This grandma prop with the serious Halloweenish/creepy streak was at a Christmas shop the other day. Seems someone had knocked the J out of the Joy.
Kinda sums up the year!
So, oi to the world. Surely humanity can do better than this?
Thankfully in music we had these:
* The Vaccines' English Graffiti (unexpected!). I adjusted a bit my summer holidays so I could catch them in Chicago (posted video on youtube). Luckily even had a lively chat with Freddie at the meet &greet. They knew a big chunk of their fans would not agree with the change of direction and still went ahead. "Couldn't keep doing 3 chord songs forever", "had been listening to new music we really liked"). Way to go.
* Tim Wheeler's Lost Domain. Takes a lot of courage to put out an album like this one and a lot of skill to balance it and come up with something this good.
* Quite good too Ryan Adams's take on Taylor Swift's 1989 (isn't it impressive what he's done with Blank Space?). Daring move.
* Marina & the diamonds' Froot, as bold as usual.
But also listened a lot to some tracks from end of last year's Adrien Gallo's Gemini and this year's Laura Marling, Lisa Ekdahl, Soko, Emika, Sara Lov, Natalia Lafourcade..
Personally it's been the best year ever, "only" because I'll just say that milk and
eggs are no longer handled like cyanide in my kitchen and that a 10 yr
old someone had his first donut, his first fried egg, his first
proper pizza. After very tough years of not only not advancing but
adding new allergies to the list (some remain), this is a reminder that there's always
hope, even when. How cheesy is that!! (←double meaning!)
Jeez, how difficult is it to post after so long? Most, so I will this once. It's Valentine's and for those in the US who still have time, anyone want an idea for a quick easy treat? I've done these today and they've turned out quite ok, thought I'd share (well, I've had to make them egg and dairy free - always harder). Recipe here, much nicer ones than my sloppy version in the pic. Otherwise these pancakes are amazing. There's so many terrible recipes out there, you can't tell, but these are great.
It's the day for sharing and stuff so..music: my favourite cd of 2012: Julia Stone, "By the horns", wouldn't have predicted it but she's really taken a huge leap with this one (a grower, takes a lot of listens to get to the bottom and the first few times most of it may not even seem any appealing, but it's fantastic -half the songs). Video I liked best probably Knots, by Dan Michaelson, most simple and yet...
2013 now, it has started with enjoying a few perfect pop songs off the new Tegan and Sara (with the help of mighty omnipresent Kurstin, now busy with Sia -btw so happy to see a sheet music shop in their website, finally someone doing that!-), the cosy if this time too diluted Dido (she's giving away a reallly good acoustic of an oldie today, check out her facebook. Not one of my favourites though), the This is 40 soundtrack (Fiona's ace back in 2012 but Norah's now, bravo-h) and this and that like Blackbird Blackbird's It's a war -last year's though. And old The Kills (Sour cherry, a natural reaction today to so many hearts and marshmallows I suppose! -and to other things other days). Oh, and Solange!!, Losing you is fantastic (Rice-Oxley recommended, really surprised to love it and later found out someone familiar is behind it: Dev Hynes!: that explained it, long time no see, a music genious). Lots of my favourites preparing releases these days, may be a good year.
The other day I set out to discover new blogs, thought I'd do so with a search of my two favourite songs of 2012 "with quotation marks", see which blogs/websites were in the same "niche". Got only one hit: me!!! (the lastfm I use now, that is). Unexpected, gets you thinking...
Back to my cave now :P To the people like me out there may patience, temperance, resignation be with you in the most unreasonably huge amounts.
February 21st: Went to Madrid fashion week today, managed to attend one of the fashion shows, Sita Murt. One of the three songs they used was Solange's "Losing you", serendipity!. Took the bad camera so bad pic:
The experience of going to the Cibelespacio was somehow bitter, seeing too many people around trying too hard and failing miserably, not a nice sight. But there certainly are bigger issues out there.
27th: And on second thought I need to mention Kathleen Edward's Voyager as another one of my favourites from last year if it took me quite a while, but again half the songs are just gorgeous, and inevitably she always ends up being my most played. She's just released a new video. So brilliant-.
Not pretending to be what she's not, thankfully. But again, some absolutely don't need to.
