Feature - Music I Listen To During Exam Season (May-June)

Grizzly Bear! Air! Akron/Family! Elliott Smith! Beethoven!

It's a skull-shatteringly predictable serving of calming melodies, maybe a few songs that remind me of loud, fuck you! music that frequented my ears before those dreaded letters - G C S E - entered my mind and refused to budge, but mostly what most would tag 'boring' or 'zzzzzzzzzzz' or 'this makes me sleep, pass the duvet'. Its the sort of music that lulls you into feigned concentration and makes you feel all productive and clever and prepared, when really you're not doing the 4500 page chemistry past paper that sits before you at all, you're just reviewing the latest Grizzly Bear song, 'While You Wait For The Others,' in your head (It's quite good by the way, though the fact that it has a structure and proper lyrics that aren't disjointed words and phrases tacked together makes me uncomfortable, highlights of my life include sitting in various trains listening to "Colorado" off Yellow House as the sun melts away into the horizon and I fear words and logic would taint the experience and make me think about the meaning and not the beautiful, beautiful music. And the beautiful sunset. I like trains.)

Constant replays of Air's discography mean that instead of humming the riff to INSERT AVANT-GARDE DANCE PUNK BAND's underrated art punk classic 'INSERT OBSCURE ALBUM SONG, PREFERABLY NOT THE OPENER AS IT IS TOO OBVIOUS', I am singing along to Sexy Boy quite loudly and replaying the piano intro to Once Upon A Time until it is embedding in my brain like a ringtone. And all this time, I still haven't actually learnt anything about dynamic equilibrium or the extraction of iron.

Maybe if music contained topic-specific hidden messages, which would combine education and music in one foolproof sweep - Cajun Dance Party tried it with 'Amylase' but it is far less helpful in reality - amylase will not dry up the plaster, it will aid the digestion of glucose to maltose. Sorry purveyors of the slightly stagnant London indie scene, you aren't of any use to my brain.

Expect last.FM. stats to be horribly skewed in the next few weeks, with Mozart and Bach topping the 'most-played' lists, for this is How I Do when exam are nearing - only time will tell if the inoffensive palette of harmonies that is my exam-time music did any real good for my brain. In 3 months and 6 days, we shall all know.