I always wonder if my neighbors can hear my music and if so, do they have complaints about the same song playing over and over for 3 hours at a time while I work? They couldn’t about this song. It’s perfection. Leon’s voice (that spoken word interlude!), the lyrics, the wail of the pedal steel guitar, all of it.
“Texas Sun. I wanted to capture a vibe that embodies the essence of Texas,” Bridges told Texas Monthly about the origins of the song. Do we ever need some sunshine now.
This is my kind of easy listening. What a groove. When Nau sings over the fuzz: “Going over and over and over/To get closer to the start,” that’s my cue to drag the Youtube arrow back to the beginning.
Purple Mountains's single "All My Happiness is Gone" is out May 10, 2019 from Drag City. This song is also on the debut self-titled album by Purple Mountains, available on LP/CS/CD from Drag City on July 12, 2019. Film by Brent Stewart and Matt Boyd.
I was half-listening to WTMD while doing chores and when this song came on, it struck me as the saddest song I’d ever heard. “Oh,” is all I thought when I looked up who sang it.
“Lately I tend to make strangers wherever I go…All my happiness is gone…I confess I’m barely hanging on…No way to last out here like this for long….” It’s all right there in the lyrics.
I went on to listen this song maybe 20,000 times in a row (sorry, neighbors!). Please don’t be worried about me. It’s just an excellent song, dark poetry set to the peppiest little Joy Division/The Cure-y synth-y riff. I know it’s a song ostensibly bereft of happiness. But to me, when David Berman sings “Ten thousand afternoons ago/All my happiness just overflowed,” it’s like my own heart is spilling out and I go back to moments when I felt just like that.
I wish I had known about him way before this, because I went and bought the Purple Mountains album based on this song alone. “I’ve always worked harder on words,” he told NYT, and my God, it shows. I was prepared to be depressed, yes, but not to laugh out loud (“ceaseless feasts of schadenfreude?”). He tosses off lines that I couldn’t write in my wildest dreams. I need to dive into the whole Silver Jews catalog, but I can already tell that David Berman saw the human condition and he pinned it down into something we could sing along to.
Listen to the full album: http://bit.ly/325XRIu "Don't Say That You Love Me" by Jade Jackson from the album 'Wilderness,' available now Order at https://jadejackson.ffm.to/wilderness Lyrics I been on the outside looking in I was always waiting, for life to begin And I feel alright now Ain't nothing gonna bring me
Just a little country twang with a perfect chorus to start off your week. In between music gigs, Jade Jackson is waiting tables at her family restaurant, according to the LA Times. If it were a perfect world, she’d be opening for Taylor already, right? Hopefully that will all come soon…
I can't remember a show I've been to expressly for the opening act, until the Van William + Lissie show at 9:30 Club this past weekend. I got into Van William via his song with First Aid Kit (because everything they touch is golden), but I love his whole album. Particularly this song, creative interpretive dancing and all. He writes a good chorus, no?
This is a two-fer post because Lissie is super talented too. She can sing like whoa, as I learned. Really loving this positivity anthem because we could all use that these days. "'Cause the best days of my life are coming for me/Waiting to be realized...I want more best days."
Sometimes you pick your vacation spots, and sometimes they find you. That just happened for us, in the form of an invite from good friends who happened to be cat sitting in Spain in a two-bedroom apartment. They live in SF, and no, this isn't an international version of the Rover app or a remake of "The Holiday" but with dogs and cats. A friend of theirs who lives in Spain invited them to come stay for free in her apartment for a couple weeks while she was traveling, and it was great for both parties: free vacation + free petsitting, win-win! We were lucky enough to get invited along to hang and pet kitties too.
So Joe and I packed our bags a few weeks ago to take a flight to Madrid, where we stayed for about 24 hours before we moved onto our next destination! We didn't get to do too too much. Namely: Churros and chocolate.
My sweatshirt did not survive an encounter with this super thick dipping chocolate. We went to the historic Chocolateria San Gines in Madrid, as recommended by my friend Linda, and sat in the basement, which looked like a subterranean subway car.
Sorry for the dirty plate shot, but I had to share my wallet for this trip. I kept all my valuables in a ziplock bag for some reason, that's not sad at all. I've been obsessed with reading about Birkins lately (an impossible dream), and we'd joke that I would get the Birkin (how good is Chiara's orange one?) but continue using a ziploc bag as a wallet.
There's a whole story behind that lounge pass too - basically I took all the money we would've spent on hotels and splurged on getting an Amex Platinum card. Everyone in my life tried to talk me out of this card in favor of the Chase Sapphire, but I got weirdly fixated on it (much like the Birkin, but slightly more attainable). I realize now that adulthood is just a series of conversations about credit card rewards.
Of course, I tried to rationalize it by putting it in the context of this trip. We'd get Global Entry! And lounge access! I believe Joe was more excited before we left about #loungelife than our vacation. At Dulles, I sashayed into the Turkish Airline Lounge and proudly held up my Priority Pass. It was as if I held up a dirty sock.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, the lounge is full," the receptionist said as she waived in actual rich people. "It didn't work," I shrugged to Joe. "Let's go to Wendy's."
Once we got to Madrid, we took the metro to Gran Via to our hotel, which was the cheapest central hotel I could find the Amex travel site. What the Amex site neglected to mention is that there was zero signage for the hotel, not even a buzzer. We were at the right address, but it looked like an apartment building in a semi-abandoned alley. We had already dragged our suitcases all over Gran Via at that point, which was (as is our luck) blocked off for a marathon. Joe and I actually cut across the marathon course not once, not twice, but three times looking for our hotel, each time running across with our rolly bags in tour. What a scene.
So this situation after finally finding the hotel was not ideal. I looked up the name of the hotel on Trip Advisor and it said you were supposed to let them know you were coming 48 hours in advance. Also not ideal!
Luckily, the apartment door eventually opened and I sprinted to grab it and everything worked out. Except that the hotel was too small to store our luggage before we checked in. "I know a place that can help you," the hotel employee said, and she wrote down an address and the words "Look and be free."
"Look and be free," Joe said. "That's deep. That might be my next tattoo." Once we arrived at the address, it made a lot more sense.
Lock & Be Free! It was this oh-so-branded luggage locker place. Is this not the SoulCycle of luggage lockers? They were absolutely printing money, with a steady stream of suitcase-laden millennials like us lined up outside.
Now that we were free sans luggage, here's how we explored Madrid in the little time we had: we went to Mercado de San Miguel, which was an adorable food market but so crowded. We also took a spin through Mercado San Anton, which seemed more geared towards locals. We found a hipster coffee shop, Toma Cafe, so so hip. I promised that my jet-lag and red-eye-induced nap would just be a few hours but that was a lie.
Mainly, we visited Madrid's amazing art museums because I had to see "Guernica" at Museo Reina Sofia, just had to! And the Museo Nacional Del Prado is incredible, totally worth walking a mile around the marathon course to get inside. We just scratched the surface of Madrid, but it seemed like living there would be hard to beat.
