Sufjan Stevens at the Beachland Ballroom, 12/16/12

I'm fairly convinced that Sufjan Stevens is a genius.  I'm also convinced that he's a pretty weird guy, and that he's aware of this.  Last night, after stumbling over some lyrics early on in his new epic 12-minute holiday masterpiece "Christmas Unicorn," he wryly said, "Who wrote these lyrics, anyway?"  Oh yeah, and let's not forget that he was wearing an elaborate unicorn headdress festooned with balloons and feathers at the time.

There's just something about the guy.  I mean, who does these things?  How many indie folk musicians would bedeck themselves with sparkles and balloons and a unicorn horn during a show?  How many indie folk musicians would release 10 discs of Christmas music, one disc for each year, in two 5 disc sets, each packaged with all sorts of extras ranging from stickers to deep, thoughtful essays on the holiday season to temporary tattoos?  How many indie folk musicians would close an album (The Age of Adz) with a 25 minute pop song ("Impossible Soul")?  How many people, period, could even write a 25 minute pop song and make the whole thing absolutely brilliant?  And how many people could get a room full of mostly twenty-and-thirty-something indie music fans to boisterously sing along to a series of traditional Christmas carols?

I certainly had high expectations for Sufjan's concert at the Beachland, where I'd seen him twice previously.  Both were great shows, and I was excited to see him perform his holiday music, which I love.  That's something I never would have thought I'd say as recently as a few years ago.  I can't say that I ever had any particular fondness for Christmas music before I started listening to Sufjan's Songs For Christmas collection.  I fell in love with the first five disc release, both for the beautiful renditions of traditional carols and (especially) for some of the best original songs of Sufjan's career.  This year he came out with the second five disc set.  It's easily even more ambitious than the first, and I'm beginning to feel that it's just as great.  So Cara and I headed over to the venue a half hour before doors opened, hoping we'd be able to get a decent spot near the stage (last time we'd been near the back), and fortunately, the line was not yet too long when we got there.

I knew beforehand that the show was going to be quite a spectacle, but when I walked into the ballroom, my eyes instantly widened at what I saw.  The stage was all decked out in holiday cheer, and that was nice enough, but to the left of the stage...

There was a giant, colorful, game-show-style wheel stretching from floor to ceiling with the names of different Christmas carols festively decorating it.  One might have guessed that this wheel would be spun during the show to select the songs that would be used for the sing-a-long portion of the night, and one would have been right.  This was all tremendous fun.  There were even hymn booklets handed out at the entrance to ensure that everyone could sing along.  Here's the cover (make note of the instructions printed on it):

Perhaps ten or twelve carols were performed sing-along style, with Sufjan, his band and the audience all celebrating the holidays together.  This was divided into two segments of the main set, the rest of which was a stunning display of musicianship easily up to the standards of any "normal" Sufjan Stevens performance.  I'm truly amazed at the diversity of his catalog, from his early acoustically focused songs to his more electronic and experimental recent stuff.  His Christmas music covers the same range.  Sufjan's music can at times be catchy, rousing, or majestic, but at its best, I'd usually describe it as "heartachingly beautiful."  A prime example would be "For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti," a fan favorite from the Michigan album featuring Sufjan's amazing voice and banjo playing which was inserted as a brief, non-Christmas interlude in the middle of the main set.  Several of his holiday songs are just as chills-inducing.  My favorite is probably "Sister Winter," which was an absolute thrill to see performed live.  I also loved "Justice Delivers Its Death," a new song in which Sufjan seems to ponder the strange contradiction of a holiday meant to celebrate Christ's birth that is celebrated with rampant consumption and consumerism.

There were several short hymns which Sufjan and his band performed a cappella, filling the ballroom with angelic harmonies.  And at other points in the show, there were bubble and confetti machines, and inflatable Santas and unicorns and enormous bouncing balls thrown into the crowd.

And then there was Sufjan, dressed as the Christmas Unicorn, climbing up onto a speaker directly above where Cara and I were standing, during an astonishingly good song that goes from gentle, playful verses to an increasingly majestic chorus before transitioning into an irresistibly danceable cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart."  It was truly a magical moment, and one that only Sufjan could pull off.  "Christmas Unicorn" closed out the main set perfectly.  After several minutes of unrelenting applause from an enraptured audience, Sufjan returned to the stage sans holiday attire for a perfect encore that filled me with nostalgia for more than one reason.

You see, the first concert I ever attended at the Beachland was Sufjan Stevens on September 13, 2005.  (I know the exact date because we have a poster from the show hanging in our apartment.  I didn't actually buy the poster at the show, but found it at a local shop years later.)  Not only was it my first concert at the Beachland, it was at that point in my life that going to concerts became a "thing" that I did.  In a sense, it was the beginning of a new era in my life.  At that show seven years ago, Sufjan was touring his breakthrough Illinois album, and last night's encore was quite Illinois-heavy, including "John Wayne Gacy, Jr.," another one of those heartachingly beautiful songs on which Sufjan's voice and lyrics do things that no one else's can.  As I stood there, I couldn't help but think of being in the same room, hearing the same music more than seven years ago, and of all the ways my life had changed since then.  In a way, it was like things had come full circle.

