Pull Me Out in Your Flood

Details: Jacket-Nasty Gal, Sweater-Urban Outfitters, Jeans-American Apparel, Shoes-Doc Martens

Happy Halloween! Today was a rainy day and it was awesome. I've been waiting to wear this anorak I got from Nasty Gal for the longest time so I was thankful for the opportunity. It's also finally starting to feel like fall! It's been rather warm lately, but the past two days have been a bit more on the chilly side which makes me very happy because I'm getting a little tired of showing up to class drenched in sweat after a long, probably uphill, trek. Sadly I'm still getting used to bay area weather and the importance of layering. Back home in Texas people complained about "crazy Texas weather" because the temperature could change quite drastically from one day to the next. Here the temperature changes quite drastically from one hour to the next. I like to joke that you can always tell how early a person's classes are by how warmly they're dressed. As a person on that 8 am grind for 4/5 days of the week, I find myself walking home at 11am in jeans, boots, and a sweater, feeling and looking like an idiot among the swarms of those in shorts and tees just arriving on campus. I really need to step up my layering game so I think my next clothing purchases will definitely be in the light-medium sweater category. 

Choosing a song to fit with today's gloomy mood was rather difficult seeing as most of the music I like could easily fit the theme. Since my last post included some serious grunge glorification I decided to hold out on the obvious music choice for this Seattlesque weather and go instead for something by one of my favorite bands, DIIV (fun note-they actually got their name from the Nirvana song "Dive" that was included on my 90s playlist from last week!) DIIV songs always take me back to last fall when I started listening to them during my first few weeks at Cal. I then had the joy of going to see them in concert at a tiny venue in San Francisco in May. I was literally 5 feet from Cole Smith and it was truly amazing. While all their songs are great, there's not a whole lot since they only have one album (still waiting on that second one guys, c'mon, I know you have like 100 songs you've made so please shave them down into an album already k thnx) I've chosen "Oshin" for today because it's definitely one of my favorites and also mentions rain and water and stuff so it's fitting I guess? But seriously if you've never heard any of their stuff, go download their entire album (it's called Oshin) and give it a listen!

Have a safe and spoopy Halloween!

Karis the Baybonnet

PS- Expect a Halloween post sometime this weekend; I'll be talking about my costume and all my spoopy shenanigans! 

PSS- Spooy is not a typo. It's just a far superior word to "spooky"

An Ode to the 90s

Details: Shirt-Omighty, Choker-Urban Outfitters, Jeans-Urban Outfitters, Shoes-Docs

Today I'm here to talk about my favorite decade: the 90s. I know, I know, we see 90s stuff everywhere nowadays. Chokers, flannels, slip dresses, and combat boots have become a part of modern, popular fashion. People want to look like they have the "90s style". And I'm all about it. I mean I love being able to walk into a store a buy a band shirt for a band that I actually know, love, and listen to. But, it can be annoying seeing people with no knowledge of the music wearing a Nirvana shirt, for example, which is why I fell in love with this shirt from Omighty the second I saw it. I feel like a hypocrite though because I get annoyed personally when I'm wearing a shirt by a band that I like and people start to question me about it, so it does show that you really can't judge a book by it's cover. Just yesterday I was wearing a Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream shirt and a guy waiting for the bus with me started asking me about the band and it turns out that I knew more about them than he did, so I ended up giving him some song suggestions! 

90s alt rock holds such a special place in my heart and my iTunes. It's what I was raised on. Growing up, I would listen to Soundgarden's "Superunknown" with my dad on the weekends and Gin Blossoms' "New Miserable Experience" on trips to see the family with my mom.  I literally did not know who NSYNC was until maybe 2nd or 3rd grade. And it's not just the music of my parents; it became my music as well, which is why I'm sharing it with you today.

