#sundayrevival Pretty good year - Tori Amos

Pretty good year - Tori Amos

I don't know why I found myself with this song in my head this afternoon, but I just did. I suppose I triggered Tori myself by suggesting her music to a friend recently, but I suppose that's not all of it...! Anyway I guess that, notwithstanding my generally bad mood of the last few days/weeks (I need a holiday), a Sunday with Tori can never be a totally bad Sunday. Maybe it's a bliss of another kind...!

#sundayrevival A thousand miles - Vanessa Carlton

A thousand miles - Vanessa Carlton

A couple weeks ago I went to karaoke with some friends, a pretty fun night, and one of the songs we sang all together was of course a teenage classic of ours, 'A thousand miles'. The song has been coming up often ever since, with some of us singing it off the top of our heads from time to time; this happened today too during our hike to the Lion Rock peak, a steep walk up a tall hill which rewarded us with a mystical view of nothingness (we were surrounded by the white of clouds), and of course we also got soaked. It's been a nice and enjoyable experience anyway! The celebrations for the Chinese New Year are going on, but they are past the climax now, so I'm getting ready to start next semester!

Taxi ride - Tori Amos

Taxi ride - Tori Amos

Don't know why, tonight I felt the need to watch/listen to some live performance of Tori Amos (if you ever need a reason for that feeling), and thanking her incredible productivity, a quick and easy YouTube search brought me to find what I was looking for. It's been incredibly soothing and I will forever be grateful to the forces of the universe that have brought me to discover her... well, more than 7 years ago. Feels like forever. Anyway, I've found this beautiful live performance she did for NPR in 2012 and have been absolutely delighted by it, seeing how she came back to near-to perfect shape in that time frame after long years of decadence. I've particularly enjoyed 'Taxi ride' from that live, it's a version I probably like even better than the album one, so I'm gonna share it with you now, you can look at (and especially listen to) the difference if you care about it enough!

Call me - Elli de Mon

It's been a while since I last listened to Elli de Mon, an Italian blues/rock singer-songwriter I got to know last summer as she opened a concert I've been to. I really liked her music and bought her debut album online, an album I have greatly enjoyed! I don't know why (the incipit of) this song has come back to my mind 5 minutes ago, but it did! And I forgot how I love this funky blues beat, it really takes me back to my beautiful field research adventure in US Mid-west a few years ago... great, great times! Click on the link hereunder to go to a page where you can listen to the song!

Call me - Elli de Mon

Townie - Mitski

Townie - Mitski

"I'm not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be."
Mitski is another one of my latest discoveries, her music is strangely peculiar and standard at the same time: I have a feeling like her melodies are not particularly original, yet when they are put together, she has a kind of peculiar effect, I don't know how to explain it in words, you have to listen to her songs and try to understand!
"I want a love that falls as fast as a body from the balcony."
It's also weird how many songs I'm finding lately whose lyrics perfectly match with my current thoughts and lifestyle... it happened already with a few artists (namely Florence + the Machine), but lately I've got the feeling that more and more songs have been written related to feelings very much akin to mine right now!
"And I've tried sharing, and I've tried caring [...] and change, change, change is gonna come but when, when, when?"
Now I'm ready to start this lazy Saturday with a lunch with one of my university friends, than I'm gonna go back home and see what to do with my life next week!
"I'm gonna be what my body wants me to be!"

#liveweek Satisfaction (live @ Brit Awards) - Björk & PJ Harvey

Satisfaction (live @ Brit Awards) - Björk & PJ Harvey

By now we're in the second half of this #liveweek, which has been going quite well up to now! Yet I wanna take it to the next level with these last few posts. This is a song that immediately came to my mind when I thought about the whole idea of a set of blogposts about live performances and I feel I cannot leave it out. So, the recipe is quite simple: take a great and underestimated singer/songwriter from England; take a crazy singer/songwriter from Iceland who is ages ahead her current time; take a glorious rock song by the Rolling Stones; mix it all together and... voilà! I dare you to find a 4-minute music video more powerful than this one in its simplicity!

