He does something similar on The Glad Version's song, "Heavenly Bodies," where he talks about the sun and moon as if they were lovers who chase each other across the sky but can never touch. Then he drops the line, "Heavenly bodies need eclipse/For that one moment, that brief kiss/And then that's it" and you have a music-gasm and cry about how depressing your life is (but not really). It's amazing stuff.
What I'm really, insanely jealous of is his ability to write melody. He can be talking about the deepest, darkest stuff and singing these beguiling things that just make you feel like everything's going to be okay. I feel like it's rare--at least for me--to find a songwriter that can do this.
Adam is a local treasure that's so obviously on the verge of wider recognition (I've written about him a few times here and here) and I would love to do some string arrangements for a record of his sometime. Or maybe like a live-ish EP of him going native acoustic with some accompanying instruments wailing away alongside him? That would be so much fun.
I also recently bought Owen Pallett's album, Heartland. Think electronica meets a symphony orchestra with an incredibly diverse harmonic palette (no pun intended) but not in a kitschy, look-what-I-can-do kind of way.
True. It certainly does remind one of Sufjan Stevens every now and then what with the trills and woodwind runs here and there but, frankly, good music is good music no matter what it sounds like. Check out the track "Lewis Takes Action." Towards the end he writes these totally discordant parallel seconds into the orchestra part. You don't find that stuff lying around outside of concert music very often.
Then there are these beautiful symphonic swells in "Lewis Takes Off His Shirt" (that only a group of acoustic instruments could ever pull off) which swoon over the top of an electronic ostinato as he sings the line "I'm never gonna give it to you" over and over again. Just really beautiful stuff that's constructed well and I'm so glad I happened to hear this record while I was shopping for clothes the other day.
On a gastronomic note, I made an incredible risotto the other day. Remember how I blogged about Barbette a few entries back? Well I finally got fed up with having to pay so much for that culinary masterpiece and decided to try and decipher their recipe.
I don't know if you've ever had Taleggio cheese but, holy shit, it goes really, really well in a risotto with fresh sage, parsnips and squash. It's a soft cheese that has this great salty, nutty thing going on and, although I got covered in the stuff in the process of cutting off the rind, it's my new favorite Italian export.
I'm still a little fuzzy on how much Arborio rice it takes to make a certain amount of the dish but, having now conquered my baseless fear of making this stuff, I think it's safe to say that it'll be staple of my diet in the coming years.
As far as writing goes I'm hip-deep in a piece for the Minnesota All-State Choir. It uses portions of an amazing text by Khalil Gibran called "On Children" which I've been sitting on for years in the search for the right venue. It starts off with the line, "Your children are not your children/They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself."
Now, beauty aside (and it is soooo beautiful...here, read it), I think it's mildly awesome that I'm going to have the best young singers in the state singing at their teachers and parents that "their children are not their children." And I've got them repeating that line over and over and over again so that the irony should hopefully take root.
I've also decided to use two, four-hand pianos as accompaniment. The commission calls for a piano but, since choral pieces always use a piano, I wanted to turn this totally regular thing into something extraordinary. Formatting this score is going to be a bitch so my apologies to the page turners who are going to have to navigate my mess. Just know that I'll be thinking of you.
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