Just the way I'm feeling: Grimes & Donora

It's funny how our music tastes change. Not just with age, which is the obvious one, but even within a space of time as short as a couple of weeks - or even literally overnight.

Don't worry, dear reader, I'll get round to recommending some music in a few paragraphs' time. For now this blog post is going to be a little more personal than usual - but hey, blogs are meant to be personal, right?

I first downloaded 'Oblivion' by Grimes back in, I think, October, and thought it was a pretty good song. I went on to listen to the second single, 'Genesis', but it didn't really grab me and so I didn't bother checking out the album.

If you read this blog regularly - errr well, as often as Ben and I post content - you may have caught my frothing-at-the-mouth review of Visions back in March. So what changed? The cynic in me wants to say that it was hearing 'Genesis' again on 6 Music ('Fro brain logic: this is on 6 Music, ergo must be trendy), but I like to think that my adoration for the album was brought on, not by peer pressure, but a very dark mood.

Yes, for those who may not know, three months ago our very own Quiff pipped me to the post to become editor of our student newspaper. I hold nothing against him for it, but I was, I hope understandably, pretty upset. Suddenly, Visions made sense. Its bleakness and alienation spoke to me in a way that I don't think it would have done before - certainly at least not to the same extent.

I'm pleased to say that I feel considerably more positive today; yet, while my outlook has improved, Visions has as the same time lost some of its appeal for me, the same intensity and bleakness which originally drew me to the album instead turning me off it. I still think it's a tremendous piece of work - I just don't want to listen to it anymore.

• [free mp3] Grimes - Genesis
• [mp3] Grimes - Be A Body

On to the present (and music recommendations, yay!): What sums up my present mood is a great record called Boyfriends, Girlfriends by Donora. I downloaded the single 'And Then The Girls', an angular indie-rock boogie with a killer chorus, after a recommendation from I Guess I'm Floating. It's one helluva track, and after a couple of listens to sister single 'Mancini Dance Hall' I felt compelled to download the whole thing.

Unfortunately, I was a bit let down by the rest of the album - I was expecting upbeat disco tunes throughout, but instead a lot of it seemed a bit saccharine; romantic pop-rock for teenage girls. I'm not really one for soppiness, and I started cherry-picking the more bittersweet and danceable tracks.

That very same night, I caught up with someone I hadn't seen for a while and - well, I'm not spilling my entire personal life on here. But the next morning I had 'The World is Ours' in my head, a track I'd already pretty much written off, and suddenly the 'soppy' tracks seemed so much richer than they had twenty-four hours earlier. In fact, the catchy disco-tinged tunes which had initially drawn me to the album seemed, in comparison, a bit shallow.

God, this turned into a proper wall o' text, didn't it? To summarise the above: life can have a massive influence on the music you love, and you should go listen Boyfriends, Girlfriends by Donora now, as it's significantly deeper than first appearances might suggest.

• [mp3] Donora - And Then The Girls
• Album stream: Boyfriends, Girlfriends by Donora