Lip-Smacking

For the past couple of months, I had been using a broken pair of in-ear headphones.  As an avid music lover, this is incomprehensible.  I was missing half of my music (literally, one ear didn't work).  It's just, I didn't want to throw down the $80 for a good pair... and I didn't want to spend a month being indecisive about which brand to purchase.  So what did I do?  I asked my brother for a perfect Christmas present - a new pair of headphones.  He did all the work for me.

I have had two life changing experiences this week: 1) my new Good Year tires and 2) my Klipsch headphones. First of all, I had no idea that my Mazda 3 5-door could actually give those SUV's some competition on the icy roads.  This whole time, I just had to come up with $700 to waste at the Mazda Autobarn.  Yeah, success costs money.  But more importantly, my day was just completely turned upside down by this experience:

+



= Pure Bliss.

Did you enjoy the photograph that accompanies song?  I obviously didn't choose it.  "Kettering," by The Antlers, has been used in a lot of TV shows, commercials, etc.  But trust me, the visual/audio experience does not compare to what I just heard on these headphones.  In order to understand, you probably need an original mp3 (not a burned copy)... or maybe even the real CD!  (what?  I thought those were obsolete...)  And you need to purchase a real pair of headphones.  If you want my recommendation, please refer to the previous picture.

I may or may not be obsessed with the confessional voice.  I devoted an entire year to writing a thesis on this subject.  When I can hear lips smacking into the microphone, I'm intrigued.  Maybe because I can't sing?  Vocalists aren't supposed to do this... yet some deliberately break the rules for certain recording purposes.  Peter Silberman is so close to us, I can hear his lips move accordingly to each word he enunciates.  He then uses his own breath as another instrument at the end of the song.  And to think, it wasn't until I wore these headphones that I heard the actual lip-smacking.

Now I am going to be at my computer the rest of the night because there are thousands of songs ready to be experienced with my new headphones.  That's the wonderful thing about music.  There's something new to discover each time you listen to a song.