Past in present - Feist

Past in present - Feist

This night has been a very intense one: I am a bit sad as I finished the second season of Arrow and it's gonna be another year before I can watch the next one (I like to watch episodes all together so as I don't forget what happened previously...!), it's been a very nice one and I can't wait so long for more!!! I have also being going out with friends, but this Saturday night in Milan was quite dead, not many things open, no events, no night transportation, few people... kind of a weird atmosphere in a night that ended up with me walking about 4 km to get home. A nice walk I must say, especially the last part when I was about to reach home and, in such a period of feeling drifted and rootless, I got a strong rush of familiarity through my body that made me realise once again how important is this place for me, how many memories are linked to it and how meaningful the last 5 years of my life (that I mostly spent here) have been... I'll never ever forget it, and I'm a bit sad (again) as university has practically come to an end and I still have no idea of what's gonna come next... but I have fate in my fate! And it seems like I have the perfect song for this post!

Team - Lorde

Team - Lorde

I have been obsessed with this song for the past few days (as you might have understood by the pic I posted last night)! I am slowly getting into the Lorde state of mind and, well, I am really liking her debut album. This song in particular has stuck with me, even more than Royals, I don't know why and, even more importantly, I don't remember where I had heard it (but I knew it already when I first listened to it), anyway it doesn't matter now, it's what I'm sharing with you with the utmost certainty that you're gonna love it! Good nite!

Shame - PJ Harvey

Shame - PJ Harvey

Sorry for skipping the post of yesterday, but it's been a super full day: a nice birthday at night, travelling back to Milan, the afternoon in the countryside with the (possibly) last bath of the season, my mom being called to be a school director... super eventful day, this August 27! And that's not all, I have to add that it was probably the best day of the whole season under a meteorological point of view, a nice warm sun the likes of which we have not seen often this summer! But it was not all so rosy, I also had to experience a couple of moments of unpleasantness, like when we got flurries of manure in the countryside and when I found out the lights went out in Milan and all the stuff (fish and veggies) in the freezer were rotten... not a pleasant job to clean it up, trust me! Back to music, I have been listening to PJ in these last few hours so it makes sense for me to post a song of hers! In particular I've been listening to her 2004 album Uh huh her and this is one the best tracks on it! Here you are!

Shame is the shadow of love

Wing (live) - Patti Smith

Wing (live) - Patti Smith

I started listening (again) to Patti last night as while getting through Regina Spektor's album I'm listening to now I found a song whose piano incipit sounded a bit like Patti's Gloria. And building on that I kept on listening to her all afternoon today as when I begin I can't get a hold of myself and stop, so it is natural for me to post a song of hers here today. The one I chose is the one that caught my attention the most this time and, well, it's a song I have a special relationship with. It's not one that struck me strong as soon as I listened to it, actually while listening to Gone Again it passed through quite unnoticed. I started feeling strongly for it while listening to a live version of it on Patti's collection Land and well, this is the version I feel like posting, as it's the one I feel the most.

My moon my man - Feist

My moon my man - Feist

Ok, I just decided to call it a... what? Day? Night? Anyway, to call it what I want and stop working on my thesis for today (today as the day finishing when I go to sleep). This decision has been quite abrupt, taken in the middle of reading an chapter of a very interesting new article I just found (together with another couple of promising readings I will approach, hopefully, tomorrow!) because something funny happened on Google Translate: I was trying to find an expression for an Italian idiomatic form and, well, because of a typo the translation I got was "geese in words" instead of "in a nutshell". I think I deserve to get my eyes off my beloved thesis after that!! But it's not bed-time yet, I have to blog-post (and also choose a new book to start, as I just realised I finished the one I was reading last night!). The song of today is yet again out of Feist's 2007 The Reminder, another one of the loves at first (or second) listen of the album. Probably my current fav on my latest playlist, so you must enjoy that! Hoping to be my own good man for tonight's moon, I'll talk to you soon! Have a nice day/night/whatyouwant!

PS: Great video btw, think I'm gonna try and do the same next time I'm at the airport!!

