11/13/14

"We know full well there's just time
So is it wrong to toss this line?
If your heart was full of love,
Could you give it up?

'Cause what about, what about angels?
They will come, they will go, make us special,
Don't give me up.

How unfair, it's just our love
Found something real that's out of touch.
But if you'd searched the whole wide world
Would you dare to let it go?

'Cause what about, what about angels?
They will come, they will go, make us special,
Don't give me up,
Don't give me up."

~Not About Angels, Birdy

Another one to dance away the mornings to, another one with swollen hearts and eyes filling up the empty sonic space. Angelic vocals and pianos are almost requisite for this.

Some songs are like deep breaths, suffusing you, washing away the cluttered mess of broken tries and leaving you distilled to your finest nerves.

11/12/14

Nothing but Northstar. So much good new music has come out in recent weeks and I've got a backlog of thoughts to think and musings to post, but for daytime listening lately I keep coming back to these Glamour Kills YouTube videos from four years ago of Nick Torres acoustic. I would do bad things like take candy from children and cut off an old woman on the sidewalk if I meant I'd get an hour of songwriting with this guy.And I would like to turn around and scold all those folks chattering too loud during a too-good performance.

Torres's post-Northstar project, Cassino, said earlier this year they'd have new music by the end of the year. So that's something to look forward to. I'm counting down the days to the unknown.



"So this is how it ends, toxic and deliberate
She’s blood red at the neck boiling off fingerprints
This hospital love is making death seem elegant
“Just don’t breathe and we’ll stop time”
She said...
“I got this delicate lisp that speaks in tongues and upper lips”
Your silhouette's my favorite
I'm not letting go of it
I'm not letting go of it
She’s got a leash that grips my teeth
That cleans the air I breathe and
It’s wrapped around this city
You look so lovely running through my fingers
Running through my fingers
Where everything’s always felt right
You look so lovely running through my fingers
Running through my fingers
Where everything’s always felt right
So she glides off the bed with unflinching relevance
and completely motionless
You’re so heavy, you’re so warm
Just a pillow I've used a thousand times before
Wrapped in velvet and filled with thorns
I’ve got this weakening grip around her arms, around her hips
Your silhouette's my favorite
I’m not letting go of it
I'm not letting go of it
She’s got a leash that grips my teeth
That cleans the air I breathe and
It’s wrapped around this city
You look so lovely running through my fingers
Running through my fingers
Where everything’s always felt right
You look so lovely running through my fingers
Running through my fingers
Where everything’s always felt right"
~Pollyanna
Northstar, Pollyana

11/6/14

I won't ever feel better than I do when I hear the perfect song at the perfect time. Or, at least, I don't think I will, not when it is the ultimate comfort and satisfaction, the blissful calm in the middle of a perfect storm.

This morning I awoke to the new Copeland track and found it incredibly perfect. The slowness, the stillness, the build. This much piano is a delight, a refreshing classic delight, adorned with muted-before-spotlit rhythm, delicate falsetto and the swells of carefully strummed electric guitars. I've said "Ixora" is one of my most anticipated albums of this year and this track, "Erase," delivers nothing I could have imagined and everything I hoped to hear.

The first time I heard Copeland, I was in the passenger seat next to a boy I liked. I was a sophomore in high school. He was wonderful. So was "Beneath Medicine Tree," and its expounding emotion in heartbreakers like "Brightest" and "California," and assertive pleas like "There Cannot Be a Close Second." In a time and scene where this thoughtful sound fulfilled a softer side, I knew this band showcased talent of raw ability but I did not realize what potential there was to come.

Each of their full-lengths holds a special space in my musical memory. "In Motion" was a proper follow, hitting the same highs and extending past, then "Eat, Sleep, Repeat" tread further down the path of introspection. Then "You are My Sunshine" delivered their most masterful musical performance yet, a full-out tapestry of shades and tones and trills in the most serene, composed way. I've generally thought the mark of a true artist is one who can always grow, the one who is the effortless, endless ivy climbing up the wall, not the bold, bright petunias that will die with the coming season.

The more I listen to "Erase," the more I notice its brilliant little choices. How there isn't really any standard structure, but there is melody that carries and travels and comes to confluence with something like a refrain. How deploying the kick and the string section so close together creates a beautiful kind of crescendo, worthy of a symphony stage. How the spark of inspiration that roused these words is the stark scene of a singular, complex feeling, a feeling of melancholy, ache and tragic realism, a feeling that is love without mention of the cursed and capitalized word.

In this state, with this hope, I'm so looking forward to Nov. 24. I'm so looking forward to hearing more and getting lost. I missed out on the "Ixora" pre-order that comes with the one-week-early release, which was silly of me. That's alright, as I believe this one will be worth trying to hunt down in record stores rather than clicking through for it on iTunes. This one I want to hold onto. This one I want to study from all sides.

