Albums For Every Moment

Photo by Paul Broome

I'm a firm believer in concocting the perfect soundtrack to life - stashing away some jazzy and upbeat and melodic tunes for all of those conceivable moments that could require music. Whether it's a single song for those moments when you get the incurable blues or a whole playlist overflowing with swingin', swayin', slam-dancin' pep,  the power of music to change the rhythm of life is undeniable. The question is, what's on your soundtrack?

♥ For Electric Shocked, Bubblegum Pop, Clap-Your-Hands Moments 

Jukebox the Ghost - Let Live & Let Ghosts

I discovered this triad of merriment no more than a few weeks ago when they opened for Ben Folds at an itsy bitsy show in a local college theatre, electrifying the crowd with repeating beats and swingin' tunes. Before the show the women's bathroom had been crowded with twenty-something girls complaining about how opening acts never made them want to rush out and buy their CD, but Jukebox the Ghost shocked everyone by doing exactly that. As soon as they left the stage, there was practically a stampede of people charging towards their tiny merchandise table! 

Let Live & Let Ghosts is for those moments of chaotically sweet soda-pop bliss - for the upbeat anarchist spray-painting ten foot smiley faces underneath bridges and on empty walls, for tiny girls sipping down chocolate milkshakes in diners and trying to explain the Socratic method to bewildered strangers, for eight year old gangster girls in Converse and tutus, stomping around the playground and cursing like a sailor at anyone who looks at her the wrong way. It's an album about the confusing thrills that make up life, whether it be parking your car in a tow-away zone or surviving the apocalypse only to find, after the dust settles, "a better world than the one you left behind."

Preview (Hold It In):

 

♥ For Sweetly Surreal, Slow-Motion, Modern Day Moments

Ben Folds - Ben Folds Live

Ben Folds has been my personal hero for as long as I can remember (I've joked since the sixth grade that one day I'll get him to come to my birthday party), with charmingly surreal tracks ranging in topic from the club-life of gothic misfits to the daily failures of a college drop-out considering joining the army. His live shows have a kind of communal spark to them that studio-recorded tracks just can't capture which makes this album, in my opinion, one of his best. It's the next best thing to actually being in the audience!

Ben Folds Live is the perfect soundtrack for those moments that require flinchingly catchy yet down-to-earth ballads - for being chased down by the hypertonic scream of a cop car, or watching a car crash shatter in front of you in steamy, dreamy, mistifying slow motion, or daydreaming aimlessly to the haunting question of "What if? What if? What if? What now?" It's music for realists and daydreamers alike, for awkward teens and ever more awkward adults, for strangers and loners confused by the sleepy complexities of life but in love with them nonetheless. It seems that those thrilling je ne sais quoi moments that life quietly slips underneath us can always be filled in neatly with a bottle of beer and a Ben Folds song.

Preview (Zak & Sara): 

♥ For Super-Charged, Ska-a-Go-Go, Save the World Moments

The Aquabats! - Myths, Legends and Other Amazing Adventures, Vol. 2

Whether you know it or not, most everyone with a toddler in the house has encountered the Aquabats in one way or another. As the creative geniuses behind the electrifying kids show Yo Gabba Gabba, their music has seeped into houses all across the world in the form of those tiny tunes that your baby sister won't stop humming. Their formal music, though, is far more thrilling, taking on the form of backflipping ska tracks with a full brass band and shakin', cartoon-inspired lyrics.

Perfect for thrashing, bashing, party-crashing moments, Myths, Legends and Other Amazing Adventures, Vol. 2 makes a ska-a-go-go background to a day spent playing dress-up with wrinkled costumes and kids bed sheets-turned-capes, or cannon-balling in on a hot summer pool party, or speeding towards the beach on an electric yellow moped, revving through stop signs and stop lights and crosswalks alike. For big kids, though, their music is the main ingredient to starting a sweet-and-sour slam-dance-mania mosh pit, no matter whether you're at a club, in a parking lot, or even thrashing through supermarket isles!

Preview (The Wild Sea!):

♥ For Mean Reds, Swollen Blues, and Bittersweet Happiness In-Between Moments

Luke Doucet - Broken (And Other Rogue States)

With songs reminiscent of flirtatiously dangerous noir flicks, black and white and splattered with streaks of chocolate syrup blood, Luke Doucet strums out harrowing tales of broken hearts and broken china, furniture tossed from apartment buildings in a steamy frenzy and sloshing glasses of bourbon and rum on the rocks. His characters are acoustic heroes, "martyrs and barflies" tiptoeing through a sepia city sparked by broken neon and shady, rouged girls in golden cocktail dresses. 

For those smokescreen jazz-club moments in life where the blues and the reds collide spectacularly leaving you swaying and woozy, Broken (And Other Rogue States) provides a perfect soundtrack to match your haziness and transport you to a world of sleepy strangers and broken fire-escapes. It's a world of brick apartment buildings and swaying sidewalks, of restaurant powder rooms and young waiters in tuxes and a matching fez, of jazz singers and lit cigarettes and stiletto heels and black suited men. An album for dazed moods and bittersweet blues, Doucet lights up those dark corners of life with mystifying songs and swaying guitar solos.

Preview (Emily, Please):

Always,
Penelope ♥

The Cocoa Soundtrack To Life

CD..

