That's not to say I've found, or that I ever will. It's just to say I'm looking, and I'm sick of sitting still.

I’m a pretty big fan of Bon Iver.  He’s pretty much what I’m about to talk about for the next paragraph or so. (also, note that Bon Iver is actually a band with multiple members, but the band themselves talk about Bon Iver as if it is a solo person…a “He” if you will…so I shall too.)  So if you’ve never heard of him, you’re going to need to look him up and listen to at least a couple of his songs, otherwise you may as well skip these first couple paragraphs and get down to the stuff for which you’ll at least have a bit of a frame of reference.

So about Bon Iver.  Let’s start with what I knew before a couple days ago.  I knew that I was crazy about literally every song on his album For Emma, Forever Ago.  That CD is beyond legit.  If you’ve never gotten into it, then the obvious first song you need to check out is Skinny Love.  “I tell my love to wreck it all.  Cut out all the ropes and let me fall.”  Mmmm…get it boy.   That song does a beautiful job of contrasting emotion and passion.  For the beginning of that song, he’s singing and all of his words are overflowing with emotion.  They are all so completely heartfelt.  Even if all the words themselves don’t connect with you, it’s easy to feel the emotions that the words are coming from.  Then, when he hits a certain part of the song (it’s obvious), the emotion in his voice changes to passion.  If you’re singing along in your car, you can feel the change in the way that you sing it.  You may be trying to make it all sound smooth and pretty during the emotional part of the song, but once it jumps to passion, if you’re still singing along, you don’t even care if your voice is cracking or straining.  You just want to belt it along with him.  At the end, you’re just left with the feeling that you just experienced something usually kept private. 

I could go off on tangents about LITERALLY every song on that CD but I won’t.  Anyways, I listened to that CD a ton of times and waited patiently for more Bon Iver to come out.  Finally, I got a small amount of fulfillment when the movie New Moon (Twilight 2) came out.  There was a song on that soundtrack with Bon Iver and a girl named St. Vincent (she used to be in Polyphonic spree I think.  I looked into the other St. Vincent stuff…not my favorite.  I think Bon Iver is the one who really makes this song what it is..)  Oh man. This song is amazing.  It’s called  Rosyln.  Just thinking about it was enough to make me basically have to turn it on.  So I’m listening to it as I type.  This song is literally one my favorite songs ever.  I don’t even care if it’s on the Twilight soundtrack.  The lyrics on some of his songs are a little hard to understand sometimes but look up the lyrics when you listen to this song.  They’re so eloquent.   The space that he captures in this song is one of my favorite parts.  I can be laying in my bed at my house in Stillwater but when I turn this song on loud enough, it feels like I’m listening to him playing the song across the sanctuary in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican City.  It’s so huge and the song is so cool.

Click on that picture.  It's really high quality and is a sick picture.

So anyways, then after this song came out and I listened to it like a hundred times, I was again strongly desiring more Bon Iver to come out.  And of course I was happy when the Blood Bank EP came out.  But that pretty much brings you up to this last Friday.  I had purchased a CD earlier in the week that I hadn’t really listened to yet but I decided to give it some air time in my Accord.   As I’m listening to the first song, I was happy that I’d finally found a band that was similar to Bon Iver.  As the song went on though, it simply became undeniable that this HAD to be him singing.  So once I got home, I looked it up and, sure enough, this was the same singer.  I’m ecstatic at this point because not only was I happy to find out it was him, but I was happy to find out that it was awesome.  Also good to know what that his real name is not Bon Iver.  That was good because people are always arguing about how to pronounce that name.  So know we realize how much more irrelevant that conversation is than I‘d even previously thought.  His real name is Justin Vernon.

So of course when I found that Bon Iver was an alias, I had to look up his real name and see if there was any music released under his real name.  Sure enough, he’s put out two CD’s as Justin Vernon…and they’re AWESOME!   Also, he was part of a band called DeYarmond Edison, which also has some really tight songs (his full name is Justin Deyarmond Edison Vernon).  So anyways, I’m basically in heaven right now because there’s so much of him out there that it’s going to take me a while to listen to all of it.  All of these bands have a really different sounds though so you may or may not like each of them.  Here are my two favorite songs from each that I’d say you should listen to to see if you love it:

               Bon Iver:  Skinny Love, Flume, and Rosyln

               Volcano Choir: Husks and Shells, and Still

               DeYarmond Edison: Love Long Gone, and Silent Signs

               Justin Vernon:  Hazelton, and Frail Sail

Also, I found another band called Isbells that, if you’re into Bon Iver, I think you might really realy like.  Maybe check out Time’s Ticking as well as As Long As It Takes by them.  Good stuff.

OK so if you were trying to skip down to all the stuff that isn’t about Bon Iver, this is the paragraph you would have wanted to skip to. Sorry, I wrote a little more there than I’d planned.

So much has happened since I blogged a couple of days ago but it really doesn’t matter because I never really talk about anything that has anything to do with my schedule on here.  It’s pretty much just random thoughts.   However, I did go see Tim Burton’s new version of Alice and Wonderland last night with Patch in 3D!  I made the decision as I started typing this sentence to NOT give any kind of a review on this movie.  It’s not that I don’t have a plethora of thoughts and opinions on the many facets of this movie, it’s more that I don’t want to take the time to write them all out right now because this is already very long.  So I’ll just say that the movie get’s probably a 7.4 out of 10 stars for me.  You really don’t know what that means though because you have no frame of reference for how I rate movies because this is the first one I’ve ever given a rating on here.  I’m hoping that this will be the first of many ratings for me though so that, in a couple months, you’ll understand how I rate movies and maybe they can start to mean something. 

The reason I bring up this movie though is just because Patch (Patrick Williams) and I got some SWEEEEET 3D glasses at the movie.  I’ve been wearing them around all day and it’s crazy that this little pair of cheep shades can make it so that I can see the entire world in 3D.  Technology these days blows my mind.

Plus, we have decided that they are fashionable!  You have to agree right?  Right.

I don't wash my strawberries before I eat them.  And that's not gross.

Achouffe Brewery puts out some really good beer.  It's in Belgium and all of their beers come in large 750 mL bottles.  One thing I like about that is that it promotes sharing the beer with a friend.  I've only had the Le Chouffe (a blonde) and the Mc Chouffe (an unfiltered dark beer) but they were both mind-blowingly awesome.  I had the Mc in Australia with Kelly a few times and then I found the Le here in Stillwater at Brown's.  If you actually care what the beer you drink tastes like, look for this in the liquor store.  So tasty and a great beer to have an awesome conversation over with a buddy.  I look forward to trying their other brews.

I ate the above-mentioned, unwashed strawberries in my bed the other night.  I ended up staining my sheets with strawberry juice.  Awesome.

It's kinda gross cause it kinda looks like blood...but I swear it's not.  It is strawberry juice.

I’m sitting here looking at the beginnings of a stencil that I’m working on and the longer I type, the more I wish I was stenciling instead of typing.  SO I’m going to have to go ahead and get to it.

Peace out.