Filed under: Night Drive Tunes, Rainy Day Songs, Songs for Contemplation | Tags: Century Rolls: I.First Movement, I am Love, John Adams, piano
Near the end of New Years Day I watched the greater portion of the Tilda Swinton Movie I am Love. (Which I’ve wanted to watch for a while – based on the fact that the movie poster is so awesome). 
The movie was okay; a little slow for my taste, but the acting was phenomenal and subtle. What really struck me was the music.
The scores for the film were written by modern composer John Adams, and his work here is stunning: subtle, rhythmic, and contemplative, tailored perfectly to the film like a nice italian 3-piece suit.
I’m not saying you have to watch the movie, but you should at least give the sound track a try.
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems, Rainy Day Songs, sing like no one is listening, Songs of Triumph | Tags: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Up From Below
The beginning of the song, “Up From Below” sounds exactly like a song my old band wrote, so when it first played over my car speakers on a rainy Monday morning in late summer, I was carried back to a time when with the wind tousled my hair and friends and instruments surrounded me, when the fountainhead and dandelion wine first sprawled across me as I slept on the wooden slat of our tour bus. When the lyrics kicked in I was delivered to the present: “I was only five, when my dad told me I’d die…”
This song is engineered to tug at your heart strings. “Cause I’ve suffered I want you to know God, I’m ridin’ on hell’s hot flames, coming up from below.” Sounds triumphant and slightly spiteful, doesn’t it? But then listen to the melody, it climbs valiantly toward heaven, struggling towards God; the piano gives it weight, the guitar keeps its momentum, but in spite of those the lyric falls again, deeper, ending quickly on a note lower than where it began. This happens over and over again within the song and every time it only gets higher, more exalted, only to fall with equal and opposite force.
The other day I pulled out a copy of ‘Washing Your Hair in a Truckstop Sink’ a chapter of an incomplete manuscript about the band which I’ve held close to my chest for about two years now. It felt like time to prep the piece for submissions, release it to the lions. Usually when editing stories from that manuscript, I’m surrounded with music of that time period to get back into the now of then, but this time I went for Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, straight to track three. For the first time, my pen crossed the page objectively, crossing out adverbs and unnecessary clauses surgically and tactically. More importantly, I was finally able to articulate the overwhelming disappointment that the tour ended with, and get a full grip on what had caused me to abandon the manuscript for so long. The album played a few times before I was finished editing, but track three stuck with me the most. The beauty of ‘Up From Below’ is its humanity; our capability to withstand and improve in the wake of our mistakes, rather than succumb to them.
Filed under: Dance like no one is watching, Inspirational Anthems, sing like no one is listening, Songs for Contemplation, Songs of Triumph | Tags: age of adz, astmatic kitty, come on feel the illinoise, greetings from michigan!, impossible soul, opus, seven swans, sufjan stevens
Here’s a simple request. Listen to Impossible soul as if it were an opera. By listen to it, I mean lock yourself up in a room and really soak it in, lyrics, instrumentation and all. This process will take you a little over 23 minutes. There is no doubt in my mind you will feel exalted.
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes, Songs for Contemplation | Tags: Elliot Smith, Lemon Jelly, Sigur Ros, Yo La Tengo
The other day I stumbled upon a mix that I made in February of 2007, a time in my life where I found myself on the road quite often. It was also the winter that felt like I had taken up residence in a freezer. The holidays had taken any last shred of sympathy out of winter and Muncie had become a white cage. I surrounded myself with quiet songs whose substance was thick as a wool blanket; their melodies thawed out the grey air.
Today, in a thick orange heat of 91˚, I put the compilation in my CD player and had an epiphany: It will never be cold enough to listen to these songs here. Listening to them is as comfortable as wearing a winter sweater right now. So I ask of you, dear readers in the North, when icicles start to form on your outdoor thermometers, will you listen to these songs for me? They have their home in the cold.
Waltz #1- Elliot Smith
You Can Have It All- Yo La Tengo
Sæglópur- Sigur Ros
Pushy- Lemon Jelly
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)-Arcade Fire
Filed under: Songs for Contemplation, Sunny Dispositions | Tags: Angus and Julia Stone, Big Jet Plane
Near the end of summer the songs slow. Our bodies wade through the the heat, and the metronomes shift down in bpm’s. We return from vacation and life seems as congested as morning traffic. “Back to School Sale” signs go up outside of Target, Staples, and Office Max, insulting freedom everywhere, even after we’ve thrown our graduation caps.
Angus and Julia stone’s “Big Jet Plane” is what Au Revoir Simone’s “Backyards of our Neighbors” was to me a few years ago. Its melody is weighted down by the sun. It’s the melancholy of peeling skin, knowing that soon you will be indoors, shivering beneath the blankets.
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems, sing like no one is listening, Sunny Dispositions | Tags: birthday, birthday!Can't Help but Smiling, Devendra Banhart, What Will Be will Be
Tomorrow is my birthday: a score + four. It’s pretty invigorating.
Half my life ago I was agonizing on the fact that teenager-dom still seemed so distant. Life was a constant popsicle enduced brain-freeze of emotion that summer. The future felt so far away. My sister and I spent hours in the library that summer. I did not yet feel justified in reading “adult” books, in fact I felt guilty checking out books from the “young-adult” section as it was. The librarian’s skeptically furrowed brow plagued me whenever I stood, tip-toed, on the other side of the counter and slid her my library card across the counter. It felt burnt in my forehead “twelve- not quite a teen.”
