A melody, a guitar riff, a drum break, are all simple auditory elements that can instantly transport a listener to another place and time. A set of 10 or 12 songs can embrace a generation of kids, adults, or even teenagers, reminding them of a place in time. Great bands do this easily. Mediocre bands can too, if on a smaller, less life-changing scale. Jimmy Eat World has this year for the 207-person strong graduating class of Ypsilanti High. Everyone I know owns their self-titled, essentially their breakout record, and has at least one song inextricably wrapped in memory.

Jimmy’s is a band that binds us. I usually consider myself a unique individual, at least taste-wise, so I should despise all Jimmy Eat World output by rights. Simplistic, no-duh pop-rock? J-14 lyrics and melodies that rip off Weezer like it’s going out of style? The indie-nerd in me withers and dies when I say this, but I don’t hate it. It’s not half as original as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or as intriguing as British Sea Power, or as innovative as just about anything from the last ten years, of course. My love affair with this sound has almost nothing to do with the sound�it’s about shedding all sensation of being an individual, or unique or different or independent. It’s feeling part of a generation, a part of my class, c/o 2006.

Jimmy Eat World songs are my high school years. Sophomore year, when I was slowly but surely losing my best friend to his Courtney Love of a girlfriend and he refused to dump her ho-ass and see that she was blatantly screwing him over�”Get It Faster” fueled my revenge fantasies, which all interestingly enough involved eggs and parked cars. He was a bastard, and damn it if Jim Atkins didn’t understand that. I was totally the jilted protagonist/antagonist of that song, and it will forever be the tune I hark back to when I am feeling cynical and jaded and bitter. It’s misguided angst, pointless anger. It’s what we feel.

These are the high school memories that we all share, even if we experienced them separately. We all remember the tune behind each heavy dance with that boy or girl we were crazy about, right? That was “A Praise Chorus,” conjuring up that spinning sensation of dancing your life away and thinking “yes! I can tell them how I really feel!” There were the hyper-intense football games shouting ourselves crazy, and late-night joyrides around a muffled city with the radio up. Whenever I was feeling particularly splendiferous (and in the mood to use such words as “splendiferous”), I’d pack my CD player full of new batteries and take a walk downtown with “The Authority Song,” full of a quite smug sense that I, at 16, could do whatever the hell I wanted (at least, what was possible without a driver’s license).

Will the songs fade with the passing of time, and all its sickening crimes? Hopefully not. If I lose the mixtape backing these four years of crowded thoughts, there won’t be much of me left to take to college.

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I can’t speak for anyone but myself. So when I say that there comes a time in the devotion of every fan of Austin band Okkervil River that he must stop in his tracks and give serious thought to what his reaction to these songs would be were they croaked by Conor Oberst�a disquieting thought to the most discerning listener, but terrifying to one with a confirmed soft spot for I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and a clandestine habit of spinning his copy of Lifted, putting on a hoodie, and feeling safe�I’m not actually speaking for anyone but myself. But if no other rabid Okkervil fans have wondered if the songs they’re describing so forcefully as “prose poetry” are just Bright Eyes tracks sans quaver and child-prodigy mythology, I’d be surprised.

What can one do to reassure oneself? It might be best to reassess the whole love affair from the beginning. So, then: if you came to Okkervil River relatively early, before last year’s Black Sheep Boy blew the band wide open, then it’s stuff like “The War Criminal Rises and Speaks” that won you over�hardly innocent of the slow build and mid-song explosion so beloved of the bands you mock, its spiral-staircase shuffle and subsequent plunge are nonetheless irresistible, particularly when wedded with Will Sheff’s disciplined, symmetrical libretto, and if you’re a fan of soft-edged suburban imagery, it didn’t take much more than that “The heart takes past Subway, past Stop and Shop, past Beal’s, and calls it coming home” line to get you on Okkervil’s side. Maybe you’re just annoyed by the demonization of evil, and happy to find a catchy warning of its universality. (”Our blood-spattered criminal is inscrutable,” Sheff sneers at the end. “Don’t worry, he won’t rise up behind your eyes and take wild control. He’s not of this time. He fell out of a hole.”) Hannah Arendt isn’t someone you expect to find fronting a rock band.