Out alee - Hundred Waters

Out alee - Hundred Waters

I already introduced you to Hundred Waters last week with Down from the drafters! This is its sister song (for me), as they are the couple of songs which made me notice them and then fall in love with them (thanks again, KEXP)! Seeing them as twin brothers, I'd say Out alee is the first-born, as it's the first song of theirs I ever listened to. Anyway these two songs are so coming together in my mind that they are the opener and the closer of both my August playlists (KEXP versions on the first and, inverted, original album versions on the second). If you missed the other post (or if you didn't), by any chance go check this out and you won't be disappointed!

Reading time with pickle - Regina Spektor

After a very satisfying and a bit tiring day I am finally able to sit down and write a few lines for my blog! First of all, just for a change, the music: the song I have picked for today's post is one of the group I mentioned yesterday, more specifically the one by the artist I already knew, another album of whom I just started listening (yes, that's Regina Spektor). The "new" album is Begin to hope, while this tune is featured on her sophomore album Songs. I think I just fully realised the brilliance of the lyrics of this song, with Regina making eye contact with a solitary pickle in the supermarket and bringing it home while thinking about love and forgotten questions. Second of all, my nice day: I didn't touch my thesis BUT I did clean the shelves in my room, taking my "animals" and gadgets out on the balcony to get some air and getting rid of all the dust they caught lately, I got into the SPA-weekend atmosphere (it's my fav F1 GP so it's always a pretty special time of year for me, can't wait for the race tomorrow!), I had a great christmas dinner with my besties (yes, christmas. The weather almost looks like December, so why not?), american style with hamburgers, fries and chips (and a touch of Italia with home-made gelato). What more?

PS: Credits to mimi-merlot for the great, great pic! Genius! (http://mimi-merlot.deviantart.com/)

We float (live) - Tori Amos

We float (PJ Harvey cover) - Tori Amos

My goodness, so many things to post today! I woke up with a song in mind, than I listened to another one by the same singer that made sense too, then I found out about this one I'm posting and in the late afternoon I gave the first listen to an album by a singer I already knew and I went back to listen to a song of hers I knew already and wanted to post that one too! Anyway, hopefully the other girls are gonna find room in the next few days, but now I have to post the song that made my day!
First of all, happy birthday to Tori Amos, who turned 51 today (22 August, which is still in the US). Second of all, congrats to PJ Harvey for being awarded a honorary degree by Goldsmiths University, the ceremony will take place on the next 10th of September. And congrats to both for contributing to this awesomeness that took place during Tori's Lizard Lounge (her "cover set within the setlist" of this tour) in Durham!

Stevie - Kasabian

Stevie - Kasabian

On the wave of picking tunes that have already gone through the whole "get-to-know-it" phase, I'm posting this out of Kasabian's latest work. You might remember that in my last post I was complaining about 48:13: I didn't like it a lot, I felt like it didn't speak to me, it was kinda flat and so on... well, I'm not saying it's the best album of all times (not even Kasabian's best or this year's best) now, but I'll allow that my liking for it has sharply increased! There are quite a few songs I am feeling good about now and this is actually one of the hot spots of my latest playlist, the second one of August!

Coming of age - Foster the People

Coming of age - Foster the People

I feel like I am in that weird transition moment between an era and the next, I have finished listening to all of these good and great albums in the summer and now I'm moving to the next lot... it's a smooth transition though and I think it wouldn't hurt to post a few latecomers from the former group... one of them is this Coming of age, first single out of FTP's Supermodel and (currently) last song I have started to really like out of it. As I mentioned already a few days ago, I am not completely satisfied with this album but I think I took out of it everything I could and this is really the last drop of juice I can drink for now!
Say goodbye to FTP for a while as I don't see myself posting other stuff of theirs anytime soon, just enjoy this to the fullest!

