Nov 24 - Fever Ray / Tokimonsta

I'm back in China after a whirlwind trip home. I only spent about 10 days in the US, which is probably the shortest trip I've done in a long time. I split it between California and New York, because I haven't been in a couple years and wanted to see friends. Which was a great choice.

The trip home was not for any particular reason, but planned around my sister's birthday. I just didn't have any wedding or something to come for, but I had a flight to use, so she asked me to come for that. So I did. Which was good, cause she didn't have such a great week leading up to it so we planned lots of fun birthday activities to cheer her up. I think it worked quite well. We had a character breakfast at the Disneyland hotel, went for a wine tasting (with zebras and tigers), fancy dinner and a jazz club. So pretty busy, but wonderful. And all with good company. Then it was pretty much just family and friend time for the next few days. I somehow had less time than usual at home, and only spent 1 day in LA to see friends, but felt less stressed and busy, and I think I managed to see more people than usual. It was pretty great.

Then I flew to New York. Where I spent 4 days eating and drinking. That's about it. Also, I looked at a bunch of art (in LA also). Lots of Yayoi Kusama. There's this great exhibition at The Broad in LA, but it's completely sold out. Well, I found out that if you go early you can get standby tickets. So I had some free time and decided I'd try, and showed up an hour before the museum opened. As it turns out, not only does showing up early help you get a ticket (even though there were like no lines that early), they also open the Yayoi Kusama exhibit before they open the museum! Like 2 hours earlier. So, show up at like 9am, and you'll probably get in and out super quickly even if you didn't pre-order a ticket. This was on a weekday, though, which I'm sure affected things.

So art was fun, but I also ate a ton of good food. Highlight was probably Marea, this fancy Italian place in NYC. One Michelin star. Had a tasting menu with wine. Delicious stuff. I even ate a half a tomato, and can now confirm what we all already knew: I still hate tomatoes. They are disgusting. It was so bad, it made me want to spit out the big piece of delicious lobster I ate at the same time. Now that's just sad. And we drank lots of wine. Lots and lots and lots of wine. This was brought on by my friend Miguel, who I spent two full days with and whose restaurant I went to (other highlight. It's called Pinch and it's really great xiaolongbao and Chinese food. Eat the roast chicken and mushroom dumplings), and he's a sommelier so he just gives me lots of delicious wine. Like, a lot. A whole lot. And so good, too. No complaints here!

Oh, and I went to see a Broadway show. After much hesitation and skepticism, Miguel and I decided to see the new Spongebob Squarepants musical that's just opened. And I have to say, it is awesome. Hilarious. Inventive. Just a super fun musical. I have no idea if it will do well, because I am sure it will be met with tons of skepticism. But this skeptic has been won over and would urge you to go see it if you have the chance.

As usual on these trips, I got way behind on music. In 10 days I barely even made it through the 2 new albums I bought just before leaving. I feel like it's been a slow few weeks for new music, but there were a couple albums that came out like 2 weeks ago and crept up on me. The first was Plunge, the new album from Fever Ray. If you don't know Fever Ray, it's one half of Swedish brother/sister duo The Knife. I'm sure I've written about them here. They make super weird dancy pop. Case in point, IDK About You. First time I listened to the album, I was like "meh". But then I listened again and things like this started to jump out at me. Especially when I listened to it on headphones. This is an exciting song, hidden right in the middle of the album.





The one that originally jumped out at me was Mama's Hand, the closing track. Really great one. Less jumpy and twitchy and weird, but really pretty and interesting.





The other album that came out was Lune Rouge, the new one from Tokimonsta. I think I've written about her before, not sure. I first saw her opening for Bonobo years and years ago in LA, and wasn't so impressed. She's a DJ from LA who's slowly gotten a lot of buzz and popularity, and who's also gotten steadily better, in my opinion. Her previous album, FOVERE, was the first one that really caught my attention. And now Lune Rouge has also. And to make it all more impressive, I just learned that she apparently had some rare brain disease that stopped her ability to talk and hear music, for which she underwent brain surgery, and then she came back and put out this album. Overall, the album is very listenable. Very smooth. But not too many amazing tracks. Except for the opener. I love the opener. It's actually two tracks, called Lune and Rouge, but they blend together on the album into a single continuous piece, so I don't know why she split it. Anywhere, here's both of the songs, which you should actually go listen to on Spotify or something so you can listen to them in order without any break and get the real feeling of the full song as I want you to.