On the other hand, if you signed on after the release of Black Sheep Boy, it might have been “Black” that secured your loyalty�robust, rollicking, and unaffectedly American-sounding, it juxtaposes convertible-on-freeway music with dark, violent lyrics in true Summerteeth fashion, and if Sheff’s lest-ye-be-judged moralism is subtler and less Aesopian here, it’s also more effective; for a lovestruck, vengeance-crazed killer, it’s amazing how little “Black”’s protagonist actually gets done. And that the song slots neatly into Okkervil’s legendarium of an album is no small feat either.

Finally, if you’re really a Johnny-come-lately�in fact, let’s say you are; I’m good at speaking for myself�it might have been a song off Black Sheep Boy Appendix that caught your ear. It might have been “Narcocorrido,” which, for a cryptically titled track on an EP billed as an “appendix” to a complicated, hyper-literary album centered around the romantic and criminal exploits of an antihero taken from a ’60s folk-pop song, is an awful lot of fun. If there’s a catchier way of arranging the lines “You never earned your soul / I know, but I’m gonna try” I don’t know what it is.

So does all of this make you feel better? It might not. In a lot of ways there isn’t much difference between Okkervil River and Bright Eyes�both Sheff and Oberst are earnest, ambitious, possessed of at least a modicum of articulacy; both are students, albeit to different degrees, of the quaver-or-scream school of enunciation; both write songs centered around their lyrics, with music that supports page after page of prose-formatted verbiage; both are tailor-made for the kind of fans you don’t like. What Okkervil has that Bright Eyes doesn’t is restraint, care, discipline�and, most importantly, a real band. If there’s one thing that could turn Okkervil River from a folky, lyrically gifted indie outfit into your new favorite band, it’s the evolution of the music backing up Sheff’s suburban gothics, from the pleasant shuffle of “War Criminal” to the glorious American pop of “Black” and “Narcocorrido.” And they are your new favorite band, aren’t they? I know I’m not just speaking for myself.

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In Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is an ordinary man who is transformed overnight into an insect. In Richmond, VA, post-rock band Gregor Samsa’s debut album, 55:12, there are no such dramatic transitions. Subtle, incremental change is the order of the day.

This wouldn’t come as a surprise to you, given I’ve just cursed them with the tag of “post-rock band”, but it’s easy shorthand for the kind of slow, moody, delicate music they make. My feelings towards this oft-maligned genre have evolved much over the years. While I felt a lot of love for the noisy squalls of Mogwai’s “My Father My King” or “Christmas Steps”, their mellower songs seemed slight and inconsequential. It was also easy to dismiss Godspeed! You Black Emperor as purveyors of nothing more than drawn-out crescendos. As my attention span and ear for subtlety (or possibly just my tolerance for pretension) increase, I find myself drawn more and more to post-rock’s deep waters.

Gregor Samsa may be referred to by some as “just another” post-rock band. This is fair enough for mass-downloaders who need to be sold on a song in the first minute, but it’s hardly the point of the genre. On the surface, most post-rock sounds identical � it’s in the nuances and details that its creators realise their ideas and visions.

This is why Gregor Samsa can still be essential listening, despite the clear sonic parallels with aforementioned Godspeed and Mogwai, as well as Sigur Ros, Rachels and Low. Just as each new album by these artists can be a revelation despite strong similarities (unlike successive albums by, say, Pearl Jam), 55:12 is an important step (sideways) for the genre. Sure, it’s 2006 rather than 1999, but who’s counting?

The biggest difference between Gregor Samsa and their predecessors is the “pop” potential of their songs. Obviously I’m using the term loosely, but each track functions well as a standalone piece and most have some kind of vocals (even if they are well back in the mix). Most exceed the six-minute mark, but the individual songs have greater immediacy and autonomy than even those on Mogwai’s iTunes-ready Mr Beast.

