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.

Away with the Lights!

This is a brilliant work of art. I've never loved We Were Evergreen more. Once in a while there's a band like this that emerges, whose music is so exciting that it challenges one lyrically & artistically, and We Were Evergreen is one of those bands. What's even more exciting is that after five years of touring & the release of several EPs, We Were Evergreen is finally recording a full-length album this spring! I couldn't be more excited.

As an unsigned indie band though, Michael, Fabienne & William need loads of help from fans. And now it's possible. It's pretty amazing to me, how lesser-known artistes can make use of this age of technology to create art music, like how Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls managed to raise over a million dollars in a month for her first solo record. It's so easy for musicians like these to just dissolve or disappear altogether due to the lack of funding, and I believe that there's a certain responsibility that music lovers have to ensure that this never happens, particularly to the bands that we love & that inspire us.

Through this self-started kickstarter campaign, you can donate as little as one pound to help fund We Were Evergreen's recording as well as get really wicked band merchandise such as autographed EPs & posters. Great deal, aint it? Look at it this way: a couple dollars is really a small investment for the great music that lies ahead :)

Oh, did I ever have it!

I like simple things. I like street shows & the hum of a train station in Paris. I like music with good &  honest lyrics. I like a song composition which musical backbone consists of only a ukulele, a xylophone & three voices. I like simple things, & it's been too long a time since I've heard such a unique sound... it's absolutely refreshing.

Paris' very own We Were Evergreen has a dynamic tome that never goes out of style; Their lyrics & melodies have a naïveté-like quality to it that is endearing, but not over-sentimental. It's something quite special to see... A beautiful song that emerges when a couple of chords on a ukulele are put together with a bass-line & slick vocal harmonies. I always think that the appeal of indie music comes from the sum of its parts, rather than soaring powerhouse vocals or a huge brass section, because it shows such creativity in complex arrangement while remaining relatable to music-listeners. That's why I will always prefer Andrew Bird whistling a simple tune for a pre-chorus, or Edward Sharpe making a song out of claps and twelve voices over more chart-toppers. We Were Evergreen is a perfect, perfect example of this kind of music. Give it a listen, won't you?

You can listen to more variations of their single, Baby Blue, here & here, and also watch this crazy awesome stop-motion video of one of their earlier songs, Penguins & Moonboots.