My Musical Highlights Of 2015

2015 is the year I got my mojo back, music-wise. For the past few years I've been pretty disengaged when it came to new bands, new releases, live music... nothing was really getting me excited.

But 2015 has fixed all that. There was so much I loved this year, so many new releases that made me heart soar with joy. I even went to two gigs in one week in November which, I know, is hardly front page news but I think I went to two gigs total in 2014. So....

Pop Crush Of 2015
Long-time readers of this blog will know that I'm enormously susceptible to a slice of great pop music (2012's One Direction obsession, anyone?) , and my pop crush this year was Charli XCX, and particularly the single Famous. She has savvy, smart and funny lyrics, a don't-give-a-fuck attitude, an all-girl live band, plus she made a documentary about feminism and pop music. What's not to love?

Gig Of 2015
Gig of the year was hands down Joanna Newsom at the Albert Hall in Manchester on Halloween, who never fails to provide anything less than a transcendental live experience. She was beating off stiff competition, however, from Ryan Adams (Leicester De Montfort Hall, 21st February), Father John Misty (Sheffield Plug, October 26th), and Sufjan Stevens (Manchester Apollo, August 31st).

Albums Of 2015
Joanna Newsom's Divers was the most exciting release of the year; a new album from her is always cause for celebration, as they don't come along often. And Divers more than lived up to the anticipation, a breathtakingly beautiful collection of songs.

Meanwhile, Father John Misty's I Love You Honeybear hasn't been far from my stereo since its release in February. Moving far from the gentle acoustic songs of his recordings under real name Josh Tillman, I Love You Honeybear is a melodic mixture of ballad, torch song, and folk rock, the highlight of which is almost always his audaciously witty, often bitter and cynical, lyrics.

Another record I loved was Beirut's No No No, a joyous and uplifting collection of songs from multi-instrumentalist Zach Condon. I am so looking forward to seeing them in the new year.

And finally, mention has to go to noisepop band Joanna Gruesome, who I resisted for a long time because of their name until, in 2015, falling head over heels first for their 2013 album Weird Sister followed closely by recent release Peanut Butter.

Songs Of 2015 (omitting tracks from my albums of the year)
As well as the aforementioned Famous by Charli XCX, I loved Bad Blood by Taylor Swift ft. Kendrick Lamar (and the Ryan Adams cover was pretty awesome too).

While I've struggled to listen much to Sufjan Stevens' 2015 release, Carrie & Lowell, with its aching sense of loss and sadness, Blue Bucket Of Gold is a standout track, the remixed single version of which I perhaps love even more than the original.

Meanwhile, although Wolf Alice's debut album was, for me, too much filler and not enough killer, You're A Germ is a fucking tune and no mistake.

Finally, the two opening songs from Bjork's ambitious and much-lauded album Vulnicura - Stonemilker and Lionsong - reminded me just how much I love her.

What were your musical highlights (or should I say high notes?!) of 2015?

A Day Out At Indietracks

I've long wanted to visit Indietracks Festival, a small and family-friendly affair specialising in Indiepop music which takes place every summer in the Derbyshire Dales. For the music, yes, but more so for the lure of the setting: at the Midlands Railway Centre, on a site filled with vintage trains. So when fellow Midlands blogger Laura, of Make Do & Mend, got in touch with me to ask if I'd like to be her plus one, I jumped at the chance.

Arriving at Butterley Station, a beautifully restored building just outside the village, we jumped on a steam train and grabbed our seats for the short journey to the festival site.

After torrential rain the previous day, we were lucky to be met by blue skies, dry ground and lots of friendly people. Indietracks is such a relaxed and chilled out festival, with everything within an easy 5 minute walk of the entrance and a crowd that skews slightly older: 30-somethings rather than cavorting teens, in the main, with lots of families.

As you'd expect from a festival focusing largely on music from DIY scenes - indiepop, noisepop, punk - the merch tent was a delight, filled with vinyl, charmingly hand-lettered t-shirts and tote bags, and a smattering of zines. The food offering was good, too, and with a number of bars across the site (including one in a static train carriage) you wouldn't go thirsty.

We ended up missing not one but two performances on the steam train, as the carriage was too crowded, but did manage to squeeze in to see London-based punk band Flemmings on the Church Stage (which, as the name suggests, is in an actual church). Colleen Green was a big draw on the Main Stage, and we chowed down on tasty pizza as we watched. My pick of the day, though, were grrrl band Feature: seeing three powerful, cool women rock out on stage is what festivals are all about.

We left to drive home before headliners Wave Pictures and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, which I was sad about but - a real sign of age here - my bed beckoned. But my taste of Indietracks has left me wanting more: I'll definitely be back next year.

