Lately I have been obsessed with this furniture-building blog, Knock-off Wood. The author writes up plans for furniture based on fancy pieces from places like Pottery Barn and West Elm, as well as Ikea and some home-designed stuff. The finished pieces all look great, and the plans are super detailed and apparently really easy to follow. I haven’t made anything yet, but I really want to do this table for a patio/outdoor table, and this wine cabinet base looks perfect for storing yarn and fabric etc. in my sewing room, which I have been trying to remodel for several months now.
In a couple of weeks I will be traveling to Washington DC for my sister’s college graduation (hooray!). Last time I went was to help her move there, and I was there for like 36 hours and slept on the floor of her dorm room. This time I’ll be traveling alone there and back, staying with a friend, and spending ~3.5 days.
So of course now I’m full of dilemmas. What should I plan to do in DC? What should I bring to knit? What should I bring to read?? What shoes to wear? Can I justify buying a new dress?
I have been listening to NPR for like an hour and a half (G. is out of the house) and I have heard music bumpers from the Be Good Tanyas, M. Ward, and Sigur Ros. I am not sure how to feel about this apparent convergence of my tastes and NPR’s.
Yeah, November’s a wash. We’ll see if I pick the songs back up again in December. Or maybe I’ll work on photography with my new (used, gifted) camera, a Nikon D70!
So here’s an alternate something for you to read instead of me blathering about songs I’ve never listened to: Yes, You Are, by Sars (Tomato Nation). Thanks SJ for reminding me of this great post.
“If you believe in, support, look fondly on, hope for, and/or work towards equality of the sexes, you are a feminist.
Well, that didn’t last long. Now that much of my time has been freed up, I might try to catch up with the Month of Undiscovered Music, or I might scrap it and start over again in December.
I wonder why last year’s worked better? I guess the music actually takes longer than the photos.
How did I get so many days behind? Oh right — I had to process 150 chickens last weekend.
“Blindsided,” by Bon Iver, from For Emma, Forever Ago, 2007.
I begged this album off Katie after I became obsessed with the Fleet Foxes and started hearing a lot of people comparing the two. I don’t like Bon Iver as much, though, and I think it’s because the vocals appear to be one person on multiple tracks. I don’t know if Fleet Foxes is one person or multiple people, but it doesn’t sound as much like multiple tracks … I tend to like the technology to be invisible.
But, the song is pleasant all the same; I’ll keep it.
“No One Knows My Name,” by Gillian Welch, from Soul Journey, 2003.
One thing I am finding interesting about this is discovering the albums I don’t listen to, by artists I do listen to. Like this Gillian Welch song. I listen to Time (The Revelator) all the time, and Hell Among the Yearlings sometimes, but although I have Soul Journey and Revival, I have listened to them rarely if ever.
Anyway this song is enjoyable, as hers always are, though a bit sad — also as they often are. I just learned from Wikipedia that she was adopted as an infant; I wonder if this has anything to do with the subject matter of many of her songs? Or else it’s just that that’s what you sing about when you’re singing this type of music.
“Viðrar vel til loftárása,” Sigur Rós, from Ágætis Byrjun, 1999.
Facts! This song is ten minutes long (probably why I never listened to it). Also, the singer is a dude. Apparently the thing that is not a pedal steel is a guitar played with a cello bow, which is cool. And “The band named the song after a quote sarcastically spoken by an Icelandic weatherman during the war in Kosovo: ‘í dag viðrar vel til loftárása’ (meaning ‘today is good weather for an airstrike’).[1]” And — there is an eth (aka voiced dental fricative, aka ð)! I like eths.
The video is somehow shorter than the album track though still 7 minutes long, and apparently was very controversial. I can’t tell if that’s anything to do with the lyrics though, because I do not speak Icelandic, unfortunately. Maybe I’ll learn.
Anyway I like this song. It’s got cool weirdness and difficult-to-identify instruments (the aforementioned guitar with cello bow) and then at the end some “Day In The Life”-esque dissonance. It’s added to the (thankfully) ever-growing list of non-Boards of Canada things I can listen to next time I read Infinite Jest, as well as probably to my “I’m working, leave me alone” headphones playlist.
Verdict: I’ll keep it, for sure. I just wish I knew what he was saying.
Current play count: 5.
Current Smart Playlist length: 2543. Why does it jump around? I don’t understand.
Zap Mama is a Belgian group that I saw at my very first concert ever, actually a two-day music festival, in Belgium in 1997. It was overwhelming and crazy and muddy, and I don’t remember much of it (though not for any fun reason). I remember that Zap Mama played, though, and then when they came up in conversation for some reason recently, I got this album on Amazon, just to see.
I don’t know if it’s just this song or not, but I don’t think this is really my style. It might be because it came with the genre “reggae,” historically not my thing, but I’m not really convinced about this song. Maybe it’s the twinkly bits in the music, or the “what are you talking about” portion of the lyrics … I feel like I should like it better, but I don’t, quite.
Verdict: I’ll try other songs on the album, but I think I’ll continue to skip this one when it comes up.
Current play count: 4
Current Smart Playlist length: 2573.
(Yesterday’s song — we had no power last night so there was no listening and no blogging either.)
“Cherry” by Ratatat, from Ratatat, 2004.
This is instrumental! I don’t know what to say about it! There are no lyrics to talk about!
I got this from eMusic on the recommendation of a coworker, and then I proceeded not to listen to it, but that was a mistake. I wish I had known; I wouldn’t have had to listen to Boards of Canada as my default/only music for reading Infinite Jest on the bus.
Recent comments