Recently, while talking to a friend about music, I differentiated between music that hits your ears, music that bends your heart, music that gets in your feet or moves your hips and music that beats in your very blood.
There are two bands I want to write about, the first is a popular English Indie-rock band called Florence and the Machine, the second an English self determined genre-ambiguous band called Alt-J (∆).
FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE
Florence Welch is a vocal powerhouse, her songs almost pounding in your chest with themes like guilt, religion and drowning. You can feel this almost faith-like experience when listening to her music. There are several other reasons why I love her,
Her hair.
Her style.
After listening to her newest album (Ceremonials) I spent three weeks dancing darkly in my room, wishing like never before to be one with the devil.
ALT-J (∆)
Alt-J (∆) is comprised of Joe Newman, Thom Green, Gwil Sainsbury, Gus Unger-Hamilton, three Fine Artists and an English major from Leeds University. Their receiving of the Mercury Prize, an award given to the year’s best album in the United Kingdom and Ireland, for their first album, An Awesome Wave, stunned the music industry. Their music feels as experiential as Florence’s, creating an almost physical reaction to the drumbeat, the lead singer’s strange voice, and the poetry of the lyrics. Their refrains stick in my head like peanut butter to a palate. I love them because:
This is their drummer:
These are their lyrics:
Now dissolve me, two tabs on your tongue
A herd of shepherds to herd the sheep, sleep now my only one
Broken sweethearts who sleep apart
Both still pine for the other’s side spine, spoon as sleep starts
And pulse to pulse, now shush
She makes the sound the sea makes to calm me down
I am see-through, soap sliver you’re so thin
As I begin rubbing lathers up your state worsens on my skin
And gold, fatless finger to lip, one two three four hush
And pulse to pulse, now shush
She makes the sound the sea makes to calm me down
She makes the sound the sea makes, I’m tired now
She makes the sound the sea makes, knee-deep in the north sea
And this was their concert:
I want to point out the strange and powerful ways they sing, Florence with lungs almost super-human and Joe Newman’s strange and haunting manipulation of the band’s poetry. I think the things you say or the things you sing are important, but the way they’re said or sung can make all the difference.
Embrace it.
-Rebecca Najjar
The Junction Journal 