Texas Is The Reason "do you know who you are?"

This cd is so loaded with memories it's almost impossible to isolate them.  The disc stirs my memories all up into one mid-twenties pulp.  I first heard the band on a Revelation Records comp. Which led me to buy their ep. When this #texasisthereason album was released in 1996 I was a 24 year old mess. I was of the disposition that a broken heart at 24 meant my life was over and I was just killing time until death took me.  I was reading the other day about how you have three loves in your life.  The first one is "idealistic love".  The one where everything appears to be how it "should be" but fails because it is shallow or at least unappreciated.  The second one is your "hard love", that's the one that actually teaches you what you need from and and what to give for love, often in very painful ways.  The third is your "commitment love".  The one where you supposedly figure all this love shit out.  This album fits snuggly in my "hard love" period of music collecting.  I was into music that was transitioning from sincere punk and hardcore into more thinking and artistic grounds.  Smart indie and first wave of emo (before it became a dirty word)  this album always conjures up memories of walking around the west side of buffalo in early winter with cold, wet shoes and pants cuffed with ice and snow.  A new winter is always calming to me, the city gets real quiet except for your crunchy footsteps.  The band encapsulates it with the lyric: "it's getting cold all over again. So I'll be inside way too much again."  I'd spend alot of time making mix tapes for people I suspect didn't really want them in the first place.  It was a warm cocoon inside a cold apartment in a cold city.  I actually thrived on it.  It was like faux misery because I was content. The weather had given me a rational excuse to stay inside and pour over music and sketchbooks while drinking brewed cheap coffee, which is all I wanted to do anyway.  I can sing this whole album, probably without be accompanyed by the CD. Laying on my stomach with a pen and a sketchbook just inches from my ill-gotten stereo.  Once in a while looking up and beingesmerized by the vibration of the speakers. Simple sad times.