Out of bed, out of comfort

Antlers - We Were Evergreen

Tell Us Your Name - The New Limb

Drifting In & Out - Porcelain Raft

Overjoyed - Bastille

Build Your Kingdom Here - Rend Collective Experiment

Collective Mon Amour - Éléphant

Entertainment - Phoenix

Pompeii - Bastille

Everything's Gonna Be Undone - Band of Horses

No Other Plans - Sunny Levine feat. Young Dad

Big Parade - The Lumineers

Towers - Bon Iver

Charleston - Set Sail

Son My Son - Milo Greene

Wild Things - San Cisco

Cousins - Vampire Weekend

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Here's what I've been listening to lately, songs plucked out from youtube obscurity & also my Facebook timeline (!): The latest from WWE, tracks from the Celeste & Jesse Forever OST & the lesser-known from Coachella. These are the songs I could spend entire rainy days listening to, days like the ones we've been having, falling asleep beside melody & lavender tea.

I also received my We Were Evergreen package I blogged about earlier this year (x), all the way from London! I had to stifle screams of excitement as I ripped apart postage paper & airmail bubblewrap to get to its contents: a signed poster, handwritten lyric sheets for Penguins & Moonboots by Fabienne & best of all, their first album from 2010! Every track is different, slightly incomplete, but beautiful. There's a fifty-second demo at the end of the record entitled Verano ('summer', in Spanish), a mere fragment of a song which begins with nothing but whistles & a plucking guitar & repeats the lines 'Hang on to summer / Don't let go / Don't let go' over & over. It's perfect in its simplicity. I love how much you can fall in love with a song & how much comfort it can give & how it never asks for anything in return.


I don't know... I'm feeling strangely content right now, just listening to fresh music in my room. Haven't felt like this in a while & it's nice.

Doth move

Acres

Visible horizon

Right where it starts it ends

Oh when did we start the end?

Acres

Visible illusion

Oh where it starts it ends

Love like a sunset

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Currently in Redding, CA. Flew to SF two weeks ago, literally right after youth camp (a whole other story, not a less amazing one, too) and I'm now at BSW, listening to amazing messages and taking guitar classes and writing, attempting to write, new songs. It's incredible.

I'm so blessed to be here, I almost can't believe it. Sometimes we forget what a privilege it is to travel and experience fresh things, because traveling the world is no longer a luxury but a commodity to most. But it's important to realize the infinite moment we're living in and appreciate the joy of just being... Present. It would be such a shame to be anything less than that.


More soon, on USA.

Montmarte

Counting all different ideas drifting away
Past and present, they don't matter now the future's sorted out
Watch her move in elliptical patterns
Think it's not what you say, what you say is way too complicated
For a minute, though, I couldn't tell how to fall out

It's twenty seconds 'til the last call
Calling hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Lie down, you know it's easy
Like we did it all the summer long

And I'll be anything you ask and more
Going hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
It's not a miracle we needed
No, I wouldn't let you think so

Folded, folded, folded, folded
Folded, folded, folded, folded

Girlfriend, oh, your girlfriend is drifting away
Past and present, 1855, 1901
Watch them build up a meteor tower
Think it's not gonna stay anyway, I think it's overrated
For a minute, though, I couldn't tell how to fall out


Paris 1901

____________________

A take away show

Phoenix's music, along with the French music site La Blogotheque pretty much got me through last week's hell. The Eiffel tower, the back of an open-aired bus, the echoes under a bridge... Paris is where everyone wants to be.

La Blogotheque hosts The Takeaway Show, a simple concept which entails following indie English acts such as the Kooks or Bloc Party, far flung American-based bands such as Vampire Weekend and home bred (and internationally well-known) groups like Phoenix, for as long as a whole day. And this doesn't only happen in Paris; The Takeaway Show brings it's thousands of subscribers to San Francisco CA for a day to catch Lykke Li belt out 'Somebody's baby' with El Perro Del Mar, or as far as Bamako (Mali) to see Sidi Touré walk through the streets of Western Africa with his acoustic guitar. Postmark-international, indeed.

It's a simple yet beautiful idea, which showcases artistes in the most ordinary of places, capturing them in all their spontaneous glory. Acoustic sets, percussion on elevator walls combined with beautiful Parisian scenery is hard to beat. Especially when it's Phoenix :)


You can watch part 1 and part 2 of Phoenix's Paris Sojourn here.

You are of 5-cent lemonade stands

Two kids in Love (in a lake of ice-cream)

Sunny days don't get any better
We'll lie in the backyard and drink lemonade from the jug,
five-cent lemonade from the jug
Reveling in unsophisticated
behaviour
Oh, so lovely

These days don't get any better
You painted my front lawn with the colours of your eyes,
too many colours in your eyes
Well, like it matters
I've always liked the mess
we made of things

I think it's safe to say,
We're safe from boredom forever
I know it's unconventional
But this labyrinth it's too lovely
to throw away
What a waste it would have been
to throw it away

Sunny days don't get any better,
If the heat gets up, honey,
let's have a dip
in that lake of ice-cream
Reveling in a lake of ice-cream
Dream,
You and I.

21st July

_______________________________________

Cheers to lemon slice eyes, scribbling in leather bound notebooks and of course, reveling in unsophisticated behaviour :)

A PLAYLIST
for the days you're late for school and don't feel like sleeping on the bus

1. Kisses over Babylon - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
2. General Specific - Band of Horses
3. Lisztomania - Phoenix
4. Bees - Animal Collective
5. Sea of Love - Cat Power
6. Weekend Wars - MGMT
7. Your heart is as black as night - Melody Gardot
8. Stars and Sons - Broken Social Scene
9. We Go Together - Grease Soundtrack
10. Something more (Augustine's confession) - Switchfoot
11. Beat (Health, Life & Fire) - Thao with the Get Down Stay Down
12. Moon River - Audrey Hepburn

I've been watching too many Audrey Hepburn movies these days, and am halfway through My Fair Lady (linguistics research, is my excuse!) There's something magical about Audrey's acting that can make a bad day turn marvelous, in a couple of hours.

Have yet to start revision for prelims! So I suppose watching movies or reading Margaret Atwood novels can wait for a couple of months. Or can they?

Goodnight everyone :)

love like a sunset

Acres
Visible horizon
Right where it starts and ends
When did we start and end?

Acres
Visible illusion
where it starts it ends
Love like a sunset.

Phoenix

I know I've got a ton of things to blog about... including SYDNEY HILLSONG CONFERENCE 2010 :)))) Life for the past couple of weeks have been a jumble of book fairs, old records, knick-knacks and humphrey bogart movies.

My lovely new cup. I swear I will drink from no other.

I watched this movie a couple of days ago and it was pure magic. William Holden is hilarious, and audrey of course, was sensational.

!
!!
!!!

Coming back to Singapore has been bizarre, depressing, but strangely, feels a lot like settling back into a comfortable nook.

Sydney in the next post :)