Beer, Music, and Hifi

After having a nice meal of Trader Joe's mexican food, I have proceeded to polish off a 750ml bottle of Good Beer. At 8.5% ABV, it's a bit like drinking a whole bottle of wine.

Given my warm fuzzy state, I decided to listen to some new music. I picked up the new Shins album this week and I've been liking it quite a bit, it will probably be up there with their previous ones, maybe even better. As I was listening to Phantom Limb today at work something about his voice really struck me. Holy crap, this song sounds exactly like a Beach Boys song. Brian Wilson could do a cover and you would be hard to pressed to tell them apart. Maybe that's why I like their stuff more than a lot of other recent bands with similar sounds. I challenge you to listen to Pet Sounds along side Phantom Limb or Turn on me and tell me they're not the same. Reading a few reviews online after listening to it, I'm not alone in that thought.

Since it's late and Molly would probably wake up if I played the CD on the stereo downstairs, I'm here at the table with my headphones. These days I don't use my headphones much, which I think I miss sometimes. They give a really interesting nuanced representation of things, much different than either my Tannoys at work (very controlled, very acurate, not very interesting) and my JBLs at home (huge, booming, peel-back-the-carpet sound.) I prefer the JBLs' sound because it's much more musical and recreates a big sound better, although I rarely get to listen to them at a volume that does them justice. I remember sitting in Matt Morgan's basement listening to Pearl Jam tracks on his JBL 4343s backed by 400W of Mcintosh power, and that is what I want to hear downstairs on mine. The headphones give a beautiful sound up until about 50% of the peak volume I like. You can hear every breath and finger on a guitar string, but when you start to turn it up you can't feel the music. The headphones run out of stream, there's no substitute for a couple big 12" drivers actually pushing air around.

With that, I'm going to get some rest.