The dashboard melted but we still have the radio. Oh, we talked about nothing which was more than I wanted you to know

I’m not sure what exactly inspired me to do this, but here is the –

M for March Playlist:

1. Wasted Time – The Morning Benders
This is a link to a live show, I couldn’t find an album version streaming online, so the quality is off but do get their album to hear it.
I don’t know why, but I wanted to open and end this playlist with this band… these two songs seem to reflect a nice change of heart.

2. Shadows – Midnight Juggernauts
An Aussie band, nice bass hooks, the sort of thing I can imagine dancing to at a bar.

3. Asleep at a Party – Memory Cassette
The sort of song that evokes a lot more thought than you’d expect it to…

4. On Dancefloors – Metronomy
My favourite Metronomy song. I love how the song sounds like it’s swirling in circles, and the line “all those evenings, spent disappointed on dancefloors” makes me almost want to cry. But I feel like Metronomy does those lyrics justice by evoking such a sad, bittersweet sound and that’s why it’s my favourite track by them.

5. No One Will Ever Love You – The Magnetic Fields
Oldie, but a goodie.

6. When You Sleep – My Bloody Valentine
From one of my favourite albums ever.

7. Tourniquet – Marilyn Manson
I’m a sucker for guitar bends when done correctly…

8. Opium of the People – The Mint Chicks
Not a Youtube link, but nonetheless takes you to their video.
Probably a largely forgotten Mint Chicks song (by now), that I still love love love.

9. Dashboard – Modest Mouse
I know this is one of their biggest songs, but that’s because it’s so damn good. The title of this post is from this track, and so is my friend’s tumblr title, haha. I just love the clean guitar chkchkchk sound over the bass line. Oh oh oh.

10. The Youth – MGMT
After seeing MGMT live, this song has been further cemented as one of my favourite MGMT songs. The haunting whisper-like quality of this song with the typical MGMT-fantasy-sounding effects over the top, ahh.

11. Always Mine – The Morning After Girls
When I was about 13 or 14 I had a huge obsession with this band, their psychedelic-ish guitar twangs and raspy vocals, with the odd song that had some good ol’ rock n roll screaming in it. This is one of those songs from the middle of the album that often gets neglected, but now I remember how much I enjoyed this as the one of the little peaks in the album, in between all the lulls.

12. Tape Loop – Morcheeba
Why couldn’t music on MTV these days (what music?! I know…) be this good again? I love guitar with a bit of good ol’ wah-wah. And even though the bass and drums are playing really simple things, the whole thing is just really nice and tight, and grooves. Damn it’s hard to groove with some drummers, even if you’re perfectly in time. It often just doesn’t fucking groove.

13. Angel – Massive Attack
This is probably really biased as usual, but I really enjoy when bands use the bass as a means of achieving a brooding buildup, and this is precisely what this song has.

14. Porcelain – Moby
I don’t know why but for years I have been under the false impression that Moby was British, not American. Oops. But anyway, I’m sure that for many people besides myself, Moby’s “Play” album reminds them of 1999 going into 2000.

15. Cheated Hearts Could Be Beautiful – Metronomy Remix (Yeah Yeah Yeahs)
In its original state, “Cheated Hearts ” is one of my favourite Yeah Yeah Yeahs songs, but obviously this is an M-playlist so here I’ve got the Metronomy remix. It took me longer than I thought to really enjoy this track, but I guess that’s what happens when a band you like goes and fucks with the songs by one of your all time favourite bands and you go, ooh errr ummm for a bit there. In the end though, just like how I really like “On Dancefloors” (as above), I love the sad sound of this mix, which almost has a sweet tinge to the edge of it – like the inverse of a salt-rimmed cocktail glass.

16. When We’re Apart – The Morning Benders
Just another sweet-nothings sort of song…

…which is the perfect segue into photos from a sweet-nothings sort of evening. Le petit ami et moi didn’t manage to find any suitable mens boots for him, so instead we indulged in “Fruit Flo”s and purchased a book each for our brains to gorge on.  We also spent far too long trying on Ray Bans and now my years of suppressed desire for either a pair of Wayfarers or Aviators has been reignited. Uh oh.



Butter chicken and beer.

