Wistful

For some reason, the last couple days have inspired me to track down songs that hold nostalgic value to me. Nostalgic, in this case, dates back to high school or so.

Hush. I know I am young yet.

This particular song stuck with me at the time, and I was surprised to find how powerful the words were when I re-visited it:

Multimedia Friday: Lacuna Coil

Previously, I've only flirted with Lacuna Coil*, a symphonic metal band. I liked what I heard, but never quite enough to pursue it any further. On a whim a few weeks ago, I was in a store in the mall where the goth and emo kids like to hang out. Lacuna Coil's latest album, Shallow Life was newly released and on sale. On a whim, I bought it, listened to it once or twice, then tucked it away in the armrest of my car.

Last week or so, nothing was on the radio, and I was bored with the CDs I previously had in my car. I rummaged around for something different, came up with Lacuna Coil's, and that's been that. It's been "stuck" in my car's CD player since. Any day now I should be getting bored with it, but the first track "I Survive" draws me in, the dual male-female vocals are used to great effect in "Not Enough," and by the time the last track, my tentative favorite, "Shallow Life" comes around, I'm hooked, a goner. The following video is the first single from the album, "Spellbound." Enjoy.



* - Incidentally, Lacuna Coil (along with Within Temptation, Evansecence, and the like) was great for midnight grading. In spite of that connotation, I still enjoy their music.

Haven't done one of these in a while...

It's Friday. I have multimedia. I am also tired and therefore lazy.

Here's a peaceful, beautiful tune to end the work week on:

Belated Multimedia Friday

I woke up with a craving for the music of Rise Against today. Their music is a good blend of both personal and political lyrics, delivered in the raspy sort of vocals I gravitate toward. I had a specific song I craved this morning, though--"The Good Left Undone"--the lyrics were stuck in my head for some inexplicable reason:

"All because of you,
I believe in angels.
Not the kind with wings,
No, not the kind with halos,
The kind that bring you home,
When home becomes a strange place.
I’ll follow your voice,
All you have to do is shout it out."

Music itself is good, too, though--have a listen.

Multimedia Friday: Dustin Kensrue

I've loved the music of Thrice for a while now, but I only recently explored the solo work of frontman Dustin Kensrue. Ah, be still my heart; I have a new musical crush. I have a weakness for acoustic music side projects released by punk band members; Chuck Ragan, Tim Barry, and Sundowner all fall into this category. Like the former musicians, Dustin Kensrue, capable of writing ear-crashingly yet articulate punk rock goodness, turns that gift to stripped-down, heartfelt songs.

One song, "I Knew You Before," speaks of the loss of innocence and purity of a young woman who has been taken under the spell of "magazines and media...with their plastic protocol." The song concludes, "And all I can say is I knew you before / You were beautiful back then. // You could be beautiful again."All together ladies, please, a wistful sigh. Another song, "Please Come Home," addresses a prodigal son with the plea in the title.

The song that grabbed me and made me hit re-play more times than I ought to admit, though, is "Pistol," a loving tribute to his wife. She sounds like quite the woman; I'm inclined to envy her, actually...

Multimedia Friday: Greensleeves

It's been a long week of lots of grading--not a bad week, per se, just a long one. A nice peaceful song is a good note (pun fully intended) to end on.

Have a good weekend, folks, and in the meantime, enjoy an oldie but goodie: Greensleeves. This has been my favorite rendition so far, both in terms of the music and the video.

Multimedia Friday: Gaslight Anthem

Last.fm has had the great wisdom to recommend some great artists to me. One such artist is The Gaslight Anthem. I liked their first album on first listen, and I later caught some snatches of their new-ish album.

This week, I finally purchased The '59 Sound. I consider it an investment; it has barely left my car CD player this week. What is their appeal? Well, they're either a punk band with a bluesy feel, or they're a blues band with punk sensibilities. Whatever the case may be, they write heartfelt and catchy tunes. More than once I've caught myself bobbing my head, drumming the steering wheel to the tune, and singing along (and this in the midst of mid-term grading stress!). They have a sensibility I can identify with--the songs go from bittersweet, older-sounding reminiscing ("Here's Looking at You, Kid"), to youthful exuberance ("Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"). More than that, though, their references don't date them as a young culturally oblivious band; allusions include Elvis, Tom Petty, Audrey Hepburn, and even Charles Dickens ("Great Expectations"). And the vocals, like many of my favorite bands, are distinctive--a little gravelly, a little wary sounding.

