Why Disney's Frozen Will Make You Want to Build Ice Castles With Idina Menzel (even if you hate snow)

As much as I love Disney movies, they rarely surprise me and I don't expect them to.

After all, the Walt Disney Company has been operating for the better part of a century under the same principles. Wishes can come true, dreams are worth dreaming, the good guys always win, the bad guys always lose, the prince rescues the princess, and immediately after the climactic battle sequence, it starts to rain.

It's not rocket science. Disney movies are so formulaic that they are basically their own genre. So, I went into Frozen thinking that I had it all figured out. An icy, Norwegian version of Tangled with an extra princess and a creepy snowman character? Okay. Sounds good enough.

This is weird, but I guess I'm into it. 

Ice ice baby!

So imagine my great shock when Frozen veered off-course into quirky and unpredictable territory! Because, ladies and gentlemen, Disney has finally made a modern fairy tale and it is unspeakably lovely. 

It starts off as generic princess fodder. Anna (the perpetually charming, even as a voice actor, Kristen Bell) is the spunky younger sister of soon to be Queen Elsa. What Anna doesn't know is that Queen Elsa (who is also Queen of Broadway and Queen of my Heart, Idina Menzel) actually has this little, presumably sorcery-related issue where she turns things into ice cubes when she gets upset. The night of Elsa's coronation, Anna (which is pronounced Ah-nah, which is how I will forever pronounce Anna from here on out) meets a studly ginger prince and decides to go off and marry him immediately. This, of course, upsets Elsa (because marrying someone you just met? How Snow White of you!) which plunges the kingdom into eternal winter. Anna insists on going out to find her sister and talk to her? Change her mind? End winter? She's not really sure what she's going to do, actually, but she knows she has to be the one to do it. And along the way, we meet a guy who was raised by trolls and has an unhealthy obsession with reindeer and a talking snowman who was built by Elsa and has an unhealthy obsession with summer.

Idina Menzel playing a misunderstood witch who is exiled from her society and forced to live in solitude... where have I heard this one before?

If all of that sounds kind of nothing like what you were expecting, just wait until you get into the third act. 

For years, Disney has been trying to make a modern classic without losing touch with its fairy tale tradition. They came close on a few occasions (most notably Enchanted and The Princess and the Frog), but they never seemed to get it quite right. Frozen is that modern classic. Of course, there are show-stopping musical numbers. There are songs that will not leave your head for days. The animation is breathtaking and even reminiscent of Disney's greatest artistic achievements, like Cinderella and Peter Pan. But there is also a contemporary twist. This is the first princess movie where the central story arc hasn't been a romantic relationship. There is no big, sweeping ballad that the two main characters sing to each other. The closest thing that we get to a ballroom is a scene where Elsa literally transforms into the Snow Queen, building herself a brand new castle and a gown that the other Disney princesses would probably kill for. And at its core, Frozen is a story about the relationship between two sisters. After nearly a century of expecting something else, that is refreshing. 

Something's... not right.

Ermegerd, hugzzzz!

Why I'm Canceling My Trip to Space (or, A Review of Gravity)

About halfway through Gravity, after having been pummeled with space garbage for the nth time and knocked around like a tether ball and almost choking to death on her own carbon dioxide, Sandra Bullock says, "I hate space." It's one of those rare instances in film where you know, the moment it happens, that you have just witnessed a moment in cinematic history. 

Gurl, I know. Space is the worst.

Because Gravity is not just a movie. It's one of those Motion Picture Event films, like Titanic or Gone With the Wind or Jaws, that you don't just sit and watch. You let it happen to you.

And also, it's a god damn masterpiece. 

This is a real, honest-to-goodness triumph for director Alfonso Cuaron. It's a visceral film that virtually swallows the viewer in the act of watching it. It's perfectly paced and plotted. It's terrifying. It's visually stunning. And the entire thing is anchored by a career-defining performance by Sandra Bullock (I hate to bring up Oscar already... but seriously). 

For me, it is also the biggest surprise of the entire year. 