After playing "Come On! Feel the Illinoise!" Sufjan said he thought they had time for one more song.  I was silently hoping for one song in particular, and when he laid down the opening notes of "Chicago" on piano I was overjoyed.  "Chicago," after all, was the song Cara and I used for the recessional of our wedding, and now we were standing together, perhaps ten feet away from Sufjan Stevens himself, seeing the song performed live.  (Amazingly, earlier this year we also got to see a live performance of our wedding's first dance song, Bowerbirds' "Northern Lights.")  Talk about a perfect way to end the night!

During the show, some of the stage banter included joking about how the world was supposedly going to end in a few days.  And I thought to myself, if the world were going to end, this was a good concert to go out on!

I'm the Christmas Unicorn.  You're the Christmas Unicorn too.

Springsteen on the mind

The Amazon MP3 store recently had Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. among its sale albums.  I like Springsteen's music, but had very little of it in my collection (only Born to Run from a previous Amazon sale), so, given that Born in the U.S.A. is considered another classic album, I decided to grab it.

When I listened to it, something happened that I consider pretty remarkable.

Some background information is in order.  When I was a kid, my dad listened to a lot of Springsteen.  A lot.  Picture several CD towers full of Springsteen albums and concert bootlegs.  Apparently, I was into The Boss as a small child.  I've been told that I liked (as I called it) "Bruce music."  Somewhere around middle school, in what was undoubtedly typical preteen contrarianism, I decided that I didn't really care for Springsteen anymore.  As I matured through high school and college, my opinion swung back toward appreciation, but I didn't go out of my way to listen to much Springsteen.  When I pressed play on my iPod after downloading Born in the U.S.A., it had been many, many years since I last heard the album.

Before that first listen, if you had named any tune from the album besides the title track and asked me to hum it, I'm fairly certain that I would have been at a complete loss.  I had little to no conscious memory of any of the other songs.  Yet upon hearing the album, everything was instantly so familiar.  It was like I had never stopped listening to it over all those years.  I also found that I loved the album.  After a few listens, I'm tempted to consider it one of my favorite albums ever, something that would almost never happen so quickly with a new album.  But to my conscious mind, a few weeks ago, there was essentially no difference between Born in the U.S.A. and an entirely new album.

Think about that.  In my brain, there were neural circuits associated with the music of this album, and they had lain dormant for years upon years.  But there were powerful connections there, because a single listen to the album reactivated them so quickly and so strongly.  The same thing had not happened with Born to Run.  With that album, I knew the very famous title track well, but other than that, only a few bits and pieces rekindled vague memories; there was none of that intense feeling of familiarity.  And this makes a lot of sense - Born to Run was released almost eight years before I was born.  Born in the U.S.A. came out just before my first birthday, and considering my dad's fandom, it's quite possible that it's the album I was exposed to more than any other during my early childhood.  And early childhood is, of course, when the most rapid brain development occurs, when neural plasticity is at its highest.  I suspect that those dormant neural circuits I spoke of were already being formed when I was too young to have any conscious memories - much like how we begin to learn language before we are even a year old.

It makes sense, but it still blows me away.  Just the fact that there are parts of our brains storing specific pieces of music, and we can go years without accessing them, but they're still right there, waiting to be pulled up to conscious thought.  The human brain really is an amazing thing - I wouldn't hesitate to call it the most amazing thing in the known universe.  I'm also blown away by the power music can have over us.  Why did we evolve to be so affected by certain arrangements of sounds?

It's not surprising, really, that the me of today likes this album so much.  Some of my favorite music artists, like Arcade Fire and Pearl Jam, were strongly influenced by Springsteen.  And now, I can appreciate the lyrics in a way that would have been impossible for a child.  But at the same time, I have to guess that nostalgia plays an important role.  At times, when I'm listening to Born in the U.S.A., it seems like I can hear my dad singing along.  It's something I wouldn't have anticipated, and it's rather remarkable.

It's all so fascinating for me to think about, and I just had to get those thoughts out.  So there's my extremely nerdy exploration of the experience of hearing a great album for the first time in many years!

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Here

It's a nice feeling when great music takes you completely by surprise.  I remember well the first time I saw Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros perform live, at the Spot at Case Western Reserve University.  I knew little about the band before the show.  Here was this big group of hippie-looking people with all sorts of instruments playing big, uplifting, utterly irresistible songs that sounded like they came out of the '60s or '70s.  I was enthralled with their performance, and bought their debut album Up From Below without hesitation.  It ended up being my favorite album of 2009.  The highlight of the album, "Home," a duet with the Magnetic Zeros' frontman Alex Ebert trading off vocals with Jade Castrinos, is one of the happiest love songs I've ever heard, and probably one of my favorite songs ever.  The song helped propel the group to a decent amount of fame, and anyone who watches the NFL regularly probably heard it in the league's commercials.

