11/14/12

Sitting a a hotel, watching palm trees whip round in 21 mph winds. Feeling reality suspended for a few more hours. After a while of this, this song came to my mind, it is fun and it is flirty as it tells that tale of what sounds like a rather visceral run-around. Part ballad, part metaphor, I think.

Something in this Simon and Garfunkel-esque rollicking, the steady tambourine and probably the fact Fisher is Canadian makes me love this song. As far as singer-songwriters go, he is on the internal narrative side, but the way he sets the story is what sets off his lyrics more than any great revelation. Great with a hook, "doo-doo-doos" or "yeah-yeah-yeah," group vocals underscored by things like banjos and mandolins.

This song, though, I particularly adore, because I like those upbeat tunes about being defeated, and that's a damn fun chorus.



Something very "life goes on" about that, rather than some sad sack at a piano mourning and hollowing (though that has a place, too).

Maybe it jumped out at me this morning because I've been on the lighthearted side lightly. I've been on quite the adventure the last couple weeks, lots of travel, lots of  new people, lots of spontaneity and fun and inspiration. A certain degree of benchmarking. Much to be happy about. Much to enjoy. I even managed to properly stretch out my back, given the time and a hot tub, doing wonders for my overall sense of well-being. And yet, there it is, the nagging lonely, the empty head syndrome of having no one to wrap myself around. So a song like this is a good fit for this morning, when everything is clipping right along in the eyes of the world but I'm no less lost in my head.

"She's my polyrhythm
Carryin' my heart like the beat
So fast I can't keep up
My prayers sing the melody

She runs guns, everyone wants guns,
She runs guns, everyone wants there she goes,
She runs guns, everyone wants guns,
She runs guns, everyone wants there she goes....

Why you wanna save me?
Lord my soul is taken

She cried, I cried so hard
Left her for the L.R.A.
Fly by like a million hornets
These bullets know my name

She runs guns, everyone wants guns,
She runs guns, everyone wants there she goes...
She runs guns, everyone wants guns,
She runs guns, everyone wants there she goes..

I done too much damage,
Got nothing left to feel,
My self is broke and bandaged,
Her love is a scar that never heals.

Why you wanna save me?
Lord my soul is shaken
Why you wanna save me?
Lord my soul is taken

She runs guns everyone wants guns,
She runs guns everyone wants there she goes,
She runs guns everyone wants guns,
She runs guns everyone wants there she goes...."

~Love is a Scar That Never Heals

Jeremy Fisher, Goodbye Blue Monday

11/3/12

Good mornings have good coffee and good songs, the kinds with harmonies and odd layers of instruments and musings on humanity. I am well-rested for the first time in what feels like days, I can listen better and focus on little moments.This album has so many.

I think it'd be a wonderful thing to write songs this sad and thoughtful, I do not think that everyone who thinks they can pull it off can, but you know it instantly when you've heard someone who can get it right.

"It's not hard to live like a ghost
I just haunt all that I've wanted
And leave what I don't
I dreamt a trail up to the sky
And my brothers built propellers
Just to see how far they'd fly

So hold, high how faint your reasons
Or you'll never get on
Your flashing sparrows chasing with them
Or you'll never get on
Don't you forget you come from nothing
Or you'll never get on
That wind is calling my name
I won't wait, or I'll never get on"

~Half Moon 

Blind Pilot, We Are The Tide

11/2/12

It's amazing, how many things manage not to change while everything else is spinning.

For example, I am still the girl who doesn't mind sitting home alone, discovering and dreaming and being in my own little wandering world. And yet, life happens, full of surprises and challenges and "too-good-to-say-no" chances, interrupting my chance to explore but exhilarating in its own fascinating, eye-opening and hopefully absurd way.

Sameness, stillness, is not bad after all that. So after a ridiculous week of too many press conferences and deadlines, way too many words in too few hours, too many beers and too much to process, I will sit here and listen to Jimmy Eat World, like nothing is new, alone with myself and my words and my thoughts and I am grateful that not everything changes, because maybe, it is really is better this way.

11/1/12

I have a secret theory a lot of Copeland songs would sound really amazing arranged for an orchestra. One that performs somewhere outside at night, under stars, with amphitheater-style staging and crowds scattered on the lawn.

A decent amount of their songs, especially on the last two albums, have quite varied instrumentation, but I think this would translate well, too. S'all in my head.

Lately I've been tearing songs apart and listening to everything as best I can, then trying to pluck out solos even if I know they are too hard for me to pull off, stretching tendons and forcing precision in the meantime. It is pretty much the only thing I can do lately that really distracts me from the rest of my life, the rest of the world and these ridiculous people I find in it that I no longer know what to say to anymore. Music = better option.

"Go if you want
Make your way straight to the door
I hope that you look back before you go
Because grace looks perfect before it starts to leave

It’s a fight between my heart and mind
No one really wins this time
No one really wins this time..."

~No One Really Wins This Time 

Copeland, In Motion

10/25/12

"Two headlights shine through the sleepless night
And I will get you, get you alone
Your name has echoed through my mind
And I just think you should, think you should know
That nothing safe is worth the drive I will
Follow you, follow you home...
I'll follow you, follow you home..

I'll follow you, follow you home...
I'll follow you, follow you home...

This slope is treacherous
I, I, I like it"~Treacherous
Taylor Swift, Red

I told myself, "Self, you haven't blogged in awhile, make sure that when you do, it's not about the new Taylor Swift album, because you've got a long list of older tunes that deserve a heads-up."

Alas.

This song pushes me to the break that promise. Mostly because of the bridge. "Red" overall is pretty damn impressive.

OK. Back to work now.