My absolute, absolute, hands-down favorite song is "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues." The opening chords grabbed my attention immediately, the opening lyrics made me nod in wistful agreement, and the chorus had me tapping my foot and singing along with joyful abandon. Give it a listen, or two, or three, or... Just leave a comment. Let me know what you think.

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Now playing: The Gaslight Anthem - Film Noir
via FoxyTunes

Multimedia Friday: Dance Me to the End of Love

In the pursuit of making the grading process less painful (a difficult, and indeed, often futile venture), I branched out with new musical exploration. Ah, online radio is great stuff.

One semester I found female-fronted gothic metal great to grade to. Another it was emo music I hesitate to admit liking. This time around, I was exploring the music of Nick Cave, in part because he's supposed to be scoring The Road, a movie I dearly hope does justice to an amazing book, and in part because I'd heard his name bandied about and always meant to explore his music.

But the joy of online radio like Last.fm or Pandora is in its related music, which can take you down new paths of discovery. In this case, the stations I was listening to re-introduced me to a few artists I'd heard only in passing, songwriters like Leonard Cohen, for one. When the following track popped up in the playlist, I was entranced by it--it's a lovely song in every sense of the word, with a lovely accompanying video.

Leonard Cohen - "Dance Me to the End of Love"
(Can't embed, but give it a watch/listen. It's worth it.)

Multimedia Friday: Pure awesomeness

As the stress of an approaching new semester starts to hit me, I've been gravitating toward certain favorite songs. The following is one of them, and no introduction I write can possibly do justice to it.

Multimedia Friday: Flobots

A ways back, my friend told me about a band. "I think you'd like them," she said. "They're kinda political." The the Flobots are political, yes (their debut album is called Fight with Tools, and it's a call to fight the injustices that exist), but more than that--I'd never heard a combination of hip hop and violin before.

Now, their first single, "Handlebars," is all over the radio. It's cute and catchy to start, but it builds to a dark ending, and I hope its overexposure doesn't blunt their message or, over time, their originality. (As an aside, blast you, Universal Music, for disabling embedding of your videos. Hint: embedded videos link right back to the original Youtube video...)

Pfft. I liked "Stand Up" better, anyway. The violin really adds to the music here, and the lyrical content is a bit stronger. See for yourself.

Multimedia Friday: Bonus edition

Is it just me, or does really, really, really good music just send a shiver down your spine.

Coldplay's good, but they're not that good.

On the other hand, Bristle Ridge, a joint effort of Chuck Ragan and Austin Lucas, is. Just. That. Good. But then again, practically everything Chuck Ragan touches is golden. His voice.... *melts* Windows Media Player dubs this stuff country. I will grudgingly concede that it is. I like it anyway. Love, actually.

But. Seriously, go listen to the few tracks streaming on Chuck Ragan's Myspace page. "Bloody Shells" is simply breath-taking, in that old-fashioned-ballad-folk-story-ZOMG-amazing sort of way.

But "Hold My Bed" is its own sort of amazingness. See?



And, having made my fangirly tendencies abundantly clear, I shall bounce off to savor the musical goodness.

Multimedia Friday: Coldplay

I like punk music. I should, therefore, scorn the mainstream. Or so the scenesters would have me believe. Sometimes pop can be good, though.

From time to time a Coldplay track will pop up on my musical radar, and with good reason. It's not their fault the radio stations killed "Clocks" by overplay.

I've never actually dropped money on one of their albums (though I have since...acquired...their previous albums), until Viva la Vida. The song that sold me on it? Not the one made famous by the iTunes commercial, but "Violet Hill." Rest of the album is solid, though, especially tracks like "Cemeteries of London" and "Lost." But here's the video for Violet Hill:



In other news, I may pop back in here tomorrow morning, but otherwise I'll be out of town and without Internet for a few days. I'll bring my camera, though, on the off chance I see something interesting enough to post about.

Multimedia Friday: Cover the kiddies' ears for this one...

I've decided to share my music again. The song I'm going to share is one that never fails to put a grin on my face.

I became a fan of Against Me! courtesy of Last.fm. Their music resides on the punk-folk spectrum, and vocalist Tom Gabel's got one of those gravelly voices I seem to like. They've got a healthy dose of politics in many lyrics, but they're also able to have some fun.

The song I'm sharing is "Unprotected Sex with Multiple Partners." I love the extended metaphor within the song; it's not about X-rated activities, per se. Here are the first few lines:

Everyone's a critic, but hey, they really respect your talent.
Have your manager call my manager, and we'll make records together.
At this level of success in entertainment, there are certain connotations.
It's a "you give, we take" relation.
No, the kids wouldn't understand it.

