Augie March - There's No Such Place

I recently decided to set up an itunes alarm on my computer and set it to random so that every morning I wake to a different song. It's always something of a lottery. Some mornings, it's The National. Others, it's John Denver. Once, it was 'Learn to speak spanish: lesson 1'.

This morning I woke up to this gentle melancholy number. 'There's no Such Place' by Australian band Augie March. What a nostalgic little gem.

I lay in bed, watching the last droplets of early morning rain slip and slide their way down my bedroom window, a final dance to their resting place. Through the window, clouds of fog hugged the Canberra mountains.  And below them, the absence of traffic marked the sound of a city still asleep.

There is no such place, o yes I have seen it too
Just a little different from how you do,
A river winding blue among the dunes and a marble bed
A sun that doesn't set but settles.
There is no such place.
If I lower mine to yours would you kiss me on the face?
If you're looking for an unmarked place,
There is no such place -
Blasted in appearance and a composite of fearful minutes
Frozen in the waking instant

Longing, things I long for,
Peaceful nights, strangers at the door,
O come in, come in,
You've been here before.

Impossible not to wake up feeling a little pensive.

Tropfest winner 2010 - Shock

It being Tropfest season, I found myself looking through some of the past winners and came across this one from 2010. A great concept piece. One of those short film ideas that is so simple you can practically teack the film back through the creative process to the point of conception. As in: "I reckon shock jocks must just spend every moment they are not on air crying." Yep. There's your Tropfest winning film right there.

For the Moody Christmas fans you might recognise a young Patrick Brammall.
 

What makes you itch?

Ryan Adams - Lucky Now

I'm confused about Ryan Adams. I can't tell whether he's really good, or just a really mediocre song writer with an awesome band. Sometimes his writing is incredibly lazy ('Waiting outside for you to find your keys / Like bags of trash in the blackening snow' - why the?). Other times I think, this is a man who just writes from the heart, without the need to overstate anything. ('So buy a pretty dress / Wear it out tonight / For all the boys you think could outdo me')

This is the man who wrote Sylvia Plath, Easy Plateau, Magnolia Mountain, My Winding Wheel, and Shadowlands. Worthy, beautiful music. But he's also got a sizeable catalogue of really average music, a lot of which has the stench of a man desperate to fulfill his record label contract. One could say, Mayeresque?

Sometimes he manages to fit awesome and mediocre into the same song. Take his latest single 'Lucky Now', which essentially comprises a drunken ramble during the verses, only to smash out an incredibly listenable chorus and an even better guitar solo (see earlier comments about him perhaps being saved by his band?).

I imagine turning up to band rehearsal must be quite the roller coaster. "Wow! Ryan! That was awesome. Love it! What else have you got?... Oh... Uh huh.... ok. what else? .... hmmmm.... Well... Um... yeah.... we can work with that...Yeah, that'll be ok once we whack a few guitar solos on ... What else?... Um. Ok... Lets take a break."
 

Bon Iver - I can't make you love me

And for the broodier amongst you... this moocher from Bon Iver. What's that? Your brain hurts? Yeah, he'll do that.

Metric - Nothing But Time

Smooth mindless pop from Canadian synth outfit Metric. Happy Friday.