eighty-seven

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Melody Dean
Amanda Palmer
Theatre is Evil
2012

I have to admit that I feel funny posting this song because I really don't know much about Amanda Palmer or her music (save for a few Dresden Dolls songs) AND it feels like I am encroaching on Jill-territory.

BUT this song.  Like.  I kind of can't stop.  I think this is partially attributed to that infectious riff ripped straight from The Knack's "My Sharona".  When I am listening to this song I cannot stay still.  I picture a moment in particular--last Saturday afternoon--waiting for the metro, trying to suppress the urge to bounce in place on the platform.

There is something about the words and music that draws me in.  To my ears, it is something different (but paradoxically familiar!), and new and exciting (but, again it may sound like everything else AP has recorded--maybe not knowing is kind of nice in this instance).  It sounds giddy (those horns, bouncing piano and underlying synths!).  I love the combination of sounds--"melody" and "a lady"--the way they get confused and blend together.  I like the song's pace and how it is impacted by the way the words are sung (it's so funny to look at them on paper--hard to pull any sense of rhythm out of it at all, though the beautiful images like, "I am a tree that's carved with her name" (I love that it's "her") stand out more clearly).  This is the type of song I need right now--I stopped resisting and just posted!

eighty-seven.

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

What I Feel
Artist: Pony Pony Run Run
Album: You Need Pony Pony Run Run
Year: 2009
♥: There have been many times when -- when leaving a social to-do -- I end up on the bus, fighting tears. It happens to everyone: despite good conversation, good company, some topic or another takes a turn for the worse and you end up locked in your own head. "Quebec politics" or "I love City X" becomes 'Am I going to stay in the same city forever? Am I going to lose all my friends to some nomadic impulse I'm not sure I have?'; "My job" becomes 'Am I happy with mine, really? Will I have the chance to do what I know I'm meant to?' And then you question yourself and you wonder and not only can you not have a good time, you start second-guessing every decision you've made. The plight of the self-reflective person.

But there are other times, when I take the bus home -- last Tuesday being one of them -- when I can't keep the grin off my face. And even in the midst of some rocky emotional times, some rocky topics of conversation, I was happy. I had just spent a few hours wandering Montreal, reading Elliot Perlman and really feeling it. I felt like myself, like things outside of me didn't have the effect they'd had the day before, like I was internally connected. And however long that would last: the feeling of beaming up at the stars through an open window on the 24 stirred something. A memory, maybe; hope, definitely.

I discovered this band this week, and they were instant -- fully my electropop style. This song/album was playing all Tuesday, as I found V's birthday present and read The Street Sweeper while drinking a spectacular decaf cappucino, and again as I took that bus ride home. It was only afterwards that I realized how apt the lyrics were.

"I just wanted to stay where I live, inside ---

baby I'm with you
no I don't want it to go
baby I want you
I don't wanna hide
Inside"

I will be coming to terms with myself for a lifetime. There will be moments of despair and moments of clarity, songs that accompany both. This one, despite its honest, all-too-close-to-home message (I will have to change, I can't go back, and not only that: I don't even want to, anymore -- but that's yet another thing with which to come to terms) ---- accompanies a moment of bliss.

post 88 theme!

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]