#AND LIKE... I think that is exactly the kind of mindset he can unironically HELP Squilf with

[bonefall]

I haven’t read the first arc in forever but if anyone else was a jerk to their best friend, ditched their clan, then ditched that clan and came back, killed someone, and didn’t even train their apprentice at all, that sounds like a horrible warrior and villain right?

But Graystripe is excused because Graystripe.

Also I swear Graystripe wanting to become a father came out of nowhere for me. Like yes, the treatment of half clan kits sucks, but Graystripe was well aware that there would be consequences if he fathered half clan kits, so he’s already ignoring that responsibility. And then he just goes into father mode and wants to be with them? And then he just leaves 💀Bro is a menace

I think the fact that Graystripe kills Clawface is super interesting, because Fireheart let him go to be a good warrior... and then Clawface attacks AGAIN, proving he will continue to be a problem until he's put down.

I think that's actually a really interesting vibe, that Fireheart WILL hold himself back for honor's sake. But Graystripe? Nah, one chance is enough, threaten Fireheart and Gray's gonna snap your neck LMAO

He is absolutely a menace, but I think that moment where Silverstream tells Fireheart she's pregnant is one of the scenes that makes me really like Gray in spite of it. She snaps, saying that is loving Graystripe is against the code, then it's the CODE that's wrong... and in this instance I think she's totally right!

The way that Graystripe breaks the code is exactly why I like him. For his own benefit; but he doesn't cross the line to put the people he loves in danger, you know? That's why he couldn't stay loyal to RiverClan... it came down to choosing.

Choose. Savage the clan of your best friend, or be banished from your children.

And more than just entering father mode, the death of Silverstream is so, so traumatic. It's sudden, it's bloody, it's violent. Cinderpelt AND Graystripe both walk away from it absolutely shaken.

Everyone forgets that Bluestar was ready to go to actual war with RiverClan over keeping the kits, at a point where RiverClan was their ONLY ally (Wind and Shadow had both united to try and kill blinded Brokentail)... and Graystripe is the one who begs for it to stop.

Bringing his kits to the Clan that demands them, but also, he can't bare to leave his children. Not after watching Silverstream die for them.

I just find him and his choices very interesting. I wouldn't have him any other way; my biggest problem is that the writers refuse to let other characters see him for the complicated, self-centered person that he is, you know?

[borisbubbles]

17. CZECH REPUBLIC

Benny Christo - “Kemama”

So first off, thank you for the nice commens. 😇The past few months haven’t been the happiest time for me, so thank you for your patience as I scraped my bearings together for another post! 😁

So I will now extend that same sympathy to Benny Christo, whom I think I damn fucking underrated. Let’s jump in~

ENTRY ANALYSIS

As one may expect i INSTANTLY liked “Kemama” because you know, it’s a fun, laid-back, tropical afro-breeze, completely different from anything else we would see in NFs and the year. EXACTLY the type of song I was hoping the Czech NF would deliver (and deliver they did, see NF Corner). This level of mild like swung into strong unironic like upon realizing that the title is a contraction of “Okay Mother” 😍 and the song deals with the subject of overcoming racially-tinged discrimination and rising above the hate. That just feels very poetic and apt? “Kemama” felt like the entry that had to overcome the highest odds in order to earn the respect it so fully deserves, and still hasn’t fully reached it.

.In our Western European bubble, comprised mostly of gays and left-liberal straights, we have a very grateful and universal acceptance of many different kinds of [lizard] people that make up Eurovision casts. Yet with “Kemama” we may have reached  an unusually grimy undercurrent of coded racism. 

Of course nothing I read was outrageously rancid, than Cod for that. The worst statement I read was a double-whammy of “EWW THIS ISN’T CARIBBEANVISION” and “WHY WOULD SOMEONE FROM *KENYA* WANT TO REP CZECHIA IN EUROVISION?”, and yes they first got the continent wrong and then *also* got the country wrong in the follow-up post and then they were torn limb from limb by a pack of aformentioned left-liberals. I’m sorry but i can’t not have any other response than laughter in the face of yet another fucking MORON faceplanting themselves with words like a... racist JK Rowling if you will?

