From H to h.

True story. So about a year ago I quit drinking/using drugs. Did I do it on my own? FUCK NO! Addiction is some serious shit, and if you can kick a habit all by yourself, hats off to you. Not many people succeed. So, like of alot people who've tried every possibly way of getting sober unsuccessfully, I checked myself into rehab. What was it like, you ask? It was really, really boring, and consisted of alot of heroin addicts farting and shitting their brains out after eating their first solid meal after years of, well, doing heroin. I also learned about a TON of drugs I'd never heard of before. Did you know there's a whole subculture of alcoholics who drink nothing but vanilla extract? Neither did I. But I digress...

One of the things you find upon getting sober is that you suddenly have alot of free time on your hands that you used to spend either at the bar or hanging out with your annoying transvestite Mexican coke dealer. (Yuck.) You begin looking for healthier means of expression that still fuck you up on some kind of existential level, but don't inevitably kill you. In my case, instead of cramming stuff up my nose, down my throat, or into my veins, I found myself cramming the past 50 years of modern music into my ears.

In a way, you could say that I've started treating music as a drug. It's consumed most of my free time, mental space, and amazingly, in the age of free downloads, money. And like all drugs, everyone has their own personal preference.

In my case, I've found that I like heavy, slow, somewhat downtempo music; music that sounds like it was dredged from the bottom of a stagnant pond filled with warm acid and left to crystalize under the summer sun. Now the word heavy can be misleading. Heavy does not necessarily mean metal. Heavy isn't just a sound. It's an implication. I'll go out on a limb and say that Coast To Coast by Elliott Smith is heavier than anything Slayer ever recorded, because the heaviness I'm talking about isn't what's hitting your ears, it's what you're feeling once you've internalized the song as a whole. I guess you could say that I'm trying to describe heavy with a lower-case H. I'm talking about an abstract feeling, not a theatrical genre of guys in tights and face paint.

That being said, there are some amazing bands out there that, with a little searching, can be found to fit this (wait for it...) heaviness that I'm looking for to replace drugs. Since this is a blog and not a memoir on sobriety, I'll share just two of them with you for now.

First, there's Low. These guys have been around for the past 20 years, the past several of which they've spent with Sub Pop. These guys rock, in a slow, quiet, delicate-yet-heavy-in-their-own-right kind of way. They're one of the first bands to discover that when a crowd is getting loud, turning DOWN the volume will (amazingly) shut people up. This doesn't make them whisper-y pussies, though. In fact, their sound is rock solid. Where alot of bands have trouble tying their arrangements together, Low keeps things very, very tight. When people are talking about Slowcore music, they're inadvertantly paying homage to Low.

This one is from their newest album, "C'mon."


Second, there's True Widow. Why this band isn't more well known is beyond me, because they fucking ROCK. Remember Slowride? Yeah me neither, but apparently that guy decided correctly that "emo" was fucking lame and that woodworking was a better way to spend his time, a point I think most readers will unanimously agree on. After staring at planks of oak and walnut for a few years, Dan Phillips decided to give song crafting another shot, and the result was True Widow. Now, remember that this guy worked with wood for a few years, because that's what comes to mind when I listen to them: walking through a dank, dark forest. This is doomy, gloomy music for those more organically inclined than metal fans. Alot of write ups about them include the term Slowcore, but the band prefers "stonegaze," which seems pretty appropriate, considering everytime I listen to them, which is alot, I find myself gazing at the floor in an aurally induced stony haze. Did I mention that their bassist/vocalist is a total babe?

Here's a joint off their newest release, As High As The Highest Heavens And From The Center To The Circumfrence Of The Earth.


Stay fucked up, kids...