Midlake

You should go here and listen to "Roscoe." I learned of this band this morning and have been listening to this song obsessively, on repeat, while doing Saturday chores, sweeping and oiling the hardwood floors, bleaching the clawfoot tub, washing linens (yeah, I like to pretend I live in the early 1900s, ok?). And I get to see them at the Doug Fir tonight for FREE MONEY!

Anyway, something about this song is so touching. I read that the album (The Trails of Van Occupanther) is rumored to be based on the Oregon Trail computer game, which makes it even better. It reminds me of Fleetwood Mac, Gulliver's Travels, pioneerism, the dead giant in Ender's Game (my favorite sci-fi novel), whose corpse gradually morphs into a beautiful knoll, the ribs forming grassy glissades...I really love the Dad-rock feel. I especially love:

1891 -
They looked around the forest.
They made their house from cedars.
They made their house from stones.

Oh, they're a little like you, and
They're a little like me,
When they're falling me.

Tears me up. Calls back all of the work I did as a researcher at the Rare Books Room a few years ago, where I focused on Oregon history from 1850 - 1905 and got to read all kinds of fascinating pamphlets and picture books on early pioneers/settlers and the collective utopian belief that Oregon was the closest thing to Eden one could find in the United States. Which is pretty much da troof today.