(Yes, I took a photograph of the loo sign because INDOOR TOILETS! At a festival!)

Seen & heard

1. I was very pleasantly surprised by Friends With Benefits. With some very funny lines and a central plot that, while not entirely blameless, is still less anti-feminist than many rom-coms, it's one that I'd watch again. Justin Timberlake is surprisingly winning as a romantic lead, and Mila Kunis is wonderful as always. Just... we keep being told that Kunis's character is emotionally damaged and fucked up, yet being shown no evidence of it. She's no more damaged than any other human being, as far as I can see. It's no use just telling your audience something is true, we need to see something to back it up.

2. In A World is such a fun film, but one I'd never have thought to watch based on the plot summary alone. It features Lake Bell (who also wrote and directed) as the daughter of a legendary voiceover artist trying to make her own way in what turns out to be a rather cut-throat industry and competing with her father for a prestigious trailer voiceover job. It's a lovely, quietly funny film, in the vein of other indie comedies such as Garden State or The Station Agent. 

3. Wild is the true story of Cheryl Strayed's 2000+ mile walk along the Pacific Coast Trail, following a descent into drug abuse and sex addiction after her mother's death. I loved Wild: beautifully shot, moving, funny in parts, and Reece Witherspoon is brilliant in the lead role.

At the moment I'm excited about new music in a way that I haven't been for a long while - years, even. With the exception of Father John Misty, I mostly want to be listening to music that sounds like it could have come from a circa 1992 Riot Grrrl mixtape.

1. Father John Misty is the latest alias of my long-time favourite, Josh Tillman (who's also recorded as J. Tillman) and I Love You Honeybear, his second album under this name, is a thing of beauty. Moving from electronica (True Affection) to the Todd Rundgren-esque 70s soft rock of When You're Smiling And Astride Me, to Bored In The USA and the lush orchestrals of the title track, both of which reminded me of Release The Stars-era Rufus Wainwright, this is a wide-ranging and eclectic mix of songs. I've listened to little else since buying it two weeks ago, with lead single Chateau Lobby #4 being a particular favourite.

2. Tuff Love are from Glasgow and make fast, scuzzy garage pop music. New single Thats' Right has been getting some airplay on 6 Music, but the rest of their Dross EP is also worth a listen for those into grunge-era grrrl bands.

3. And speaking of grunge-era grrrl bands, Colleen Green's new single, Pay Attention, sounds eerily like Veruca Salt. I love it.

The soundtrack to my life

It feels like it's been years - in fact, it actually might be years - since I last wrote about music here. When I started the blog, my regular Music Monday posts were a big part of what I did, but since that finished the music content has sort of petered out. 

Music is and always has been a massive part of my life: my parents met when they performed together in a Gilbert & Sullivan opera in Johannesburg and between my dad's organ-playing and my mum's guitar and piano, there was always music at home. My siblings and I were all musically involved as children, whether it was learning instruments, singing in the church or school choirs, or putting on shows at home (I used to harangue my brothers to be my back-up dancers in performances of Jesus Christ Superstar).

When I hit my teens I gave up on church and discovered rock music: grunge, indie and Britpop were the soundtrack to my youth. I started a music fanzine and got the chance to meet my heroes, bands like Placebo and Gene, Ash and Longpigs; acts mostly long-forgotten except to 90s kids like myself. At university I started listening to the somewhat weird combination of heavy rock - Marilyn Manson, Deftones - and conscious hip-hop - Common, De La Soul, Mos Def. Then, in my mid-twenties, I was introduced by my brother to American folk and alt-rock, artists such as Grizzly Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, which is a large part of what I still listen to today.

All of which is to say, if I had to make a true soundtrack of my life it'd be a very confused playlist, running the gamut from my parents' Simon & Garfunkel records to my current favourite band, chillwave duo Tennis, via Take That, Hole, Blur, the Manic Street Preachers, Korn, Dr Dre, Bjork, Ben Folds Five and The Smiths. But when I saw the Soundtrack to My Life tag on Elettravelle, I knew I wanted to at least give it a go.

I'd also love to know the soundtracks to your lives - use these tag questions or hit me up in the comments.

Song you listen to when you're happy?
This changes constantly but at the moment I really like Mean The Most by Nehruvian Doom, which is just the loveliest and most romantic slice of chilled-out hip hop.

Song you listen to when you're sad?

It depends whether or not I want to wallow in my misery. If I'm content to lie around and weep, then Beck's Golden Age is one of the saddest songs I know. If I need something to cheer me up, then nothing is better than pure pop music. I still love 2012 Eurovision winner Loreen's Euphoria, and my 2014 obsession was Nobody To Love by Sigma.

What song will you have at your wedding?

