lucy rose's album...

Because I'm excited. Seven days until I see her live!

kate nash live

(Unfortunately this is the only video I've been able to find, admittedly Dickhead is not my favourite song, but I sang along quite happily... Yes she made me merry, made me very very happy.)

She was cute and, of course, feisty. Certainly enjoyed attending her Rock N Roll For Girls After-School Music Club, and learning about how she's trying to help more females get into the music industry on their own terms.

Visit her website here to learn more or attend!

arcade fire: the suburbs

So, secretly this might be the best eighteenth birthday present I received... the album is no less than phenomenal.

From the first cymbal crash to the last whispered lyric, it's a beautiful, solemn, fierce and almost haunting memoir of teenage-hood, of living on the suburbs themselves. The familiar, almost friendly title track starts the album off, a prologue of things to come; "sometimes I can't believe it, I'm moving past a feeling..." then crashing into Ready To Start, and slipping an orchestra behind the drums, guitar and vocals. I've refrained from using the cliche "emotional rollercoaster", but it truly is every emotion; from the shouted chorus of Empty Room to the cold, slow and traumatic imagery in Sprawl I (Flatland) - it's nothing short of a novel in music form.

Which of course, is now also the soundtrack to Scenes From The Suburbs, a short film inspired by the album (some scenes of the film are featured in the above video for The Suburbs, see the trailer for Scenes From the Suburbs underneath it too). Unfortunately there's no way of buying the film yet, although if I had gone to South by Southwest this year, I would have seen the screening of it (in no way am I bitter about it at all, whatsoever, it's fine, it's fine, there's always next year I guess...) but I'm keeping my eyes peeled for when it will be available in the good ol' United Kingdom - according to Arcade Fire's YouTube, it will be released in May/June this year. Until then, it's all earphones and imagination.

Visit Arcade Fire's website here.

dancing in my birthday suit...

Happily turned eighteen this week, and what a week it's been. Forget the sixth form and the work for a minute, (I neatly tucked them away on the back burner this past weekend) as I got out and had some fun (albeit sober fun, but fun all the same).

Muscially speaking, it was a brilliant week too. I received Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, was bought The Maccabees' Wall of Arms and also was leant Neon Bible. (I know, all things I should already own, it's true. Well, I do now!)

Plus on top of that, a few gigs coming up, all of which were funded on borrowed and now birthday money: next week, it's Kate Nash, then Lucy Rose in April and Arcade Fire, Mumford & Sons, The Vaccines and Beirut in June. Roll. On. This. Summer.

Just a snippet of how beautiful my music life is right now, whilst I watch everything else go to pot.

That's the fun of being a student, right? Right?!

noah and the whale: last night on earth

They're a band I'm in love with. The album was not love at first listen for me, however. Sounding very different to The First Days of Spring (more so than First Days did compared to Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down), it's more of a grower, with L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. picking the album up and spinning it out into something more beautiful, if not still a little too eighties for my liking. I can't say I'll be swapping it for First Days, which really is melancholy perfection, but I will be ordering and locking myself in a room with it for a few nights (so as to give a proper listen and opinion, meaning this blog will most probably be rendered useless...)

Listen to it here for free // Visit Noah & The Whale's website.