lcrelyea
rebeccapatrick
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Tommy Wilson
stephenkillion
amsettineri
Peter Cavanaugh
AndrewFiled under: Songs for Contemplation,Sunny Dispositions | Tags: Angus and Julia Stone, Big Jet Plane
Near the end of summer the songs slow. Our bodies wade through the the heat, and the metronomes shift down in bpm’s. We return from vacation and life seems as congested as morning traffic. ”Back to School Sale” signs go up outside of Target, Stables, and Office Max, insulting freedom everywhere, even after we’ve thrown our graduation caps.
Angus and Julia stone’s “Big Jet Plane” is what Au Revoir Simone’s “Backyards of our Neighbors” was to me a few years ago. Its melody is weighted down by the sun. It’s the melancholy of peeling skin, knowing that soon you will be indoors, shivering beneath the blankets.
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems,Sunny Dispositions,sing like no one is listening | Tags: birthday, birthday!Can't Help but Smiling, Devendra Banhart, What Will Be will Be
Tomorrow is my birthday: a score + four. It’s pretty invigorating.
Half my life ago I was agonizing on the fact that teenager-dom still seemed so distant. Life was a constant popsicle enduced brain-freeze of emotion that summer. The future felt so far away. My sister and I spent hours in the library that summer. I did not yet feel justified in reading “adult” books, in fact I felt guilty checking out books from the “young-adult” section as it was. The librarian’s skeptically furrowed brow plagued me whenever I stood, tip-toed, on the other side of the counter and slid her my library card across the counter. It felt burnt in my forehead “twelve- not quite a teen.”
It was the awkward chubby year, which didn’t help much either. I would thumb through Mom’s Vanity Fair’s and day dream about being a well-collected woman someday, married to JTT and walking down the red-carpet. It was hard to imagine what I would make of myself in those days, but it seemed to be something that was always on my mind.
Now, being there, most of the time I still feel like a little girl playing with her mom’s makeup when I get ready in the morning. But instead of romping around in her high-heels pretending to be a superstar, I’m going to work in my own. Going to look at houses. Planning my wedding. It’s so much more fun, building a real life instead of a pretend one. Especially when the future doesn’t seem so out of reach.
It’s just like Devendra Banhart said, “Mama ain’t it wild when you can’t help but smiling? What fun to not know why, we’re lost in the one thing, truly worth getting lost in? It’s so nice to think that you’re alone, and to look up and see you’re home.”
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems,Songs to listen to with the windows down,Sunny Dispositions,sing like no one is listening | Tags: Arnold Palmer Tea, bottle-rockets, Louisiana, Summer, Summer songs, sun-burns, sun-tans, The Walkmen
Summer is in the upswing in Atlanta. You can see the humidity, it bends the leaves forward as if they were nodding off to sleep. I love watching the condensation drip off of my glass. I do not love my electric bill.
I do love making summer vacation mixes. What I have come up with this year is probably the strongest mix I’ve come up with since leaving the harbor of Muncie, IN. It will fill you with summer’s heat and refresh you like a glass of hand-squeezed lemonade. It’s my Arnold Palmer Tea Mix:
It was important this mix start with “Louisiana” by the Walkmen. The piano line really gets to me. It sways between D-maj and A-maj, slurred and sometimes stumbling, beckoning to a a mosquito-bitten and sandy teenage summer. When we were teenagers, naive and ambitious, we moved as herd of Impalas would, bounding about the terrain. We would play volleyball at the local park all day, then take our sunburnt cheeks and arms to the bowling alley. Some nights we had bottle-rocket battles in church parking lots, the sparks chasing us like ankle-biting dogs. Other nights we took to the playgrounds, after our little brothers, sisters, and cousins were asleep. We would chase each other until the local police arrived to send us home. We took off with our summer songs blaring through the open windows of our cars. We broke every curfew because we had to.
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: sing like no one is listening | Tags: awesometown, streaming songs, Upgrade
Songs for your day is very proud to announced an upgrade! Finally we will bless our readers with the capability to hear the songs we are ranting about! Huzzah!
For our first upload we will grace your ears with the song featured in our debut post! (Unavailable on itunes!)
I present “Ain’t We Superhuman?” By Telephono!
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes,Songs for Contemplation,Songs to listen to with the windows down | Tags: Akron/Family, Anathallo, Andrew Bird, Annuals, Beach house, Blackbird, brother, Califone, Criminal Records, Lost Ring Finger, Nico, Returning, Running, The Orchids, Zebra
1. “Brother”- Annuals
2. “Zebra” – Beach House
3. ”Running, Returning” -Akron/Family
4. “Blackbird”- Andrew Bird
5. “The Orchids”- Califone
6. “Lost Ring Finger”- Anathallo
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I wish that I could remember the specifics for you, the names and dates we learned about the bridge in physics class. It was somewhere in the midwest, that much I can recall, way back when our parents were young. It was built over the course of a decade, and crumbled in the course of a day. The architect built a beautiful red limb spanning the river. It was inanimate- so they assumed.
Until the day it came to life. The commuters hit their brakes, then sprang from their cars, running to the solid ground as the concrete began to wave beneath them. They watched their vehicles fall through the cracks of asphault to be devoured by the river.
What the architect forgot was resonance. The effect that the hymn of the wind would have on the bridge that caused it to dance, twirl, tumble, and collapse.
That’s the most specific thing I can recall for you, that feeling. When I hear these songs, that bridge comes to mind. That feeling when the earth takes on a life of its own, and we all stand to the side, asphyxiated.
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems,Songs for Contemplation,Songs of Triumph | Tags: Grace, Jeff Buckley, Last Goodbye, Lover you should have come over, Morning Theft, Opened Once, Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk, teenage heartbreak
Two very important things happened to me when I was seventeen:
1. Jeff Buckley
2. My heart was broken for the first time.
Jeff Buckley happened first, thankfully. Otherwise I’m not sure how I would have salvaged myself from the emotional turmoil that is teenage heartbreak. “Grace” and “Sketches of My Sweetheart the Drunk,” found themselves in endless rotation driving to and from school. Mr. Buckley successfully carried me through all of the stages of mourning. At first it was “Lover You Should Have Come Over” that I clung to. But then my wounds started to close and the pain evolved into a muted anger, which is when I almost wore out “The Sky is a Landfill.” Quiet mourning progressed me to “Opened Once” and “Morning Theft.” By the time the year was coming to a close I had finally made it to “Last Goodbye.”
The song is a sigh of relief. It’s like a playful whisper in your ear: “It’s over now. You’re better.”
**You can thank itunes shuffle for bringing all of these memories to surface again.
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems,Songs to listen to with the windows down,Sunny Dispositions | Tags: Jens Lekman, You put your arms around me, you're so silent jens
On days that I drink Earl Grey tea, I have a tendency to listen to Jens Lekman. Perhaps it’s the warming sensation they both provide. It’s chilly and raining here in Atlanta, a pattern that won’t seem to break (I left Muncie, didn’t I?), and the frequent chilly draft of the office leaves me craving sunshine and spring flowers. A good Earl Grey can half-unearth these things, I can feel the tulip bulbs begin to burst through the weary seams of earth with each sip I take. But the bulbs need a leg up, a voice to guide them along.
We would probably find ourselves in a perpetual state of spring if Jens Lekman would just travel the earth singing with a marching band. Remember in Ferngully, when Magi Lune would put her hand to a tree, and new life would spring underneath it? Jens Lekman’s voice might have that power, at least in our hearts it should. Tell me “Maple Leaves” doesn’t make you think sunshine. Listen to “A Sweet Summer Night on Hammer Hill” and try to convince me you don’t feel half drunk on Dandelion Wine.
My favorite lately, although they vary month to month, is “Put your Arms Around Me.” Because it captures the innocent feeling of fresh love. I’m not talking about Hallmark card Love, the kind you let other people articulate for you. What I’m referring to is the kind of love that makes you want to try everything, ever. The kind that makes you feel most alive. You’ll skydive, you’ll jump in puddles, stay up all night, shoot fireworks, make ridiculous art projects, drive anywhere, drive everywhere, all for one other person. In this case, a rare case, I say ignore the lyrics (about Jens cutting off his finger while slicing an Avacado). Somewhere in there is an odd form of what I’m talking about. Springtime can make you reckless.
-Laura
Filed under: Songs to listen to with the windows down,Songs to start your day,Sunny Dispositions | Tags: A Tune for Jack, Driving, Lemon Jelly, Lemon Jelly.ky
If you want to go on vacation, and find yourself faced with a lack of funding, planning, and the general bravery to just get up and go…turn up the heat as high as possible on a sunny morning, roll down your windows, and listen to “A Tune For Jack.” You will instantly be transported to a solar flared photograph of yourself laughing on the beach: tan, freckled, and completely at ease.
Filed under: Dance like no one is watching,Songs to listen to with the windows down,songs that make you feel cool in uncool moments
Quite frequently, via facebook, I get invited to events and shows in Indiana. It’s great that my friends still want to include me in things, but simultaneously reminds me of cool things I’m missing out on. One such invitation was for an Everything, NOW!/Pomegranates show that occurred last weekend. Everything, NOW! is a great band, full of friends, and it would have been really great to be there. I had never heard of Pomegranates.
But I had been eating a lot of them recently (being a superfood and all).
So, because I love the fruit so much I bought their newest album, “Everybody! Come Outside” without even listening to a preview.
The title track sounds like jumping through a sprinkler. Not in a Vampire Weekend kind of way (they sound more like playful romping on a Caribbean beach). It’s just genuine joy and playfulness, the kind of lawlessness that most people lose when they get their driver’s permit. It’s beautiful.
But the track that made me fall in love is “Svatsi Uutsi.” The initial clapping and playful guitar melodies have a youthful charm that make me want to run barefoot grass in a white eyelet dress and do cartwheels. A montage swims through my mind, hands outside of windows, warm breezes, sunburnt cheeks, and bike rides. What’s not to like about this?
-Laura Celeste
Filed under: Songs for Contemplation | Tags: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, El Noi de La Mare, Classical guitar, spanish guitar, hawaii, haiku, Jean-Felix Lalanne & Muriel Anderson
I’ve had a lot of great moments in my life, but I can count the number of perfect moments on one hand.
The most perfect moment of my life was in Hawaii. [of course it was, you say].
Let me back track a bit. You need to know that I have never felt completely at home anywhere. So those rare moments where I’m in complete unity with my surroundings are the most cherished ones.
The summer of 2004 l I was fortunate to stay with one of my all-time best friends, Jake, and his parents at their home in Haiku, Hawaii. Not once did I feel transplanted there. It was home from the second I stepped foot off of the plane.
One of those mornings I woke up before everyone else and took a shower (which was outdoors, and their was rain on the breeze that ruffled the shower curtain). I dried off, poured myself some coffee, and went to their swinging front porch bench (pictured to the left). Sitting there, listening to the rain was an overwhelming peace. The deepest breath.
I was so happy I cried.
“El Noi de La Mare” off of the Vicky Cristina Barcelona soundtrack, is the only song in the world that can take me back to that place.
-Laura Celeste