Still, while I never read something outright vile about Benny doesn’t mean I found his deniers really annoying and they were! Think “Ew Solovey is ‘Too Aggressive’ it will NEVER DO WELL IN ESC”, a statement that isn’t coded nor racist (and yet extremely false and misguided), functioned as a similar idea by the same minds. A statement borne from the same breed of narrow-minded stubbornness which has caused elitist morons to be all “there is **SOMETHING** about “Kemama” i do *NOT* like and I cannot lay my finger on it... but I **DO NOT** like it at ALL. It won’t ever qualify because everyone will think the same way I do” -- Eurovision snobs, tiptoeing around racial coda in January 2020.

 They would also insist that Benny was “arrogant” because he was seemingly impervious to their (de)constructive criticism. Like, if you were a biracial butterfly living in a slavic country who had to deal with statements such as the above on a regular basis, you WOULD block out the noise. And if you heard them often enough you will start to block them out pre-emptively. DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW COPING MECHANISMS WORK?? (oh wait you’re white-privileged. Nevermind 🙄)

 So naturally, when Benny decided that he would revamp “Okay Mother” by adding in MORE African elements it only made me love him even more lol. 😍 Was it a bull-headed, contrarian and possibly really stupid decision? Yes, yes and absolutely yes. Was it worth it? Well he managed to incite even more meltdowns in a group of people I feel nothing but contempt for, so hell yeah? Eurovision was cancelled anyway so who cares how much ‘worse’ “Kemama” actually got. 

Okay, so we’ve arrived at the revamp.

Granted, it wasn’t the best ‘vamp, I’d be a fool to deny it. The new elements threw a wrench in the melodic balance of the song. Out went tropical laid-back fun, IN went that fucking guitar oh my god this is some Hotel FM piano levels of overbearing I swear. (nb: this still didn’t stop me from ironically stanning Hotel FM’s lame asses anyway 😍). However, it made the personal backstory that I loved and savoured take a backseat to the now inferior composition. 😭

Regardless, New Kemama was fundamentally the same song, and I fundamentally liked Old Kemama, so whatevs, it made no different to me. In the eyes of many Eurovision diehards we were experiencing WORST PRESHOW SEASON EVER (after three songs... lol) and nothing clinches this brainworm more than a revamp announcement. “OH MY GOD HE WILL RUIN IT! I CAN GUARANTEE YOU I *WON’T* LIKE IT”. Self-fulfilling prophecies, ya know? It certainly didn’t help when the official channel accidentally uploaded a vid with broken soundmixing (‘OMG HORRIBLE LAST IN THE SEMI!!!!’ calm the ever-loving HELL down) and took another FULL WEEK to upload the correct vid. The damage had already been done. Typing "SEE I TOLD YOU THE REVAMP WOULD BE SHITE HA HA HA” in the Kemama comment box really just is the ESC equivalent of reponding with “Actually, *all* lives matter :smug:” to a BLM support pamphlet, isn’t it?

NF CORNER

While not my favourite NF of the bunch, I found the Czech NF to be lowkey epic. Not epic enough to remember its name but regardless Czechvision or whatever marked the end of an era because it was also the last selection spearheaded by Jan Bors :o

I think I’ve made it clear enough in the past that I’m somewhat mixed on Bors Era Czechia - Lake Malawi were a toetapping good, Ickolas was a pockmarked, skin-crawling evil and the other three inhibit a purgatory somewhere between “moderately nice” and “moderate timewaste.”

