Let’s get one thing out of the way right up-front: Unless you know your geek extraordinarily well, or are a fellow geek yourself, avoid tech gifts like the plague! Chances are, your geek researches the living hell out of every technology purchase, analyzing myriad specifications and exploring minutia of compatibility. The odds are stacked – much like a ready-to-topple Jenga tower – very much against you. If you must buy technology, get ready to do your homework: you’ll need to make sure that your gadget gift of choice will play nicely with everything in your geek’s current stable of tech goodies, not to mention scope out the reviews to make sure it meets with other geeks’ approval. Simply aiming for the cutting edge isn’t enough, either – it can actually be a negative if your target hasn’t been “rooted” or “jailbroken” yet. All that said, if you’re still insistent and a fan of the “dog ate my homework” school of research, most things endorsed by Limor Fried, Linus Torvalds or Steve Wozniak are at least a good start.

Next up? Accessories. You might think you’re home free now – your geek already owns and loves their smartphone, tablet or camera of choice, so picking up some attachments should be a sure thing! “But,” as Jeremy Clarkson is wont to say, “you’d be wrong…” Geeks are nearly as choosy about their accessories as they are about their gadgets. After all – if your phone accompanies you every waking hour, how it attaches to your waistband is probably nearly as important as how it synchronizes with your personal cloud. Compounding the confusion, some accessories actually use magnets, RFIDs or Bluetooth to affect the way their host gadgets operate – something that your geek might find fascinating and useful, or annoying and intrusive.

At this point, you might be left wondering what’s left?! Thankfully, the tech world is a big place, filled with extravagances that your geek probably finds endlessly amusing or interesting, but insufficiently-essential to break out the PayPal account. It’s in this treasure trove of extravagance that we find some of the best geek gift ideas. Take clothing, for example: Consider apparel (or, if your connection with your geek is a romantic one, various undergarment permutations) from ThinkGeek.com, XKCD or that epic Pandora’s box of personal printing sites, CafePress.com. If this weren’t enough, all three of these places offer various other gift options – from cube goodies to brain teasers – that are likely to glom onto your geek’s favorite memes and offer endless amusement (or, at least, a reminder of your thoughtfulness that’ll make them smile with the warmth of knowing someone finally embraces their geekiness).

Failing this, geeks’ tendencies to go over-the-top on certain things is another great source of gift ideas. For one thing, most geeks have an ongoing unrequited love affair with security. They adore encryption, enjoy (or are at least thoroughly intrigued by) lock-picking, and – among other common threads – possibly harbor a penchant for philosophy or an enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. Some ideas to consider along these lines? Check out the latest in mechanical info-sec, locksmithing for dummies, geeky deep-think or startup savvy. If your geek has constructive tendencies, you might consider applying your gift to their creative side. A gift certificate to Adafruit, Sparkfun or your local electronics (or, if you’re crazy daring, pyrotechnics) surplus house can go a long way – and it’ll give them the opportunity to analyze and scrutinize their purchase to their geeky heart’s content.

You know your geek best – so bear in mind that the advice here may apply to varying degrees. Note that I haven’t mentioned gaming (a. because this is a complete Pandora’s Box in itself, and b. because if gaming is high on their list, relationships that might result in gifts probably aren’t) – though this can offer as many gift-giving opportunities as it does land-mines. Bear in mind, too, that the best gift for a geek might be something entirely and decidedly non-geeky – because even geeks need a break from geekiness once in a while. Sentimentality is not lost on us – one of my favorite gifts remains a framed duo of hair-brained invention ideas on coarse, yellowed typing paper – borne of my 6-year-old brain and transcribed by my patient-to-the-point-of-sainthood grandmother. It was a collaborative gift to commemorate my completion of grad-school: my Aunt saved the letters, and my wife had them framed. For the record: No combination of silicon, wires and software can bring quite the smile to my face that appears when I look at those notes. They’re artifacts of the past, connected to the me of the present by the hands of the people I love.

[Image credit: David Miles]

The warm cafe where I’m sitting and typing this entry – with jazz, the smell of espresso and the sound of lighthearted conversation floating through the air – feels almost as otherworldly as the landscapes I just endured with two other riders…

The madness actually began the day prior. I picked up an Ellsworth Glimpse from the Golden Bike Shop in (wait for it…) Golden, Colorado. The owner suggested I give the Chimney Gulch Trail a try – “an easy out-and-back with some climbing.” Sitting in the rental car at the trailhead, waiting out a rain shower, the trail didn’t look too bad. Then – knock! knock! - a knuckle on the passenger window pulled me out of my internal pre-ride self-pep-talk. Another rider had gotten an ear bud cord tangled into his freewheel, and wondered if I had any pliers. After a few minutes’ conversation, through the combined dexterity of the rider, his friend, and I, we managed to extricate the remains. I learned their names – PJ and Dave. Both were paramedics – and had recently returned from stints as civilian professional firefighters at Al Asad airbase in Iraq.

