I’ve been failing to do quite a few things recently, which I won’t get into here, or not right now. What I have been doing is listening to a fair lot of music. I’ve posted about some songs I like—there’s actually a category for music posts—and I’m sure I’ll keep doing so.

First, I wanted to mention this vaguely-bizarre musician I heard of a few days ago, Cosmo Jarvis, whose videos for his songs “Gay Pirates” and “My Day” are actually pretty fun. I think I might even like the music. I guess I’m just amused enough to note this down? (Also I find it weird that normal musicians are now sometimes younger than me.)

Last night, I went to see a show at Miami’s Grand Central, a relatively new club/performance space that I rather like. The bands performing were Cut Copy, an Australian electronic band, and openers Washed Out and Midnight Magic.

I’d only heard Midnight Magic once before, but I quite enjoyed them; they describe themselves as “funk, disco, electro and soul,” which I guess I get. Here: take a listen to a remix of one of their songs I liked best. Anyway, the singer was charismatic; I was in a corner of the crowd that felt like dancing, and so I danced. It was fun!

Washed Out came sandwiched in the middle. Washed Out is Ernest Greene, but live it was him with a backup band (see below for Greene and three of the four). I wasn’t sure how they’d sound live—listen to this song, one of their best, to see why—but the music worked to dance to, and I was in the mood I guess; they also, sort of unexpectedly for so-called “chill-wave” music, had a bit of a stage presence. I think I liked them best of the night, which I guess I expected to.

Cut Copy (see picture at top) were the main band, and they were a lot of fun. The singer is enthusiastic and feels comfortable on the stage, and seemed happy to be there. I guess all in all there wasn’t anything remarkable about their set, or even their music, but I was glad to be there. I left early, at not-quite-2:00, but I was super-glad I went.

I went last week to a concert as well, to see the Swedish band Peter, Bjorn and John, who have that song “Young Folks” that you know you know. They were great; I surprised myself with how well I knew their music. The opener, Dinosaur Feathers, were great too; I really love their song “History Lessons”. I think you should watch that video.

I have a few songs I keep getting stuck on my head the past few weeks. A few are kind of irrelevant, but I keep coming back to this one. I mean, Bomba Estéreo are a weird band—lots of songs that I only kind of like, but then also music like this. Beautiful and sad. “Let me cry,” she sings¹, and later she tells us that “I dreamt that I was sleeping / and you woke me up / in the full light of the night / becoming dawn, / and I changed into salt water, / and now I am one with the sea.” I love the way she plays with sweat and tears; I love the way she sings this.

I also spent all of Friday with Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” stuck in my head, but that’s perhaps less exciting.

I’ve been thinking rather often about story-telling, and what makes people good or bad at it. It’s a conversation that happens in my head pretty regularly, at least for the past nine years or so. I’ve never found a perfect way to illustrate my thoughts, which is frustrating (and, incidentally, fairly demonstrative of the very issue I’m talking about). The gist of it is this: I have some friends who are fantastic story-tellers. They can describe a trip to the supermarket in a way that makes it engaging, while someone else would tell the story in one sentence: “I went to the store and bought some cookies.”

I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I can’t create a story out of nothing. If I went to the store to buy cookies, I might remember it as a non-story, and then it is one. But if something interesting happens on the way—I run into an old friend, someone flash mobs the store, I’m sleep-deprived and stumbling—I can usually find a way to fit it into a story. But it doesn’t come naturally to me, despite how much I like doing it. I have to mold it. This is a surprisingly-exacting process; it requires actual effort. So I’m often lazy with it.

When I was younger, I used to use my blog/online journal to write thoughts down. They were often disconnected; even more so than today, I liked to number paragraphs to keep things separated into sections. But these days, I prefer to try for connected, coherent posts. I would rather write a whole piece that makes some sort of [non]sense. It’s kind of sad to lose that container-for-everything mentality that my blog used to have for me, but it’s also quite pleasant to try to craft an essay, rather than just throw something out into the internet². This does mean that I post less often, as I’m trying to find things that can be framed in the way of a story—or ideas that have a conclusion, at least.

1. In Spanish, in case that isn’t clear. I installed a footnotes plugin! Awesome. And a music one, too, so that song should play up top there.
2. It also means that this post has no real room for me to talk about all of my awesome cooking I did this weekend. So I’ll throw it into a footnote! I made three kinds of ice cream for some friends last night: chocolate sherbet (from David Lebovitz, here), , to which I added a pinch of cinnamon and a pinch of cayenne pepper; strawberry sherbet, which I adapted from another Lebovitz recipe; and coconut ice cream, which was vegan because hey!, why not (recipe here). The coconut might have been the best, although I love the chocolate. I accidentally melted the strawberry one a bit (didn’t put it away soon enough) and so it wasn’t quite as tasty. Right. Here’s a photograph of all three, in the ice cream-maker. I made Ramos Gin Fizz drinks last night, as well, and used the reserved egg yolks this morning to make super-rich French toast. Hurrah!