Still, I have great respect for the man who orchestrated Czech’s comeback after scoring NINE POINTS TOTAL across three years with the mindset of “So what? Why says we can’t win?” so ofc I was all into the idea of the “EIGHT INDIE ANGELS, HAND-PICKED BY BORS HIMSELF” NF that would serve as his swan song.

Naturally things went down the drain the second Bors left, with one of the eight peacing and his successor cancelling the live broadcast (does anyone remember what exactly happened? I vaguely recall one was the cause of the other but lol it’s July can’t be bothered to factscheck (Factsczeck?) anymore, bitches.

Anyway, ON TO THE GOOD STUFF, and yes, there was plenty.

We All Poop - “ All the Blood (Positive Song Actually)”

Yes, as you can imagine I ofc IMMEDIATELY fell into like when I saw that chyron and invisioned the inevitability of the Czech Rep’s Rep immediately alienating every parent just based on their name alone <3 😍 w/e WAP quickly became that “Good but not great” song you find in every NF that everyone gushes over because it’s the whitest option available. Like, yes, “All the blood” is good, but musically it’s identical to Green Day and Twenty-One Pilots and god name ANY 90s-early00′s American Punk Rock band. For me the enjoyment came from the fact that WAP were openly crazy vegan fundamentalists and the VC clip actively condemns the use ANY animal protein by replacing the cattle and game with LITERAL HUMAN BEINGS. 😍 :fusedmarcintensifies: :kasiamosage:

Pam Rabbit - “Get up”

Ohhhh YES a glorious experimental Synth-Trap song only I could love and ofc I did. God what is there even to say; the provocative darkness of the verses combined with the swirling amorphousness of the chorus gives me LIFE. LUFF THIS SHIT <3333 Ftr, this was also the fave of Slovene Juror duo / synth angels / Boris faves ZALAGASPER, further proving their pathetic naysayers that they own all things music and the haters can suck a series of-

Barbora Mochowa - “White and Black Holes“

Lol, yes even with a “Get up” existing, there was a song I liked even more. Barbora proved a very competent Lana del Gay last year, but I was a YUGE fan of this year’s... Kate Bush-Björk blend of ethereal awesome. It is so soothingly beautiful and the rare example of a song that I find completely free of flaws. Were the competition not such a hard place, I’d be pissed she didnt win (at least she won the jury vote MASSIVE KUDOS to every alum on that) but w/e this selection had opions and I’m rather robbed of a “Kemama” than I am of a BRILLIANT IRREPLICABLE AETHERBALLAD. ~Danse balance sûr les white and black holes~

Elis Mraz & Cis T - “Wanna be like”

I *VERY* strongly felt that if the Czech Republic wanted to win ESC, they should have picked Elis and even now I STILL believe she could have won. That isn’t to say I gushed over “Wanna be like” because I find it kind of annoying lol. Yes, I LOVE an annoying female voice (:Tones&Icackle:) but Elis’s reaches a Camilla Cabello sort of place for me (good lord get Senorita OFF the fucking radio) and the Scat + White Guy Rapping middle-eight. 😬. However, the second I opened up the video clip for this paragraph and was immediately BLASTED by Elis murdering a ukelele and wearing a  “schoolgirl” outfit straight from a Japanese tentacle porn movie and OH MY GOD THE AGGRESSIVE TWERKING made me reconsider that hey, this min-sized Meghan Traynor actually kinda highkey owns, yo!  Yet, I’m not at all bothered we lost her in the Czech NF because we got UNO DOS QUATRO CINCO SEIS :fatmansplit: fill up the megameme slot instead, so...

Eurovision 2020 vs Eurovision 2021

BENNY RUINED HIS SONG AND NEVER WOULD HAVE QUALIFIED. jk I’m not a moron. Sure, “Kemama” wasn’t an easy sell because you know AFROBEAT in a contest where half of the people watching are fash (ie: all of Eastern Europe, who watch out of ~Nationalistic Sentiment~ 😬), but there are Kemama live renditions out there and he owns them SO hard lol. A few soundmixing issues really would not have stopped Benny from qualifying in that RIDICULOUSLY WEAKSAUCE SEMIFINAL are you fucking kidding me. He probably would’ve bombed in the Grand Final, but I mean it’s Czech and it’s not Ickolas so ofc it would have.

