Have Mercy

Mercy Arms played last night at work. I was really impressed- definitely would have paid money to see them. Besides sounding pretty, they are genuinely interesting to stand in front of. Kirin Calunan is bjork and jarvis cocker's shirtless, bounding love child and lead singer Thom Moore is as engaging and understated as their tunes.

The crowd was small (though apparently their largest over this tour), only just over 200 folks by the looks of it, but o my sweet lady, weren't they shiny. I think I even saw a couple of spray tans in there. Which always look stupid in the rain.

There don't seem to be any videos online that really capture their live thing. This is sort of close, but probably better just to go to their myspace to get the feel-up.

the you in every song

I'm going to see the mountain goats tonight. My little brother first introduced me to "No Children" years ago and I've loved their yearning, witty, apocalyptic folk ever since.

The ex lover will be there tonight and that's a little weird. Our song was "Old college try" and our breakup album was "Get Lonely". The music is pretty integrated into the way we grew into and out of each other.

I'm still learning whether there is music i can take with me or if some songs should be left in the past.

this is my favourite song of all time. i only just discovered this vers today.

wildhearts and onions

two things i discovered tonight:

-I am more than a little bit in love with the wildhearts. They played at my work tonight and I was all starry-eyed, especially to "beautiful thing, you". Apparently they trashed kerrang's office one time in the 90's. Only about 200 people turned up tonight though- how do folks not know of this band? I thought they were the kind of half-remembered buried thing that funkyindietypes got off on. I've got this sneaking suspicion that indie is a high school clique rather than a scene anymore.

-If you try to eat your cold half-kebab hours after you put it down in front of the computer, all you taste is onions.

metallic

i find metal music one part relaxing, two parts fascinating, one part beautiful and three parts owch.

tra la la

I've been singing with this new acoustic sort-of band, which has been particularly fun. I sing to my friends when I'm drunk, and they like it at least half of the time. That's how I met Toni- I catterwalled within his ear range at a mutual friend's house warming. He is a guitarist and the apparent ringleader. Toni is a tall Lebanese boy with long and luscious curls who writes dark and miserable poetry and wants to be referred to as Lady Godiva on stage. I find this excellent.

kings and lovers

the lover is not the lover anymore, hence my silence. He hasn't come home in about two weeks so I figure he's gone for good this time. It's been a brilliant, sparkling, ugly, crazy two years. Less said about that the better.

Been getting into the new KOL stuff as it comes out. Luckily I have a KOL obsessive at the podjob who is like my own personal KOL newswire. Being drip-fed use somebody was an undeniably pleasurable experience in a week of rather shit ones.

In more abstract and interesting news than all of that, here's yet another article that is pointing towards the pheonix rising of vinyl. To me, it makes perfect sense to buy the vinyl if you're going to purchase music at all. The sound quality argument has been around since day dot, but to my mind, the worth of buying music in a physical form rather than just as a sound file online is in its artifact status. And if the product ceases to be the music itself and starts to become the physical artifact, then why wouldn't you buy the vinyl? There's simply more room for the graphic design, the lyrics and the credits. In other words, all of the tasty merchandising that somehow makes the relationship between the fan and the artists all the more rich.

On that note, this is what I was 'tubin today:

cool kitten

one good thing about the podjob, discounting the fact that they make me wear shoes indoors, is that sometimes the dude that sits next to you will say, "hey, you've gotta see this kid i met last night," and show you clips like this.

brand new hate

my flatmate loves these guys.

i argue that the line "use my body while i sleep" is a loaded one upon first listen. Apparently I'm an asshole because he's singing to some sick friend.

besides that he sounds like a whingy, whingy teenager.

spit 'tubing

So whenever I have something mundane to do at the podjob, I listen to youtube clips. I understand that this is somewhat like a blind man listening to his VCR, but I started off by listening to music clips and playing youtube DJ with some folk at my place of employ. So the progression to not-watching comedy and then not-watching visual media that was clearly intended for watching was swift.

Anyway, lately I've been hankering for some harp and I found this guy, who is my current spit-guru:



I passed this dude around to a few select podders and one of them came right back at me with this guy, who is my new personal hero:

sweet child o mine

Yes, this is my new bambino.

totally... in... love.

Bonde

I can't fucking wait for these guys to hit sydney on the 6th... then come together festival on the 7th and 8th. Trying to bug Kaitlyn to come with me to BdR. Henceforth known as the Queen's Wild Weekend