Songs I think you should be listening to (pt. 2)

Hello again.

I'm not drunk this time. But for some reason I keep feeling the need to do these blogs at 1 in the morning. Stupid. Here's some more songs that you should be listening to.

Husky-

Don't really remember how I stumbled upon this song or this band. The melody had me hooked the moment I first heard it though, and it carried me through the rest of this spectacularly arranged tune. I get strange feelings in my stomach everytime I listen to it. The rest of the album is unfortunately rather uninspired in comparison, but at least the video is neat.

yMusic-

If I had to pick a favorite album of 2014(and I don't have to do anything you tell me to, jerk) it'd be yMusic's "Balance Problems". It's produced by Ryan Lott (aka Son Lux(aka one of my favorite musicians ever)) and features several composers(one of them Sufjan) who each contribute a song or two that make up the whole album. I've honestly only listened to it about 3 times, mainly cause I know if I'm gonna put it on I have to just sit and listen and do nothing else. It's a beautiful world of sound to get lost in. This is one of my favored tracks from it, but honestly you just need to go buy it on bandcamp, throw on some headphones then sit and listen.

Vulfpeck-

This band is one of my favorite finds of last year. My friend Dan(and bass player of Ancient Mariner) introduced me to this group after practice one night. What followed was about 45 minutes of us drinking beer, watching all of their videos, and geeking out over the musical awesomeness of this band. Putting on any of their EP's is the danciest decision you'll make all day, and the best decision. This is probably my favorite song of theirs, if only because the drum fills starting right before the 2 minute mark are absolutely orgasmic. I dunno how else to say it. These dudes just slay. Basically always.

Marika Hackman-

If you follow me on twitter(and you do because how the hell else did you find this blog) you've probably seen me talking about this lady and her lovely album. She writes the most beautiful melodies, gorgeous lyrics, and dreamy chord progressions. I was trying to sleep the other night and literally could not because this song was in my head, and it was spooking the hell out of me for some reason. So I grabbed my phone and listened to it, which spooked me out some more. Then I started the album from the beginning, found all her lyrics online and gave the album another listen through at 1 in the morning while reading her lyrics. The album ended and I just sat there until 4 in the morning thinking about it. I couldn't get the music out of my head til I finally just fell asleep from total exhaustion.Songs and albums don't do that to me very often, you guys.

Anyways. Bedtime I guess... hopefully.

Gabriel

More important songs

Disclaimer: Let it be known that as I'm typing this, I am drunk, but it doesn't discredit anything I say, because if anything, I just become a more obnoxiously self aware version of myself when there's alcohol in me. Please excuse all grammatical and spelling errors. Thank you.

Anyways, my brother did a lil' post like this a while back(there will be similarities), and since I haven't had any full albums completely rock my gourd in some time, I'll focus on songs that have been quite important to me over the last year or two. Whether it's just a good jam, or something much more to me, here's the hits, y'all.

My Blue Supreme:

Eli showed me this song sometime last year. I love it. I don't care to listen to the rest of the album cause I'm pretty sure it won't be as dope as this tune is. The lil' guitar riff, the chorus melody, the small breaks in the beat. AH!

Meteorites:

I love everything about this song and this video. It's hard to find(what I deem as) good spoken word pieces in the world. But this nails it. Clemence Posey's face with a dude's glorious irish accent coming out of it is the best thing in the world. The words themselves are beautiful. When I first found this, I watched it 3 times in a row. It was during an odd time last summer where I was completely incapacitated by sexual longing for 2 weeks straight. This was so amazing to watch and absorb on some hot summer night in one of the loneliest times of my life. I almost want to go back and experience it again because it was beautiful to find this during that time.

Before:

I had been listening to this album for a few weeks before this song went even deeper than it already did for me. Upon my escape from The Badlands(ask me about that story in person sometime), this was the only song I wanted to listen to. So, driving through South Dakota, with my phone speaker jammed in my ear since I don't have an aux port in my car, I screamed this entire song in my car, completely elated, filled with joy and life. I still lose my mind a little when I listen to this song. "And I feel brand new, and not so whole, that's how I know". FUCK.

