Summer Mixtape

This predominantly country mix was one of the soundtracks to my summer this year.  Many miles were traveled to this music, and many a game of scrabble played.

For Portia.

Little Mountain Town – The Unfaithful Ways
Wagon Wheel – Old Crow Medicine Show
Frankie’s Gun – The Felice Brothers
Love Vigilantes – Iron + Wine
South Tacoma Way – Neko Case
Helpless – Neil Young
Each Coming Night – Iron + Wine
The Ship Song – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Please Be Patient with Me – Wilco
Nobody’s Baby Now – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Across the Border – Bruce Springsteen
Look at Miss Ohio – Gillian Welch
New York Times – Simone Felice
Wings – Joan Baez (cover of Josh Ritter)
You and I Belong – Simone Felice
Bad Luck – Langhorne Slim
Locesick Blues – Hank Williams
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Hank Williams
Amanda – Waylon Jennings
I Ain’t Marching Anymore – Phil Ochs
Workin’ for the MTA – Justin Townes Earle
No Depression – Uncle Tupelo
Wichita Lineman – Glen Campbell
The Stable Song – Gregory Alan Isakov
Into My Arms – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

top live music moments of 2011

The National, Enmore Theatre

I got to see The National twice in 2011 – once at The Enmore Theatre and once at Harvest Festival (it was indeed, as promised, a civilised gathering).  Both shows, Matt Beringer (who seems to experience some pretty debilitating stage fright) walked into a crowd of adoring fans who swarmed around him.  I love this sort of giving from bands: the collaboration, the shared moment.  But the song that transfixed and transformed me was the acoustic version of Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks sung by Matt and the Desner brothers at the end of their Enmore concert.  All the very best of us string ourselves up for love.  Heartbreaking.

Sufjan Stevens, Sydney Opera House

Scoring box tickets to see Sufjan Stevens hours before he played his second show at the Sydney Opera House was possibly the best thing that happened to me in 2011.  I want to be able to dance like those girls when I grow up.  Sufjan was a gentleman, as always, and I loved the journey he took us on through the Age of Adz.  I hadn’t really thought of this album as a concept album, but all the science fiction themes and moments of personal connection and love really concreted when he explained how the album had been inspired by outsider artist Royal Robertson.  Impossible Soul was maybe the best 30 minutes of my life.  Sufjan had people up on their feet, the Concert Hall was about to become a dance party… and then there were balloons.  So many balloons.  Boy, we can do much more together.

Michelangelo and the Tin Star, The Vanguard (and The Old Bar in Melbourne)

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve saw this band in 2011.  They are a band for laughing with, and frenetic dancing is compulsory.  Mikelangelo has such great stage presence, and you completely lose track of which decade you are living in, let alone where in the world you are.  I want to dance to Balkan Beach Party right now. 

The Eastern, my Backyard (!)

My favourite New Zealand band - Country/Folk  mainstays of Lyttetton, The Eastern, were in Sydney in May, and were looking for a house concert to play.  So I set them up to play in my backyard!   40 people came along and enjoyed a great set, but it was a very cold night.  There was mulled wine to drink and green lanterns hanging from my washing line, and we all rugged up under quilts and duvets and enjoyed some tunes before Adam McGrath hauled everyone inside, squashed into the tiny kitchen of my victorian terrace, for the last two songs. 

Union S.S.C. went off, Jess Shanks dedicated one of her songs to me (I love her voice in the band, her songs are some of my favourites), and they brought the house down with us all crammed into the kitchen for Tiny Town.  I don’t think many people can say that they’ve had a banjo, guitar, violin, harmonica, double bass + 40 people in their kitchen, especially not for a rawkus song like Tiny Town.  Best night ever.

