This is really something I should have done a couple of months ago, but all this university nonsense has ensured that important stuff like sleep, a social life and music have been required to take a backseat in my life, and unfortunately I haven't been able to dig into as many new albums as I would have liked to. Here, in any case, are the handful that have managed to make an impression on me within the first 5 months of the year or so.
Favourite Albums Of 2010 So Far
1. The Wild Hunt - The Tallest Man On Earth
Kristian Matsson, the most amazingest songwriter to ever songwrite continues to be utterly awesomesauce while relying on nothing but fingerpicked acoustic guitar and a shockingly ugly voice. This is all the usual folksy troubadour stuff about travelling and dusty roads and being swallowed up by rivers and hearing ghosts in trees and rolling away to hell ; stuff that you think you've heard a million times before. But in this dude's hands everything sounds new and magnetic and haunting and born-yesterday-fresh. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this guy and his music. Get this record, you guys. Just get this record.
Warning for shaky video but I had to choose this one because he breaks out into a random Sade cover towards the end and things like that must be shared.
And just for the record, Matsson is only about five foot nine. His moniker is perhaps a slight exaggeration. Also just for the record, he needs to let me have his babies.
2.Go - Jonsi
Sigur ros frontman Jonsi Birgissson (or at least I think that's how you spell it) breaks out on his own to create the happiest bounciest colourfullest album I've heard all year and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong because I can never have enough happy bouncy colourful albums. Most songs are in English this time but it hardly matters cause it still sounds gibberish anyway. Gorgeous gibberish, backed by flutes and tribal drums and strings upon strings upon strings. If this record doesn't make you smile at least once then you are pretty much dead in your soul. DEAD. In the SOUL.
3. The Winter Of Mixed Drinks - Frightened Rabbit
Nobody does the tortured emo thing quite as well as the Scots do, and you can count on Frightened Rabbit to howl and yell all about life's miseries and the fuckery that is love accompanied by pounding drums and lush guitars and handclaps. You heard me. Handclaps. Atmospheric and pretty and utterly delicious, despite the very depressing subject matter.
4. High Violet - The National
Hell. Yes.
5 Eclipse Soundtrack - Various Artists
I would be a lying liar who lies if I ever claimed that this wasn't a really really good collection of very sexy music, totally out of the movie's league. Where else would you find Beck and Bat For Lashes together, dammit? Plus Sia and Band Of Horses and Fanfarlo and The Dead Weather and I'm practically salivating just thinking about it.
6. The Golden Archipelago - Shearwater
Shearwater has always been one of those bands I always knew I should probably try and like but have never been able to muster up more than a passing "Meh" or maybe "That's not such a bad song heyyyyyyyy look over there at the Kristian Matsson!". This year however, they won me heart and soul with the track Castaways ; all dramatic and soaring and pounding and melodious and utterly unintelligible (but in the best way possible). The rest of the album is not nearly as accessible and I've lost count of the number of times I've given up on it simply because I couldn't tell when one song ended and the next began. This is a gorgeous record which demands a lot more patience and commitment than I'm usually willing to give but the rewards have been worth the frustration.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
Tertiary Education. Check It Out.
'Sup peasants.
It has been officially a month since I registered at university and I'm still not entirely sure what I think of the whole shindig just yet. All I know is that it's been somewhat of a culture shock trying to deal with both living on my own and a spanking new style of education at the same time.
Stuff That Has Happened To Me Over The Last 5 Weeks Or So
1. Orientation Week was killer. We were allowed 2 hours of sleep a day and had to wear the same clothes for 6 days in a row (no laundry allowed, thank you and good night), and there was a great deal of running around and shouting and learning songs and wondering when the next toilet break would be and marvelling at how all of us somehow found the strength to chew food without passing out or something. I also volunteered to join the intercollege (hostels are referred to as colleges here, which made a lot of my friends back home go WTF all over the place) Orientation debate competition, in which I sucked most spectacularly. Still got a shiny trophy for my sleep-deprived troubles though.
2. And just when everyone thought official acts of freshman orientatingization was over, and we could finally move on to classes and things, came a piece of not very happy news. There would be another round of special orientation for Indian students. And it would last a month. And you wouldn't be allowed to sleep till 3 a.m. And myself being a student of the brown-skinned persuasion, I joined in for about a week - one long stress-filled-sleep-deprived week of unnnecessary emotional burden - before finally demanding to be let out.
