Music Love: "Lonesome Rider" by The Beth Edges

A few weeks ago, I was at the Radical Reels Film Tour, an offshoot of the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival. Both are super cool film tours that showcase shorts (anywhere from 2 to 30ish minutes) about outdoor sports such as rock climbing, skiing, and kayaking. Radical Reels focuses on the more “extreme” end of these sports. Both festivals are a lot of fun. If you get a chance, you should check them out! The Banff tour goes all over the world; Radical Reels has events in Canada, the USA, and Australia.

At any rate, it was at the tour, during one of these films, that I first heard The Beth Edges. I can’t tell you what song it was, or what movie it was in (I’m guessing it was the one about the crazy Austrian guys who put their BMX-type bikes on skis to ride them down mountains, doing tricks) and they weren’t even my favorite of the two bands whose names I wrote down. About a week later, I remembered that I’d written down these bands (the other was FMLYBND) and decided to look them up on iTunes.

A listen to FMLYBND left me, frankly, puzzled as to why they’d intrigued me in the first place. Then I listened to The Beth Edges and immediately fell in love. I loved them so much, in fact, that it was difficult to choose just one song to download. (If I let myself, I would spend hundreds of dollars on music, so I try to keep it in check.) The song I chose is the one above.

I don’t know about you, but I never would have guessed that this young band hails from Austria. All of their songs are in English, and to me they have a very British sound, which is probably why I like them so much. In fact, they remind me of early Kooks, and I love early Kooks (I like later Kooks too, but reserve most of my love for the early years). There’s something about the quality of singer Tobias Gruenzweil’s voice that’s often reminiscent of the Kooks’ Luke Pritchard. The music has a similar sound too.

I love pretty much every about this band and this particular song: their sound, and Grunzweil’s voice, and their lyrics. What drew me to this song was the pleading refrain, “Just wanted you to know that I’ll be trying to change for the better.” It hits very close to home for me, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I can do to be a better person. As much as I love this song, however, I hate the video, so much so that I almost decided to put up an unofficial video instead. Eventually, I decided that I want you to hear the studio version. Maybe just close your eyes and listen to it instead of watching.

A day or two after I downloaded “Lonesome Rider,” my husband spontaneously gave me an iTunes gift card. That same night, I bought both Beth Edges albums. They’re phenomenal. Can’t recommend them enough. If, for some reason, you don’t like “Lonesome Rider,” check out “Made-Up Stories,” “Older Than Me,” and “Follow Your Feet.” Just don’t miss out on this band!

Music Love: "Alleyway" by Life in Film

If you stick with this series long enough, you’ll see me talk about lyrics a lot. I prefer great lyrics and a fine voice to the actual music itself. My husband thinks I’m weird. To him, the music and the beat are paramount. He doesn’t really care if the lyrics are dumb. Perhaps this is why we have very different taste in music, not that I mind. To each their own, right?

A large part of what I like about the UK’s Life in Film is their lyrics. I came to “Alleyway” because of Sirius XM, which we got for free for a year when we leased our car. There were about five channels I listened to regularly, one of which was the alternative station. That’s where I first heard Life in Film’s catchy, upbeat single “Get Closer.” I downloaded it immediately. A few months later, I looked to see if they had anything else available and discovered their songs “Alleyway,” and “It’s What Happens Next That Matters Most.” I downloaded those as well, and pre-ordered the rest of the album.

It was a first for me. I’m not the type to pay for an album before listening to it. Heck, I’m not really the type to download a whole album at all. I usually just cherry pick the songs that I like. So that should tell you how much I love Life in Film.

In addition to their lyrics (in this song: “And what we have, no one ever gives up lightly. What time is it when the whole world stops?” and “And so we’ll break our wrists, trying to hold up the world for a few more seconds so we won’t be lonely for a while”), I also love lead singer Samuel Fry’s rich, strong vocals. His tone has a hint of a wail to it that I feel like I shouldn’t enjoy but do. I also like the uptempo beat of most of their music. In particular, I’m a sucker for uptempo songs that are actually sad, such as this one, the tale former lovers meeting and discovering, all over again, that they don’t belong together.

There’s currently no “official” video for “Alleyway.” I had to choose between linking a video with a still photo and the studio version of the song or a video with the band playing an acoustic version of it. Honestly, it was a tough choice. One of my favorite things about this song is the guitar intro, which I find rather haunting. It loses that quality in the acoustic version, but that’s the one I chose anyway because I thought my readers might like to see what the band looks like. Also, I’m impressed that Samuel Fry’s voice seems as strong outside of the studio as it is in it. 