In some sense, it felt to me like the band had caught lightning in a bottle with Up From Below, so although I was looking forward to the followup Here, I had my doubts that it would live up to its predecessor.  Now, having given a lot of listens to Here, I'm happy to report that those doubts were unnecessary.

I'll admit that the first time I listened to Here, a part of me was waiting for some of the big, rousing numbers that made up much of Up From Below's runtime.  Such a song never really came.  And that's why I consider Here so surprising: after the breakthrough success of their first album, they came out with a followup that is so different in sound, but at the same time, so excellent.  Indeed, the more I listen to Here (which is not an album that should be judged after one or two listens, especially if you're comparing it to its predecessor), the more I'm tempted to say it's just as good as Up From Below.

The album does retain the retro feel of its predecessor, but it's a much more mellow and more intimate affair.  I'm sure some people will be looking for another "Home."  I'd say "Home" was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and it was a wise choice not to try to copy their earlier success.  At the same time, the second track on Here, "That's What's Up," is (in a sense) a sequel to "Home," not in overall sound but in content.  It's another Alex/Jade duet, and whereas "Home" described the experience of falling in love, "That's What's Up" includes lyrics like, "Forever, hey hey love/We been best friends forever darlin, that's what's up!"  It's another very happy song, and I can't help but smile when I listen to it.  Castrinos' powerful vocals are a delight, and she takes lead vocals on "Fiya Wata," another highlight.  Ebert is an excellent vocalist himself, reminiscent of John Lennon at times.

Many songs on Here, such as "I Don't Wanna Pray," sound like they could be a group of friends singing around a campfire.  The album just emanates such great vibes.  Other standout tracks include opener "Man on Fire" and "Mayla," the centerpiece of the album, which takes great advantage of the band's large size as different instruments provide layered textures in a wonderfully chill-sounding song.  Here was self-produced, and I'm really impressed with the overall sound of the album.  I'm no audiophile, so this may not be the best description, but I'm sure some people have heard of the Loudness War, and may have noticed that albums released more than, say, 15 or 20 years ago tend to be less loud than more recent albums.  This is not a good quality of modern music, as the increased loudness means more compression,  less dynamic range, and at times loss of sound quality.  I noticed that when I play Here on my stereo I have to turn the volume up higher, like I would for an album from 30 or 40 years ago.  I feel like this adds to the old-timey nature of the Magnetic Zeros' sound.  The music has more room to breathe, and just has a nice, warm feeling to it.

The world, I think, could use more unabashedly happy folk music.  Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros have now released a second outstanding album of such music, and the gospel-folk of Here makes a wonderful companion piece to the folk-rock of Up From Below.  I very much hope that I will get to see these songs performed live!

Favorite music of 2011

With the new year here, I guess if I want to post a list of my favorite albums from 2011, I had better get to it! It was a strong year for music, from my point of view. I got to listen to a lot of really good albums; some were releases I'd been anticipating and many others were artists I discovered. There were also some great concerts. Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Chicago and The Decemberists at Nautica stand out as two of the most memorable shows I've ever attended. The former was simply one of the most epic experiences of my life, two-and-a-half mind blowing and eardrum rattling hours of post-rock mastery. The latter was an all around great set punctuated by the single most memorable song performance I've witnessed, as a huge cargo ship passed behind the riverside stage in perfect timing with "The Mariner's Revenge Song."

In this post, I decided to list my ten favorite albums of the year. I make no claim that these are the ten best albums of the year; these are strictly my opinions. I listened to about three dozen new albums this year (and at least as many albums from previous years that were new to me). There's undoubtedly lots of great stuff out there that I haven't heard, but this was a good number for me. I like being able to devote extra attention to the stuff I really like, rather than trying to listen to as many different albums as possible.

I'd like to mention When You Left the Fire by The Wilderness of Manitoba, which I reviewed here. It was released in 2011 in the U.S., and would rank pretty highly on my list, but was actually released in 2010 in Canada.

And now, to the countdown.

10. Beirut - The Rip Tide









"Postcards From Italy" off of Beirut's first album, Gulag Orkestar, is one of my favorite songs ever. The words and music together create an amazing mood of nostalgia and of being transported to another time and place. And oh, those horns! Although The Flying Club Cup was pretty good, nothing off of Beirut's sophomore LP really came close, and I found it somewhat disappointing. The Rip Tide, in contrast, has several tracks that evoke similar feelings to "Postcards From Italy," and coming from me, that's saying a lot. Key tracks: "A Candle's Fire," "Santa Fe," "The Rip Tide."