Let me back up for a moment. This summer, I went to a midnight screening of Man of Steel (don't get me started on that piece of crap). Prior to the movie, we saw the 3D trailer for Gravity and, I'm not kidding, the entire theater erupted in inappropriate laughter at one point (I think when Sandra Bullock was desperately trying to grab onto the satellite and kept missing?). As we were leaving, in between complaints about Man of Steel, I said, "Can we just talk about that trailer for Gravity?" and everyone agreed that it looked absolutely terrible. 

I've never been happier to admit that I'm wrong. 

Astronauts on leashes: a character study.

It's so unusual to find a movie that works so completely, from start to finish, and in so many different ways. Gravity works as a popcorn flick, full of suspense and external conflict, incredible special effects, and mind-blowing action sequences. But it also works as a quieter, existential examination of the effects of life threatening situations on the human subconscious. It's a sci-fi opera. It's a monster movie where the atmosphere is the monster. But most of all, it's a movie about the remarkable ability of human beings to survive.

Gravity opens with text that reads, "Life in space is impossible." It's so impossible that humans literally have to build machines to house their bodies in order to live.  And those machines have never looker punier than they do in this film. Over the course of the movie, the Hubble telescope is ripped to pieces, the International Space Station completely decimated, and we are left with one tiny human body, pushed to its limits, swallowed by the blackness of space. And that's the true genius of Gravity: this is the first time a movie about space has managed to communicate the enormity of space. And maybe even the futility of human technology.

Cuaron, who has been working on this film on and off since 2006, is nothing short of a wizard. The first shot is an almost twenty-minute, fluid camera shot that would make you say "wow!" if you weren't busy gaping at how utterly fucking real everything looks. From there on out, it's all choreography, like a zero-g ballet with devastating consequences. It's so immersive and wonderful, it leaves you breathless and amazed and kind of in a state of disbelief- a remarkable achievement in the age of CGI fantasy cinema.

This is a space epic that will ultimately be listed alongside 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien and Star Trek. And it's especially hard not to think about 2001: A Space Odyssey, when watching Gravity. But whereas Kubrick's film was about mankind journeying up into space, Gravity is about making it back down to earth. And whereas 2001 was overwhelmingly a film about men, Gravity is a film anchored around the strength of a woman. But instead of getting into feminist theory in Cuaron's movies, I'll use this space to praise Sandra Bullock, who delivers the best performance of her career in this film. With a setting this immense, it is imperative that the actor puts out work that is equally immense and Bullock is up to the task. Entire scenes rise and fall to the rhythm of Bullock's breathing. There are long stretches with no dialogue and no human interaction where Bullock must emote so much intensity using nothing but facial expressions. It's easy to see why practically ever actress in Hollywood turned this role down (including Angelina Jolie... twice). But Bullock doesn't only handle the part, she kills it. And she takes the entire audience along with her, forcing them to feel everything that she feels.

Gravity is only ninety minutes long (and thank goodness, because it's ninety minutes of sweaty-palmed cinematic agony) in an age where most movies seem to tap out at the two and a half hour mark.  It's also absolutely essential to see in 3D and on the biggest screen that you can find. Nothing else would not do justice to this expansive work of art. Do yourself a favor and let Gravity pull you in.  It's nothing like any experience that you've ever had at the movies and you're unlikely to experience anything like it ever again. 

The exact position I was in on the floor of the theater, waiting for this movie to finish.

By the end, you might hate space, too.  But if you're anything like me, you probably be a little in love with it as well. 

Why I Almost Walked Out On Man of Steel

When I love something, I make excuses for it. It's why I went to see The Phantom Menace when they rereleased it in 3D and it's why I convinced myself that Superman Returns was a good movie. 

Kal-El? Is that you?

Because I love Superman. He's always been my favorite superhero, even when it became obvious that he lacked the edgy, "cool" factor that inherent in other superhero properties. I don't care about any of that. I've loved him all this time and I thought that I would love him forever. 

Until Zack Snyder got a hold of him, at least. 

Man of Steel is a terrible, disjointed mess of a film that is full of plot holes and terrible dialogue and pointless violence. Even that, I might be able to forgive, if Zack Snyder had addressed his source material with even the slightest hint of respect. Instead, what we get is a desperate, inferior Dark Knightification of Superman that attempts to assassinate every single iconic character from the 75 year history of the comic book. As the film goes on (and it does, for nearly two and a half painful hours) it becomes clearer and clearer that this isn't a case of misunderstanding the Superman property. Zack Snyder and the people who made this film (and, I wager, the people who actually like it) must genuinely hate Superman. 