Sea lion woman - Feist

Sea lion woman - Feist

A song or two per day is back! The holidays are getting close to the end for most of the workers and students (not for me luckily enough, if they ever started at all though...), so it's time to get fired back up to full power! For the post of today (yesterday... well, whatever) I chose a song form Feist's 2007 album 'The reminder'. As you might recall (or not) I am deeply in love with Feist latest album, Metals, which used to be the first and only one of hers I've listened to and one of the first posts of this blog was about a song on that one. The last day of my English time this year I was in Bristol doing shopping and, while at a records shop, I walked on an offer and among the CDs I bought was indeed The reminder, which I bought without ever listening to it before. Well, after a while I did (actually I am doing it) and one of the favourites is this Sea lion woman I am posting now. Besides the charm of the song in itself, the title of it me me smile as it reminds me of the Pokemon Dewgong and the first Pokemon's Elite Four Lorelei!

Instrumental #3 - PJ Harvey

I promise I'll be back in full form starting tomorrow! This is just to let you know that I am alive and well and that I took a few days of vacation from the blog in this dead period of the year! I'll be back with you tomorrow for a more hefty post! Good night (or whatever part of day is now where you are)!

PS: This is one of my favourite (instrumental) songs ever, so powerful, love it a lot!

Instrumental #3

Roar - Katy Perry

Roar - Katy Perry

Yesterday was spent travelling here and there, so I didn't find a moment to write a post, but here I am now! I am in the mountains, it's quite cold (last night and this morning... my goodness! Is it really August?), the weather is so and so (but at home it's even worse, they say), so I'm not completely disappointed! Moreover I got some time to spend with my family, which was nice!
Musically speaking I don't have any news, but i have plenty of stuff to post coming from my latest playlists. This is a song I got to know better when I was in Croatia: I first thought it was by Alicia Keys, but well... it isn't!

Down from the rafters (live on KEXP) - Hundred Waters

Down by the rafters (live on KEXP) - Hundred Waters

Tomorrow (actually today) I'm leaving for the mountains to spend Ferragosto (15th of August, it is a holiday in Italy, actually the one I hate the most as cities get empty, everything is closed and going away is super expensive and all the vacation-places are awfully crowded) with my grandparents. I'm not gonna have any Internet there (even though I might be able to use an Internet key, we'll see) and I didn't prepare any posts in advance, so we'll see if I'm gonna (a bit forcefully) take the first voluntary gap in the life of the blog (it's mid-August anyway, I think you all have better things to do than waste time reading my posts) or if I'm gonna be able to keep posting!


For now let's enjoy the present! I've been willing to post Hundred Waters since I discovered them by chance thanks to KEXP a few days ago. This is one of my two current favourite songs of them, really love it! Hope you'll enjoy!

Below my feet - Mumford & Sons

Below my feet - Mumford & Sons

Got on the late train again, well... important thing is that I'm here now! Today I have been hearing a (new?) song by Markus Mumford at the radio and my mother commented on it. That made me think about Mumford & Sons (actually I think I was already subconsciously noting that it had been a while since I last listened to them) and, well... they were the soundtrack of a very pleasing afternoon I spent at the pool, with some good sun and some good relax! Don't worry, the clouds did come in the late afternoon and a storm started raging out, but what can we do? This summer's like this, take it or... take it! Below my feet is one of the songs that made me think the most today, and I am now amazed to notice it's on Babel and not on their debut album Sigh no more, I really thought the opposite!

High - James Blunt

High - James Blunt

I was chatting with my dear friends in our Facebook group when one of them posted a song by 5 seconds of summer. I won't waste our time explaining the whole conversation, it is enough to say that it mostly revolves having doubts around the alleged heterosexuality of the band members (a buzz that is generated around practically every boy band, most often with reason)! But that's not what I wanted to talk about today. When I started playing a song posted by one of my friends (don't remember the title, sorry...) the intro sounded a lot like the one of this song, which of course stuck into my mind and, well... why not post it?

