Far

You know when you love an artist, but you haven’t liked them long enough that you’ve been around for a new CD release? You download/buy/steal everything that they did up until that point and anxiously await the new.

And then somehow their new stuff just isn’t good enough to live up to your expectations?

It’s happened to me so many times and so I was worried about the new Regina Spektor CD, Far. What if I hated it? Regina Spektor, to me, is God.

Luckily, I wasn’t the least bit disappointed. It came out yesterday and it’s just as wonderful as I wanted it to be.

Man of a Thousand Faces

Listening to Regina Spektor is an intense experience for me. Like reading a good book, it takes me time to think about it and process it. I once listened to Braille on repeat for an entire day. I’ve been known to put Samson on repeat too.

So far, my favourite of her new songs are Calculations and One More Time with Feeling. But I rediscover Regina songs, new and old, all the time.

Hold on, one more time with feeling.
Try it again, breathing’s just a rhythm.
Say it in your mind until you know that the words are right,
This is why we fight.

I’m too sexy for this song

After my posts about Old Soul Songs and Travelling Songs, I’ve decided another category needs to be added: Sexy Songs.

By Sexy Songs I don’t mean those trashy scantily clad, barely veiled come-on songs that people like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson specialize in. No, I mean songs whose lyrics are truly sexy. Let me start with, of course, a Regina Spektor song.

Samson came to my bed
Told me that my hair was red
He told me I was beautiful and came into my bed
Oh I cut his hair myself one night
A pair of dull scissors and the yellow light
And he told me that I’d done alright
and kissed me till the morning light, the morning light
and he kissed me till the morning light

-Samson, Regina Spektor

Samson is quite possibly one of the sexiest songs I’ve ever heard, though at first it seems to be mostly sad. At first you think it’s just about love, but it’s about more than that. Like the story it references, it’s about disarming someone with sex (or love, or both). Mostly, it’s about that weakness that is such a part of being in love, the vulnerability. It’s about why someone like Samson loves someone like Delilah, and why she betrays him. And why he loves her still. It’s about even the greatest hero being weakened by love. And sex. I thought this song was innocent at first, but it quickly became obvious that it’s not at all.

I remember when the days were long
and the nights when the living room was on the lawn.
Constant quarreling the childish fits
and our clothes in a pile on the ottoman.
All the slander and double speak were only foolish attempts
to show you did not mean,
anything but the blatant proof was your lips touching mine in the photobooth.

-Photobooth, Death Cab for Cutie

I’ve mentioned at least once before that I think Death Cab for Cutie makes the sexiest music. There’s something about the soft nostalgic tone to their songs that makes me want to make out with people under trees in suburban parks, that makes me want to kiss someone in a photobooth, go skinny dipping and have sex in the back seat of a car. Death Cab for Cutie is first loves and fumbling hands and sweet kisses and it makes my heart warm. Also, kissing someone in a photobooth remains one of my life’s goals, no matter how 16 it sounds.

Kiss me too fiercely, hold me too tight
I need help believing you’re with me tonight
My wildest dreamings could not foresee
Lying beside you with you wanting me

And just for this moment, as long as you’re mine
I’ve lost all resistance and crossed some borderline
And if it turns out it’s over too fast
I’ll make every last moment last
As long as you’re mine

- As Long As You’re Mine, Wicked

There’s a lot that’s sexy about Wicked. And not just visions of Taye Diggs as Fiyero. This song is the ultimate meaningful one night stand song, I guess. It captures not the love but the intense physical attraction of Fiyero and Elphaba. Because the whole show Elphaba is supposed to be ugly, wicked. And here, Fiyero not only loves her but wants her, despite her not having a “blithe smile, lithe limb” and “gold hair with a gentle curl” like Glinda.

Where I go, when I go there,
No more whispering anymore-
Only hymns upon your lips;
A mystic wisdom, rising with them, to shore…
Touch me - just like that.
And that - oh, yeah -now, that’s heaven.
Now, that I like.
God that’s so nice.
Now lower down, where the figs lie…

[...]

