Alli's Articles
INTERVIEWS, REVIEWS, CULTURE PIECES, MUSICAL RAMBLINGS.
Whenever I'm bored and have zero article ideas, having the "Discovered On Insta" series is a good backup plan. I get to crank out some quality content while discovering some quality people at the same time. This week I was scrolling through my Instagram feed and I saw these guys pop up. I knew they followed me a while ago, and I enjoyed some of their funny and entertaining posts, so I just knew their music had to be good. The first song I listened to on their Spotify was their newest single, deadheads. Let me tell you a little sumthin'...I really really really really really like this song. I feel like it represents everything good about indie rock culture - the fun, the friends, the carefreeness, and gosh dang, the drums. Those drums give me life and gives this song even more energy than it had before. This song makes me want to have a fun rebellious teen life, like any indie song should. I don't know why, but if I lived in London and my friends and I were spending a night in town, I would want to listen to this song and anything off of Tourist History by Two Door Cinema Club. I could head the similarities between them the most in this song. As for the London scenario, I don't know. Sometimes when I listen to songs I get transported to random and sometimes very detailed situations, but you should all know this by now.
I love it when you listen to bands and you feel like you're in the studio with them, just because you can feel the hard work, energy, and friendship that was put into the song. That's how I felt while listening to Indigo Club. It put a smile on my face just because it made me excited and happy to have friends that I can party with. But yes, I have decided that The Montreals are the very cool and hip lovechild of TDCC and Bear Hands. They're really rad and I'm definitely going to stan them forever after hearing their discography so far. Also, they have very cool clothes and hats on their site, so I'd suggest checking that out if you enjoyed their tunes and you have some merch money to spare. That's all for today, my friends. Be happy. Be kind to people. Be you. Don't let anyone control you from being you. You can't help being you. There's a little mid-week inspo for ya!
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Before I start this episode of V&R I would like to start off by saying SO MUCH HAS HAPPENED TO ME SINCE I SAW YOU GUYS LAST. Sad things, happy things, fun things, just a lot of things. I'm sorry I love you guys I'll never abandon you again. Hopefully. Cause school IS coming up....
Aaaaaanyway, let's all try to enjoy the sweet few weeks of summer we have left. If you need any new music to listen to, I just might have the thing. A couple months ago, right before 2017, I got to conduct my first ever interview with a nice lad named Alfie Templeman. Well, he's BACK with a new album and has asked me to give it a listen. Being in need of new music and an Alfie Temple-stan, I HAD TO. So, here we go! Waiting On The Other Side - This song reminded me a lot of Holding Roses by Twin Peaks. I feel like this song showcases the improvement and development of Alfie's music throughout the year. I feel like I'm finally getting a feel for who Alfie is and what his signature sound is. That sound, for me, is 60s-sounding psychedelia with the happiness and chillness and coming-of-ageness of Mac Demarco and all of the other bands in that category. Like I said before, Twin Peaks is also in that category. One More Day - When I listened to this one, my mind traveled to lazy sunny days and chilly nights in backyards at family barbecues. Why so specific? Don't ask me. But I associate it with happy times, and that's all that matters. I felt real "dreamin'" vibes from this song, just because it makes me wanna daydream about good memories and good times with friends. August - Before I listened to this song I had an itch that it would make me feel nostalgic for more eventful Augusts in the past. I was RIGHT. The church bells, the lyrics that focused on going on adventures with cool people you love, and the chorus, EVERYTHING made me upset. But that's not a bad thing. Music is supposed to make you feel all sorts of emotions, and sometimes they're not all gonna be positive. I'm glad that even though Alfie has just begun his music career, he sees this and incorporates this into his music already. Loved Again - Have you guys watched Riverdale yet? I've been obsessing over it for the past couple days. My favorite part about it is that there's this diner that all of the characters go to that always has some good music on. Cage the Elephant, Mac, and even some cool modern covers of old rock songs. You name any indie artist, they've probably played it in the show. My point is, I totally can picture this song playing in that diner. It has every required element - the cool spacey guitar, the blissful vocals, and nothing too intense and that you can have a conversation about the Blossom twins over. I love making comparisons like this because it can really bring the music to life and can make it relatable for the few people