Usage & Abusage. See, he was going to buy my book and then I was interested in buying his. We ended up buying a different one each, but damn I want “Usage & Abusage” because we’d been using it all last night, looking up the “correct” way to use the words and phrases that are often misused.

An expedition to the kitchen for beer resulted in me taking photos of what his phone’s light looks like through ale in my pitch-black kitchen.

Which kind of just looks like light coke or something, especially because we were using coke glasses.

Just the pale ale
of experience
Takes away the crooked edge.
But only when empty.
Like a sharp migraine,
you get to me.

In the secrecy of your room
Words untold and
Theories unrepeated.
Weave me
through your
shirt again.

And if, scold is the new chide
Then happily behind
those shades we hide.
For even when shuttered twice,
I fear it’s too dark,
The film of our love is
still underexposed.

(Written in the most rapid-fire fashion ever, I spastically scribbled, crossed out and scribbled as the boy looked on in confusion before finally relaxing into the song he’d put on which set off this… spark.)

Comfort zones & mislaid harmonies.

 

No harm, he’s armed, Setting off all your alarms

Today was the first day of my 2nd year at university. When I woke up naturally at 7.46am, my first thought was, oh no, how long have I overslept for?! But luckily for once that was not the case. I still can’t believe I woke up a quarter of an hour before my alarm! And I can’t believe how fast the past four months of summer holidays has just slipped away. It seems barely last week when I was jumping on the $999/return deal to fly to LA, and it feels barely yesterday that I was power-walking through San Francisco and riding on cable cars. Yet, at the same time it feels like an entire lifetime away. I think I’ve had four main distinctive phases this summer:

1/ November: California lovin’
2/ December: late nights, dashes in and out of everywhere
3/ January: wishy washy old self, dreaming of all the possibilities and living my life through daydreams and the internet
4/ February: actual lovin’, every day blurs into the next in the HOT HOT HEAT of summer, wishing I could rewind or fast forward time

I guess time truly flies when you’re having fun, huh.

Here are some (sorry, but shitty… it wasn’t my camera and it took a long time to work out how to 1/ get it out of black and white mode; 2/ get out of manual point-and-shoot mode; 3/ take an okay picture) pictures from Friday night, pizzas made from scratch, grâce à l’ami petit:

Rum & Pepsi, my phone getting charged, CC & dry

 

 

 

Tomatoes courtesy of his backyard.

 

Pre-Basil.

Note to anyone else who also likes sniffing boys books: acquaint yourself with a boy who has a vast book collection.

I spent an hour in a queue at university in order to obtain a Maxx sticker, which is what entitles me and my student ID to a discount when buying ferry tickets. For half an hour of this, my parking was expired and I was panicking over whether or not I was going to get a parking ticket. Luckily not, but you’d think that the major university in the biggest city of this country would have more than two people on computers sussing out timetables and enrollment qualification business!

In addition to this, currently on my timetable for the year, I have jazz combo on Wednesday night… at 8-10pm. Now… whilst that time is completely acceptable for when we have recital assessments, but on a weekly basis?! Gaaah! Especially when I had been hoping to play hockey this season, I really don’t know how everything is going to work. I’m not a happy chappy about my combo, but I meet them tomorrow, so we’ll see what happens, I guess.

Completely irrelevantly, I’ve had a draft post sitting in WordPress for the past week or so, but I just never got around to writing it properly. Too much food consumption. Chocolate. More Chocolate. Yes, it deserves capitalisation, that’s how much I love Chocolate. Going to sleep with Blonde Redhead, a Radiohead play list or The Raveonettes on repeat all night. Waking up reluctantly to wine and dine and do it all over again.

I don’t know when I’ll ever be able to use the local dialect for petit ami. That is, without feeling like I’m saying “cunt” in my mother’s presence or something to that effect. I’m a person of extremes, I know. I also know that I’m going to get a blister or two this week (already developing), and that I will start posting sporadic, spontaneous shit on here. Weekly wish list? Oh, yes please.