I've long wanted Aretha Franklin's beautiful version of the soul classic You Send Me but I also have a soft spot for At My Most Beautiful by REM. Unfortunately, The Boy is most fond of quite terrible 80s hair rock ballads (think Bon Jovi, Poison, Alice Cooper) so god only knows* what we'll end up with.

* Also a lovely wedding song.

What song do you dance around the house to?

Party Hard by Andrew WK. I honestly don't think it's possible not to grin while headbanging away to it.

Song you play on your headphones when out and about?
Beach House's Bloom album makes a great soundtrack, especially in sunny weather. Same goes for any of Tennis's three albums. If I had to narrow it down to one song each, I'd go for Beach House's Troublemaker and Marathon by Tennis.

Song you listen to when you're angry?

Gutless by Hole is a great song for getting the rage out by singing along to. All together now, "Just you try to hold me down, come on try to shut me up."

Song you'd have at your funeral?

My brother and I used to play this game where we'd try and name the most vastly inappropriate song to play at a wedding or funeral. Shoot The Head, Kill The Ghoul by Jeffrey Lewis might be pretty funny.

Song that makes you lose your shit at a party?

Ah, so many! Boogie Wonderland by Earth Wind & Fire (that bit where he sings, "All the love in the world can't be wrong..."? Musical perfection) can always get me dancing, as can Test Icicles' indie disco classic Circle Square Triangle or Reptilia by The Strokes. And, more embarrassingly, Papa Roach's Last Resort.

The last song you listened to?

Playing on the iPod as I write is Of Moons, Birds & Monsters by MGMT. Completely random shuffle choice, but it's reminded me of how much I like MGMT.

Your karaoke song?

I've only ever done karaoke once and it's not a performance I'm proud of. Picture the scene: a bar full of my fellow trainee teachers - one too many white wines - a karaoke machine - the Devinyls song I Touch Myself. I'll allow you to fill in the details.

What song do you work out/exercise to?

Arctic Monkeys' Brianstorm is great for picking up speed on the cross-trainer.

Song with the most memories attached?

It's a great sadness to me that the beautiful Last Goodbye by Jeff Buckley is forever tainted by memories of my awful ex-boyfriend.

Song that makes you cry?

Weird, because I'm an atheist, but Oh Holy Night gets me every time. Pretty much any version, but bonus points if sung by an angelic child or if it's Sufjan Stevens' arrangement.

Song you hate the most?

There are a few songs that, if I hear them on the radio, I'll turn straight over. Blurred Lines, obviously, Timber by Kesha and Pitbull, or anything by Chris Brown.

Your favourite song of all time?
This is completely impossible to answer. I could just about give you a favourite song for each year of my life, but we'd be here a long time. So I'm going to throw out the first few that come to mind and then internally curse myself for missing other stuff out. So...
Cosmia by Joanna Newsom
Olympian by Gene
Elephant Gun by Beirut
Rocket by the Smashing Pumpkins
Hot Fun In The Summertime by Sly & The Family Stone
About Face by Grizzly Bear
The Shining by Badly Drawn Boy
Sonnet 29 by Rufus Wainwright
Dry Lips by Lightspeed Champion
Grown Ocean by Fleet Foxes
Branches by Midlake
To The End by Blur

Good stuff

A very cool article from Impose Magazine about women in music (also the image source).

I cannot tell you how very badly I want to go to something like this.

I really love The Militant Baker (self-billed Body Advocate, Fat Chick & Feminist), and these photographs of hers are utterly beautiful.

I definitely need to make a DIY book clutch bag.

Five idiotic travel tips you should avoid: all so true.  The number of times I've heard, "Don't you worry about travelling in Africa on your own?", the implication being that don't I worry about being mugged/knifed/raped?

As the daughter of immigrants from South Africa, I very much related to Crysta's post - Benefit Claiming Immigrants - about moving to the UK.

* Thanks to Jenny, Bitch Media, Charlotte for links *

List #15: The five tunes that kickstart my soul

That lifting feeling, when it seems as if my entire soul is as light as a feather and I can't wipe the smile off my face, is largely brought on by the combination of music and circumstance.  All I need to feel perfectly happy is the perfect tune + sunshine + good company (sometimes just my own).  So today, list number 15 is a playlist of songs that have kickstarted my soul.  None of them are necessarily my favourite or most cherished songs, but I love to listen to them because they remind me so strongly of those moments when I heard them and everything felt brilliant.

1. After a massive thunderstorm the night before, the sun is shining and we're sitting on the grass at Latitude festival.  I have a pint of cold cider in my hand, I have my friends around me, school broke up a few days ago and the entire summer holiday stretches ahead of me like a promise.  The Mummers are on stage, and when they launch into their lovely, fairground-tinged This Is Heaven (Glow) all I can think is, "Yes, this is heaven."

