Since high school I have been making a yearly mix cd of songs/bands that I've been listening to all year for some friends at home. I usually would burn a big pile of copies and give them out to friends- it's a fun little gift to give people.

Since I've been in London for the past week, I've been annoying the other hotel patrons by playing these songs over and over again, but I finally finished this year's edition of The Chrismukkah (what, it's a good word) Mix, and I thought you guys might be interested too. Merry Christmas, team droolycat!

(Those of us who frequently follow my posts might recognize some of these tunes - sorry for posting them repeatedly!)

tracklist
01 i didn't see it coming - belle & sebastian
02 miami - foals
03 good intentions paving co - joanna newsom
04 someone great - lcd soundsystem
05 i heard it through the grapevine - the slits
06 john, i'm only dancing - david bowie
07 tighten up - the black keys
08 12:51 - the strokes
09 inspiration information - sharon jones & the dap-kings
10 one - yeasayer
11 not in love (ft. robert smith) - crystal castles
12 used to be - beach house
13 all the wine - the national
14 abel - the national
15 snowfall - esquivel

download the chrismukkah mix 2010 here

If all things go to plan, tomorrow i am booked on flight #3 back to the States. This Time Tomorrow is one of my favorite songs about flying:

i hope i make it home sometime this year! wish me luck...

Snowy Mix

Snow! It is finally here, and while it may not accumulate to much, at least it feels like winter finally. I think the mixes we make for wintertimes are sometimes the best ones. I remember winter 2007 when I came home from my first semester of college, I got in a very wonderful Animal Collective (Sung Tongs + Feels)  cocoon, complimented by some eccentric retro pop. Actually, I've never really left that mode. Anyway, if you can't go out because of the weather, might as well listen to fantastic music. What music makes you feel comfy, cozy, warm-all-over? 
Warning about this playlist: I've been really into Bollywood music lately...

Extra: Beach House just released this new track, "I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun", what do we think? I was completely in love with Beach House last winter, but I think I'm done with them now...? Love Victoria's voice, but I need something new, I don't know what. 

GET ME BACK TO MY CONTINENT

As you may have heard, the UK is experiencing an extreme weather event (six inches of snow, not the 2 feet they're making it sound like) which is causing airports to shut down, flights canceled, etc. Basically nobody can get anywhere. I've been trying to get back to the states since Saturday - I had no problem getting from Glasgow to London, but then I sat on a plane on the tarmac for 3 hours while we waited to be de-iced, and then that flight was canceled, despite the fact that we had just sat there for 3 hours. Long story short, everything was canceled or overbooked indefinitely, so I got myself on another flight from London > Paris > Boston for the 21st, but then my flight from London > Paris was canceled. Everyone's trying to get back home, so all buses and trains anywhere are booked until sometime into next year. Luckily I was able to cancel my flight from Paris to Boston. I am now booked on a third flight from London to NYC on Christmas Day.

Thankfully I am not still sitting in Heathrow Hell (the below picture is 100% true - those are people sleeping under tinfoil for warmth)

but rather in a hotel in Windsor, London - with all my bags, a bed, and a shower. I am VERY grateful to be here (I've been here since Saturday night) - it was a good plan to get a hotel room after I got myself on a new flight; shortly thereafter I was kicked out of Heathrow itself. More people kept showing up, and if you had alternate plans you were being asked to leave to make way for more people.

But in the meantime i present to you my ANTHEM OF HEATHROW HELL 2010

YES.

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy with Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly from Will Ferrell

Merry Christmas?

Janelle Monae!

Check this woman out. Janelle Monae, you may have heard her single "Tightrope" which features Big Boi of Outkast fame. I actually saw Ms. Monae live in Summer 2009, when she opened for No Doubt. Well, I was expecting Gwen Stefani to steal the show fashion-wise, but Janelle put up a stiff competition with her awesome bouffant and retro menswear outfit. And she can sing!

I have been playing "Cold War" over and over in my car, what a great driving song. My favorite part is how just when you think it is just another 2010 pop song...two minutes in some guitar action blows in out of nowhere and carries the whole thing away. Thank god, some pop stars still like guitars. I mean, yeah, I can dig some electro beats, but I'll take some classic Queen over Lady Gaga any day.

If only to wish Janelle a belated birthday, (it was yesterday, December 1st!) have a listen to "Cold War", and definitely check out her website to listen to her entire album, The Archandroid (originally released May 2010). Ugh, I just think she is the coolest. Her and Lady Gaga should probably battle, and then the both of them should unite and lock Ke$ha away somewhere where we never have to hear her again. While on the subject, I'm not concerned about The Bieber, he's pretty much doomed anyway.

Too much?

So Sufjan Stevens played Jimmy Fallon a couple night ago... Thoughts?

step into my office, baby

There are two perks of being a postgraduate research student.
Perk #1 is having a card that says "[University] Researcher"
Perk #2 is spending my days in an office where the only directive is really just to read.
(Implied Perk #3 is that i have an office.)