9. My Morning Jacket - Circuital









Here's another band whose previous LP disappointed me, and in this case, a lot of other people as well. Circuital is a nice return to form, just some great roots rock that adds nicely to what the band did on albums like It Still Moves and Z. Key tracks: "Victory Dance," "Circuital," "Holdin on to Black Metal."

8. The Rural Alberta Advantage -Departing









I reviewed this album from the Canadian indie rock trio after it was released. It picks up right where their first album, Hometowns, left off - "Departing is ten more tracks of the RAA's signature sound - Nils Edenloff's Jeff Mangum-esque vocals over purposefully strummed acoustic guitar and propulsive keyboard and percussion." Although I'd like to see them change up their sound a little more in the future, they certainly haven't worn out their welcome yet; there's some great stuff here. Of special note, Paul Banwatt's drumming is killer, not something you often hear in modern indie rock. Key tracks: "Stamp," "Tornado '87," "Good Night."

7. Odessa Chen - Archives of the Natural World









Odessa Chen is a little known, San Francisco-based artist who I discovered several years ago and whose gorgeously moody music characterized by stirring cello, arpeggiated electric guitar lines, and Chen's strong voice I fell in love with. This is her third album; it was funded by a Kickstarter project which I gladly donated to because I enjoyed her previous albums so much. The title of the album refers to Chen's desire to record the stories of the numerous forms of wildlife that are being driven to extinction by human activity. This serves as an overarching theme for the album, which, musically, is fairly similar to her previous work, with a bit more of a rock side. The appropriately nautical-sounding "Oh, Atlantis!" is a real standout. Key tracks: "Deer Perspectives," "Oh, Atlantis!", "The Mercy of Sound," "Cinders."

6. Bon Iver - Bon Iver, Bon Iver









This album ranked highly on a lot of people's year-end lists, and I can see why. I was really surprised by the dramatic evolution in sound here, and I personally like this album quite a bit more than the also quite good For Emma, Forever Ago. Key tracks: "Perth," "Holocene," "Calgary."

5. Motopony -Motopony








This is another album that I already reviewed. I guess it's appropriate that it ends up adjacent to Bon Iver on my list, because I wrote, "In a certain sense, I'd compare this album to Bon Iver's latest. I wouldn't say that Motopony sounds just like Bon Iver (maybe a little) but there is a similarity in that, at its heart, this is a guy with a guitar playing folk music, but then it pulls in all sorts of eclectic instrumentation and stylistic influences and becomes a wonderfully diverse (yet cohesive) collection of songs." There are several songs on this album that are just beautiful. Key tracks: "God Damn Girl," "Wait For Me," "Wake Up."

4. Various Artists - National Parks Project









Here's an album that seems to have flown under just about everyone's radar, and that's a shame. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of Canada's national parks, the National Parks Project was created, a film and accompanying soundtrack album with contributions from a whopping 39 musicians. As a big fan of Canada's indie music scene, it's not surprising that I've found much to enjoy in this album, with contributing artists including some of my favorites (Mark Hamilton of Woodpigeon and Casey Mecija of Ohbijou) and a whole host of others, such as Kathleen Edwards and Besnard Lakes' Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas. What did surprise me was how well it actually works as an album. There's a tremendous variety of sounds, but it all flows together pretty well, and I can imagine the songs here would go well with the scenes one might encounter in national parks - much of the music tends toward the pastoral or the atmospheric in sound. With twenty tracks, It's a pretty long album, but it's well worth listening to the whole thing. Key tracks: "Welcome to the Dark," "Sunblood," "Mystic Morning," "Wapusk," "Kathleen Lake."

3. Moving Mountains - Waves









After two albums of epic post-rock music with emo vocals, Moving Mountains decided to change things up, leaning more toward the post-hardcore side of their sound with an album of songs that are generally heavier and more to the point. Although I do miss their more drawn out post-rock numbers, this album still has the essence of what makes Moving Mountains' music great, with soaring melodies, heavy riffs, and plenty of emotional intensity. If you are into the sort of music that comprises the rest of my list, there's a chance this won't be your cup of tea, but sometimes it's nice to just rock out. Actually, this is the one album on my list that I'd describe as great workout music. Key tracks: "Where Two Bodies Lie," "Furnace Woods," "Full Circle."

1. Okkervil River - I Am Very Far and Ohbijou - Metal Meets (tie)









Two albums stood well ahead of the pack for me, and when it came down to it, I couldn't decide which one was my favorite. (I previously reviewed both.) Okkervil River is my favorite band, so I was expecting to love I Am Very Far, and it didn't disappoint. The band definitely pushed their sound to new places, with a variety of instrumentation making this their biggest sounding album. At times raucous, at times gorgeous, and with more of Will Sheff's reliably brilliant lyrics, it's another outstanding addition to the Okkervil catalog. That another band released an album I ended up loving just as much is a testament to how much Ohbijou has grown as a band. They, too, really explored new places with their sound, adding synths and heavier guitars to help create lush dreamscapes, with the string section and Casey Mecija's angelic vocals reminding the listener that this is still the Ohbijou we know and love from their previous releases. Yet this is definitely their most confident-sounding, and in my mind best, album so far. Key tracks: "We Need a Myth," "Show Yourself," "Wake and Be Fine," "The Rise" (I Am Very Far), "Niagara," "Balikbayan," "Anser," "Scalpel Blade" (Metal Meets).

