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The lights in the room went down. The lights onstage went up. I could feel my heart in my throat. I was just… I knew something bad was going to happen. I just did.

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It’s confusing and heady, atonal and inaccessible; a weird and transgressive noise tapestry of American psychodrama. It’s also a tweener album; falling squarely between the complete noise/no wave worship of Confusion Is Sex and the more melodic song structure of EVOL.

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Take all the courage you have left, and waste it on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head, but it was not your fault but mine, and it was your heart on the line. I really fucked it up this time. Didn’t I, my dear?

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100% of rapes are caused by rapists.

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Rock music is often called a dinosaur, though I find that term inaccurate, as the dinosaurs actually died

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Until Lennon’s remark that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus”, pop culture had been dismissed as a “kid thing” and unimportant. But after that, it was regarded a social force to be reckoned with.

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This expression of male vulnerability is needed in our culture, but the price at which Berninger is selling it may be too high.

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Among obsessive music fans, including some who write about the art form for a living, there is a constant demand for authenticity, which is unfortunately often confused with purity.

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If you’re looking over a chasm, surely the edge demarcates the point of destruction. But if you’re learning to swim in a public pool, the edge is the thing you cling onto for safety.

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I shudder to think of all the matching Nickelback T’s I saw fathers and sons sporting. (Sidenote: as it turns out, Nickelback concerts provide a hysterical exception to the “don’t wear a band’s t-shirt to their show” rule.)