Album Discussion: Five O'Clock Charlie - Five O'Clock Charlie

Waiting for something for a long time often leads to disappointment. I have been waiting almost 2 years to listen to this album, but I can say it has not disappointed me. 

This story starts back in 2024, where a bassist I watch on YouTube released a solo acoustic cover of a song called, "Winter Trying" by this band called Five O'Clock Charlie. I found myself very intrigued by this song. It had such interesting lyrics and such a catchy guitar riff. It certainly screamed 2000s indie band which is a genre of band that I do have an affection for. Obviously my first instinct is to look into this band, and see what else they have available. The only thing on YouTube that was actually from this band (there have been several other bands that share the same name since this one disbanded, so if you look them up you'll get a lot of results for those other bands) was a performance of the same song from their final show. It is a fantastic performance that I have listened to many times over. 

But that was it. There was no other Five O'Clock Charlie easily accessible to me. I remember seeing their self titled album on a shop in Edmonton, where the band is from, on Ebay, but I eventually lost the listing and never bought it. I tried asking the bassist whose cover I watched and he said if he could find his CD he would upload it for me, but that never went anywhere. One of the members, Trevor Belley, made contact with me on a comment on original upload of their live performance (the one I linked is a reupload by Trevor), but I ended up being a little late to the comment and I wasn't sure if he saw my reply at the time. I tried emailing the band that formed out of the death of Five O'Clock Charlie, The Provincial Archive, to no avail. I tried asking the bassist again after this, and he said he would try contacting them. 

Randomly, a few weeks ago, I was on my phone waiting for a bus at night. I noticed I had a YouTube notification, so I checked it. It was Trevor replying to a comment of mine with a link. I clicked on the link... and there it was. The album cover that I had seen before. The first song? Winter Trying. 

So now that I have finally been able to listen to this album, do I actually like it? The simple answer is yes, I do like it. It was everything I wanted this album to be, more Five O'Clock Charlie. That melancholic 2000s indie sound that I had grown so very attached to from the live performance, but now in a high quality studio form. There is a bit more of a folksy flair to the album than I was expecting, but I welcomed it. The album also sounds fantastic, it is very well produced. 

Lost or hard to access media is something that will always interest me, as I am sure many can relate to. The thought of a piece of a media that seems so interesting yet inaccessible is so tantalizing. It makes you want to do nothing but find it, or even just any information about it. You never really expect to actually find it, so it makes it so much more special when you are given access to it. Thank you Trevor Belley for uploading this. Thank you Steve Badach for introducing me to such a wonderful artist. I highly recommend listening to the album, which I will link below. 

 Album: GO LISTEN

Stavi is Still Kicking!

Hello there! I just wanted to give a brief update so nobody thinks I just dropped off the face of the Earth. I am still here! You may wonder where the album reviews are? Well I'm suspending the consistent album reviews indefinitely. I thought about it at the beginning of the new year after the postmortem post and it just felt like it was too much to do consistent reviews like that. The reviews can feel like a lot of effort sometimes, especially when I want to really focus on an album, and are easy to get behind on as seen with what happened last year. I still enjoy the idea of reviewing albums though, so I think I will just do one when I listen to an album that I think is interesting enough to write about or that is very special to me. 

So with no reviews, what will I put on my blog now? Personally, I would like to branch out and talk about other forms of media that I enjoy, as well as just other things that I like. While music is something I truly love, I think by the end of last year I was feeling a little one dimensional in terms of the media I was consuming as I was listening to a lot of music to cover my backlog of albums. So expect posts about movies and other interests of mine. I'd like to at least make one post a month. I think that is an easily achievable goal and sets the expectations low so I don't feel stressed out about it. This post doesn't count towards that, but I have the idea for my next post already. I hope this has cleared things up about the future of this blog, and I look forward to a fun year on here!