Andy Gapin

Last weekend I took a trip to Toronto with the girlfriend to see Evil Dead: The Musical again.

The drive up wasn’t too bad for the most part. We left about when I wanted to and would have gotten there right when I was planning despite stopping to get pizza and Rita’s and having my GPS decide that the best route was to go through downtown Scranton (leading to the adoption of the phrase “What the Scranton?!?”), except we got stuck in traffic for over an hour at the border to Canada. Once we got up to the booth, we went right through, but it felt like it took forever to get there.

By the time we got into Toronto and got checked in at the hotel, it was close to midnight so we just hit up a nearby bar for some greasy food and a few drinks…and photo hunt.

Saturday morning we got up and went down to the Distillery District to get breakfast. Unfortunately, it was a little early in the day to really check out the area so we walked around underground a bit instead.

We grabbed a very expensive dinner at the CN Tower, but it was pretty awesome. The food wasn’t the best that I’ve had, but the view is really amazing from up there. I had eaten there once before, but it was later at night when it was already dark out and we had a more inside table. This time we had a table right up against the window and it was still light out. It was really great.

The play itself was just as amazing the second time as it was when I saw it in NYC the first time. Ash was played by the same actor, but all of the others were different. The only actor that I didn’t like as much the second time was Cheryl (Ash’s sister). I didn’t feel that her singing was as good, but everyone else was really awesome.

Last time when I saw it, we sat in the fourth row which is just out of the “splash zone,” but this time I wasn’t having that that bloodless nonsense. We sat in the second row and got covered in blood. It was pretty awesome, but getting it all off was kind of a pain in the butt. I couldn’t even get it all off of my coat. It’s definitely going to need to take a trip to the dry cleaners. I probably should have showered before I went to bed because I woke up and the white case on my pillow had turned a nice blood red.

On the way back, we stopped at Niagara Falls for what I was planning to be a very short visit, but instead we stayed for a few hours. We took some pictures in front of the Falls, but really how long can you stare at a waterfall? So we went through a haunted house, played mini-golf, and got fudge, breakfast, and ice cream.

Getting through the border on the way back was a breeze which was much appreciated after all of the crap I had to go through to get a copy of my birth certificate so that I could get back into the country.

One of the best things about the whole trip was driving home and having a car behind me be a complete jerk, honking and flashing his lights for me to get out of his way when there was no where to go. When he finally was able to get around us, we were pretty ticked at him, but all was righted shortly after. A couple miles up the road, we saw cop lights go on and we both looked at each other and were like “no way, that’d be too good to actually happen.” Well, it did! It was great.

And here are the pictures…

It’s no secret that I have a “slight” obsession with Zooey Deschanel, but anyone who has ever heard me talk about her knows that while I think she’s super gorgeous, one of my favorite things about her is her voice when she sings. Hearing her sing usually is enough to make me completely melt and when she sings in Elf it’s almost too much for me to handle.

After mentioning all of that, it should be no surprise that when I found out that she was recording an album with M. Ward under the name She & Him, I could barely wait to hear it. But finally, the album was released last week and it was well worth the wait.

Most of the music is on the softer side of things with Zooey’s voice perfectly complementing M. Ward’s instrumentation. The songs range from being soulful singer/songwriter gems to catchy indie-rock tunes to 50s inspired pop to straight up country, but they are all completely awesome. The album is made up of all original music except for two excellent covers of Smokey Robinson and The Beatles.

I could go on and on about this record, but basically, if you’re not swooning over this record, you’re messing up.

Now I understand that it’s only February, but I’m pretty sure that the album of the year has already graced my ears. The new Murder By Death record, Red of Tooth and Claw, is pretty much perfect from start to finish. Since I got a copy of it on Monday, it’s been the only thing that I’ve listened to. The album grabs you within the first few seconds and refuses to let go until the eleventh track rings out.

I’ve been a fan for quite sometime, but I had been a little down on them for a while. In Bocca al Lupo has some of my favorite songs by them on it, but overall as an album, it just doesn’t have it. It lost a lot of the flow that they had previously with Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them and was really just a collection of songs instead of a cohesive album. So after that album came out, I kind of figured that they had already peaked and started to lose a lot of interested in them.

Then this record happened and completely redeemed them for me. I highly recommend placing a pre-order for this so that you can have it in your record player right as soon as possible.

For the past couple months, there really haven’t been a lot of new albums that have grabbed me. It’s true that I check out about twenty new records every week, so you’d think that there’d be at least a handful each month that stick with me. That hasn’t really been the case. There have been a ton of decent records that I’m like “hey, this isn’t half bad,” but I find that I’ve just been listening to the same few albums from last year and before over and over. So while there have been a few that I’ve been more into like the new Loved Ones, I’m feeling kind of blah about music right now.

But this new record by Ex-Boyfriends has been stuck in my head all week. The first time that I heard it I wasn’t terribly impressed, but it’s grown on me a lot. I think I spent a lot of time listening to it because they reminded me of something that I couldn’t put my finger on. They remind me a lot of high school, in a good way, but I knew that there was a recent band that they sounded a lot like. After a couple days, I put my finger on New Brunswick’s Scream Hello. Anyway, this record is fun and catchy despite sounding super familiar.

There’s still hope though! I still need to hear the entire new record by the Drive-By Truckers and give the new Magnetic Fields album some more attention. There’s also new stuff coming out by the Gaslight Anthem, Murder By Death, Make Believe, and Joan of Arc–yes, two Kinsella records–soon so that should help.

I really wanted to like the new Chris Walla album, but I just can’t get super into it. I don’t even like Death Cab, but I played “The Score” on my radio show and was really into it, but when I went back to listen to the rest of the album thinking that it might not be boring, I was disappointed to find that it was indeed boring…as is the new Say Hi (formerly Say Hi To Your Mom).

Some other stuff that I still want to spend some time with are the new ones by Willie Nelson, The Shackeltons, Rafter, Bob Mould, Jason Collett, and Fjord Rowboat. So we’ll see!