I was going to write two separate posts about my birthday and the Iowa State Fair, but once again i’ve procrastinated too long and so i’m just going to post photos and talk a little bit about them.
For my birthday Nathan got me tickets to three different shows that happened here in Des Moines right around my birthday: Rooney, Phoenix and Tegan & Sara. Rooney was first, and it was a really fun little show in an intimate venue, and it was early in the day which turned out to be nice for us working types. Phoenix was the very next day, and their show was a little too loud and a little too packed and a little too blinding as far as the light show, but it was still fun.
Next came my actual b-day, which i spent trying on wedding dresses, watching Eat, Pray, Love and playing Apples to Apples with a handful of my lovely friends.
A few days later we saw Tegan & Sara, which was definitely an interesting show. They performed at Hoyt Sherman which is a really lovely old venue here in Des Moines. There was no opening band, and T&S played two sets: an acoustic set and one with the full band. During the first set they did some Q&A sessions which got to be a little long-winded, but they’re funny people so it was interesting to hear them talk about some adventures they’ve had both in the recording studio and on the road. We had to cut out of the second set a little early, but i still got to hear all of my favorite T&S songs.
Nathan’s gifts (comic books & concert tickets!)
First thing i saw when i got to work Monday. Love it.
The day after Tegan & Sara, we went to the Iowa State Fair. If you haven’t been to our fair, it’s pretty much the best one in the country. And i say that because i think Martha Stewart said it, or something. It’s all about excess: who grows the fattest pig, the biggest pumpkin, the most enormous stalk of corn; how many calories can we pack into a single $6 fried-on-a-stick commodity; how many big ol’ corn-fed Iowans can you pack into a few hundred acres? I used to absolutely hate it and now i think it’s great fun.
I really wanted to steal a little chickie. They’re SO CUTE.
Our famous Butter Cow. Life-size, all butter.
The biggest pumpkin weighed over 1,000 lbs.
So *that’s* why they call it eggplant.
That cabbage in the back was the size of a beach ball.
…And these were tiny! I like photographing produce…
A sampling of the many, many pretty quilts
This year we ate: mini doughnuts, some rootbeer, a couple of exorbitantly priced brewskis, fried cheese curds (a must), i had 2/3 of a tenderloin (it took a while to find one that wasn’t the size of a dinner plate), and a turkey leg which we took home and made stock with. Have i mentioned that we’re getting really into the whole “domestic” thing?
This album isn’t actually new; it’s from last year, but for whatever reason it has just recently gained a lot of popularity. In fact, a lot of you are probably already familiar with La Roux, but just in case you aren’t, here. You should be.
This is the video for the song Bulletproof, just one of many catchy and dance-able tracks from the fantastic self-titled album (which you can get for $5 on amazon mp3 right now):
After this week i’m going to start doing this on Fridays, because Calee does hers on Thursdays and she’s been doing it longer, so this way if we want to blog about the same band she gets the credit and/or i can change mine.
This week i’m going to talk about The National. Their new album High Violet came out earlier this year, and while i don’t think it’s quite as good as Boxer it’s been steadily growing on me and i think it’s a really solid album. I discovered The National at pretty much the same time and in the same manner that i discovered Stars. I still don’t have their older albums, but i’m working on that.
Evidently The National doesn’t really “do” music videos, so here’s a live rendition of the track “Terrible Love” off of High Violet. There’s a little flub in the beginning, but keep watching. 
People often ask me what i’ve been listening to lately. With the death of lala.com it’s gotten more difficult for me to recommend music to people, and while i don’t think a blog is nearly as good a forum for this sort of thing as lala was, i’m going to go ahead and try to share music this way. And by share i mean recommend in a perfectly legal way, by posting videos.
I bought the new Stars album The Five Ghosts a few weeks ago and it hasn’t left my CD changer yet. (Yeah that’s right, i have a disc changer in my vehicle and i use it. Way old school.) I discovered Stars a few years ago as i was finishing up at college, i believe, when i first heard a remix of their song Your Ex Lover Is Dead on the college radio station in Ames and thought it was hauntingly lovely. I think their style has gotten more upbeat since then, and i enjoy both the old stuff and the new.
