Mixtape 2014

Currently playing on loop in my brain: this song. Honestly, it gets stuck in my head every few days. I'll just find myself humming the whistled chorus without realizing I'm doing it, and by then it's too late. It's already in! And I can't even whistle, so I have to settle for humming the thing. "And the whole wide world is whistling," my ass. Some of us can't do that, thanks. Prejudice!

Some days I go into this blind, pick a random song, and write about it. Today is one of those days. Alabama Shakes is such a good, good band, one that's really helped to user in this blues/soul rock revival that's going on in one microcosm of the indie music world. Their music just feels good, down to the bone. That's what good blues should do, and that's what Alabama Shakes accomplishes.

I'm kind of shocked I haven't done a Lorde song yet? I love her as a person, obviously, along with most of the reasonable portion of the internet, and I've argued with a lot of people who think she's "weird." (If "weird" is the best word you can come up with to negatively describe a person, then something's wrong with you, not them.) But from a solely musical point of view, I just straight up don't understand how you could dislike her or dispute her talent. I can't remember the last time I heard such a solid debut album from an individual artist. I basically just go down the tracklist and become obsessed with a different song every month.

There is something to be said for reinventing a genre, or at least refreshing it, and Lorde has almost singlehandedly done that to the top 40 pop genre. Hearing a song like Buzzcut Season on the radio following a canned pop song that includes just the right amount of autotune and EDM shouldn't work, but it somehow does. If she hadn't blown up the way she did, we'd probably still be drooling over her as our "best-kept indie secret" or something.

I have a pretty good/bad habit of getting addicted to a book and powering through it in one sitting. Good because I'm a quick reader, and I enjoy it immensely; bad because I'm almost incapable of doing anything other than reading once I get into that mindset. I'll sacrifice exercise, sleep, food, general bodily functions... all for the sake of not being able to put a book down.

Anyway, you can imagine that this habit is pretty compatible with listening to a lot of music. Because I never stop reading, I'll often just listen to a random album on repeat while I'm doing it. This makes for some weird mental associations in my head; for example, New Moon by Stephenie Meyer will forever make me think of Nelly Furtado, because I literally listened to "Loose" five times in a row while reading it from cover to cover. This list goes on and on: The Giver and New Found Glory, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Damien Rice, The Notebook and Kanye West. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Other times,, I'll choose an artist before I even begin, based on what mood I think I want. Sufjan Stevens, for example, lent himself very well to reading Everything Is Illuminated. And Iron & Wine worked perfectly for Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, which I just blew through in a matter of hours. Soft, intimate, and quietly joyful. I can't remember the last time I felt so warm reading a book; the characters and experiences felt so familiar to me, even though I'd never read about them before. (Mostly because I recognized them in myself!)

It totally figures that I would choose to do a music-related project in a year that I'm almost too busy and/or otherwise indisposed to listen to music. Right now I'm going through this weird thing where I have a migraine every day, a weird throbbing going on behind my right eye that gets worse with too much light or sound. So that pretty much takes music out of the picture, which is incredibly frustrating.

But just because I'm not listening to a lot of music doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it, and I found myself thinking about "Landslide" as of late. (If I'm being perfectly honest with you, I think it originated from Miley Cyrus singing it at a concert in honor of her dog that recently passed away.) This is a song that everyone knows, and seemingly everyone loves. It is the ultimate sad song - beautiful in its simplicity, in terms of composition, and depth, in terms of feeling. It's just amazing how universal it is, like "All You Need Is Love" or... well, really what else is there? What makes a song "universal?" They say music is something that transcends language, but when I try to think of a universal song that isn't in English my mind draws a blank. Hell, I don't even really know if "Landslide" is universal, it's just a song that everyone I know sings along to when it comes on.

Pardon the absence; it's been a busy couple of days. Figured that to make it up to you, I'd share a song that's been getting a lot of buzz recently - well, obviously, because it's by The Black Keys. It's always a big deal when a popular indie band releases new material for the first time in a few years, but it seems like the hype around The Black Keys' new album has been particularly fervent. And deservedly so! Fever is a catchy little earworm that's perfect to groove to. It sounds old timey but also new, bluesy but funky too - a strange balance that the Keys have perfected down to a science.

You have to think, though, that no matter how good the Keys' new album is, it will never live up to the hype. The popularity of their last album, El Camino, which shot them into music mainstream, has set an almost impossible bar to reach. We've seen it before, with Arcade Fire (a guy from work who I dislike recently told me that "Arcade Fire hasn't been cool for 3 years" and I almost punched him in the face), Mumford and Sons (the last show of theirs I went to was full of drunken frat bros who barely knew any words but still insisted on yelling them all), and so many more. When you get that good, you get much more criticism shot your way if you don't continue to be that good.

I'm leaving for a work trip to Florida tomorrow, so naturally instead of packing all I did today was watch the entirety of the 1995 BBC miniseries version of Pride and Prejudice. All five hours. In a row. Only stopping to hastily run to the bathroom before changing DVD discs.

Not to say I regret it! And having not seen it for a while, I was able to re-appreciate the music in it. This song, for instance, is from the infamous Colin Firth lake scene, and is just so melodramatic you can't help but love it. The same of which can be said for the entire miniseries itself, honestly. It's just so good.