If I gave you pretty flowers…

So last night was probably the first of many nights I’ll spend chained to my desk reluctantly married to Photoshop over the next few months. I’m in full swing with rendering and colouring all the pages for my book and in true Swa form it’s taking me ten times longer than I thought it would to get through all the work… I keep stumbling upon new ways to colour things, which yeah, look heaps better, but take double the time to complete. I’m going with this whole rainbow luminescence device which is quite magical looking (It’s like a poor man’s Avatar in Wonderland). There’s lots of blue and turquoise overlays going on mixed with splashes of magenta and purple.

If I ever get the chance to make another children’s book I think I’ll set it in the daylight hours… night time is cool and mysterious and all but there’s so much darkness that it takes yonks to get everything balanced and the right amounts of variation in tone. I can’t wait til I have all these pictures coloured and I can sit back and actually be nice to myself. At the moment I’m being a hard-ass perfectionist… but hopefully that means I can maintain the quality of the imagery the whole way through and not slack off over time.

And now for a Swaylist. I realised after I compiled it how banjo-centric it is. It must be a mood thing. There’s some other cool snippets in there too.

No One Said This Would Be Easy – The Postmarks – There’s a bit of a Bond film theme song edge to this, which is snazzy. The whole album is reminiscent of that sound.

Roscoe – Midlake – This was the first song I heard of theirs and I’m really enjoy the vibe. I think I might enjoy the older album a bit more than the new one but they’re both really well put together.

Devil’s Spoke – Laura Marling – (may contain traces of banjo) Newish Laura, little bit keen for her new album to be released. I’ve always had a bit of a crush on the whole Indian infused folk thing. I like that her voice is deeper and that it’s different from her other stuff. I imagine not everyone will dig this because it’s not as ‘cute’. It should be noted that Miss Marling was my summer girl.

40 Day Dream – Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes – These guys hit the spot! You know… the place where your inner hippy love child dwells. I can’t stop listening to this song – It’s the magical mystery kind. Can’t wait to see them at the end of March.

Laundry Room – The Avett Brothers – (may contain traces of banjo.. hold out for the hoedown at the end) It was hard to choose which song of theirs to put on this playlist. I’m really quite partial to I and Love and You as well as Ten Thousand Words. Yes they’re country and lots of people hate country but they’re also lovely and wholesome and handsome (sans beards). I want to make sweet sweet harmonies with them.

Another Day – Jamie Lidell – Jamie’s album Jim is pretty swell. This track in particular I can’t help but sing along to. When it hits the little instrumental interlude in the middle I think of dance sequences in old Disney movies. Oh and the birds tweeting= adorable.

Giving Up On Love – Slow Club – This was my Valentine’s Day theme song. It’s good for giving the concept of love the finger in a very simple and a little bit oldschool rock’n’roll way.

Awake My Soul – Mumford and Sons – (may contain traces of banjo.. and ends with a bit of a hoedown too) Mumford have been exposed muchly this summer. I was initially drawn to the “bigger” numbers on the album but this one has really grown on me. I like the jaunty patterns in the verses. Someone let me know when they start auditioning for daughters.

Cement – Washington – I stumbled upon Megan’s stuff as a result of her appearances on Spicks and Specks. I really like her vocal tone. Fun song too.

Pretty Flowers – Steve Martin (It’s actually Dolly Parton and Vince Gill singing) (there’s no doubt about the epic traces of banjo on Steve Martin’s album) This is the kind of music I would have shunned as a kid. Now I’m just totally lame or something but I find myself a bit of a sucker for country. Dolly does it to me every time.

Awesome lyrics include –

Well I took you out to dinner
And I told you funny stories
And I moved a little closer
And you made love to me

And on that note xxxSwa

Swaylist Vol.1

Following on from my previous post here is the current soundtrack on loop in my head.

Paolo Nutini – Growing Up Beside You – My ma bought this CD a few weeks ago. It’s kind of ridiculous to think this guy is 22. He sounds so much older and from another era. I find this song very comforting. This song is me and all the special people I’ve grown up beside – riding bicycles in the countryside until we can’t take the joy anymore and collapse in a heap in a meadow only to stumble upon a massive feast which we get to work on as the sun goes down. 

Jill Barber – Oh My My – This lovely lass is a retro gem. And she’s playing at the Newtown Festival on Sunday which delights me in the pants. The whole album is rather pretty but I chose this track because it’s got swagger. This song allows me to experience a very vintage brand of heartbreak while I weep over a sink full of dishes and lament pain that the good ol’ doc has no cure for. 