The gentle, delay-soaked introduction to “Young and Old” sounds reminiscent of like mid-90s Low and the angelic, wistful vocals enhance the feeling. Mid-way the band segues through soft guitar downstrokes into a rising string section, moving inexorably towards the big orchestral-cum-noise-rock climax.

“Lessening,” with its delicate Rhodes and shimmering cymbals, also builds up towards an anthemic close, this time centred on a heavenly slide-guitar part. While Gregor Samsa use vocals and lyrics more than other similar artists, they are subtle and poetic enough to allow the listener a certain subjectivity. I’m not sure exactly what this song means, but it’s beautiful.

For a summary of why post-rock still matters, these songs are hard to go past.

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The two golden rules with a cover version are that it must either bring an obscure song to people�s attention so that it gets the respect it deserved first time around, or it must do something completely different with it. With the Beatles, no one has the luxury of achieving the first objective, so the aim of the game is to smash the song apart, re-arrange the building blocks and fashion something unusual. In short, the songs must be subverted, converted, or perverted.

Do: Take the best element, chuck everything else out.

Chemical Brothers featuring Noel Gallagher- Setting Sun

Not a cover version in the truest sense, but this takes the rhythm of �Tomorrow Never Knows,� fattens it up, and adds wailing sirens and new lyrics to create a Frankenstein�s monster of a tune. It�s sufficiently different for the Chemicals not to have to share royalties, but similar enough that it had a working title of �Tomorrow Never Noels� and it�s is certainly one of the noisiest UK number ones of the last decade.

Do: Inject oestrogen into proceedings

The Breeders- Happiness is a Warm Gun

Where to start? This track is the highlight on an album (1990�s Pod) that was the equal of anything the Pixies produced. Just listen to Kim Deal�s voice, where every syllable is lovingly pronounced, or Tanya Donnelly�s softly sung chorus. It also boasts typical Steve Albini production�wherein each instrument sounds like it was recorded in a different country. The reason it makes this list, though, is the streak of pure femininity that goes through it�not simply that there�s a female vocal, but the way it rocks out in such an unobvious, un�male way. There�s an understated power that men with instruments just aren�t capable of going on here.

Don�t: Listen to this song

Wet Wet Wet- With a Little Help from My Friends

This was released as a charity record for Childline�a telephone number that children could call if they were being abused. But it still doesn�t excuse it. Impressively, Marti Pellow manages to sound worse than Ringo Starr. I think it�s the ooh�s that prefix every line of the chorus that really do it for me. Those ooh�s also represent the band injecting their own style�a terrifying thing. In fact the only thing more terrifying is their version of The Troggs� �Love Is All Around.�

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“Derivative” can be a damning indictment for a new band. Who wants to listen to music that sounds exactly like music they have already listened to? It is a requirement, along with mathematically impossible hair and a goofy name, that new bands bring a new dish to the indie smorgasbord. Otherwise, a band just gets labeled as a Decemberists cover band right out of the gate, and where can they go from there? Not very far.

Take Boston’s Aberdeen City. Upon listening to their record, The Freezing Atlantic, their influences are not actually that obvious; the mere fact that they are influenced in the first place is what sticks out. The listener is immediately struck with a feeling of “I have heard this band before,” and then cranes their brain to figure out who those inspirations might be. The songs are melancholy, atmospheric, with the occasional disco drum and terrible lyrical couplets. So who did Aberdeen City steal those ideas from?