This is my favorite track off the album. It’s called Fixed. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.
I like to write a blog post at the end of each year to sum up what happened during the year and how i felt about it. This year has been a huge one, however, and it’s also the end of a pretty significant decade, so i’m breaking my post up into multiple parts. To kick things off, let’s talk about music.
I acquired about twenty albums this year, and i think it’s worth mentioning that i only stole a handful of them. That’s right, i actually purchased most of the albums i’ll be talking about here. Not that i really think it matters, but it’ll make my mom happy. 
I started the year off by buying We Started Nothing by The Ting Tings, and that’s a reflection of the sort of tunes i listened to all year long. Very dance-y, high-energy stuff with just a few exceptions, including last year’s old-west-flavored Fleet Foxes and nineties-alt-punk-y Girl In A Coma, whom i was delighted to discover at the 80/35 festival this summer. I decided to buy their older album, Both Before I’m Gone, but i hope to also acquire their 2009 release soon.
Other indie/dance albums i enjoyed in 2009 include: Fantasies by Metric, Manners by Passion Pit, Miike Snow’s self-titled album which is very good, Phoenix’s very popular Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix which, in my opinion, is rather overrated as a whole, and probably my favorite album of the year: It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Many an impromptu kitchen dance party was inspired by each of these albums, but i think It’s Blitz! entertained us the most. We also streamed a lot of La Roux and Lady Gaga for a while, but i never actually got the albums. Poker Face really started to grate on my nerves after a while.
Another album i’d stick in the same genre is The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot. I love this album, and i spent half the year thinking it was an ’09 release, so i’m mentioning it in this post despite the fact that it was actually released in ’08. It’s such fun, and you’ve gotta love a rock band that includes a cello and violin on (i think) every track.
Ursa Major by Third Eye Blind has been growing on me steadily. It’s a pretty sad album, though, and these days i prefer to listen to happier music. Swoon by Silversun Pickups just wasn’t as good as Carnavas. The Resistance by Muse got a lot of people excited, but not me. I’ve listened to it a few times and it just never really grabbed me. The New Moon soundtrack, on the other hand… I can’t stop listening to it. It’s fantastic. And i wouldn’t be ashamed of that fact if it weren’t for the utter scorn that half of my friends feel toward anything and anyone associated with the Twilight Saga. But more on that in the Movies post.
Some older albums that i got this year include: Third by Portishead, which i didn’t think lived up to all the hype even though “Machine Gun” is a really great track, Red Letter Year by Ani DiFranco which disappointed me pretty thoroughly, The Con which is a good solid Tegan & Sara album, The Shepherd’s Dog by Iron & Wine who never really makes a bad album, Neon Bible by the Arcade Fire for whom i discovered a whole new appreciation and a bunch of Ryan Adams albums which i find quite enjoyable.
So, to wrap up, here are a couple of lists:
Steph’s favorite albums of the year:
- It’s Blitz! by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- The Rhumb Line by Ra Ra Riot (yeah, 2008, whatever.)
- The New Moon Soundtrack
- Miike Snow by Miike Snow
Steph’s favorite tracks of the year:
- “Sleepy Head” by Passion Pit
- “1909″ by Phoenix
- “Zero” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- “Silvia” by Miike Snow
Have yourself a little dance party.
Since this is also the end of a decade, i’d like to crown Coldplay as the band of the aughts. A lot of my favorite bands hit their peak back in the nineties – Third Eye Blind, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead (this is arguable), Bjork, and Ani DiFranco to name a few. But Coldplay released their first album, Parachutes, in 2000. Since then, we’ve watched them go from little-known newbies to one of the biggest bands in the world, and with good reason. They’ve released four studio albums and two live albums in that time. I’ve seen them in concert twice, and it was one of the best shows i’ve seen. Of all that they’ve accomplished, though, Parachutes is still my favorite piece of Coldplay work, and it’s also my favorite album of this decade. If you don’t own it, i think you should.