However, I encourage you to listen to the studio version of the song. I also encourage you to buy as much of Life in Film’s music you can find because they're a band that's going places.

Music Love: "Blush" by Wolf Alice

The first song of Wolf Alice’s I ever heard was “Moaning Lisa Smile,” on the car radio. I dug its gritty 90s vibe, but sort of forgot about it for a few months until I heard it in the car again. I decided to look them up online when I got home. Within a few moments of doing so, I’d downloaded two of their EPs, “Blush” and “Creature Songs.”

The 90s were my time to come of age; I was in my teens and twenties throughout them. I was definitely into the alternative and grunge scenes. However, I’ve never considered myself “stuck” on them. I feel that a lot of people hold on too tightly to the music of their youth. I’ve always tried to keep an open mind about music, to find bands and/or songs that I like in each genre, and to keep an ear out for great new music. Few things bother me more than people who say there’s no good music anymore. I say those people just don’t know where to look for it.

So I don’t make a habit of seeking out music with a 90s alternative sound, but there’s something about Wolf Alice’s take on it that I find incredibly pleasing. I also love the voice of Ellie Rowsell, their lead singer. That’s not something you’ll hear me say a whole lot. I tend to prefer male singers. In recent years, I’ve found more and more female singers that I enjoy (Elephant, First Aid Kit, Phantogram) but my music library is still largely overrun by men.

But even more than I love Ellie’s beautiful, haunting vocals, and more than I love the way that the music completely sets the tone of the song, manipulating how I feel, I love the opening lyrics of “Blush”:

Curse the things that made me sad for so long

Yeah, it hurts to think that they can still go on

I’m happy now

Are you happy now?

Man, that hits me right where it hurts. I spent a lot of this year struggling with feelings of inadequacy. They were of a particular sort that I hadn’t felt in a while. It reminded me of some of my more youthful struggles, and it drove me nuts to think that these feelings I thought I’d conquered were still lurking in my psyche, all these years later. I got through that bad patch, and I did so before I ever heard of this song, but those lyrics still mean a lot to me. I listen to “Blush” all the time now. It’s a good reminder to not let my old demons get the best of me, because I’m happy now.

I’m expecting good things from Wolf Alice in the future.

Music Love: "Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow)" by The Monkees

I love music just as much as, if not more than, I love movies, but for some reason, I don’t talk about that much here. The other day, as I was writing, I had music on and one of the songs I’ve really been digging lately came on. “Why don’t I do some blog posts about the songs I love?” I thought to myself. And hence this series was born.

For my first entry, I present you with The Monkees’ “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow).”

I’ve always loved The Monkees. When I was a kid, my brothers and I watched the reruns of their show all the time. Just like there were four of them, there were four of us in our little family, so we each chose a Monkee to represent us. I was Davy Jones; my brother Mike was Mike Nesmith; my brother Ken (a blond) was Peter Tork; and Mickey Dolenz was assigned to my mom because he was the only one left over. Davy Jones was one of my very first crushes. I was devastated when he died a few years ago.

The Monkees are often written off because they were a “manufactured” band. One could even reasonably describe them as a “boy band.” However, they were all talented musicians in their own right before being cast on the show. The producers assigned pretty much all of them to play different instruments than what they normally played, so they had to learn new ones. Jones, for example, was an accomplished drummer, but he virtually never played drums when he was with the Monkees. They wrote a lot of their own songs, especially Nesmith (he also wrote my favorite Linda Ronstadt song, “Different Drum”). All of them could sing. There’s seriously not a weak singer in the bunch. They used each singer differently and, in my opinion, correctly. They definitely knew what they were doing.

I’ve been loving “Look Out (Here Comes Tomorrow),” written by Neil Diamond, for a lot of reasons. One, I love Davy’s vocals. He sings this one with more of an edge than normal. Two, I’m a sucker for uptempo, happy-on-the-surface songs that are actually unhappy at the core (see: The Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York”). And three, I think it’s funny. This guy’s whole problem is that he’s got the hots for two women. Truly an issue for the ages!

As to what’s going on in the video, I couldn’t tell you. It’s a clip from the show, but it’s not an episode I recall. I have no idea why there’s a guy tied up in it, or why The Monkees are singing about a love triangle at what appears to a child’s birthday party. The dancing kids are pretty priceless though! I learned everything I know about 1960s dance moves from this show and from the old “Batman” TV show.