The Boxtops – Letter- I pinched this from the soundtrack to ‘The Boat that Rocked’- a great soundtrack that caters lovingly to my inner 60’s modgirl. This song just gets me grooving in a totally happening and far out way. This song is a lovers’ reunion. It’s the desperate race against time, the running through the airport scene, littered with horn stabs and nervous anticipation. Oh and I really enjoy dancing down the Pacific Highway, clicking my fingers and miming to it as I walk home.

Paolo Nutini – Candy – Another one from Paolo. I’m enjoying the country vibe. It’s got a bit of Neil Youngness going on actually. This song is sadness and exhaustion and taking a bath with a lover after a fight. It could also be getting caught in the rain and resigning yourself to just drinking it in.

Rufus Wainwright – California – If you know me well enough you’ll know I have a bit of an attachment to the TV show The OC. Say what you will about the show – it had a lot of great musical moments for me. Rufus is a darling and this song was used early on in the first season. It sounds so happy and full of sunshine and it makes me think of being pretty and hanging out on the pier or chillin’ at the Crab Shack. BUT he’s basically mocking the culture in California and how overrated the place is. I enjoy melodies that contradict the tone of the lyrics. Also, he makes reference to Bea Arthur being his new grandma, which is random but cool.

Ed Harcourt – Hanging With the Wrong Crowd – I find Ed Harcourt to be an quite a beautiful storyteller. Picking just one song to share is too hard but I’m going for one of the first ones I really loved. This song is merry-go-rounds and ups and downs and feeling content doing your very own thing.

The Hoosiers – Goodbye Mr A – The Hoosiers are kind of insane. They have a bit of an 80’s vibe and sometimes the vocals stray into annoying american pop punk territory but mostly it’s just lots of cheese and silly piano and synth lines. I think this song is about their science teacher but to me this song is dancing down dirty London back alleys in 80’s get-up, beating out rhythms on brick walls and using trashcans for percussion. All whilst incorporating some seemingly spontaneous but noticeably rehearsed choreography.

Florence and the Machine – Drumming Song – Some pounding beats and strong lady vocals for a little girl power. This song is tribal and rough. It’s running in a forest at night during an earthquake. It’s losing control.

Stevie Nicks – Edge of Seventeen – Ahhhh Stevie Nicks. Even if you hate her you can’t hate this song.  Gotta love that chugging guitar riff. And then Destiny’s Child sampled it when they released Bootylicious and according to wiki Stevie Nick’s actually played the riff on Bootylicious. This song always makes me break out my power fists and pull faces like I know about life and shit and stuff. Definitely a good one for singing into your hairbrush. 

Sufjan Stevens – For The Widows In Paradise; For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti – And we end with a softly sweet Sufjan moment. This is actually another song that’s been featured on the OC. I’ve listened to it a lot recently. It’s kind of my sad song and it’s a little bit about loss and a little bit about desperation and it helps to slow me down and drift off.

Hope you enjoy! Please tell me what  you like and don’t like.

Swa

A little bit of High Fidelity to start

‘To me, making a tape is like writing a letter. There’s a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You’ve got to kick off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with “Got to Get You Off My Mind,” but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you’ve got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can’t have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can’t have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you’ve done the whole thing in pairs and…oh, there are loads of rules.’     Rob Gordon

Some people will throw together a compilation with speed and spontaneity. Perhaps the urgency is relative to the need to locate a listener who will have the same emotional response to a particular set of sounds that they did. Certain other individuals will painstakingly trawl through melodies for hours and hours in search of the perfect fit, a complimentary set of songs that are connected in some way and mean something. Apparently I am the latter.

That’s not to say I don’t hope that someone somewhere will feel the same way I do when I hear something special. I just seem to want to make a masterpiece out of other people’s art. I can’t unleash these songs on you without transferring some of the butterflies I feel when I listen to them. I want it to feel like a story. A soundtrack to a story in my head. I am a wanker as of just now. So for my very first ‘Swaylist’*  I will attempt to paint a picture with words that tell a story to accompany the soundtrack that is the Swaylist.

I don’t know about the white music and black music segregation. I have a dream that one day all music can join hands and stand side by side on a playlist.

Please enjoy my blorg. Please.

*Swaylist – is a playlist by Swa (me) that will hopefully sway you into loving some of the tunes I like.