Monday Mix Tapes: In Which Dirty Projectors Cover Usher & I Forget Everything Else that Happened, Ever

Chicago may have turned into a strange,wet place where it THUNDERSNOWS and then magically shoots up to 50 degrees, but whatever! I don't care, and this is why.

Dirty Projectors covered an Usher song.

Seriously, this happened, you guys, and it was AMAZING:



I think now I'm supposed to start talking about how I've listened to nothing but the new Local Natives' album, Hummingbird, all week, and how the songs "You & I" and "Ceilings" and "Three Months" and "Columbia" completely devastate me, but I really can't think straight.

The Dirty Fucking Projectors just completely killed an Usher Raymond song.

Monday Mix Tapes: Fiona! Feist! (And More!)

I'm coming off a pretty big week, music-wise. And by "pretty big" I actually mean FUCKING EPIC.

It started on Tuesday with Fiona Apple at The Chicago Theatre, and ended Friday night at Pitchfork with Leslie Feist.

There's so much to say about all the feelings I felt during the Fiona show that, for now anyway, I'm actually not going to say anything at all. (Gasp!) This doesn't nearly capture it, but here's a glimpse of some of my favorite moments at the bestconcertevvver:





As for Feist, it was a great time. My friends and I staked out spots close to the stage, while also still in great view of the Dirty Projectors, so we also caught their kickass set before Feist's. (Swing Lo Magellan! Have you heard it yet?!)

Prior to all that Feist and Dirty Projectors goodness, Willis Earl Beal blew me away with his gravelly, goddamn beautiful voice (and a lot of pelvic thrusting and mic swinging). He also took off his belt, verrry slowly, and then started beating it against the stage. Talk about a one-man show:





Meanwhile, amid all the concert-going, Frank Ocean released Channel Orange, and I've had it pretty much on repeat ever since. He performed "Bad Religion" on Jimmy Fallon recently... Frank Ocean backed by The Roots? Yes please. Check it out.

Writer's Block: The Gun Has No Trigger

I haven’t been writing lately. Well, that’s a lie. I write all day at work, five days a week. But that doesn’t really seem to count.

This blog hasn’t been updated in weeks. The last entry in my journal was in March. There’s just…nothing.

So I write all day at work. Then I come home, and my laptop sits, closed, on the chair, on the table, on the cat-hair covered rug. It might as well be locked in a closet (which apparently, I did to my poor little kitty all day yesterday). I read The Hunger Games series. I do yoga. I watch New Girl and Mad Men. I keep having the same conversation, over and over. I look at my laptop. I feel my journal in my bag, smacking against my thigh as I walk to the train.

But still: nothing. No writing.

I went to Indiana last weekend to visit my family. By Sunday afternoon, my dread at driving back to Chicago, alone, was overwhelming. I felt it in my stomach. I didn’t want to go. It’s not that I was dreading coming back to the city. I shouldn't have been dreading the drive; after all, it’s not like I haven’t taken the trip alone, countless times.

I just didn’t want to do it.

About halfway back to Chicago, right when I was passing the windmills that seem to go on for infinity, the little red lights blinking, the blades spinning rhythmically, I figured it out: I didn’t want to be alone with my own thoughts.

No wonder I can’t write.

You guys, I don't mean to get all emo on you and everything, but it makes me feel like this:




Maybe that's not it, exactly, but I had to get that song on here, somehow. And it's something. (In more uplifting news, I'll be seeing The Dirty Projectors at Pitchfork this year!)

I'm off to my hot yoga class now, where I'll try to focus, find my center, and most importantly, not fall down. In the meantime, I'll just try to keep in mind:

You'd see a million colors if you really looked.