Treasures in the cheap bin, featuring Lumatic

I've written before, in a journal on last.fm, about what fun it can be to look for new music by browsing through cheap used CDs and picking out some to buy. To quote from my previous post:

From time to time, I'll go to a store that sells music and browse their used section, then pick out an album (or a few) that I've never heard of but that looks interesting. There are hits and misses, of course. The misses don't hurt much when the CDs can cost as little as a dollar, and when I get a hit in this way there's just something really cool about it. Some of my tactics for increasing my success rate:

-Look for interesting album artwork.
-CDs packaged in digipaks instead of jewel cases seem more likely to fit my tastes (not that I ignore those in jewel cases).
-Look at the liner notes to get a sense of the lyrics and (more importantly) see what sort of instrumentation the music employs.

The best place, by far, that I know of for buying used CDs is an independent store in Columbus, Ohio called Play It Trade It. It's a store that is mainly focused on video games, but for some reason they have all sorts of random CDs there, and at really good prices.

Cara and I discovered Play It Trade It when she still lived in Columbus - it's right down the street from her old apartment - and we would often stop in there when I visited. Now that we are only in Columbus every couple of months or so, we still like to take the opportunity to revisit one of our old haunts. Thanksgiving weekend was a good opportunity, with the store having its usual Black Friday sale, including buy-one-get-one on all CDs. I picked out six albums, and it turned out to be a nice haul. A quick rundown of the albums, with prices:

TV on the Radio - Dear Science ($3.96) - This art rock group is the one really well known band on the list, and the only band I had any familiarity with, but I hadn't listened to them much at all, and thought this was a good chance to check out one of their albums. It's quite good.

Stars of Track and Field - Centuries Before Love and War ($1.99) - I knew nothing about this band except that their name is the title of a Belle and Sebastian song that I really like. It turns out that they are indeed named after the song in question, but their soaring, electronically-tinged rock sounds nothing like Belle and Sebastian, which came as something of a surprise. Still, I've found the album enjoyable.

Broken Spindles - Inside/Absent ($1.99) - I picked this up partly because it's on the Saddle Creek label. It's fairly minimalist electronica, and it seems pretty good, but with so much music on my plate it hasn't really inspired repeat listens.

Blake Miller - Together With Cats ($1.99) - I got this album because Miller is a local Cleveland artist on the Exit Stencil label. This album is pretty simple lo-fi indie folk, but there's a decent variety in sounds from song to song, and it's quite a charming listen.

Eulogies - Here Anonymous ($1.99) - This one definitely takes the silver medal for this trip to Play It Trade It. The infectious, catchy indie rock has a sound appropriate for the band's Southern California home, and might appeal to fans of Weezer. Strong melodies, a nice variety of guitar and synth tones, and some welcome female guest vocals on a few tracks help Eulogies avoid the risk of becoming generic. I've listened to this album a lot, but not as much as...

Lumatic - Swimming to the Hook ($1.99) - With the buy-one-get-one deal, that's six CDs for $7.94 plus tax. Quite a bargain, I'd say, especially with this hidden gem included.

Sometimes I'll come across a really good album and just wonder, how is it that this is so obscure? I'm well aware that most good musicians don't achieve real fame, but this is a fantastic album that seems to have been produced with a lot of effort and care, and the band Lumatic has just 67 listeners on last.fm. (To put that into perspective, my favorite band, Okkervil River, has over 500,000 listeners, and they're far from being the biggest band in the world). I searched the web for reviews of Swimming to the Hook and literally all I could find were two short customer reviews on cdbaby.com. It's almost criminal that this album (released in 2007) got so little attention. Hopefully I can do just a little bit to rectify that.

The title of the album, pulled from the lyrics of "Go Fish," is appropriate, as much of the music feels like it could be the soundtrack to dreamy underwater scenes. The songs here are richly textured, with a great variety of sounds that flow together organically. Katherine Miller's sultry, expressive voice is the clear star. Behind it is some nicely complex guitar and bass work, with synths, cello and accordion adding further layers to the lush dreamscapes. Lumatic's music can comfortably switch from laid-back to intense both within and between songs. It's often thrilling to experience. I can't really think of another album that I would consider similar to this one, although I do get something of a My Brightest Diamond vibe at times. I like Lumatic more, though, in part because they clearly like to rock out and know just when to do it.