And Czech renewed him for 2021 regardless of the sceptics, woohoo! I think part of it was due the Czech not wanting to re-organize an ENTIRE NF from scratch without Jan Bors, but probably also because Benny owns live when he isn’t engaged in psychological trench warfare with actual human detritus <3 and also because the Czech fucking CARE about their artists and don’t drop them like a sack of rotten potatoes wtfshitprus.

Can’t wait for the moment when he qualifies and Efendi does not, etc, etc. 

FREAKY! FRIDAY! FACTOR!

I’d say that the core around which the Ben Drama spun was pretty standard fare: niche fave beats out the concensus fave, meltdowns ensue, people convince themselves it was the WRONG decision because it wasn the result they wanted, try to disown the song and make a fool of themselves because the song slaps, sorry. Even the revamp drama felt more of less generic for me, because yawn fantards melting down over a revamp of a song they don’t even like what else is new.  

However, what I do take away that the revamp was ENTIRELY Benny’s idea which he told no one about (cue to JAN BORS having a social media meltdown like he’s Caesar at the Ides of March 💔) added MORE afrobeat just to troll his haters even more <3  God, I’d say it was bad from a musical perspective but this level of in-your-face defiance is fucking iconic and hilarious, sorry. This entire this year is so batshit bonkers that the concept of a someone potentially shooting themselves in the foot and “torpedo’ing” their qualification chances  (not rly, he would’ve Q’d anyway lol) JUST to take the moral high ground in a racially coded argument only HE took seriously may not even be the craziest concept in the year! (lol it definitely isn’t. Look at the pics I haven’t greyed out yet)

This and more yield Benny some well-earned Senheads! Yay!! 

Score: 3 Senhits out of 5.

[grimelords]

My November playlist is complete from Aretha Franklin to Blood Incatation, and I guarantee there’s at least something in here you’ll love. Thanks for listening!

If you’d like to get these playlists emailed to you instead of having them appear randomly on your dash, please sign up to my tinyletter.

listen here

Don't Start Now - Dua Lipa: Dua Lipa said disco lives. I absolutely love this song, it’s rock solid disco without being throwback or ironic about it. The way this song starts with the first line of the chorus and then launches into the verse and only gives you the full chorus later feels like that thing movie trailers do now where they give you a little trailer before the trailer for some reason. It’s also something I’ve never heard before, and it gives the song a very fun structure in the intro where it has two different levels of elevation it can drop down to before the bass properly drops in. I think Dua Lipa understands something fundamental about being a pop singer: literally the only thing you have to do is make bangers. She has basically zero personality and was criticised massively around New Rules for having zero stage presence (which she's definitely gotten better at since) but I kind of like it like that - she's just an unknowable blank canvas that's not particularly interested in any kind of narrative, she just makes bangers.

Mirage (Don't Stop) - Jessie Ware: Jessie Ware has been putting out some extremely good singles since her last album and this song is another. It’s the kind of smooth neo-soul that Jungle is pioneering but the way this song is structured is really beautiful; it gives the ‘don’t stop moving’ part a lot of space early on before it really gets to take hold and take over the second half of the song - it gives the whole song this feeling of disco evolution and the song going on and on and changing rather than static pop.

What A Fool Believes - Aretha Franklin: I can’t believe I’ve never heard Aretha’s version of What A Fool Believes before. It’s amazing. It’s the best kind of cover where you just basically do the song exactly the same but better in every single way. Push the tempo slightly, put big brass in it, make the bass hot as hell, sing the hell out of it, add a sax solo obviously. She takes such liberty with the rhythm of the vocals and it gives this whole song this great swooping and diving energy that just uplifts in such a beautiful way.

