Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.
I was trying really hard to write this one yesterday, seeing as the city was experiencing the aftermath of one of its biggest parties in history—that post-Eagles Super Bowl bliss. But I was too hungover, I'm sorry to say. I partied too hard on Broad Street, me and 100,000 of my friends.
After the Party does a great job of relaying that feeling that maybe your "best" days are behind you, and the prevalent sadness of realizing that. "Tellin' Lies" is all about being scared shitless that you're turning 30 years old and that maybe you should stop acting like you're in your 20s "Lookers" and "After the Party" and "Bad Catholics" all reflect about relationships back when relationships were frivolous and more about having fun than building a life. "Your Wild Years," I mean, it literally has a character rummaging through a "box labeled 'Former You.'"
It's all here, and since it came out almost exactly a year ago as of this writing, it was hitting me at exactly the right time. I myself spent a lot of 2017 questioning whether my best years were behind me. It was a confusing year. I might as well have been rummaging through a box labeled "Former You" when I was writing all those "The Night That We..." blog posts.
Does After the Party offer a solution to any of these feelings, this toxic nostalgia-fueled angst? Not really. We conclude with "Livin' Ain't Easy," where we find our protagonist, still on the road running from something, still looking for fulfillment and not finding it.
Luckily, since the New Year, I'm starting to take the opposite path, and I've started to realize more often that there is a lot of joy to be found in my life. There's the obvious (new baby coming real soon) and subtle (comfortable with drinking less).
I'm still building life memories, some just as crazy as the times I had in my younger 20s. When the Eagles won the Super Bowl on Sunday night, about a dozen of us marched up Broad Street from Oregon to City Hall, passing thousands and thousands of Philadelphians, everyone drinking and high-fiving and screaming. It was collective euphoria on a massive citywide scale. It's something I'll always remember.
I'm getting better at living in the present, instead of the past. I want to be comfortable and happy even when the party is over. I'm getting there.
Good album.
After the Party
The Menzingers
2017
I was trying really hard to write this one yesterday, seeing as the city was experiencing the aftermath of one of its biggest parties in history—that post-Eagles Super Bowl bliss. But I was too hungover, I'm sorry to say. I partied too hard on Broad Street, me and 100,000 of my friends.
After the Party does a great job of relaying that feeling that maybe your "best" days are behind you, and the prevalent sadness of realizing that. "Tellin' Lies" is all about being scared shitless that you're turning 30 years old and that maybe you should stop acting like you're in your 20s "Lookers" and "After the Party" and "Bad Catholics" all reflect about relationships back when relationships were frivolous and more about having fun than building a life. "Your Wild Years," I mean, it literally has a character rummaging through a "box labeled 'Former You.'"
It's all here, and since it came out almost exactly a year ago as of this writing, it was hitting me at exactly the right time. I myself spent a lot of 2017 questioning whether my best years were behind me. It was a confusing year. I might as well have been rummaging through a box labeled "Former You" when I was writing all those "The Night That We..." blog posts.
Does After the Party offer a solution to any of these feelings, this toxic nostalgia-fueled angst? Not really. We conclude with "Livin' Ain't Easy," where we find our protagonist, still on the road running from something, still looking for fulfillment and not finding it.
Luckily, since the New Year, I'm starting to take the opposite path, and I've started to realize more often that there is a lot of joy to be found in my life. There's the obvious (new baby coming real soon) and subtle (comfortable with drinking less).
I'm still building life memories, some just as crazy as the times I had in my younger 20s. When the Eagles won the Super Bowl on Sunday night, about a dozen of us marched up Broad Street from Oregon to City Hall, passing thousands and thousands of Philadelphians, everyone drinking and high-fiving and screaming. It was collective euphoria on a massive citywide scale. It's something I'll always remember.
I'm getting better at living in the present, instead of the past. I want to be comfortable and happy even when the party is over. I'm getting there.
Good album.
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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Bad Catholics"
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Stray Observations
- The Menzingers are practically Philly natives. Scranton, PA is "practically Philly," right? They were playing at the Neshaminy Creek Brewing Co. a few weeks ago in Croyden, for some reason. I should've tried to go. I fucking love this band.
- Per frontman Greg Barnett, this album was written as a "love letter to our twenties." That puts it more eloquently than I did above. Be sure to check out all my shitty blog post love letters to my twenties, written in sloppy prose, all throughout the next ten months, right here on Puke on Your Birthday!!
- FRONT COVER: A guy looking despondent, possibly hungover, outside a closed amusement park. I'm always impressed with album covers that can so accurately and effortlessly depict the thesis statement of the album itself.
- I hope it doesn't become a concern that many of these albums were released so recently. I know it's just chance that I wrote about this and another 2017 album within three days of each other, but I did a quick check of just how much music I had from the last couple years, and albums from 2016-2018 account currently for about 1/5th of my music. So... sorry, I guess? I'll be less wise about those albums, maybe.
NEXT TIME: Against Me! as the Eternal Cowboy by Against Me!
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