Every alternative American band in the past 5 years, essentially. Take a look at the bands they have opened for recently: Stellastarr*, British Sea Power, The National, Elefant, The Go! Team, and We Are Scientists. If you like that scene, you’ll like this band�as for sound, Aberdeen City are equal parts Arcade Fire and Killers, with a generous dose of Interpol blending it all together. Singer/bassist Brad Parker has a caterwaul/whine/bark that manages to blend Brandon Flowers, Paul Banks, and Thom Yorke, heard on “Best Chances Are Gone.” The mid-tempo grower takes in those myriad influences to create a sound that is at once familiar, but never stodgy. The drums that build to nowhere, the depressing arpeggios, the drawn out middle 8: we have heard it all before, but we still let it take over our iTunes. Elsewhere, the songs get an upgrade in mood and energy. “Mercy” takes Interpol’s more danceable moments from Antics, adds just the right amount of The Bends sentiment, and repeats the title word until it takes on a life of its own. The song is a bottles-and-cans bouncer, falling down the stairs shambolic but still making a go to save the universe with indie-disco. Aberdeen City knows they have an army of older bands to back them up - why screw with a formula that is so clearly effective?

Thankfully, we do hit a track that does not sound egregiously like twenty other bands, with definite potential hit “God Is Going to Get Sick of Me.” Sure, the influences are still there and audible, but there is a subtlety in this track that subdues the obviousness. The main nod to Interpol comes in the whirring, chiming guitar sound. The vocals don’t sound as much Flowers as Parker, finally, and the synths in the background are cool instead of disco. All in all, this track creates what Aberdeen City are going to need to stick out among the atmospheric, American, alternative scene: an identity, an original sound, and a unique approach to a common sound. Unfortunately, the lyrics remain pretty dire.

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The May long weekend is Canada’s escape. Three�in some cases, four�days, one of which is a stat holiday, generally nice weather, newly-opened campgrounds, fireworks and the promise of the impending summer. Blue skies taper down to the green grass you didn’t realize existed until this weekend, interrupted by the leaves that you didn’t know the trees had sprouted. Suddenly, the year turns around again, feels right.

This year was the first year I fully appreciated this. I recognized the potential in this escape and saw the excitement that this summer will hold. And, in true music nerd fashion, I began immediately working on a mix CD to capture this. I needed this to be extra summery, too, because I was sharing it with People I Like, and I didn’t want to alienate them.

It takes an extra kind of spark for a song to universally capture summer, however. Music is evocative of moods, surely, but a song that everyone can slide their sunroof back to and let the breeze cut currents around their fingertips, that’s tough. And what’s even tougher is the fact that it has to be either brand-new, sparkling and untouched and full of a virgin excitement, or it has to be familiar as Kool-Aid in your backyard, as warm and close to your heart as your first bike ride with your parents.

If it isn’t the loving ghost of summer yet to be, the song must be the ghost of those past, welcoming you into a memorial embrace. And that, of course, is the essence of May Long: past and future coming only as fleeting spectres, warming the present instead of cooling it, getting you re-energized for that one last sprint through what remains of spring.

“Major Label Debut (Fast),” off of Broken Social Scene’s EP To Be You And Me, the limited edition disc packaged with last year’s self-titled record, is an example of this flighty, energized feeling. Where the normal version of it is slow, beatless, and melancholy, the fast version is exuberant, full of summer-dance drums, exuberant shouting, and giddy smiles. If anything captures the feeling of elementary-school summer freedom, it’s the way that Broken Social Scene packs their joy into this song, making it both dizzyingly expansive and strongly focused simultaneously. Their summer is one where you’re determined to do something big - you don’t know what, but you know you’re going to do it.

A song lost in the enormity of it all is Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” Cee-Lo Green’s plaintive tale of mental illness has already been the topic of many a blog; however, its hip-hop beat belies the fact that it’s an old song. My mother used to croon gorgeous old soul songs to me before I went to bed, and they remind me of a time when I had nothing to worry about, nothing planned except the next day, which would undoubtedly involve a Slurpee. Of course, to extract it from that beat is to slice it away from what freshens it, namely some prime Danger Mouse, huge and strutting. It’s the confidence of a well-built teenager stalking the beach, looking for some play/prey. Its contrast with the desperate vocals and shuddering chorus is as disparate as the divide between the sky and a quickly-moving countryside.

