Et tu, Coline?

Okay I've been listening to Hazards of Love, and I have one word to describe it. Weird. I mean listen to Queen's Rebuke! Wow. Do I need to atte- Actually, you know, fuck it. I don't have only one word to describe it, I have several: weird, awkward, inconsistent, WHYY??? Why are you doing this to me???? What's with all the 80s guitars on some of the tracks? It sounds like Axl Rose and Bon Jovi happened to pop up at the recording studio and took over the instruments. And where are the haunting melodies that only The Decemberists know how to produce? And what about that totally irrelevant P.J. Harveyish voice? It's not that it's a bad voice, but in combination with Meloy's? Dear Lord!! I'm all for bands evolving, but evolving in the right direction. And this is not it, for me. This feeling of disappointment is exacerbated by the fact that I am a HUGE Decemberists fan. I really really love this band and feel so let down. First Connor Oberst, now Colin Meloy too??? And I've never even had the chance to see them live yet! Oookay this post is not making me feel any better so it will have to meet an early end. But you know Colin, maybe predictability is not such a bad thing after all. And there are some songs - or parts of songs - on the album where, if you really pay attention, the good ol' Decemberists formula is still recognizable. So I will choose to have faith and hope it's not all downhill from now on. Is this just wishful thinking?

The actually quite good, though not mind-blowing or anything:
Isn't It a Lovely Night?

The mediocre:
The Rake's Song

The awkward:
The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing

And here in Spain I am a Spaniard

Early morning Barcelona airport
 

I flew to Spain on Monday, travelling via Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela, and will be here for another 4 to 5 weeks, or at least until spring shows its pretty face. I'm here visiting my brother in the lovely (and small) seaside town of Cambados (Galicia), and can see the Atlantic tide come in just outside my window.
I figured a relevant trip-related post was surely in order!

Grandaddy - Aisle Seat 37-D
Miles high
Stalled above the sea
Aisle seat 37-D
The hard guys that are crying quietly
And the mom's lost in shock will never see
Me sittin alone
Wearin head phones
Smiling slightly as we
Fall toward the sea

And I'm havin a glass of red wine
Tryin to find a picture of you
While everyone's goin insane
I feel that I'm staying reasonably calm
And now the pilot's reciting a prayer
But I'm so not there
And I really don't care

Cuz the picture of you I couldn't
I finally found
So everything's fine
And the picture of you I couldn't find
I finally found
So everything's fine
While faster we fall toward the sea
I'm ok cuz yer with me
Here in 37-D
 

10:45 to Santiago


Bishop Allen - Flight 180
how disconnected I can feel on the ground
it's like I'm shining all alone
and I don't wanna be
so
before I go to bed tonight
  I'll signal up to the passing flights
hit the lights
the lights
the lights
the lights ...

This beautiful song was once sent to me by the person I miss and will continue to miss (a LOT) while I'm here...

The Decemberists - Here I dreamt I was an Architect

And here in Spain I am a Spaniard
I will be buried with my marionettes
Countess and courtesan
Have fallen beneath my tender hand
When their husbands were not around
But you, my soiled teenage girlfriend
Or are you furrowed like a lioness
And we are vagabonds
We travel without seatbelts on
We live this close to death  

 

The Modern Lovers - Pablo Picasso

Well some people try to pick up girls
And get called assholes
This never happened to Pablo Picasso
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare and
So Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole

Apart from the rather obvious Spain connection, I included this as I missed seeing Jonathan Richman in Barcelona by exactly 8 days. This makes me sad.

Touchdown coffee in Santiago de Compostela

Letters have no Arms reaches 100,000 views!

Yayoi Kusama Fireflies on Water
   
Yes, Letters have no Arms is happy to announce its 100,000 view anniversary.
 

So a big thanks to everyone who has visited our page over the past, oh nine months or so. To quote many a boyband and teen sensation, we couldn't have done it without you! (well, we could have, of course, but what would have been the fun of that?)
 

