Monthly Spin: The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You

The Monthly Spin is a recurring feature on Feminine Things wherein I talked about an album I'm loving and the perfumes I think go with it.

"I haven't finished a thing since I started my life;
I haven't finished a thing since I started my life..."

I freely admit to having totally avoided the Avett Brothers in general and this album in particular because the song "Head Full of Doubt, Heart Full of Promise" was played approximately every two and half minutes for the entire multiple year run of TNT's Saving Grace which I did not enjoy (ads or show) and I got so sick of it I ran in the opposite direction anytime I heard the words, "And now, the Avett Brothers...."

...which, it turns out, was too bad. Here I am, two years later, finally enjoying the album I and Love and You thanks to "I and Love and You" getting into radio rotation on the PDX alt.station 94.7. Because folks, if someone had played "My Heart like a Kick Drum" or "Ill With Want" for me first, I might have overlooked that painful "Head Full of Doubt" period.

I admit that when I first heard "I and Love and You," my first thought went something like this. "Is that the Counting Crows? No..... Did Jakob Dylan's voice get super gravelly? No....." The Avett Brothers' sound feels comfortable and familiar, like you've heard it before, but I wouldn't necessarily call it derivative. I'd more describe it as filling a mental musical space you didn't realize was empty. It's a little bluesy, a little blue grassy, a lot of introspective navel gazing. ("Oh my favorite!" says my partner with sarcasm as he rolls his eyes.) I find it pretty enjoyable and easy to listen to. It seems like the kind of tunes good for a reflective, solo road trip of self-exploration and discovery. Since I indulge myself in such trips with almost monthly frequency, this works for me.

Also, if you're thinking about giving the Avett Brothers a chance, may I recommend you actually start with the 2007 release Emotionalism? It's terrific and not nearly as overplayed, though you'll probably find yourself thinking, "Hey I recognize this!" on the occasional track. I like that the bluegrass roots of the Avett Brothers is more obvious here, which of course makes it less mainstream radio accessible, but probably the better album. My favs off of Emotionalism are 'The Ballad of Love and Hate," "Will You Return", and "I Would Be Sad".

"Love arrives safely with suitcase in tow,
carrying with her the good things we know --
a reason to live, and a reason to grow,
to trust, to hold, to care..."

Recommended if you like: Counting Crows, Gin Blossoms, Bob Dylan, Jakob Dylan,  Mumford and Sons

While spinning, wear:  Olympic Orchids Arizona, slumberhouse Rume, Bulgari BLV Pour Homme,  Bellatrix Perfumes Titania. I don't really know what links these scents together with these songs/musical style in my mind.  I guess I think of these scents as being earthy and beautiful without trying too hard, just sort of appearing out of the ether in their beautiful complexity without even a backward glance of acknowledgment that they were really intensely difficult to create. Which is how I find the Avett Brothers' music -- accessible to the point of being deceptive in its complexity.

The sun in your eyes made some of your lies worth believing.

Sometimes a girl just wants to rest!

Perfume Challenge Week 22: Monday, 6/13/11, to Friday, 6/17/11

First off, congrats to Elisa who won the May drawing and with it a mix CD and beautiful sampler set from INeKE Perfumes. Bonus: the cost of the sampler set goes toward a bottle purchase! That's right, people. The prizes just keep getting sweeter here at Feminine Things.

This weekend is busy like woah. I had a wedding last night, The Mountain Goats show tonight, and tomorrow, more things! And every weekend has been like this lately.

Also, I want to give a shout out to Samantha, one of my readers who introduced me to a some new perfumes and gave *me* a couple mix CDs. Who knew I could love a carrot perfume? But I do. It's awesome. Also, I am rocking those CDs, so thanks for that. It makes me want to see if we can get a little local perfumista shindig together. If you're greater PDX local and interested, send me an email.

Monday: Soivohle Perfumes Vanillaville - Notes: A rustic eathery vanilla with overtones of pipe tobacco, notes include, sweet fennel, pink pepper, coffee absolute, cinnamon cepes, rectified birch tar, sandalwood, amyris, floral accord benzoin, almonds. This a bitter, dry chocolatey, rubbery leather scent. I imagine this is what chocolate scented leather would smell like, or like drinking a bone dry mexican chocolate latte while perched atop a mountain of brand new leather pants. I get no vanilla at the top, just a noseful of vetiver and chocolate. If you were looking for a chocolate scent for someone who wanted a muscular and lean expression and less full-bodied and foodie, this might make a good one. You better love the leather, though. I haven't smelled this much leather since the last time I was in a bondage boutique. My only complaint is that on me it faded to a slightly sweet but otherwise almost undetectable scent on my skin after about four hours. 4.5 of 5 nods for scent originality, 3 of 5 nods for longevity.

Tuesday: As part of The Midsummer Night's Dream event, I reviewed Bellatrix Perfumes Titania.

Wednesday: By Kilian Prelude to Love (Invitation) - Notes: Seville orange, bergamot, Amalfi lemon, ginger, pepper, orange blossom, Florence iris. The notes on this one really precede it with accuracy in my opinion. I don't get a lot of orange, but I do gt a nose full of bergamot, ginger, and lemon heavy-citrus up front, like being slapped with the citrus stick. I personally get very little of the iris, which appears in the middle, before the drydown turns into a citrus-tinged orange blossom. A nice fragrance, but a strange and unexpected sharpness to a romantic prelude, so as a meditation on the theme, a little off for me. 3 of 5 nods.

Thursday: Parfums de Nicolai Turquoise - Notes: Mango, apricot, lime, osmanthus, spice, Turkish rose, pepper, jasmine, cardamom, cedar, musk, jasmine absolute. Lime, mango, and rose mesh together in the opening to give a surprisingly pleasant fruit coctail experience. I know that sounds bad, but it is meant to be a compliment. It smooths out thanks to the dry spices so you end up with a gently smooth and sweet scent that works surprisingly well in hot weather. Don't really get the name, though.  3 of 5 nods.

Friday: As part of The Midsummer Night's Dream event, I reviewed EnVoyage Perfumes Titania.

Winner of the Week: This is really hard because of the fantastic perfumes made for the Midsummer Night's Dream Event. I think I have to pass; this week I'm the winner for getting to smell all these lovely smells.

"Don't leave false illusions behind.
Don't cry; I ain't changing my mind.
So find another fool like before
'cause I ain't gonna live anymore believing
some of the lies while
all of the signs are deceiving..."
~ "Eye in the Sky," Alan Parsons Project

A Midsummer Night's Dream - EnVoyage Perfumes Titania

En Voyage Perfumes Titania

Edward Robert Hughes's
Midsummer Eve

The second Midsummer scent I received was from Shelley Waddington of EnVoyage Perfumes. She also provided a meditation on the Titania, Queen of Fae, but this took its inspiration from a very different part of Shakespeare’s play.

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk roses and eglantine.
~Oberon, describing Titania’s bower, where she sleeps.

Top Notes: Fir Needles, Spice and Citrus.
Heart Notes: Basil, Mint, Geranium, Lavender Hidcote, Ylang-Ylang, Wild Rose and Heliotrope.
Base Notes: Juniper, Ho-Wood, Aromatic Woods and Nuts, Moss, Fern, Savory Leaves, Iris, Honey.

This is Titania as her vexed but nonetheless doting lover sees her. It is so different from Bellatrix Perfumes Titania, it is almost astonishing. Ankica Milic’s Titania is strong and bold, and the passage Ankica choose includes lines that can be played as vaguely threatening. Shelley Waddington focuses instead on Titania’s softness, and beauty. It gives us a scent that is more a reflection of the Queen, as seen through the eyes of a lover, than that of a mirror. And yet, despite the wildly different trajectory here, I think it is equally beautiful!

Galadriel, the Lady of the Wood

The top is fresh and minty and reminds me of falling asleep on a bed of fresh pine needles in a cool forest. The sweetness is very gentle and natural. It is so elegant, as though a beautiful cape were made from the greenest spring leaves and mosses and a crown made from the tender twisted stems and branches and wrapped around you. It has a kind of majesty to it that remind me of what it might be like to see Cate Blanchett play Titania as though she were much softer version of Galadriel. In my mind, I go immediately to the image of the playful, dreamy Titania after she has been bewitched by Oberon, which apparently was the exact inspiration. But it not only reminds me of Titania as she is lying sleepily in her bower, it also reminds me of the slowly waking lovers near the end of the play, when they arise and cannot recall if they have lived, or merely dreamed, the night’s events.