• Lykke Li – Love Out of Lust
• Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues (really excited for this album to come out)
• Peter, Bjorn, and John – Breaker Breaker
• Destroyer – Poor in Love

I’m not hosting any of them here, apologies. But most of those links should be good for a while, at least.

I also really quite like the new Radiohead album. Yes indeed.

I would post photographs; there are so many good ones but none that particularly lend to a blog post. No group pictures, yeah? It’s my own fault for forgetting to pull out the camera at opportune moments.

I’ve been obsessing with two songs for the past few days.

1. The Hidden Words – “Temple”. (Ref. this bog post for a description and to download; facebook.) Really haunting good.
2. Flight Facilities – “Crave You” (featuring Giselle). (youtube video.) Jesse, one of my friends in Philadelphia, mentioned this song while we were all dancing at the flat he shares with three other guys I really like. I looked it up later that night; it’s pretty wonderful. The video’s interesting.

See?, that was relevant.

In any case, interlude aside, I miss Philadelphia. I miss the city; I miss the feeling of connection to the city itself that I lack in Miami. I miss my friends a lot — that sense of having lots of people who I want to see every moment of every day if possible. I wonder if I will spend a lot of time in my life missing that feeling, which was very much a college thing. I always am interested by the way I feel about things like this; in many ways I’m introverted, and I like spending time by myself — but I really feel like I need a balance between self-time and good, happy, pleasant other-time. I don’t enjoy meeting random people, or talking with strangers, not unless they’re really cool. Some people who are particularly extraverted just love to go out and talk about whatever; that doesn’t work for me, although I can do it sometimes. Yeah?

In any case, I don’t think I really Did all too much in Philadelphia. Ate some good food; made some good food; ate the good food we made. Watched a movie; played a board game; played a light game of Exquisite Corpse and a rousing game of telephone pictionary (aka writey/draw-y), which Jacob or Jesse probably won. (No, fine, you can’t really win.) Walked around. Saw people. Went out to Haverford and hung out with some awesome past professors.

Really a lovely time.

As always, words used in Spanish have mouseover text for the definitions in English — just put your cursor over the words in itallics.

The word for swollen in Spanish is hinchado. There’s no good reason that I should know this word, except for the song below. The band is an Argentine one, called Onda Vaga.
Onda Vaga – Así
(note that the last half-minute is applause)

When I was in Bilbao, I stayed with a really nice girl named Ashley, who had the lyrics from this song painted on the wall above her bed. The song hasn’t got much in the way of lyrics:

Yo dormiría así, detrás de la montaña;
y tendría mil arañas colgadas,
hipopotamos rosados hinchados,
yo dormiría así de plastico fantastico

There’s another bit that’s a play on the words olé, olor, and oler. Anyway, it’s got ridiculous lyrics. Which I’m okay with.

Point is this: I remembered the word hinchado because it’s so ridiculous in this context. (Swollen pink hippos!) And then it came in handy.

I also got to stay with Marta, who’s amazing. Also an excellent hostess. It was fun to get to see her!

The festival was here, which is to say here. Which was an excellent venue for a music festival.

It’s a huge place; there were four main large stages, several smaller ones, and a gigantic auditorium. According to one place I looked, there were over one hundred thousand people. Definitely there were at least 75,000. Which is actually pretty ridiculous, when you think about it. I can’t really understand that number of people.

In any case, if you’re curious, here are the bands I saw. The ones who had enjoyable shows, or something worth noting, have a picture or a comment, or both. I have pictures of all of the shows I saw, except for Owen Pallett’s show and the one show I can’t really count. All in all, I saw 31 shows over the weekend, although of course most of them I didn’t see all of. I’d hazard that very few of the shows were longer than an hour.

Day 1. Show 1.
The Wave Pictures
Went with this kid I met in Bilbao, Fernando, and his friends. Shrug.

Day 1. Show 2.
Monotonix
Tagged along here. Only saw the last song, but their show was ridiculous. Mostly-sans-clothes. Running through the audience with the microphone and drum. Yeah.

Day 1. Show 3.
Titus Andronicus
A bit of a large stage for them, in my opinion. Fun.

Day 1. Show 4.
The xx

I really like this band’s album. You’ve probably heard “Crystalised” or “VCR” — if not, try ‘em out. They’ve gotten a bad rap for their live shows, but — and I acknowledge that this may come from the fact that I was expecting worse — I rather enjoyed seeing them. They weren’t amazing, and they were mostly just rather calm, but they put on an enjoyable show. It rained slightly during it, which was too bad, but honestly it was barely a sprinkle. I stayed for the whole show.

