little secrets

I know a thing or two about manners.  The mere thought of calling your parents by their .. first .. name .. makes my stomach tighten. As your guest, I will promptly pull the sheets off the bed at the end of my stay and can guarantee a thoughtful thank you card within three days of your favor.  I even earned the Girl Scout Manners badge in record time!  We could pretend that, as a Southerner, I was born with these habits; that in utero, they were implanted deep within my fibers among pools of sweet tea and cornbread.  Nope.  In 1992, while you were enjoying a bounty of Peeps and Mini Cadbury Eggs, my Easter basket was filled with 856 pages of Emily Post's Guide to Etiquette.  Nice way to blow your bunny cover, mom.
Maggie definitely got a Barbie.

But these days I've been obsessed with Manners, Passion Pit's first full length album.  Since the inception of this little project, I've had so many of my musical muses (Roman, Lindsay, Johnny, Kev) tell me I need to immediately sample this slice of american electronica heaven.  This genre gets a lot of play on my JesusPhone thanks to The Postal Service, but even if you're new to the area I bet you've unknowingly bopped your head to The Reeling and Sleepyhead while watching The Hills' stock footage of leggy, unbalanced lady-swarms.  Want to impress your friends?  The not-so-secret fan favorite on this album is Little Secrets.

I know in my first post I banned secrets - let's throw them to the wind with our padded spinning shorts and protein shakes!  But truth be told, I have all kinds of little secrets and now with this song I basically have a musical enabler.  Granted when you first hear this song, you're going to think Passion Pit lived the first years of its life in a clown car (I did), but give the track a few seconds and you'll be thinking the same thing:

Let this be our little secret
No one needs to know we're feeling

But I do know what you're feeling! You love this song because it indulges so many of the reasons you hit play (and repeat) in the first place- your mood is lightened, you're intrigued by all the little noises coming together so perfectly ... and if you're me, you want to put on your favorite pair of legwarmers and make more secrets just so that you can sing about them.

I'm sure these were not the kind of manners Emily Post would prefer, but if she wanted to keep herself and her girdle current, she'd better download this song stat.

white houses

Has it really been a month?  Yikes!  Guess counting people took more time than I anticipated.  But now I'm back - committed to the cause - and have a yummy little number that you need to play on repeat immediately (if you don't already).

So wanna know the fastest way to make me happy?  Play Vanessa Carlton.  Not only do I love her music, I think I want to be her.  Only she can match the enthusiasm and ADHD-ness to which I bang My Heart Will Go On out on the piano (wearing this, wearing only this).  She dated my future blog-subject/husband Stephan Jenkins, is a classically trained ballerina, has long shiny brown hair and likes to wear a lot of eyeliner.  Did your heart just explode in envy?  Yeah, mine too!

Initially, I wasn't too impressed with Vanessa and her completely unrelatable hit A Thousand Miles:

Cause you know I'd walk a thousand miles
If I could just see you...
Tonight.

Don't count on me walking a thousand miles in one night to see you.  Even if you've got Ryan Reynold's wit, Justin Bieber's 'bama bangs and Brad Pitt's ability to eat on camera, I would only get about 55 miles - putting me in Woodbridge, VA.  Vanessa, it's ok that you weren't a math major, but a song about being so in love that you'd spend all night walking to a place that just got a Target isn't going to tickle my pickle.

Shockingly,  I don't remember when I first heard White Houses.  I can't give you details as to what I was wearing, what I was thinking, what homework I was ignoring - all I know it was sometime early senior year at Duke.  I've been a Vanessa believer ever since.

Whenever I hear White Houses, I just want to spin around in happy little circles just like Vanessa in her banned-from-MTV video (apparently her coming-of-age lyrics were too descriptive for the land of fist pumps and Justin Bobbys).  I love the melody - so sweetly vulnerable - and how it interplays with antsy, awkward tempo.  And the lyrics?  I feel like I'm playing house on the set of The Wonder Years - so excited, filled with self-importance and no a clue as to what I'm doing:

Maybe I'm a little bit over my head
I come undone at the things he said
And he's so funny in his bright red shirt
We were all in love and we all got hurt

So give Vanessa a spin - if you like it, I also recommend Nolita Fairytale and Hands On Me.  If you don't like it, well, you're probably a communist.