What You Like, You'll Find Again

I LOVE AU REVOIR SIMONE. They haven't put anything new out in a year or so, but I still love all their songs times a million and have recently re-discovered them. There's something so summery and magical about their music. Unfortunately, there is something very East Coast summer specific about their music too, and it kind of makes me homesick. But I still love it! Here! You love it too!








this is the song that plays when Hattie calls me!





I want to be their roadie on their summer Europe tour. I WANT TO!

My New Favorite

things I like now

the way Snagglepuss talks



this song


Judge Judy


more of this stuff



Dr. Steve Brule

I Wanna Know What I Know I Got a Right to Know

Some things I've been listening to lately:


Pressure by some Danish band called Quadron.



I'm Just a Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin) by Candi Staton. She's a super excellent sassy black lady from Alabama and on Tuesday Kelly, Nicole and I made Korean food and drank homemade wine and blasted her best of and smoked inside and it was terrific.



Go Do by Jónsi, who is the lead singer of Sigur Ros. It is good for morning bike rides to school in the sun.


The Opposite of Adults by Chiddy Bang. I know its not new anymore or whatever, but I've only just found out about it and I'm kind of hoping that by the end of the week I'll be sick of it already. I like the name of that one guy though. Xaphoon. foooooooon.


Never Follow Suit by The Radio Dept. They're from Sweden, so of course I like them. I'm actually kind of obsessed with this song, as well as two others, This Time Around and David. Here:




This one is like if Freestyle and Jens Lekman and the Jesus and Mary Chain all somehow had a baby together. I like it.


p.s. I already have a tan!

even T-Pain feels sad sometimes

I'm glad someone finally wrote a song about this

hail satan

this is kind of sweet, no?

steve reich

cheese I feel like I always meant to talk to you about this but never did, feel the vibrations of the sweet musics!

The HBIC

As we all know, I had a little bit of an obsession with Rihanna's Rated R over Christmas break. I guess in my post-Mardi Gras stupor, I've rekindled that obsession a smidge since that album is all I've played today.




Mardi Gras, in general, was wildly successful this year. I'm sick (again) but all the festivities are over, so it's ok. I have some blank spots in my memory and only $15 to buy food for the rest of the month. But I had a kick ass time so it was all worth it. Due to the tragic demise of Tor Coolguy, my beloved digital camera, I have no pictures of anything. I am super excited for next year when Hattie lives here and we can have Mardi Gras together!

I am also excited for the next time Nick and Schuylar are in town and I get to see Nick's miffle, the definitely hot, almost certainly into me, MPO Dan.

Now I will eat some noodles, drink some tea, and crawl into my cave with a downloaded copy of the Princess and the Frog and try not to hack my lungs out.

February

I love this cover a lot. Don't bother watching the video, its crap, just play it and imagine you're someplace beautiful. Chase those winter blues away!



I want to dress like this all the time:



But of course I can't, because I haven't got any green tights or good shorts and also it's very cold this week. Ugh.

But Mardi Gras season has finally arrived! I am exceedingly excited (maybe too much?) for the week between the Superbowl and Mardi Gras because it means that my exams/responsibilities are over and I can just get DRUNK all the time! Yesterday, a great thing happened when I went to the bank to deposit some money into my overdrawn account: I signed a paper that makes it impossible to overdraw, and the guy gave me a refund on my overdraft! Including the fee! That means that the giant bottles of Sky Vodka and Amaretto that I bought with money I didn't have were FREE. Yessssss!

I think I might be a little too cheery for so early in the morning. Coffee.

Here's the original, just for good measure:

ONE HUNDER!

this jam is about us. you know it.
also, preview of lizard print! edition is an exploration of the making of a shade of green. i know, wtf that sounds tarded. beel liked it.

exam! in 32 minutes and then im DONE!!!!

Obsession

The Black Keys + Mos Def + Jim Jones = Blakroc



I'll be done with the semester after today. I can't wait.

collard greens, stringy beans

It Wasn't

Girl, I Never Loved One Like You

"Birthed by Mouth in the year two-thousand and five, young Edward Sharpe had to wait nearly two years before he was to grow his arms and legs and fingers and toes. Immaculately conceived, his father (a Robot who had magically become a real boy but that's another story) declared his undying devotion to the creature. He perched the fleshy bust upon a teetering pedestal fashioned from stacked cereal boxes and positioned the display at his window for all the town to see. Young Edward soon proved no ordinary boy.