Day 1. Show 5.
Broken Social Scene
These guys put on a great show. I’d seen them before, at Brandeis I think (with my sister). I really like their new album, besides. I’m fairly sure I stayed for their whole show, although to be honest I don’t really remember.

Day 1. Show 6.
The Books

I love The Books. They’re one of my favorite bands. They do… I dunno, curious music. And for their live shows, they compile these amazing videos. Here’s a junction between good video and good song: “Smells Like Content“. “Tokyo” is another great song, although this video isn’t as great (and is fan-made). I got to see them do the former; not the latter. At this show, I met two American guys from D.C. while we were all waiting for the show to start. They were quite nice. I stayed for this entire show. I was really impressed by how well they did playing out of doors. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but it totally did. And I’m glad; this marks the second time I’ve loved them live.

Day 1. No show.
Pavement
With Rob and Tom, the guys from above, I walked over to the Pavement show. But we didn’t stay. It was nearing the end, none of us really knew the music, and it was PACKED. Instead, we went to…

Day 1. Show 7.
Sleigh Bells
This was enjoyable, despite this being essentially hard rock with some woman screaming.

Day 1. Show 8.
Apse
I took off after a while at Sleigh Bells, and went to see Apse. I like their music (thanks, Ali), but I couldn’t get into the show.

Day 1. Show 9. Last show of the day (for me) — 02:30 AM.
Fuck Buttons
I don’t know their music very well. They’ve got some songs I like, though. They’re kind of a noise DJ pair? I don’t know. See what wiki has to say.

Well.

I took the night bus to the Plaza de Catalunya, and then walked to Marta’s place.

Day 2. Show 1.
Owen Pallett (used to go by Final Fantasy)
I really like Owen Pallett, and honestly this was one of the best shows of the festival. Unfortunately, I arrived late — the show started at 16:00 — so I only caught the second half and didn’t take any photographs. Pallett is a really good musician; his live show is really cool to watch. He plays the violin — very well — and loops it on itself, live, to create his songs. Also he had accompaniment. I encourage you to give him a try, but honestly I’m not sure what song to recommend. This song (with its ridiculous video) is excellent. So’s this one (the names are the couple who form The Arcade Fire; Pallett toured with them but I don’t know the origins of the song). Anyway, really fun. Also, this show and several others I went to this day were in the auditorium, which was super-nice.

Day 2. Show 2.
Hope Sandoval and the Warm Inventions
Hope Sandoval is apparently rather strange; she and her band played their show in almost-complete darkness, and she (above and beyond the theatre’s prohibition) asked that we not take photographs. I don’t know her music very well. I do like it, though. I stayed for the whole show, although I dazed off for some of it. I had gotten up to the second row, so it’s too bad these two shows weren’t reversed.

As I left, I saw this enormous line to get into the auditorium, for a band called Low. I think maybe Europeans know this band better than Americans, because I’m pretty sure I don’t know them at all. Although apparently they’re American, and worthy of huge queues.

Day 2. Show 3.
The New Pornographers
I’m not the hugest fan of this band, although I do like them. I didn’t stay for much of their show, since a friend from Madrid, Javi, gave me a call. So I joined him for a band he really liked:

Day 2. Show 4.
Nueva Vulcano
Javi and his friends really like this band, and knew all the words. It was pretty good, so I stayed for the whole show. It was my first not-in-English-show. Then I followed Javi and his friends back to the auditorium.

Day 2. Show 5.
Junip
I’d never heard of this band, and no wonder, since they’ve never released an album. It’s a group project featuring José González, the Swedish singer probably best known for his covers. (“Heartbeats“, originally by The Knife. “Teardrop“, originally by Massive Attack.) It was a nice show, although weird since I knew none of the music.

Day 2. Show 6.
CocoRosie
I have mixed feelings about them. Their live show is supposed to be fun, but I decided not to stay for longer than a few songs. They seemed to be having fun.

Day 2. Show 7.
Beach House
I like Beach House better anyway, and I’m glad I got to see a good part of this show. It was completely packed, so I didn’t get as close as I would’ve liked. But they’re excellent musicians, and I was pleased that they were good live. Around this time, I managed to miss two bands I would’ve liked to have seen: Here We Go Magic, and (more importantly) Wilco. I’ll have to see Wilco some other time to make up for it.

Day 2. Show 8.
Standstill

I saw this band a few weeks ago in Madrid. They weren’t as good in the auditorium, but they’re excellent musicians, and this time they played with this cool video behind them. I liked parts of the video quite a lot.

Day 2. Show 9.
Panda Bear
I left Standstill to go see Panda Bear, which was honestly a waste of time. He played a lot of new stuff, I think. I wandered off and got food after a while. Disappointing. I love Animal Collective, of which he’s a part. And I like his solo work — I just need to listen to it more. Also maybe he’d be more fun in a smaller space.