By My Side(Everlasting Life):

This song, this artist, and his two albums that can longer be found online, mean so so much to me. When you wake up completely faithless one morning, it's hard to know what to orient yourself around. Valley Maker was one of the things I found a tremendous amount of comfort in. I should probably write a whole post about it, but for now, here's one of the tunes that has stuck with me most. It's been my theme song since I've heard it. I can't describe the feeling I get when I listen to it. I listened to it at sunset on the roof with my best friend on the Summer Solstice. I listened to it in the car with 2 of my brothers in the mountains on the Winter Solstice. I listened to it by myself, drunk in my living room on New Year's Eve. Oh man. It's perfect.

Lost It To Trying:

I feel nothing but pure energy when I listen to this song. I start going nuts every time I hear it. I literally starting yelling and squealing whenever I listen to it. The vocals. That goddamn sax. Holy crap. Plus, redemption! Hope! "Give in and get out, we rise in the dying!" Christian connotation or not, that's the tops. Ryan Lott continually slays me with his lyrics.

Star:

Here's to the one song last year that very nearly brought me to tears. My friend suggested I listen to this album if I have some mental stuff to work through, and I basically always do. So I bought it, sat in my living room with a cup of coffee while it lightly snowed outside, and gave it a listen. The album is nothing very special. Pleasant, simple, but thoughtful tunes. This is the last song on the album, and as I came to some conclusions about a relationship that I had been clinging to these lines started to play: "I walk slow/ down to where we'd go/ where we've gone for so long/ Where you and I come from/ the stars in the sky/ they caught my eye/ I search but I'm not lost/ I cry but it's not wrong/ and I can see so much/ much more than before/ mmmm"
OHMYGOD

Ffunny Ffriends:

This riff is just too damn good. I listen to this song and album all the time in the shop. It's perfect for anytime of day. Six in the morning, middle of the rush, late afternoon, closing tunes. It works anywhere.

Hover I:

This song just has the most unbelievably intimate vibe to it for me. I think of my closest friends, and family, and something like home whenever I hear this. It's comfort. It's a soft bed. It's late night conversations. It's a huge dinner. It's sex. It's snowfall. It's whiskey by a fireplace. It's camping in the woods. It's starlight. It's a montage of everything beautiful playing out before my eyes.

That's all I can think of right now. My brain is probably missing some things, but I'll get around to that when I'm sober.

Goodnight,
Gabriel

Artistic Entitlement

Despite having exactly one Facebook friend, for whatever reason I still get on the 'ol FB about once a week to see whatever is trending and look at the things posted from groups and pages that I got too lazy to 'unlike' during the great purge. One of these is the Denver Music scene group, which I obviously joined before moving. Someone posted this article about why musicians shouldn't get paid. Here's my thoughts on the matter.

I'm not going reiterate too much of it here, so maybe just read it yourself? It takes like 3 minutes. Honestly, I was expecting a well thought out article. I was all like "Why SHOULDN'T I make money?!" since I'm a glutton for that sort of thing. But unfortunately the article appears to have been written by a bitter 16 year old.

Perhaps it really isn't worth writing this, but I'm gonna assume that it is, because as misguided as this human is, some of his points were at least worth acknowledging, even if he explained it rather poorly.

So, heres why he's (sorta)right:

"We're already rich"

        I had this thought placed in my brain a while back while watching interviews of Aaron Weiss from mewithoutYou on youtube. Obviously if you live in this country chances are things aren't so bad in the grand scheme of things. And the constant gripe of artists is that we're poor and no one compensates us fairly for the amount of work we do. Ironically it feeds the whole "starving artist" label. It's certainly partially true that the amount of compensation we get for our work is pretty bogus overall. Most of us have to work part-time or even full-time jobs to supplement our creative ambitions, as well as our "regular" lives. But in one of those interviews I remember Aaron talking about how he would start his cycles of self pity in his less than ideal financial state, while forgetting that he has thousands of dollars in equipment in his possession and a notoriously supportive fan base. 