And as much as they’re remembered for “One Week,” The Barenaked Ladies’ “Falling for the First Time” is a song that basically sounds like cannonballs into a pool, like one of the spinning rides at the travelling fair, and like running outside to catch the Dickie-Dee guy’s bike. In Canada, at least, it’s a pop song as familiar and homey as a Mountie holding a beaver while standing in front of the CN Tower. What’s even better, though, is that it’s warm, a close friend and a charge into the future, big and bright. What better, then, to soundtrack a weekend that basically represents that charge, that last buildup before the year splinters, shatters and explodes into hundreds of different directions?

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I�ve been obsessed with cinematic montages for several years now. Last winter, while on a health kick, I attempted what would have been a video and photo montage of my progressive weight loss. As a conversation starter, I often ask people what song they�d choose if they were making a montage of their lives. I even downloaded the montage song from the �Team America� movie, which dissects the various montage clich�s with tongue in cheek enthusiasm.

The truth is that despite the unabashed lameness of this filmic cop-out, I want nothing more than to star in a montage of my own. I even have a few ideas to get the attention of the next aspiring filmmaker.

Depression
Despondent montages are most commonly found in romances and buddy movies, usually following a miscommunication or split between the two parties.

The Song: Nico �These Days.�
In �These Days,� Nico sings her woes with the raspy whisper of an insomniac chain smoker. Set to an actively finger-picked guitar and accompanied by a more sedate string section, the song sounds like how a rainy Sunday feels, especially if your rainy Sundays tend to be unaccompanied by a rhythm section. The sparse instrumentation places a greater emphasis on Nico�s very articulate vocal technique and, consequently, her lyrics. Attentive listeners can�t help but share in the singer�s pain as she carefully dissects the various ways in which her life really sucks.

The Highlights
I walk along the beach barefoot, longingly look at the lake, and dispassionately throw rocks towards the lapping waves (note: sidearm is the most dispassionate throwing technique). I consider calling my estranged friend/lover in several scenes, hesitate before dialing, and eventually opt to sink back into the couch. To conclude, my friends and I will be enjoying ourselves at a local carnival when I accidentally catch a glimpse of a happy couple holding hands and carrying some sort of massive stuffed bear, possibly wearing a gaudy hat. My shoulders hunch, I stare at my feet, and intentionally slow my pace. My friends step ahead of me and I�m alone in the shot for a slow fadeout. If the montage is used for a buddy film, the couple should be replaced with two friends of the same sex, they should not be holding hands, and the bear�s hat should be slightly less gaudy.

Revenge
Virtually every kung-fu movie has a revenge montage. Some warlord typically murders the patriarchal figure early in the film and the relative/understudy trains for the following 20 years to avenge his mentor�s death.

The Song: Comeback Kid �Wake the Dead.�
This blistering track takes a characteristically East Coast approach to the melodic hardcore, owing equal amounts to Sick Of It All and Bane. With octave solos, a call to �Rise,� a sing-a-long reprise, and a generous serving of gang vocals, �Wake the Dead� occupies the space between clich� and classic. Comeback Kid pulls all those maneuvers we�ve heard a thousand times before but executes them a thousand times better; definitely a song to put on while working on your katana technique.

The Highlights
I begin training and am barely able to complete my various exercises. I have trouble doing sit-ups and my punches fail to sway the heavy bag. To illustrate my intensity and dedication, I climb a steep mountain, in the rain, while carrying what appears to be an overstuffed backpack. I am also inexplicably bleeding from my face. My performing a series of routines is revisited throughout the montage until I complete each one with startling ease and confidence. By the end, I am bicycle-kicking pi�atas and doing various exercises while shirtless and screaming, also inexplicably. The montage ends with me breaking my punching bag with a single blow.

Rehabilitation
After an extended period of frustrated efforts to stifle a ragtag team of cultural stereotypes, the local authority figure has finally had the group disbanded and their dreams crushed. But wait! It was on a technicality. According to the never-read but quickly referenced bylaws, if any team is able to pass an assembly of seemingly unrelated tasks, they will ensure their right to continue operating. Now if only they can get their act together�

The Song: Jefferson Starship �We Built This City.�
Ranked by Blender Magazine as the worst single ever recorded, �We Built This City� is an easily digestible stab at complacency and commercialism. The synthesizer-laced bounce in the verse reeks of neon hot pants and all things 80s. The equally lame chorus comes equipped with such invigorating questions as �Don�t you remember? We built this city on Rock and Roll.� Jefferson Starship�s pump-up rock anthem so half-heartedly sells its corny, PG-13 rebellion, it almost works in its favor. Besides, it was only a matter of time before someone called out those corporations for their �corporation games.�

The Highlights
The camera focuses in on the team captain asleep in bed. My alarm clock sounds at 6:00 am, jolting me awake. I sit up, sigh, and walk off screen just as the opening lines to �We Built This City� begin. The camera cuts to my Ultimate Frisbee team performing their various passing drills underneath the rising sun. Shots include us jogging through downtown Chicago, drinking raw eggs, and studying through the night. Our drills begin to look near perfect and we even get a couple clips of the me laughing amicably with my love interest, who is of course unsure of my maturity and intent. By the end of the montage, we see a team poised and confident, ready to spite the Dean, defeat our rivals, and claim the Ultimate Frisbee trophy. And to think, an entire culture of losing was transformed with two weeks of practice.

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In an infrequent series of articles, the Stypod will be highlighting some of the best writing on Stylus Magazine. Today, Josh Love’s Seconds piece on Gram Parsons’ “$1000 Wedding.”

Alt-country should have known better, that’s for sure. You can’t create and sustain a subgenre of music based solely on the assumption that it is purer, more honest, more incorruptible, and hence superior to another, more popular, more culturally entrenched form of the same music without anticipating a motherfucker of a backlash. The persistent nose-thumbing and ceaseless, twittering cries of “Nashville sucks” that came out of the alt-country camp for years finally backfired, and now it’s phenomenally uncool to profess an affection for such overwhelmingly moribund, completely irrelevant marginalia.

Arguments made for alt-country’s well-deserved demise hinge on a number of perennially divisive factors: class, politics, perspective, intent, and perhaps most importantly, audience. Apparently, alt-country either ignores or insults the mythical 21st century southern-bred Everyman, who naturally looks towards pop country for a truer representation of his own experience. Positing alt-country as an untranslatable dead language that fails to resonate with its should-be audience is a pretty airtight supposition, as it accounts for, and summarily negates, both of its logical retorts.

Claim that pop-pacified new-country acolytes should spurn Nashville’s force-fed offerings and discover some “real” music and you’re automatically (and certainly a good bit justifiably) branded a condescending elitist fuckwad, passing judgment on the listening tastes of blue-collar Americans who work with their hands and “live” their music far more faithfully than you ever will, pussy. Counter with the argument that alt-country really is a better mirror for Middle American values and everyday concerns and you’re just hopelessly out of touch. Seriously, says the South, we don’t wanna hear that weak ish no more.

Critics have in their heads this imagined perfect modicum of the New South country fan, brimming with shitkickin’ Rebel pride and staunchly unapologetic for it, but tempered with the kind of inescapable social and financial realties that tend to make music an unconsciously ingrained part of everyday existence. Unsurprisingly, critics like to champion these unsuspecting folks and their preferred musical choices because it makes them feel all populist and junk. Which isn’t meant to suggest that there isn’t some terrifically durable pop-country out there, it’s certainly just as fertile territory as mainstream hip-hop (a much more culturally analogous point of reference), but simply that some of its window-on-the-world adherents seem a teensy bit disingenuous.

Ultimately, alt-country’s rapid devaluation can be traced back to these two nicely dovetailing ideas, that blue-collar-at-heart suburban Southerners represent the default audience that country music should aspire to reach and reflect, and that pop country has proven to be the essential thread that has woven itself into the very fabric of these people’s lives.