How else can you explain the fact that the word "Superman" isn't even spoken out loud a single time in the entire film? How can you explain a scene where Jonathan Kent actually chastises his son for saving a bus full of other people's children? How can you explain an almost laughable sequence in which Clark Kent watches his adopted father die in a tornado rather than save him because he's that afraid of revealing his true identity? 

In what incantation of the Superman stories have Clark and Jonathan Kent been that unbelievably selfish? And how, having been raised to think like that, could Clark ever become the hero that Metropolis needs him to be? 

Don't worry. Amy Adams and Morpheus are skeptical, too.

The short answer is: he can't. 

When Man of Steel isn't assaulting its source material, it is trying to be some kind of weird, sci-fi, alien invasion movie where Michael Shannon yells a lot and Jor-El hangs around as a computer program. Or it is trying to be a commercial for IHOP (the pancake restaurant features very prominently in several shameless product placement scenes). Or it is showing an entire city being leveled to the ground in the most offensive display of meaningless disaster-porn this side of Michael Bay. Or it jumping around in rapid-fire flashbacks like Terrence Malick meets an episode of Lost in a way that actually makes the Superman origin story (one of, I thought, the most well-known stories on the planet) confusing. 

Michael Shannon takes a break from yelling to wonder why he did this movie.

What Man of Steel doesn't do is develop the character of Clark Kent. The doofy, bespectacled reporter is nowhere to be found. Instead, he's been replaced by a beefy hipster Hercules who works on fishing boats and tells Lois Lane his life story five minutes after meeting her (even though we already established that his father died to protect his secret identity and, oh yeah, Lois is a reporter!). 

And Amy Adams, who I would go to bat for any day as one of the finest and most underrated actresses in the business, actually looks terrible in this movie. Her version of Lois is not ambitious, is not even particularly smart, and spends most of the movie following Clark around like a love sick puppy. She's even willing to trash her huge, probably career-making, story about extraterrestrial life on earth without a fuss because, well, have you seen Henry Cavill? 

I mean, seriously. Have you seen him?

There's no humor to be found here, either. Humor was a key part of each and every one of the earlier Superman films, whether it was the ineptitude of Lex Luthor's henchmen or Clark's clumsiness or Lois' brassy attitude. You've got to remember, this is ultimately a story about a man wearing tights and a bright red cape who can fly. It's not exactly Shakespeare. Even The Dark Knight, as bleak as it was, had moments where laughter eased the tension. But there is not a single moment of bright color or joy to redeem this cynical shell of a film. 

And it culminates in one of the darkest and most disturbing sequences that I've ever seen in a comic book film: Superman snaps Zod's neck. And because subtlety is clearly not Snyder's strong suit, he shows the event in all of its explicitly violent glory. In that moment, I thought about all of the Man of Steel action figures that I've seen in stores over the past few months. I thought about the fact that my job gave out 300 free tickets to the film at a local middle school. I thought about all of the children that were going to see that scene and I recoiled as though I'd been slapped across the face. Never mind the fact that it is entirely out of character for Superman to kill anyone. We've already established that every characterization in Man of Steel is incorrect. This film is being marketed to children in a very big way and to have the big guy behave like that is irresponsible and disgusting. 

There is a scene about halfway through Man of Steel, in which Lois Lane asks Superman what the S on his chest stands for. "It's not an S," he says. "On my planet, it's a symbol for Hope." That would be absolutely fantastic, if Snyder and his team really believed that it were true. But it all comes down to the fact that Snyder, and probably a lot of other people, think that the hope and the optimism inherent in the Superman story are passé or incompatible with our modern world. They are contemptuous and disparaging and would probably sneer at the end of the old Chris Reeve movies, where Superman flew across the screen and grinned a cheesy grin directly at the camera before disappearing into space. 

Will someone PLEASE think of the children?

