you can't turn your cheek when you're falling asleep

it's an album decorated with pots and pans, spanish mama's, and simple rhythms that you'll curse yourself for eternally humming. it's the sounds of a hippie summer and a fling with nature in 10 short tracks. i'm not completely sure how the sounds of a camping trip and an old spaghetti western collaborate, but alex ebert seems to have mastered it in his solo album, alexander. formerly known for his fame of being the assumed edward sharpe in the edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros, alex ebert is stepping out in the music realm alone. his recipe of twang-meets-tenting is spicier than his last works, equipped with more blasphemies and a more visually interesting album cover (if you consider a small child in stripes holding his rainbowed name more visually interesting). there's still the childish sing-a-long aspect to many of the songs on this album that captured our hearts when alex was posing as edward sharpe; he's just more at liberty to scream or whisper or let us peak into his musically-concocted mind on this album. his songs are still littered with back-up choirs composed of off-tune hipsters, beats made up of heavy breaths and yelling spaniards, and whistled tunes thrown into the mixture with kazoos. alex continues to wow his audiences with the melodies he can create from a melancholic pile of instruments. give his single "awake my body" a taste test, and i'll pay you money if you don't picture yourself roasting marshmallows around a fire and shotgunning beers to this song.

i'm pretty sure if alex ebert's soul was an instrument it'd be the tamborine.

THIS after 8 tylenol extra strength and a bottle of rum

there's been an influx in the costuming of animal shirts in the population of greater vancouverite teenagers. it's like there was a divorce between the hipster kids, and half of them went to a division of femininity based on audrey hepburn and frou-frou skirts, and the other half were reduced to plaid hunting, nose-piercing attire with borderline lesbian haircuts. the hipsters left their american apparel hoodies in the way side, and both classes either graduated or were demoted from the cotton specifics of being indie. the shitty photography skills, however, are one tradition both classes continue to uphold: the girly now sporting pastel shades of polaroids with their ripoff chanel clutches, and the boyish ones using disposables to document their drunken trailer-trash adventures. the film is just capturing two very different classes of once-unified teens. one photo will boast frilly socks and oxfords, the next will be complimented with hunting socks and thrifted doc martens. the ones less focused on the perfection of their foundation and the barrels of their curls, have brought it upon themselves to host endangered species on their chests. there seems to be a fascination with setting themselves apart and becoming part of a, per se, wolf's ecology for a day. this fad is an ugly outdoing its own expected ugliness; it's like they're fully aware they're the lower class of the indies and are even going beyond the expectations of the superior class to prove the hideousness of their newfound culture. either that, or there's a sudden awareness and knowledged data base about the beauty of big cats on polyster. this in spite of the secreterial patterened tights and 1800s-inspired ruffles sported by the 'better' half of the indie population. it'll be interesting to see if this divorce continues into the summer, or if the indie relationship will be reunited with ray bans and a claim to high waisted denim shorts..