However, the best alt-country proves the former a fallacy and the latter a technicality. Sure, the audiences for alt-country and pop country might be miles apart, but that doesn’t mean that one is necessarily less valid than the other, or less deserves its own representative voice. As quantifiably dismissible as it would be to claim that alt-country’s audience is composed entirely of NPR-cowed Noo Yawk liberals who are only interested in guilt-free culture-slumming (this isn’t hip-hop after all, everyone’s real considerate of the womenfolk), it seems that a substantial portion of alt-country’s fan base (and this seems equally true of the artists themselves) are native or transplanted Southerners themselves, often ones who initially rejected and even reviled its cultural predominance in their Bible Belt backyards.

That said, it makes sense that our experience (shit, I guess I just showed my hand there) with country would necessarily be different from that of someone who lived and breathed the music from birth. Because we’ve apostatized country and then later returned to it, we can never truly recreate that naturalistic ease, that unconscious milieu, and so instead we pick and choose. Anything might rise to the surface: a fascination with the Church, a need to understand our racist past, a desire to reconcile our selves with our South (is it any wonder that the Drive-By Truckers’ mythic excoriation Southern Rock Opera is one my all-time alt-country favorites?). In this case, alt-country becomes an artificial prop, sometimes reflecting no more than a fetishistic urge for escapism, that’s certainly true, but just as likely, its stylized language and large-than-life symbology can be the perfect emotional signifiers for our experience, or anyone else’s for that matter. Call it conscious Southern artifice for conflicted art fags if you will, but don’t act like we ain’t earned the right to sing “Dixie.”

Now, if anyone should be taken to task for engendering that dilettantish reputation that plagues alt-country, it’s trust-fund baby, Rolling Stone groupie, and grudging godfather of the subgenre Gram Parsons, but in his all-too-brief career, Parsons proved that alt-country’s carefully cultivated artifice and free-form structural rule-breaking could be its most emotionally potent weapons. In that context, his heart-shattering tale of desertion at the altar, the 1973 classic “$1000 Wedding,” is not just a textbook example of alt-country, it’s also a truly perfect pop moment.

First off, there are the consciously antiquated, completely untranslatable details, namely the fact that a thousand bucks for a wedding is considered the absolute height of tragically misspent extravagance. There’s archaic dialect in the invitation to spike the drink of the abandoned groom, to “do him in/some old way,” and of course there are the standard-stock tropes of the “mean old mama” and the benevolent “Reverend Dr. William Grace,” who fulfills that alt-country demand to have faith haunting the perceptual edges in his insistence that “the fiercest beasts could all be put to sleep/the same silly way.”

But because “$1000 Wedding” is a perfectly artificial pop song, it doesn’t have to follow a predictable narrative arc, and therein lies its undeniable emotional pull. Parsons grabs images out of the structural ether and plunks them down in all kinds of emotionally satisfying ways, and while a more traditionally chronological reading might be able to build more dramatic tension and might better reflect the actual event in its concrete beginning and end,”$1000 Wedding” enjoys that aforementioned luxury of picking and choosing, and so we get deliberately open-ended explanations (”she only knew she loved the world”) and devastating stream-of-consciousness asides(”why ain’t there a funeral/if you’re gonna act that way”). If you’re looking for a singularly “perfect” pop moment, there’s the 1:46 mark, after Parsons has set the disoriented scene on his own, when Emmylou Harris joins him and together, with ragged, furious beauty, they sing “I hate to tell you how he acted when the news arrived/He took some friends out drinking and it’s lucky they survived.”

Yep, just another overused alt-country device, that vaguely stoic indication of hard drinking and hard living. But goddamn if it doesn’t make me tear up all the same.

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The weather’s turning cold here in Canberra and the autumn leaves have descended from the trees en masse to form a gigantic orange-brown cushion on the ground. The first frost of the year hit on Saturday, followed by showers and winds on Sunday that brought an entire bluegum down in a nearby suburb. Not a conducive environment to have to leave the house in search of coffee, but addiction is a powerful thing.

