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Drunken Library’s Album of the Month – December

DRUNKEN LIBRARY’S ALBUM OF THE MONTH

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Wild Animals by Trampled By Turtles

December marks our retreat back to snowy wilderness roots – so listening to this traditional bluegrass/folk-rock band originally from northern Minnesota is the perfect music to stream through your headphones.

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The music, if you are really listening, will actually flip your heart upside down because it’s dripping with unembellished truth. Once you’re over the biting heart ache that is evoked from the echoing howls in “Hollow” and “Ghosts,” you’ll experience extreme gratitude for the musical skill of the winter craftsmen that created this. You will breathe fuller and love deeper. Raw is the best word to describe its lyrics. Lugubrious (look it up) is the word to describe its tone.

“I’m a monster just like you – I’m an animal, it’s true.”

Listening suggestion: Get out your paint set, find a blank canvas, and turn on “Winners.”

Follow them http://trampledbyturtles.com.

See their amazing live NPR Tiny Desk Concert with more songs.

After listening to their music, you’ll feel like you’ll make it through the darkest and coldest nights. You will feel like you found everything you need “buried deep beneath the leaves.”

 

Drunken Library’s Album of the Month – November

DRUNKEN LIBRARY’S ALBUM OF THE MONTH

Because we hesitated to highlight an October album – we are featuring two for the month of November.

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Our first recommendation for the month is The Fight by the french duo Lilly Wood & The Prick.

If you’ve heard the Robin Schulz Remix of “Prayer in C” then you’re already familiar with the female vocals of Lilly Wood & The Prick. Nili Hadida & Benjamin Cotto create a cool electro-pop vibe with a twist of funk in The Fight. Unlike popular pop, this has experimental alternative flavors that indicate stale feelings of teen angst. On every track there’s jamming instrumentals paired with brooding contemplative lyrics, like “I’ve been trying to get myself to be quiet / I’ve been trying to get myself better.” The band sings “give me back my youth, my strength, my happiness” as if the album ought to bring them back to a happier place. As avid music listeners and fans, we nod along swaying our hips because we agree with truth when we hear it.

“If you expect too much of things and people in general you can only be disappointed.”

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Listening suggestion: Play on vinyl at a holiday get-together with warm beverages and tinseled decorations.

Our second recommendation is Golden Echo by Kimbra.

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Kimbra caught worldly attention first with her duet in Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Now on her own album she comes out with surrealist and transcendental vibrations that get you lost in a whole new world. We get lost in her beyond catchy tunes that are just littered with funk influence. You will be transported back to the “heat of the moment” in “Teen Heat” and you’ll feel like “tearing up the streets” in “90s Music”. Our favorite track is (so hard to choose) “Waltz Me to the Grave” because of the three part trip it triggers. The slowed tempo with the echoing high-pitched chorus really dances you “down to the ground.” You’ll enter a place of “love and disarray” as you drown in a psychedelic high from Kimbra’s metallic voice.

Listening suggestion: Blast “Madhouse” during that time between slipping out of the shower and sneaking out of the house.

“Night Text” – Sarah Maclay

NIGHT TEXT

Let’s imagine I’m translating something to you–
you, asleep, or sleepless and naming
that third place–between–

with the tips of your tapering fingers–

I don’t know the language.
It bends.

In the mind–in that strangely shared chamber–
that is, I mean, in your hands,

where you show me those scenes of confusion and flight
with such intimacy, and don’t know it–

even sans color, sans liquor, sans shape,
we are twins. Fraternal. Unknown.

The moon, invasive, huge,
lunging in through the windows,
makes no exceptions–

It’s true: it will never happen / you’d be surprised.

“One Art” – Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing father, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing ins’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

–Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Excerpt from The Giver – Louis Lowry

“Comfortable?” he asked, and she nodded, her eyes closed. Jonas squeezed cleansing lotion onto the clean sponge at the edge of the tub and began to wash her frail body.

Last night he had watched his father bathed the newchild. This was much the same: the fragile skin, the soothing water, the gentle motion of his hand, slippery with soap. The relaxed, peaceful smile on the woman’s face reminded him of Gabriel being bathed.

And the nakedness, too. It was against the rules for children or adults to look at another’s nakedness; but the rule did not apply to newchildren or the Old. Jonas was glad. It was a nuisance to keep oneself covered while changing for games, and the required apology if one had by mistake glimpsed another’s body was always awkward.

He couldn’t see why it was necessary.

He liked the feeling of safety here in this warm and quiet room; he liked the expression of trust on the woman’s face as she lay in the water unprotected, exposed, and free.

Drunken Library’s Album of the Month – September

September marks the end of beachy hakuna matata tunes to a moody “wake me up when September ends” attitude. Autumn opens a realm of transition into winter that will be best paired with FKA twigs’ album LP1.

“I know it hurts, you know, I’d put you first . . .”

Tahliah Barnett’s sound is like a “little lovely gun” dreamily searching for any reason loss or pain has come her way. With lyrics like “so lonely trying to be yours / when you’re looking for so much more,” FKA twigs will carry you through your recent break-up, an unexpected change, or any blue day in September.

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Also check out an earlier single “Water Me.” http://wwwater.me

Excerpt from The Bone Clocks – David Mitchell

Through the thorny roses, between swaying bushes, down the dusty lawn, I run. I run like I’ve never run. The sun’s in my face and the wall’s not far. Halfway there, when I get to the trellis thing, I look back; he’s not running after me, like I dreaded, just standing there, a few steps from Ian and Heidi, who’re still lying dead so he’s letting me go–why who cares why he’s a mental psycho so run run run run run run, but, run, but, but, run, but . . . But I’m slowing, slowing, how, why, what, my heart’s straining like crazy, but it’s like the brake and accelerator are being pressed at the same time but whatever’s slowing down isn’t inside me, it’s not poison, it’s outside me, it’s time slowing up or gravity pulling harder, or air changing to water, or sand, or treacle . . . I have dreams like this–but I’m awake, it’s daytime, I know I’m awake . . . But, impossibly, I’ve stopped, like a statue of a runner, one foot raised for the next stride that’ll never come. This is mad. Infeckingsane. It occurs to me I ought to try to scream for help, it’s what people do, but all that comes out is this grunt spasm noise . . .

. . . and the world starts shrinking back towards the bungalow, hauling me along with it, helplessly.

Drunken Library’s Album of the Month – August

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Look Like You Love It – Elliphant

August’s album (technically an EP) is Look Like You Love It by Elliphant, a swedish pop artist whose sound is loud, passionate and engrossing. She embodies a fierceness of a wild sub-Saharan desert beast ready to stomp out any obstacle. Her style is aggressively motivating with lyrics like “fuck tomorrow / we’re only getting younger” and “prison is for you to visit and get out of” — nothing scares the Elliphant. With collaborations between Diplo and Skrillex, her music hits full-throttle in your speakers, demanding you to release your bottled emotions at the same intensity too — “all or nothing.” She can hit darker moods like “I need you to take all my shadows for a walk tonight” from “Down On Life,” however, she stays true to her power stance, uplifting with “You may be poor but music is free / a shitty day but then you press play,” proving that her music is meant to empower.

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Check out her newest single “Music Is Life” here.

“If — ” by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

 

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master;

If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

 

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

 

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings–nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!