2. It's a gloriously sunny Saturday morning in spring, and I'm walking into Leicester, on my way to a second date with a guy I've met online.  Lone Wolf  by Eels shuffles onto my iPod and my spirits lift.  Instead of the usual pre-date nerves, I'm singing along with gusto (internally, at least.  I'm not quite that mad that I'd walk along singing aloud).  The choice of song seemed fateful, somehow: a reminder that I was a lone wolf and I liked it that way.  Internet guy was not the one for me, I already suspected, but hearing this song made it feel ok that he wasn't.  I stayed single - a lone wolf - for years and I'm glad I did, because when I met The Boy I was ready for him.

3. I'm standing on a street corner in Portland, Oregon.  My brother and I have spent the day apart - me in an extremely rewarding trawl through the vintage and book stores, Richard with a cultural day at the museum - and I'm waiting for him to come and meet me so we can go to the pub.  The sun is shining, I'm in the best city I've ever visited, and when Fleet Foxes' Grown Ocean starts playing on my iPod, I experience one of those perfect moments, when everything comes together to lift my spirit and put a huge grin on my face.

4. Grizzly Bear are absolutely incredible live, and when I saw them play in Nottingham a couple of years ago their final song, While You Wait For The Others, was one of the most perfect gig moments I've ever experienced, beautiful harmonies washing over me in waves of sound.

5. I didn't 'get' Sigue Ros until I went to Iceland, where suddenly their music made perfect sense.  Se Lest reminds me of watching the eerie, volcanic, strangely beautiful Icelandic countryside pass by the window of the bus.

What came first, the music or the misery?

High Fidelity Screenprint by Barry D Bulsara

"What came first, the music or the misery?  People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?" 

(High Fidelity by Nick Hornby)

I didn't have what it takes to be a happy teenager.  Too many strikes - bullied, weird, clever, queer - against me.  So it wasn't that I was miserable because I listened to miserable music, not exactly.  I hadn't been all that happy before I discovered Hole, Nirvana, the Manic Street Preachers, but once I did start listening to them, it brought my own unhappiness into sharper focus. I could see my own misery reflected back to me in the lyrics of the songs and the actions of the musicians, both validating my feelings and - this is the crux - exacerbating them. The music normalised my misery and I've always wondered: did it contribute to what came next?

"I'm a creep/I'm a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here?/I don't belong here."

Radiohead, Creep (1992)

Bradford in the mid-90s was not the greatest place anyway, but if you had a southern accent that eight years of living in Yorkshire hadn't softened, a habit of coming top of the class in every subject, and "a shyness that was criminally vulgar", then it was not just dull, it was hell.  By the time I was 15, I'd worked out that I was never going to belong there and so maybe I could stop trying so hard.  I cut my hair, dyed it and started wearing the clothes I wanted to wear.  I began listening to the music I was interested in - grunge, indie, Riot Grrrl - rather than the house music that was de rigueur amongst my peers.  I quickly found that there was a comfort to be had in not just not fitting in but being declarative and open about my otherness.  I'd always been called weird, but embracing the weirdness meant it didn't hurt as much when they said it. 

 

"Scratch my leg with a rusty nail, sadly it heals/Colour my hair but the dye grows out/I can't seem to stay a fixed ideal."

Manic Street Preachers, Die In The Summertime (1994)

Somehow, the year I started A Levels, being weird on my own morphed into being weird with two best friends.  But rather than cheer me up and enhance my life, we plunged into one of those intense, crazed teenage girl friendships that thrive on drama and pain.  We wallowed in our misery, revelled in it. We aped the fashions of our outsider heroes, so why not ape their angst too? From Richey we learnt that to cut was divine, each slice into our flesh a rebellion against... what?  Oh we all had our own reasons to be unhappy, that's true, but the first cuts weren't made in sadness but in a twisted sort of hero-worship, egging each other on almost competitively.  And of course, once you've done it, the addiction kicks in.  A need for the adrenaline rush and the release and the sweet sweet feeling that this, this was something more real than life in a Northern town that they forgot to close down.

 

"Since I was born I started to decay/Now nothing ever ever goes my way"

Placebo, Teenage Angst (1996)

Alone in my bedroom, walls plastered with posters of suicidal rock stars, I would mull over the pointlessness of life and the terrible inevitability of death.  I would listen to The Smiths and the Manics, read Sylvia Plath poetry, pick at the scabs on my arms and write tortured 'zine articles.  I thought I was being 'deep' when really I was a total cliche.  I sunk into my depression and began a cycle of medication and therapy that was to go on for years. 

"So you go and you stand on your own/And you leave on your own/And you go home and you cry and you want to die."