Zack Snyder might hate Superman, but I still love him and I know that there is a place for him in this world. I know that, no matter how dark things get and how many horrible tragedies happen, there will always be room for hope. I have to believe that, because without hope, what do we have? We live in a world the person who bombed a major city during a major event ends up on the cover of Rolling Stone. Children are killing children with no discernible motives. Even movie theaters aren't safe from deadly violence, as we learned last year. So, in a time that is so dark and so desperate, what is wrong with a little bit of hope? What is wrong with a little bit of optimism? What is wrong with Superman? 

Why I Am So Thankful For The Postal Service

There are things in life that you wish for so fervently, there is no way that they can do anything but disappoint you. And then, there are those very, very rare events that manage to be even better than you imagined they could be.

I, like a lot of people my age, fell in love with a band called The Postal Service when I was in high school. For the past ten years, I've kept Give Up close to my heart, revisiting it over and over again and always finding something new to love about it. It is simply one of my very favorite records to ever exist in any time and any place. 

Yet, there was always a great sense of loss that accompanied the record, as well. The Postal Service is the band that got away. After that one perfect record, Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard went on with their respective lives and continued making great music-- just not together. And for those of us who were so in love with the collaboration, the idea of a Postal Service reunion became one of those musical Moby Dicks that were long chased after and often rumored, but never materialized. 

Until this year, that is. 

When the Postal Service announced that they were reforming (along with Jenny freaking love of my life Lewis) for a tour to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Give Up, I felt like all of the Christmases for the next five years had come early. And I knew that there was no way that I was going to miss it. 

Ten years ago, if you had told me that I would be standing ten feet from the stage in an arena owned by Jay-Z, watching the Postal Service play their one album to a sold out crowd- I probably would have laughed at you. And yet, that is exactly what happened last night. Given my intense expectations, and the fact that I had waited so damn long to see these folks perform together, I was aware that there was a very good chance that I might wind up feeling slightly disappointed. 

Thankfully, that couldn't have been further from the truth. When Ben, Jimmy, and Jenny walked out on stage, that familiar droning synth from "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" started playing and the entire arena lost their collective shit. What followed for the next two hours was nothing short of magical. It was the biggest, most fun, dance party/singalong that I have ever attended. There were several moments where I lifted my arms in the air and looked up at the teeming masses above me and felt such unbelievable amounts of love, there is no other way to describe the experience but "religious."

The audience weren't the only people who could feel the magic. Onstage, the band was energetic and smiling and playful. I've seen Jenny Lewis play a few different shows under different circumstances, but I have never seen her have as much fun as she was having last night. Ditto for Ben Gibbard, who danced and strutted around the stage like he was channeling Bono. Overall, it was abundantly clear that the members of the Postal Service understand why we love the band so much- because they love it just as much. 

The show ended with the joyful, deafening, crowd-led repetition of that final line from "Brand New Colony." Everything will change. Everything will change. Everything will change. 

As I walked outside into the steamy New York air and watched the hipsters dispersing, an overwhelming gratitude settled over me. I felt so thankful for Give Up; for the fact that it came into my life when it did and opened my eyes to a completely different musical landscape. But mostly, I was thankful to the Postal Service for giving us the gift of these reunion shows, for recognizing and rewarding our devotion, and for making a decade-old dream come true.  

Jenny channeling her spirit animal, Dave Mustaine. 

Why Rilo Kiley is My Favorite Of Favorites

If there is one band that I tend to revisit the most frequently, it's Rilo Kiley. 

Every few months, one of their songs will pop up somewhere or I'll read an interview with Jenny Lewis or I'll see Blake on a rerun of Boy Meets World and it will inevitably lead to a week-long RK binge. There's something about the honesty of the lyrics or the way that Jenny sings them or Blake's guitar parts or those charming little interludes on Execution of All Things that make me love the shit out of that band (possibly more than I love any other band). Part of it comes from my California DNA thing, I think. There is something ingrained in Rilo that is just totally LA and it brings out all of the parts of my West Coast upbringing that I love the most. 

But when the palm trees bow their heads...

Anyway, I love LA. Back to business. 