The Eastern are a very community minded band.  Adam has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met, and he collects amazing people wherever he goes.  But The Eastern’s heart rests in Lyttelton and they have done amazing things for the people of Lyttelton and Christchurch since the September 2010 and February 2011 earthquakes, playing too many house concerts, street parties and benefits to count.  These guys have such spirit and are a driving force behind The Harbour Union, a Lyttelton collective of musicians who released a stellar album to raise funds for post-earthquake Christchurch. 

The Eastern have a new double album out and are touring Australia in April/May 2012.  I’m hoping they’ll have time to play an awesome Newtown house party.

Okkervil River, The Metro

I hadn’t really connected with Okkervil River’s new album, I am Very Far, but they brought it at their Sydney Show in 2011.  What a stunning band.  Will Shef has such great stage presence and his songs just really get me.  I think I’m actually a little too close to this band to be able to articulate what I love about them so much.  Highlight song from the new album live was You Past Life as a Blast.  I think this band gets edgier with each new album, and seeing them live again helped me love their new music.  This is why we go see bands.  This is how we connect.  This is why we connect.

the goriest of fruit

Since getting my ice cream maker at Christmas, my holy grail has been to find fresh Blood Oranges so that I can make David Lebovitz’s Blood Orange Sorbet. When my sister was up from Melbourne I scoured all the fancy markets hoping I’d find them, but no luck. Sydney was Blood Orange dry.

This week though I found them finally – the Blood Orange Mecca – in a small greengrocer in the predominantly middle eastern community I work in in Sydney’s West.

I bought a dozen and couldn’t wait to take them home and juice them. This is me really excited later that night when I was about to start juicin’

I wasn’t prepared for how dark they were (such a great colour!), or their complex flavour. Like the sweetst, most alcoholic of oranges. They taste like concentrated sunshine. A friend of mine told me a story the day I bought them about growing up in Tamworth eating blood oranges straight from the tree as she walked home, and they really taste like that childhood summer walking. Such a treat!

I made such a mess juicing them, because the juice splattered everywhere as I did them by hand with my trusty white porcelain maxwell williams citrus peeler. It probably didn’t help that I felt the need to suck the last bit of juice our of every juiced half, either. I walked away with two cups of juice, but looking like I had also just walked off the set of an episode of True Blood! Totally worth it, though. Juice is sitting chilled in the fridge and I am going to churn it tomorrow morning. I’ll let you know how it goes and will try and take photos. The colour is going to be intense!

In other fun news, I scored tickets to see Sufjan Stevens at the Opera House a few weeks ago. They were late release tickets, so I only knew we were going a few hours before the gig started and had to get there straight from work. Which made it all the more special when I realised what an amazing performance we had been invited into. When people got up from their seats in the middle of Impossible Soul and started dancing, I realised what a great thing we were part of — and then balloons and glitter came raining down. In the Sydney Opera House! It was like a giant dance party, and it was so nice to see everyone enjoying themselves so much. I love a happy concert. I’m going to learn to dance like those girls, I swear.

January was just the most amazing month for live music, and 2011 has barely started!

some live music moments this year (in near chronological order)

I usually make a top five gigs list as the year winds up, but tonight I am thinking about those amazing, stupendously heartbreaking moments that you get sometimes with live music, the ones that you go to concert after concert searching for… and it seems like a nice gesture to list some of this year’s here.

Jon Rauhouse’s lap steel solo in the middle of Deep Red Bells, Neko Case at the Clarenden Hotel, Katoomba. You could have heard a pin drop in the nano-moment it ended.

Neko Case singing Middle Cyclone, thrice over. I never noticed this song until I heard it live, and now it haunts me (‘to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love’).

Andrew Bird’s Table and Chairs, Sydney Opera House. I was so happy I cried, goddammit.

El Gatillo, Calexico. Metro Theatre. Four guitars, and it just builds and builds. So evocative. It was just at the Metro, but it felt like the open road. It felt like everywhere (but mostly Arizona…. but also… everywhere). And that whistling…

There’s this song that Catherine Traicos sings, a cover of a song written by her friend Marcus. It kills me every time…

Emily Lubitz’s covers of Famous Blue Raincoat, Suzanne and Hallelujah at Monsieur Camembert’s Leonard Cohen Birthday Bash at Notes last night. That girl has such an amazing voice. I will never have those moments back. I wish I could hear her sing each song again.

And every time I went to a gig with Dave this year and caught him smiling. Queuing with him at late, free Spiegeltent shows. Seeing him so happy at The Royal Crown Review and Qwirz. Him helping me buy my beloved Andrew Bird tshirt (my one and only concert tee). Watching him, poised and pensive, whenever he photographed. The times his arms were around me. And every time I saw him smile. And those smiles. Those smiles.

to ride the bus to the outskirts…

                           (of the fact)

                                                          (that I need love)

My friend Rowena and I caught the train up to Katoomba on Sunday afternoon.  We arrived to dry heat and the humming of cicadas at high altitude, and immediately found a nice shady, spot in the garden where we could sit on the grass and drink gin and tonics.

Which was perfect… the cicadas, the moments that you spend with women which lead you to realise that you could have/should have been childhood friends, all of it…

Because the rest of the evening was spent with Neko Case.

Neko and her band played a very small intimate show at the Clarendon Hotel in Katoomba on Sunday night.  And we were seated right at the front of the room, only about a meter from the stage.  It was so wonderful being able to watch Jon Rauhouse on the banjo and lap steel up close, and he told a hilarious story about being mistaken for a miner by a 14 year old boy on the plane over.   The banter between the band members was just lovely, as always.  They know how to make a crowd feel at home, even if they themselves are jet lagged or jittery. 

I was just generally enchanted and exhausted and brilliantly happy.  The whole evening was wonderful.  Even the opening act, Jordie Lane, was a revelation. 

Listening to music that I love so dearly live always leaves me a little emotionally raw.  So I am a little ragged around the edges today… but am going for another dose tonight at the Recital Hall nonetheless.

I am holding out for Star Witness.

Home, on a shady street, then library-bound

It feels good being back in Sydney.  Beth woke me up this morning (I broke my alarm clock the other night, so no more sheep and crickets in the morning) and we got a coffee at Scrambled and then went… fabric shopping!

I will soon have a beautiful new summery little black dress, minimalist, with the only embellishment being the construction of the garment itself – my favourite kind.

I was wearing a very cute parisian outfit this morning, a little black skirt and patent black flats with a stripey blue and white top.  I ruined this outfit before our day had really even started, however, by spilling coffee all down my front.  Never take the lid off your coffee in the car, ever.  A rookie mistake from a card-carrying pedestrian.

So after my delightful morning off (which also involved listening to Regina Spektor’s Fidelity on repeat, a delicious white peach, and reading Bolaño in the hammock with my cat for company), I felt entitled to wear my new, awesome Andrew Bird tee to work this afternoon.  Apparently this breaks a cardinal rule of concert shirt etiquette, because you are not supposed to wear a new concert tee for at least two weeks after you have attended said show. 

I went to see Andrew Bird play in the Concert hall at Sydney Opera House on Sunday night with Dave, after flying back from NZ that morning.  It was such a delightful show.  Tables and Chairs made my cry it was so good.  I didn’t have enough cash to buy anything at the merch stand, but I really wanted one of the tees, because they came in my favourite red and had a bird that is also an LP on the front, that reminded me of Charley Harper’s birds.  Dave was remarkably sweet and found the ten extra dollars in schrapnel that I needed to make up the price.  I adore that boy.

And that, my friends, is the extended story behind today’s library-girl outfit.  I don’t care if the hipsters say it’s too soon.  What’s so wrong with commemorating a wonderful evening?  Life is great.  A friend told me last night that he could tell that I was well by my syntax, and it’s true!  It feels good to be back at work.  Everything is wonderful.  This is going to be the year of productive and awesome.