The Smiths, How Soon Is Now (1984)

In 1996 I left for university.  If my depression at home had been somewhat brought upon myself, an experience that I almost treasured, the misery that came upon me when I moved was something else entirely.  A black wall, insurmountable.  Now that I didn't have buddies with whom to be sad, I did the unthinkable and went out on my own, reaching out blindly to find a human connection.  And I would, quite literally, go to clubs and stand on my own and leave on my own.  I would go home and cry and want to die.  I made an entirely half-hearted attempt at suicide on one such night, not so much a cry for help as a stupid drunken attempt to just feel something.  I felt a twat the next day, sitting in the dining hall with my pathetically bandaged wrist.

"For once in my life/Let me get what I want/Lord knows it would be the first time."

The Smiths, Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want (1984)

Do I think the music was to blame for my depression?  No.  A few years later I was listening to Destiny's Child and Dr Dre and I was still depressed.  An unhappy time at school as a young teenager and the fucked up biochemistry of my brain is what made me depressed.  But Laura Barcella wrote a great article on xojane recently about how The Smiths screwed her up and I do think there's something in the notion that, as impressionable youths, we took more from those songs than we should have.  That they normalised our alientation and made it seem glamorous and cool, something to aspire to.

"I'm a survivor/I'm gonna make it/I will survive/Keep on surviving."

Destiny's Child, Survivor (2001)

I'm fine now.  I get sad of course, everyone does, and occassionally I feel the black cloud hovering but I'm usually quick to get through it.  I still can't listen to a lot of music from those early days of my depression, though.  Parts of the Manics' The Holy Bible album will be forever off limits.  Olympian by Gene can still move me to tears.

When I look at the teenage girls that I teach, heavy eyeliner and long sleeves in summer, listening to My Chemical Romance and the Pretty Reckless, hanging out with other unhappy girls, I want to tell them that it does get better.  I want to tell them not to take the song lyrics as gospel.  That there's no glamour in depression, no matter what their rock star heroes seem to suggest.  That, for most of us, we come out the other side and survive.  But they'd think (with my own long sleeves in summer, all trace of teenage angst hidden), what do I know about misery?

Seen & heard: March

Seen...
Three equally stylised but extremely different new films this month, plus an oldie-but-goodie and a great stage show.

1. The new film by Spike Jonze, Her, is also very lovely to look at and full of stylish touches, but I found it said rather more: about modern life and love, about loneliness, about relationships ending and beginning. I really enjoyed it, and thought Scarlett Johansson was brilliant as the voice of Samantha.

2. Still with Johansson, unfortunately the best I can say about Under The Skin is that her performance was good, considering what she was given to work with. I found it stunningly boring and although to begin with I thought perhaps the only redeeming feature of this film would be the fact that it reveresed the usual trope of a predatory male stalking women victims, but no. Ultimately it's the female body which is most violated in Under The Skin.

3. I have a confession to make: I'm not the biggest Wes Anderson fan.  I know, I know, that's practically enough to get me excommunicated from the cool club but still, I find his films rather reliant on style over substance.  And true to form, The Grand Budapest Hotel was lovely to look at and had some rather nifty visual jokes, and I liked it fine but I can't imagine wanting to rewatch it in years to come.

4. Can you believe that The Boy had never seen Juno? After becoming rather tired of me referring to Ellen Page as "my girlfriend Ellen Page," he decided to see what the fuss was about and we watched it during a cosy night in. I think it must have been about my tenth viewing and I still love it as much as ever, and still get weepy over the lovely final scene with Page and Michael Cera.

5. Curve in Leicester currently have a barn-storming stage version of Hairspray.  Slowly but surely - a cinema date to watch Les Miserables here, a trip to see Hairspray there - I am making sure The Boy becomes as much a fan of jazz hands and musical theatre as I am.

Heard...

I'm rather enamoured of Belfast quartet Wonder Villains at the moment.  Chiming Britpop-era guitars, pretty harmonies and a rather wonderful keytar in the video to new single Marshall all combined to make me fall a bit in love with them.  They remind me of being 18 and listening to bands like Kenickie and Bis, and that's always a good thing.

Seen & heard: January & February

Seen...

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire managed not one but two difficult tasks: a sequel that surpassed the achievements of the first film, and a book adaptation that more than lived up to the source material.  I absolutely loved this film, and handily I had forgotten a lot of the plot so was genuinely on the edge of my seat a few times.  But really, what's not to like about a blockbuster franchise which has a kick-ass female protaganist tasked with saving the boy and which is on the side of the revolutionaries rising up against an oppressive capitalist state?!

