Music of Long Vacation 2012

I suppose now that it's halfway through 1st Week, I'd better round off the long vacation by telling you what songs I listened to over and and over again between June and the end of September.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, we'll start off with yet more Florence + the Machine, which is fast becoming one of my favourite bands ever.  For some reason 'Dog Days Are Over' really got me this summer.  Also, I've discovered it's a great song to run to: 'Run fast for your mother and fast for your father / Run for your children for your sisters and brothers / Leave all your love and your longing behind you / Can't carry love with you if you want to survive.'  Slightly apocalyptic, no?

I still continue to sort of like Lana Del Rey, even though she's terrible live, going by the vidoe I've seen.  But there's something in her rather gothic, corrupt American Dream lyrics that I quite like.  Also, her studio voice is very versatile.  My new favourite of hers is 'Summertime Sadness'.

Just in the last couple weeks, I think I've become a Mumford and Sons fan.  'I Will Wait', from their second album Babel, all of which is good, is the first song of theirs I really liked.  It's so nice to find a band who can sing in harmony and whose members are all multi-instrumentalists.

Here's my other (current) favourite Mumford and Sons song, this time from the first album, Sigh No More - 'Little Lion Man'.  Gosh, these guys are good.  Also Tim likes listening to them, so I can play them in the evenings while I work and he doesn't complain.

Tim does complain about this song.  This is a sample of the lead single off the new Kamelot album, 'Sacrimony'.  Gosh, those double-kick drums makes me feel like coming back to my prog metal home.  Since the last album, Kamelot's replaced their long-time lead singer Roy Khan with Tommy Karevik who is just as good as Khan and actually, somehow, sounds incredibly similar, which is nice.  The new album, Silverthorn, comes out this month and is the band's third concept album (the first two were metal retellings of Goethe's Faust!).

This is Lykke Li's cover of Fleetwood Mac's 'Silver Springs', one of my favourite songs ever, which was sadly left off the original Rumors album.  Li's voice is haunting.  The first time I listened to this cover, with a great deal of trepidation, I was blown away.  I experienced a kind of frisson and really remembered just how fabulous the original version was.  The album is called Just Tell Me That You Want Me and also has a great cover of Stevie Nick's 'Storms', a song I can only listen to on certain days, because it also chokes me up.

Will update soon with news of Michaelmas 2012!