“Please Visit Your National Parks” – Oxford Collapse
(Words/music: Oxford Collapse, available on Remember the Night Parties, Sub Pop 2006)

One way that I’ve noticed my taste shift in the last few years is that I find myself engaging in more “situational listening.  There were times where I could listen to anything I pulled out of my CD wallet – yes, I’ve always had urges to listen to a specific band or album, but I find now that I “have to be in the mood” for certain things far more often. This doesn’t mean that I don’t like these bands – that would be entirely false.  I think this was how I got back into Pandora radio about a year ago – I’ve found that in certain situations, I want to hear something that sounds a certain way (or, at least, don’t want to hear something that sounds a certain way), and rather than trust one of my huge, randomized playlists or pick out an entire album to listen to, I fire up Pandora and let it work its magic.

Remember the Night Parties is an album that fits this mould perfectly.  When I hear one of these songs in the right situation, I want to listen to the rest of the album.  While a few years ago, I would have put the album on my discman and got to work on whatever I needed to do for class, I’ve found that I can’t listen to a song like “Please Visit Your National Parks” and get anything taxing accomplished (and appropriately, I’m writing this blog post in silence after having listen to the song a couple times).  When I first thought of this, I wanted to say that I’ve lost the ability to multitask and split my attention between a couple different tasks.  However, I’d like to think that it’s more that I want to give what I’m doing my complete attention, or at least the attention it deserves.  “Please Visit Your National Parks” has a lot going for it – it’s a fun, playful blast of guitar that sounds like a boat on a lake being tossed around enough to make the excursion exciting, but not enough to endanger the passengers.  It’s the rare studio recording where the band sounds like it’s having fun in the studio (and having seen them play live once before, they without a doubt enjoy making music).  I just find that once I hear those guitars start, I can’t concentrate on anything else.  To a degree, it’s fine because the song is worth the attention; it only causes a problem when I have something else I’m trying to accomplish (such as writing a blog post before the end of the day).

More on Oxford Collapse: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm