weekend in photos 2/14-2/17

Justin and I took a three day weekend and went to Chicago.  It was such a fun relaxing weekend.  Valentines day we made a steak dinner and had chocolate covered strawberries for dessert.  We headed to Chicago Friday.  We walked the Magnificent Mile, went to the original Gino's East for some deep dish pizza and ended the night at the Clark St. Ale House. 

Saturday was a miserable attempt to go to the Shedd Aquarium.  We waited in line for 2 hours. In the freezing cold. Only to leave because they were at capacity and not letting anyone else in.  We ended up going to the hotel to warm up and buy tickets online for the next day.  The rest of Saturday was mostly relaxing.  We went to dinner at RMP Italian   It was really nice.  Lots of delicious drinks and Italian food. Justin had the carbonara and I had the tortellini.

Sunday we finally made it to the Shedd! I will always buy my tickets online if I know I'm going.  Waiting 20 minutes inside is a lot better than 2 hours outside.  The animals that the aquatic show didn't want to cooperate so it was very entertaining. We ended our day in Chicago walking back to the Bean and headed home.

Music Monday: Local Natives

Local Natives is an indie rock band based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.  Three years ago Local Natives released their debut album, Gorilla Manor.  This year comes the release of their second album, Hummingbird (released January 29).  Hummingbird is very warm with its sweeping harmonies. It also references summer in many of the songs.  It's a perfect album to come out in the dead of winter.

Hummingbird  has many different sounds throughout the album and all comes together nicely. If you liked their first album, I'm sure you'll like this one just as much.  You can really tell they've put a lot of time and thought into creating it.  My favorite song on the album is "Breakers".  It's got all the things that I love about their music in one song. Take a listen and let me know what you think!

Track list:

1. You & I 2. Ceilings 3. Black Spot 4. Breakers 5. Three Months 6. Black Balloons		7. Wooly Mammoth 8. Mt. Washington 9. Colombia 10. Bowery 11. Ingrid (Bonus track)

Music Monday: Most Anticipated Albums 2013

Been getting more and more excited about the albums I've seen that are going to be release/expected to be released this year. Here are the five I am most excited about.

Arcade Fire The group is working with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem and Markus Dravs (who has also worked with them on Neon Bible and The Suburbs  I am super jealous of anyone who was able to see them in their secret Montreal gig where they performed a few of their new songs. "Crucified Again"
Pheonix April 2013.  Haven't really heard much about this one either except it's going to be "revolutionary". They had posted a picture in their diary back in may 2011 about the album.
Vampire Weekend  Spring (tentitive)  They were able to focus on song writing because they weren't on a time restriction.
Local Natives Jan. 29 Hummingbird Official video for "Breakers" (off the new album) Possible track list:  01 You & I 02 Heavy Feet 03 Ceilings 04 Black Spot 05 Breakers 06 Three Months 07 Black Balloons 08 Wooly Mammoth 09 Mt. Washington 10 Colombia 11 Bowery
MGMT Spring MGMT(tentitive).  Should be similar to their last album Congratulations. Possibly more psychedelic.  Andrew Wyngarden has said that five new songs have been written to follow up the album.

NYC fall 2012

I took these photos on a day trip into NYC with Justin.  We spent the morning walking through Central Park with a good cup of coffee. We decided to search for Alice since we had just seen a show talking about how the statue was created. After the park we headed down Madison Ave and stopped at The Ginger Man for a drink and some food. 

After warming up we continued our walk down towards Madison Square Park. On the way Justin and I stopped to get a few shots of the Empire State Building. We chilled at Madison Square Park for a bit then decided to take a cab down to the East Village. There we got a drink and watched the Badger game at Ace Bar.  The atmosphere was fun, and it had pool tables and skee-ball.  After wandering the East Village for a bit we took a cab up to Times Square to check out the lights at night.