I really wish I could place the sweet part of this. I keep looking to the notes for guidance, but I just can’t work it out. I think I’m mostly getting geranium, with a decent hit of lavender and honey. Yes, I’m definitely getting lavender, now that I think back to my friend Tiff’s wedding, which was an outdoor June pagan wedding in a wood along a lake, and lavender was the theme flower/scent. She carried lavender; some of the cupcakes were lemon lavender; we threw cups of dried lavender over the couple as they left. It was dark and warmly wet and the smell of lavender was everywhere that afternoon and night; I suspect if you were going to make her a scent in commemoration of the event, which was very midsummer themed (fairy themed touches around the wedding as well), this might be, not the scent she wore, but the actual smell of her union day itself. FN1.

Bridal Veil Lakes,
where my friend was married

Every fairy take his gait;
And each several chamber bless,
Through this palace, with sweet peace;
And the owner of it blest
Ever shall in safety rest.
~ Oberon, giving instructions to the fairies

Which brings me to another tangential, but thematically appropriate, thought. This would make an excellent scent for a summer wedding, in the merry, marry month of June. Shakespeare’s work itself transpires around what becomes a triple wedding, and this seems like an excellent scent for a warm outdoor ceremony, because I can imagine it warming on the skin beautifully without becoming overpowering. How perfectly it all plays together, and how wonderfully Shelley Waddington did with this one. If you close your eyes, you can imagine this smell wafting through the whole of Theseus and Hippolyta’s house at the play’s end as an olfactory experience of having each couple’s love, and all those among them, and all those their love has yet to create, being blessed by nature and by magic.

Wonderful. Magical. A hit for summer, for love, and definitely worth owning if made available for purchase.

To see more visit A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Perfume Event, running June 14-24, 2011.
______________________________
1. I’ll tell you, because I know you’d want to know, she wore Coco Mademoiselle.

A Midsummer Night's Dream - Bellatrix Perfumes Titania

Bellatrix Perfumes Titania

The first Midsummer scent I bring you comes from the lovely Ankica Milic of Bellatrix Perfumes.

She provided me the following to reflect on as I sampled her scent, Titania:

Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I’ll gve thee fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.

Notes: Rosewood, Pink Pepper, Mentha peperita, Tuberose, Rose damascene abs., Neroli, Iris, Labdanum, Violet leaf, Orris butter, Sandal album, Angelica root, Ambrette, Oak moss, Patchouli.

What a lovely choice of words for an artistic meditation. I believe, on this passage alone, I could plan an entire lovely summer wedding. Titania’s woods are in many ways like love itself – once ensnared, it is a place one not only cannot leave, but does not wish to flee, for how sweet are its tender entrapments!

The scent, then, to me is less a mediation on the Queen of Fae herself, than on that blessed and magickal place that lives in our hearts, the haze of love that feels like the moment between sleeping and wakefulness. A drowsing dreamy state, where one might feel the gentle press of hands and gentler kiss of brow and cheek, and even in that unconsciousness, sigh for the happiness of it.

In that respect, Ankica has done her material a turn considerably more than fair. The scent is one that eyes closed and listening to Shakespeare’s words, might conjure in one’s mind images of the characters venturing into the woods that fateful night.

I cannot say that it is much like anything else I have tried, though I see some similarity to both strongly woody scents and some nerolis. The opening is full of pepper and menthe, which quickly retreats and folds strongly toward rosewood, oak moss, and patchouli. Violet leaf lurks, and rose as well. I give Ankica true credit for managing such a gentle patchouli. Usually it is a note so overwhelming I have to struggle to catch anything else. I do not get any iris, sadly, but I do not find it a loss here.

To give a sense of the scent beyond my own expression, let me give some other comparisons. It has some in common with Dana English Leather, but it less sharp featured and masculine than this cousin. Compared to Jo Malone Orange Blossom, Ankica's scent is less flowery and sweet and more of smooth wood, more inclined toward Fair Titania's hidden home than she herself. It is not so green as to share any relation to Roxana Illuminated Perfumes GreenWitch, though the Queen of Fae be both green and bewitching. It is very lovely, and makes a truly sweet scent for this project.

I hope Ankica will make it available when she chooses to launch her line. I’d like to own it. It fills a hole in my collection I did not know existed until I smelled the scent. And in this respect, it is quite like finding love when for love one seeks least.

That may be Titania and Oberon’s greatest trick here, and it is a good one.

To see more visit A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Perfume Event, running June 14-24, 2011.