Under the weather - KT Tunstall

Under the weather - KT Tunstall

Hey guys, hope all is well by you. Here the crazy summer is going on, rampaging more than ever! Last night I was out with friends in the city center, when I left home the weather was nice with just some dark clouds on one side of the sky and, after two rain incidents in the last 10 days I knew I should have carried an umbrella around with me. I didn't. And, well... while we were out, almost ready to head back home, the worst tropical storm I have ever seen took off. It was raining like crazy (I'll just tell you I got my underpants wet being exposed no more than 10 seconds to direct rain), with (they told me) 607 lightnings per minute (most of them just over our heads). When I was heading home with my car (a 5 minute ride) I was literally surfing on the road, never seen anything like that (42 mm out water, it poured down, in about 2 hours methinks)! When I finally reached my building's garage, the power went out and I had to drive my car in the box in full dark, looked like the setting of a horror movie and I was expecting some weird monster or zombie to come out of the dark any moment! Thanks goodness I had my little cow key-holder making light and mooing!! When I got in the house, my parents were in bed awake and seconds later it started hailing as if people were smashing eggs on our windows. Of course it calmed down a second and then started all over again! I swear I have never ever seen something this messy in my whole life, not even in England! I think that I don't need to give any further explanation on why I chose this song for today...!

Someone to save you - OneRepublic

Someone to save you - OneRepublic

Here we are with the big news of today! I started writing my thesis! What? You don't care? Right, right... sorry that's not what I meant to write! Just joking, the big news coming from yesterday is that I have bought tickets for the OneRepublic gig in November, me and my bestie G. (and, who knows who else) are going to Assago on the 17th of November and I am really really excited! To celebrate this (and also the fact that I finally started writing my thingy for real) I'm posting one of my favourite OneRep's songs, out of their debut album (how's it possible that I haven't posted anything from that one yet?!) Dreaming out loud! Enjoy!

Take on me - A-ha

Take on me - A-ha

One of my Facebook friends posted a video I already saw a few years ago about 3 super-funny guys (Axis of awesome) showing how most successful pop-songs are built on the same 4 chords (watch the official video here). One of the songs they were playing is a 1986 song I just added to my August playlist. I immediately thought about posting it, then I changed my mind because there is another relevant music-related event that took place in my life today, but, given that I practically already wrote the post about A-ha, let's give them some room today and tomorrow (or maybe tonight if I have the time) I'll tell you more about what else is going on. I can give you an anticipation: it regards one of the people featured in my new blog heading!

Any which way - Scissor Sisters

Any which way - Scissor Sisters

I hope you guys like the new heading of the blog, I updated it a few days ago...! It took me some time to work it out, but I got rid of the introduction (sounded a bit cheesy) and I had to rearrange the length of the background image to make it as wide as the whole blog, so the idea was to add pictures of music people and albums I am in love with! I confess I am not 100% satisfied with how it turned out, but after all the work I think it's quite ok, it's gonna stay like this for a while! To stay in topic with what's up there, I wanna post a few things by people who are up there and who didn't have much room on the blog lately. The first one is the guy on the extreme right, guess you know who he is and which band he belongs to! And if you don't... well, you have to make it up!

Wasting my young years - London Grammar

Wasting my young years -
London Grammar

It's quite weird that the days when I forget to post are the ones I spend without leaving my home... anyway, aside from being a bad blogger, I already should have posted this two days ago (the sliding away of it is due to my not posting twice the day before yesterday), I set to post this yesterday but of course I forgot, so here it is now! This is another post generated by Lollapalooza 2014 live streaming: yes, I have watched London Grammar too and, well, I enjoyed it a lot! Did I have any doubts about it? Not really...! The funny thing is that this song was already in my drafts since probably two weeks ago, as it came to my mind during my day of wild inspiration. Realising I hadn't posted it yet, I immediately put it in queue. It kept on coming to my mind after that and, even if it was not the one I most enjoyed on Lolla, I did really like it (and I have already posted Sights, go watch the live performance of it anyway, it's awesooome).

