I spent last week in the UK. What started out as a weekend trip to London to celebrate a friend's birthday was extended to include the week spent in the North for work. Our office there is near Sheffield, in a little town called Wath-upon-Dearne. Ridiculous name. I love the UK, but they really need to work on some of their town names. Anyway, I'd been told that the area is basically one big shithole, but I was looking forward to seeing a proper British shithole and going further north than I thought I'd ever been. But then I looked at a map and realized I'd already been further north than the Sheffield area, so really all I had to look forward to was a shithole.
As it turns out, it's not a complete shithole. It's not an exciting place by any means, but at least there's a cute little town center with really old buildings. So that was nice. And I have to say, I was pretty disappointed by the lack of Chavs. I was specifically told it's full of Chavs, and I wanted to see one outside of my television set.
The whole week was really spent looking forward to the weekend, though. I can't say London is one of my favorite cities, but I do love it. It's a great city, but there's nothing about the city itself that's makes me fall in love with it, not like Tokyo (best city in the world) or Paris (I fall in love every time I go) or Cape Town (most beautiful city in the world) or LA (home). For me, London is about the people I see when I'm there, and it's always amazing. And every time I'm there I leave with a stronger desire to live there. I guess the same thing happens with New York or Tokyo, cities I'd also love to live in where I have a lot of friends, but I guess I just go to London more often than the other two. There's plenty of places I'd love to live, but London is probably the only place outside of the US that I could see myself settling down.
But as wonderful as my time in London always is, it always sucks when I leave. Especially when I'm headed back to a tiny little village in Germany where there's nothing to do and I have no friends. It gets pretty boring and lonely out here. Which is why I put so much effort into traveling and leaving every weekend, and trying to see people whenever possible. Even just getting out and doing something on my own is better than staying here. And I've been very good about it, this month in particular. There's a couple long weekends coming up, which will make for great travel opportunities and get me two new countries, but it's also a good month for music for me. This week in particular.
I went down to Munich last night to see Wild Beasts. Generally I go to these concerts on my own, which I'm pretty used to now, but the period when I'm waiting for the show to start and just playing on my phone is always pretty shitty. It's times like that when I just want to quit my job and leave the village and move to London or Beijing or wherever and just be with my friends. But once the show actually begins, I am genuinely happy again. Especially when it's a band as amazing as Wild Beasts. And it definitely helped that it was a tiny venue (which was quite surprising to me, I expected them to be in a much larger venue), I was right in front of the stage, and they played a lot of my favorites. Including Devil's Crayon, which may be one of their oldest songs, but it's my new obsession. I only got into them with their second album, Two Dancers, so it took me a while to go back and listen to Limbo, Panto, the first album. But I'm glad I did, mostly because of Devil's Crayon.
I've got two Lucius shows to go to tonight and tomorrow night, which will also be fantastic. They're a great live band. And it's like the perfect combination for me, since I get to see an old friend at the same time. And even if I didn't like the music so much, Lucius concerts would make me happier than normal because it's great to see a friend being successful while doing what they love. If I'm lucky and there are some tickets available at the door, I'll even get to see Band of Skulls on Sunday, which would be 4 shows in 5 days. Not bad, if I do say so myself.
As much as I loved the Wild Beasts show, I was very happy that they played a lot of older songs. They just released their fourth album, Present Tense, and I like it a lot and listen to it a lot, but it doesn't grab me like the previous two albums did. The last two were obvious entries into my top ten for the year - this one is not. It could make it, we'll see in 8 months, but it's not an obvious entry.
Luckily I also found Milagres this year. They put out their third album, Violent Light, earlier this year, but it's the first I've heard of them. I have already gone back and listened to their first two albums as well, and really liked the first, not so much the second, which kind of follows the trend for a lot of bands.
I would say the closest thing I can think of when I listen to them is Wild Beasts. But there's a lot more as well. Especially on the first half of the album, there are songs where I hear influences of bands like The Killers, Muse or Broken Bells. But Wild Beasts is still the strongest influence. As is evident on Column of Streetlight, one of my favorite tracks.
My favorite track on the album is Sunburn, though. It wasn't at first. IDNYL was my favorite at first. When I first heard Sunburn I liked it, but it sounded like there was something missing. But then I listened to it at much louder volumes while driving, and I realized nothing was missing. The song is amazing. The only problem is it's too short. And I feel like everything I love about Wild Beasts that I didn't get in the new Wild Beasts album is in this album, and in this song in particular. I would love to hear Wild Beasts cover this song.