Walking Into Sunshine (Larry Levan 12” Mix) - Central Line: Something I love about this song is the crowd noise that breaks in with a ‘woo’ near the beginning. It’s such a strange little detail that instantly injects so much life and love into the track. It positions it at a party rather than a studio from the outset and somehow that mindset carries through the whole rest of the song even though the crowd noise only lasts a couple of seconds until they reconvene right at the very end.

Freedom - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five: There was a time in the history of rap music where some kind of government mandate demanded that every song go for at least 7 minutes, so you ended up with great songs like this where they spend a good couple minutes in the middle killing time by going through everyone’s star sign and then asking the crowd their star sign too. Also they appear to have recorded their own kazoos on the track over the kazoos in the sample, which is a lesson in good production everyone take.

Freedom Funk It Up Freedom - Freedom: I was looking up where the sample on that Grandmaster Flash song Freedom was from and it turns out it’s from this band called Freedom. Easy enough. This isn’t the song Freedom samples though, this is Freedom’s other song Freedom Funk It Up Freedom. It’s fucking hot and contains maybe the livest crowd I’ve ever heard, they are just going absolutely nuts the whole time and it only helps the energy of the song which is already off the charts.

Set Guitars To Kill (Live) - And So I Watch You From Afar: For the 10th anniversary of their debut album, And So I Watch You From Afar just played the whole thing front ot back and put it out as a live album, and it’s amazing. They’re an instrumental band that’s always emphasised the rock part of post-rock, in the same space as bands like 65daysofstatic and Russian Circles but not so self-serious about it, just big honking rock and roll tunes with a surprising depth and complexity to them that never get bogged down in ambient buildups or the other space-making trappings of post-rock. Their debut album has always been my favourite of theirs because it felt the most ‘live’ and wasn’t as cleanly produced as their subsequent releases (which are still very good), and so this live version feels sort of like a definitive version for me, like this is how it was always meant to sound but they didn’t have enough fans to do the ‘woo!’ part properly yet, which is one of the most purely joyful moments in music.

Bullet The Blue Sky (Live) - U2: I saw U2 this week for the second time in my life and guess what: they’re still great. Even though they’re old as fuck and Bono is getting stranger and stranger they’ve still got it. They have a very good bit of stage design going with this current tour where for a big chunk of it they’re out on a little platform in the middle of everyone with no screens or fancy lights and it’s one of the most effective ways I’ve seen of making an arena show feel like an actual intimate experience. I was a million miles away and Bono looked like an ant more than usual but the energy still came across. Then, when they do the Joshua Tree Start To Finish part of the show they have big visuals for every song but it’s still pretty light on actual cameras on the band, which I think works really well - a sort of best of both worlds where you get the arena show but the actual band performance. This song was a highlight for me, and they’ve somehow managed to make it even more ferocious now than ever before. It got extremely noisy, far noisier than you’d ever expect from U2 at least and really amped up the swirling energy that I’ve always loved about this song. People accuse U2's politics of being too wide ranging, and it's well founded they're the prototypical 'heal the world' rock stars - even in this song and the way they've repurposed its messages to fit various political causes over the years they've tried to dilute it, but this feels to me like a song that you can't wash the meaning out of no matter how hard you try. It's one of the best and most direct criticisms of American evil put to song, and it's an arena song that doesn't particularly have an arena melody to it. Especially in the Joshua Tree/Rattle And Hum era, U2 have always been captivated by the American mythos but have never been able to completely ingratiate themselves as an American Rock Band because they're not and I think that point of difference in identity has them uniquely positioned to criticise the American mythos as well. They can have it both ways because they can't fully have it, so in this song the circle of American violence is complete in the women and children who run from the American fighter planes into the arms of America as refugees. Bono's actually mad, which is a nice change of pace from love healing the world.