They can also create music that I'd have to describe as pretty darn sexy, such as on "Abduction Fantasy," where Miller's vocals really shine. Shortly after, "Reassemble" provides a nice change of pace, with more of an acoustic feel. There are a number of really wonderful moments on this album, and one of my favorites comes partway through this track, when Miller's voice and the music drop out for a moment, and then a lonesome harmonica enters in a way that's somehow just perfect. The next, and second-to-last, track, "Chugalug," is a superb climax, with a great buildup to the heaviest guitar sounds on the album. The short "Serial Monogamist" is a fitting denouement.

On a number of occasions, I've wondered just how it was that some little-known album made its way to a store on North High Street in Columbus, Ohio. That's again the case here, although the NYC-based band does have Ohio roots, with Miller having studied at Oberlin Conservatory. Still, the overwhelming obscurity of this triumphant piece of work bewilders me.

Check out Lumatic here!

A future that is better than today

I recently spent a few days in Washington, D.C., for the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting. It just so happened that one morning there, as I was eating a hotel breakfast, Tommy Lee Jones appeared on TV in a commercial for Ameriprise Financial and began speaking with this pronouncement: "In America, we believe in a future that is better than today."

This got me to thinking. Well, to be honest, it's something I've been thinking about for a while, but this commercial provided a perfect impetus for further, more focused reflection. "In America, we believe in a future that is better than today." Sure, it's a nice slogan for a commercial, but is it true?

I remember that when I was a child, the future seemed full of promise and potential. Looking back over the course of human history (in what's clear to me now was a very over-simplified way), it seemed like progress was something that happened naturally. Sure, there were still all sorts of problems for humanity to address, but as civilization advanced, as science and technology advanced, things would continue to get better. Why wouldn't they? In this country, my parents' generation grew up with a considerably higher standard of living than my grandparents' generation. And my generation grew up with a considerably higher standard of living than my parents' generation. As a child, I saw no reason to doubt that this trend would continue.

How things have changed. In the last three decades (over the course of my lifetime, roughly speaking), productivity in the U.S. has continued to rise, but median incomes have stagnated, as the gains have gone almost exclusively to the top. Take into account exploding health care costs (and a myriad of other factors, but that one right there is a killer), and the typical family now is worse off than the typical family in the '80s. To put it bluntly, my children's generation will almost undoubtedly grow up with a worse standard of living than my generation. It's kind of staggering to think about, and to contrast with my grade school self's view of the future.

"In America, we believe in a future that is better than today." After finishing my breakfast that day, I decided to forgo the conference events for the next couple hours and take a stroll through Washington. As I walked, a Washington Post headline caught my eye. But not the headline of that day's newspaper - rather, a headline on an image that appeared on the side of the paper dispenser. It was a rather interesting choice by whoever designed the dispenser's layout.

The sudden promise of huge surpluses for as far as the eye can see is radically altering the way some politicians and economists think about spending money and has raised expectations of bolder government programs in years to come. "We are on the edge, if we will have discipline, of a generation of surpluses beyond reckoning" said Newt Gingrich.

So goes the article, and it's a stark reminder of how, even at the turn of the century, the future seemed so different from today. Government . . . surpluses? The idea seems almost incomprehensible. Now we wake up to depressing headlines about debt panels and supercommittees debating how to cut retirees' benefits and social programs to stave off trillion dollar deficits.

Where did things go wrong?

Well, when it comes to the current deficit issues, at least, the answer is pretty simple. It also has nothing to do with the entitlement programs that are potentially on the chopping block. I don't want to get too analysis-heavy with this post, but this chart is useful.

Let's remind ourselves again that, when President Clinton exited office, we were projected to have surpluses for years to come. Then a few things happened. President Bush slashed tax rates with the benefits going almost entirely to the wealthy. (This was supposed to create jobs. It didn't.) President Bush launched two unfunded wars. And then the economy cratered, which both necessitated increased spending and caused decreased tax revenue. And the economic crisis can largely be linked to financial deregulation, going back to the '80s and '90s.

So, tax cuts, unfunded wars, and financial deregulation. Three actions taken by the government that led directly to the current deficit. If none of these three things had happened, the deficit would basically not exist! What do all three have in common? They benefited a very wealthy few, and did more or less nothing to "promote the general welfare" of this country. Interesting. Why would a government of elected representatives do all these things that oppose the interests of those they represent?

(If you guessed "because money has completely corrupted our political system," a winner is you!)

Returning to the narrative of my day in Washington, I walked a few more blocks down K Street until I came to the intersection with 15th Street. There, in McPherson Square, I came across a sight that would have looked utterly bizarre in the midst of an American metropolis just a few months ago.

