“I am the light of the

light at the center of the

thing that’s happening

the most important thing

that’s happening currently”

With that, Aaron Belz closes “So Galactic,” a monologue by an LA kid who plays (presumably guitar) in the Macronauts and wears pink hair and “crapped-up Vans.” I think I met this same really important kid once in my gigging days, only it was in Chicago and he was the bass player, but I won’t name the really important band because this blog is super-read and I don’t want to damage a promising career.

But yeah, that’s the indie music scene in a stanza.

That clip gives you a little cross-section of Belz’s style as well as his awareness of the cultural soup. He cuts stuff up and laughs about it. Once the squeamish feelings go away and you get desensitized to the blood and guts, Belz’s visceral (eviscerating?) humor will have you in proverbial stitches.

The man can really turn a phrase. Check it:

“Like, I might be driving along, and the

iPod might shuffle to that one Coldplay song:

why now? Here, where the road

gracefully descends to Steak ‘n Shake,

where the trail ends

 

in”

–“Scattered Showers”

You can practically smell the weirdness of living under the power of algorithms. It’s moments like that that make you think maybe these computers do know what they’re doing, and random ain’t so random after all. Plus a Steak ‘n Shake reference is just funny.

It’s not all funny, though. For every ounce of humor, you get a little serving of cynicism. Belz is honest about his human lostness; and coming from a follower of Christ, that honesty is refreshing. The serious side of this collection leaves an impression of incompleteness–the unclosed circle of us without God. Belz doesn’t sweeten the draught: this side of glory, nobody’s going to fix this mess. Belz revels in it.

You can get Glitter Bomb here. I got mine straight from the dude himself: