Any Day But Thursday

The post's title is a lyric from Morrissey's new ish cover of Satellite of Love, originally by Lou Reed. Being Morrissey, he obviously had to change the lyrics slightly to suit himself, transforming 'I watched it on TV' to 'I cannot stand the TV'.. Oh Moz.

A recent Rookie article I read is very relevant to this post and it encouraged me to carry on making things after I had a major stall/freakout/stress, when I realised I should be devoting every second of my break to cramming more biology definitions into my brain for my exams. But you need to rest between revising, or your head might just explode or something, so the article made me re-realise that, and slow down. Basically, if you're vaguely interested in creating things or you criticise the arts as an "easy subject", maybe have a read of this, because it's a good article and could give you a better perspective.

This holiday, I've filled a whole moleskine with drawings and random stuff like my scans below, because revision has been so ghastly and I finished like all of the tv series I was chain-watching. (asdfg Sherlock) -This is probably a good thing, because I watched too much tv anyway. Also making art is the perfect way to calm down and forget my oncoming exams. I love it when people share their visual diaries on the internet because I can compare with mine and get inspiration and it's just nice to see other people's work so here's some of mine.. 

Just A Reflektor

Sorry I'm a bit late to the party here but just so you know I did write this in December. Almost every 'Top Albums of 2013' review that I've read has included Reflektor, Arcade Fire's new album. Need I say more. Clearly I do, because I'm going to write an entire blog post on why Arcade Fire are my top band of 2013 and now 2014, and why they're so great.

A few months ago, my school's Vinyl Society had a meeting about The Suburbs, Arcade Fire's 2nd most recent album, (and arguably their best)- I went along because it was the first CD I ever bought when I was 11 after I had read in a magazine that it was cool, but I never really got into it that much. 

When they showed The Suburbs music video which I had never seen before, and played Suburban War and Sprawl II, it gave me that feeling where you hear a song you haven't heard in a while and get a flashback of all the feelings you had when you heard that album first. And it was AMAZING. I became obsessed with the lyrics and structure of the album, how they repeat lyrics throughout it and show changing moods. I haven't really ever seen a band like them that does that. Arguably, they're really pretentious and arty but they do 'being arty' really well because it's not annoying and they actually produced something beautiful when they made The Suburbs.
(Especially the album artwork because of the grainy film-camera snapshots of cars in suburban landscapes and the pretty colours.)

Naturally I went on to buy Reflektor and read and watch as much about Arcade Fire as I could find on the internet, and listened to those two albums and not much else for the next 4 months or so.. 
I definitely prefer The Suburbs as a whole album, because it's what made me recognise Arcade Fire as the BEST THING EVER, but Reflektor isn't inferior, because they're so different that they're incomparable. I love Reflektor too, especially the music video and themes and new shiny sound that they've created. Their new 'look' is so great with those jazzy new suits they wear to all their concerts, and the Roman Coppola mini film of one of their sets with cameos from perfect people like Michael Cera and James Franco, they're doing pretty well right for themselves now..
The album artwork is also beautiful as my gif at the top will hopefully convey, because of the holographic material and the black and white contrast. In conclusion please listen to Arcade Fire. thx.