Gingerly - Enemies: I love this Enemies album so much. A sweet spot between post-rock and midwest emo math guitar, and listening to it now this song really stood out in a way it hasn’t before. It turns up at a good spot in the album just as you might be getting tired of the twinkly clean guitars that characterise the rest of it and burns a hole in the speaker with that distorted bass and siren guitar sound.

You Look Certain (I’m Not So Sure) - WXAXRXP Session - Mount Kimbie: I think every band should get the chance to re-record their album a year or two after they’ve put it out, once they’ve had a chance to really sit with the songs for a while and figure out exactly how they work because this version is just so much better than the album version (which was already great!). The guitar sound is so much bigger, properly leaning into the post-punk idea they were only exploring on the album, and the vocals are so much stronger and more up front which makes it feel so much more like a full song than an experiment. This whole Warp Session EP is fantastic and I’ve been listening to it on repeat, it’s so great that they’ve morphed from this insular electronic duo into a proper band over the years and I'm excited to see where they'll take it next.

Peace To All Freaks - of Montreal: The new of Montreal single is great. Embracing an 80s dance vibe and immediately turning his back on it in the opening lines and not going out because he needs to educate himself instead. I love this song, an unironic and non-cheesy rallying against negativity which is a lot harder to do with earnesty than they make it sound here.

Taipei - Social Climbers: Thankyou to my friend and yours agrifuture for this recommendation. Social Climbers played an odd and paranoid version of art rock in the early 80s that on this song at least sounds more like modern opera trying to fit itself to a rock band than anything else. I can also say with confidence this is the only song I’ve ever heard where someone sends a quiche back in the middle of it.

Mad Eyed Screamer - The Creatures: I’ve never gotten much into Siouxie And The Bashees, they're probably somewhere on my list of bands to have a deep three week long obsession with somewhere in the future, but for now my biggest exposure to them is the time The Weeknd sampled them. I am, however, deeply interested in this drums and vocals only side project that Siouxie Sioux formed with her then-partner Budgie. I’m a big fan of any kind of restricted composition like this and I love this song. It’s so busy and the amount of reverb and extra percussion going on makes for this extremely chaotic, noisy vision of what is essentially a folk song in its lyric and melody.

Black Magic - Jarvis Cocker: I found out that the main guitar part in this song is sampled from Crimson & Clover by Tommy James and The Shondells. Which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, a rock song like this built around a sample. Not exactly sampling in order to recontextualise across genres or approaches but sampling to recontextualise in a lateral, parallel approach. I love this song because his delivery is so feverish and impassioned it really does feel like he’s seen beyond the veil and come back without the language or capacity to explain what he saw, only the passion.

Year In Pictures - Dick Diver: Every year since this album came out it's shown up somewhere in my Spotify most listened list at the end of the year. It's surprising because I don't think of it as one of my all time favourites when it definitely is, it's such an easy listen that it just comes and goes pleasantly. This song is kind of about that feeling I guess, of things just happening and time just passing pleasantly enough year on year, everthing in its own time while the past disappears and doesn't matter anymore. "Whatever happens, I think everything will"

Heart - Bertie Blackman: I love the percussion in this song, the same propulsive clapping-centred beat that makes Single Ladies so good with the dark grinding bass underneath it that just pulses malevolently until the gearshift of the chorus where it morphs immediately into this 60s soul version of itself, with the ooh la la backing vocals and everthing, and that disonnance between the two styles drives the song for me. Where the verse lays out the evil plainly and the music matches, the chorus accentuates it in wide eyed irony "I know there's something sick with what I've been sold" sung with a smile and showgirl backing vocals.

