What I’ve Been Listening To & Watching

Sadly, I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump of late, which is absolutely terrible. However, it means that I’ve been consuming a bunch of TV and music, which I guess could be worse. I thought I’d talk about some of the things I’ve been listening to and watching. What about you guys? What have you been listening to or watching? Rec me some stuff in the comments!

LISTEN

HAMILTON

Basically on repeat all day every day. I was already obsessed, but my obsession has continued to grow while I’ve been not reading. I even bought the Hamiltome finally in an attempt to 1. Feed my obsession (it worked, obviously) and 2. Get back into reading (it also worked; I read 95 pages of this last night). I cannot get enough of the soundtrack though. It’s incredible. As I’m sure most of you are well aware. And if you aren’t, what are you waiting for?

GROUPLOVE

One of my absolute favorite bands right now. I saw them live in August and haven’t been able to stop listening since. Not that I want to. They are fun and upbeat and I love dancing along to their music in the car or at home.

Some of my favorites are: Welcome To Your Life, Ways to Go, Tongue Tied, and Lovely Cup.

WATCH

COMMUNITY

I believe I’ve talked about my love for this show on the blog before, but if I haven’t, this is one of my favorite shows. After everything that happened at the beginning of the month (*cough*we elected the devil*cough*), I needed something funny and silly that could take my mind off of it. Community did the trick. I watched the first four seasons (the only ones I own on DVD sadly) in about two weeks. My love for this show has just grown.

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Ditto what I said above. I only own the first four seasons of Community and the first season of Arrested Development, so I’m about out, which sucks. But I’ve enjoyed visiting these characters again and getting in a laugh or two. Or a hundred.

MOANA

I just saw Moana this morning and I’m still in awe. I feel like I will be for a while. If you haven’t seen this yet, GO SEE IT. It’s beautiful – the story, the visuals, the characters, the songs. I felt like a little kid watching the movie because my eyes were like saucers the whole time. I absolutely loved it.

FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

If you’re like me and you grew up with the Harry Potter books, watching the movie will reignite the love you had for that world. It was like walking into a warm hug. It felt like home. I also happen to really love Eddie Redmayne and Ezra Miller, who were both soooo good. I wish Ezra Miller could’ve had a whole movie for his character. And I can’t wait for more from Newt Scamander.

What about you? What have you been watching and listening to?

 

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Songs I Love

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the Broke and the Bookish. Today’s theme was:

All About Audio freebie —  aka top ten audiobooks you should listen to, 10 books I want to listen to on audio,10 bands you should check out, 10 podcasts you should be listening to, 10 of my all time favorite albums, 10 songs I love, really whatever you can come up with.

I’ve done a post about audiobooks before, so I decided to go with music this time. I’m going to tell you about Ten Songs I Love. I’ve included a Spotify playlist below if you want to listen to any of them!

1. Welcome to Your Life – Grouplove
2. Kill Your Heroes – AWOLNATION
3. Kitchen Sink – twenty one pilots (it was unbelievably hard to narrow this down to just one of their songs, so listen to all of them)
4. Let It Go – The Neighbourhood
5. Where I’m Going – Sir Sly
6. High – Young Rising Sons
7. Tell the World – Eric Hutchinson
8. If You Didn’t See Me (Then You Weren’t on the Dancefloor) – Jr. Jr.
9. Queen of the City – Joshua James
10. Ease – Troye Sivan

In which I talk about Sloss Music & Arts Festival

Living in Mississippi means that it’s sometimes hard to find cultural events to attend, which is why when a friend of mine told me about Sloss Fest in Birmingham, Alabama, I was totally down. This was the second year for Sloss, a two-day music and arts festival featuring three stages of music, food trucks from local restaurants, a whole slew of tens for local and regional artists, and lots and lots of hot weather.

Sloss Music & Arts Festival is held at the Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, a National Historic Landmark, which is super cool. Like it says on their website, Sloss Fest is “about more than 30+ bands on 3 stages, it’s a celebration of the unique, creative culture that makes life in Birmingham so special.” Birmingham really is a wonderful city, so I was excited to experience something else there.

There were some really cool bands at the festival – from Fitz & the Tantrums to Death Cab for Cutie to Jr. Jr. to Grouplove – playing on three different stages. Two of the stages were set across a wide open lawn from each other and one was on the other side of the entrance in a giant, metal shed. Thankfully, there was one big tent in the middle of that open lawn for shade and two free water fill-ups. Unfortunately, the gates didn’t open till after noon, so it was HOT HOT HOT. I know that the festival coordinators had absolutely no say about the weather but it was approximately the temperature of Hades that weekend. The good thing was that everyone else was just as sweaty so nbd.

One of the coolest parts of the festival was the booths for regional and national artists. I was super excited to find out that Fur Turtle – who has created posters and art for one of my favorite musicians, Joshua James – was going to be there. He was one of the first artists we sought out when we got to the festival on Saturday, and I immediately saw a twenty one pilots poster in his booth. I, of course, had to have it, and I’m super excited with my purchase. This is what the poster looks like (image from Fur Turtle’s website).

My favorite performance on Saturday was Grouplove on the Steam Stage. I might’ve loved them even more live than I do recorded. Grouplove’s two singers – Hannah Hooper and Christian Zucconi – were phenomenal, jumping around, head-banging, rocking out, and singing to their – and all of our – heart’s content. It was impossible to look away from them because they are so obviously passionate about music and in love with performing. Their music had everyone jumping and dancing despite how hot it was. Such a great performance.

I also saw Death Cab for Cutie (who was cool and relaxed and maybe a bit boring in parts but still super fun to see live) from the front row and Logic (who is a really talented rapper; couldn’t stay for his whole set though).

On Sunday, my favorite was definitely Jr. Jr., despite the fact that earlier in the day, they were 30 minutes late for their signing (my friends and I waited for almost an hour to meet them and their whole band didn’t even come). Even though I was annoyed with the signing debacle, their set was awesome. They sound exactly like their recorded albums, which is rare and wonderful.

And this is where the weekend got a little disappointing. My friend and I went over to the Shed stage to see The Struts for a few songs and then head over to the other side to see Fitz & the Tantrums. Of course, the sky took it as the time to let the rain fall. It was a relief because it had been so hot, but they had to postpone all of the sets to avoid ruining the equipment or electrocuting all of us. Because they had to postpone it though, we weren’t able to see either of the sets because we were going to another show that night (Parachute).

But you know what? Despite the HOT weather and the rain and the late bands, I had a fantastic time at Sloss Fest, and I would definitely go again next year.