"There are oceans and waves and wires between us, and you called to say you're getting older..."

Cover illustration of Secrets magazine issue #1405, November 10, 1962

With the end of 2011, I've decided to take a break for a while. While my reasons for stepping away are not the same as those of online music-writing legend Mark Prindle, who also shut down his site this week, I can sympathize when he says that it just kinda stopped being fun. After three years of daily posts (barely missing a single day the whole time, a fact of which I am a little proud), I find that keeping this online journal of my music experiences has changed my connection to music. I need to step away for a minute and see if I can start enjoying music outside of the context of writing about it, and my guess is that I'll take at least all of 2012 to do this.

I'll leave all the entries up for random Googlers, and the MP3s will all stay active for at least a little while. I'd like to thank everyone who's read this blog - it's been a cool experience, but I think I'm going to spend a few months fully absorbing the new Guided By Voices record (and going back to a lot of great records I wrote glowing reviews of, which have been gathering dust on a shelf ever since). I may start posting again at some point as well. We'll see. And, because I'm a weirdo who obsesses over minutiae and symmetry, I'm ending my blog with the titular song that I started it with in November 2008. Bye, folks...

"Wires and Waves" by Rilo Kiley