Amélie

I wonder if there's anything better than listening to Yann Tiersen while doing your French homework. Today I was reminded just how heartbreakingly beautiful the soundtrack to 'Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain' is and now I'm finding it hard to listen to anything else. I don't know who it was, but somebody played a piece from it on the piano in the school hall and the most gorgeous visions of Paris, beaming sunlight and pageboy haircuts started appearing in my head. The movie is definitely a favourite of mine and one that can be watched several times without ever becoming boring. I've seen it a lot of times now, but when watching it I still discover new things. I think that's a quite rare and wonderful feature for a film to have. So, as things go, I have now discovered the fact that the soundtrack is also a very, very nice thing. In particular I'm obsessed with the two segments 'J'y Suis Jamais Allé' and 'Comptine D'un Autre Été, L'après-Midi' and both are stuck in my head. I simply cannot get over the brilliance, the mood and the amount of emotions and memories this music carries. It is an excellent example of one the things music is so good at - transforming and creating a mood, often sending you off to a completely different place than where you actually are. It is more than once that I've been listening to music while on the road and then having to take my headphones off - only to suddenly be confronted with the silence. The sounds of the world are nice, but the way you can create your own little world just by sticking earbuds in your ears is quite mesmerizing, I think.

Track of the day #2

St. Vincent - 'Actor Out Of Work'
I'm becoming more and more excited for the new St. Vincent album. In the last few weeks everyone's been treated to the first taster, the brilliantly beautiful 'The Strangers' with those haunting lyrics about wanting to 'paint the black hole blacker' and now we get this. The single, a tastefully noisy track, gets a literal working in the video and makes one recall the best moments from St. Vincent's first album, 'Marry Me', only ten times better. 'Actor', the new album, out on May 5, could easily end up being one of my favorite albums of the year. 

Mercenary + A Midsummer Night's Dream

I think I'm finally beginning to understand the concept of metal. It probably won't ever be my favourite genre of music, but going to a metal gig once in a while isn't that bad. The gig yesterday was only my second gig of that kind, so headbanging and hand gestures probably seemed a bit half-arsed for my part, but hey, at least I tried. Metal is all about energy, power and anger. It's sweaty and loud and people like to fight and throw each other around in front of the stage. Not really what I'd like from every gig I go to but it's pretty entertaining in the right doses. And yesterday was just the right amount; had the gig been just a few minutes longer, I think I would have turned from excited to a little bored but luckily that wasn't how it turned out. The support band just kind of looked and sounded like my stereotype of a bad metal band, but hoohay, they didn't play for that long. Then Mercenary entered the stage, and they're in that, I guess - correct me if I'm wrong, I really don't know a lot about metal - slightly more melodic and less hard metal category, which I think was probably also a part of the reason why I tend to enjoy their gigs instead of covering up my ears and hiding in a corner, and made my night better. Also, Mikkel, the lead singer (who I've mentioned before, since he's actually a member of my family) has a quite strong and intense voice, that I think it would be rather interesting to hear in another genre as well. Most of the night I felt out a bit of place, since my friend Line and I were surrounded by (mostly male) people in Iron Maiden and Metallica shirts and I had decided to go the gig in a dress. But the band did their part, we did ours and it was good fun.
Earlier in the day I'd been to see a modern staging of the classic Shakespeare play 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' with music by a pretty prominent Danish composer (who only Danish readers of this blog will know, so that's irrelevant), that I'd just like to mention how impressed and blown away I was by. Since I know a few of the performing people involved in the play I almost felt privileged afterwards for actually being friends with such talented people. It's all over now but I had a very, very good time watching the extremely beautiful set design, listening to the both cheeky and serious music and being impressed by the fact that this was actually staged in our little town of Viborg. But you know, the point is that I went to a heavy metal gig a few hours after - a bit weird, but also quite wonderful, how you can attend two such different things in one day.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

Since I'm younger than a lot of people and have often been more drawn to listening to newer music, there's a great amount of classic albums/bands/songs/etc. I have yet to discover. Sometimes it makes me feel like I lack some very important knowledge, but mostly I just like the fact that there's a lot of (supposedly great) music waiting for me out there when I'm ready to listen to it. My father is quite a big Beatles fan and I've been pestering him to help me get into their stuff, since I always intended to do so at some point, it has just seemed pretty overwhelming and hard to find the right place to begin. Then a few days ago I listened to a radio programme about George Martin, which they played some of the songs he'd produced for The Beatles and it made me want to discover their music even more. So I went to the library the next day and borrowed a pile of their albums - I still had no idea where to start, though, so I asked my dad and he said it could be a good idea to start with some of their earlier, more poppy and less experimental stuff, to kind of start out with the 'easy' stuff. I listened to a bit of Rubber Soul with him and though I didn't dislike the music, it didn't really tick any of my boxes at first listen. Then we decided to switch to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (phew, long title!) and even from the first track I was hooked. Since I'd heard it before (ages ago, when we had it in the car) my joy could easily have been connected to some kind of recognition, but it sounded both old and new and exciting at the same time - songs I felt like I knew very well and always had, even though I didn't. And still there was some kind of unsettling music hidden in there that I hadn't discovered properly yet. Then I listened to it again, on my own, to check if it really could be that good. And it fucking was!