If you're interested in hearing it, I've uploaded it in mp3 format here. Again, comment if taking. And if I get absolutely no response or indication of interest, I'll discontinue my experiment in pir sharing music.

Multimedia Friday: Thrice

Thrice has been a favorite band of mine for a while. Why? Oh, so many reasons, lyrical amazing-ness and musical versatility being top of the list. Previously, my favorite album of theirs was Vheissu. Then came The Alchemy Index. Volumes I and II, Fire and Water, respectively, were good. Fire was very much along the lines of their older material--an articulate assault of sound. Water hooked me in though, which was surprising--the synthetic ambiance isn't my usual sort of music.

Volumes III and IV, Air and Earth, just came out, and they're almost singularly responsible for Thrice steadily climbing up my Last.fm profile. Air is other-worldly, but Earth is. . . is. . . amazing. It goes down to musical roots with an indie-folk feel that I've been increasingly gravitating toward.

I could easily go on and on and on about the albums. I can link to Youtube videos of them. Or I can one-up that, let you listen for yourself--a track from each volume.

The Flame Deluge [Lyrics] - A delicious deluge of sound.
Digital Sea [Lyrics] [Video] - Creative take on the water theme. Cool, mellow song.
Daedalus [Lyrics] - We've all heard the story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun; this is his father's story. Broke my heart in a good way.
Come All You Weary [Lyrics] - Music with soul. Literally sent shivers down my spine.

I only ask for a comment in return - anything from, "Good lord, you really don't have any taste in music" to "Wow. [Song] is really good."

If this ain't poetry...

...please tell me what is.

I speak in many tongues to many men;
Argue with angels and I always win,
But I don't know the first thing about love.

I prophesy and know all mysteries;
All hidden things are opened up to me
But I don't know the first thing about love

I have the keys to open any door;
I give all of my possessions to the poor,
But I don't know the first thing about love

And moving mountains ain't nothing to me;
I've faith enough to cast them to the sea,
But I don't know the first thing about love

But all other things shall fade away;
While love stands alone and still holds sway
All other things shall fade away;
Into the ground into the grey.

I give my body up unto the flames;
And never once have I denied your name
But I don't know the first thing about love.
--Thrice, "Moving Mountains," off The Alchemy Index, Volume IV: Earth

The music it's put to is amazing as well. But these lyrics just grabbed me. And it's still National Poetry Month.

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Now playing: Thrice - The Earth Isn't Humming
via FoxyTunes

Multimedia Friday: With Honor

I'm a lyrics type of gal; when I listen to music, lyrics are one of the first things to jump out at me. Good lyrics will make me re-consider something I might not otherwise touch with a 10-foot pole. Music with good lyrics will sometimes send me off in directions that challenge even my most musically open-minded friends.

"That . . . doesn't sound like music," my friend said, upon hearing one such band, a hardcore punk group called Comeback Kid.

I think she had the same assessment of With Honor, also hardcore punk. I liked the albums because they made me "want to light something on fire." Loud, fast, obnoxious--and messages that meant something. Some of With Honor's songs run together in terms of musical quality, but the lyrics make them worth the listen. "These songs that we're singing are more than moving on, / They're the only ways we're making sense of a world that's small enough to shake, / But it's still strong enough to break us down." Another song, "In A Bottle," includes these verses: "When did life assume the shape of a TV screen, / A work-horse work week, and commute in between? / As we masquerde the days we waste, / Love's stuck on dusty shelves with feelings we forsake. // Before you know it, they'll be selling us blood to bleed and air to breathe, / Along with pre-packed hopes and dreams that always stay at arm's length, out of reach."

My favorite song, though, is "Like Trumpets." I include, with the knowledge that it may sound like incomprehensible shouting over a cacophony of noise to the uninitiated ear, a link to the lyrics. Enjoy, or don't.

Multimedia Friday: "You may say I'm a dreamer..."

I've mentioned my affinity for cover songs before. Today's video is also a cover, a John Lennon cover by one of my favorite groups, A Perfect Circle. The song appears on their album, eMOTIVe, which is largely covers of songs with socio-political themes. Most of the covers are pretty good, although "People are People" leaves much to be desired (Dope's cover is the one APC should've done. Ah well). But "Imagine" takes the cake. In an interview, frontman Maynard James Keenan explained that he envisioned John Lennon looking back 20 years later, realizing his dream hadn't come to be. The result is a more pensive, brooding version of a classic, fitting for a century that has been marked by conflict since its beginning.

