At least I'm honest, right?

We're back.

I'd lie and say we've been busy, but you all know better by know. Truth is, we've been working, some of us in summer camps, some of us manual labor, some of us on other pursuits.

I'm fairly sure the point of this blog was to pay for our liquor (beer, specifically), so typing this out after I've been drinking seems only appropriate. I've been listening to the Gaslight Anthem for the better part of the summer, mostly to the yet to be released the '59 Sound disc, and it's pretty fantastic, even if the same ground is covered each song on it. It sounds like Bruce Springsteen in 2008, if he was just starting out. On every song some variation of "driving", "Saturday night", "dancing" "the radio" and another that's not coming to me now. The themes, somehow, don't get tired. Maybe that's because of the liquor.  Neither, for that matter, do the song structures, which, for all but one song, is verse/chorus/verse/chorus/chorus/chorus (and if they're feeling adventurous, they'll throw a bridge in there).

In a way, the '59 Sound sounded oddly familiar to me on the first listen, because the first comparison was JRPGs. Much of the same themes are recycled in JRPGs, and I don't tire of those either. The one I'm still playing (Persona 3), has the same themes of teenagers making up for the sins of the earlier generation, a corporate coverup which has disastrous effects on the populus, a main character with an epic destiny and high school girls in short skirts as the rest of the genre.

There are rough patches in both pieces. Equipping a character in Persona 3 with a weapon means you have to walk up to them, and go into their inventory, scroll down, and then exchange the weapon, which is a pain, considering that the standard in JRPGs is that all characters can have items swapped out from your menu. Miles Davis and the Cool, off of the '59 Sound has it's own issues, a fairly pointless minor part in the song that (almost) kills the flow of what could be the perfect song to play during the iconic scene in Say Anything, with a hook of "so I laid a kiss on a stone/tossed it upside your window, upside the roof", but the song survives due to its strength everywhere else. 

Speaking of everywhere else, when Persona 3 gets into a groove, it's pretty much undeniable. Spoilers follow.

One of my favorite scenes in the game is one after a brutal death, a particularly close friend (Akihiko) of the deceased says his goodbyes to his friend after the ceremony and the rest of the school left the auditorium. Somehow, the character, has a conversation on his own with the deceased, just to say goodbye, but introduces it like this: "I had the usual for lunch...Ramen tastes a lot better when you're cutting class."

Spoilers end

The power in those sentences is in what isn't said. It's not that the ramen, likely, was made any better, but that the deceased character kept telling him to cut class with him, and he probably never did.

The same power in what isn't said can be found in the song High Lonesome, where the singer (Brian Fallon) murmurs to a girl "It's a pretty good song, babe, you know the rest" before hesitating and finishing the line: "baby, you know the rest." Again, the power is in what isn't said. Lord knows what meaning that song has for the two of them, and Mr. Fallon only hints at it.

Hell, Persona 3 doesn't feel like a JRPG when I play it, and yet I've already sunk roughly three four days into that game. I can't count the number of times I've played the '59 Sound straight through. Maybe 40 60something? Lord only knows. Even if the themes are recycled and familiar, I still enjoy the time I spend with both discs, and will spend more before the summer is out.