When I hear songs like this, when I listen to the soft honesty of pretty words and take in the brimming strings that serve as curtain to the patient epic grandeur, I cannot help but be inspired for something more to come. The music we hear that comes to mean something in our lives can come from so many places, and it can see us through so many more. Who can know how any art or life or love will grow?

"Sweetest taste, your armor
I can never know
Feeling, hold you're honor
Bright as falling snow
Now your heaven keeps me honest
But you can see my grey has faded
And you can't erase it

Never, I know you're waiting
Listening to your heart
No one seems to notice
That all my broken parts get mended
But I feel alone
And you can't erase it again

From my words your will was broken
Knowing I'll never get it back

Feeling all your worries, I can never know
Bleeding for your kindness, I cannot control
Heaven or your Hell when
I have nothing to offer you now
When you feel alone
But you can't erase it again

You're still a breeze upon my skin
Close my eyes, breathe you in
I'm still the shadows in your night
Taking over until I fade into your light
But you won't erase me
Heaven or hell will have to wait
You won't erase me
So you just colored me from grey

Oh, through the grey
I thought I saw your face
In there I was searching
And I saw these days
When you didn't know my name, oh
I can't help this awful feeling
That I can't erase you."

~Erase 

Copeland, Ixora

10/31/14

"Sympathy, this is my best disguise. 
My skin stepped out for my bones to dry up
For the rest of the world outside to see.
You see,you see I bleed on the side.
It's a part time thing, a private affair.
I try to keep it out of the light.
I must confess, I didn't recognize you tonight
Dressed up like my love."

When Gaslight gets it right, there is no doubt this is a band worth believing in. Sure, many have lamented "Get Hurt," and its cringe-worthy moments, but the band had the good sense to re-record "Halloween" in studio, and there, they capture the mood that makes this band great.

I am sorry I missed their tour this fall, because they are a truly excellent live band. They sit and settle together, they do not scatter, and through that they weave a dark and solemn sound, a powerful one at that. This track exemplifies this ability. This track is captivating. I love its patience and tension, I love its subtle structural changes and lack of a chorus. I love the way it gets you to listen, through wordplay and repetition. I love the way Brian Fallon, at his most capable, howls just so. I love how the story it tells is not one of perfection, but one marred in confusion and masquerade, persisting in spite. 

 

"And I hate these things but I always attend
A little sip of something to take off the edge.
And I make my way through the ghosts in the room
Trying to crack a smile
And who are you supposed to be?
You look like heaven tonight
Me, I'm a tomb, I'm a corpse in a suit,
Trying to look a little alive.

Are you alright?
Cause I worry sometimes
Are you dressed up to take my life?
Keep it coming, keep it coming.

Well I think I saw you for the flash of a moment
Your broken heart and the body that holds it
I lost your scent in the flash of the party
The big bright lights, baby, constantly haunt me.
I've never been right, have you ever been lied to?
I think I just saw the same scars upon you
Is this a disguise? Or a masquerade for me?
Keep it coming, 

Keep it coming, keep it coming.

Who are you supposed to be?
Yeah, you look just like my love.
Who are you supposed to be?
Are you dressed just like my love? 
Who are you supposed to be?
Yeah, you look just like my love.
Who are you supposed to be?
Are you dressed just like my love for Halloween?"
 ~Halloween
The Gaslight Anthem,Get Hurt

10/22/14

New discovery of the week comes courtesy of a catchy lyrical reference over at absolultepunk.net. Moose Blood is a good band, if you didn't know, a UK-bred emo quartet with high-energy tension, wallowing realities, poppy fills and enough lyrical references to merit footnotes. Their aesthetic is everything I like about the emo revival (and the exact one I've been in the mood for all day), and their 2013 release "Moving Home" is six tracks of guitar-driven goodness in fifteen minutes or less. Easy to take in, easy to hold onto. Nights like this are why I love discovering new music, and why it is so often what I do when I've got time to kill - because you never know what might sound perfectly right.

"Bukowski's growing old,

 this coffee's getting cold
I guess I'll never know
why you closed the window
Start reading Hemingway,
start drinking cups of Earl Grey, 
then I guess maybe one day..
I'll be yours forever
I'm the best book you'll never read
you make me feel like Jimmy Dean
you make me feel like Morrissey
when you undress from your best dress..

To keep warm, I'll bring a sweater
you can have mine, it looks better
and honestly, you can take it home. We'll take blankets to stay safe
I'll do my best to stay out of your way
then I guess maybe one day,
I'll be yours forever.
I'll introduce you to Clarity
teach you the words to 'The Sound Of Settling,'
make you watch High Fidelity
on a Sunday, maybe one day.

To keep warm, I'll bring a sweater
you can have mine, it looks better
and honestly, you can take it home.

To keep warm, I'll bring a sweater
you can have mine, it looks better
and honestly, you can take it home. "

~Bukowski 

Moose Blood, Moving Home