Looking directly into this night barreling down on 1 am. The Leinenkugels Summer Shandys are three-deep, thanks to the summer discount that's been going on at the local grocer's market. The eyes are starting to tighten up and droop. It's much too quiet around here. There's no one in the house and there's no one outside the house, but a stray opossum, a raccoon and a tomcat or two, smelling the exteriors of homes for the scents of lady cats. The alley's vacant and there's just the sound of the train, lumbering on the tracks down along the Mississippi River. The engine makes a good rumble, even a few blocks up from it, tucked here in the hills.
Damn it, everything's too quiet. Even the rumble of that train thrumming powerfully is like a friendly lullaby, heard every night around this time, like clockwork. There are two lights on in the house and everything's mostly in its place. It's been one of those evenings where there were so many other things that I wanted to do and never got to them. It drives you mad, just a little bit, when that happens. It makes you want to break the silence and the doldrums in a way that will startle even yourself.
You want to just pad over to the turntable and - in the center of the night, on the cusp of a future morning - throw the new Cribs record on, turning the volume up to blaring, bleeding levels. The album that twin brothers Gary and Ryan Jarman and younger brother/drummer Ross Jarman made is one that will make a night like this obsolete if the volume is cranked up high enough. The way that it could punctuate the night, to galvanize an energy that wasn't there before the needle was lowered onto the record is momentous. It must happen right now, before we pass out for hours.