Playing for keeps

[via, here]

Someone in my dictionary's up to no good, I can never find the very, special words I should

GRIN MAGIC'S FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF THE 00s

All these end of the decade lists popping up around various corners of the internet have made me want to jump on this retrospective band wagon. Because it would be impossible for me put my favourites in order I've decided to give a song and album with a short write up about why I love it, in no particular order, approximately one a week till the end of the year.



Animal Collective's Feels is pretty perfect, it's all real emotions like longing and heartbreak and awe shining through in a way that I've never really heard in any other music. Animal Collective have this uncanny ability to express every good, bad, fucked up spectrum of human emotion until it gets to a point where I'm floudering around looking unrecognisably at myself. I really don't know how they do it. Probably just by being unpretentious and generally cool guys who, you know, get. it.

Animal Collective - Banshee Beat

[myspace]
[buy]

PAVEMENT COME TO AUSTRALIA IN MARCH

This is kind of amazing, since when does Australia get anything before America/Europe? Auckland gets Pavement's first show in something like a decade?

Pitchfork has dates but Brisbane people will want to be at the Tivoli March 10th.

My head's just one big fuzz

egon schiele

RatTail - Go Green (demo)

Late last year, the day I finished school in fact, my grandmother died. My grandma was very important to my family, and to my dad, as his dad had died when he was 14, leaving him, his mother and younger sister. She lived in Tooting, London, where my family and I had moved from to Brisbane when I was nine. We were happy in the sun of Australia but every now and again we'd feel an aching need for grey days, cold noses, warm houses and the people we'd left behind. When Grandma got sick we'd gone straight to see her and look after her. But I had to come back early to finish my exams, this song reminds of waiting on a balcony outside Grandma's room, wondering how on earth to say goodbye, trying desperately not to cry. It reminds me of weeks of loneliness and my empty house and maths equations and ink stained fingers and wanting to reach down and telephone line and touch.

[site]

I tried to forget you, I tried to forget you

GRIN MAGIC'S FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF THE 00s

All these end of the decade lists popping up around various corners of the internet have made me want to jump on this retrospective band wagon. Because it would be impossible for me put my favourites in order I've decided to give a song and album with a short write up about why I love it, in no particular order, approximately one a week till the end of the year.


Electrelane's No Shouts, No Calls is a quiet achievement by an all girl group from Brighton, one of my favourite places in the world. It's not production-slick, grit free or perfect but to me, it glows with real feelings and melodies. Filled with heart felt harmonies, call and response vocals, splatterings of organs and occasional raucuous guitar meanderings it's definitely one of my favourite albums of the last ten years.





Electrelane - Saturday

You are quivering with excitement over some new project you have, probably an amplifier that sounds like it's fallen down three flights of stairs and pictures that are like looking through a dirty windscreen with a sunset behind it. Cute, I say, squatting down with you and rolling my eyes, hiding my grin in my sleeve. You, self aware and brazen, push me over and pull on my pigtails. I remember this while brushing the dirt off of a creased photo I found of you and me in the shit I cleared out of my car, with a silver spoon, bills, so many empty cigarette packets and a old, ratty jacket.

[myspace]

[buy]

But it's like we weren't made for this world... though I wouldn't really wanna meet someone who was

GRIN MAGIC'S FAVOURITE ALBUMS OF THE 00s

All these end of the decade lists popping up around various corners of the internet have made me want to jump on this retrospective band wagon. Because it would be impossible for me put my favourites in order I've decided to give a song and album with a short write up about why I love it, in no particular order, approximately one a week till the end of the year.

A dizzying triumph of self inspection, soul wrenching terror, longing and raw emotional vulnerability, Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? is one of my favourite albums from the last ten years. Kevin Barnes pushes all he can onto this record, the darkest and most desperate parts of human emotion, the battle with the chemistry of the brain and a grapple for control whether through fanatical escapism, funky grooves or head long, hysterical, self loathing. This album sparkles in the most suprising ways, always richly melodic and abounding in lyricals gems it seems to demand attachment as it's as hard to ignore this kind of emotive power as much as it is to ignore great pop music.

of Montreal - We Were Born Mutants Again With Leofling

'...our particles are in motion...'

