Tag: Music

  • Music | Loving Lately #1

    Music | Loving Lately #1

    (Kinda) new feature klaxon. Since discovering it’s perfectly acceptable for me to plug in my headphones and just work at my desk at my job, I’ve been cycling through entire albums Spotify pretty much every day now. Inspired by the snippet reviews from my lovely friend Jennie, here are some of my favourites.

    Citrine EP, Hayley Kiyoko
    About: Refreshingly Queer melodic synth pop
    Favourite track: One Bad Night
    Thoughts: Like sipping cloudy lemonade from a mason jar on a Summer evening. Youthful. Hopeful.

    Honey, KAYE
    About: 80s inspired indie-pop
    Favourite track: Porcelain
    Thoughts: Utterly infectious pop music at its finest, #AsianExcellence at its best

    In Loving Memory Of When I Gave A Shit, LOLO
    About: Rough and ready Millennial soul
    Favourite track: No Time For Lonely
    Thoughts: Brutally honest, self aware songwriting at it’s most heart wrenchingly finest (also wins the prize for favourite album title of all time)

    I Am Bones - AIM - WIld World

    I Am Bones, Joe Brooks
    About: Soothing acoustic indie
    Favourite tracks: Dandelion Hair
    Thoughts: Heart-warmingly familiar breath of fresh air. Welcome back Brooks!

    AIM, M.I.A.
    About: Politically charged yet gloriously mellow, modern trip hop
    Favourite track: Bird Song (Diplo Remix)
    Thoughts: A much more introspective album than previous ones but it’s M.I.A. so it packs a powerful lyrical punch

    Wild World, Bastille
    About: Electo-infused alt rock
    Favourite track: Send them off!
    Thoughts: All the best bits of Bad Blood with more guitars, trippy samples & underlying lyrical darkness


    Have you listened to any of these guys? Let me know what you think in the comments!

    Ria

  • Playlist | Best of the Broadway Musicals 15/16 Season

    broadway-playlists

    Happy Tony Awards Eve!

    Tonight is the biggest night in every theater geek’s calendar as the 70th Annual Tony Awards ceremony will once again be held live at Radio City Music Hall in New York City tomorrow evening. To get you in the mood I thought I’d send you off with a little playlist of the best of this year’s season of Broadway musicals.

    It really has been a stellar year on the Big White Way with both impressive revivals and innovative brand new pieces of work. And even though Hamilton is likely to dominate the night with their record breaking 16 nominations there are more absolute gems both on the nominee list and sadly snubbed by the voters that are definitely worth the listen to as well!

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  • Music | My Life (So Far) In Albums

    lifeinalbums

    I’ve written a post on the albums that made me before and whilst many of those still stand as my favourites of all time they have a tendency to dip in and out of my life at various points. The albums in this post are more solidly rooted in a specific time period in my life. These are the ones I (already) look back on and think ‘that was me at x age’

    — — —

    13 Years Old | ‘Wonderland’, McFLY

    After the blissful Summer-y sunniness of ‘Room On The Third Floor‘, the slightly darker tones and cinematic quality of ‘Wonderland‘ came as a welcome shock to the system. I say welcome, as I too was going through the motions of teenage angst and whilst my friends drifted towards heavier punk rock or metal I turned to ‘Don’t Know Why‘ and ‘She Falls Asleep‘. Cycling through Wonderland is a nostalgia trip. ‘Too Close For Comfort‘ was the first song I ever learnt on guitar, I still remember angst listening to ‘I’ll Be Ok‘ after a fight with my parents (and then years later with the feeling of elation and pride the first time I saw them live), I’d spend weekends rewatching the Wonderland live DVD over and over again. Wonderland was my true first foray into an album that could shape you inside out for the better and how powerful music could be.

    18 Years Old | ‘Youth Novels’, Lykke Li

    I needed revision music…bad. After years of drifting away from albums (like the rest of the world I was becoming more attuned to single releases rather than a full set of songs), all of the songs on my iTunes were either from the ‘Glee’ soundtracks (holla!), or too sing-a-long-able to concentrate to. I found Lykke Li by way of Sia. I wanted ambiance to stifle the silence of going over accounting coursework and business system models, I ended up with an album that became the travelling soundtrack to my commutes to and from University for the next two years.

    Youth Novels‘ came out in 2008, but as always I was late to the game in discovery Li’s soothing voice. In times of stress ‘Dance, Dance, Dance‘ cured many a migraine, in conversations trying to impress people she was a my go-to cool indie artist (instead of Taylor Swift or the Jonas Brothers), I ended up having to stop listening to her music revising because I ended up humming along too often. Youth Novels wasn’t life changing, but neither was that period in my life. It was stable. It bumbled along. It felt good.

    21 Years Old | ‘Red’, Taylor Swift

    People talk about ‘which Taylor era you are’ and for me it’s ‘Red‘. ‘1989‘ may have been the album that stitched me back together and lifted me up, but ‘Red‘ was perfectly imperfect, raging with every emotion and captured every essence of ‘me’ in my early Twenties.

    Nothing set my heart alight as much as the nostalgic romance of ‘The Lucky One‘. Nothing was more fun that dancing wildly to ‘22‘ on nights out. Nothing felt as frantic as listening to ‘Holy Ground‘ over and over again until the words lost their meaning. Nothing hurt as much as crying along to ‘All Too Well‘ in my bed nursing heartbreak. Nothing felt as good as euphorically screaming the lyrics to ‘We Are Never Getting Back together‘ at the O2 with my best friend. ‘Red‘ was Taylor at an heightened sense of self discovery and experimentation. I too was at a crossroads of still figuring it out after thinking I had held myself together so well, but as soon as the album starts my mind beats along to the drum beat of ‘State of Grace‘ and I can loose myself to the music.

    24 Years Old | ‘The Blessed Unrest’, Sara Bareilles

    Bareilles’ music has always had an ongoing presence in my life through teenage angst, growing up and moving on but her voice and her lyrics now hold an ever increasing importance to me in my mid-twenties especially in the past 5 or so months.

    The Blessed Unrest‘ came out in 2013 but I hadn’t downloaded the full album (bar ‘Brave‘ and ‘Manhattan‘) and listened through till January this year. Coming back to the album was a wake up call. I shared many of the same sentiments Sara had on New York, on falling in love and fighting against love, on self-confidence and my place in the world. I’d dipped into the hopelessness of ‘Satellite Call‘ and ‘December‘, reminisced on missed chances in ‘Manhattan‘, and have psyched myself up to ‘Little Black Dress‘ more times than I can count in the past month alone. Despite the ‘everyman’ feel of many of Sara’s songs, she feels very much like a woman who writes for women and perfectly encapsulates every detail and emotion I feel ‘being’ a woman right now.

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    So this those are my albums, let me know in the comments which albums were oh so important to you at various points in your life.

    Ria Xx