I absolutely hated the way that Rilo Kiley ended. It was one of the most anti-climactic things that's ever happened in the music industry, as far as I'm concerned. Here was a band that was poised for global domination. They had a great back story, musical chemistry, songwriting chops, an exceptional lead guitarist, and a female vocalist who was ready to seduce the entire fucking world. They had two great independent full-lengths which they followed by More Adventurous, a fantastic breakthrough album that got them tons of attention. At the same time, Jenny was doing fantastic work with on her solo project with the Watson Twins and charming the shit out of everyone, while Blake put out two stellar albums with his own side project, The Elected. There was just so much momentum propelling these guys forward.  It was crazy.

And then, it was like the bus broke down. On the highway. In the middle of July. No one was happy. 

The band's major label debut, Under the Blacklight, was totally underwhelming. It had its moments (the song "Silver Lining" is as good of a song as they ever wrote), but gone were the days of indie-pop rock with a hint of country folk sensibility and emotionally resonant lyrics. They were playing around with synthesizers and singing about porn stars and swinging for the Top Forty fences. 

They struck out.

Jenny went on to moderate solo success and made friends with Elvis Costello but the rest of the band totally disappeared off the face of the earth. There was no news of Rilo Kiley until the announcement of a hiatus and then an unofficial break-up.

For me, time has actually been kind to Under the Blacklight. I like it much better now than I ever thought I would. The melodies are catchy and the production is solid and Jenny's voice sounds great. But there are still also things about the album that I don't like (mostly "Dejalo" and "15" and "Smoke Detector") and I still hated the idea that this polarizing, inconsistent effort was the swan song of one of my favorite ever bands.

So when the band announced that the long rumored B-sides and rarities compilation was finally happening, I was completely ecstatic. But my expectations also weren't very high. I assumed that most of the songs would be ones that I had already heard. Things like "Emotional" and "Jenny, You're Barely Alive" and their fun cover of"After Hours." I thought if I were lucky, I might get a few studio versions of songs like "Room 8" and "Butcher's Paper." What I absolutely did not expect were no less than seven songs that I have never heard before, in any context. 

What I really didn't expect was that a majority of them were recorded at the same time as Under the Blacklight. And that they would be just as good as everything else that RK ever did. Because of that, this album has turned Rilo history on it's head for me. I no longer see UtB as a record by a band that was seriously overreaching and broke under the pressure of major label scrutiny (not to mention internal turmoil). Now, I see late-Rilo Kiley as a band that was still prolific and had great songs to offer the world but for whatever reason chose to keep them hidden.

RKives begins with the long awaited studio version of my favorite Rilo song of all time. For years it's been called "I Love LA," but the official title is now "Let Me Back In." It's very similar to the live at ACL and radio recordings that I've been listening to forever, but when those strings came in on the second verse, I nearly burst into tears. I don't understand how a song as great as that one didn't make it onto an album until now. 

I feel the same way about a lot of these songs. "It'll Get You There" would have been right at home with RK's best on Execution of All Things. "Well, You Left" is better than all of Blake's other songs (except Ripchord) and it has a shredding guitar solo at the end that rivals "Spectacular Views". "Bury, Bury, Bury Another"  is country-flavored goodness that easily could have found a spot on More Adventurous. "All the Drugs" and "I Remember You" could have been the best two songs on Under the Blacklight.

My only real complaint about this collection is that they chose to include things that were readily available (like "American Wife" and "The Frug") when I know for a fact that there were other unreleased songs we could have gotten instead. I heard that the Deluxe Edition (which I ordered and should hopefully get sometime before Christmas, due to an industry wide vinyl production problem or some nonsense) comes with a special cassette tape that contains a studio version of "Pull Me In Tighter." That song is phenomenal and deserves a legit release, more so than that "Dejalo" remix that doesn't make me hate that song any less (sorry, Jenny, but "Dejalo" is never going to happen). 

Still, we loyalists take what we can get. Truth be told, RKives is better than it has any right to be, considering it's a collection of B-sides from a band that was hardly a household name. It's an extremely generous present to the fans, one that I am going to appreciate for a long time. Furthermore, if Rilo Kiley never reforms and gifts the world with another album, RKives will remain as an impressive bookend to a phenomenal catalog of tunes.