Love Lockdown - Kanye West: Something I think we’re all learning as Kanye loses his mind completely on the world stage is that Kanye has always been insane. He has always had an unnervingly powerful self-belief and unwavering vision that has up until recently been what made him such a unique and era-defining artist. After the radical directions of MBDTF and Yeezus it’s sort of hard to remember just how radical 808s And Heartbreaks was at the time because unlike the self aware harshness and strangeness of the other two it was also so pop adjacent, because of its 80s synthpop influence but also because of the way it (and T-Pain) impacted all other pop music of the time. The instrumentation on this song is still so staggering, even just the pitched kick at the centre I could listen to on loop forever I think.

It Might Be Time - Tame Impala: Absolutely cannot wait for the new Tame Impala if this and Patience are any indication. The absolutely huge blown out drums on this are so good and remind me of something I’ve been trying to place for weeks and can’t. Maybe a Chemical Brothers song or some kind of big beat era thing. I think of Kevin Parker and Adam Granduciel from The War On Drugs as the same kind of guys, absolute craftsmen studio nerds that are completely obsessed with sound but unlike most other guys of that genre are actually great songwriters as well. Long haired studio hermits that emerge every few years to bless us all.

Never Again - Kelly Clarkson: I’ve been trying to decide whether this or Since U Been Gone is a better song and I’ve settled on this having the superior verses and Since U Been Gone the better chorus. The absolute venom in the lyrics is incredible. “I hope the ring you gave to her turns her finger green.  I hope when you’re in bed with her you think of me” is like.. the most metal opening I’ve ever heard. She literally sings “You’ll die together, but alone” in the second verse, jesus christ.

Giant Swan - The Blood Brothers: I found out recently from reading the wiki article on screamo (which like almost all wiki articles about music genres is about 60% artists claiming that genres are fake and critics coining new genre names half in jest) that The Blood Brothers were apparently part of a screamo subgenre called Sass, which is a term I have never heard before in my life and certainly never heard in the heyday of the style. You learn something every day I suppose. “It originated as an opposing style of hardcore punk to the machismo in heavy hardcore scenes. It takes influence from genres such as post-punk, new wave, disco, electronic, dance-punk, emoviolence, grindcore, metalcore and heavy hardcore. The genre is characterized by often incorporating overtly flamboyant mannerisms, erotic lyrics featuring sexual tension, and a lisping vocal style. The genre is also noted for its "spastic edge", blast beats, chaotic guitars, danceable beats and the use of synthesizers.” My understanding is that when emo went mainstream and the split between ‘emo’ as a music and ‘scene’ as a fashion occurred, this is the music that emerged from the middle ground. Turning against the masculinity of their screamo forebears and toward the queer aesthetics of scene, the resulting style was still furious and violent but furious with a light cabaret (but like, if cabaret was good and not just a guy in a top hat emoting, a different style of emo that Panic! At The Disco famously pioneered) and violent in a psychedelic, surreal way that set it apart from the depressed and black aesthetics of the rest of emo. I love The Blood Brothers and have never found another band like them in terms of lyrical inventiveness and sheer vocal insanity, the characteristic shrill falsetto that sporadically turns to screams is an amazing choice that’s incredible it works at all. This song especially stands out as unique even amongst the chaos of their discography. The loping lounge feel in the first half, coupled with the properly surreal description of the giant swan in the lyrics establishes such an strange and dark cabaret mood that makes this song so oddly singular to me.

The Ripper - The Used: I really appreciate the production on this whole album, it is so overdone and hyperactive that it creates this irrepressible momentum because something is always happening. The songs themselves are incredibly compressed in structure and extremely hook heavy, and it feels like to counteract and complement that approach they‘ve been gone over bar by bar finding every possible spot to add interest. Dynamics shifting, drums filtering and then revealing themselves, choirs appearing from this air for two lines. Guitar squeals fly in and out in the background and the bass suddenly becomes extremely chunky in parts. The whole mix gets sucked down a black hole and then a little glockenspiel outlines the vocal melody in the background for a second leading back into a huge chorus. Everything happen in this short song. It’s an interesting approach that can be overwhelming, but it has undeniable results.