A few minutes an an enthusiastic invitation later, we were saddling up at the summit of the trail. My perception of a quick 2-mile out and back rapidly disintegrated as PJ’s truck had sliced switchback after switchback, climbing to the far-end trailhead. The town of Golden, far below, looked like a miniature model. After a few quick seat adjustments and a rattlesnake warning from PJ, we clipped in and started descending. It only took about 100 feet of trail to put massive grins on all our faces – shuttling this descent was a decidedly good idea!

At the bottom, after we exchanged all the requisite post-awesome-descent fist bumps and exclamations, came the invite: Kenosha Pass tomorrow? I was in. I’d head to REI that night to pick up some cool-weather gear, and we’d meet a little before 9 to head 45 minutes into the Rockies.

I did. We did. And moments after cresting Kenosha pass on Highway 285, I got the news – the plan had changed, and we were actually headed much farther into the Rockies, to the Monarch Crest Trail. Starting elevation: 11,386 feet. Length: 32 miles. We’d leave my rental car at the bottom, then shuttle our bikes and ourselves to the top in PJ’s truck. Ride time? About 3-5 hours, according to most of the reviews. My response? What the heck – let’s go for it. After all, this ride was apparently #6 on someone’s list of the 10 epic rides you should take before you die.

We arrived in Salidas, Colorado at about Noon, and headed to the Sinclair gas station whose owners operate a shuttle service for mountain bikers. The shaggy guy slinging roller-dogs behind the counter – who warned us he was new to the area – told us that 6 inches of snow had fallen at the pass overnight. With clear skies and bright sunshine, we figured most of the new snow would have burned off through the morning – even when we reached Monarch Pass, only a dusting was clinging to the ground in the shadows. We suited up – gore-tex socks, insulation layers, fresh-powder-worthy rainproof jackets, and sunglasses all around – and headed up the fire road toward the trailhead. A few minutes’ pedaling and pushing gave us the view pictured here: the summit of Monarch Ridge. Pulling in a shred of a Verizon data signal, we downloaded directions for the route – which would prove, quite literally, to be a lifesaver a few hours later.

While the trail started snowy, it was completely rideable. The sticky layer of high-country white stuff allowed surprising traction, and within minutes we were 2 miles into our adventure. That was about when things started to get interesting… The Monarch Crest route, for the most part, follows the Continental Divide Trail (or CDT) from Monarch Pass to Marshall Pass. Our portion? It winds around the windward (Western) peaks of Mt. Peck, Pahlone Peak, Chipeta Mountain and Marshall Pass, predominantly above the tree-line. With precious little shelter from 40+ mile-per-hour winds and sporadic bouts of snow and hail, we trudged along the 9+ miles of trail separating us from the leeward face and the miles of grin-inducing downhill we’d set out to find. In many places, early October snows had drifted to thigh-deep – we mixed slogs through snow with occasional frozen trail riding and crunchy pedaling over the permafrost tundra.

Just prior to reaching Marshall Pass, we reached a spot sheltered enough to allow a few gloves-off minutes, and a short break in the snow allowed a quick photograph:

Just to be clear: our starting trailhead was on the far side of the most distant mountain visible in this photo – at the top of an even higher summit that’s shrouded in clouds. The view is Northerly, so the wind was out of the left side of the frame – the Pacific drainage – the same side of the mountains our trail followed. The only visible trail here drops from left to right, just above the pine forest on the pass.

After clearing Marshall Pass, we found a clearing and took a few minutes to recover. Since the Camelbak hoses were frozen, we took the opportunity to crack into the not-yet-frozen bladders and take on some much-needed hydration, as well as load up on calories and lash our cold-weather shells to our packs. Safely out of the wind, we started descending toward the Silver Creek Trail – which past reviewers assured us was composed of long, sweeping single-track descents.

Before we could reach the Silver Creek Trail, however, we had more dues to pay: another mile of climbing on the Continental Divide Trail that took us nearly an hour, followed by a long uphill fire-road slog to reach the Silver Creek trailhead. By the time we arrived there, the sun was ominously low in the sky – and not knowing how long our dirt road descent into Poncha Springs would be, the risk of not making it back to the car by nightfall was very real. The climbs paid off, though: the final stretch of fire road to the Silver Creek trailhead was a fast descent over drainage ridges that had all three of us airborne, alternating with banked berms around tight corners.

At last, with PJ nursing a slow front tire leak and fighting exhaustion, and me thoroughly motivated to get a message through to Kelly that we were OK, we started down the Silver Creek Trail. The descents were as-promised: fun, fast and technical. Frozen fingers struggling to stay anchored on my ice-cold brake levers, I pushed the Ellsworth and myself as hard as I could – and the O-rings would later indicate I used every bit of its 5+ inches of front and rear suspension travel. Silver Creek offered a vast array of lines, with terrain ranging from glassy, banked, sweeping red clay single track, to tight-packed gravel, to steep roots, rock gardens and switchbacks. At the bottom of the trail – with minutes of dim twilight remaining – we even encountered a trifecta of stream crossings, one of which offered no bridge or stepping stones – we forded this one on nothing but knobby tires.

Finally – 6 hours after we set out – we reached the dirt-paved Silver Creek Lakes Road, descending from 9,000′ to Poncha Springs at 7,500′. With one final food stop to stave off an imminent bonk, we took on energy for the last frigid descent, and beelined for the car. Our way was lit only by moonlight, diffused by a thin layer of cirrus clouds and the headlights of occasional passing cars. Thankfully, Dave had a small headlamp to provide a bit of supplemental illumination, as well. I arrived at the car at 8:03PM – over 7 hours after we started with the sun high overhead – and the others would follow shortly.

All told, taking those first few pedal strokes to set out on the Monarch Crest trail was likely the riskiest, most reckless and dangerous endeavor I’ve ever undertaken. Between high altitudes, bitter cold, unfamiliar (and unforgivingly-rugged) terrain, and complete ignorance of how long or how difficult the trip would be, the adventure could quickly have turned into a nightmare. But it didn’t – we prepared as best we could, we pushed hard and worked through each challenge as we encountered them, and we reached our goal. I’m sure there was as much praying as swearing, and as much fear as confidence, but when we arrived at trail’s end there was nothing but agreement: it was hard, it was scary, and it was as fun as it was insane. And at one point, sometime during the hours we spent plowing across the wind-battered tundra on the Western face of the ridge, the horizon tearing away at 45-degree angles to vertical on either side, I thought back to my first “real” mountain bike ride at Dryer Road Park. If you’d have told me the pursuit of great mountain biking (mixed with a touch of peer pressure and blissful ignorance) would someday take me here, I’d never have believed you…

Featured “IRL” Comment: ”So, you do know how close to death you were?” – Craig

1. It doesn’t help if we can’t scan it!  It’s great that you’ve got an awesome web link with lots of data values hanging off the end, and maybe a nice long tracking ID, and that you’ve turned it into a QR code. The problem is, that code is probably 20 to 30 blocks on-a-side, and unless a user gets right next to it and holds their phone at just the right angle, they won’t be able to scan it. One of our local realtors has taken a liking to just this approach – convert a long, convoluted link into an extremely-detailed QR code, then print it about 4 inches tall and plop it on top of the sign. Most people will see it as a gray square, and the few that do recognize it as a QR code will have to get out of their cars and walk up to it. Congratulations – you’ve provided exactly the same value as the paper flyers stuffed into the box down below. The solution: If you must use a web link that’s 2 miles long, pass it through a URL shortening service like Bit.ly or Goo.gl. In addition to a nice, simple, QR code that doesn’t have to be in spitting distance to scan, you’ll get the click-through counters and analytics that those services provide out of the box.
    
2. Keep it mobile! Few practices in advertising get under my skin more than a QR code that redirects me to a company’s old-fashioned home page. The only way these QR codes are going to be scanned is using a mobile device – most likely a smartphone or tablet. So don’t dump me to your boring, slow-to-load, optimized-for-1280-pixel-screens home page. You know I’m going to be visiting from a mobile device, so send me to a mobile web page that my device can consume. If I have to double-tap, pinch-zoom, scroll around or squint to see the page you’re sending me to, chances are my interaction with you is going to end almost immediately after I scan your code.
    
