More Music

I’m feeling lost again, not in any serious way. Work has recently become just work, home life is so crazy chaotic it’s become all consuming (thankfully the home life is chaotic for good reasons). When life gets a little hectic I think it’s important to escape once in a while. My latest escape is the album Lungs by Florence + the Machine.

Florence + The Machine - Lungs

I’d had the single Dog Days Are Over for a while then recently iTunes was nice enough to have the whole album on sale. I’d been tempted to buy it for some time and who can argue with $7.80. It’s funny, when I checked out the albums details on Wikipedia I was surprised to see the album was released way back in July of 2009, 2 years ago! Wow, talking about getting on the bandwagon late. Anyway, what a surprising album this has turned out to be. As with many albums I’ve purchased recently my favourite tracks are ones that haven’t been released as singles. I love making these discoveries, finding special tracks before they are thrust upon you by the mass media, secretly I like it if the songs are never released, I feel like I’m keeping them to myself.

Between Two Lungs is currently my favourite and is receiving a hammering on my iPhone. It’s a truly uplifting track and I love the way it builds to the end. Check out a version of the track here on YouTube, this version doesn’t quite have the same impact as the album version, it’s still fantastic none the less.

The other tracks on my regular playlist are Swimming, My Boy Builds Coffins, Cosmic Love and Hurricane Drunk. Cosmic Love has a fantastic video to go with it (unfortunately like most official videos you can’t watch it on the iPhone, why why why???), I’ll include it for those reading this on their computer.

My Boy Builds Coffins is not as morbid as I first thought, I do like the thought of how he makes beautiful things that no one gets to see. Swimming is a great song that I’m still trying to work out it’s meaning and what I’m taking from the song. When I was looking to see if it had an official video I stumbled across a video on YouTube that I thought for a second was the official video, but felt it had a few editing flaws. It turns out it was put together by a fan using footage from a video diary of a trip to LA by Florence Welch. It’s actually not terrible and allows you to listen to the song for free.

Well, that’s my little take on Lungs. I’m looking forward to their next instalment.

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Only the Young, and Others

My last post got me thinking about my love of music videos. A fond memory through my teenage years was watching Rage and Video Hits on Saturday and Sunday mornings (yes, they used to be on both days). Thankfully they weren’t full of ads and a couple of fools rabbiting on about who knows what (or whatever the latest music festival is). Anyway, thanks to the wonders of modern technology in particular YouTube and iTunes, music videos have never been so accessible, even the ones I used to watch. Since I worked out how to embed YouTube videos in my blog I’ve decided to put a few of my favourites together.

Only the Young

Continuing on the Brandon Flowers theme, below is the last music video he made for his debut solo album Flamingo. Flamingo easily ranks up in my top 5 albums in recent years. There is a lot that is new, yet the voice of The Killers is unmistakably there. If you like The Killers and haven’t heard this album do yourself a favour and have a listen. The video for this song features Cirque Du Soleil Le Reve, a spectacular show that uses acrobatics and bucket loads of water. If we ever get back to the USA and go to Las Vegas I’d love to check it out.

Never Let You Go

Evermore are a great New Zealand band (thanks to @Albums_Blog from albumsyouprobablydontown.blogspot.com for correcting that they aren’t an Aussie band, even though they reside here now) and they have a number of songs on my regular playlist. The track Never Let You Go from their 2006 album Real Life is one of my favourites. I love how they use snippets of old footage to represent the lyrics from the song, it seems to emphasis the lyrics even more.

Take on Me

Ok, so I was only 11 when this track was first released, but it still managed to have an impact on me. Apart from being a great song it has a very cool music video. The video won several awards when it was released and included the technique of rotoscoping (sketching over the live footage to make an animation).

World

New Order are a group that have spanned several generations especially if you go back to the Joy Division days. I can’t say that I’ve been a big fan of all their music, Bizarre Love Triangle from the album Brotherhood is one of my favourite tracks. I do like several tracks from the 1993 album Republic, including Regret and World. The music video for World is filmed in Cannes and features a series of steadicam shots. I love videos that take you on a Journey, probably why I love Russian Ark so much (I must remember to tell you about that some time).

Perhaps I won’t bore you with too many videos all at once and break them up over a few posts, so stay tuned. I hope you’ve enjoyed these videos and maybe seen a couple of tracks you like.

The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Why am I reading The Ground Beneath Her Feet by Salman Rushdie? This is not generally the sort of book that I would read, but I found myself drawn to it by a musical influence.

One of my favorite albums is All That You Can’t Leave Behind by U2. Living in Australia I was lucky enough to get a bonus track on the album. This track was called The Ground Beneath Her Feet (no surprise there).

The funny thing was it turned out to be my favorite track on the album with beautiful lyrics and melodies. One day when I was reading the CD insert I noticed that the lyrics for the track were credited to Salman Rushdie. Whilst I new of him as an author of books, I was not aware of his song writing abilities. Below are the lyrics to the song courtesy of U2.com.

All my life, I worshipped her
Her golden voice, her beauty’s beat
How she made us feel
How she made me real
And the ground beneath her feet
And the ground beneath her feet

And now I can’t be sure of anything
Black is white, and cold is heat
For what I worshipped stole my love away
It was the ground beneath her feet
It was the ground beneath her feet

Go lightly down your darkened way
Go lightly underground
I’ll be down there in another day
I won’t rest until you’re found
Let me love you true, let me rescue you
Let me lead you to where two roads meet
O come back above
Where there’s only love
And the ground beneath her feet
And the ground beneath her feet

Whilst reading the beautiful lyrics alone is nice, listening to them is better, if you don’t have the album I highly recommend you purchase it. You can but the single on iTunes here or buy the entire album from Amazon.com here or on iTunes here. As the track was only released on the CD in a couple of countries, it is a lot more expensive to purchase on Amazon.com than to go into a store in Australia and buy it.

On a side note U2 also included the song on the soundtrack to the movie The Million Dollar Hotel, which was co-written by Bono. I haven’t seen the movie (it received poor reviews), but will get around to it one day, more out of curiosity than anything. The cast included Jeremy Davies, Milla Jovovich, Mel Gibson, Jimmy Smits and Tim Roth. It goes to show that a great cast does not equate to a great movie (in some eyes anyway).

Now, that I have finished going on about the music, how did this lead me to the book? As it turns out the lyrics that Salman Rushdie wrote were not for U2 but were actually in the book. One of the characters in the book Ormus Cama, a musician, writes the lyrics in memory of his lover Vina Apsara. I felt that if the book contained lyrics as beautiful as that, I had to see what else it contained. To date I have not been disappointed.

I am the first to admit, I am no literary scholar. Consequently this book has been far from the easiest to read. Having said that Salman Rushdie’s writing allows me to visualize the story in the smallest detail. If you are up for a challenging (in a good way) read, I don recommend you have a look at this book. You can purchase the book from Amazon.com here (I really should hit Amazon.com up for some advertising fees).

Well, this is often how I end up reading books, watching movies or listening to music, via series of connections. Eventually I might get around to writing about a few more.

Enjoy.