Youth Lagoon – Cannons
This is the newest addition to my MP3 player and has been receiving heavy play.
It is the latest in a series of songs of a similar ilk that have grabbed me (several of which I have posted, with probably some more to come). They all have a kind of washed out, dreamy sound, like The Beach Boys meets Fleet Foxes. Not sure if this is just the style of the moment or they just speak to my slightly jaded mental state.
Swiftumz – It’s Beautiful
This is short but kind of cool and hypnotic. It has a trippy, dreamlike charm that I have found irresistible for the past few days.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Ffunny Frends
Short post today – it’s been a long week. Interesting band name. I know little about them other than this guardian article. New Zealand by way of Portland apparently.
Anyway, I like this laid back number and have been listening to a lot of it this week.
An old friend returned home from a 2 year African odyssey today (welcome home Sammy) so I wanted to post something with a world music vibe in his honour. This is released on Sofrito Records – “home of the tropical discotheque.” A pretty good claim to fame.
Said buddy and I have also been having a transcontinental email conversation about our shared appreciation of Seamus Heaney. Particularly how his poetry reminds us of home, heartening us from places far and not so far from there. See below a favourite from his latest collection that conjures an image of home for me as vividly as anything i have ever read.
The Baler
All day the clunk of a baler
Ongoing, cardiac-dull,
So taken for granted
It was evening before I came to
To what I was hearing
And missing: summer’s richest hours
As they had been to begin with,
Fork-lifted, sweated-through
And nearly rewarded enough
By the giddied-up race of a tractor
At the end of the day
Last-lapping a hayfield.
But what I also remembered
As woodpigeons sued at the edge
Of thirty gleaned acres
And I stood inhaling the cool
In a dusk eldorado
Of mighty cylindrical bales
Was Derek Hill’s saying,
The last time he sat at our table,
He could bear no longer to watch
The sun going down
And asking please to be put
With his back to the window.
Peter and Kerry – Knees