"They Can Knock All of My Doors Down, but I Won't Say a Word..."

I've said it before, but it's always worth repeating: I love music. I can get pretty passionate about my favorite bands. In college, I wrote plenty of music reviews for the school newspaper, attempting (sometimes in vain) to get the otherwise indifferent kids at our college to listen to something besides what they were hearing on the radio.

I try not to be an indie snob, you know, one of those people who thinks anything on a major label is trash. I try to keep an open mind about whatever it is that I'm listening to. I think I was even chided slightly by some of you readers once for not listing a country band in my list of favorite bands.

All in all, if there were no music in my life, I'd be one unhappy Hannah. It's been kind of a grey, cloudy week here mentally, so I am beyond excited that I get to go catch one of my favorite bands tonight at a bar in Philadelphia, Murder by Death. Murder by Death is hard to describe, but in short, they play almost alt-country, dark Americana punk. I say "punk" because as a band, they seem to just continue to sneer at anyone's idea of what they are.

Every time I've seen MBD, they've been opening or co-headlining with some other band that has fans who don't seem to get it. They were there to see Thursday or This Day Forward, they were there to mosh and scream, and suddenly this band comes out on the stage with a cello player and a singer who sounds reminiscent of Johnny Cash. The thing that I think is really great about MBD is that they get themselves invited to be on all these crazy tours--it's not some label-specific pairing. There is a mutual appreciation between all these bands, and sometimes that just goes over your average sixteen-year-old emo kid's head. Curious? Check out this video:



All I know is this music makes me happy from my head to my toes, which will be collectively bobbing and tapping for most of the evening. No job yet? No problem. It can wait for another day because I'm going to be surrounded by sounds that I love and the friends I most want to share them with. It's a beautiful thing.