3. Consider the context! QR codes are great, but there are some places and times where even the staunchest techie will admit they don’t work all that well. It’s really hard to scan a QR code in a dimly-lit room. Same goes for scanning from a moving car or aboard a bouncing bus. But my favorite example is the web link QR code (a long, convoluted link, of course) proudly displayed on a NYC subway car. Yay! You’ve given me a link! On a subway car where there’s no freakin’ data service! Unless that train car happens to go above-ground (which, I admit, does happen occasionally in the outer boroughs) I can’t even visit the site you want to share with me, let alone take any action on it. Which leads me to…
    
4. There’s more to QR codes than URLs! It’s exceedingly rare that I encounter a QR code that contains anything but a web link (a.k.a. a URL). But there are lots more things you can stuff into a QR code! A quick look at the options on the ZXing QR Code Generator indicates you can store calendar events, geographic locations, e-mail addresses, contact info, or even just raw text. Mobile devices know what to do with these different types of codes – scanning the QR code on the back of my business card, for instance, will net you all my encoded contact info that you can pull into your device’s address book with one click. That NYC subway ad – which was for a classical music concert – would have been much more useful as a calendar event code: let me save it to my device’s calendar, then I can take action on it later, when I’m back in cell service or sitting at my home PC.
    
5. Make it worth our while! The bottom line and end goal for any ad campaign is to convince the viewer to take action. When you put a QR code in your visuals, you’ve already got your audience taking action – we’re scanning the code! So once we’ve done that, don’t just send us to the company’s home page, or to some boring campaign-specific landing page. Offer some value add. Macy’s hit the nail on the head with this one – their latest in-store campaign offers QR codes that link you to various web videos featuring designers offering fashion advice. Considering QR code early adopters (read: geeks like me) are probably the most likely to need such advice, this is pretty brilliant. Kidding aside, in a huge field of boring QR codes, Macy’s offers a post-scan experience that’s interesting and engaging, and tied directly to the products you’re browsing through and (if they’ve played their cards right) about to carry over to the cash register.

As it happened, we found a place, and booked a 3-night stay at the Timberhouse Lodge, nestled at the edge of Prince Edward County, Ontario. After a 5-hour drive with a dinnertime pit stop in Alexandria Bay, we settled into our room, too tired to spend much effort looking through the brochures we’d picked up, or planning the next day’s adventures. At breakfast, a charming retired couple joined us at our table – after the usual greetings and pleasantries, they explained that they were visiting the area for a special concert. Apparently, they were on the mailing list of a local winery and had tickets for a concert. And the artist? Just a singer from nearby Kingston – maybe we’ve heard of her? – her name is Sarah Harmer.

As it turns out, we had heard of the delightful Sarah Harmer. She’s been a darling of local indie station WBER, and even came to Rochester for a concert at the Water Street Music Hall, years before Kelly and I were married – a concert that we attended and enjoyed! So, needless to say, we were excited, and kept our fingers crossed that there’d be a few extra tickets available if we showed up at the winery, smiled real big and maybe bought a few bottles of wine to take home.

Thanks to the efforts of Robert, the owner of Chadsey’s Cairns winery, we were able to get the last two tickets – sealed with a rooster hand stamp. After trying some wine in their barn-turned-tasting-room, we took a quick peek at the venue: a nearby barn lined with chairs and hay bales, complete with a stage, endless strings of tiny white lights, and a cool breeze through the open pasture door.

A couple of hours later, we arrived alongside a hundred-fifty-or-so other (far more invited) guests. Kids climbed around the stacks of hay, parents mingled over glasses of wine, and we found a comfortable bale on which to park. Streams of afternoon sunlight cut through the barn’s siding, painting bright stripes over long-dormant farm equipment and highlighting what little dust floated through the air as if it were fireflies brought in just for this occasion. The concert opened with the lead singer from the Canadian band Bahamas playing a solo set, just as Sarah would not long after. A witty and likable amalgamation of Willy Nelson’s guitar, John Mayer’s voice and lyrics landing somewhere in the triangle connecting the Barenaked Ladies, Jason Mraz and The Weepies, Afie Jurvanen played a set of original songs that made us smile, and set the stage of good vibes perfectly for the rest of the afternoon.

