I have to admit to being a bit enamoured with Lily Allen at the moment. I’ve already blogged about her video for Hard Out Here, and today I’m sharing her new song, Air Balloon.

The clip was filmed in Cape Town, South Africa and features zebras and a cheetah, and I love it to bits. Honestly, its not my kind of music but everything that Lily does at the moment is SO much fun.

I love the lighting of this video, her clothes, the fact that she’s surrounded by four average looking blokes not a bunch of male models, and because…butterflies!

Then of course there’s Jesus nailed to the cross floating past at the very end. Well that’s enough to get everyone talking! Most people seem to believe that the song is about getting high (bright red toadstools growing behind her and a psychedelic feel sure point to that), but I believe Lily’s been quoted as saying it’s just a song about going to her happy place.

Music Feeds has this opinion: While the track is ostensibly a nursery-rhyme singalong pop tune about rising above the daily grind, it’s hard to definitively surmise whether Ms Allen is advocating day dreaming, or describing a Hunter Thompson-style vaporising high. Perhaps both. With lyrics like “we’re so high it can’t rain”, “”somebody remind me where I am, Miami or Timbuktu?” and the “trippin’, tri-tri-trippin’ now” refrain, we’ll let you make up your own mind …

Either way, it’s poppy and cheeky and so very Lily!

Director — That Go (Noel Paul and Stefan Moore) Producer — Sonya Sier 

Everything that kills me… makes me feel alive~ OneRepublic

Love, love LOVE this song! Every time I hear it, I smile. Upbeat, great lyrics, slick music production. So what about the video? Frankly, I’m not sure.

Filmed in New Orleans in the second oldest church in the country, the band performs in a basement while overhead a Christian revival meeting is going on. The two scenes are cut together in quick bites and interspersed with an alligator roaming around. The video culminates in someone from the revivalist meeting falling through the floorboards down to where the band are.

An intersection of belief sytems, perhaps? Music News says: Lyrics “losing sleep dreaming about the things that I could be,” resonate in the duality of danger being ever present and looking for a safe haven to heal yourself. The lost alligator roams the halls of the deteriorated church basement far from its’ swamp home and the ever present unknown. 

Lost in translation is the phrase that comes to mind when I watch it. I feel like the meaning is an elusive vision, hovering just outside my cornersight. But then maybe I’m just looking for something that’s not there in the first place!

To be fair, part of my ambivalence towards the video is because the music incites a wholly different set of images for me – far removed from church basements and bible-singing congregations. But this was the vision the band and British producer James Lees (British aesthetic, colour, frames, blah di blah…) shared, so I’m on board with that and I still totally LOVE the song.

The Video

The making of the video!

Reviewed by Krista McKeeth

(BACK OF THE BACK OF BEYOND Come and join the Party!

Through her short stories “No Pets Allowed”, “Get Me to The Worldcon on Time” , “My Sweet 286” and “Party”, Edwina Harvey introduced her readers to a world where flatmates discover the difficulties of raising young dragons in small suburban apartments, where “flying” to a science fiction convention takes on a whole new meaning, and where “the next door neighbours” on an Australian rural backblock are out of this world, but the parties are legendary.
Now collected here for the first time, these stories are interwoven with seven new tales set in the same universe.

Come and be introduced to a rural Australian landscape you never knew existed somewhere out in the back of the back of beyond.

If you had to describe this book in one word, it would be “quirky.”  The stories are short and at times made me do a double take and say to myself “what just happened?”  They are ordered in a way that makes the collection seem to be continuous narrative with character development and progression along the way.

From the very first story of trying to understand how two flatmates were capable of raising a dragon in such a small space, to the idea of traveling by air and going through a drive-in fast food restaurant to order food without landing, this collection is unique.

Each separate chapter, or story has an element of the weird, some reality and a bit of the supernatural. From a snake that tries to mate with (or eat?) a power cord, to a dragon farm, unicorns and aliens, this book really does have a variety of characters.

I am sure that many of us love the idea of moving to secluded farmland and unplugging from the outside world for awhile; cherishing the moments we do get to share with family and friends, meeting new ones and in this unusual case, getting to know an alien creature and their love for Coca Cola. Edwina Harvey provides it all.

Although I am still trying to gather all my thoughts on these stories, it is definitely a book that I will remember for years to come. Taking place in the “outback” of Australia, it is a humorous and quirky read. If you’re looking for something a little outside of the box, you should pick this one up!

 Peggy Bright Books (December 8, 2013)