This Is What a Music Post Looks Like

The weather in DC is atrocious.

It's one of those lack-of-weather days where you almost can't feel the temperature difference between outside and inside, and the only thing that characterizes the day is the complete lack of color when the clouds turn everything to grey. The sky has opened up, but not in the sort of way that causes students to scurry frantically between buildings, books servings as impromptu umbrellas in a torrential rainstorm. It's the sort of mist that you can't really define or avoid, and so you just walk through it, squinting as drops of water rest on your eyelashes and an uncomfortable clamminess works its way through your bones.

Anyway.
As a result of this, it's also one of those existential crisis days for me.
As a sort of follow-up to my last entry, I'm in a bit of an ironically apathetic panic. My education seems pointless, I'm unmotivated, and I just feel like I'm wasting money and time in these classes.

Enter playlist therapy.
In accordance with my lack of motivation, I'm too lazy to make a real playlist. Plus I'm in the mood for epicness, so I'm making it my mission to listen to about seven full albums front-to-back throughout the course of my day/night. It's no Apex, but everything's got it's place, yeah?

So here we go, in no particular order (except the one in which I am listening to them, which is random)...

1. In Our Bedroom After the War - Stars
Epic epic epic epic epic and made entirely for rainy days.
Potentially the most cohesive album I've heard. It manages to be uniform in sound without being dull and repetitive. The album lulls and rocks and carries the listener from the wonderfully synth-heavy instrumental opening track "The Beginning After the End" to the final seven-minute title track. Slow building tracks and perfect harmonies between the etheral Amy Millan and Torquill Campbell lull the listener into a seamless dream-like state in the very best of ways.

Download: The Night Starts Here, Take Me to the Riot, Bitches in Tokyo

2. Set Yourself on Fire - Stars
The predecessor to In Our Bedroom, Set Yourself on Fire functioned today as the more lively, though slightly less mature, answer to my gloomy mood. "What I'm Trying to Say" is potentially my favorite song of all time. As Campbell once announced before performing the piece live, "This song is about fucking and death." Its multilayered beat and carpe diem fuck-'em-all lyrics combine to form a three-and-a-half minute no-fail tour de force. The rest of the album follows in the same vein.
Download: What I'm Trying to Say, Reunion, The First Five Times

3. Pinkerton - Weezer
My first favorite album ever. Originally crafted to be a concept album (this admittedly would have been a fail), Pinkerton serves as the pinnacle of Weezer's discography. It is the epitome of eccentric frontman Rivers Cuomo's style (though he doesn't know his own talent): a collection of confessions, apologies, and love songs expressed through charmingly simple and almost uncomfortably honest lyrics. It also works on shuffle. He screams, he whispers, he makes awkward references to lesbians and half-Japanese girls. It's perfect. Also home to my second favorite song of all time, "El Scorcho."

Download: Falling for You, El Scorcho, Across the Sea (epic!)

4. The Con - Tegan and Sara
I know, you were all waiting for this one. My favorite, and perhaps the ultimate (yes, ultimate), album to listen to front-to-back. With 14 songs coming in just over 30 minutes, The Con is potentially Tegan and Sara's best work to date, all at once featuring their classic harmonies while managing to reach toward the experimental. With a higher production budget, and therefore quality, than any of the other albums, the Quins take on a variety of musical styles, from the standard poppy "Back In Your Head" to the electronic, looping, "Are You Ten Years Ago" to the haunting, quirky "Like O, Like H." Despite the variation among songs, always consistent is the raw and honest emotion that carries the album through a full story arc. I have listened to this album a countless number of times, and I can guarantee that there is always always always something new and wonderful to discover.
Download: THE WHOLE THING
But no, really: The Con, Nineteen, Dark Come Soon, Back in Your Head (demo, if you can)

Okay, I'm actually going to give it a rest for now because (1) I've only gotten this far in listening today anyway, (2) I have a TON of work that I've been putting off through this, and (3) this shit is getting real epic.

To be continued.