Rebellious shit, I tell you.
3. The best part of being at university? This one, specifically? It's 45 minutes away from home. Which is probably cheating in terms of the whole "leaving the nest" thing but whatever. The food here sucks. I need two homecooked dinners per week for the well-being of my soul, at least for the first few months.
4. Classes are interesting in general, except when I am far too sleepy, daydreamy or sweaty (from having walked all the way uphill to my faculty and then up like, 135 flights of stairs or something) to pay attention.
5. My jeans don't fit anymore. And by don't fit I mean they keep slipping off my ass.
6. The library is awesome. It has an entire floor devoted to literary books of the old, musty, thick, crumbly kind. Yes, an entire floor! As opposed to the whole building dammit.
7. Internet connection is satisfactory but not splendiferous. I can't watch Youtube videos, stream TV shows or download more than an mp3 at a time. Feel my pain.
8. Also, assignments. Too many of them. I had a mini tear-filled breakdown over the weekend wondering if any of us would ever be able to get anything done.
It has been officially a month since I registered at university and I'm still not entirely sure what I think of the whole shindig just yet. All I know is that it's been somewhat of a culture shock trying to deal with both living on my own and a spanking new style of education at the same time.
Stuff That Has Happened To Me Over The Last 5 Weeks Or So
1. Orientation Week was killer. We were allowed 2 hours of sleep a day and had to wear the same clothes for 6 days in a row (no laundry allowed, thank you and good night), and there was a great deal of running around and shouting and learning songs and wondering when the next toilet break would be and marvelling at how all of us somehow found the strength to chew food without passing out or something. I also volunteered to join the intercollege (hostels are referred to as colleges here, which made a lot of my friends back home go WTF all over the place) Orientation debate competition, in which I sucked most spectacularly. Still got a shiny trophy for my sleep-deprived troubles though.
2. And just when everyone thought official acts of freshman orientatingization was over, and we could finally move on to classes and things, came a piece of not very happy news. There would be another round of special orientation for Indian students. And it would last a month. And you wouldn't be allowed to sleep till 3 a.m. And myself being a student of the brown-skinned persuasion, I joined in for about a week - one long stress-filled-sleep-deprived week of unnnecessary emotional burden - before finally demanding to be let out.
Rebellious shit, I tell you.
3. The best part of being at university? This one, specifically? It's 45 minutes away from home. Which is probably cheating in terms of the whole "leaving the nest" thing but whatever. The food here sucks. I need two homecooked dinners per week for the well-being of my soul, at least for the first few months.
4. Classes are interesting in general, except when I am far too sleepy, daydreamy or sweaty (from having walked all the way uphill to my faculty and then up like, 135 flights of stairs or something) to pay attention.
5. My jeans don't fit anymore. And by don't fit I mean they keep slipping off my ass.
6. The library is awesome. It has an entire floor devoted to literary books of the old, musty, thick, crumbly kind. Yes, an entire floor! As opposed to the whole building dammit.
7. Internet connection is satisfactory but not splendiferous. I can't watch Youtube videos, stream TV shows or download more than an mp3 at a time. Feel my pain.
8. Also, assignments. Too many of them. I had a mini tear-filled breakdown over the weekend wondering if any of us would ever be able to get anything done.
9. Also, I have listened to the new Arcade Fire leak and I am not impressed you guys. Yet. Perhaps it shall grow on me but overall I feel slightly let down despite loving at least 3 tracks.
10. Also I must watch Inception because I am the only person I know who has yet to see it and it makes me feel tragically unhip and cut off from the world. The only thing I can make out for now is that people in this movie like to dream their dreams sideways and shit. And that Cillian Murphy is as creepyshithot as he ever was.
Here he is, being prettier than you.
10. Also I must watch Inception because I am the only person I know who has yet to see it and it makes me feel tragically unhip and cut off from the world. The only thing I can make out for now is that people in this movie like to dream their dreams sideways and shit. And that Cillian Murphy is as creepyshithot as he ever was.
Here he is, being prettier than you.
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