 Thanks for all the comments, the views, the bookmarks, and the time taken to check us out (even if you just came straight from Hype Machine/Elbo.ws and downloaded an mp3) We love you all!

And here are some party favours to take home with you:


The Magnetic Fields - 100,000 Fireflies
The Decemberists - The Rake's Song
Beirut - La Llorona

Songs about books: a mix tape

Our favorite songs about books everyone.

1. Akron/Family - Franny/You're Human
"Please Lord give me strength to be nobody 'cause I am not my thoughts'
("Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger)

2. Modest Mouse - Bukowski
"Woke this morning and it seemed to me
That every night turns out to be a little bit more like Bukowski
And yeah, I know he's a pretty good read but God, who'd want to be such an asshole?"
(about writer Charles Bukowski)

3. Bjork - Sun In My Mouth

"I will wade out 'till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth"
("I Will Wade Out" by E.E. Cummings)

4. The Cure - Charlotte Sometimes
"Night after night she lay alone in bed, her eyes so open to the dark
The streets all looked so strange, they seemed so far away
But Charlotte did not cry"
("Charlotte Sometimes" by Penelope Farmer)

5. Of Montreal - The Past Is a Grotesque Animal
"I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met who could appreciate Georges Bataille
Standing at a Swedish festival discussing Story of the Eye"
("Story of the Eye" by Georges Bataille)

6. Idlewild - Roseability
"Gertrude Stein said "that’s enough"
(I know that that’s not enough now)
Rose, ability. There is no roseability"
("Sacred Emily" by Gertrude Stein)

7. Babyshambles - East of Eden
"There's a slow train rumblin' east of a place called Eden
The wind blowin' in proud as the trees upon the plain
And a stranger's voice talked to me of liberty and freedom"
("East of Eden" by John Steinbeck)

8. How Airplanes Fly - Luna, I Believe in You
"You're strange but in a good way, you keep things interesting
I never know what you'll say next, you always keep me guessing
Who cares if you've got radishes in your ears? Not me!
Maybe they're telling you something we can't hear, something that goes like this"
("Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" by J.K. Rowling)

9. Los Campesinos! - Don't Tell Me to Do the Maths
"We know that we could sell your magazines
If only you would give your life to literature just
Don't read Jane Eyre!"
("Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Brontë)

10. The Decemberists - Song for Myla Goldberg
"Sew wings to your pigeon toes
Put paper to pen to spell out Eliza"
("Bee Season" by Myla Goldberg)

11. Billy Bragg ft Wilco - Walt Whitman's Niece
"My girl had told us that she was a niece of Walt Whitman, but not which niece
And it takes a night and a girl and a book of this kind a long long time to find its way back"
(mentions poet Walt Whitman)

12. Sound Team - No More Birthdays
"Let's speed it up so we can slow back down
Kafka on the shore, ah Kafka on the shore!
Rising up so we can rise back down
Oh Kafka on the shore"
("Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami)

13. Kate Bush - Cloudbusting
"I wake up crying. You're making rain
And you're just in reach
When you and sleep escape me"
("A Book of Dreams" by Peter Reich)

14. The Divine Comedy - A Woman of the World
"Just you wait - hey, give the girl a break
And a fifty dollar bill will see to that
That ain't enough to feed the cat
Serve up the rats and super rats
Well they just get fatter while she fades away"
("Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Truman Capote)

15. Radiohead - My Iron Lung

"A total w.a.s.t.e. of time, my iron lung"
("The Crying Of Lot 49" by Thomas Pynchon - incidentally
the same novel that inspired Yo La Tengo's "The Crying of Lot G")

Plus: Did you know?

