It would be so easy for me, as a moderately cynical and non-gifty-type person, to abhor this time of year. I also don’t love the smell of cinnamon and Christmas carols sung in Chipmunk voices. But, oddly, I don’t hate it. I love it. I don’t love everything about the holidays – I just love certain aspects quite a lot.

There’s a Dutch word – gezellig – that is untranslatable in English, but as far as I can tell begins to describe exactly what I love about Christmastime. It means cozy, homey, pleasant, convivial and fun. It’s about having your people around you in a warm and lovely environment. It means holing up and eating and drinking and laughing. It means togetherness and twinkle lights, roaring fires and long conversations. It means merry and bright.

We all trim our homes and string up lights and create the spaces to accommodate this cozy time of year and there is something really comforting about it. Whether the party be a grown-up-dress up affair with rivers of booze or a long afternoon at home with just the family, some tunes and some games – it just feels good to preen the house, to hibernate, to be together, to cook and to take stock in the passage of time.

Apropos of time passing, there is honestly no better marker of time for me than the annual Christmas concert. You sit in a pew, shoulder to shoulder with your honey watching as each class performs their little songs. Your friends’ kids who started in kindergarten angel wings are suddenly gigantic 8th graders. You watch chubby cheeks grow progressively slimmer as each grade takes the stage and you marvel at the changes over time. The constant (the church, the lights, the songs, the pews) allows the change (the children) to jump into focus and it is always staggering and beautiful.

And so, with fresh reminders of how quickly it’s all going and how lucky we all are to be going at all, we gather in our homes with each other and try to stop time, for just a little while. We pull out all our tricks to get ourselves to stay still long enough to feel the wonder again, to spread it around, to fill our cups for the rest of the year.

Merry Christmas, my friends.

Hard to pick a favorite, but for me it’s Perfect Day. So simple and, well, perfect. Rest in Peace, Mr. Reed.

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For a really great essay about Lou Reed by another fave of mine, Emily Haines of Metric, check this out.

And for a really cool BBC  promotion featuring anyone and everyone singing Perfect Day, watch this:

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Unlike my usual m.o., I actually came to Patti through her look first, her writing second and her music third. It seems I’ve always unconsciously knocked off her iconic androgynous style – flat chested, no hips, her tomboy look always worked for me. Still does. I wear many different things, but I am most myself in a pair of Chucks and jeans. That’s what I wear when I want to be free. Or invisible. Or invincible. I was a total nerd and stole a white oxford from Saint James and basically wore the black ribbon outfit pictured above (also the cover of her Horses album). Felt like a goofball and also, a million bucks.

A few years ago I read her quiet gem of a memoir, Just Kids. It’s about her friendship/love with Robert Mapplethorpe, and I must admit it shook me. These people were so extremely outside of my experience growing up – basically finding no other way to live than to completely mesh life and art, so that one bled into the other until they were indistinguishable and often deeply painful. I read it again with the ladies of my book club, the second time leaving me free to concentrate on her words and how she delicately strung them together like the beaded necklaces she and Robert used to wear. Her writing is so beautiful, tender, strong and honest – really just a way to describe her too.

She took the stage with her son, Jackson. (Don’t even get me started on the awesomeness of watching a mom and her boy make music together). She was soon joined by Gary Louris, Mark Mallman and a few other local musicians. She pretended not to know their names, but she did of course. They were utterly and obviously in her thrall – grown men, accomplished musicians, full-fledged rockers just happy and jazzed to be on stage with her. It’s not often, in this society, that a woman of that age gets to command that much respect and adoration. It was inspiring to say the least.

She is simply bad ass. But she’s also delicate and her voice sounds unexpectedly young and sweet. I think that she has lived so authentically her whole life, that she’s one of those people you can see into. She’s complex, she’s a thinker and a creator, but she’s very very clear about who she is and what she is. When you can see and feel someone with that immediacy, their art goes straight to your heart. There are no layers – no artifice – no attitude. Nothing to get in the way and distort the art. She very simply gave us the gift of herself without a lot of fanfare. And that is her power.

She dedicated this song to all of our “loves” and to her love, the late Fred Sonic Smith. Talk about a swooning moment. Top five, people.

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I have always liked Mumford and Sons, but man, they blew up so quick and huge that it’s hard not to want to escape them from time to time. That’s why this self-mocking video for ‘Hopeless Wanderer’ is such a brilliant move. The Mumford boys do not appear – instead you get Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Ed Helmes and Will Forte, hamming it up in gnarly beards and dusty amish-wear.

It’s great and just enough to make me want to hang in there with Mumford. Any band with a sense of humor about themselves and a clue about where they fit in the world is alright by me.

Happy Labor Day and enjoy.