Though his father had figured him deaf for his unresponsiveness to sounds, he in fact had the universally unique condition of being deaf from hearing too much or, more correctly put, too well. In plain words, he heard EVERYTHING AT ONCE.
At first it proved rather painful like a wretched whining winding all hours, but very soon those who whisper visited young Edward and revealed to him the Tricks and Truths, the Ways and Plays, the Chords and Dischords of the Universe. He did not need to eat but the color of the sun, which was F#, and moved his bones to grow. His arms and legs and fingers and toes grew til the tower of boxes collapsed and he laughed. He moved thru the door which was C over B# and ran thru the village hearing ALL of its music! The workers and children and painters of buildings and dogs barking madly and trees bristling softly and OH!!"

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros



I'm obsessed with this band, especially the above song.

Whatever You About To Discover, We Off That

So I was trying to write this itty bitty paper for Psych on Diffuse Axonal Injuries and the corresponding affected areas of the brain last night, and I might have stayed up until 3. This morning, while prepping to do some ab-and-thigh-and-butt busting moves, I discovered in an email that I had to write a paper in response to a reading I hadn't done for my first class. I got it done, but I didn't bust any part of my anatomy before school, nor did I drink a full cup of coffee or eat anything besides half of a banana.

And then it was SO HOT all day. I got a giant cup of iced coffee from PJ's at lunch and went to the park where I ate an apple and shared it with one skinny squirrel and one fat one. On the way through the quad to take money out of the ATM, I passed one of those girls giving away free energy drinks. Despite the potential for ulcers and stress disorders, I took one and then drank it during Psych.

After class I went to the sculpture quad to try to finish the reading I had to do for my last class, but I couldn't focus on the page at all, so I lay down in a scratty patch of grass with my sunglasses on and my head on my backpack. Next thing I know, the phone is buzzing under my head and it's almost 5. There I was, after 20 oz. of coffee and a Monster, sleeping like a homeless person in the quad.

Last night in my effort to avoid actually writing anything about the prefrontal cortex, I downloaded a bunch of stuff, including the new Jay-Z album and Kid Cudi's The Man on the Moon: The End of Day. As a result, I've been listening to these songs all day:


Hate all you want on Aubrey Graham, but this shit is killer.






Stupid Cudi blocked embedding of the real video, but you can watch it
here

And, because I'm just that awesome, download The Blueprint 3
And Man On The Moon: The End Of Day

P.S. Welcome to the blog, bitches!

The Sticky

Last year, I went to see Aesop Rock at the Parish House with a couple friends, and despite our flouncing around the French Quarter for a good 40 minutes trying to find the place, we still managed to be super early to the show. So we're standing around, kind of stoned and in various stages of drunkenness, just kind of all wishing we were 21 so we could buy something to do, and who should come on the stage but Black Moth Super Rainbow.



They were quiet and even kind of shy (the girl seemed to be, anyways) and the only thing they said was "Hey, we're Black Moth Super Rainbow" and then they launched into the best show of my life.



It was loud, and weird, and I was undeniably fucked up, but all of a sudden I was on another planet. The bassist got so into it, he was bopping around on top of the speakers and everywhere else. The drummer had no face on account of his giant hoodie. The girl who plays the keyboard wasn't even facing the audience and she had a string of christmas lights to play by. The guy who does the mixing and the singing was just lying on a couch with his back turned to the audience. I didn't even know he was there until he decided to stand up halfway through the show. I danced (which I never do) and I managed to get some guy to buy me a vodka cranberry, and the only other thing I can pick out of the giant awesome blur that was that show is my friend Kelly eating a banana and screaming about how this music had made her understand Spinoza.



BMSR is preparing to release another spectacular sensation this spring called Eating Us, which will be their fourth album. It's wonderful, really, the entire thing. Not being much of a conventional band, I don't think they've released a single, which leaves me free to choose my favorites and make everybody I know listen to them without having to bitch and moan about how everybody likes the single but the true gem is underappreciated.



Twin of Myself is definitely one of my favorites. The third song on the album, it is twinkly and light, but the bass is right there to back it up without overtaking the melody. The vocals are less distressed on this album in general, but still not quite discernable. This song is a gentler, more soothing Black Moth, and I love it. All the elements combine perfectly, making me wish it was hot and sunny and I was lying in a park, watching birds and eating fruit.



