alright, seriously: why didn’t anyone ever tell me about cursive? what the fuck, people? you had no right to keep this band from me for all these years. NO right at all. i thought we were friends! i thought we shared our treasures and our fantastic discoveries! but now i don’t know if i can ever trust you like i used to. this is going to take some time to get over.

as a whole i would say the plea for peace tour was fair to good. i like the lawrence arms even though it didn’t seem like anyone else did which was a damper on that set. i was pretty un-fond of common rider (we used to be operation ivy! we’re political and conscious and soooo intelligent; so much so that our music can be very audibly just watered down op-ivy leftover crap but you can’t hate us because then you’re not all about unity like we are!), and poison the well was a little too hardcore for my usual tastes.

(i decided a good measure of hardcoreness is the ratio of screaming to singing. thus the new glassjaw cd sucks compared to the old one, because the first one had a higher ratio and was more hardcore and therefore cooler, of course, because glassjaw is a good hardcore band. PTW was probably around 70/30 most of the time, which is a little too high, because the music just wasn’t interesting enough to get me through it on the majority of their songs. admittedly it could have been that the roundhouse-kicking hardcore suburban kids were just too distracting for me to find something to like in the band’s performance, which was all-out if nothing else, so i’d be willing to give them another chance in the future. maybe. if i didn’t have to pay.)

thursday was good because they go all the way and their songs are made to be played live in front of throngs of kids who like to scream. i had a great time with them. they seem like good guys too that have fun playing for people that like to hear them play. i always appreciate getting that vibe from a band.

cursive though? i don’t think i’d ever heard a cursive song before, which i’m now really embarrassed about, because they were outstanding. and they had a cello player! and it made them sound better instead of being used as a stage accessory to make them appear more credible. it was great. dug the cursive. need to get my hands on some cursive. and some guy happily yelled, “i write my name in cursive!” up at the band after their set, which got me pretty good i have to say. oh those crazy kids.

two music blogs in a row. wooo-eeeee. seriously though, check out that minus the bear song. it’s unstoppable. get their e.p.(s). they’re excellent.

**collapsing is not in any way affiliated with minus the bear, their record label, or any subsidiary thereof, and does not profit by their endorsement of the aforementioned band except that if more people buy their stuff maybe they can afford to come down to LA to play more often since they’re from seattle.

[now hearing this: cursive mp3 of “the radiator hums”. jesus you guys… you really should have said something.]

note: if you are offended by me calling glassjaw a hardcore band, which maybe they really aren’t, then i’m sorry but i really can’t be troubled to care. and their first cd is still way better, you’re just going to have to admit it. –b