happens to be a powerful decongestant Sunday, February 10 2008
I was actually feeling a little better today, at least by afternoon, though this might have only been because I'd take two hits of one of my favorite study drugs, pseudoephedrine, which also happens to be a powerful decongestant. (These days, though, due to the War on Meth, you have to show an ID to buy the stuff. I've already racked up two records in the kicking-through-your-door-justifying database that is being compiled.) I was able to get some good web development work done.
At some point today SOMA FM's Indie Pop Rocks turned me on to Citizens Here & Abroad, a dark guitar & atmospheric synth band with obvious influences from bands like Joy Division and perhaps Interpol (their name continues the brooding-rock tradition of band names that make references — dark or otherwise — to matters international). What makes Citizens Here & Abroad different is that the vocals are mostly sung by the band's one female member (and she plays guitar, not bass!), which is just odd enough to lead some to categorize the band as goth. There are plenty of male-female harmonies too, and these have that peculiarly dissonant (or perhaps amature) quality found more in Indie Rock than goth. The song that got me to pay $0.99 for a download from Amazon was "Secret," though I also like this song:
There was a little more snow today, but this time it came with a miserable howling wind and, from indoors at least, the outdoors became as inhospitable as the central Yukon. All the tree trunks were highlighted on their north sides with snow, giving the forest the appearance of illumination by an intense southward-pointing halogen lamp.
