What was that line you said? Something about how time runs down.

Man, I tell ya, I really do, I don’t know how these weeks just melt away. I always end up feeling like I did nothing, or at least I didn’t do enough, but the truth is that I’m always completely shattered. Hopefully this will be the last of these such weeks, at least for the foreseeable future. The dust begins to settle, the pieces have begun to - somewhat - fall into place, and though I can’t say that things are perfect, much less ideal, I definitely can see some progress. By next month I’ll be able to get into a much different groove, I deem.

Now, as for this week, l finished the whole of the Coheed and Cambria discography, at least when it comes to studio albums. 

Day 19 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘The Color Before the Sun'

Day 20 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘Vaxis – Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures'

Day 21 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘Vaxis – Act II: A Window of the Waking Mind'
Day 22 - Coheed and Cambria - ‘Vaxis – Act III: The Father of Make Believe'

So, having listened to every single album I can definitely say I really loved pretty much everyone of them - but likely I loved the first half better. While I enjoyed these four records a lot, they do tend to sound a bit samey. That said, every single one of them was truly worth my time, not a dud in the lot. They have such a clean and well defined identity to their sound that you know you’re listening to a C&C record within seconds. And Claudio has a really great and versatile voice, and I love it when he goes into this low, husky register he uses for the quietest tunes mostly. I often think of Brian Molko’s voice when I hear his voice, and not because they sound anything like each other, but rather because both are so distinct, and they both use their own tricks and techniques that make their voices so easy to identify. This is a band I’ll be returning to in the future, for sure.

And then… then I needed to listen to something else. But what? My first choice came from thinking about the passage of time, and how this year marks the twentieth anniversary of some key moments in my life.
Day 23 - Jeniferever - 'Choose a Bright Morning’.

It’s 2006, and months before I met the girl that I’d spending the next five years of my life with, I had a friend called Alice. And Alice isn’t even her real name - I forget what it is - but everyone knows her as Alice. I’m not sure if friend is indeed the right term - we have not seen each other more than a handful of times, once here in Lisbon and then a few more in London. But through the social network of the time - Hi5 - we were friends who shared songs with one another all the time. All this to say that she had a friend there - and a real life one at that - that really caught my eye, a girl called Joana. She had long black hair with bangs, and she was quirky and wild and funny - or so she seemed to me. But she was really beautiful, and she had a taste in music that more than matched mine - she knew of bands I’d never heard of. And one of those was a Swedish band called Jeniferever. One day she shared a video on her wall, and I played it. I loved what I was listening to. So you know what I did next? Well, I never listened to anything by them ever again. Until this very week, that is. This is very much in that dream-pop, shoegazey kind of slowcore that I like - think maybe stuff like Beach House, Daughter or Cigarettes After Sex, but with some post-rock trappings in the mix, maybe reminiscent of Mogwai. It’s stupid it took me this long to get to them, really. Good stuff here, an 8/10.

Now, for these last two, I admit this with a certain sense of shame. When I was buying records on the regular, there were - above all - two labels I followed religiously, and these were Dunk! Records and Pelagic Records. I’ll not say that I bought everything they’d put out, but…. I bought a lot from these labels, and some stuff I never, ever listened to. Either because I wasn’t so inclined, or I didn’t have the time, but be that as it may… here are a few I listened to for the first time this week.

Day 24 - EF - 'We salute you, you and you!'

And probably the biggest surprise of the week, this album is a work of beauty, so emotionally wrought and  layered with pounding guitars, some shouty bits which I adored, and lots and lots of melodies to be found. This album was so good that I listened to it twice in a row. This is a 9/10 and I’ll be listening to whatever else they got.
Day 25 - PG.Lost - 'Oscillate'

Now, to be fair - I had listened to ONE song from this album some years ago, and I really loved it, so buying the record was a no-brainer for me. Hell, I even went so far as to buy their whole discography. Can you guess how many I’d listened to before? You’re goddamn right, none of them. A pattern begins to reveal itself, eh? And it’s really good - I probably couldn’t have wished for a better palate cleanser than this one. Post-rock/post-metal with a healthy dose of electronic in there, all completely instrumental, just solid and well produced. Another one to get to know better. 8/10

As for the coming week, I’m going to choose bands from twenty something years ago that I really liked - though the sound I was into at the time was wildly different from anything here so far - and I’ll give a listen- to their latest record.