It was the awkward chubby year, which didn’t help much either. I would thumb through Mom’s Vanity Fair’s and day dream about being a well-collected woman someday, married to JTT and walking down the red-carpet. It was hard to imagine what I would make of myself in those days, but it seemed to be something that was always on my mind.
Now, being there, most of the time I still feel like a little girl playing with her mom’s makeup when I get ready in the morning. But instead of romping around in her high-heels pretending to be a superstar, I’m going to work in my own. Going to look at houses. Planning my wedding. It’s so much more fun, building a real life instead of a pretend one. Especially when the future doesn’t seem so out of reach.
It’s just like Devendra Banhart said, “Mama ain’t it wild when you can’t help but smiling? What fun to not know why, we’re lost in the one thing, truly worth getting lost in? It’s so nice to think that you’re alone, and to look up and see you’re home.”
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems, sing like no one is listening, Songs to listen to with the windows down, Sunny Dispositions | Tags: Arnold Palmer Tea, bottle-rockets, Louisiana, Summer, Summer songs, sun-burns, sun-tans, The Walkmen
Summer is in the upswing in Atlanta. You can see the humidity, it bends the leaves forward as if they were nodding off to sleep. I love watching the condensation drip off of my glass. I do not love my electric bill.
I do love making summer vacation mixes. What I have come up with this year is probably the strongest mix I’ve come up with since leaving the harbor of Muncie, IN. It will fill you with summer’s heat and refresh you like a glass of hand-squeezed lemonade. It’s my Arnold Palmer Tea Mix:
It was important this mix start with “Louisiana” by the Walkmen. The piano line really gets to me. It sways between D-maj and A-maj, slurred and sometimes stumbling, beckoning to a a mosquito-bitten and sandy teenage summer. When we were teenagers, naive and ambitious, we moved as herd of Impalas would, bounding about the terrain. We would play volleyball at the local park all day, then take our sunburnt cheeks and arms to the bowling alley. Some nights we had bottle-rocket battles in church parking lots, the sparks chasing us like ankle-biting dogs. Other nights we took to the playgrounds, after our little brothers, sisters, and cousins were asleep. We would chase each other until the local police arrived to send us home. We took off with our summer songs blaring through the open windows of our cars. We broke every curfew because we had to.
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: sing like no one is listening | Tags: awesometown, streaming songs, Upgrade
Songs for your day is very proud to announced an upgrade! Finally we will bless our readers with the capability to hear the songs we are ranting about! Huzzah!
For our first upload we will grace your ears with the song featured in our debut post! (Unavailable on itunes!)
I present “Ain’t We Superhuman?” By Telephono!
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes, Songs for Contemplation, Songs to listen to with the windows down | Tags: Akron/Family, Anathallo, Andrew Bird, Annuals, Beach house, Blackbird, brother, Califone, Criminal Records, Lost Ring Finger, Nico, Returning, Running, The Orchids, Zebra
1. “Brother”- Annuals
2. “Zebra” – Beach House
3. “Running, Returning” -Akron/Family
4. “Blackbird”- Andrew Bird
5. “The Orchids”- Califone
6. “Lost Ring Finger”- Anathallo
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I wish that I could remember the specifics for you, the names and dates we learned about the bridge in physics class. It was somewhere in the midwest, that much I can recall, way back when our parents were young. It was built over the course of a decade, and crumbled in the course of a day. The architect built a beautiful red limb spanning the river. It was inanimate- so they assumed.
Until the day it came to life. The commuters hit their brakes, then sprang from their cars, running to the solid ground as the concrete began to wave beneath them. They watched their vehicles fall through the cracks of asphault to be devoured by the river.
What the architect forgot was resonance. The effect that the hymn of the wind would have on the bridge that caused it to dance, twirl, tumble, and collapse.
That’s the most specific thing I can recall for you, that feeling. When I hear these songs, that bridge comes to mind. That feeling when the earth takes on a life of its own, and we all stand to the side, asphyxiated.
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems, Songs for Contemplation, Songs of Triumph | Tags: Grace, Jeff Buckley, Last Goodbye, Lover you should have come over, Morning Theft, Opened Once, Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk, teenage heartbreak
Two very important things happened to me when I was seventeen:
1. Jeff Buckley
2. My heart was broken for the first time.
Jeff Buckley happened first, thankfully. Otherwise I’m not sure how I would have salvaged myself from the emotional turmoil that is teenage heartbreak. “Grace” and “Sketches of My Sweetheart the Drunk,” found themselves in endless rotation driving to and from school. Mr. Buckley successfully carried me through all of the stages of mourning. At first it was “Lover You Should Have Come Over” that I clung to. But then my wounds started to close and the pain evolved into a muted anger, which is when I almost wore out “The Sky is a Landfill.” Quiet mourning progressed me to “Opened Once” and “Morning Theft.” By the time the year was coming to a close I had finally made it to “Last Goodbye.”
The song is a sigh of relief. It’s like a playful whisper in your ear: “It’s over now. You’re better.”
**You can thank itunes shuffle for bringing all of these memories to surface again.
Songs For Your Day 