After a short break, Sarah stepped nonchalantly from a small room off to one side, finished in the same slatted siding that was now casting long strips of amber late-afternoon light over the stage. With no fanfare and just a short introduction from the winery’s owner, she started into spinning her unique flavor of indie-infused folk that’s simultaneously brilliant and down-to-earth; through the delightfully-clear concert sound system, the pitch and intonation of her voice would have been at home right alongside Sarah Mclachlan or Regina Spektor. She ran through some favorites (Basement Apartment, I am Aglow), a handful of covers, and even a few new songs – one highlight was her performance of an upbeat commissioned song for the Canadian National Parks Service (presumably) titled “Won’t You Come With Me?“ that put a smile on all our faces. Though she only speaks English, she did impress us with one verse in French after describing the difficulty she had in recording the French version. At another spot, when she forgot a chord for a cover song, she just started experimenting with the audience – eventually someone called out “B-flat!” and as she played it, a satisfied smile washed over everyone and the song casually resumed.

As Afie and Sarah played, I stopped at odd intervals and looked around. I watched people in the audience pouring wine and smiling, watched a small spider work across one beam of sunlight building a web that would have shamed Charlotte herself, watched as kids played on the broad, well-worn floorboards at the performers’ feet, prompting occasional smiles from behind the microphone that tinted the lyrics with joy. It reminded me of an article I read while we were on our honeymoon. I thought, This – right here – is the kind of thing you only read about in magazines and food blogs. It was a rare, special, once-in-a-lifetime treat, indeed.

Just in case you enjoy such things, I’ve finally gone and set up a Twitter account: @mtbkrdave

I’ve made a somewhat startling realization this week: Beginning July 15th, I’ll be participating in some sort of organized cycling event every weekend for a solid month.

On the 15th, I’ll be kicking off the craziness with a ride in the 6th Annual Fat Tire Festival at our area’s definitive singletrack destination, Dryer Road Park. But that’s just a warm up – the following weekend, I’ll be burning about 6x the energy of the Fat Tire when I ride in a twenty-four hour mountain bike race – thankfully, as part of a team of 4 riders.

From there, the fun moves onto the road, with the Ride MS century (that’s 100 miles, kids) the next weekend, and a 55-mile tour one week later.

I suppose the training rides have already started – but I sure don’t feel as ready for this epic month of cycling as I did for last year’s race!

Back in January, while musing on the topic of sea trends and innovations in mobile technology, I predicted that mobile app rentals would emerge as a new business model sometime in 2011. The idea? Rather than require users to purchase applications that they might only use for a short period of time, offer a rental option. It’s a particularly-appealing prospect for the travel and gaming markets, where application use is often transient, and rentals offer a potential annuity revenue stream. Of course, it doesn’t take much of a leap to make the jump to a subscription model, either…

Well, this morning I got a nice birthday present: My prediction came true! T-Mobile and WildTangent (an Android game development house) have announced that they’ll be offering 25-cent game rentals! Keep up the innovation, folks – every time I read the tech news, pick up my phone or sit down at my workstation, I’m reminded we’re living in amazing times.

Occasionally, staunch environmentalists make a good point or two. But in many cases, despite their enthusiasm for the term “sustainability”, they’re just not willing to look at the big picture. Case in point? Greenpeace recently released a scorecard for the “green-ness” of datacenters operated by the world’s cloud computing behemoths. Here it is:

“So what’s the problem?” you might ask… According to a Greenpeace quote highlighted by Boy Genius Report, everyone’s favorite eco-terrorism troupe based their siting scores on the typical sources of electricity for the states where the datacenters are located. But if we’re going to talk genuine “sustainability” (which, by the way, eco-nuts are completely uninterested in) then you’ve got to consider a lot more factors than just the makeup of the power grid sources in a particular host state.

If we take a look at an infographic from the ever-so-transparently-named CoolerPlanet, we can see just how “green” the electricity sources in each US state are:

So greener is always better, right? Not necessarily. Greenpeace specifically bad-mouthed Apple for choosing to locate its newest datacenter in North Carolina, where the energy supply is notoriously un-green. But what were their alternatives? A California site would expose the datacenter to earthquake risks – and I’m sure your neighborhood Greenpeace operative isn’t keen on downtime for their favorite iDevice. Coastal Texas isn’t really an option due to the risk of severe weather. That leaves inland Texas, the Pacific Northwest, and New York.

“Great, relocate there!” say our tree-hugging friends. Not so fast – remember that inland Texas can throw down a wicked heat gauntlet in the summer, while Oregon, Washington and New York get downright frigid in the winters. The DOE estimates that almost half of a typical datacenter’s energy consumption is used for climate control – what happens to that number when the ambient temperature is well over 100°F? Or -10°F? Suddenly, choosing a comfortably-temperate and relatively disaster-free state like North Carolina or Virginia – despite the un-greenness of their energy supplies – doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. I’m sure the stewards of these datacenters would much rather not use as much as 10X the total energy – along with all it’s concomitant transmission inefficiencies – and keep their overall consumption low.