As I'm sure you realize, this is the Occupy DC encampment. It was a striking thing to witness in person. I've seen it asked what the purpose of camping out in the streets to protest is. I think it sends a pretty powerful message, personally, of how committed these people are to the cause. I remember, before the first protests started, reading on the Internet that some people were planning to "Occupy Wall Street" on September 17. Neat idea, probably won't amount to a whole lot, were basically my thoughts at the time. A few days in, the movement seemed to be dwindling. I remember that many Internet liberals had a belittling attitude toward the Occupiers in those early days. Well, at least they're trying to do something, I thought. I had to at least give them credit for the effort.

Then something changed. The movement took off. Occupations popped up all over the country, and all over the world. It's really quite inspiring to see a true grassroots movement grow from such small seeds. I mean, everyone knows the system is screwed up. People were desperate for change, which is why Obama won such a sweeping victory in '08. I was a gung ho Obama supporter. I had been pretty despondent about the state of the country, and the Obama campaign provided hope. Lots of people thought he could bring real change to Washington. And in retrospect, it was naive to think that our current system would allow a president who was really going to change things in the ways that are needed, or that one person would be capable of bringing that change even if he intended to. So people are still desperate for change. And a few people realized that the old methods are no longer working. Voting alone (not to say that people shouldn't vote) isn't going to save us when the best you can do is the lesser of two evils. Holding big, one-day protests doesn't do much when everyone just goes home and back to their lives afterwards. So let's do something different, they thought. Let's do something that can't be ignored.

So a few people got together with an idea. And from those humble beginnings, many thousands upon thousands of people have latched onto that idea, and have stood up and said the way this country is being run, it's not working. We need real change. We need a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Ordinary Americans have woken up to the fact that (contrary to my naive childhood views) progress isn't something that happens naturally, it only happens when we fight for it. The whole thing really is inspirational. I haven't been so proud of my fellow country people in a long time.

There wasn't a whole lot going on at the Occupy DC camp while I was there, but I got a general sense of how things were run, and came away impressed. There's a medical tent, a food tent, a library tent - it was all pretty well organized. And there was a lot of exchanging of ideas. I think one thing I'd take away from the visit is this - people do better when they work together, when they care for each other, when they take an interest in each others' well-beings.

As a society, that's something we've moved away from, and nowhere is this more evident than at the very top, where the elites have become so insulated that it doesn't matter to them whether society as a whole is functioning properly. If the children of the rich and of the poor went to the same schools, for example, then the rich would want to make sure the schools were good. If politicians had to use the same health care plans as everyone else, then politicians would want to make sure we had a decent health care system.

The Occupy movement has faced a lot of criticism, even demonization, in the corporate media. They don't have any clear message! is one common complaint. I think you'd have to be intentionally blind to say that. There are a lot of intersecting issues at play here, but at a very basic level, the message that the government is owned by financial elites and thus does not represent the interests of the people comes across loud and clear. And I think that's a message that a sizable majority of Americans would agree with. What are they hoping to accomplish? There's a long road ahead; these problems are very hard to solve, the obstacles are enormous, and real change won't come easily. But they've already accomplished something - changing the national discourse - and that itself is commendable. Why don't those dirty hippies just get a job? Well, this common criticism is really quite remarkable. Besides the fact that most of the protesters do have jobs . . . with a historic unemployment crisis, you're telling people who are protesting (among many other things) the lack of decent jobs to just get a job? I mean, that's pretty laughable, isn't it?

Again, I go back to the idea, "In America, we believe in a future that is better than today." I suspect that the percentage of people who would honestly agree with that sentiment has taken a precipitous decline in the past few years. Everyone knows things are broken in this country. Most everyone knows the government doesn't really represent the people. More and more people are waking up to the fact that we need a real, fundamental change in our political and economic system, or things are, inevitably, just going to keep getting worse.

There's a feedback loop in action. When money has undue influence on government, then the rich will influence government to enact policies that benefit the rich. Thus, the rich will get richer. Thus, the rich will have more money to influence the government. And so on. Furthermore, even in the absence of government intervention, money and power have a tendency to accumulate in the hands of a few. It's essentially a natural law, and it's why progressive taxation is necessary for a functional society. The best way to become richer is to already be rich. (I defy anyone to argue with this.) And excessive economic inequality leads to a host of societal ills, as well as a less robust economy. The middle and lower classes, quite obviously, spend a greater percentage of their income than the wealthy, so what happens if too much wealth accumulates at the top? Less money flowing in the economy. Less demand. Less jobs.

The ultra-rich continue to get richer, and everyone else suffers.

That's the course we're on. Unless we reverse rising inequality and get corporate money out of politics, we're going to continue on that course. A lot of people have recognized this. The Occupiers have decided they're going to do something about it. Unless you like the status quo of politicians that don't care about your interests if you can't fund their campaigns, you should support this movement. Is it a perfect movement? Nothing's perfect, but I reiterate: without fundamental change in the system, things will get worse.

