Marianas Trench

Just below this entry, you'll notice that I have had a very bad week. Tuesday, as I drove back from Nashville and Sarah tried to sleep while Leslie listened to the iPod in the backseat, I switched from news to music on the XM, looking for something to comfort me in that painful way that only music can - perhaps Johnny Cash or 1980s U2. I found something different.

Their name is Marianas Trench.

Let me fill in some of the blank spots. They're a Canadian band, specifically hailing from Vancouver in BC. Their sound, well, take a little hard rock and a little punk, then emphasize lyrics and vocals. I am reminded, when I listen to them, of any number of alt rock bands from the late 1990s and early XXIst (don't ask me why, but Matchbox 20, Foo Fighters, Spacehog, early Everclear, and most significantly Alien Ant Farm come to mind, but only in snippets - don't be looking for another band's sound) but not to the point of thinking they're cookie cutter.

If, in college, you ever walked into the painting studio after 10Pm, when I was the only man working, covered in paint and yelling at the canvas, moshing with the walls, and pouring high-caffeine drinks down my throat, well, this is the kind of music you would have heard me listening to. You know, the kind of music you'd want to be listening to while reading a book about Anselm Kiefer or looking at the darker works of Keith Haring or Theodore Geisel (and yes, Haring and Geisel did do dark work).

There are two ways you can hear'm. First, you can hit their official site, where you'll not only get data on the band, but further you can download some 30-odd second clips in MP3 format. Not quite enough for me, I kept searching and found they'd loaded some such-have-yous on myspace.com, which is a cool site browse, needless to say (Echols had mentioned it to me the other day, and he was right on). Link straight to their myspace account here.

All of their work is pretty good, but I won't like, I keep listening to "Say Anything." I think you will too.