But, for the record, I'm still holding out hope for a reunion, the eternal optimist that I am. Fleetwood Mac did it, after all.

Bottom Line: Very strong for a B-Sides collection, RKives effectively highlights all of the reasons that made Rilo Kiley a great band to begin with.

Why You Should Give Ghost on Ghost a Chance

Of all of the artists that have consistently secured a place on my "favorite bands" playlists over the past decade, Iron & Wine is the one that has changed the most dramatically.

It's been ten years since I&W released the practically perfect Creek Drank the Cradle. It was a breath of fresh air for a lot of people. It didn't rely on studio gadgetry or production values. In fact it was nothing but Sam Beam's hushed vocals, an acoustic guitar, a four track recorder, and the incredible power of phenomenal songwriting.

I remember reading that some people thought it was some lost recording from a forgotten 1960's singer-songwriter. That's how good it is. It didn't seem like it could be a thing from modern times.

Since then, Iron & Wine has evolved into a musical behemoth, incorporating nearly every instrument on the planet and churning out bright 70's style pop music with plenty of oohs and aahs and even elements of jazz and funk. Truth be told, I miss Creek era Sam Beam. Going back and listening to that album, Endless Numbered Days, and "The Trapeze Swinger", I become aware that these new batches of songs just don't move me the way that the old ones did. Sure, Sam Beam can still write an amazing song, but sometimes those songs are overpowered by their arrangements. I still like a lot of them, but I also catch myself envisioning what they would sound like if they were stripped down into their most fundamental parts. 

It helps to think of Iron & Wine as two separate bands. To listen to the newer albums without the context of the earlier albums. The old Iron & Wine was really, really great. But if you packaged up the new Iron & Wine and sold it to me as a completely different band with no preconceived notions of what one of their albums should sound like, I would think they were pretty great as well.

Ghost on Ghost continues on the trajectory established by Kiss Each Other Clean. There's lots of warm, upbeat music here, a la "Tree By the River." Lots of horns, lots of background vocals, groovy bass lines, and even a couple of really strange instrumental breakdowns and time-signature changes. The record starts with a percussive crescendo that stops and leads into the acoustic guitar of "Caught in the Briars." It's that kind of weird shift that actually characterizes the album as a whole.  There are many instances where a song will abruptly and unexpectedly shift styles or sounds to become something else entirely.

It should be jarring. It should be disruptive. But somehow, this is a much more coherent album than Kiss Each Other Clean. Maybe it's because there's a thematic symmetry that weaves this set of songs together. They seem to tell a story about a couple who is on some sort of journey. Maybe a physical one or maybe an emotional one. Maybe they are running away or running towards something. Either way, this is a record that definitely tells a story and I like that. It's a very listenable album. It's the kind of album that you can put on and jam to from start to finish and enjoy without thinking too much into it. It sounds like a warm summer evening, sitting on the porch and drinking a beer and watching the lightning bugs flash in the grass.

When you start to think too hard, it becomes less enjoyable. It's apparent that certain songs are much grander than they need to be. Sometimes it feels like Sam Beam is trying to get as far away as possible from his bare bones indie-folk roots.  A quiet, lovely little number like "Joy" would have sounded great with nothing but an acoustic guitar. Instead it is kind of a layered clunky thing with tinkling synths and shimmery vocal runs that overrun the potency of the lyrics. It's still a nice song, but I can't help but feel there is an alternate version of it out there that I like much better.

My favorites are the ones that sound like "old Iron & Wine." This has been the case since The Shepherd's Dog when I listened to "Flightless Bird" and "Resurrection Fern" on repeat and neglected most of the rest of the album. My favorites on Ghost on Ghost are "Winter Prayers" and "Baby Center Stage." The latter in particular is a masterpiece for me and probably one of the few times where I feel like everything works. Like Iron & Wine don't have to be two separate bands, as long as they can meet somewhere in the middle and makes beautiful little tunes like this. 

Bottom Line: Another solid effort and overall enjoyable record from Iron & Wine, but the complexity of the arrangements on Ghost on Ghost sometimes overpower the songwriting.