When you start factoring in second-order causes and effects – such as the environmental impact of pulling power, water, fiber and vehicle conduits into remote places, landfill and recycling capacities, employee commute emissions, construction impact – the sites that Apple, Google, Facebook and others have chosen start to look even better. As is almost always the case, monovariatic analysis in pursuit of a pre-selected conclusion falls flat on its face when a bigger-picture view is considered.

Unfortunately, datacenters consume a lot of energy. Choosing their sites carefully – not only based on energy sources but also based on consumption – can reduce this. The people whose jobs, reputations and employers’ solvency are on the line have no choice but to look at the big picture. Ultimately the true solution for Greenpeace’s gripes is likely for them (and the rest of us) to give up their iPhones and App Stores – but then – how would they coordinate their naval blocades, nuclear power plant break-ins and cargo ship boardings?

Maybe (probably?) it’s just me, but it seems like the majority of performers that appear in movies – while usually musicians in real life – are merely playing additional characters. So I suppose it was entirely natural for me to think that The Boxer Rebellion wasn’t a real band when one of the main characters in the rom-com Going the Distance dropped the group’s name. But, much to my surprise, the indie-rock group popped up on the set list of my friend Andy’s long-running Internet radio show! A quick Amazon search revealed they’ve actually released three albums, the oldest of which dates back to 2005. It only took a few previews to convince me to pick up all three…

Exits (2005) – Amazon, eMusic

I started my chronological tour of The Boxer Rebellion with Exits. Frontman Nathan Nicholson doesn’t waste any time before introducing us to his range – he gives equal time to quiet, subdued lyrics and urgent, almost-imploring vocals in the album’s opening tracks. The occasional distortion seems well-placed, and has a nice analog quality to it – you can almost see the board’s VU meters peaking into the red in Nicholson’s voice. While hints of Coldplay come through occasionally, the far more-indie sound of the instrumentals was a nice differentiator.

My first run through Exits – as with the other two albums – played through my office open-air as I wrote various bits of software. It was great coding music inasmuch as it maintained a good pace and an urgent tone – but no particular track stood out enough from the background for me to stop and take note of it. If I were to queue up the album on a different day, I can’t pin down any one that I’d jump to – all were good, but none were catchy enough to stand out. One possible exception was the atypically-melodic “Never Knowing How Or Why”.

Union (2009) – Amazon, eMusic

I started to notice patterns as I moved on from Exits to Union. The four years of (presumable) work and maturation that preceded Rebellion’s sophomore effort showed immediately, but the band certainly tipped their hats to their first release: come out the gate with a strong beat and prominent vocals to get the listener’s attention, make everything flow with nice seamless transitions, and offer a stylistic variety that (quite justifiably) shows off your musical versatility.

Unlike Exits, however, the songs on this album had contrast. When a new one came on, I noticed. I noticed the acoustic subtlety of “Soviets”. I noticed the head-nodding, foot-tapping magnetism of “Spitting Fire”. And I noticed the bits I’d go back to the next time Union ends up in front of me.

The Cold Still (2011) – Amazon, eMusic

After listening through five years of music-making in my first two hours with The Boxer Rebellion, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect when I dove into their most-recent release. Of course, as most assumptions go, I was wrong. Right out the gate with “No Harm”, the band made it clear they intend to be taken seriously. The indie-sounding guitar tracks are pushed farther into the album, and they wait to turn up the catchy-dial. This was the point where I stopped my work and took notice.

In The Cold Still, the lyrics turn more introspective and dark – but in light of their accompaniment remain encouraging-sounding. More than just offering song-to-song contrast, the band now juxtaposes sounds with emotions, and explores the complexities that take them beyond the typical indie sound – they achieve a phenomenon I’ve wanted to explore more: Some of the songs enter that personal canon of music that seems unfathomable not to have been written. For a perfect example of all-of-the-above, listen to “Organ Song” with your eyes closed. It makes you want to get up and run. Not from anything, or to anywhere. Just run.

If you couldn’t tell from the above, I’m glad The Boxer Rebellion is a real band. They’ll certainly be regularly appearing in my playlists from now on, and I hope they keep up the good work in their releases. In the mean time, do pick those releases up – if you have any sort of affinity for indie rock, you’ll be glad you did.