Gearing up for a polar expedition, I decided that Antarctica�s 81:03 would form the ideal soundtrack for the walk to the nearest caf�. There are few band names as apt as Antarctica, whose sole album, released in 2001, was a slab of icy synthesizer pop, conjuring visions of clear blue skies over white mountains. There were no ice floes in my suburb, but otherwise the Antarctic theme seemed appropriate.

I stepped out of my driveway with the opening synthesizer blast of �Absence� pounding in my ears. It�s like a New Order song, one that you used to sing along to whenever it came on the radio, except that it�s even better than anything New Order wrote except for possibly �Bizarre Love Triangle� and �Blue Monday.� The synthesizers sound crisp and the vocals straddle the angsty line between mid-90s emo (vocalist Eric Richter is formerly of Denver legends Christie Front Drive) and early-90s shoegazers like Ride.

The walk took me through an easement made up of a large drainage channel (flowing rapidly from all the rain) with trees and parkland on either side. The leaves crunched under my feet, compacting as I trod along and the air was chilly and slightly wet from the humidity. Entranced, I actually took a long route, delaying my coffee by a good half hour to enjoy the beauty that miserable weather wreaks on my neighbourhood.

By this time, I�d passed through the monumental �Tower of Silence� and the psychedelic �Velvet Flood� and was immersed in the Underworldly �Return to Omma Dawn.� The anthemic analogue synths reminded me of teenage techno favourites like �Juanita� and �Rowla� and I found myself in a nostalgic reverie.

Like a lot of people my mood follows a seasonal cycle, but with wintry music like this to soundtrack my life, I suspect that the cold will not dampen my exuberance.

To the weather gods, I say “bring it on.”

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A sudden lack of concentration; mindless skipping through the hallways; a steep increase in girlish giggles. Yep, I have got myself a new boyfriend. So, not only am I basking in the mindless joy of this new love interest with the obvious symptoms, I’m also reveling in the moment with music. Now, the songs soundtracking this new relationship may not fit the average stereotype of a love song. After all, there’s not a “Take My Breath Away” or even a “Wonderwall” in the bunch. This current crop of love songs will never get played at my prom, but so what? These songs are about twenty times cooler than Whitney and definitely less clich�d.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Is This Love?

Everyone’s favorite indie underdogs may not exactly typify that newfound butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling. The title of this one gives it away, though I’m still not sure this song is even about love. Might be about aliens, though I think that about most CYHSY tracks. But it fits with my mood nonetheless, for I obtained a really smart and really adorable boy. What better to listen to than intellectual Technicolor indie? The “whoa” of the background harmony and sheer energy makes me spin in my computer chair and think about hugs. Bouncy guitar riffs really are love.

Idlewild - Paint Nothing

There is nothing more romantic than buying your loved one a sketchbook. Even if that gift makes him/her so depressed that they can’t even look at you properly anymore, which is (sort of) the gist of the lyrics. But whatever�just pay attention to the mood of this giddy pop-punk. The near-pretentious metaphor of escaping one’s oppressive art school equals new-love thrill. I’m drugged with that same abdication of any and all responsibility I have to act sane. Throw open the doors, let the sunshine in, and draw to your soul’s content. Even if it’s just moronic doodles of hearts and cupids.

Graham Coxon - Bittersweet Bundle of Misery

The best way to tell someone how you really feel is to fully explain how much of a pain in the neck they are. Let your honey know that they are mean, annoying, and not as fun as they used to be. It helps to set such a sentiment to a ten dollar-lo-fi tune, especially sung in a charmingly poor British accent. Mr. Coxon understands this perfectly�many ladies have been beguiled by such tact, I’m sure. And if the couplet of rhyming “happily ever after” with “dafter” doesn’t bring a lovesick smile to your face, I don’t know what else will.

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