I try not to hurt anybody I like, But I don’t have the drugs to sort it out

With less than two weeks to go until my second year of university commences, I’ve been trying to make the most of my remaining summer holidays. Even though this largely entails daydreams, poetry/prose/song writing, music playing, internet philandering and movie watching, rather than actual outdoor activities that involve basking in the sun. That said, I’ll be doing my fair share of exercise in two games of hockey tonight, and as for getting enough sun… well I’ve retained my tan lines from last week, and ferrying to and from uni will be plenty of fresh air for me, once that starts.

In my sleeplessness last night I did something that a lot of people must think I do often, but in actual fact is a rare occurrence – I sat down with an acoustic guitar and wrote a song from start to finish. By rare I mean that, of all the instruments I can play, I actually hate playing guitar (typical bass player syndrome?); and also the fact that I finished the song, with accompanying music and all – which usually takes much longer than just a couple of hours of sleepless strumming around to achieve. Mind you, by “finish”, I just mean that the song is in existence now, except realistically, for me to ever let anyone hear it, I would really need to jam out all the other instrumental parts, and possibly even score add extra instrumentation… perhaps I’ve been listening to too much Sufjan Stevens, and I’m getting too imaginative and musically ambitious in my head in terms of harmonic and percussive layers.

So, since I can’t and won’t show you my song, here’s a playlist instead. I think I’m going to dub it the end-of-summer playlist – a variety of new and old loves, largely chilled out stuff and also, in hindsight, largely bass-driven – although I promise this was completely subconscious and not on purpose! (Guess I’m majoring in the right thing then?):

1. Odessa – Caribou
I just like the bass line and the percussive feel throughout.

2. New Theory – Washed Out
Just. So. Chill.

3. 23 – Blonde Redhead
Absolutely adore this song, and they played it amazingly at Laneway.

4. Afraid of Everyone – The National
From whence the title of this post was snagged.

5. I Know You Know – Esperanza Spalding
Yeah yeah, I know she just won a Grammy and made most people go “who the hell is that?!”, but us jazz students have had our ears on her for ages. Especially those of us of the female, bass-playing variety. The link is to a live version, cos I think it’s awesomer than just the album recording. I don’t know how she plays bass like that whilst singing…

6. Dissolved Girl – Massive Attack
Another bass driven song.

7. From the Ritz to the Rubble – Arctic Monkeys
Bass mania. And love to the partying ways.

8. Used To Be – Beach House
There’s a reason everyone seems to love this band.

9. Blush – The Raveonettes
I absolutely LOVE this song. The lyrics are so sweet, so sad, and so beautifully, brutally truthful and relevant.

10. Miami – Foals
One of my favourite Foals songs – and yes, it was amazing live. Love the bass line, once again.

11. Strobe – Friendly Fires
A chilled out feel, nice beat but just sad enough to keep it interesting.

12. Evil – Interpol
I’ve loved this song for years, and I guess it’s one of their most recognisable songs. I hadn’t listened to it for ages until our road trip last week, and then at a 21st birthday party and post-party the weekend immediately after. And I can’t help but need to mention that this is possibly one of the most recognisable bass lines ever. Also, I wrote a, uhh, thing on this song last year. Maybe I’ll post it at some point, if I grow some balls.

13. Last Day of Magic
It’s been almost two years since I saw these guys live; they’ve got a new album out in two months, so I’m curious to see what it sounds like, asides from the single they just dropped. I can never quite get over how underratedly sad this song actually is.

Is anyone else excited to see what the Radiohead album coming out this weekend will bring?

I’m trying to put this thing to bed, I’ve drugged it in its sleep. There aren’t many memories I’m comfortable to keep

The painting that I had started in this post last month was finished quite a few weeks ago, but I kept forgetting to post the final product, until a friend reminded me about it just before. I couldn’t figure out the best quick and easy way to photograph the painting, because of the gold paint that I had used – it looks different depending on which angle and lighting you see it at. I didn’t think much about what I was doing when I was slopping layers after layers of paint onto canvas, but in hindsight there is so much about it that I could analyse about myself. This fact scares me a little. I hadn’t painted in yeeears, and I rather miss it; although back in the day I used to do more realistic, rather than abstract and erratic stuff.

