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 by Sun Kil Moon from Among the Leaves

Sunshine in Chicago - Sun Kil Moon

As sure as I am that I want to move to New York, I’m also sure I’ll end up in Chicago one day. It’s the great American city. And thanks to Anna for recommending this album. What are the rest of you listening to?

nudewave:

It may not officially be summer yet but I count Memorial Day, the miserable heat, and sudden afternoon storms as signs of this season being upon us. I might be as fair as they come but lord knows I love sunshine, jangly as fuck guitars, and the feeling of sand and salt on my skin. Here’s a collection of songs to get you ready for surfing, swimming, spiking a watermelon, napping in the shade, dancing in the street, or just driving around town with your honey. Enjoy and HAGS!
Download
Down Under by Navajo Bixby
Girl Don’t Tell Me by the Beach Boys
(Punk) Walking by the Widowers
Dickshakers Union by Surf City
June by Triptides
Radio by Lana Del Rey
Alta Mira by Björk
Cala Cola by the Miracals
Dominican Fade by Battles
Velouria by Pixies
Pyrite Pedestal by Pretty Girls Make Graves
Snakes in the Grass by the Essex Green
Beach Girls by Sleigh Bells
Diana by Fanshaw
Will I See You by All Girl Summer Fun Band
They Always Fly Away by Blouse
Overdrawn by White Sea
Honey by Mariah Carey
Bad Street by Twin Sister

nudewave:

It may not officially be summer yet but I count Memorial Day, the miserable heat, and sudden afternoon storms as signs of this season being upon us. I might be as fair as they come but lord knows I love sunshine, jangly as fuck guitars, and the feeling of sand and salt on my skin. Here’s a collection of songs to get you ready for surfing, swimming, spiking a watermelon, napping in the shade, dancing in the street, or just driving around town with your honey. Enjoy and HAGS!

Download

  1. Down Under by Navajo Bixby
  2. Girl Don’t Tell Me by the Beach Boys
  3. (Punk) Walking by the Widowers
  4. Dickshakers Union by Surf City
  5. June by Triptides
  6. Radio by Lana Del Rey
  7. Alta Mira by Björk
  8. Cala Cola by the Miracals
  9. Dominican Fade by Battles
  10. Velouria by Pixies
  11. Pyrite Pedestal by Pretty Girls Make Graves
  12. Snakes in the Grass by the Essex Green
  13. Beach Girls by Sleigh Bells
  14. Diana by Fanshaw
  15. Will I See You by All Girl Summer Fun Band
  16. They Always Fly Away by Blouse
  17. Overdrawn by White Sea
  18. Honey by Mariah Carey
  19. Bad Street by Twin Sister

17 plays

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 by Andrew Belle from The Ladder

Static Waves - Andrew Belle feat. Katie Herzig

I need a summer soundtrack

…and I’ve not heard anything new I’ve liked in a long, long time. But some dear friends sent me a graduation card and a giftcard to iTunes (yeah, I still buy music), and reiterated the importance of having a soundtrack for your life. (I do, I do, I do.) Anyway, what are you listening to for the summer? What’s new and great?

Borderline - Madonna

“Stop playing with my heart. Finish what you start.”

Oh, do I feel this. But anyway, the next time you’re in your car, I dare you not to listen to “Holiday,” “Lucky Star,” or “Borderline” and not dance. It’s impossible. Early Madonna was the best.

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 by William Fitzsimmons from The Sparrow and the Crow

I Don’t Feel It Anymore (Song of the Sparrow) - William Fitzsimmons

“Oh, take it all away. I don’t feel it anymore.”

Buy U a Drank (Shawty Snappin’) - T-Pain feat. Yung Joc

“I’mma buy you a drank. I’mma take you home with me. I got money in the bank. Shawty, what you think ‘bout that?”

This song was in my head all through finals week, and despite the number of times I sang it to my friends in bars, I never did buy anyone a drank.

64 plays

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 by Drake from Take Care (Deluxe Version)

Take Care - Drake

“I know you’ve been hurt by someone else. I can tell by the way you carry yourself.”