2. I really enjoyed the Coen Brothers' new film, Inside Llewyn Davis, set amongst the denizens of the early 1960s New York folk scene.  The mid-century interiors & costumes were beautifully designed and I liked the cyclical nature of the narrative.  The main character, Llewyn, is essentially a bit of a dick, but I enjoyed the film all the moreso for this fact: I think I would have found his travails unbearably sad if I'd actually liked him. 

3. Nebraska follows father and son Woody and David as they drive from Montana to Nebraska in a doomed attempt to collect a million dollar prize, which Woody thinks he has won after getting a marketing letter.  The performances in this film were amazing; I mistakenly thought that Bruce Dern hadn't gained an Oscar nomination for his brilliant turn as the elderly, alcoholic and increasingly confused Woody and was preparing to rail against the ageism of Hollywood.  Then I looked it up on IMDB and realised that he had got a nod, so I promptly shut up.

4. I've had this on DVD for ages but never seen it, but it ended up being the only thing The Boy and I could agree on on a recent Friday night.  The story of middle aged lesbian couple Jules and Nic (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore), whose lives are rocked by the appearance of their childrens' sperm donor dad, The Kids Are Alright was pretty good.  Definitely one I'd watch again.

5. I refuse to be embarrassed by my rewatch of Miss Congeniality 2 because although it's not a patch on the first one, it's still good fun.

6. If you haven't given Fargo a watch in a while, I can highly recommend returning to it.  Still as brilliant and funny and bleak as it was when I first saw it on release in 1996 (I had to look that up, and my first reaction was, "Oh my god, I'm so old!").

Heard...

 

1. I'm pretty obsessed with husband-and-wife due Tennis at the moment, and especially their new Small Sound EP.  Mellow summer sounds in the vein of Best Coast and Beach House, I especially love the lead track Mean Streets.

2. I finally got round to buying Haim's Days Are Gone, and it's a lovely album of, again, summery pop tunes.  I am proper trying to convince myself that summer is just round the corner!

3. The Boy loves Bruce Springsteen whereas I am decidedly not keen.  So when I heard a track (Hunter Of Invisible Game) from his new album, High Hopes, on 6 Music and actually liked it, I thought maybe I'd been converted and decided to buy the CD for The Boy as a surprise present.  Well, turns out I still don't like Springsteen as I only really love that one song, but hey, T liked his gift.

List #5: My favourite quotations

So, asking a bibliophile and music obsessive for her favourite quotations is like asking a mother which child she loves the most.  It was almost impossible to narrow it down, but I managed to decide, based purely on the first six lines that sprang to mind.

1. When I first read The Perks Of Being A Wallflower, I spent much of the time madly nodding in recognition.  My copy is filled with pencil marks and underlinings - something I hadn't really done in a novel since I was a teenager - because the book is so full of relatable lines.  My favourite is this, said by his teacher to narrator Charlie:

 “Sometimes people use thought to not participate in life."

2. I didn't totally love the film Liberal Arts, but this quotation, which is not dissimilar to the one above, stuck in my mind:
 
"I just started to feel like reading about life was taking time away from actually living life, so I'm trying to, like, accept invitations to things, say "hi" to the world a little more... I keep thinking I'd be so much happier in bed with a book, and that makes me feel not super cool. I still read tons. I just feel like I'm more aware of a book's limitations. Does that make sense?"

When I heard this in the film, I felt like shouting "YES!" and doing a fist pump.  Everything about it is just me, completely and utterly.  This one line made up for the film in general being pretty disappointing.

3. The Smashing Pumpkins are pretty much my favourite band of all time, and I couldn't narrow it down to just one line.  So first, we have (from Muzzle, on 1995's Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness album):

"I fear that I am ordinary just like everyone."

It's a ridiculous line, right?  Typical Billy Corgan: overblown and juvenile, the sound of every teenage tantrum ever thrown.  But also... isn't it just totally true?  Don't we all fear, deep down, that we're ordinary and workaday and that there's nothing special about us in the least?  Or maybe that's just me.

4. And secondly, from Siamese Dream track Rocket:

"I miss me, I miss everything I'll never be."

This is a line I love so much that I'm sorta/kinda/maybe planning on getting a tattoo of it. 

5. I couldn't talk about favourite quotations without quoting The Smiths.  From Handsome Devil, it is of course:

"There's more to life than books you know, but not much more."

I have this quotation framed in my front room, and I could not agree with it more.

6. Finally, I'm planning a whole post around this last one.  From Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity:

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos... nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

I'd love to hear about your favourite quotations, hit me up in the comments below.

Seen & heard: November & December

1. Gravity was The Boy's choice on a recent date night, and I have to admit that I wasn't overly keen on seeing it (having read one too many tweets lamenting either its length and lack of action or, conversely, the extreme tension and stress felt while viewing). But I really enjoyed it; how nice to see a woman in the leading role of an action/sci-fi flick.