Enjoy:

Multimedia Friday: Dropkick Murphys

Today's Multimedia Friday is directly attributable to PandoraFM, which I mentioned here. This week's been paydirt in terms of discovering new music and re-discovering favorites. I can categorize the finds in two broad genres: folk and punk.

I was initially going to share some of the folk stuff but ran into a problem: it's pretty darn difficult to find some of them on Youtube, at least, the songs I wanted to post. (I know, the concept of not being able to find something on Youtube? It's shattering my worldview and leaving me question everything else I've been taught.)

Which leaves punk. Hey, hey, don't go running off covering your ears. Compromise, OK? I won't spring anything too hardcore on you. How about some celtic punk? Punk with a bagpipe accompaniment? At least listen for novelty's sake. Without much ado, the Dropkick Murphys with a kickass blue-collar pride message in "The Workers' Song":

Suh-weet

So my last post was negative in tone. I wouldn't say my funk has lifted, but I have a reason to be happy, or at least momentarily diverted by teh shiny.

While poking around the playground that is Last.fm, I stumbled across some info for something called PandoraFM; I bookmarked it and forgot about it (quite a common occurrence, actually), then re-discovered it today. What it is is an amalgamation of two of my favorite websites: Pandora.com (The Music Genome project) and Last.fm. Using this nifty site, you can play tracks on Pandora and have them scrobble to your Last.fm profile.

Exciting stuff.

There's a lot of overlap between the music both sites have recommended to me, but I would say Pandora is better. While some features of the music I like are relatively genre-related, like punk or hard rock roots, other qualities of music I like are less genre-locked, such as vocal-centric aesthetics or aggressive male vocals or emotional delivery or angry and/or political lyrics. Based on these qualities, the site sometimes recommends music of another genre that still has qualities I like. I can bookmark favorite songs, and sometimes at the expense of repetitiveness, Pandora will play loved tracks, which is something you have to be a subscriber on Last.fm to access. Because the tags in Last.fm are added by users, they tend to be very genre-specific or even downright inaccurate. But Last.fm scrobbles, so it has a record of my listening, even when I listen to CDs on my computer. I mean, come on, can't beat that, can you?

Actually, you can. It's called PandoraFM, and I expect to be listening to a heck of a lot more music on Pandora now.

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Now playing: Boy Sets Fire - Curtain Call
via FoxyTunes

Multimedia Friday: Stereophonics

In an effort to bring a little structure to this blog, I'm going to make Fridays a day for multimedia, whether it's an interesting Youtube video (the lazy way) or a music rec.

This Friday, it'll be music. I'm banking on my tastes being eclectic enough that every once in a while, at least, I can share a gem of a song or artist/band that someone will find listen-worthy. I make no promises as to the quality of my tastes; I only know that I like what I like.

First off is a band whose music I've only gotten into recently, Stereophonics. When I fall for new music, though, I can fall hard, and these guys are skyrocketing up my Last.fm charts. Genre-wise, they're indie rock or indie pop or the ever-ambiguous "alternative." What does that mean? A groovy, laid-back sound. I think what first drew me in were the vocals; singer Kelly Jones has an incredible voice, with just enough rasp and emotion in it to send shivers down my spine. When I listen to their music, the vibe I get is either a small blues club or coffee house, an intimate, laid-back setting, or a free-ranging road trip. It's moody and melancholy, but not negative or self-indulgently emo.

Admittedly, I only have one album of theirs right now, You Gotta Go There to Come Back, but it's a solid album, lyrically, musically, and whatever else constitutes a damn good album. The track that drew me in was "Maybe Tomorrow." It has potential to be gloomy ("I've been down / and I'm wondering why / these little black clouds / keep walking around / with me"), but the refrain has hope in it, "So maybe tomorrow / I'll find my way home." I mentioned the vocals earlier; I'll mention them again because they affect the delivery greatly. These lyrics look flat as I type them out, but they sound beautifully world-weary in the song. "Nothing Precious at All" is another atmospheric song; "I been people watching again / I think they watch me too / There's a new girl at the coffee house" opens the song, and the music makes you feel like you're there.

The album has a few pleasant surprises, too. "Madame Helga" opens with a neat little guitar riff; "Jealousy" has what sounds like a... gospel choir. Don't knock it; it worked for symphonic metal group Nightwish in "Meadows of Heaven," and it works for Stereophonics, too.

My favorite song was originally "Maybe Tomorrow," but in subsequent listens, I've fallen for title track "I'm Alright (You Gotta Go There to Come Back)" and the following song, "Rainbows and Pots of Gold":



Enjoy, and let me know what you think.