Iron Lemonade is definitely one of the best songs on the album. The vocals are clear enough that if I was so inclined, I could actually sing along. The beat is driving, and it seems dark, almost ominous. The vocals float through, adding a happy-go-lucky if not dutch angled tone to the piece, and when the synth comes in toward the end, the song builds quickly to what seems like it must be a crashing end. But instead, it disappears, like it's flying off into the night. I like this song so much that I've set a goal to either trip face and listen to this song on repeat or have some really excellent stoned sex while it's playing.

If you like what you hear so far, here are some links to downloads:

Sun Lips, off their 2007 album Dandelion Gum.

Forever Heavy, also from Dandelion Gum.

I Think it is Beautiful That You Are 256 Colors Too from 2003's Falling Through a Field.

Spiracle, from the Octopus Project collaboration The House of Apples and Eyeballs.

Happy Melted City, off the Drippers Rarities EP.
Enjoy!

A Crispy Realization

I knew there was a reason I like Bon Iver so much.

It is because he takes pictures of himself with his cat.

Also he writes beautiful songs. In true broken-hearted artist fashion, he hid alone in a cabin for months after a break up and recorded an album. All the songs on For Emma, Forever Ago were composed with only a melody, and the words were added later. Its an interesting idea, to fit the words into the song based on the shapes of their sounds and not the meaning behind them. Clearly, he didn't just randomly throw words around, but he might not have thought about them too hard. I can't always tell what the words are, so I guess I'm only getting bits and pieces anyways.

This is my favorite song, and coincidentally the only official video in existence:



The whole album is lovely, really. It feels personal, delicate even. Maybe what I mean is that it makes me feel delicate. I can only listen to it alone, though. I've never managed to discover if other people have music like that too, that they can only listen to when they're alone because it makes them think too many things at once.

Well, whatever the case, For Emma, Forever Ago is great. As is this:


Cats and saws? BEST.

This is where you can download Re: Stacks

And this is where you can download The Park, which is a Feist cover.

He has a blog, which is probably more informative and better than mine, so here. It is called Creature Fear, which is also probably why I like him.

Is There Any Good Reason That I Should Be Scared?

This is pretty much my new favorite thing:



This guy, François Virot, does not even have a Wikipedia page. The closest thing Wikipedia has is some Marquis who got his head cut off in the French Revolution.

So, this guy is from Lyon, and he was in a noise pop band called Clara Clara which has no videos on YouTube. He's been playing the guitar since he was seven because he wanted to impersonate Kurt Cobain, but thank goodness that he doesn't sound like Kurt Cobain at all. He does, however, make very frightening faces when he's singing his own songs:


There are loads of La Blogotheque videos here, including some more Fançois Virot. And here is where you can download you very own copy of Say Fiesta! It's labeled Cascade Kisses, but that's incorrect so just change it yourself. His debut album came out in September, and it is a lo-fi freak pop masterpiece called Yes or No: Here is what last.fm had to say about the album:

"In a nutshell, then: it’s the record of a sage, recorded by a kid. Achieved with no superfluous addition: one guitar, sometimes two, one voice, sometimes two, or three, plus an acoustic rain of hands on wood, bits and pieces of percussion. Or else, a beautiful suppressed anger against whatever, overflowing with generosity, acoustic guitar strings assaulted with no second thought whatsoever, escalating songs, funk to the core, rageously melodic, that never fears total exposure be it in full sun or a car’s headlights in your eyes. What does François Virot’s pulsing heart look like, you’re wondering? Depending on the moments, what you will hear in this programmatic Yes Or No is: an either melancholic or joyous folksy rout, a fake grand reunion recorded onto tape in total solitude, moments of mingled pavement-esque and beatlesy descent, and that same brio that you like to hear in Animal Collective (we’ll be frank with you: you will think of Animal Collective from time to time, François does like to strum his guitar like it was a percussion piece, and play in dark, savage forests). Eventually, you will hear a voice that is both singular and precious. People who were lucky enough to see and hear François consume himself on stage at the back of a basement or a spacey flat know it too too well: François needs to wince in order to hoot, yet his chanting never sounds like groans. From deep down in his throat, his voice, gently saturated with matter, likes nothing more than to settle in your ear and levitate, harangue it without assaulting it. You either love it or conjecture about the fact that you may hate it, and then you end up loving it anyway."

YES.