Are you what you want to be? - Foster the People

Are you what you want to be? - Foster the People

In my best (and rarely realistic) intentions this would've been the second post of yesterday, as it made sense yesterday and I also would have had the time to write it down last night... but I didn't. Anyway the reason for this post lies behind me watching Foster the People on the livestream of Lollapalooza festival two nights ago (ok, it was late afternoon in Chicago but it was past 3 at night at my place!) and, well... I loved the performance! I admit I didn't totally love their second and currently latest album and my relationship with it can be perfectly summed up with the one I have with this song: loved the chorus at once (the same happened with a couple of songs on the album), while the rest of the song (/album) didn't really say anything to me for the first 5-6 listens. Now I got kind of used to it and I find it ok (as I do with few more songs on the album), but just ok not great, plus there are some other parts of the song (and especially some other songs on the album) that still have not caught me at all. So, a false step after the explosive love I had for Torches, their debut album. What saved the whole thing was indeed the watching them live at Lollapalooza: their performance has been great and super energizing, I was dancing like an idiot in front on my pc with my earplugs on in the middle of the night! The song that gained the most live for me has been this one, with the result that I have been singing the chorus in my mind (and not only) the whole day yesterday!

#sundayrevival I'll take the rain - R.E.M.

I'll take the rain - R.E.M.

I feel that I have been neglecting my sundayrevival concept in the last few weeks: between forgotten posts and lack of time to sit down and write something real, not taking into account all the amazing new stuff I am listening to, I didn't do justice to my sunday posts.
The choice of a post for a weird day (full rain to clouds to the sun out now and who knows what's gonna happen!) of this fake, rainy and autumny summer had to be something rain-related! And, well... this works perfectly. My relationship with R.E.M's 2001 album Reveal has been one of the hard and complicated kind (but with a happy end): I have been listening to it before I should have according to the chronological order I have used to approach their discography because my favourite song of theirs (Imitation of life) is on it and at first I found the album a very hard one to digest. Then things (slowly) evolved, song by song I started growing a liking and then fell in love, up to the point of it surely entering the top 5 of R.E.M. albums in my personal ranking! And I'll take the rain is no exception: it is one of the first songs I started liking for what I remember and, well... that's it! and what better song for this frigging weather? I can't do but take the (whole lot of) rain that's pouring down from the sky. Literally. Not to say that I'm not taking the rain that's always dropping down on my head figuratively... what else can I do?
As a magnet my parents gave me as a present says:

"Don't wait for the rain to stop, learn to dance in the rain"

Ultraviolence - Lana del Rey

Guess who is the singer featured in today's post? Wow, you're amazing! Not only that... it's also me being 'a bit' redundant. But, come on... it's a brand new video, it's the title track of what is probably gonna be my favourite album of the year, it's right on cue! The negative side is that I'm running out of Ultraviolence songs, the positive one is that it means I kinda posted almost all of them, at least all of the good ones! Back to the title track: it has been one of the first songs to find its way into me, together with the opening track and its predecessor on the album (Cruel world), which I have posted more than one month ago. Circumstances and loads of other (Lana and not Lana) songs I started to love in the meanwhile have brought me to not posting it until now, which (as I believe) has been a nice touch of destiny, as the official 'Ultra video' has been released yesterday. So, what better moment?

Ultraviolence - Lana del Rey

I love you the first time
I love you the last time
Yo soy la princesa
Comprende mis white lines?

Cause I'm your jazz singer
And you're my cult leader
I love you forever
I love you forever...




PS: I love the quite quote to 'Fucked my way up to the top' in the last refrain ("Lay me down tonight in my linen and curls, Lay me down tonight Riviera girls"), I think I subconsciously noticed it already but I took full conscience of it just now!

Bumblebeee - Kasabian

Bumblebeee - Kasabian

I have started listening to Kasabian's brand new album, 48:13, a few days ago and I must confess I have not been particularly amazed by it. Ok, I do like the opening single Eez-eh (by the way, I think I just got the meaning of the title today!), but I wouldn't go as far as saying I love it soo much. Let alone the rest of the album... after 4-5 plays none of the songs have been able to make a real impression on me. Ok, maybe they are growers, I should give it time, and I will. What I can't do is hide my current disappointment though. The light at the end of the 48:13 tunnel might be at arm's reach, as I have been having slightly more encouraging feelings. What I'm posting today is one of the 2-3 songs that have at least started ringing some kind of bell and, coincidentally, also the second single out of the album!