Why I Swooned Over Chris Carraba

My favorite thing about experiencing live music is the nature of unpredictability. Anything can happen at a show, for both spectators and participators. Mistakes are made, toes are stepped on, the setlist is revised. You can discover something totally new about a song or about yourself. Your favorite band might ruin themselves in front of you. Everything is within the realm of possibility. 

Quite often, you get surprised. Which is exactly what happened to me last night at Johnny Brenda's. 

I went into this show for the Lone Bellow. Because their self-titled debut has been on constant loop in my life for the past few months and is already a serious contender for album of the year for me. Because I know that this band is going to be enormous and I'll never have another chance to see them play such an intimate venue. And because I have a very serious toner for hipster alt-country acts with really tight harmonies. 

The Lone Bellow @ JB's.

 The Lone Bellow did not disappoint me. They were every bit as magnificent as I knew they would be. Every single song was a show stopper. As I stood at the foot of the stage and sang my heart out to "You Never Need Nobody" the girls next to me were doing the same. We threw our arms around one another, strangers no more, and shared the joyful experience of loving music together. 

So, the Lone Bellow is going to be in my life for a long time. That was not a surprise. 

Also not surprising, Ivan & Alyosha were thoroughly enjoyable. They've been a mix tape staple of mine for a while and the song "Glorify" gets me going every single time. I'm not sure that they had the right set up for the venue (two electric guitars and the electric bass kind of drowned out the vocals in that small room) but no matter. It was still a solid set. That wasn't surprising either. 

Ivan & Alyosha @ JB's.

What I wasn't prepared for was Twin Forks. In fact, I had no idea who they were or that they were playing until five minutes before I left for the show. My brother barged into my room and said, "Did you know there is another opener tonight?" 

This is how the conversation went- 

S: They're called Twin Forks. 

LB: That sounds like the setting for a high school TV melodrama.

S: It's from the guy from Dashboard Confessional with people from Bad Books and the Narrative.

LB: Chris Carrabba? What is he, like, producing it?

S: I think he's the singer. 

LB: No way. 

S: I think so. 

LB: No way that the singer from Dashboard is opening at a bar for two unknown bands.

S: I really think he is, though. 

My disbelief changed into total shock when I checked the band's Twitter account and Soundcloud and they both confirmed what S had told me. Chris Carrabba is in a new folk group with members of Bad Books and the Narrative and they are called Twin Forks and we were about to see them play their  first show at Johnny Brenda's. 

Fucking surprise, dude!

Also, surprise! They are really, really good. 

I have to preface this by saying that I am by no means a die hard Dashboard or Further Seems Forever fan. Of course, those bands represent something quintessential about my coming of age experience that is rivaled only by the Garden State soundtrack and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For the millennial generation, Dashboard is everything about high school. There is no better Song to Fall in Love To than "Hands Down" and no Balm for a Broken Heart quite like "Screaming Infidelities." Of course I listened to them back in the day and sometimes revisit them now. 

Twin Forks @ Johnny Brenda's.

But while I will always have a soft spot in my heart for all of these things, my 25 year old self wouldn't go out of the way to see a Dashboard show, as great as those old songs are. 

Then Chris Carrabba walked out onstage at Johnny Brenda's and he is still the same tiny, tattooed man that I remembered from MTV Unplugged with a voice big enough to express every emotion. 

And he was singing honest-to-god folk songs. Think the Lumineers with less Ho-ing and Hey-ing and more introspective lyrics. 

Surprise! It was everything I never knew that I wanted. I fell in love with this group about thirty seconds into their first song, which is when I started trying to sing along even though I'd never heard it before. Maybe because the band was clearly having a great time playing together, maybe because they were just some great tunes, maybe because Chris' voice took me right back to some safe, warm place that I didn't know I'd been missing- but I smiled through their entire set. 

Obviously, this is a project that these guys are really excited and passionate about. That translates very well onstage. I also really respect that Chris isn't letting his notoriety from Dashboard sell this new band. I think that, ultimately, the songs will speak for themselves and that is the most beautiful thing of all. 

Not surprisingly, I am now a fan. The next time they come around to Philly, I'll be there with the same huge smile on my face.

Twin Forks @ Johnny Brenda's, 4/16/13