2. Knocked Up was a re-watch this month.  Always funny, but the cameos by Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Martin Starr, Charlene Yi and Jason Segel are the best things about it.

4. As I do every year, I watched A Christmas Carol at school with year 6.

5. I only saw Elf for the first time last year, but I think its viewing may become a new festive tradition.  This time round, I introduced The Boy to the tale of Buddy the Elf; ever since, he has taken to calling me 'Elf' when I get too over-excited and shrieky about Christmas.

6. My mum and I watched The Family Stone on Christmas Eve and wept copiously, as always.  It's one of my favourite Christmas films.

7. Finally, I can hardly believe that I'd never seen It's A Wonderful Life before!  Luckily, our local independent cinema had a charity screening in aid of Action Homeless, so The Boy and I took ourselves down there.  It made a brilliant end to a long and gruelling term at school (even if we did go through rather a lot of tissues).

Heard...

If it's November and December, then Sufjan Stevens' two Christmas collections - Songs For Christmas  and Silver & Gold - will be on constant rotation round my way.  Seriously, I've listened to almost nothing else for the past five weeks!

Glad tidings of comfort & joy

After weeks of preparation and longing, the school holidays are finally here and Christmas is upon us!

The Boy and I spent the weekend with my mum and step-mum, but now he's headed home to Glasgow and my step-mum to Gloucestershire to see her grandchildren, so I'll be spending the next few days quietly with my mum: reading books by the fire, watching seasonal films, drinking wine, mulling cider, eating lots of cheese...it will be bliss!

I hope that wherever it finds you, your Christmas is peaceful, relaxing and joyful.  And I'll leave you with this song, Sufjan Stevens' version of Oh Holy Night. 



Seen & heard: October

Seen...

 

1. This is what happens when you go out with a philosphy graduate: you have to go and see films such as philosopher Slavoj Zizek's documentary, The Pervert's Guide To Ideology.  I can't pretend to have understood much of his "inventive interpretation of moving pictures to examine ideology - the collective fantasies that shape our beliefs and practices"* but it was enjoyable nonetheless.  I particularly liked the section on West Side Story, looking at how the narrative of a song such as Officer Krupke has echoes in liberal interpretations of the London riots.

2. From Dazed & Confused to School of Rock to the Before... trilogy, I'm a huge fan of everything director Richard Linklater has made, and Bernie turned out to be no exception.  Based on the true story of a small town funeral director in Texas who was convicted of the murder of a widow he'd befriended, it's a gentle film which ingeniously combines actors (Jack Black is particularly effective in the title role) with talking head interviews from the real townspeople. 

3. Like writer/director Martin McDonagh's previous feature In Bruges, this was a hugely enjoyable and at times shockingly violent black comedy about, well, seven psychopaths.  Colin Farrell was superb as an alcoholic screenwriter working on a script called Seven Psychopaths and watching as his screenplay slowly comes to life through the machinations of... well, that would be spoiling it.

I also went to see Alexei Sayle's first stand-up gig for many years, which was riotously funny and acerbically political, just as you would expect it to be.

* Source - www.imdb.com

Heard...

I've mostly been listening to lots of Midlake, after seeing them last week.  I can't wait for the new album next Monday!

Midlake live at Nottingham Glee Club, 22nd October

It's not unusual for a band to continue recording after the departure of a key member, but it is more notable for a band to stay together following the departure of their lead singer and songwriter.  In Midlake's case, when founder member Tim Smith left the band in 2012,  the remaining members made the decision to keep writing and recording as Midlake, with guitarist and backing vocalist Eric Pulido taking over leadership duties.  As a longtime fan of Midlake - a band who, even when performing with the original line-up would tend to come out with a slightly new sound with each new record, from their oddball Americana debut Bamnan and Slivercork, to the prog rock-ish concept album The Trials of Van Occupanther, to 2011's folk song cycle, The Courage Of Others - I was intriuged to find out how the new line-up would affect their sound.

It wasn't the most auspicious of starts: throughout the support act I was feeling sick, dizzy, hot, and rather like I wanted to go home and lie down.  But it didn't take much more than to hear the rhythmic drum beat that heralded the start of Midlake's crowd-pleasing opener Young Bride to get me feeling bright-eyed again.  Knowing that an audience needs to be eased into new material, they followed up with two tracks from The Courage Of Others, the gentle folk of the record here beefed up into a bigger, rockier sound. 

Only the most oblique reference was made by Eric to the drastic changes to the line-up ("It's been a while, and we're a little different... [beat] our beards are bushier and our bellies fatter").  New single Antiphon was well received, the four part harmony sounding full-bodied and rich.  Another new track, It's Going Down, reminded me of Grizzly Bear at their most melodic and harmonious, while the remainder of the new material did not sound a million miles away from Midlake's last album.

