I AM BACK

Wonder if anyone noticed I was gone? Anyway I don't really have any excuses for not posting in this for ages, I don't have a job or anything and I've left school, I just guess I haven't felt like it. Today I do.

To ease myself back into this whole blogging thing, I'm going to write up two of my current favourite songs. I will do two more in another post, and so on, until I have a top 10 right now. It will be fun. Here goes...

1. TRADING THINGS IN - VOLUNTARY BUTLER SCHEME

I found Voluntary Butler Scheme when I was looking at some acts that were doing Latitude. He might have been the only act we went to see that we only discovered because they were doing Latitude, but I'm not sure? Richard can correct me if I'm wrong. Anyway by the time we got to see him doing his thing on the Lake stage I knew the chorus to this song and would have been properly singing along if I hadn't lost my voice. He's really interesting live, too - it is just him, he doesn't have a band, so you see him recording loops and stuff on stage, like he'll tap a beat on his violin into a second microphone and then that beat will repeat through the song. I hadn't seen anyone do that live before, I thought it was awesome.

It's really, really, well, twee - I don't mean that as an insult, hey, I'm the one who still finds "twee as fuck" really amusing and loved The International Tweexcore Underground before I'd heard a note of it - but like, really good. I like this sort of love song - it's really cute, yeah, I mean he does actually sing the line "if you were broccoli I'd turn vegetarian for you", among others, but that's why it's so brilliant. It's sort of why I still love Umbrella so much - he's not just like I LOVE YOU PLEASE DON'T PICK SOMEONE ELSE OVER ME, he's all like here are all the silly things I'd do to be with you, now please don't go for anyone else? Umbrella uses the umbrella instead of "I WILL PROTECT YOU" or whatever, VBS uses tea, coffee and paper planes. Also the chorus is really fucking catchy in a really nice way. I hadn't seen the video before, too, how cute is it?! I love when he laughs at the end.


2. THE LUCKSMITHS - FICTION (link to a cover by salambo31@youtube)

I've linked to a cover because I really like the cover and there's only a live version up by The Lucksmiths and I don't like listening to live versions on youtube much because the quality sucks most of the time. Maybe it's good though. Yesterday I was in the back of the car on a long drive home - we went on a family holiday for a week to just outside Lancaster, which is quite far away from Ipswich - and this song came on and while I've pretty much always loved it, I hadn't realised quite how much. Musically, it's pretty much standard Lucksmiths, and probably lyrically too - but it's just awesome. The lyrics have got to be some of their best, whatever, and it progresses so nicely... he sounds so nostalgic, sort of down and hushed, but can't hide the rhyme of kitchen/fiction and from then on the song is just so well done, so well made. I write poetry and I hardly ever rhyme because it's so hard to do but it's managed perfectly here, not one rhyme makes me go ouch and several make me go I WISH I'D THOUGHT OF THAT. It's so understated. I also sort of want a tattoo of the word fiction now, is that wrong?