I recently did an interview for Lisa Clark's Pink World (which can be seen right here!) and one of her many fantastic questions included "What five songs are on the Cocoa soundtrack to life?" Although she only asked for a simple five, this got me thinking, sorting, compiling an eclectic mix of the most inspiring music I could find - the kind of music that keeps the world spinning round. Music that makes you want to jitterbug across the living room floor, music that played in your head during your first kiss, music that shakes the ground beneath you and makes you want to stand atop moving cars and sing out slewed lyrics at the top of your lungs. Music that says hello, Cocoa.

This is the Cocoa Soundtrack to life, simply.

1. Float On - Modest Mouse

Driving through labyrinth streets and glowing red lights that seem to whisper secrets to the tarmac. Teenagers eating scrambled eggs and french toast in diners at one in the morning. Sitting in the backseat of a two-door sedan, banging against the window with every downbeat - shouting, not singing. Recognizing the silliness and thrill of this world in that moment, in that song. Never being afraid to blast the radio ever again.

2. Breakdown - Jack Johnson

Afternoon picnics under the blinding caramel sun - buttery light so airy that it spreads itself entirely across the landscape. Sunday morning cafes that serve fizzy Italian sodas and hazelnut coffee to sparkling jazz musicians in fedoras. Buzzing down alleyways and open roads on the back of a lemon-yellow Vespa, eyes closed, inhaling the scenery. Feeling as though the entire world is as sweet as this honey-drizzled paradise.

3. Chelsea Dagger - The Fratellis

Thrashing in the streets. Girls in six-inch heels and paper-thin jeans strutting, not walking. Cherry red lipstick stains on every white-button up and paper napkin in town, like a trail of breadcrumbs side-winding from lover to lover. Swaying hips and guitar riffs shaking up the city streets. All-night shows that spark lightning storms inside neon dance clubs and corrupt the youth.

4. Love and Happiness - Al Green

Blues club kisses and southern nights. Folks with so much soul that they shout when they mean to whisper. Guitars that strum on their own, sending out a harmonious mating call to the people that were meant to play them. Silky smooth swaying hips and dollhouses made from Limone bottle caps. That feeling of overwhelming, unshakable soul that prickles you straight down the chest like an acupuncturist. Folk art on scraps of musty wood, illustrating baptist gospels and sunday brunches and the birth of Elvis and Jesus sighing on the cross.

5. Blood & Peanut Butter - BC Camplight

Strumming out chords in the middle of the street, singing out as a one-man musical revolution. Women in business suits and tie-dye alike clasping hands and twirling like rockstar whirling dervishes. Tap dancing atop cars, bouncing to drum beats, cage dancing for the uncageable.

6. Raw Sugar - Metric

Slow dancing, low dancing - belly dances and bonfires on sandy beaches. Poetry slams set to music and beat-boxing boys linking fingers with microphones. Palm trees that whiplash against the wind and the children who bandage them with snowflake-colored Christmas lights. Overcast days spent breezing down Worth Avenue on cruise control, admiring the high-rises and gold-flaked chateaus.

7. Love Underground - Robbers on High Street

Superhero-like love, with white-river rapids of adrenaline and emotion. Running, bounding, backflipping through boundaries and obstacles - cartwheeling into a lover's arms and feeling the ground shake from your bass-drum heartbeat. Knowing that this is how love should feel - sparkling, soaring, sweeping through couples like hawks in a swan-dive.

8. Good Enough For Granddad - Squirrel Nut Zippers

Outdoor parties under the cherry-pink sky where harlequin girls shake their fingers to the rhythm. Foxtrotting and lindyhopping and swing dancing and sidestepping while chewing on watermelon bubble gum and chalky candy cigarettes. Seizing tiny girls by the waist and spinning them into a dizzy dreamworld of big bandstands and big band.

9. Dancing in the Moonlight - King Harvest

Blind dates in tiny cafes where the entire restaurant is illuminated by strings of paper lights. Warming frosted hands with mugs of hot chocolate and making origami cranes out of cloth napkins. Tap dancing under the summer moon, watching it wain from park benches. Making love in a personal-pan sized bedroom the color of rosewater marzipan.

10. Sweet Jane - The Velvet Underground

Tossing left and right with Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgewick as dance partners, sipping the factory scene like it's a sweetened rum and coke. Going to the grocery store in furs and flats while budding rock stars strum guitars on the dairy isle, shouting out names of all their lovers. Alternative families who dress their children in kimonos and cowgirl boots and whisper stories about how they used to be local punk stars or costumers for movies or novelists or party planners. Watching those children grow up to be exactly that.

11. All My Life - Cas Haley

End credits played at outdoor movie theatres. Life seeming to move to the same beat. Dinner with friends, eating Israeli couscous and thick slices of cheese pizza outdoors amongst the bougainvilleas and humming swallows. Finding that perfect ice cream ice princess dress that makes you feel like a candied ska star. Figuring out the secrets of life from thick canopies of trees and late-night sunshine and sweeping beaches and stray cats that eat out of your hand. Finding happiness.

Bonus Tracks

12. Hong Kong Garden - Siouxsie and the Banshees

13. A-Punk - Vampire Weekend

14. Kiss Me - Sixpence None the Richer

15. You - Atmosphere

16. The Science of Selling Yourself Short - Less Than Jake

Always,

Penelope ♥