The real highlights, though, were the handful of tracks from ...Van Occupanther, which received a riotous reception.  Roscoe, with its 70s keyboard sound, Van Occupanther and Head Home (both from the encore) were performed with a joyous energy, the band clearly having the time of their lives, and so too the audience.

Seen & heard: September

Seen...

 

1. Filled with stock characters who never undergo much development and about whom we know very little, apart from that which is relevant to move the plot forward, I nevertheless really enjoyed I Give It A Year. Filled with crude, laugh-out-loud moments (three words, "tits or face," will haunt me for a while), it was a superior rom-com and perfect for a lazy Friday night in.  What on earth did they do to the gorgeous Anna Faris, though, to turn her into such a cliche of the frumpy girl-next-door?!

2. Silver Linings Playbook was the first film in a while that I've been unable to finish.  After about 40 minutes, we decided to switch it off and just read the wiki entry to find out how it ended! I'm hard-pressed to say exactly what left me cold about the film, except that I found the characters hard to sympathise with or connect with. Did you love this film; am I missing something?

3. About Time was really wonderful.  Just as Hollywood blockbusters don't present a realistic portrayal of American families and homes, I don't go to a Curtis film for social realism. I go for the posh-but-wacky characters, the bumbling heroes who win the girl, beautiful shots of London, and gorgeous bohemian upper class houses.  You get all of this with About Time, but also more.  What started as a classic 'girl-meets-time-travelling-boy' (btw, what is it with Rachel McAdams and time travellers?), becomes a love story about parents and children, about memory and loss.  Massively worth seeing, but take the tissues.

4. If you asked me what I was looking forward to most - The Boy coming back to Leicester, or us being able to start watching the Game Of Thrones boxset - I would have been hard-pressed to answer.  But, although having my boyfriend living in the same country has been nothing but wonderful, I'm slightly underwhelmed by GoT.  Is it because I know exactly what's going to happen at all times?  I've read the first book so recently, that I'm constantly being the irritating viewer who winces before something happens, or who pipes up, "that's not how it is in the book." 

5. I'm a long-time fan of Alan Partridge, and Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa did not disappoint. I thought it did a very good job of extending a half-hour TV show to a full-length film feature.

Heard...

1. Looking forward to seeing Midlake later in October, and to hearing their new album in November.
2. Hearing the rumours that Veruca Salt are recording new material - yay!
3. Listening to Wake Up, a collaboration between The Roots and John Legend.  Perfect music for chilling out with my boy.

Seen & heard: August

Seen...

1. I'm a complete and utter sucker for musicals.  Where some people cringe at the cheese, I revel in it.  And I adored Pitch Perfect, which is a sort of Glee-goes-to-college movie, and therefore amazing.  Anna Kendrick and Skylar Astin were great as the romantic leads, but of course Rebel Wilson stole the show as Fat Amy ("I call myself that so twig bitches like you don't do it behind my back").  Definitely the best film of the month, in a month of excellent films.

2. Sarah recommended Robot & Frank a while ago, and it's a lovely little film.  Set in the near future, Frank is an ageing cat burglar whose children worry about his memory loss.  The answer?  Employ a robot as a healthcare assistant.  Frank initially resists this idea, but when he discovers that the robot has not been programmed to regard burglary as wrong, he realises that he might have found the perfect partner in crime...

 3. I watched Whip It for about the sixth time because I wanted The Boy to see it.  I never get bored of this film, and when I stopped to think about it I realised that one of the reasons I love it is that is smashes the Bechdel test (as does Pitch Perfect, when I think about it).  Yes, main character Bliss spends some of the film thinking and talking about a guy, but it's by far the least important plot strand. Her journey to becoming a roller derby star is the heart of the film, and her conversations -  about derby and about life, but rarely about love - with the strong women she rolls with are key.

4. You know when I said I'm a sucker for musicals?  I really, really meant it.  I LOVED Rent when I saw it on stage years ago - so much so that I went three times in a week - and I also love the film.  My idea of a good night in on my own is pyjamas, popcorn, laptop propped on my knees in bed, and the Rent DVD.  I start crying during the opening number Seasons Of Love and usually weep on and off through the rest of it, culminating in wrenching sobs when (SPOILER!) Angel dies and during the last song.  Yes, maybe I am weird to so enjoy a good cry, but it's cathartic no?

Heard...

I'm still obsessing over Arctic Monkeys new material, this month Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?  All of the singles from the new album are SO good, I can't wait to hear the whole thing.

I've also been listening to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins and Hole.  Trying to reclaim my youth maybe?