The past couple of months have been a bit strange for me and my usually peachy relationship with music. I don’t know why 2008’s been so troublesome, but never have I felt so old and just plain out-of-it as I have this year. I always expected that as I grew older, I’d eventually stop listening to new music and become one of Those People—you know, the ones convinced all the interesting music was made years ago, coincidentally around the time they were in high school or college—but never did I imagine the decline would be so steep or sudden.
It’s in that limbo that I went to Lee’s Palace on Thursday night to catch the Long Blondes, a band whose show last year made me beg for their return. “Couples,” however, is not the immediately satisfying listen that Someone to Drive You Home was, and evidence suggests a lot of people feel the same way I do. So I carried three levels of uncertainty into that concert. Would the new material sound better live? Was my infatuation with the Long Blondes necessarily a short-lived affair? And did any or all of this have anything to do with the fact that me and music appeared to be breaking up with one another?