Instead of choosing just one song to define how I feel about my favorite decade, I've created this huge playlist of 27 of my favorite 90s jams by some of my favorite 90s artists (I've limited it to one song by each artist and believe me it was literally painful at times to decide which song to put on here). I think it's a pretty good mix of different sounds from the decade, from the heavier "Would" by Alice in Chains to the more poppy "Meet Virginia" by Train to everything in between like the upbeat but actually disturbingly dark "Semi Charmed Life" by Third Eye Blind.  I painstakingly ordered them chronologically because I think it's interesting to see how the music changed over the course of the decade and how certain elements stayed the same; specifically I wanted to isolate the "grunge" artists from their later descendants.   I love the so-called "grunge" genre and the bands associated with it, but it's completely incorrect to say that the music from the 90s was all grunge. There were so many other alternative music movements and subgenres that I enjoy just as much.  

I feel a lot of emotion listening to each of these songs. The alt rock that came out of this decade, for the most part, was rather dark, and while some might say that its "a bummer" to listen to, I enjoy digesting every lyric. I'm not saying that music today is emotionless and empty - many of my favorite songs and bands came out of this more recent decade - I just think that there really is something special about the grittiness of the 90s that shows through even in the more upbeat-sounding songs. Maybe I'm just making this up, so I'll let you all decide for yourselves. 

On this thing of beauty, you will find:

1 - Hey by the Pixies (1989)

2 - Dive by Nirvana (1990)

3 - Outshined by Soundgarden (1991)

4 - Black by Pearl Jam (1991)

5 - Would by Alice in Chains (1992)

6 - Hey Jealousy by Gin Blossoms (1993)

7 - Low by Cracker (1993)

8 - Soul to Squeeze by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1993)

9 - Unglued by Stone Temple Pilots (1994)

10 - Undone- The Sweater Song by Weezer (1994)

11 - Possum Kingdom by the Toadies (1994)

12 - Reptile by Nine Inch Nails (1994)

13 - Everything Zen by Bush (1994)

14 - Zero by Smashing Pumpkins (1995)
15 - Everlong by the Foo Fighters (1995)

16 - Only Happy When it Rains by Garbage (1995)

17 - Lump by the Presidents of the USA (1995)

18 - Meet Virginia by Train (1996)

19 - Nude as the News by Cat Power (1996)

20 - The Freshmen by the Verve Pipe (1996)

21 - Wind Below by Rage Against the Machine (1996)

22 - Semi Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind (1997)

23 - Song 2 by Blur (1997)

24 - Brick by Ben Folds Five (1997)

25 - Black Balloon by Goo Goo Dolls (1998)

26 - Shimmer by Fuel (1998)

27 - Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead (2000)


Have a wonderful week my 90s beauties!

Karis the baybonnet

All of These Things Will Change

Details: Boots-Dolce Vita, Tights-Urban Outfitters, Dress-BDBG, Flannel-Thrifted, Necklaces-Nasty Gal and Bufalo Exchange

So it's been forever since I blogged, and that makes me sad, but hey I'm here so that's cool. Anyways, today I just want to give a shout out to my favorite month, October (now that we're like halfway through it). Fall itself is my favorite season; the changing leaves, the cool weather, the darker style that becomes more commonplace, starting new classes and meeting new people. Despite the fact that I've never been a PSL fan (I'm all about chai lattes 100% of the time), there is really something special about this season of change. I always feel like I have the chance to become a new, better version of myself. October itself is the perfect month within fall because I've had time to get into the swing of school and life, but there's still this chance of wonderful changes and surprises ahead. Also Halloween and all the spoopiness leading up to it is pretty great.  I've finally decided what I'm going to be this year and I'm super excited, but it will have to be a surprise until I make a Halloween post.

Today's song is this beautiful jam by Banks, who I got really into about a month ago (I just haven't been able to talk about it here seeing as I haven't posted in a while). Change was the first song I heard by her and I instantly fell in love with it. Everything about the song is beautiful: the lyrics, the beat, that awesome little guitar lick at the very beginning and end of the chorus (the way I feel about this lick is very similar to my feeling towards the guitar part during the verses of Sweater Weather-gfsgfjhlk). It's a melancholy song but it's also so sensual and beautiful, plus it really struck a chord with my personal life at the time that I heard it. I think it's a wonderful song to accompany my feelings about fall; not only is it literally a song about change, but it is somehow the exact feeling of curling up in a warm blanket with a hot beverage as the leaves fall put into song.

Til next time,

Karis the Baybonnet