I compiled the following playlist with a lot of emotion, and very lack of thought. I say lack of thought because at first glance it will seem completely uncohesive and probably make little sense to you, but I hope that the tracks get listened to. I literally didn’t “think” about what songs I wanted on this playlist, I just chose song after song, and dug up links for them. But once again, in hindsight, there is so much that one could read into my song choices. They all have relevant themes, lyrics and feel. For example, I just noticed that there are several songs on here that are quite long – there are 5 songs that are longer than 6 minutes, the longest being over 8 minutes. The songs are all either very old or very new loves of mine, and each song just feels… relevant. I wish I had a better word to describe this playlist, but maybe the best I can say is that it is very “right now, this moment, this evening” for me.

Click on the bold titles for youtube links of the tracks:

1. In Particular – Blonde Redhead
After a night’s marathon of listening to them, I’ve finally fallen in love. “Such a good band to escape into.”

2. Howlin’ For You – The Black Keys
Looking forward to seeing these guys in 5 days’ time! Their set should be super tight.

3. Hero – Regina Spektor
Hearing this song reenacts the scene from 500 Days of Summer in my head… of heartbreak.

4. Alabaster – Foals
Song from an amazing album, where everything just builds and builds so nicely. Layers. I love layers, and by that I mean I love layers in everything – music, paint, writing plots and subplots, the undertows of character, clothing… I could go on forever.

5. My Same – Adele
Oh, how this feels! I love the crispy accompaniment in this song as well… the tone of that guitar and subtle but precise, driving bass.

6. Tourist – Athlete
This song reminds me of my friend Sinead – she was the one who got me into this band, and this song in particular. Listened to it today, and just… its relevance is killing me.

7. Bees – Warpaint
One of my most listened-to tracks since Boxing Day. I could loop this and its precursor (Undertow) on their album over and over and over and over.

8. Only In Dreams – Weezer
I’ve finally stopped repeating this song obsessively, but last month I gave it a good enough run for a lifetime. I’m not a Weezer fanatic, but this is one song I love. I half wrote a song based on a tangent of this idea…

9. Belief – John Mayer
Something about this guitar line, so simple, but I really like it…

10. But Not For Me – Chet Baker
Unfortunately, this isn’t the same version as the one that I’ve got, which has a very speedy bass solo on it, woah.

11. Sister – Sufjan Stevens
Need to buy our tickets, but I am seeing this man perform next month in Wellington. The lyrical guitar just gets me, every time. From my favourite album of his, Seven Swans.

12. Here In My Room – Incubus
Everything about this song is beautiful – I’m a huge fan of Brandon Boyd’s lyrics.

13. The Lost Art of Keeping A Secret – Queens of the Stone Age
I need to fish together roughly $85 to see these guys next month, ahhh! Not used to paying for gigs again.

14. I Will Possess Your Heart – Death Cab For Cutie
The long build up makes it worth it. In my opinion it reflects precisely what the song is on about.

15. Your Ex-Lover Is Dead – Stars
For F.M.D., because we both know what it feels like.

16. When You Sleep – My Bloody Valentine
I will never forget the day I was introduced to this band and Loveless. So fucking ironic. LOVELESS.

17. Killing in the Name – Rage Against the Machine
Can’t believe they played this at a club last night. Danced/moshed/headbanged to this like the 15 year old I once was, except this time I was wearing rather high heels. This song was far more amazing when I saw it live though, of course – as opposed to in some basement club where sweat is dripping off the ceiling and we have to fend boys off with a stick.

I wish I could stop using this word in this post already, but even the post title is spot-on relevant. A lot of friends of mine don’t understand why I blog, and et cetera sort of questions surrounding the practice of blogging. Ironically, this blog documents my life better than my notebooks, in which I do scribble about “major events” and the odd mundane, daily happenings – but mostly I only ever craft in ink things that are nonsensical, lyrical, extremely painful, descriptive, or all of the above. And that’s why I’m saying this here, rather in some “diary” of sorts, which I don’t actually keep, because – this is it.

A couple of nights ago I had a huge emotional epiphany. It’s far too long of a story to even begin to explain, but I feel fucking great for finally having years and years’ worth of mostly self-inflicted emotional burden and pain lifted off me. Surely I’m not the only person in the world to have been so in love with an idea that you toy with it, torture yourself with it, lay it to rest and then wake it back up, repeatedly, until you can’t tell fact from fiction? And some days, you get a glimpse of the reality that you can see in the mirror, minus all the imaginary artifacts you’ve built around you… but you simply deny such insight as merely doubt. Why is it that we never want to see what we’re blindly in love with, for what it truly is? Something intangible that you concoct excuses for in your head. Largely a figment of your imagination that is based on only a mere strand of truth and reality.

