Liz From St. Louis

Cassadaga.
Bright Eyes.
All I’ve been listening to.

Okay, so that’s a bit of a lie. I’ve been listening to some other things, but right now my musical love lies with Bright Eyes’ most recent album. It’s mellow, honest, poetic… and really if there was a Dylan for the new millennium, I’m going to go out on a limb here but I think Conor Oberst would be that person.

Maybe it’s just because I’m from the Midwest, but every song on the album just pours from somewhere true and close to me. I don’t really know why I connect with Oberst so well, other than that explanation. I’m not really a fan of alt-country or folk-indie stuff or gosh, what do you classify Bright Eyes as? (I’m bad at categorizing music). Anyway – I’m more of a ‘louder and faster is better’ kind of music fan, but Cassadaga just soothes me, awakens me, makes me feel in touch with something. I love it.

She was a real royal lady, true patron of the arts
She said the best country singers die in the back of classic cars
So if I ever got too hungry for a suitcase or guitar
To think of them all alone in the dark.
- “Classic Cars”

Really, my love of Bright Eyes goes back a few years when I started working at the college radio station, KCOU. Their music was my guilty pleasure that I didn’t talk about but then in Nov. of 2006 Oberst and gang came here to MU for a performance at Jesse Auditorium and with front row center tickets in hand, I let it be public that I loved Bright Eyes like all of the dirty indie kids and hipsters that were packed in the same auditorium alongside me. My BE albums and I have been inseparable ever since.

My obsessive Cassadaga listening is partly cure for the fact that I’m impatiently waiting for the July 24th release of Tegan and Sara’s new album The Con. Their first two singles off iTunes, “The Con” and “Back In Your Head” have quenched my thirst for those Canadian twins just enough. The cute lyrics, the high-pitched girly vocals; the Quin sisters’ voices make me see little curly-ques and sketchy scribblings. Cute cute cute. Is really all I can say. (I think my brain deteriorates more and more everyday, I just can’t adequately describe music that I love because I’m too into it :X ) Their songs sound like diary entries I would’ve written if I would’ve continued keeping a diary and not begun keeping a LiveJournal instead.

“Parenthesis” by The Blow is something my sister Caitlin got me into. I think she found it on MySpace… anyway. It’s the cutest and catchiest song I’ve heard as of late. Again, I use the word ‘cute’ because I can’t really think of any other way to describe a female-sung song that includes the line “And when you’re holding me/we make a pair of parenthesis/There’s plenty space to encase/What ever weird way my mind goes” in the chorus. And hey, you can totally clap along to the slapping drum beat – LOVE IT!

Then there’s the Jeffree Star EP Plastic Surgery Slumber Party. I really wanted to write him off as another MySpace celebrity upon first glance. But that was over a year ago, and I have to admit that #1 He’s gorgeous #2 PINK EVERYWHERE! #3 Attitude to the f’ing max #4 His EP is catchy as hell. “Ice Cream” is my favorite song because it’s a little naughty but the beat is what really gets me, it’s very Berlin-esque and who doesn’t love a little Berlin? I was disappointed that my favorite J* song, “Louis Vuitton” wasn’t included on the EP. It was only on MySpace and now it’s been taken off :’( I’d like to get a hold of it, because who doesn’t like a song about a pink-haired guy paying tribute to his ‘Louie?’

I work out to Plastic Surgery Slumber Party because it give me perfect attitude to ignore all of the stupid blonde tan girls around me in the rec. I’m hotter than those bitches.

I bought the latest issue of Spin, with Amy Winehouse on the cover, delighted to find that it included the Smashing Pumpkins tribute thing that MySpace put together. While The Academy Is…’ version of “Mayonnaise” isn’t my favorite, but that Beckett kid has a whiney little voice that I can’t resist. My real love is Panic! At The Disco’s “Tonight Tonight” because, when I saw them in concert a year ago in Cleveland during their first headlining tour, they did it as a cover. Yes, Panic! appeals to the screaming braces set, but there’s something about Urie’s young warbling whine makes me turn to goo, especially with this cover. While “Today” off Siamese Dream was the song that got me into the Pumpkins as a young young kid (we’re talking 8, here), it was “Tonight Tonight” and its video that sucked me in to having this fantastical love and appreciation of Corgan & company. Panic!’s rendition and performance amidst a Moulin Rouge/”Tonight Tonight” set on a hot summer night, well it was enough to let me fall in love with the idea of some snot-nosed kids redoing one of my very beloved songs. I could do without the +44, The Bravery and Young Love renditions. Ben Kweller was the only other decent artist, offering his take on “Today.” Gosh, maybe I’m just biased to my favorite Pumpkins songs?

I need to be a little more intelligent with my music writing. But hey, this is a start, right? Just thought I’d let you know what I’m listening to.

Oh, and there’s plenty of Morrissey and My Chemical Romance filling in the gaps, because I can’t let those two go no matter how I try.