Music is the best kind of gift

CDs I asked for, and received, this Christmas morning:

Son of Evil Reindeer and Ya'll Get Scared Now, Ya Hear! by The Reindeer Section
This Side and Why Should the Fire Die? by Nickel Creek
Not All Who Wander Are Lot by Chris Thile
Far by Regina Spektor
Winter Songs by the women of the Hotel Cafe
The soundtrack to 500 Days of Summer
The soundtrack to Battlestar Galactica (Season One)
Quelqu'un M'a Dit by Carla Bruni
Slice by Five for Fighting (actually this is my dad's but I stole it briefly to put it onto my computer)

There's a reason I asked for each of these, however tenuous those reasons may be. One of my summer creative writing teachers, the inimitable Barry Yeoman, used to put on the Chris Thile CD while we walked around the room getting ready to write. I thought I'd like the Reindeer Section because I love Snow Patrol (Ben and I saw them in Nashville!) and Gary Lightbody's voice, and so far I do. I had one Carla Bruni song and loved her voice, so that's the reason for that. Nickel Creek comes from Chris Thile and from a childhood love for their first album; Battlestar Galactica soundtrack comes from Battlestar Galactica being awesome. The soundtrack to 500 Days of Summer makes the movie, and it was a great movie. I saw Ingrid Michaelson, Meiko, and two other women in the Hotel Cafe tour a little over a year ago, and it was a fantastic concert. All the women on that CD are so talented, and it is (as the title promises) a lovely collection of winter songs.

I obviously haven't been able to listen to all of this yet. I'm listening to the first Reindeer Section album now, and I like it. It's not amazing, but it's good. I've listened to smatterings of the others (I'm so late on the Regina Spektor that I've heard practically the whole thing legally over the internet) and I am excited for the music and the mix CD material that these will provide.

Today, by the way, was a wonderful day. Merry christmas, world. :)

Don't get me wrong, I'll never say never.
'Cause though love can change the weather
no act of God can pull me away from you.

-Five for Fighting

a few things about m83

M83 came out with their album "Saturdays=Youth" last year, and it was widely hailed by many of the more legitimate music blogs I read as one of the best albums of the year. I tend to not listen to electronic music much, and M83 leans enough in that direction that I never bought the album.

I have heard, however, two songs from it - admittedly the two songs that it's probably most well known for - "We Own the Sky" and "Graveyard Girl." As a song alone, I like "Graveyard Girl" a little better than "We Own the Sky," but the video for "We Own the Sky" is bizarre and wonderful. It is full of hipster children cavorting in a meadow, and the colors are lovely. I'm pretty sure it will make you smile. Here it is:

See it here!

My original point was to write about "Graveyard Girl," but I got distracted trying to find a video for it, because we haven't figured out a way to upload mp3's yet, and put up the video for "We Own the Sky" because it is awesome. But. I heard "Graveyard Girl" quite a while ago, and liked it immediately. This was partially because it's an lively, pretty song and I like its beats and all the strange twisting little melodies that run through it. Ben could probably describe it better than I can, musically. The other reason I liked it was the monologue that runs through the middle, which is as follows, spoken in the increasingly urgent voice of a teenage girl:

"I'm going to jump the walls and run. I wonder if they'll miss me. I won't miss them. The cemetery is my home; I want to be a part of it, invisible even to the night. Then I'll read poetry to the stones. Maybe someday I can be one of them, wise and silent, waiting for someone to love me, waiting for someone to kiss me. I'm fifteen years old and I feel it's already too late to live. Don't you?"

I immediately loved this when I first heard it. Then I listened to it again and realized that it was cliched, melodramatic, "emo"...then I listened to it again and realized that was why I loved it. It's evocative writing, but it's not amazing. It's something that a fifteen-year-old would write, trying to express ideas that were too big for her to put into words, and I understand that feeling. And I understand the feeling in that last sentence, "I'm fifteen years old and I feel it's already too late to live." It's pretty melodramatic, yes, but there's this sense sometimes that I think everyone gets, of being stuck in a situation or place that seems hopeless or stagnant, with an unimportant life ahead of you, no chance to "live." Apart from liking the sound of the song, that's the reason I like "Graveyard Girl" - I think it rings true for a fifteen-year-old girl. Here's a video that I haven't watched all of, so you don't have to either if you don't want to.

Love, Sarah