So, reality, here I am. At last. I’ve unloaded a pile of the past, and now I have to deal with the present. I’m not sure I like how this feels right now, because everything I deal with is suddenly so much more tangible than everything else I’ve been living in my head. But it’s for this precise reason that I need to have moved on – the present affects the future, and this is the one aspect of my life that has had the most dire outlook. I can’t remain the madwoman that I’ve been for years, because “to repeat the same action over and over and expect different results is the very definition of madness”, and it’s a rather stupid and self-deprecating process to keep repeating, to be honest.

The problem is, all of the above sounds like a really fine and dandy conclusion to have drawn, to date – but now I don’t know what choices I want to make from this point forth. I am forever a slave to indecisiveness, and wanting to have the best of both worlds. The ironic thing is, one could say “both these worlds you’re choosing between are highly flawed, you deserve better, keep waiting for a new option” – but that’s not really living in the right now, in the today… and we all know that living in the moment is something I’m notorious for. Even when I was overshadowed by the past, and the idea of the resurrection of the past, I still lived too much in the moment, without thought.

What to do?! There isn’t really a right or wrong. Ultimately, I just feel like I’m being too selfish right now.

Like a shotgun needs an outcome, like a shotgun, I can’t be outdone

Another two days as whizzed past me too fast, yet again. Although my days have seemed productive enough, I dare not think of how little I have managed to achieve in comparison to my huge list of things to do. I did end up finishing the painting I started a few days ago, but haven’t taken any photos of it yet, so I will post that later, along with some shitty self-analysis of it, haha.

Sometime in the midst of all this cloudiness, rain and then lack of rain, and utter, torturous humidity, I’ve watched a couple of decent films, sent gifts overseas, and attained a very bright Rimmel lipstick in the shade of “shocking pink”. It’s not quite as pink as I would have liked, but it will do for now. I’m not too sure what’s come over me, in this search of a very, very bright pink lipstick – anyone that knows me even just a little bit would be expecting me to wear nothing at all or a hot fiery red instead. But all that aside, I’m just looking forward to my dinner date at some mysterious, unknown location (it’s probably not a big deal, but I love – and hate – not knowing where it is, haha), followed by some scandalous dancing with Lottie. Truth be told, it will probably be nowhere near as scandalous as our dancing the night we befriended each other, but how good the DJ set is will determine how low low low we’ll get.

Some shots from Zowie’s gig at Galatos on Saturday night – the rest can be found here:

Oh Johnny boy… I don’t know what’s happening with Cut Off Your Hands, but last year Johnny was their replacement guitarist, and now he’s paying for Zowie. Either way, always a pleasure to have an excuse to stare at him, be it through the lens or not. Although, boy he moved a lot and was hard to photographer. Especially under that harsh light his angle was at.

I’ve been completely head over heels in love and lust with the band Warpaint and their new album. This is one song I just can’t get out of my head, to the point where it’s almost irritating because I was trying to write a song, and I just kept finding myself humming this thing to myself! Lyrics from “Undertow” were also the source of my last blog entry’s title. Can’t wait to see them at the end of January, although now I’m kicking myself over not having seen them in their hometown of LA.

The other song that is currently on repeat repeat as I type this is Lykke Li’s “Get Some”. I swear the lyrics of this song are akin to those that I have written before, but am too scared to actually publicise, haha. The video is pretty awesome too, so check it out.

And last but not least, the trailer of Somewhere, which was directed by Sofia Coppola. I went and saw this at Rialto with Lottie and her sister yesterday and we all absolutely loved it. I know a lot of people have given it bad reviews, saying it’s about absolutely nothing, but they’re missing the point! It’s all in the beauty of the mundane-ness of this movie star character’s life, and how he ultimately feels like nothing. Beautiful. Here’s the trailer – which has a lovely soundtrack, just like the movie does – I highly recommend this movie.

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