Day 2. Show 10.
Marc Almond
Do you know who this guy is? I didn’t. He’s apparently a member of Soft Cell, which means he played “Tainted Love.” His wiki article makes him seem like an interesting guy, but other than “Tainted Love” I was kind of bored. I just sat and watched because there wasn’t much else going on right at this point.

Day 2. Show 11.
Major Lazer

And then I went to Major Lazer. Which was a-mazing. They’re a collaboration between DJs Diplo (Philadelphia) and Switch (London) and a bunch of singers crossing a bunch of genres… See the wiki page. I actually first heard of them from, of all places, The New Yorker. See here. Actually, I believe I first read this blurb in the print edition when it came out. Anyway, Major Lazer shows are ridiculous affairs, including a type of dance known as Daggering I’ll leave you to look up yourself. Also, errr, watch this video. Before the show started, I met this Swedish guy who was on his own at the show, and these two girls who had been studying in France. I stuck with the Swedish guy for the whole show — his name was Leo, or perhaps Lio. We walked up to the next show, but then he ran off — and we oddly ran into each other again at Diplo’s solo DJ set later that night. He was possibly on something… here’s him with a mask on:

Sometime around now I missed seeing the Pixies. Yeah, I know.

Day 2. Show 12.
Yeasayer
I saw Yeasayer and wrote extensively about the show in these pages a short while ago. But I’m glad I went to see them again. Their show wasn’t quite as good, but it was very nearly so. I saw next to me this kid who had also been at the Books show, I’m almost sure. I recognized him because he was one of the only people dancing to The Books. He and I grinned and danced together for the duration of the show, and talked briefly. Nice guy. I always like when people aren’t afraid to dance during shows.

Day 2. Show 13.
The Bloody Beetroots
If you’re counting, you’ve noticed that it’s probably getting late at this point. It is. Yeasayer’s show was at 02:30. I stopped off to watch a bit of the Bloody Beetroots, who are apparently famous, while I waited for 04:30 to come — when Diplo came on. Shrug.

Day 2. Show 14.
Joker feat. Nomad
I don’t think this really counts. I can’t remember it, and I only saw like five minutes, max.

Day 2. Show 15.
Diplo
Dipo is a really good DJ. I sometimes wonder what a DJ does on the stage, but Diplo, regardless of anything else, makes it all work. Excellent show. Lots of dancing.

Got home on one of the early trams. Very easy.

Day 3. Show 1.
Dr. Dog
I like Dr. Dog quite a lot. I wish I had gotten here in time for the whole of their set, but as it was I only really saw the second half.

Day 3. Show 2.
Nana Grizol

I met up with Fernando and his friends Leire and Ignacio. We sat in the bleachers and watched this show. It was actually pretty good, considering I’d never heard of this band before. They were already kind of drunk.

Day 3. Show 3.
Florence + the Machine

Florence Welch has attracted a lot of attention, won a few awards, and so forth — and with good reason, seeing as how she’s excellent. This song is one of the more well-liked, as is “Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)“. She reminded me of Kate Bush, sort of, in what she was wearing and how she performed, although her voice is gorgeous and amazing. It was a truly excellent show; I saw the entire thing.

Day 3. Show 4.
Grizzly Bear
I really like Grizzly Bear. I don’t know their music as well as I would have thought, because I was somewhat lost at their concert, but I disagree with what some people have said — I think they played a really excellent show, and really liked the songs of theirs that I knew well. (Including a beautiful rendition of “Knife” and one of “Ready, Able“. They also, of course, played “Two Weeks.”) I stayed for the whole show.

Day 3. Show 5.
Matt and Kim

This show had the sad honor of being more or less the last one I really wanted to see. On the bright side, it was pretty wonderful. They played a short set — ten minutes less than an hour, at least — but I managed to dance up a sweat, get knocked over by Kim crowd-surfing, get drizzled on by someone’s thrown beer, get to the front lines, and so forth. They did some brief covers (“The Final Countdown”; Alice Deejay’s “Better Off Alone”), and jumped about, yelled, and never stopped smiling. I saw them at Haverford a while back, and they were amazing then; they were also amazing now. This video (for “Lessons Learned”) has gotten them some attention; their song “Daylight” is pretty well-known for a small song. And those are both more recent. The crowd had a surprising number of Spaniards; I asked one of them how he knew of M&K and he told me he’d found them on youtube. So hurrah.

Day 3. Show 6.
Sunny Day Real Estate
Apparently these guys are famous. I kind of knew this. They sing that song “Song About an Angel“. They were fun, although mostly I just know that song.

Day 3. Show 7.
Pet Shop Boys
End of the night for me. I’d never even heard of these guys, a British group. They put on a really good show, apparently, but I didn’t know the music and wasn’t so into it, so I didn’t stay. Sad, I know, but such is the case.

And then I went back to Marta’s, slept, and caught a plane home.