Oceani deserti - Carmen Consoli

Oceani deserti - Carmen Consoli

Sorry if I disregarded my blog for a few dozens of hours, but I did forgo most of my daily activities too in these past couple of days! Yesterday has been the usually "checking-out" day, so baggage and stuff in hand as usual (they called me "tortoise" because it's like as if I live carrying around my house!), went to work and then to the main office of my firm to hand over some papers and then ran through to Padova to attend Carmen's concert as part of a festival next to the football stadium of the city! I got there at about 7.30 and the opening act (very enjoyable, maybe you'll see her here soon) didn't start until 9, meaning the real concert kicked-off around 10 and ended around midnight; then just the time to find a couple of Blablacar travel partners and on our way to home (via Milan). All in all, got home at around 3 in the morning (which, I know, I'm also staying up to today too), left my stuff and went to (read and) sleep. And today eating lunch at grandparents' and then moving out to the other grandparents' in the countryside... well, it's been a full couple of days! And now home alone, I have just been watching some telefilms and reading some manga, and then went on to colouring if the rest was not enough, without realizing that I had to take care of my blog and of my Japanese studies too... so here I am! The concert last night has been pretty good, lots of niche songs I wasn't really ready for, but I enjoyed it anyway, Carmen is a great songwriter and performer, very inspiring! She played almost all of my favs out of the latest album, this one being one of them. The song is about a woman complaining because her man is not satisfied with just being with her, he goes on "like a pioneer looking for new frontiers of infidelity", she loves him but realises this is too much for her, she wonders why he doesn't feel the natural pulse of being just with her, what he wants and who he is... and finally says goodbye and goes. Very deep and inspiring lyrics (as usual), with a beautiful touch of irony!

Sintonia imperfetta - Carmen Consoli

Sintonia imperfetta - Carmen Consolicarme

Don't hate me for that, but I would feel bad not sharing a few more songs from Carmen's new album, which I really really like! If everything goes right, I will go see her play live on friday night near Padua while driving back home, I just have to make sure I'll be able to get my hands on a ticket, but I don't think the event is sold out! I'm really thrilled at the idea, as she's one of the few Italian singers I really wish to see live, and this would be a great chance! This song I'm sharing with you, whose title could be translated in English as 'Imperfect harmony', is about a relationship of a married woman with her husband, with her singing how he just lays on the sofa, sleeping in front of football matches and she has to take care of his mother, the dog, cooking and stuff. She recalls how she was charmed by him when they first met, but she's regretting her decision, complaining with her younger self, who should've realized immediately what kind of men she was getting engaged with, the one she know is planning of leaving.

La signora del quinto piano - Carmen Consoli

La signora del quinto piano - Carmen Consoli

You know I don't often post Italian (or any non-English, for that matter) music, but sometimes I really feel the need to, especially when I think it's really valuable. Carmen is one of my favourite Italian singer/songwriters and actually one of the few I listen to. She has also toured abroad and is somehow known abroad too, especially in the East Coast. Anyway, she recently released her latest album, her first in 5 years, and even if I didn't have that high an expectation about it, I must confess it really is a great work! In many songs she went back to the sound of her previous works, the lyrics are (as usual) very deep and meaningful, whipping but not too nerdy. This song in particular has struck me, and I just found out today that she is going to re-record it with Elisa, Gianna Nannini and other famous Italian singers in favour of a campaign against violence on women. The song lyrics are very peculiar and deliver an important message in a funny way, as only her can: the lady living on the 5th floor (i.e. la signora del quinto piano) is living with a piton in her home to defend herself from her ex-husband that keeps showing up in front of the building with a hammer. After she went to the police to report the fact, they told her there's no reason to be scared. In the next verse we find out the piton as escaped after eating the Chihuahua dog of the doorwoman and 3 weeks after the escape they find out that the lady has been buried alive in the bathroom wall, but the police-men still repeat that there's no reason to be scared...!

Parole forti - Nathalie

Well, today I'm gonna do something pretty unusual for this blog, i.e. I'm gonna feature a song in Italian. Yes, Italian is my mother-tongue, Italy my home country but I must say I'm not a huge fan of Italian music (at all). There are very few IT singers I really love and Nathalie is one of them: she is a half Italian / half Belgian singer-songwriter who won the Italian version of X-Factor in 2010. Unlike most of the "talents" taking part to the program, she was already a professional singer and composer (she was the only competitor presenting a fresh new song written by herself for the finals). Her pop/rock style is inspired by some of the great female singer/composers such as Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell and PJ Harvey. She sings in Italian, English and even French sometimes; recently she released her second album and this one is coming directly out of it!