So there you have it. I finally wrote about Milagres. I actually considered not writing about Milagres at all since I've mentioned them in my past 3 blogs without actually writing about them. I was worried once I actually did write about it, it would be a let down. But they're great, and deserve to be written about, and if you find them to be a let down, then you are wrong.
As it turns out, it's not a complete shithole. It's not an exciting place by any means, but at least there's a cute little town center with really old buildings. So that was nice. And I have to say, I was pretty disappointed by the lack of Chavs. I was specifically told it's full of Chavs, and I wanted to see one outside of my television set.
The whole week was really spent looking forward to the weekend, though. I can't say London is one of my favorite cities, but I do love it. It's a great city, but there's nothing about the city itself that's makes me fall in love with it, not like Tokyo (best city in the world) or Paris (I fall in love every time I go) or Cape Town (most beautiful city in the world) or LA (home). For me, London is about the people I see when I'm there, and it's always amazing. And every time I'm there I leave with a stronger desire to live there. I guess the same thing happens with New York or Tokyo, cities I'd also love to live in where I have a lot of friends, but I guess I just go to London more often than the other two. There's plenty of places I'd love to live, but London is probably the only place outside of the US that I could see myself settling down.
But as wonderful as my time in London always is, it always sucks when I leave. Especially when I'm headed back to a tiny little village in Germany where there's nothing to do and I have no friends. It gets pretty boring and lonely out here. Which is why I put so much effort into traveling and leaving every weekend, and trying to see people whenever possible. Even just getting out and doing something on my own is better than staying here. And I've been very good about it, this month in particular. There's a couple long weekends coming up, which will make for great travel opportunities and get me two new countries, but it's also a good month for music for me. This week in particular.
I went down to Munich last night to see Wild Beasts. Generally I go to these concerts on my own, which I'm pretty used to now, but the period when I'm waiting for the show to start and just playing on my phone is always pretty shitty. It's times like that when I just want to quit my job and leave the village and move to London or Beijing or wherever and just be with my friends. But once the show actually begins, I am genuinely happy again. Especially when it's a band as amazing as Wild Beasts. And it definitely helped that it was a tiny venue (which was quite surprising to me, I expected them to be in a much larger venue), I was right in front of the stage, and they played a lot of my favorites. Including Devil's Crayon, which may be one of their oldest songs, but it's my new obsession. I only got into them with their second album, Two Dancers, so it took me a while to go back and listen to Limbo, Panto, the first album. But I'm glad I did, mostly because of Devil's Crayon.
I've got two Lucius shows to go to tonight and tomorrow night, which will also be fantastic. They're a great live band. And it's like the perfect combination for me, since I get to see an old friend at the same time. And even if I didn't like the music so much, Lucius concerts would make me happier than normal because it's great to see a friend being successful while doing what they love. If I'm lucky and there are some tickets available at the door, I'll even get to see Band of Skulls on Sunday, which would be 4 shows in 5 days. Not bad, if I do say so myself.
As much as I loved the Wild Beasts show, I was very happy that they played a lot of older songs. They just released their fourth album, Present Tense, and I like it a lot and listen to it a lot, but it doesn't grab me like the previous two albums did. The last two were obvious entries into my top ten for the year - this one is not. It could make it, we'll see in 8 months, but it's not an obvious entry.
Luckily I also found Milagres this year. They put out their third album, Violent Light, earlier this year, but it's the first I've heard of them. I have already gone back and listened to their first two albums as well, and really liked the first, not so much the second, which kind of follows the trend for a lot of bands.
I would say the closest thing I can think of when I listen to them is Wild Beasts. But there's a lot more as well. Especially on the first half of the album, there are songs where I hear influences of bands like The Killers, Muse or Broken Bells. But Wild Beasts is still the strongest influence. As is evident on Column of Streetlight, one of my favorite tracks.
My favorite track on the album is Sunburn, though. It wasn't at first. IDNYL was my favorite at first. When I first heard Sunburn I liked it, but it sounded like there was something missing. But then I listened to it at much louder volumes while driving, and I realized nothing was missing. The song is amazing. The only problem is it's too short. And I feel like everything I love about Wild Beasts that I didn't get in the new Wild Beasts album is in this album, and in this song in particular. I would love to hear Wild Beasts cover this song.
So there you have it. I finally wrote about Milagres. I actually considered not writing about Milagres at all since I've mentioned them in my past 3 blogs without actually writing about them. I was worried once I actually did write about it, it would be a let down. But they're great, and deserve to be written about, and if you find them to be a let down, then you are wrong.
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