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.