twenty-seven

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Sante Fe
Beirut
The Rip Tide
2011

I had a really hard time picking a post-Osheaga-experience song.  I tried to find something new or to settle on an old favourite, but it was like I wasn't searching for a song...I was searching for a feeling.  So, I thought, to heck with it, and just went with one of the songs I've actually been listening to this week; this summer.

As I already said, seeing Beirut was an all-around wonderful experience.  I still get all goosebumpy and smiley every time I listen to this song in particular.  When I heard that jittery accordion opening I jumped up and down and squealed like, well, a thing that squeals (pig, child, what have you).  I only just realized that the people around me might not have been as excited as I was (it featured on my last mix CD) because they had never heard the song before...the album isn't out yet, haha (I can't imagine life-before-leaks).

I guess I have to go back to what I said about searching for a feeling this week.  The moment I associate with this song now...the blue, blue sky, the sort-of breeze, the smell of sunscreen...and the feeling that I was perfectly happy and light and uplifted--probably why I've been listening to so much Beirut and my post-Osheaga playlist.  This song has that transportive (totally a word, it's in the Merriam-Webster) quality...not just because of the moment I associate with it, but because of the music itself.  When those horns come in...it's like being handed a bunch of helium-filled balloons and not being able to keep your feet on the ground and being lifted up, up..."I am not, am not alone/I want you to know."

twenty-seven.

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

Cradle
The Joy Formidable
The Big Roar
2011

♥: A song to (unofficially, unthemed-ly) sum up Osheaga 2011. Impossible.

Do I repost the Midway State, which killed me dead, from Saturday morning when the sun made the gravel smell like last night's Eminem binge? Do I post An Horse, when I was so overwhelmed by a line I had to pull out my agenda and jot it down in public? Do I post Ellie Goulding, in all her centered glee and electropop vigour? Do I post White Lies, who restarted my fucking heart? Do I post a song that made me dance till I didn't even care how much I was sweating; a song that made me close my eyes reverently; a song that I'd never heard but will never forget?

Osheaga was a series of discoveries, rediscoveries; dances, moments. I'm choosing a song that was all of those.

The Joy Formidable was blocked in that awful Beirut/Ellie Goulding stage split -- especially irritating because they're the one band I researched and really got into prior to Osheaga. Ellie Goulding's fabulous set had finished, and V and I -- blissed out, giddy -- headed to the Tree Stage in hopes of catching the Joy Formidable's final few songs. We collapsed in the shade, grinning, took a photo (one of the ones where you hold the camera in front of you and hope both faces are in the frame; they were, as was the slowly setting sun behind us). The Joy Formidable was amazing, pounding out their twisting hooks and riffs -- and then! Last song.

As was standard that weekend -- they played the one song I needed to hear.

'Cradle' is one of those rare songs that could be the opening or closing credits of a movie (or TV show, for that matter). It's got a sense of atemporality to it, because I think the point is to ascribe your own meaning, your own temporality. The lyrics, of course, are quite final: "I wish the cobwebs would cover me" and "All I want to see is the end of this" ------ but it doesn't feel like an ending, really. It's about the beginnings that can come from an ending, and the endings that come from a beginnings, and how interdependently related all that "newfound kinesis" can't help but be. This song got me through the beginning of July -- how perfect that it would reappear at the end of it.

Before the song ended, we were weaving back to the Green Stage to prepare for White Lies. There was a moment, 'Cradle' blaring, that I danced across that dirt pathway between stages while everyone else was shuffling. The unadultered joy I felt with that song exploding into my heart, though a mere indication of what was to come with White Lies just moments later: indescribable.

Osheaga was perfect.

theme twenty-eight

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

 [graphic forthcoming!]

theme:
LIVE.



[like, live music, haha, the graphic will make that clear, BUT run with it!!]