Spitball Army

What I plan on listening to and looking at this week, and other things that are making my world a better place:

• Great Lake Swimmers Lost Channels  (CD)
  Every Great Lake Swimmers album – and there are four of them now – has seemed to show growth, despite the fact that they still sound just like the same band from Album #1.  The signs of a sonic break-out from the lo-fi, acoustic, dreamy somnolence of Great Lake Swimmers and Bodies and Minds were apparent on 2007’s Ongiara, where the lo-fi was turned down and the drums and bass were turned up (ever so slightly).  Lost Channels begins with “Palmistry,” sounding like a cousin to REM’s “Losing My Religion” with its chimy guitars and gentle backbeat.  The album flows gracefully from these pop-flavored moments to the more familiar quiet ones, such as “Stealing Tomorrow” and “Concrete Heart,” in which vocalist Tony Dekker sings a chorus of conversational poetry:

  This is the place where I felt
  Like the world’s tallest self-supporting tower
  Or maybe number two
  At least for a little while, anyway.

  It is a joy to listen to a band grow steadily while they keep a firm hold onto their musical identity; I’ve been doing so in my truck for almost an entire week now.  And, seeing that the band is playing a gig at The Earl in Atlanta this coming Friday (10 April), I may be listening to them extremely soon on a road trip.

  [audio:Great_Lake_Swimmers___Palmistry.mp3]
  “Palmistry” by Great Lake Swimmers, from Lost Channels (2009)
  
  [audio:Great_Lake_Swimmers___Concrete_Heart.mp3]
  “Concrete Heart” by Great Lake Swimmers, from Lost Channels (2009)

• Printable Paper (website)
  Thanks to Wendy at A Passion for Letter Writing (dot com), I was introduced to Printable Paper (dot net), where a plethora of paper layouts can be downloaded, via pdf, for free.  Somebody out there is about to receive a handwritten letter from me, written on dotted plotting paper, courtesy of this site.  You haven’t lived until you’ve tried to write a letter at a 45° angle on graph paper.  Well, okay, if you’ve jumped out of a plane or even bungee-jumped one time, you have most likely lived a more exciting life than me, but it was a unique thrill for this right-angler to challenge his horizontal-line mentality with that exercise.  See how creative you can be, and send a kind friend of yours an unexpected update on your week’s activities, written on a volleyball score sheet!  It’s the gentlest form of shock and awe.

• Water (consumable)
  Yep, good old H₂O.  I started a carbohydrate fast on Thursday, and by Saturday morning had one of the worst ketosis headaches ever.  By Saturday night, I was nearly incapacitated, physically.  So incapacitated, in fact, that I forgot that one sure way to speed up the process and get past the hump is to ingest lots and lots of water.  I started doing so on Sunday morning, when it finally occurred to me, and within five hours was feeling no pain.  Good old H₂O.  That little episode was enough to make me an ardent fan, until I forget – again – how truly awesome (and essential) water can be for a body.