It doesn't always have to be beautiful.

I know I never got around to finishing that 30-day music meme (shame on me, I know), but I'm pretty sure one of the topics was naming a song that I loved the previous year. I had started a text file with my prospective answers so I knew what I was going to write about for that topic.

Anyway, long-winded intros aside, do you ever discover a new band you really, really love that you can't get enough of them, and you listen to them so much you fear that you'll ruin their music for yourself?

Slow Club has definitely been one of those bands for me. My friend Jackie suggested them to me because she thought their music sounded like it would be right up my alley. And she was right! Their sound is the perfect, sweet mixture of folk, pop and twee, plus the boy-girl harmonies are positively heart-melting.

This morning I've been feeling a bit under the weather and in need of a pick-me-up. The weather in Toronto has been uncomfortable and sweltering these past few days, but today is cool and breezy, with the right amount of sun. If the weather was cooperating, then I wanted to feel better to enjoy it. I opted for power pop tunes from Weezer (Blue Album followed by Pinkerton and then the bonus tracks from the Pinkerton deluxe release - totally an aside but, isn't "Long Time Sunshine" great? Not too keen on the overlapping "round" at the end, but otherwise an awesome gem of a tune).

To keep the toe-tapping, upbeat pop theme going, I chose Slow Club's debut album Yeah So next. Like I had mentioned, this album, at one point, was severely in danger of being played out for me. When I'm on the verge of possibly becoming sick of a band (due to my own repetition), I stop listening to them entirely. Before today, I can't remember the last time I listened to Slow Club.

Ah, the sweet reunion! With the first opening chords of "When I Go," I felt a smile spread across my face. Song after song, I felt myself perking up, cheering up and remembering how much I love this album. A wonderful feeling.

And so I leave you with the video for my favourite song off Yeah So: "It Doesn't Have to Be Beautiful." I don't think anything will ever stop me from loving this wonderful, infectious pop song.

The 30-Day Music Meme: Day Eight

Day Eight - A song that you know all the words to.

As someone who fancies herself as a writer and a music enthusiast, lyrics are pretty important to me. I'm sure I know the lyrics to lots of songs that I like or love... I love when lyrics are included with the liner notes of an album. One of my favourite things to do is follow along with the lyric booklet when I've just bought a new album. And yes, I do still purchase music in tangible form!

Going off Day Seven's song, I'm going to continue reminiscing about my Weezer obsession in university. I thought Rivers Cuomo's lyrics, especially those on Pinkerton were absolutely brilliant. Tangentially, I was convinced I was going to marry him (hee hee, how ridiculous).

For the record, I like to pretend Weezer doesn't exist beyond the Green Album. Blech. Let us not speak of those releases that followed that album...

Back to Pinkerton. Since this album didn't include lyrics with the liner notes, I remember scouring the internet for accurate lyrics. I think I found them on weezer.com and pored over them endlessly, following along when listening to the songs, etching them to my memory. Then I continued to scour for the deeper meanings of each song, reading on messageboards the speculations of what real-life events inspired Rivers to write each song.

I guess I was pretty obsessed and a little weird at the time. And maybe I should have spent more time studying for my economics midterms instead of researching Weezer lyrics.

In any case, I don't know what it is about this song, but I love it. There was a length of time where Weezer (or Rivers, rather) refused to perform any songs off Pinkerton since its initial poor reception remained a sore spot for the man who penned the songs.

However, when I saw Weezer play Molson Amphitheatre in 2002, it was reported that songs from Pinkerton had begun to emerge this tour. Thinking I would never hear the beloved songs from this album, I think I screamed like a pre-teen at a boyband concert when the first few notes of "El Scorcho" played.



Also, on that note, this (rumoured Blue/Pinkerton tour) totally, absolutely, positively needs to happen. WHO'S WITH ME??

The 30-Day Music Meme: Day Seven

Day Seven - A song that reminds you of a certain event.

Oh god, when I first decided to do this meme and scanned over the different topics, I immediately knew what song I was going to choose for Day Seven.

"Undone - The Sweater Song" by Weezer reminds me of university in general. The Green Album came out when I was in OAC (Ontario's now-defunct grade 13) and I was working in that corporate CD store that I mentioned in my last entry.

When I went off to university the following year - for reasons unknown to me - my first year of university was the height-of-heights of my Weezer fandom. I had a Green Album poster on my wall, I had a string of Christmas lights taped to my wall in the shape of the signature Weezer "Flying W" (see image at left) and I was obsessed with Pinkerton (their initially lukewarm-received second album). I also spent hours upon hours scouring the internet for any Weezer b-sides and live tracks that I hadn't already heard (remember Kazaa and Audio Galaxy? Those were my faves for downloading music back in the day). I seriously thought I was going to marry Rivers Cuomo one day. But I digress.

I'd made some cool new friends, including one friend would sing through the Blue Album with me over the phone. What possessed us to do so, I will never know. We would sing until we were hoarse and it was AMAZING. "The Sweater Song" was always awesome to sing along to with a friend because of its call and response style, and conversational interludes.



But wait, I'm not done! In college (to keep things straight - I went to university for English after I finished high school, and when I finished university, I went on to do a post-grad college program in Journalism), our big second-last semester project was to research, conduct interviews and write articles on a particular topic over the course of a semester and, at the end of the semester, present everything in the form of a magazine and creative presentation.

My group chose to focus on DIY culture and we covered everything from DIY clothing and jewellery, to self-made video games and graffiti. We presented our topic in a fun, off-beat way... We made all our classmates and instructors wait outside the classroom and ten minutes before our scheduled presentation, we let everyone in, one by one, stamping their hand as if entering a venue.

We joked, "We asked Weezer to come play for our presentation... but since they didn't answer, we're going to DIY way..." And we proceeded to do an acoustic version of "The Sweater Song." It was a hoot! Every time I hear this song, I think of our DIY presentation and I smile.