who get my sometimes very obscure references. I'm Wonderland Dreamin' - If you don't want to move to some random rural small area and start a relationship with your dream person after listening to this song, don't talk to me. Come on. Where is my wonderland? Where is my dream guy? (He's probably a mix of all of my favorite Big Brother houseguests. Show yourself, Dr. Dan MacTerry!) Ok. For the short but sweet two minutes this song lasted, it sure invoked a lot of feelings in me. Bubbly feelings of windy meadows and smiles and sunflowers and a purple haze in the air. It made me want to visit Liah and hang out in her town. It's small and nice and doesn't have pollution like my wonderful city. Dark Tunnel of Light - To me, I think this is the most psychedelic sounding song on the album. It's a perfect daydream song. For the whole 2 minutes I closed my eyes and tried to picture a dark tunnel of light. It was kinda confusing to wrap my head around at first, but those godly riffs helped clear my head and made me imagine some sort of contraption similar to the Dark Side of the Moon cover. For a while I was trying to decide what band this song reminded me of and I got it! - MGMT. I finally cracked my realization - Alfie and Andrew VanWyngarden sound similar. Velma's Voyage - I have to admit, I was really excited for this song. Anything with "voyage" in the title excites me to be honest. Like YES I'm ready to go on an adventure. And an adventure was had. Even though this song was pretty short, when I closed my eyes and felt myself float up in the air and drift away from everything. I felt something that I only ever felt when I listen to Tame Impala. I felt like the guy in the end of the Let It Happen video for those two minutes! Also, I saw that there was an guy doing extra drumming (shoutout to Jos Shepard!) and I FOR SURE heard it. The drums stood out the most in the song for me. But my one question is...who is Velma? After listening to this song her voyage sounds like it's going pretty well. Is it the Velma from Scooby Doo? Probably not, but that's the only Velma I know. I really am glad I listened to this album tonight. Once again, huge thanks to Alfie for getting in contact with us and for just being on of the biggest TwiColl stans and Instagram fans. Also, thanks for creating a masterpiece that took ME on a voyage as well and sounded just as dreamy as the title suggests. You all better support him by the way. I hope you guys have a good weekend! My cousins are in town so I might not get as many articles up as I want to. Nevertheless I'll probably be on social media so catch me there. See ya! Yeah, I changed my background because new year new me. I changed it to rocks. Because I rock. You rock. I love rock. I love rocks. Rocks.
I was going to wait until the exact date of the anniversary of my first post, but waiting is no fun. And if I learned one thing from running a blog, it's to never wait. Do everything now.
I didn't know what to expect when Liah asked me to start a blog with her. I figured I would write about my favorite albums, band members, some concerts, and that was it. I never knew that with this blog, I would have the chance to talk to talented artists and to get noticed by my favorite bands. Seriously. So many of the bands I listen to like the tweets I mention them in and it makes me happy. Another thing I learned is that it is literally so easy to make a successful blog. Just grab a friend (or go solo), write a couple articles about bands (the smaller the band = the bigger your chance of getting noticed!), and have fun with it, really. I'd say that operating a blog helped improve my writing and changed the way I listen to music. When I first started doing Vibe and Reviews, I realized that there's so much more to music than the sounds you hear. You have to listen to the emotions and feelings and vibes you get from it. You have to appreciate how much work goes into writing a song. That's why I can almost never say that a song sucks, I think about how much effort the artist puts into it and I can't trash all of that. The one thing I love most about running this blog is that it taught me how to break out of my shell. A year ago, I was very shy about expressing my opinions and Tweeting the people I mention in my articles. Now, I do it all the time like it's second nature. All of the kind words that I hear when a band reads my work...it's really upped my self confidence and definitely inspired me to write more. So to all the bands that liked or retweeted us, all of the singers who talked to us and let us interview them, all of our followers, our lovers, our haters...THANK YOU! Without your positive (or very rarely negative) feedback, we wouldn't feel inspired to do the things we do. Here's to this past year, this current year, and all the years ahead. There's gonna be a lot of years ahead, lemmie tell ya. I'm loving this blog life. See you guys around! If you didn't know that Liah and I are Big Brother fans...um...WHERE YOU AT??? Have you seen our Twitter, where we tweeted about wanting Cameron to come back, Kevin's wisdom, and how Paul likes Radiohead??? Have you seen our