[buy]

Smiles are for private

?/the year in pictures/?

The Mantles - Don't Lie

[from Don't Lie 7"]

[myspace]

[site]

You... are... the... most... luminous... object... in... the... universe...

[here, via]

The xx - Night Time

Could my self consciousness finally have manifested in a pair of staples between my lips? From your looks and my inactivity and almost crippling silence, I think so. There's a whirlwind around me, coerced confusion, but thoughts heavy like dully shining rocks in my gut ground me, keep those staples, and my lips, firmly together like you're dark blood running deeper. You're looking at me questioningly and anxiously from the corner of your eye as I'm wondering about coke or alcohol or fuck, a pair of pliers. Sidle up next to me, just a hand on my arm. I wonder when exactly it got this bad.

[myspace]

[buy it]

Candy girl

Trailer Trash Tracys - Candy Girl (demo)

I've never heard music sound so much like a curling strand of smoke under street lights walking home by yourself. The weather has started to get hot again and once again we can't walk down the street without breaking a sweat. My hair curls widely at approaching storms, we listen to music through crackly speakers and the leather of my couch makes me sweaty as we get lazier and lazier. Night falls and it's hard to believe my heart aches still ache in this balmy air.

[website with studio stream]

[myspace]

Surely we'll be alright

To go away and not look back

[the satorialist]

Atlas Sound - Walkabout (w/Panda Bear)

So it's not really that much of a secret that I'm a fan of Atlas Sound, I'm sure even Bradford realises it, after basically falling to his feet in worship (not really) when I met him at the Brisbane Deerhunter show last month. I'm also a massive Animal Collective and Panda Bear fan, Person Pitch, still hasn't really left my regular listening since it's release over 2 years ago. So I was appropriately excited when I heard about this collaboration, which will appear on the new Atlas Sound LP Logos (which is out on October 10th on Kranky).

This song does not disappoint at all, sounding as if it would've been equally at home on Person Pitch and many laid back, bliss filled summer evenings, I've had this on repeat since I first listened about two hours ago. It sounds like a fresh start, a familiar deep breath and a high five between possibly my two favourite musicians.

My best friend loves to start her night with her hair up. Her golden locks start up in a loose bun until she deems it the 'right time' to let her hair down (usually third or fourth beer) she shakes her hair out and it curls everywhere around her grinning face, flicking her cigarette with blue painted fingernails and bopping along to the tune.

[myspace]

By the way, Brisbane, as you may have heard Animal Collective are playing the Tivoli on December 10th! I'm beyond excited! I'll see you there.

Dark bong

[via]

When I said I didn't love you, I told a lie

Camera Obscura - Honey In The Sun

This song kinda came out of nowhere to become one of my favourites of the year.

It's easy joy in a hopeless situation, a shrug, tightly tied shoelases and a voice as clear as a bell.

[buy]

[myspace]

ALL DAZE EVRY DAYZ

[lost]

Best Coast - Sun Was High (So Was I)

I'm letting you drive for some reason. I've turned right around in the passengers seat, slung my bare legs across the bench seat, lean against the glove box to better look at you. As the engine splutters I accuse you of not looking after anything properly. You just laugh as you pull onto the longest, widest, emptiest coast road, put your foot right down on the accelerator and your eyes catch mine, wind whipping your dark hair around your face. I grin and nudge you, then let my head fall back onto the dashboard, watching the (two, maybe three) clouds through the windscreen, watching the UV try to get through my sunglasses.

thanks Rose Quartz

[myspace]

So little time

BRISBANE

I have a spare ticket to see Ghostface Killah tonight at the Hi Fi Bar at West End for $40, holla at me if you want it. Email me (jess.grinmagic@gmail.com) your phone number and we'll sort shit out.

This will be a fucking awesome show and not to be missed! For ten dollar cheaper than entry price. C'monnnn.