"Felt it in my fist, in my feet, in the hollows of my eyelids"

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap," were the first words to leave my mouth after seeing Florence + The Machine with my great friend Molly last Tuesday (August 10) at Challenge Stadium in Western Australia.

Their music is just so fierce and powerful that I could still feel it resounding throughout my entire body after the concert had finished. And Florence Welch has such a mighty voice I doubt she even needed the microphone. This is someone who knows the mechanics of their voice inside and out.

The opening act was POND, a local jam pop band who, Molly says, sound like The Flaming Lips. They were surprisingly cohesive and ... well, good considering the number of people in the band. And they even had their own dance, Jeremy, all decked out in a tie-dyed shirt and filmy purple material waving from his wrists.

Here's the setlist:

Drumming Song
My Boy Builds Coffins
Girl With One Eye
Cosmic Love
Howl
Blinding
Florence says "Hello" to audience
Between Two Lungs
I'm Not Calling You A Liar
Hurricane Drunk
You've Got The Love
Strangeness & Charm
Rabbit Heart (Raise it Up)

Encore:
Heavy In Your Arms
Kiss With A Fist
band introductions
Dog Days Are Over

I did manage to get some photographs of the concert - we had epic seats in the reserved seating section, second row on the right - but the guy sitting next to me just couldn't stop feeling the music by tapping his legs continuously, so a lot of my photos make it look as though there was more than one Florence on stage.

The opening act POND. I cannot get over how much the guitarist on the right looks like Jack Hodgins from Bones.

Isabelle at the keyboard, not Florence.

Not in focus, but too wicked-looking to not upload.
Reading: Dead Air by Iain Banks
Listening to: "The Dance" by Charlotte Martin, Florence and The Machine's Lungs

Under Postmodernism's Spell

Classes started back up last week, so I'm back to finding a balance between university/readings, work, and leisure. And it is my last semester of university, so I have to find that perfect balance between studying and not going insane. I'm overloading this semester because the one creative writing unit (I think American universities call these courses?) I wanted to take is worth more credits than I need to finish my degree. So that calls for a little more work this semester. Oh, and I'm back to studying postmodernism. Lord help me, one semester of this is bad enough but three years? Oh dear.

I've been slightly more interested in food lately, in cooking rather, and attempting to take food photography (albeit low-level photography). At work I generally just have a sandwich or buy a spinach and ricotta pastry roll for lunch, but last Wednesday I decided to splash out and get sushi for the first time in months. An interesting lunch and a quiet day at work led to my camera being used.

Lunch: Iced coffee and assorted roll sushi.
I fancied Mexican food on Saturday for lunch but I didn't want my usual nachos. For some reason I felt like a tortilla, and cooking one. So I went out and bought polenta and cooked my very first tortillas. They were quite yummy as chicken burritos, if I do say so myself.
It's about 3.15am now and I couldn't sleep (despite having woken up at a normal time - 9am - yesterday) so I decided to get some studying done. I find I work better at the edge of night, between 2am and 5am, which doesn't let me fare well during the day but it does allow me to get work done without any disturbances from everyday life. There's just something peaceful and light about doing anything during this time.


Reading: Dead Air by Iain Banks (almost finished it)
Listening to: 2008 Rent soundtrack (particularly "Goodbye Love"), "The Freshmen" by The Verve Pipe, Jack's Mannequin's "The Resolution"