Snailboat, Snail Away

rgr-pop:

pussy-strut:

synecdoche:

• I was fifteen when this album came out and my favorite lyric in the whole world that year was “You seem so out of context in this gaudy apartment complex” and I have no idea why.
• +10 points for JFK references.
• I will continue to wait for a second album until I die.
• But at least they will live on in movie trailers?
• Iron & Wine’s cover of “Such Great Heights” on the Garden State soundtrack.
• STREETLIGHT MANIFESTO’S COVER.
• “Will someone please call a surgeon who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart?” + “Your heart won’t heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures” = The Postal Service were pretty much the musical version of Grey’s Anatomy.
• If you didn’t swoon at the “I kissed you in a style Clark Gable would’ve admired” lyric then you were cold and dead inside.
• OH ALSO, “BRAND NEW COLONY”
• Ben Gibbard should have married Jenny Lewis instead of Zooey Deschanel.
• It’s weird that “I want life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd” wasn’t my yearbook quote in ‘05.
• I mean, in retrospect all of these lyrics were really stupid but whatever.
• Maybe The Postal Service were my Guns N Roses. 

This is one of the first albums I remember liking self-consciously, “in spite of myself.” Because I have always been awful, even when I was thirteen (or whatever), I found a way to feel superior by liking a thing that I knew was overwrought and sort of precious. Whatever. I listened to this album and made French toast like every day the summer before ninth grade. I made fun of people for listening to Deathcab. What I’m saying is I started out as an indie-rock bully and I expect I’ll die that way. Still know all the words to this album. Obviously.

Most of Pilot’s feelings were the same as mine were once. I bought this album, like, the week it came out, I was on a totally platonic date with some boy. I always picked on Death Cab fans though, really, until Plans became my bedtime album. I don’t think I even appreciated Transatlanticism until I was like 21.

If I like any of Give Up now it’s probably only “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” and this gaudy apartment complex is a great moment but it’s the exact opposite of something I relate to. The exact opposite of anything I value.

I’m toying with the idea of liking “The Dream of Evan and Chan,” though.

This album was a lot of things to a lot of people. I remember getting the CD in high school from my math teacher, who loved it, and made me listen to The District Sleeps Along Tonight, and the part where he goes, “This is where it turns into a dance song!” 

Also, weird shit, universe. I just bought the double LP of this last night off interpunk. Get out of my head, internet.