Morning Music

I wouldn't exactly call these songs a morning playlist, but there are some songs that I keep returning to. This morning I've been listening to these tracks, in order to start my day off correctly.


Beach House - "Real Love" and "Take Care"
Yeasayer - "O.N.E." and "Madder Red"
Hot Chip - "I Feel Better" and "One Life Stand"
Okkervil River - "For Real" and "Song of Our So-Called Friend"
Devendra Banhart - "A Sight to Behold"
Joanna Newsom - "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie"

Reeaaallll Luuuuvvvv

There are days when the music I'm listening to at the moment is better than all the albums of the past decade.


"Real Love" - Beach House
I grew up with my parents' stories of how they met, and knew they were meant to be. If there was ever a song that more perfectly summed up their faith in the fate of their love, it would be this. With the single line, "Real love, it finds you somewhere with your back to it", I remember the blush in my mom's cheeks when she admitted to loving my dad when she first saw him. I remember the bewildered expression that overcame my dad's face, recalling my mom's antics of pushing him away to reveal his true feelings. If I had actually heard this song the moment my parents first told the story of how they'd met, I might have become an irreversible romantic. Thank goodness that didn't happen.


"My Way" - jj
I've listened to this song way too much. I only want someone to say to me, "Mama ya wine fine" and mean it.


"The Great Elsewhere" - Owen Pallett
Heartland is an amazing album, but by far my favorite track is "The Great Elsewhere". Who else can use words like blunderbuss and mizzenmast. I can't get over the line, "No I've seen His work upon the panes of the cathedral, in the sweat of the workers and the flight of the seagulls".


"Madder Red" - Yeasayer
I still can't get over this song. The opening, "Even when my luck is down/I take joy in knowing that our love grows/But if my vices are a burden/Please don't let me off/Cast me from your home" is so penitent, and yet way too enjoyable to sing along to.

Pickle the Pain

I've been listening to Yeasayer's album All Hour Cymbals for a while now. The first time I heard it, aside from the more precipitous tracks like "Sunrise" and "2080", the rest of the album felt a bit like fluff: the lyrics were hard to distinguish just from listening to it and mostly made little sense, the music was less than orthodox but not distinctly creative, and the singing style itself I wasn't very sure of. I honestly believed it was a band that barely set itself from others, and that while it had its moments, Yeasayer was something I could probably do without and not miss it.


And then I heard "Ambling Alp". Actually, it wasn't hearing so much as seeing -- the music video for "Ambling Alp" completely blew me away. It reminded me that while I may not have understood All Hour Cymbals right off the bat, I had loved "Sunrise" and "2080", and I remembered that for the most part, every album I love now I hated the first time I listened to it.


Sure enough, I listened to it again, and even without going out of my way to find the lyrics, I found that I liked it, and it has only grown on me more since then. (This is probably going to be a very common story -- I hate pretty much everything I listen to until I convince myself to go back and I realize I love it)


As for lyrics, this album has some pretty intriguing ones. Probably the dearest one to me (at the moment) is "2080", which by the way is a great song to bring in the New Year. It immediately feels celebratory, but the lyrics are tinged with anxiety, worries about "the future I was born into" and warns not to look ahead, since "by 2080 I'll surely be dead". My favorite lyric in the song of course would be "And the pain that we left at the station will stay in a jar behind us/We can pickle the pain into blue ribbon winners at county contests". Most songs deal with interesting subjects, some invoking Greek imagery (such as "Sunrise") and others dealing with sickness ("Germs"). "Wait for the Summer" is a cleverly written song about murder: "It's an accidental fall/And they won't suspect a thing at all". The music itself doesn't let down the lyrics, either, both perfectly complementing each other while staying true to subject matter.


Yeasayer is simply one of my favorite bands. As a friend of mine said, Odd Blood is 2010's Merriweather Post Pavilion.

Your Tongue is Sharp

I woke up this morning to the news that Flight of the Conchords don't actually plan on returning for a third season. Which makes sense, since season 2 ended somewhat definitively for the show, Bret, Jemaine and Murray having been deported back to New Zealand. It was an enjoyable show, but I have to give kudos to them for knowing when to stop. And besides, "the real Bret and Jemaine will continue to exist".


Also, the artwork for Yeasayer's new album Odd Blood was released. Definitely a weird one, folks. And I have a feeling that my anticipation for this release will not be in vain; if the album artwork, "Ambling Alp" and its music video are any indicators, this album is going to be one of my early favorites of 2010. Let's not forget, Yeasayer's All Hour Cymbals was listed as one of the best albums of the past decade. I'm listening to it again now, and I definitely have to retract my earlier statement that it was overhyped.


And if we'd all like to sit back and rewind to 1989, you'll be hearing the tracks "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Wave of Mutilation" from the Pixies off of the Doolittle album. I recently decided to go back and listen to the Pixies, and make no mistake, twenty years later and Doolittle hits just as hard as ever.

She Moves She

I guess that I'm suffering from some severe body aches and slow internet. Despite the inch thick frost that we had last night, I still felt like this morning was epicly beautiful, what with the pink tinged sky and the setting full moon. I don't really understand why so many people aren't morning people. Especially when you're living in Washington, what with the trees and the mountains and lakes.

Yesterday I went down to Pike Place Market in Seattle. It was a great experience, partly because I learned a lot more about the history of the place, and also because it was the first time I'd been brought to someplace new in a very long time. Pike Place Market is actually the world's largest public market that is still open, and apparently a lot of the businesses and alleys near the market used to be stables or places where people sent children infected with the Spanish Influenza to die. Fun factz. We also ended up checking out the Chewing Gum Wall, which I guess began because the movie theater there asked people to spit their gum out before they came into the theater, and so it sort of began in a very punk-rock way. The place has actually been pressure-washed twice, so what you see today isn't everything that was there. And of course, we should all be very proud that we have the world's second most unsanitary tourist attraction, just behind Ireland's Blarney Stone.

I have never been an overexcited Yeasayer fan (I honestly thought that All Hour Cymbals was overhyped), but I still cannot get over this song, "Ambling Alp". I find myself actually looking forward to their upcoming stuff, if it will be in the same general vein as this song.

And, just for your benefit, I'll include "Ambling Alp (Memory Tapes remix)" for you all.