love

George Harrison once said “What is my life without your love?” and he’s right.  If there is one thing for certain in life it is our need to be needed, to be accepted, to find relationships with people that mean more than growing up with the person.  We find that our friends early in life are more to teach us how to be more personable, sociable, and make connections to grow past our fears of alienation and loneliness, a concept that persecutes our everyday lives, as people we want to provoke ourselves.  And in a way, a social life educates us more than just an academic education.  With friends we have people to bounce our ideas off of, to whittle down beliefs we have that are not necessarily untrue but are not fully developed.  Love however defies our logic and sense of friendship, a powerful feeling that can make you feel lonely even with friends, a connection we seek our whole lives to make us feel, oddly enough, whole.  Physical attraction is an entirely different animal not to be confused with love, we’ll say “Damn, that girl/guy has a nice body, I wish I could get with her/him.” But that’s not love, love does not necessitate a physical attraction, but a mental attraction; feelings we share, connections we can’t explain but want to know.  In love there has to be as much unknown as there is known, for it’s in the seeking of such knowledge that we bond, we fall in love.  It drives us to do irrational things; to murder, to wage war, even just simply overspending our money.  We feel uncomfortable in our own skin, we feel it is necessary to project an image that is above ourselves.  It’s funny to see that true love can be based on white lies that we believe about ourselves to make us more mentally intriguing to the ones we seek.  It’s not wrong though, it drives creativity in our culture.  What would our society have without this unquenchable search for love and the trials we go through finding it?   Now ladies and gentleman, I give you, a mixtape driven and concerned about love.

Love Mixtape

Please note the link is to a folder not an individual song, enjoy

Ok there Ringo?

No Ringo’s not my favorite Beatle, nor do i think he’s all that bad or criminally underrated but the remastered discography goes a long way to show just what chops he had. What I found remarkable was songs I thought were toss offs,  the country numbers like Honey Don’t, What Goes On, and Act Naturally not only showcase The Beatles ability as a band to cover the genre but the remastered versions bring out the wonderful harmonies The Beatles were able to do when their weakest singer was lead. So without further ado, here are Ringo’s finest from the remastered stereo albums.

Honey Don’t

Act Naturally

What Goes On

Yellow Submarine

With A Little Help From My Friends

Octopus’s Garden

Carry That Weight

Rain

She Said She Said

New Music Sunday! Vol. II- Voxtrot, The xx, Coconut Records

Voxtrot

Voxtrot sounds like its a band that didn’t forget the eighties.  But this isn’t a bad thing, rather they come off as the Smith’s heir apparent, with dashes of The Strokes thrown in.  Ear candy for the music fan who wishes more bands were like The Smiths, and ear candy for the music fan that loves a good early Motown meets classic pop melody.

The Start of Something

the warm somewhat unclearly recorded vocals only makes this song more endearing, and it does give you that warm feeling of starting to fall in love, euphoric.

Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives

Excellent transition from a reverbed opening into clanging chords, great guitar and drum work on here and just goes to show the bands ability to stretch their style.

Kid Gloves

Yet another variation and undeniably catchy

Berlin, Without Return

This song stands up to some of Spoons best, great build, great arrangment, simple and beautiful

The xx

The xx is a very intriguing band in the way they develop their songs, arrangements play a huge role in what makes them good, and the dual female and male lead singers only help their cause

Basic Space

theres a lot of space in the arrangement as the title might suggest, and the harmony betweeen Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft is sublime.  Croft has a beautiful achy voice that just cuts right into you

Crystalized

Ever wonder what it would sound like if Thom Yorke had a female counterpart to sing with in Radiohead, I do, and this gives you a little glimpse.

Heart Skipped A Beat

It’s amazing they manage to take drum loops and make them sound like they fit nowhere else but in their songs, and this is a great duet

Coconut Records

Coconut Records is the brainchild of actor Jason Schwartzman, yes that actor who played that annoying kid in Rushmore and is also known for playing drums for ‘that band that played the theme song to The O.C.‘ (Phantom Planet). Don’t let that dissuade you though, Schwartzman has a knack for crafting pop melodies, and he plays all the instruments on the record as well.  Think of  Elliot Smith except more upbeat.  Schwartzman fully deserves to be recognized as a musician and an actor, not an actor/musician, because there is a difference.

Drummer

Off of Davy, his latest release, this song mocks his fame as a musician, and its got a great melody to boot

Saint Jerome

Somehow Schwartzman came upon the perfect meld of sound between his voice, guitar and piano, sure the arrangement is nothing groundbreaking but it sounds fresh in his hands

Microphone

He certainly has his own sound but his knack for making great pop melodies reminds me of Paul McCartney and thats not a stretch

West Coast

Off of his first album Nighttiming, everything about this song is perfect from the synthesizer to the organic backing instruments to his beautiful background harmonies.