...The Velvet Underground were named after a book about sadomasochism by Michael Leigh
... Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" refers to Marvin, the chronically depressed robot from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
...Franz Ferdinand's 'Love and Destroy' and The Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil' are about the same book: Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita". Also, The Lawrence Arms' album 'The Greatest Story Ever Told" is a chapter by chapter allegory for the same book, with Brendan's songs functioning as the Moscow chapters and Chris's songs as the Jerusalem chapters.
...Coldplay's "Clocks" makes allusions to Friedrich von Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell"
...Klaxons' debut album "Myths of the Near Future" is named after a collection of short stories by J. G. Ballard and allusions to J. G. Ballard are made throughout the album. Also, their song "Gravity's Rainbow" is named after the book of the same name by Thomas Pynchon, while "Atlantis to Interzone" references William S. Burroughs' short story collection "Interzone"
...The Divine Comedy song "The Booklovers" mentions more than 70 writers.
...there are more than 500 'wizard rock' bands who draw inspiration for their lyrics exclusively from the Harry Potter series
...the band name "The Libertines" was taken from Marquis de Sade's "Lust of the Libertines"
...Green Day (Basket Case, Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?), Belle & Sebastian (La Pastie de la Bourgeoisie), Aesop Rock (Save Yourself), The Divine Comedy (Gin Soaked), Beastie Boys (Shadrach), Jedi Mind Tricks (Trinity), Komeda (Cathcer), Streetlight Manifesto (Here's to Life), Bloodhound Gang (Magna Cum Nada), Billy Joel (We Didn't Start the Fire), The Lawrence Arms (The Disaster March), The Ataris (If You Really Wanna Hear About It) etc. What do they have in common? They all have references to 'The Catcher in the Rye'.
...several songs on The Rakes' debut album "Capture/Release" reference books. According to singer (and known bookworm) Alan Donohoe, "We Are All Animals" was inspired by Peter Singer's "Animal Liberation" and Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene". Also, "All Too Human" is named after Friedrich Nietzsche "Human, All Too Human". Donohoe has mentioned James Joyce, Richard Hawkins and Stephen King as some of his favorite writers.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how excited are we about the season final of Lost? Around 9.4

* Cocoon - Take Off
'My friends all died in a plane crash
Well there is a God but he wants cash'

* Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down (Locke)
'Well my goodness gracious let me tell you the news
My head's been wet with the midnight dew
I've been down on bended knee talkin' to the man from Galilee
He spoke to me in the voice so sweet
I thought I heard the shuffle of the angel's feet
He called my name and my heart stood still
When he said, "John go do my will!" '

* The Decemberists - The Bagman's Gambit (Sayid)
'On the lam from the law, on the steps of the capitol
You shot a plainclothes cop on the ten o'clock
And I saw momentarily
They flashed a photograph, it couldn't be you
You'd been abused so horribly
But you were there in some anonymous room
And I recall that fall I was working for the government
And in a bathroom stall off the National Mall
How we kissed so sweetly
How could I refuse a favor or two?'

* Low - Walk Into the Sea
'And time is just a hunger
It bleeds us out to nothing
And when it finally takes us over I hope we’ll float away together
Yeah, time’s the great destroyer
Leaves every child a bastard
When it finally takes us over I hope we’ll float away together'

* Irving - If You Say Jump, I Will Say No (Hugo)
'Touch something to make you know that this is real
do you think it's that girl I used to love?
I never neeeded her then, how come I'm only needing her now?
But I know now that I am not my brain
And I can listen to the thoughts
And know that we are not the same'

* Sea Wolf - The Garden That You Planted (Sun)
'Cause everything around here's changed

But the garden that you planted remains'

* Sambassadeur - Kate (well, Kate)
'Underneath the surface, love's as cold and blue
And you're saying this town is not made for you
Starts getting closer, going through the night
No one can reach us when we're out of sight
Time's running faster, please let us through
Going in any direction will do
...
Tides don't last forever, don't you know?'

* The Automatic - Monster ("Smokey")
'What's that coming over the head, is it a monster?'

* Driveshaft - You All Everybody! (Charlie)

* Previously On Lost - Be My Constant (Desmond)

Feel free to share your thoughts on the grand finale!