Nov 11 - Miya Folick / Yaeji / Fyfe

I was supposed to write this earlier this week, then I didn't. I got busy or something. I don't know. It wasn't a particularly busy week, just normally busy. But then I flew back to America. And now I'm writing this in America. Yay! It's my sister's birthday, so we're going to go have the fun times today, but before that, here's some fun times for you.

Starting with Miya Folick. Actually, this isn't so fun. Even though she's on a roller coaster. It's more destroyed and heartbroken. She does that well. She just put out her 2nd EP, which is much rockier than her first, but still wonderful. Best song is Give it To Me. Super intense. She's really just going for it. Fun facts I just learned about her: She's from Orange County, where I am currently writing this, and she started her band on Tinder. Crazy!





So now we'll start to bring it down and chill out a bit with Yaeji. She also just put out her 2nd EP, cleverly titled EP2. She's from New York, where I will be in just a few days. I've written about her (and actually everyone in today's blog) before. She generally makes super chilled electronic music, sung mostly in Korean, and EP2 is no different. Passionfruit is the closer, really great, just like it's namesake which is like my favorite thing. But also, go listen to Make It Rain cause that one is not chilled out and it is super fun.





And then moving on to even more chilled, is the acoustic version of Relax, by Fyfe. He put out an album earlier this year or last year or something, which was ok. But he also just put out an EP with some acoustic versions and remixes of songs, and I really, really love Relax. The acoustic version. The real version is fine. But this one I listen to over and over.

Nov 4 - Weaves

Ok, this is the New Zealand post. I wanted to write it during the week, but I've actually been busy at work. What's up with that? Lame. Actually, I could have written it in Thailand (where I was doing site visits Monday and Tuesday), but after walking around for hours in the heat, I was too lazy to write a long blog. And actually this entire week has been very quiet for me socially, but I've just been exhausted. I didn't sleep well last weekend, and not just the weekend, like 5 nights straight. So yeah, I was tired. But slept great after a quiet Friday night, and now I'm ready to tell you about New Zealand.

So, as you know, I went to New Zealand to visit Beth. It was incredible. I had been wanting to go for years. I'd even say it was in my top 5 places to visit. In no small part because of Beth. But every time I would think about going, there was always some reason to wait, cause something might be coming up in the near future. But this time, I just went. And I'm so glad I did. I was there like 12 days, and left already wanting to come back.

I flew into a rainy and windy Wellington (apparently the windy part is pretty normal. It's the windiest city in the world, I'm told). Luckily I wasn't there long (yet), cause the next morning we flew to Queenstown, where the weather was perfect. I went with Beth and her boyfriend and some of their friends to spend 4 days in this house on a mountain, where we basically just ate and drank and during the day would leave the house to go eat and drink and this one time shoot clay pigeons (which I won! Although the instructor did have to put masking tape over one of my eyes so I could focus properly, which looked amazing. Duh. And even if it didn't, I won, so whatever). This was a great way to spend time with these people, because they are basically all foodies and winies (that is now a word) and beeries (also a word) and know what they're talking about, so I was just given many wonderful things. Honestly, I don't know what I brought to the table, other than being Jewish. But that's always good. So yeah, there's not much to say about it other than we ate and drank amazingly and had great weather and it's beautiful.

Then Beth and I got a free camper and drove back to Wellington over 3 days. Apparently these free campers are a thing in Australia and New Zealand. People go and do road trips and leave the campers or cars in a different location, so you can get a free car to return it to where it came from. It's kind of brilliant. So we did that with a camper van that supposedly sleeps 4, but luckily we only put 2 in because it was already a tight fit. The first day we drove up to Mt. Cook, New Zealand's highest peak, and took a little hike to see the mountains. Then kept on driving to Tekapo, where we spent the night. Maybe it sounds boring, cause it was mostly just driving, but we did make lots of stops to look at beautiful scenery. And the scenery down there is super beautiful. Stunning. Amazing. Mountains and lakes and snow and big skies and really just incredible. Plus I love a good roadtrip. So for me, it was pretty perfect. We spent the first night by a lake in this place called Tekapo, where Beth somehow managed to make this amazing dinner of salmon, cauliflower mash and asparagus in a tiny little camper van kitchen. There were wine reductions and everything (which did result in a big fire in the pan and I thought would result in the van exploding but did not). It was very impressive. It ended up being this wonderful 4 course meal, ending in chocolate and whiskey. Who would have thought you could do that in a camper??