In this era of crisis, I'm not sure it's logical to believe in a future that is better than today. I do know, however, that a lot of the people I saw in that camp believe in that better future. People everywhere are standing up and fighting for that better future, and that's admirable.

There are a lot of people out there who think this movement isn't about them. They have fairly comfortable lives; they have their HDTVs and iPads and whatnot. Why are these protestors complaining? they might think. And then one day, years from now, they'll wake up and realize that, even after a lifetime of hard work, they won't be able to afford a comfortable retirement. Or they can't pay their medical bills. And even then, they might not realize that things didn't have to be that way, if only our government hadn't decided that preserving tax breaks for multimillionaires was more important than preserving the foundation of our society.

Or maybe things will turn out differently, because a bunch of people got together and decided things had to change and they were going to keep making their voices heard until things did change.

So that's the story of my morning in D.C. As scientists, I think most of us who were at the conference have a hope that our work will, in some way, help make the world a better place. The people I saw at the Occupy camp are also working to make the world a better place.

We're all in this together, and if we remember that, maybe there is hope for a future that is better than today.

Ohbijou: Metal Meets

Prior to this year, Toronto-based indie band Ohbijou had released two albums, each full of beautiful chamber pop music highlighted by ornate string parts and Casey Mecija's ethereal vocals. At times, they managed to go beyond "beautiful" and create something truly magical - "Make It Gold" off of their sophomore effort Beacons comes instantly to mind. I've come to adore both Beacons and Swift Feet for Troubling Times, but if there's any criticism I'd level, it's that when listening to either album, by the time I reach the end of the album I feel there's a certain sameness to some of the songs. It seems the band liked to work in their comfort zone - and it was a very good comfort zone, so that's not really a bad thing - but it was on the songs when they pushed beyond that comfort zone that their music gained those magical qualities.

Two weeks ago, Ohbijou released their third album, Metal Meets, and from the instant I first heard the powerful electric guitar chords that introduce opening track "Niagara" I felt something was different. That sense of magic? "Niagara" has it in spades, the guitar and some spacey synths complimenting those familiarly gorgeous strings and vocals in a dreamy masterpiece. "Niagara" is an apt beginning to an album that takes Ohbijou's sounds to places barely imaginable from their previous albums. The aforementioned "Make It Gold" was my previous favorite song by the band, but perhaps half of the tracks on Metal Meets are just as good or even better.

What's remarkable about this album is that it's simultaneously a natural progression and a radical evolution in style. Previously, Ohbijou's brand of chamber pop was folk-tinged. That's gone now, with nary an acoustic guitar to be heard. Instead, the listener is treated to richly textured soundscapes built on electric guitar tremolos, airy synth arrangements, and a weightier rhythm section - but it wouldn't be Ohbijou without the strings, and they're just as present and just as gorgeous as ever. It all comes together as a fuller, more confident sound for the band, and the vocals top it off perfectly - Casey Mecija's remarkable voice can be both angelic and mischievous, and the backing vocals of her bandmates compliment it wonderfully.

The sense of sameness that I sometimes felt creeping in on their previous albums is also gone. Each song now feels vital, and each is its own distinct entity (but not in a way that sacrifices the flow of the album). After "Niagara," third track "Balikbayan" is another standout. In a nod to Casey and (sister and bandmate) Jenny Mecija's Filipino heritage, its lyrics are inspired by Balikbayan boxes, pieces of luggage that overseas Filipinos use to send items back home.

"Sligo" is the longest Ohbijou track yet, and it makes good use of its six minutes, starting off at a leisurely pace that's repeatedly punctuated by stately strings, and then going into a drawn-out buildup in its second half that takes full advantage of Ohbijou's newfound penchant for the electric guitar. "Sligo" kicks off a sequence of songs that showcase a band at the height of its abilities. "Anser" is another strong contender for best song on the album. It's a wonderfully dramatic composition, with piano, guitar, strings, and shared female/male vocals all building off each other. This newly dramatic, dynamic Ohbijou continues to strut their stuff on "Obsidian" and "Scalpel Blade," before pulling back toward that leisurely pace for the beginning of "Turquoise Lake." (They operated at a leisurely pace for most of their first album, actually, but this is darker, more impactful stuff.) And then "Turquoise Lake" culminates in another dramatic buildup, with a heavy guitar part that I never would have imagined hearing on an Ohbijou album before now. Yet on this album, it fits right in. There's one more song, "The Dreaming." It's as dreamy as you'd guess from its title, and it's a nice way to close out one of the best albums of the year.

In summary, if you are in any way into lushly orchestrated indie pop music, do not miss this album. I continue to be amazed at all the great music arising from the Canadian indie scene, and Ohbijou has just staked their claim as one of the heavyweights in that scene. If Metal Meets is your introduction to the band, don't miss out on their previous albums, either - they're both gorgeous, and the evolution of Ohbijou's sound is wonderful to experience.