We just completed a ten day trek in the Nepal Himalayas (more on that later) with nothing but our own wheezing breaths for accompaniment. There's very little electricity available, so no iPhone charging and mostly you actually do need to be aware of your surroundings, particularly our guide calling, "No! Other right!"
So these were the tracks in my internal jukebox. You'll notice twin themes of cold and lack of oxygen. Not an accident, that.
I can't believe how long it's taken me to get round to listening to this, but soon as I did I nearly stopped in my tracks to tell everyone nearby to get it immediately. The drums! So good! And Scott's voice makes me want a cuddle and a wooly jumper and a hot toddy. Love.
OK I'm so last year, but I'm out of the loop and this is lovely. If it doesn't make you want to hug Stephen H. Davidson and feed him mince pies, you have coal for a heart.
"This music is the glue of the world Mark. It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless."
I can't say it better than one of my favourite tweets of all time. I forget the author, but it basically said, "This is Endor and if you don't like this, you don't like music." Yep.
"This music is the glue of the world Mark. It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless."
I have been lucky enough to catchSam Lee at Secret Garden Party a couple of years in a row. As anyone who's been will know, you don't really go to SGP for the music, as much as the experience, so I always just try to keep my ears open for anything wonderful. And wonderful he is. I reserve the right to romantically embellish this tale in my imagination, because he travels the lands learning traditional old folk songs and ensuring they are recorded and so do not die out.
In my head, he may be wearing tights and a doublet and carrying a lute. In reality he was wearing very tight, white shorts and kneeling on the front of the stage. It's a testimony to the purity of his voice that my friends and I were able to cease ogling/giggling long enough to listen to the most beautiful and most traditional folk I've heard in a long, long while.
His first album, 'Ground Of Its Own', is out now and you should buy it for sure.
"This music is the glue of the world Mark. It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless."
It's true, he does. And so do ye olde fantasy novels the like of which I've been reading this week. As well as causing me to say to a bus driver, "In my haste I believe I mistakenly alighted your vehicle" like it was a totally normal sentence.
Now we're in New Zealand and the Hobbit's almost out it's only going to get worse. Still, mayhap you'll partake of a playing or thrice?
Rivers - Frank Turner
Kith and Kingdom - Crazy Arm
Scottish Winds - Frightened Rabbit (substituted by Old, old fashioned on Spotify list)
Sleet and Snow - My First Tooth
The Ballad of George Collins - Sam Lee and the Gilly Boys
Show Me Land - Bronze Medal
Guest of the Government - Admiral Fallow
Higham Hill - Boat to Row
Blooming Heather - Kate Rusby
Despite the Blackout - Dave Hughes
Singalong - Ben Marwood
Love, Ire and Song - Frank Turner
The Hill of Thieves - Cara Dillon
Aragon, Pt II - Jim Lockey & the Solemn Sun
Howlin' Wind - City Shanty Band
The Kingdom - Jesca Hoop (substituted by Born To for Spotify)
Keep Your Posters - Joe Summers
"This music is the glue of the world Mark. It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless."
There Will Be Fireworks are one of those hidden gems it's so satisfying to stumble upon. They all have careers in addition to their music, so they take their time to create each album. As a result what they do release is quality stuff.
'Midfield Maestro' is one of those slow build, goosebump raising crescendo songs I love so much. Raw, raw, heartbreaking emotion. Perfect.
Alanis' second album has been my favourite for forever, but for some reason it's the one no one else seems to know of/like. I feel like it's her biggest in terms of issues tackled and preconceptions confronted.
It's also darker and heavier than her other albums, none more so than on this track. It's a really intense, tightly claustrophobic song. Plus "you were mindboggling, you were intense, you were uncomfortable in your own skin, you were thirsty, but mostly you were beautiful" pretty much describes every boy I've ever loved.
[There's not many people that give me long hair envy, but Alanis is one of the few. She's so beautuful. Sigh.]
"This music is the glue of the world Mark. It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless."
This song is Summer to me and now I'm in California having it in my earholes makes me feel like I'm swinging round palm trees and dive bombing into turquoise pools while the token moody, alternative but totally cute boy in school checks me out.
Make the most of the last days of sunshine and go have a water fight. Perhaps don't then play with tazers, though. Not a great combo unless you want to win for good. And then go to jail...
"This music is the glue of the world, Mark. It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless."
Or the obligatory, "Why is it so impossible to find a decent cup of tea outside of Britain?" post. But seriously, there's enough of a market for lemon and ginseng bags to warrant carrying them, but not enough for a good old builder's? I think no!
Plus, whenever I have succeeded in finding what will turn out to be a watery, weak relative of actual tea, I feel like the biggest cliche in the land when ordering. However normally I phrase it, I'm sure it comes out: "Mayhap I'll partake of a pot of your finest English breakfast tea, my good Sir."
So, does anyone know where I might find a decent cup of tea in the New World?
God I love these boys and their beautiful music. Plus I am having a teeny homesick, or rather people-sick, or rather one particular, special, love-of-my-life person-sick moment and this captures it better than I can.
The lyrics read like poetry:
Furrows
It’s in my belly it’s in my bones
It’s not my corner, not my cove
But with fain, you calm, you wove
It’s in my belly it’s in my bones
Though, I won’t see home till spring
-
I found my footing, I caw, I’ve sewn
Was sapped all sullen, won’t let love grow
Though with pace you sore, you rose
Alar our branches, unbend our bows
Nor find faucet, nor to flee
-
And I can hardly hold my seem shut to the sound of lurid sea
Comfort in the furrows, warn into the soil, thawing under autumn trees
-
Came loose from doubts recurring culls
With fern and copper woven groves, all remove and bare to load
Chicago has beaches. It really is the perfect city. And obviously, while swimming in Lake Michigan, I naturally hummed this to myself.
Not sure I'd try to swim across it though, you can't see the other side.
This is a beautiful live recording, by the way. Thinking of Sufjan live always makes me smile, since I can't help but remember one of the best things my friend Jess has ever sighed post show, "I want to have his little star-people babies..."
It's Sunday today, which in New York apparently means brunch and jazz. Possibly at the same time. I just ate the first and best eggs Benedict I've ever had, so good I'm sure it'll hang on to the latter title as long as the first.
So scramble yourself some eggs and whack this up. Might not be Brooklyn, but it'll be pretty darn good nonetheless.
Watching the sunset over the mountains yesterday I had one of those "nothing gold can stay" moments. Which naturally enough to my mind had me thinking of 'The Outsiders', the book in which that poem's central tenet becomes the farewell, "Stay gold, Pony boy" and on to the thusly named great early emo tune here.
In one of those great moments of internet synthesis Vice's Big Night Out went emo and I learned the above makes me "an ageing weekend revivalist" (true). But to cheer me up Fashion Grunge blog had The Outsiders as inspiration for Menswear Monday. Swoon.
...It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless." Eddie, 'Empire Records'
A big part of learning to love my life again was music, specifically new music, at least new to me. Before I'd always deferred to my brother, or cooler friends when it came to discovering new things. Now I've learned to trust my own ears. There's a longer story for another day, but for now this will be a weekly post of the most interesting/exciting/beautiful thing to hit my ear drums in the preceding seven days.
This week it's Brother and Bones, a big, bluesy rawk 5-piece that blasted my hangover into submission at twothousandtreesfestival last weekend. 2000 Trees is a festival by music lovers, for music lovers and I always find several of what will become my favourite bands there every year, so it's high praise indeed to state that these guys came out top of my discovery list. They had two drummers. Two drummers! Love. Plus look at them; definitely not a hardship is it?