Day two, we drove up to this place called Punakaiki on the west coast, which involved driving from the middle of the island (where Tekapo is) to the east coast, then doubling back through the mountains in the middle (which are incredible. We spent like 3 hours just driving through the valleys between these massive mountains. It was great), and finally to the west coast. Once you get close to the west coast, it gets almost jungly. According to Beth, it's basically the same flora that would have been around millions of years ago. That's pretty incredible. They actually even still have a dinosaur in New Zealand (It's called a Tuatara, and it's a lizard that existed when the dinosaurs were around, and is still in existence, and is a different genetic line than any lizard or bird because it is actually a dinosaur. Crazy, huh? I saw one. In a nature reserve in Wellington, but still.)! So we finally made it to the coast, just in time for sunset, so we parked on the side of the road, had a beer, and watched the sun set over the coast. It actually reminds me a bit of the Northern/Central California coast, in that it's mountains coming down into the ocean, with these random, rocky outcroppings just off the coast. Pretty spectacular. Especially with a great, New Zealand craft beer. Then we found our camping spot for the night, this time with electricity, showers and wifi (that didn't work). But the best part about it was the shitty pub, where we had a shitty meal surrounded by bikers. Very authentic experience, I'm told. It was one of those experiences where everything is so horrible, but it's exactly how it should be, and so you love it. The pub, not the camping. That was fine.

Then in the morning we woke up and went to see these Pancake rocks, that are pretty awesome. The water has eroded the rocks over the years so that they look like stacks of pancakes, and you just walk around on them, jutting out into the water, and the waves coming in at high tide make water shoot up randomly like geysers through the swiss-cheesy holes in the outcroppings. We were told it would be awesome, and it's the reason we stayed at Punakaiki, and it did not disappoint. The only disappointment was that we had to rush to catch our ferry back to the North Island in the afternoon, so we couldn't spend more than like 30 minutes at the rocks. I would have loved to spend more time. But alas, off we went, driving through more mountains and valleys and rivers and lakes and fields and plains to get to a boat to take us back to the big city, where I spent the next 4 days.

I hadn't really looked up anything to do, so just got a bunch of recs from Beth and her friends of what to do in town. And so I spent most of my time walking around exploring museums (pretty much all of which are free) and one day climbing up to the highest peak in town to take in some views. I also went to Weta Workshop, a film studio and special effects production house which most people know because of Lord of the Rings, but that is pretty much doing everything these days. Actually it'a amazing how many movies are either shot or edited in New Zealand. Kind of awesome. If you want to work in film, you should go to Wellington. And, of course, also drinking good coffee, good beer, and eating lots of good food. That was, as usual, the point of the whole thing. To eat good food. And I sure did. The food was awesome, and it helped having people who work in F&B and know (or own) all the best places taking you around. Best meal was probably at Shepherd, which is owned by Beth's boyfriend Sean. I may be biased, but seriously it was so delicious. There was this amazing chawan-mushi style egg custard with truffle oil and goat's cheese that was probably the best thing I ate on the entire trip. If you go to Wellington, go to Shepherd. And Golding's Free Dive, which is Sean's bar across the road from Shepherd, where I basically spent the late afternoon every day. But also do anything else Beth tells you. Um, yeah, I think that's it. It was wonderful. I want to go back. And I want my sister to move there. I think it's the most "her" place I've ever been. She would love it. Plus then I'd have an excuse to go annually, at least. Anyway, can't wait to go back!

Now for a bit of music, this time from Weaves. They just released their 2nd album, Wide Open, and I'm a fan. It's kind of a more poppy version of Alabama Shakes style rock. Case in point, Walkaway, one of my favorite tracks on the album.




So yeah, I really like this sound and album. I went and listened to their first album, though, and wasn't such a fan. I've actually talked before about this theory of how some bands put out a great first album that makes you fall in love, then they put out a mediocre second album, before coming back with an incredible third one. Another trend I feel like I see a lot is what Weaves did, which is where you put out a mediocre first album (which I'm not a fan of, although there was one really good song), but then an incredible second one. Very often in these cases, the 2nd album will end up being the only one I like. But sometimes, it also signifies a band coming into their own and starting to develop and make music I love. Hopefully that's what we've got with Weaves. But if not, at least we've got a great album in Wide Open. My favorite is probably the closing track, Puddle. I wasn't sure about it at first, but now I am. I play it on repeat. It's so good.