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Oh Ophelia

I have spend a significant amount of my music thoughts worried about The Lumineers. From the moment I saw them at their very first SXSW concert all those years ago, I know that I loved them. I fell hard and so did everyone else. They blew up that week and that was only the beginning. A few months after that tiny courtyard show, I saw them open up for Dave Mathews at a giant arena in Brooklyn. Not long after that they were headlining their own show. And while I get that it’s a thing now to headline a show and go all international with only one album, I started to worry. Was it all too much too fast? I heard gossip of disenchantment with the road life and they were on the road for oh so long. Their contemporaries took a step back, wrote more music, came out with more albums.

Then one day they were finished. The Lumineers went home.

And I worried.

Was that it? Had it all been too much? Was I going to have to hold on dear to that album and remember that time and that band from long ago?

Then one day there was a song. A sweet little song on Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist. Oh Ophelia, he sang, You’ve been on my mind girl like a drug. Oh Ophelia, heaven help the fool who falls in love. 

I listened to it on repeat worried that I was falling hard for this song simply because it was theirs. But I was falling for it because it is everything that made me fall in love with them the first time around. And oh, heaven help we fools who fall in love!

I am so excited for the rest of the album. May it be an entire album for dancing in the rain.

 

Marlon Williams

I love music videos because most of the time they are one giant mind fuck and I am of the belief that the occasional mind fuck is good for the soul. It keeps us on our toes. Like this video from Marlon Williams for “Hello Miss Lonesome.” What?  I don’t even have a guess.

But the song is super catchy. I love the bluegrassy quality and his versatile voice. His debut album, Dead Oceans is set to release in February.

Misterwives: Our Own House

This past month or so has been soundtracked overwhelmingly by Misterwives new album, Our Own House and it is completely and totally obsession worthy.

It is a well rounded album that ebbs and flows through a kaleidoscope of dance tunes and ballads, all connected with a steady heartbeat percussion and Mandy Lee’s powerhouse voice that dances seamlessly through the melodies and harmonies. It is an outstanding debut album that will give them solid footing to root themselves in this industry and in your ears.

It’s hard to overshadow the great dance builds and beats in this album. I’ve always been partial to a great dance tune that begs me to roll down my window and drive while dancing and singing along at the top of my lungs. Misterwives does it so wonderfully. Except they also take their songs to an even richer level with the lacing of poetic lyrics throughout. It’s an album about love and independence and identity. Mandy makes her strength clear from the very first song, singing, “We built our own house, own house/ With our hands over our hearts/ And we swore on that day/ That it will never fall apart” Nor do they fall apart. It is followed up by Not Your Way which is so I am woman hear me roar. I want sing it to every man who has ever tried to keep my vagina and me down. “Are we making ourselves clear?/ We’re all the same under here/ This is my disposition/ Apologies for breaking your traditions/ It takes two to tango/ And we’re saying…(two, three!)/ It’s not your way, not your way/ Not going to obey, to obey/ This is my party, party/ And you don’t have a say, have a say” or in Hurricane when she sing, “We are not your property/ See with our own clarity/ Ears closed, eyes open,/ Voice won’t be broken/ Won’t dance within your walls” Boom! Sing it, girl!

But Misterwives aren’t naive either. Being strong isn’t without love and vulnerability. “So let’s run with reckless emotion/ Let’s find out if love is the size of the ocean and a/ Hundred ought to be too few word/ To carry all my love for you” she sings. In Reflections, the first single off the album, she reminds us what it’s like to pick up the pieces of a shattered relationship. It’s hard. We’ve all be there.


The final song, Queen is perhaps my favorite song off the album. It’s a quieter piece but bookends the power and message of their opening. In it, Mandy gives a powerful, personal reflection on her life and struggles and the homes that the queens in her life built with and around her. “But we all lift each other up/ Learn to shake the demons off/ Conquer all this world throws at us/ Cause love is strong enough”

This album is strong enough and I can’t wait to watch the career this group builds together.

Wes Anderson Soundtracks My Life

Yeah, I made soundtrack a verb. I’d say that I’d love Wes Anderson to soundtrack my life, but I already imagine my life to be as quirky and beautifully filtered and artistically composed as his films, so I can just superimpose those soundtracks into my ears and I am all set! Fortunately, someone has already taken the time to create a playlist of all the music used in his films. It is divine. Wes reminds us that our lives are a balance of Classic Rock angst, boys choir melancholy, classical music whimsy. I recommend playing it on shuffle, putting on a crisply ironed vintage outfit, flat ironing your hair and setting off on an adventure. But never smile. It will be amazing!

Now all someone needs to do is make this playlist into a vinyl collection and we are GOLDEN!

Zella Day

Seriously, I think Zella Day is the artist I am most excited to see at SXSW this year. I Freaking love her. I listen to her a little bit obsessively and I’ve learned her songs on the ukulele and I sing them really loud in my apartment to my dog. Sorry neighbors (but not really). I know I have posted about her before, but in the wake of SXSW, she is due another post. ALL THE POSTS!

The Accidentals

Perhaps I am biased to the name of this band, or the fact that one of the girls is often wielding a fiddle (which we all know is the fastest way to my heart), but The Accidentals is a duo certainly worth checking out at SXSW this year. I mean, the tagline on their site reads, “Two girls, three years, two albums, two movies scored, thirteen instruments, fifty original songs, seven hundred live shows, thousands of fans…just graduated high school!” I kind of want to meet them to find out how to garner some of that kind of talent and energy for myself! They remind me of Mountain Man, but a little less etherial.