Luckily I'm the sort of person who can read and listen to music at the same time, but unluckily we do not have access to Pandora here in the UK. I understand there are ways around this, but lately I've been playing with the Genius Button on iTunes for a similar sort of effect. There have been some great things coming out of this, actually.

Since it has been a while since I've posted some music (braver! newer! oh god!) I return triumphantly with THINGS I HAVE BEEN LISTENING TO IN THE OFFICE, the mix. My office faces all of the city; it's a beautiful view and I've been trying to get a halfway decent picture of it, but the major weather pattern here is "Gray", which makes it kind of hard to get a good picture. I've been trying for ages, believe me. So here is another picture of me, because clearly I am important, in my office. Come listen to some tunes with me.

1. 23 - blonde redhead
2. mistaken for strangers - the national
3. gila - beach house
4. lloyd, i'm ready to be heartbroken - camera obscura
5. shine a light - wolf parade
6. all my friends - lcd soundsystem
7. i heard it through the grapevine - the slits
8. bigmouth strikes again - the smiths
9. undertow - warpaint
10. i didn't see it coming - belle & sebastian
download this (.zip)
So now you too can pretend to be in Glasgow reading about pronouns! Fun facts: Camera Obscura and Belle & Sebastian are both from here, and this city might be the perfect place for fans of The Smiths. (Seriously. The Queen is Dead could be the soundtrack to this city.)

Also, I just started writing some stuff this week, and I also just started compiling a database of sorts. For reasons I can't quite explain, I really like listening to pop music and/or hip hop when I do this (I may or may not have written large chunks of my senior thesis to Lady Gaga.) Girl Talk just released a new album which you can get for FREE here, which is perfectly timed! I am very pleased. Like any mashup album, it has its hits and misses, but it is worth a listen to just to hear "Hey Ladies" (the beastie boys) vs "lust for life" (iggy pop), even for a few seconds.

braver newer musics

Do you ever think to yourself, "I am not reaching my potential as a pretentious person?"
Sometimes I feel this way. To fix this, I went to an experimental music festival this weekend.

INSTAL, an annual pretentiousness festival, was pretty much as ridiculously obnoxious as advertised. A lot of it was obtuse for the sake of being obtuse - a lot of it was about how to destroy self-expression in music. That said, there were some really cool parts that were doing something really interesting. I was there for Saturday for about six hours until I really couldn't take it any more - I left shortly after a piece that was entirely samples of sirens.

Soon I will post some tunes again, I promise! I've met a couple of DJs, so if you are looking for some hot beats, this should tide you over for a while. (This second link will contain some Braver Newer Musics from Instal.)

Sunday Seu

Today is a Zissou-Seu Jorge day :)

That was the worst Christmas ever!

Aww, poor Droolycat! No, I have not forgotten you.

I know it is only the beginning of November! But let's be honest. People are Christmas shopping. I'm thinking about Christmas shopping. Which I will do mostly online because I refuse to get caught up in the maddening crowds this time of year. Who likes being stuck in traffic in a parking lot for an hour?

(Helpful random sidenote: "Cyber Monday" is something I never knew existed until it was too late last year...it's like the Black Friday of the internet, post-Black Friday.)

First of all, I generally dislike November. I think the only highlight may be Thanksgiving, for obvious reasons. If you think about it, it would make more sense for Thanksgiving to happen in October, at the end of the fall harvest. However, we've already got Halloween in October, November needs some action, therefore, Thanksgiving in November. Otherwise, it is a chilly month where the nights creep in earlier and earlier and all the beautiful leaves from October are shed away and turned into brown street mush.

Anyway, what does this have to do with music?

Sufjan!

I confess, I've started listening to Sufjan Stevens' Christmas music in my car. I started, like, a week or two ago. Yeah, they are Christmas songs. Yeah, they sound like Christmas songs. But they also sound like great Sufjan tunes, and I can't think of a better person (Andrew Bird?) for making spiritually minded wintery songs that translate all season long. Especially when listening to an album of songs versus a few songs on a mix, because they blend together and create more of a mood/environment. (AKA. If you pop a few of those Sufjan Christmas songs into mixes, you reach them and it's like, wait, what? Christmas? Why am I listening to this? They stand out more.)

So, I was born in December, a so-called Winter Baby, but even so, I have grown to hate the cold (but I do love the holidays!). I commute every day in my car and lately the sun has not been shining, and if you're like me and need a break from this, try on Sufjan's Christmas collection just for fun...if only for the banjo action! Banjos are soooo November, in my opinion.

Also, he is coming to Boston this week and I could not be more dismayed that I won't be going. The tickets are too expensive, even though I've been listening to Sufjan for what feels like forever and it would be worth it. It is also not general admission and I hate concerts like that, where you are forced into a seat and you never know what the view or sound will be like until you get there. It isn't fair! But, cheers to whoever is going this week, he's got two shows, Thursday and Friday.