Touch me - all silent.
Tell me - please - all is forgiven.
Consume my wine.
Consume my mind.
I’ll tell you how, how the winds sigh…
Touch me - just try it.
Now there - that’s it - God that’s heaven.
Touch me.
I’ll love your light.
I’ll love you right…
We’ll wander down, where the sins lie…

-Touch Me, Spring Awakening

Okay, so there isn’t much about Spring Awakening that isn’t sexy. I mean, it’s about sex. And they have sex on stage. Honestly, this show is very sexy (is it wrong that I think that considering they’re supposed to be teenagers…?). All the same, this song is beautiful. With the underlying chorus that the girls sing, while the boys fantasize. It’s enchanting and definitely captures that confusingly intense physical urge of teenagehood that the show is all about.

I’ll finish with one verse from one of my favourite Something Corporate songs that inspired this entire post:

But the driveway’s clear
You pray for silence
Step into my quiet violence
She smiles, taking off her shirt
Standing still, this world moves faster
On her back my next disaster
You’re gonna get what you deserve

-Letters to Noelle, Something Corporate

“She smiles, taking off her shirt” is definitely one of the sexiest lines yet. I don’t know, why exactly, but it seems as if it’s capturing an intimate memory in the writers (Andrew’s…?) relationship with ‘Noelle.’ You know that one perfect moment you think about for years after the relationships over? I think that smile is it for him.

changing all my strings, I’m gonna write another traveling song…

I’m going on a road trip next week. I’m going to drive down 8 hours to visit Fae, and I’m making a playlist. A eight hour playlist, for my iPod (yay Aux input!). So I thought this a really good time to write about my love for Traveling Songs. Which I promised when I wrote about Old Soul Songs. This is going to be hard because I always want to spell it “travelling,” so I’m going to have to spell check the hell out of this…

The above quoted is one of my all time favourite songs, Cathedrals by Jump Little Children. It’s so beautiful, and completely describes how I feel in my life right now, why I can’t stay in one place.

From I Will Follow You Into the Dark by Death Cab for Cutie. There are so many Death Cab songs about traveling that I adore. Okay, I adore most Death Cab songs. I think they’re so sexy. Yes, sexy music. It’s true. Anyone who wants to make out with me need only play me Death Cab.

No music post would be complete without a little Something Corporate, the band that inhabits every atom of my soul. Another line of this song says “I met a girl who kept tattoos for homes that she had loved.” I’ve always wanted to be that girl. Because I believe you can call a lot of places home. I also love tattoos and have two. Another Something Corporate song is where the url for this blog came from

Globes and Maps, by Something Corporate. Because even if the songs are about how sad and lonely traveling is, I love them. Because it makes me think of airplanes and bus rides and new things and going places. Anywhere but here.

Like a lot of twenty-somethings I’m just looking for the next place to call home.

It’s not enough, I’m sorry….

Old soul songs

I was at my favourite local band’s EP release concert on Friday night. Captain Firebutton is Kaitlyn’s brother Cody’s band. I’ve known Cody since I was two, and so I’ve seen pretty much every band he’s ever been in. Finally, about two years ago, he joined an awesome one. I’m one of their biggest fans and I’ve been to almost every show.

One of their new songs is called Old World, and I loved it right away. Why?

The word “Babylon.”

I have this love for what I call old soul songs* - songs that reference history at all, but especially in reference to love as old as time.

Holy Roman, by the Get Up Kids. One of my favourite Get Up Kids songs.

Thick as Thieves by Natalie Merchant is probably one of my favourite songs by her, but Ophelia is another great example.

And to sum it up, It’s All Been Done by the Barenaked Ladies. There are a hundred more I could quote, but I think you’ve got the point. I have no idea why I feel this way. It could be my love for history. It could be that at heart I’m a hopeless romantic who believes in the notion of the Origin of Love and that we have soulmates, stretching past through time. Maybe it’s just that all of these songs are beautiful.

Soon, I’ll tell you about my similar love for Leaving Songs.

*Yes, that’s a reference to Bright Eyes