings here on in person ever turned anyone other than andy on to the blood brothers. their sound is and was far from accessible. you absolutely could not and can not decipher most of their lyrics without the liner notes in front of you. if you don't like loud, you won't like the blood brothers. if you don't like using your imagination to paint your own picture on top of the musical canvas that they lay out for you, you won't like the blood brothers. they had a unique ability to write a pop song and layer in with so much noise and frenzy that it didn't hit you until about the fifth time through that you were listening the the hardcore equivalent to justin timberlake. alright...alright. that may be stretching it a little, but this is my own little last ditch effort, my own eulogy written in the hopes that you'll consider spinning a blood brothers album sometime before you die or sometime before you lose all your angst, whichever comes first.

so, farewell blood brothers. farewell and good day. may your creative juices continue to spill forth and somehow make their way into my ears. and if they do not, thank you for the good times you have given me and the good music you left for me to enjoy.

love, indeed, rhymes with hideous car wreck.