That's part of the reason WHY we're poor. Because we're spending all our money on music gear. But the fact that we can even do that is pretty damn awesome. I think it's way too easy to get caught up in the starving artist scene while we write songs about it on a $1900 guitar. I spent $1400 on a synth last summer on a whim. ON A WHIM. Admittedly I had been wanting to buy it for like 2 years, and didn't really have any immediate plans at the time to do so. But I listened to Wye Oak's new album, freaked out, went home and ordered a synth within a matter of an hour. So ya, we don't get compensated, but we choose this life. And we choose it because it's awesome. So shut your pie hole and work hard. Good art rises to the top eventually, in some way or another. Though your view of "the top" might be rather skewed at the base of a mountain.

Also, please call me out when I do this. I'm certainly not immune.

"No one deserves anything"

        He's right. We don't. At least not on a big scale. As any proper youngest child born to an American family, I was born with a wealth of entitlement, only fueled further by my artistic ambitions. Last summer I remember being so bummed that everything wasn't going the way I wanted, that my creative needs weren't being met, and that everything I did was futile. I wrote a post about it on here. It's about fire. I haven't gone back and read it but I bet it's pretty whiny and entitled to a certain degree. I then proceeded to write a song about it, and at the end of the song I accidentally called myself out:

"What is it you think you need?

What is it you really seek?

Giving til you're empty

But you aren't owed anything"

That was kind of a freeing thing to write. It began a very productive process of reevaluating why I do music. Indeed the urge has always been to be heard. To be known on some level or another, whether or not fame was a factor. But those innocent needs are easily muddled by basically everything else. Whether it was want for money, bigger shows, bandmates, fame, all that jazz. But letting go of that stuff and just focusing on creating good things has been so healthy and so much more enjoyable to me than it ever has been before. It's not always easy, and I still get in slumps of self pity and whiny-ness, but I try not to linger there too long. It's not worth it and nothing gets done.

Anyways, I could talk about this for a while. So leave your thoughts, or lets go get coffee, or send me hate mail! I haven't gotten that before, so it could be fun. I'll probably end up doing a post on why he is so terribly wrong, but maybe it's better left alone.

Gabriel

An Important Thing: Moanin'

My blog is super bland looking. I realized my old layout was super mid to late 2000's style one day and I wiped it all. Then I remembered I REALLY hate customizing and all that shit so it's just a blank white thing for now and you can make it look cool if it bothers you.

I like to pretend I'm mysterious and deep when I name my blogs. It's the "artist" in me or whatever. The name of this blog is "The Morning Roars". I named it thus when I began blogging sort of(but not really) regularly at a time in my life where I was dealing with depression head on every day. And mornings were always the worst. Night and sleep meant relief. The morning was a beast roaring me to consciousness, to the endless overwhelming light of day that crushed me. The morning roars. I wrote an album with called that. I don't know if anyone will ever hear it.

I mainly just needed to get that out of my brain. So there.

On to this post. A thing I've often whined about to those around me is the general eventlessness I fell my life has. It never lives up to my expectations and things seem quite boring overall. While I still see it as fairly valid(whether or not it's true), I have noticed that I've neglected some important markers. I think I never saw them as markers cause the effects took so long to kick in. So this is an acknowledgment of one of those events.

In my first winter in Minnesota I got black out depressed. Or rather my depression reached some new depth. Or whatever. It was awful. Everything in that several months is rather hazy in my memory. But there was a breaking point of that terrible time. A sudden crack in the dense darkness that eventually widened to wherever I am today.

In the spring of that year I went to Bethel's jazz band concert as I had a few friends performing. A rare instance of me leaving the house for anything other than work or groceries. The very first song that my friend's jazz band played was a song called "Moanin'". And it woke me up. All dreary heavy thought was blown away by a baritone sax solo that shot into the center of my chest. I laughed for the first time in a long time, I was giggling like a maniac actually. For like 8 minutes. It was pure joy. I felt so absurdly good I just wanted to scream out in the auditorium. I barely refrained. Of course everything wasn't fixed, but for an evening, I felt light. I felt euphoric. I felt like my ribcage was about to explode from some chemical reaction in my chest. I damn near cried.

Music is the best. It can make you feel the worst things and the best things. It's amazing. I don't understand how sound can affect us so much, but I'm glad it does. It's why I make music.

So. Here's the song that woke me up. Fuckin' Moanin'.

Gabriel