Instagram, where we made TWO posts in a row about Chilltown?? Obviously not if you didn't even know that in the summer we LIVE and BREATHE this show. Sometimes, life puts two things you never thought about together, and great things come out of it. Prime example: Wendy's fries and frostys. Who knew that fries taste best dipped in sugary, dairy-filled deliciousness??? My point is, thanks to my extreme interest in Big Brother over the years, I've been able to find some cool and talented musicians. Which is something I'd never expect from a cold, ruthless, filled-to-the-brim-with-drama reality show! So, without further ado, here are some songs from my favorite past Big Brother houseguests. I'm not really a metal person, so listening to Jenn from BB14's songs was my first experience with the genre. I'm not gonna lie, Metal is very intense, but there's something about screamo and all that stuff that sounds pretty therapeutic to me. Some days, you just need to scream your feelings, and most of the time, screaming isn't really appreciated by people around you. I feel like metal makes that acceptable, and I'm down with it. For a first time metal listener, I thought this song was AWESOME. I admired Jenn on her season because she was so confident in her own skin and she was never afraid to express herself. (I think I wanna be a Jenn when I grow up. I think everyone should, tbh.) Her confidence showed in this song through her vocals; they were so expressive and, well, LOUD! Loud being a good thing in this case. She's making herself known, she's getting herself out there, and what better way to do that than by speaking up? If you didn't like Johnny Mac on BB17...girl...what were you DOING? He's everything we would kill to have on this season: unproblematicness, loveableness, and just general niceness. And now he makes killer tunes. I tune in every once in a while to his YouTube channel, because I want to learn how to make music. Also, I just need some Johnny in my life. Let me tell you, the man puts SO MUCH EFFORT into making the things he does. Every note, every beat, all the tiny adjustments he makes...it takes talent. And a whole lotta patience. Watching all of these livestreams really gave me a newfound appreciation for EDM artists in general. Some people brush it off because "they aren't using real instruments!" Come on. It's 2017. Computers are instruments now. They're pretty complicated sometimes, but when you play around with it enough, the music you create can be astounding. Need evidence? Listen to Johnny Mac's music. Dominique from this year. An angel. Mistreated. The person who's YouTube channel I go to when I need to get inspired. She released this song in 2013, but I'm 99% sure she time traveled to 2017 and predicted Paul's gameplay, because this song is ABOUT THIS SEASON. When Dominique got evicted, I was sad, but relieved. I realized that she is living her best life outside the house, and staying in that toxic environment wasn't good for her. I mean, she's a motivational speaker, she's a nuclear engineer, and she has a SINGING CAREER! She's everything I want to be in life as well. This song makes me feel better because it seems like Dom knows from past experiences that the opinions of all of the liars and deceit-ers (is that a word?) in the house don't matter to her. She is ABOVE them all! When I listen to this song, I think fabulous thoughts. I think of runways and fashion and glamour and fun. That's what pop is about, essentially. I think that Dominique should put out another album, because it would go viral. Me along with all of the other Dom Stans out there would make sure of it. Okay, let me make one thing clear: I FREAKIN' LOVE STEVE. He was my BB17 preseason pick to win it all, and he did. Despite all of my family and friends telling me he sucked and that he wasn't going anywhere past jury, I still stanned and never gave up. And. It. Worked.
For some reason beyond me I never even heard this cover before now, and IT MADE ME VERY EMOTIONAL. I love it for so many reasons, one of them being the effort he put into recording all of the little squares. That takes dedication and patience, something very few people have in this world. Another thing I love about this cover is that Steve is generally a very awkward and shy guy (don't worry, I am too), but in this video, all of that seemed to drift away! I feel like Steve can find his true self in music, and I love that. Seeing this cover makes me crave some more original Steve stuff. Come on Steve, drop an album! I'm sure it will be the sound of the summer/maybe fall. If you guys got to the end of this article and still haven't checked these guys out (their music AND their BB career), WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR????? Big Brother is a very confusing sow to just dive into, but when you check out the wiki and watch a couple seasons, I'm sure you'll catch the drift just like I did. And if the houseguests I mentioned in this article are reading this (you already KNOW I'm gonna tag them all), Uhhh hey. Thank you so much for reading. I'm flattered. And kinda embarrassed. And flustered. And I love all y'all. K. Bye. |