I enjoy Hard to Imagine. Not as much now as I did when it was somewhat of a rarity though. It has several beautiful moments packaged in an under developed shell.

Present Tense.

"Hard to Imagine" is a great concert opener -- like "Release," it has a slow-burning swell that seems to suggest the impending release of of bottled energy, and leading into "Go" or "Corduroy" or whatever else feels very apropros. I would agree that it's a little undercooked as a piece of songwriting, but in that context it's everything it needs to be -- and like similar PJ songs, it isn't so much about the art of its composition as it is about staking out a pleasing aural space and lingering there briefly before drifting off. I wouldn't call it anything close to a personal favorite, but I can kind of understand why in the pre-"Lost Dogs" era fans saw it as a sort of buried treasure.

But in a side-by-side comparison, "Present Tense" dwarfs it. The studio version of "PT" remains a high point of their recorded output, adolescent lyrics and all. Some of those "No Code" tracks, regardless of what they literally mean or say, are some of the only moments in the PJ canon that truly feel like Eddie alone with his own thoughts, looking inward for a sense of peace amidst a world that he is slowly coming to realize will never match his ideals. It's beautiful, man.

I reckon that all the remaining Match Madness tunes are sitting out there, shivering, hoping beyond hope that Kevin Davis does not mention them first in a post.

I suspect my methods here are at least somewhat inspired by the girls I knew between the ages of 13 and 21, who all seemed similarly fond of the common dating practice of listing all of someone's positive qualities as a prologue to the bottom line that he is more "friend" than "dating" material. In some ways this tournament can probably be seen as my ultimate revenge.

Go get 'em, Tiger!