Orally Muptumblr

“Oh soulless city, your changing skyline is twisting me up inside. I give away another minute.”

Blue Roses - “I am Leaving”

…is my song of the year. There’s nothing particularly grand or innovative about it. It’s no “My Girls”, it has no place on Bitte Orca. I’ll be the first to say that the self-titled debut, in spite of the vocal elasticity and heart wrenching lyricism, is really nothing special. But this song. This song.

This song doesn’t have a chorus, none of the verses repeat, and nowhere in it is the explicit declaration of leaving a place. This song is more about accepting that a concrete idea of home doesn’t exist. The whole idea that home is what you make it and who you make it with resounds in every line, as Laura Groves sings about living the rest of her life from a list of towns, and cities, and populations. This song will follow me out of 2009, hopefully into that point in my life where I settle, marry a stockbroker, buy a house; that point where I need to be reminded about the romance of leaving and the relevance of staying put.

Grizzly Bear - “Southern Point”

Grizzly Bear sealed the deal for me in 2009. Their name was added to the lineup and after that I just went fuck it. Fuck it, I’m quitting this godforsaken job, milking the last of my travel privileges as an airline employee dependent, taking advantage of a random act of kindness found on globalfreeloaders.com, and flying to Chicago where I don’t know anyone and am not familiar with the culture. Not that familiar at least, because I would like to think that Andrew Bird, Jeffrey Brown, and Pitchfork all count for something. Right?

I established earlier that this is a best of list for 2009, and I’m now at no. 2. So why “Southern Point” and not perennial favorite “Two Weeks”? For the first few weeks, upon acquiring a copy of Veckatimest, I couldn’t even listen to this song. It’s not that it’s a bad song, quite the opposite actually. It surges, it’s confrontational and honest. But it was salt on open wounds and raw nerves that I was too much of a wuss to acknowledge. And that’s why I could never listen to it.

Fast forward to a couple of months later, July 19. I’m stuck in a throng of tall, burly (but very sensitive) Grizzly Bear fans. I cannot move but I could not be happier to be a total of 3 yards away from the stage. And then they open with this song and the air just turns electric, like I-bet-you-didn’t-see-that-one-coming, that kind of electric. At the risk of sounding permanently emo, a line like “Avert your eyes from all of this. We’ll make it all back,” defines my 2009.

Animal Collective - “My Girls”

Is it even possible to talk about the music of 2009 without bringing up this song? This is the song and the album that made fans out of people who’d never even heard of Animal Collective. It’s to 2009 what “For What It’s Worth” was to 1967, not to say that A/C are anything like Buffalo Springfield, but this isn’t a blog for waxing intellectual about how A/C changed the landscape of music. This is a space for me to talk about myself and that’s what I intend to do with this post.

I first became an A/C fan with Feels. The earlier freaky folk incarnations were intriguing, but not enough to get me hooked. With Merriweather and “My Girls” in particular, I felt I had found a band that would age and probably mature just as I did; and not keep attempting to make me relive my adolescence with every single album (Thanks Weezer). Merriweather is the perfect quarter-life soundtrack with “My Girls” as the extraordinar anthem to the comfortable mundanity I’ve resigned myself to.

Last night, my friend Jaton and I were kidding around about singing this at the year-end Rockeoke bash at Magnet this Friday. The Johnnys would have to learn the chords and the whole bar has to sing, “I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls,” whoo! That’s how we should welcome 2010 and take a shotgun to 2009.

via 1000xpm:

The Chairs | Flume (Bon Iver Cover)

[d/l]

(via againstyourskin)

Andrew Bird - “Oh No”

I hated my first job, but saying you hate your job is such an unoriginal sentiment. It’s one of those things people climbing the corporate ladder say to prove they still have souls, when in actuality few people actually hate their jobs. Maybe you’re indifferent towards your job, it’s like the furniture your parents chose or off-white walls. Usually your job doesn’t spark rage, it’s just…meh. Which could actually be worse; if you stop having an opinion on something you spend 40 hours a week on, then you’re probably in trouble. You’ve probably joined the cult of the soulless capitalists.

But I hated my job so much that I wanted the words “Arm in arm we are the harmless sociopaths” from this song tattooed around my wrist. Now I’m glad I left that company as soon as the contract expired because looking back, those aren’t really words I would want to contemplate every day, that is not a situation I would have wanted to commemorate on my flesh, and that’s not a line I want to have to explain to people.

It’s a beautiful way of putting it though.

Camera Obscura - “French Navy”

At Little Joy in Echo Park, I was talking to this guy who randomly blurted out, “Hey, do you like to dance?” In my book, “liking to dance” and “wanting to dance” are two different things. Of course I like to dance, is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t like to dance? It’s like asking someone if they like cake, of course they like cake, but cake-eating privileges are something else entirely. I like cake but I can’t afford the added pudge; I like cake, but cake doesn’t like me. Wanting to dance—in front of people, without a choreographer, even when I don’t like the song playing—is another issue altogether.

I’m extremely slow to pick up that I’m not being asked whether enjoy dancing, but whether I want to dance with the person asking. In the case of the boy at Little Joy (yay for rhyme time!), the answer would have been a resounding yes, but I blew that one. Sorry 2009.

My friend Meng on the other hand knows how to ask people to dance. This song, “French Navy”, was playing and she just got up, took my hand and said, “Dance with me!” That is how you ask someone to dance, and this is a song made for dancing.

Dirty Projectors - “No Intention”

2009 was the year I learned what “hocket” means.

The Flaming Lips - “Convinced of the Hex”

Pitchfork Music Festival 2009. MLIA.

Dan Deacon - “Padding Ghost”

Because one of my fantasies involves getting shoved around in a frenzy while my inebriated mind gets overwhelmed by a million cartoon voices.

Also one of my favorite musical discoveries of 2009. Dan Deacon for the epic win!

Peter, Bjorn, and John - “Lay it Down”

10 days left for 2009, so 10 days to countdown the 10 songs constantly being looped on my iPod, starting with this one:

I used to be vehemently against Peter, Bjorn, and John—at least against the idea of them, being the ultimate marketing ploy for geek chic: a trio of lanky, unthreatening, Swedes. They are Swedish, right? I mean, who in their un-Swedish mind would be called Bjorn?

All that changed when I saw the Japanese Rockabilly video for “Nothing to Worry About”. So why didn’t “Nothing to Worry About” make my top ten for this year? Because the insane boredom I was dealt at my Merchandising internship led me to one of my greatest inventions of 2009: the bathroom dance break. Being an intern at the headquarters for a luxury department store meant having to abide by a strict code of conduct that involved keeping your voice down, not wearing colors or prints, sitting up perfectly straight at all hours, and make-up. Lots of make-up.

The only thing that kept me sane there was the bathroom, a private little sanctuary where I could kick off my 3-inch heels and sing and dance to “Lay It Down” until my mascara melted off. When your face is burdened with a ton of gunk and spackle, there is no better soundtrack than a song that starts with “Hey, shut the fuck up boy. You are starting to piss me off.”

Coco Rosie - “Armageddon”

When the lights came on in the middle of the night, what I should do with my life, how I should spend my time? I’ll be a stockbroker and I’ll get me a wife, and have the diamonds cut, and have the diamonds cut.