@bubblegutz @stevesnere @chriscommon @i don’t know ryan’s insta but tell me and i’ll tag it etc ⠀ There’s something kind of bittersweet and sad when you listen to a band’s last album and despite any departure of previous sound or snobby feedback they got about this one, I really loved it and I look back on it with a little more fondness for each year that passes since they released it. They’d left Jade Tree for Suicide Squeeze here in Seattle and their sound was much fuller, bigger, and more produced but it never really lost the edge and bite of the earlier work. This was the first album where I felt like they could probably cross over and get people who weren’t just Myspace era scene kids excited about what they were doing and I was right...though it all came too late. They broke up and went on to focus on their other projects to different degrees of success. Brian is still very successful with both @russiancircles and @sumacbandofficial, @chriscommon is focusing on all forms of music production in El Paso, Ryan went off to work on Narrows, and I have no idea what Steve is up to but I’d be more than happy to interview him here if he sees this and wants to answer to TAAS questions for all of us! I hope that tonight has made you at least curious about this band and their incredible, but short, discography. If you already knew them, you aren’t surprised by my posts and if you you didn’t, I hope you’ve been curious enough to take a listen on a streaming service. I’ll close this by saying that there are few bands and artists that make such a big impact on you that you carry them with you throughout life despite timely trends. When you find one, hold onto it with both hands. TAAS will always be one of those for me. ⠀ https://www.instagram.com/p/BwL5p9VA0eN/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1wx7qk41dye89

These Arms are Snakes - Easter ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ @bubblegutz @stevesnere @chriscommon @i don’t know ryan’s insta but tell me and i’ll tag it etc ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Whew, this album rips from the first notes all the way to the end of the album. You know how there are songs that make you feel like your life is a riveting movie and your walk down the sidewalk is part of some important B-roll for the trailer? That song is “Crazy Woman Dirty Train” for me. I mentioned in the last post how important Oxeneers was for me and for what reasons, but this one somehow found an even deeper place in my heart. I’d sort of left my family, I left formal religion, and I really had no idea what life was about (and I was sort of fine with that, honestly). Easter was an album that very boldly covered all sorts of dogma and the rumor mill told me it was because of tension and general closed-minded douchebaggery they encountered when they were supporting @underoathband on a tour many years ago. Beyond the thematic impact of the album, instrumentally it was an absolute masterpiece. Each band member was in their prime in the rapport of this band and every part was intricate, forceful, and meaningful. I listen to this album on repeat sometimes just so I can pay attention to different details and layers each time and it’s one of very few albums i’ve played this many times without every tiring of. It still drives me crazy that this band was so incredible yet so many people have never even heard of them (though they love the bands that preceded and followed like Sumac, Russian Circles, Minus the Bear, Botch, Kill Sadie, The Blood Brothers, and many others). I’m getting sappy just thinking about how much I love this one, so do me a favor and give it a listen, would you? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #seattle #thesearmsaresnakes #briancook #stevesnere #chriscommon #underoath #jadetree #vinylexams #vinyl #vinyljunkie #onmyturntable #nowspinning #nowplaying #vinyligclub #vinyllovers #vinylclub #vinylrecords #vinylcollectionpost #lp #records #nowplaying @secondnaturerec @jadetree (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwL080lAYsM/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1oljae1lra9r1

These Arms are Snakes - Oxeneers or The Lion Sleeps When Its Antelope Go Home ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ @bubblegutz @stevesnere @erindavidtate @i don’t know ryan’s insta but tell me and i’ll tag it etc ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I’m going to do something I don’t often do and post 3 records in a row from one of my favorite bands. Go to the store, buy a hat, and get ready to hold onto it because we’re gonna listen to These Arms Are Snakes tonight. Oxeneers, their first album, came out when I was hilt deep in college grieving my mother and experiencing life as an out and proud gay man for the first time. It was loud, it was mathy, it was weird, and it made me wish I had more pedals and a MicroKORG of my own. It sounded like nothing i’d heard before, frantic and somehow still fun, screamy but not metal, and entirely unapologetic from start to finish. This album is the auditory equivalent of Mick Jagger’s weird-ass chicken walk being run through multiple DL-4s and tube screamers. I got so into how dark and intense the lyrics were that for a while I pretended I knew how to write a story like Steve Snere, their flamboyant frontman (spoiler alert: my lyrics sucked big time). I later found out that Brian was gay and wasn’t ashamed of it and as a young guy in a band in a dark red state, I’ve gotta say that was huge for me too. I spent a couple of years absolutely canonizing this album and studying the drum parts so that I could steal them for the pop-punk band I was playing in (hint: it didn’t work) and I made everyone that hung out with me listen to it whether or not they were wired for the task. After my partner and I started collecting records, this was one of our first honest-to-god white whale albums and I remember convincing a guy it was a shitty record so he’d sell it to me for $50 instead of $100 bucks. (Sorry dude, it’s actually a total fucking ripper, I just didn’t have $100). If you don’t know this album, please go remedy that. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #seattle #thesearmsaresnakes #briancook #stevesnere #jadetree #vinylexams #vinyl #vinyljunkie #onmyturntable #nowspinning #nowplaying #vinyligclub #vinyllovers #vinylclub #vinylrecords #vinylcollectionpost #lp #records #nowplaying @secondnaturerec @jadetree (at Seattle, Washington) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwLvhCMg1WM/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=eva1wsw77i0u