Earmageddon: Moldy Peaches, "Unreleased Cutz and Live Jamz 1994-2002"

Ever since God shamed Adam and Eve by being like "Ha ha ha, you guys are naked," self-consciousness has been a fundamental part of the human experience, and the stony path to self-realization has long been littered with often grueling tests of our ability to tune out the negative voices in our heads and embrace our childlike capacity to, as the motivational posters say, dance like no one's watching. For many if not most people, I think this is close to a lifelong process — one that's arguably grown more difficult over the last 25 years or so, as humanity has bestowed upon itself a variety of digital tools that allow us to approximate perfection closely enough to fool the listener/viewer into believing that's what they're actually experiencing, and therefore they themselves are even more woefully deficient than their darkest thoughts had previously led them to believe.

It is to be celebrated, in other words, when we encounter evidence that one of our fellow citizens of Earth has managed to brush aside that frightened, scornful inner voice, tap into the freest, most playful parts of themselves, and share the results with others. It takes guts to put any part of yourself out there, is what I'm saying; to go ahead and put all of yourself out there is something that's hard not to admire.

Hard, but not impossible.