Some part of me much larger than I’d imagined related to this song and this album this past year. Maybe turning 29 or 30 made me realize my own mortality. Maybe my aunt pointing her 9mm Smith and Wesson at my head on Christmas Day, or my dad getting arrested on felony charges of selling 32 marijuana plants made me realize how much I was fighting against. Or maybe my relationship to this album and this feeling started before then, when I realized I’d been shying away from dating for a very long time and decided to put myself back out there. I don’t know.

But I feel it, this something, and trying to write about it is a bit like trying to write about section 50 of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.” Section 50 starts with “There is that in me—I do not know what it is—but I know it is in me.” How do you write about what’s in you when you don’t know what it is but you only know it hurts?

I know we all have baggage (Drake sing-raps, “When you’re ready, just say you’re ready—when all the baggage just ain’t so heavy”), but I never realized I had so much until the past couple of years. I must’ve known in some part of me that my childhood wasn’t happy; my father supposedly moved out several times and I only remember it once. My mother brought me to meet my half-sister’s mother when I was eight and my half-sister’s mother was six-months pregnant, and I don’t remember it; my parents stayed married for ten years after that. And it goes deeper than that: one time, my father’s friend asked me how I felt about my grandmother in front of her, and I said, “She’s crazy!” I meant it in an seven-year-old I-love-you way, or maybe I said it because I was repeating my father’s words. But I certainly never meant to hurt my grandmother. When I called to apologize to my grandmother that night, she said, “I’m not going to forgive you.” I cried so much after that, realizing I’d hurt my grandmother and she’d never forgive me, but somewhere in the last couple of years I realized how fucked up it is that my grandmother couldn’t forgive my seven-year-old words. There’s so much hurt in my family, so many secrets, but all throughout my childhood, I tried to adopt a bubbly blonde personality. I didn’t know any other way of dealing with my family, or even know how to tell anyone about them.

I carried that bubbly blonde personality with me until I hit my mid-twenties or so, and my father shit all over my twenty-third birthday and I started going to therapy. I finally stopped referring to my father as the greatest man on earth, though I still remember now how and why I felt that way. When I was four, I was so attached to my father that I wouldn’t let him put a new roof on our house without me; he had to tie me to the chimney so I wouldn’t fall off. My father said he wanted to be my role model for how husbands and fathers should act, and I wanted desperately to believe him, even when I knew who he really was. For a long time, I blamed my father’s mistresses instead of my father. I wanted him to be good. I wanted to be good.

I don’t know what I’m saying with all of this except that I like Drake’s album. I like how sad it is. When he sings in “Marvin’s Room,” “I’ve had sex four times this week,” I guess he’s bragging, but he’s also really lonely. I get it. I’ve been doing some of the same, too, lately; I’m trying to fill some hole in me with physical intimacy. I’ve been trying to forget how sad it is to be an adult and to realize that the family I’d always hoped for will never be sane and healthy, and I’ll never be supported completely. I don’t know how to fill that hole; I don’t know how to stop grieving.

And I didn’t even know, really, how apparent this shift in me was until one of my students this past semester said, “Something’s happened to you; you’ve been through something.” This was after we finished reading The Sun Also Rises and most of my students wanted Jake Barnes and Lady Brett Ashley to end up together for no other reason than they wanted a happy ending. Despite the fact that I know they are still young and romantic and most of them have never had their hearts broken, I couldn’t stop myself from telling them they’d been watching too many romantic comedies.

Because, really, romantic comedies don’t come true—at least, not for me. The guy doesn’t cross over to your side of the platform to say, “I like you a lot” and especially, “I love you.” He doesn’t meet you in the airport to say, “Don’t go.” Instead, you’ll find yourself staring across a metro platform in D.C., wishing desperately that you had the courage to say how you feel and to figure out how he feels, until his train comes first and you watch it until it goes out of sight and you cry silently on the way back to your hotel on your last night. And after that, you’ll break up with romantic comedies.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I understand this album. Take Care. At 30 years old, I think I understand Drake’s sadness, whether it’s genuine or not.

19 plays

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 by Jem from Down to Earth

It’s Amazing - Jem

“But get back on your feet, and you’ll be stronger and smarter.”

44 plays

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 by Wilco from Summerteeth

She’s a Jar - Wilco

“She’s a jar with a heavy lid.”

Mlle Hazelwood

Reader & Writer, Master of Fine Arts, Collaborator on Structure and Style, a new poetry blog.

 

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