8/14/12

I've long held that, despite the popularity, fun. is secondary to The Format ("Some Nights" holds no candles to "Interventions and Lullabies"). However, I cannot get this fucking cover out of my head.

Really pretty, really well done.



"When the summer rolls around 
And the sun starts sinking down 
I still remember you, oh I remember you 
And I wonder where you are 
Are you lookin' at those same stars again? 
Do you remember when 
We woke under a blanket 
All tangled up in skin 
And I know in that moment 
We'd never speak again 
But it was perfect 
And I never will forget 
That we owned the night"
~We Owned the Night
Lady Antebellum, via fun. on Sirius XM

8/11/12

A great little song, and truly a heartfelt performance. Sometimes you just wanna hear some bluesy picking, and a song with a scene, a message and some hope.

Love the black and white, love Grace Potter's voice. Catch what she does at the end of the bridge to see just how powerful she can be, how she can make it soar.

Watching this really makes me miss having people to play music with. They're all out there in their respective homes, still playing, still crafting, and here I am doing who-knows-what with myself, my writing, my life. But that's not a bad thing, really. I can say it's all of my own design. Think I will pick up the guitar and possibly do nothing else this weekend but play and write and dream...

"I lost everything
I fell out of a daydream
At the door of a long lost friend
And I cried aloud
Without an inch of pride
I knew I had reached the end

An old and lonely man
Saw me sittin on the curb
He reached out an took my hand
He said I know your song
And I know your name
And there was a time that I felt the same

But it's a low, low road
You've gotta roll down
Before you find your way, my friend
And it's a high, high hill
You've gotta climb up
Before you get to the top again

I held on so dearly
To the wrong things in my life
But now I see so clearly
I was walking into my own knife 

You've got to get up off that street
Stop looking at your feet
And take a hold of something real 

And this old man, took my hand
He looked at me and said, little girl, I understand

That it's a low, low road
You've gotta roll down
Before you find your way, my friend
And it's a high, high hill
You've gotta climb up
Before you get to the top again

And there was a time that I thought that I knew it all
And there was a place that I thought I could call my own
But it all came crashing down and I looked around
And I knew that things would never be the same

Low, low road
You've gotta roll down
Before you find your way, my friend
And it's a high, high hill
You've gotta climb up
Before you get to the top again"

~Low Road,

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, Grace Potter & the Nocturnals 

8/6/12

Mmmmm,woodwinds.



"Where you think you're gonna put that foot down, sir?
First you need to stand.
You've been thinking on a few different styles, but
Do you need a hand?

And is there only room for the smaller dreams?
Well, you've got those in spades.
But the secret's gonna pass your lips someday
And it'll be a scream.

And you can talk a real big game
So big it wins.
When your mouth is all done and shut, well
Are you out or in?
Are you out or in?

And out or in, or high or low
You always come back here. 
If you do or if you don't,
There only is one fear
Only is one fear."
~Do or Don'tAll My Pretty Ones, Tone Poems

8/5/12

 

"There are twelve hours, there's a day between us
You called to say you're sorry in your own way
There are oceans and waves and wires between us
And you called to say you're getting older

Sometimes, planes, they smash up in the sky
Sometimes, lonely hearts, they just get lonelier"

~Wires and Waves 

Rilo Kiley, Take Offs and Landings

Old peppy Rilo Kiley to remind me retrospective isn't always a bad thing.

Such a good album. Definitely appreciate it more now than I did in high school and whatnot...the contrast between hopeful and cynical is a lot more obvious to me. The attitude is sly, confident in its despondency. But the layered West Coast guitars, Tijuana-prime brass sections and occasional raspy-surfer rock lead vocals from Blake Sennett are upbeat enough choices to distract  from what's often some pretty hopeless scene setting. Jenny Lewis is still playing with cutesy girlish punctuation -- this is the band's full-length debut after all -- but it works, makes it fun, and the songs are perfect for indistinguishable Sundays full of to-do lists that never see strikethroughs and weary feelings.

The Takeaway: No point in resenting desperation's battle. No point in trying to map the future, when life/your own impromptu choices can bust it all up at any second. 

"And why do you do it and make it seem delicate?
When it's all the stupid things, so damn confusing to me
Like talking it through, controlling my temper
Like letting it go, saying, 'Please, forgive me
For laughing at your jokes'"

~Plane Crash in C 

Rilo Kiley, Take Offs and Landings

7/31/12

This song broke my heart five times today. And it's not just because summer lightening turned the sky lavender as I drove home in the rain, the perfect Gaslight scene.



First I simply couldn't get the chorus out of my head, because the vocal line's so beautiful. And the guitars are so mournful. Have we all not buried the thought of someone somewhere so deep that we'd never have to feel it again?

But then, it made me think of unrooted family trees, and about answers, the need to find them within ourselves, our families, our compound histories.

"And I'm not looking for your love
I'm only sniffing out blood
Just a little taste of where I came from"

So it's a beautiful song, and I keep listening to it (along with the rest of this fantastic album that I will surely bring up again). And then it really sinks in that, perhaps unlike our sorrowful narrator, I have a mom and a dad, who I really should call even if they have no idea what the hell to say to me anymore. I have so much to ask them -- what is stopping me? One day I will not have the chance. Some never get it to start. There is much about my own history I do not understand, and the mysteries are buried about 150 miles north at the state line...

"And at the bottom of this river
Is where I put you down to lay
So I can live with it
And in my heart, heart, heart there are these waters
Where I put you down to lay
While I learn to live with it
Keepsake, until I'm free"
~Keepsake,
The Gaslight Anthem, Handwritten