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In actuality, Willie Nelson has been on my mind because of a band called Phosphorescent that I just discovered in the last couple months. The singer songwriter, Matthew Houck, sounds like Willie Nelson to me. Nouveaux Willie. Neo-Willie. Turns out this band had an album back in 2009 called To Willie, so my notion was not far off.

I love this song. And I think you will too. It’s as easy as a warm spring Sunday – which was the kind of day we had here in Minneapolis on Willie’s birthday. But it’s laced with sadness. Really pretty.

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And some Willie too, of course. Renegade, stoner, poet, romancer – the man can convey more emotion in one bar of music than most people can in a whole catalogue of songs. Enjoy.

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Saint James was at tennis practice, so I took a very neutral Supergirl as my sidekick. She was unfamiliar with Dawes but she’s nothing if not game. Turns out she’s the perfect wingman. When we arrived 20 minutes before the show, the line was snaking around the block, so she yelled at me to let her out and go park. I parked a few streets away and ran to meet her – hustling past all manner of hipsters, girls in bright lipstick and tights and plaid clad folks to find her tucked into the line with her hood up – chill as a buddha.

Turns out the kind of people who make an extra effort to check out a Dawes show in a record store are an affable bunch who think nothing of letting a little kid worm her way to the front. Time and again, people would smile at her, let her through and look back at me to see if I wanted to follow. Who am I to say no? We ended up with a perfect spot front and center – so good that a blogger for the City Pages asked me to text her my iPhone pics. Check out my first published pics in Natalie Gallagher’s great interview here.

Dawes is such a good band – beautiful musicianship and lyrics that get you right in the gut. Watching and listening from five feet away is so intimate it’s almost awkward. Taylor Goldsmith doesn’t make it easy – he’s not showy, and peacocky and flamboyant – he’s humble, soulful and unbearably honest. He is extending a piece of his heart every time he opens his mouth and you feel like you need to accept it with some modicum of care. I found myself staring at his beat up buttercream confection of a guitar, wondering if it had a name, to keep myself from welling up.

My favorite thing was watching them through Supergirl’s eyes. She was leaning up against an amp, her head at Goldsmith’s chest level, still as a stone. The kid who always has one eye on my Instagram and one eye on iTunes and her hands busy doodling and her mouth going a mile a minute was quite literally frozen in her tracks. She got to feel the magic that is a live performance, where the love and energy is flying in both directions, where you feel something shift in your insides and walk away just a little bit different.

And if I played my cards right, she’ll be hooked for life. Stories Don’t End.

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I think I need spring. But for the time being, I’ll just continue to suffer through these frigid days and find my warmth in music. For me, Rhye was love at first listen. Coup de foudre. I stumbled upon these guys quite by accident and had downloaded their latest album, Woman, within minutes. Seriously. The video hadn’t even ended.

A duo out of LA, they sound like Sade, but the singer is a boy and the vibe is thoroughly modern, while steeped in smooth early 90’s R&B. I kind of love how unapologetic they are about going there, like there there, like easy-listening, bearskin rug in front of a fire there. And yet, totally cool and thought provoking.

It’s exactly what I want to be listening to right now – slow, easy, sexy, warm. Damn.

And boy does this video tell a story. Enjoy your new make-out music.

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I fell for this song the very first time I heard it. It’s got everything I love: a rocking male falsetto, a sexy decrescendo and falling chords. Just makes me want to put my arms up, my booty down and groove. Which is exactly what I did.

Enjoy.

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Sometimes I’ll happily bust out something new in the kitchen and he won’t bite. I mean, he’s never as effusive as I’d like him to be. Even when he loves something, he won’t come out and say it with many many descriptive words and animated gestures like I would. Imagine.

I dig this band. A lot. But to quote Dash: They’re a little too Corey Hart for my taste. To which I say, you can never be too Corey Hart.

I understand that he’s not as drawn to a dramatic, diversely coiffed, divaesque, daredevil lead singer with delicious derring do as I might be, but he’ll come around.

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And of course, who can forget the gorgeous movie, Amelie? It’s a beautifully imagined mystery slash love story, told through those photo strips. Swoon. One of my favorites and come to think of it, long overdue for a re-watch. Maybe around Valentines Day.

Something about being in a tiny confined space behind a curtain seems to free people up to be silly, amorous, smoochy and unguarded, which is why I got completely sucked into this little tumblr called Vintage Photobooth. Just look at the hair, the outfits, the jewelry – all clues to a bygone era when people seemed to carry themselves in a more careful, deliberate and genteel way.

I find these faces just fascinating and beautiful and cannot help imagining the circumstances surrounding the decision to step behind the curtain. Girls taking pics for their soldier loves going off to war? Vice versa? A mother and child walking home from lessons? Girlfriends out for an afternoon of gossip and window shopping? A newly engaged couple, giddy with news? A pair of boys in love when it wasn’t allowed?

In that spirit, a song from way back when by Flock of Seagulls. Ha! You know what I’m talking about. Enjoy!

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