March...here, again...saw this Solange (+ Dev) performance, flawless, wanted to include it. Another fabulous song. I should finish this post at some point though. Because otherwise I'd also want to talk about Brooke Waggoner's Originator (with last lines like Be wise, you fool..), and Solange's page of vibes on Soundcloud -very original!-and then about this free download of SXSW artists that includes the fantastic Haley Bonar... -listened to her wonderful ditty Raggedy Man yet?- And I'd never end. So I'm going to try now, seriously. With crisis of every colour and shape out there inspiring music is so necessary.
Am I really doing this?. Because I've always hated Christmas stuff around when it's not even December but, well, whatever.. again, why are they releasing this so soon?
"Home for the Holidays" - Tim Wheeler & Emmy the Great
Melody sounds most familiar (in fact, combine the gorgeous L'anamour -version Françoise Hardy- and Abba's great One of us to a faster beat = mighty close to the verses) but all is forgiven because it's pretty, unpretentious just for the season cheesy kinda thing -and cheesy is good, good cheesy that is. Bad cheesy is terrible. But this is good cheesy-. And these two's talent for music is proven (Tim as for instance in Ash's fantastic Free all angels, Emmy as f.i. in collaborations with Lightspeed Champion), and foremost: hearing it is like Christmas: same warm fuzzy feeling. So different from what stems from the world and in particular my beautiful country these days, I'm making this exception. Also no need to blog until after Christmas!. But then, it makes one have to blog in January not to be so outdated (nah, can always delete, yay!).
Music these days is in general pretty incredibly boring to me, a lot of work just to find one or two songs worth it. Crumbs. That so even though some of my favourites have released albums lately...sadly boring albums (with luck one song, two can be salvaged). So practically Camera Obscura is kinda my last hope (according to their facebook they were already working on new cd in june... C'mon Tracyanne!! a last push!!!). Well, Jakob Dylan released a really great bitterest song months ago (he's so ahead he's already left his respective boring period behind). And Amy sounded so good on that bit of Like Smoke- sad. Very. Well, also hopes on La casa azul's latest out on the 28th, label mate of Camera Obscura's for a while, but not sure non Spanish listeners can get it the same way. Actually this blogs quite shares his philosophy, as explained in the video, specially at the end. It's stupid to write about music etc with the things that are going on, but then not totally.
So, uh, don't know what else to say. Well, this is pretty too.
As always, post will probably be heavily edited, no reason in particular.
PS I know some will snort at some of my crumbs (one christmas song and one Coldplay and Rihanna song? oh, jeezz). Well, I like both and other, considered more "serious" crumbs I've been listening to I haven't blogged about. Though they'd look much cooler, I'm well aware.
On a positive note, there's still more than a month left of 2011. Maybe time enough for me to get my cool back!!
Christmas notes: for christmas letters , love the typography of the warm december here. For christmas ornaments the super Fishinkblog has pretty ideas including recycled jumpers (funn, involves shrinking them, which some of us are accidental experts at). Like in music blogs, some posts I love, some not. Definitely dazzled by incredible artists featured in it, like Jon Klassen -WOW- or Jared Andrew Schorr, no lack of inspiration there. Some pretty stuff in Laura Veirs' happy Tumble bee too, like Prairie Lullabye.
Or for those who for some reason are still feeling un-christmassy like me this is also December and mighty catchy (and still good natured, ahem).
And of all the goodies artists have given away this Christmas, I'll choose Tina Dico's -she released the very crisply produced True North a month ago-: an old unreleased song, quiet and simple but full of flavour and meaning, Don't belong here. Too few available downloads though, they were gone faster than fast.
And Goldfrapp's little greeting, too many swear words for me, but singing's fantastic.
Christmas is not synonim of amnesia, though.
Everybody listened to it already?. Coldplay + Rihanna?!??! Leaked to the internet yesterday apparently: Coldplay - Princess Of China (feat. Rihanna) by DJ ERM Unexpected. But kinda good. Made me think of a comment Nerina Pallot made on her twitter about R.'s songs theme the other day (lol), an exception indeed for the girl with possibly the worst taste in clothes (ugg) and the most thigh exposure (double ugg). But voice too. Anyway, halfway between a fun freestyle version of Ruben Darío's Sonatina and a catchy eurovision tune: Chris Martin, douze points! This post may disappear in a few days. Some parts have already have .. must be amanaemonesia. PS To get into the Halloween mood, this Spike Jonze thing is pretty.