Ilana - Mdou Moctar: Mdou Moctar rocks because he takes a big power chord riff like the one at the start of this song that could just as easily start a Thin Lizzy song and then immediately discards it and twists a melting solo that crosses time and space for the rest of the song instead.

Ancestral Recall (feat. Saul Williams) - Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah: The press release for this album says: “In its inception, Ancestral Recall was built as a map to de-colonialize sound; to challenge previously held misconceptions about some cultures of music; to codify a new folkloric tradition and begin the work of creating a national set of rhythms; rhythms rooted in the synergy between West African, First Nation, African Diaspora/Caribbean rhythms and their marriage to rhythmic templates found in trap music, alt-rock, and other modern forms. It is time we created a sound that dispels singular narratives of entire peoples and looks to finally represent the wealth of narratives found throughout the American experience. One that shows that all forms of expression in sound are valid, as all people are." All that and a bit of spoken word at the start that sounds like Hannibal Buress’ Morpheus Walruses rap and I’m sold. I’m such a fan of jazz like this that purposefully opens itself up to the influence of the modern world and modern tradition, and the percussion work across this album in particular is so unique and really does what he set out to do in my opinion, bringing the rhythms of tradition into a modern context seamlessly.

Spider Hole - Billy Woods & Kenny Segal: I only found out about Billy Woods this month and I’m surprised I’ve never heard of him before because he feels like the middle of the venn diagram between Earl Sweatshirt, Aesop Rock and Death Grips. This flat out sounds like a Death Grips song played at half speed. The justified paranoia and anger that runs through this whole album is palpable and jumbled, centring around a feeling of lashing out in a moment of hopelessness because you don’t know what else you can do. "4 million USD hovering over some mud huts, it's nuts, it's not the heat it's the dust" is one of the most evocative lines of the year for me.

El Toro Combo Meal (feat. Mavi) - Earl Sweatshirt: When this new earl EP came out I listened to it 4 times in a row because it is just so compulsively brilliant. He’s refining his style more and more with every release and he’s honed it to this fine point now where every song is so super dense in its lyrical content and production that a full length release would almost be too much. There’s just so much to absorb here. Mavi’s verse is incredible too. I’ve never heard of him before but I’m a big supporter now. The beats too, through this whole EP are the kind that sound like a radio stuck between stations - looping snatches of vocals and drums drowned out in tape hiss where the beat is only a suggestion that Mavi and Earl both glide over on some sort of metric modulation and only land every now and then just to take off again.

Drug Dealer - Slowthai: Slowthai is so full of fire on this song it's scary. Facing a dead end future down and screaming that something's gotta change, and that he's the one to do it.

Lighthouse (feat. Rico Nasty, Slowthai and ICECOLDBISHOP) - Take A Daytrip: I have never heard of Take A Daytrip before this song but doing some research it turns out I have heard them, because they produced Panini by Lil Nas X. I have also never heard of ICECOLDBISHOP before but the way he brings an absolutely deranged verse on this song has made me an instant fan. I love this trio of features: three out there, huge personality voices at the outer limits of mainstream rap that in their oddness complement each other perfectly.

Rich Girl - Michie One & Louchie Lou: Something I learned this month was that Rich Girl by Gwen Stefani isn't a direct rip of If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler On The Roof, it actually samples this song which acts as a sort of bridge between the two, and I think there's something interesting in the transfer of intention between the three songs, lyrically and musically. In the original his conception of a rich man is someone who can afford to have lots of ducks and geese, eat well and have enough time to pray because he doesn't have to work, then in the Michie One & Louchie Lou version rich is being able to feed your family and start a school (as well as play the horses and never lose), and in the Gwen Stefani version rich is having a house in Hollywood and London, clearing out designer stores, and buying four Harajuku girls and naming them Love, Angel, Music and Baby. It spirals up mercilessly from geese to, I guess, human trafficking. Musically there's a transformation as well, where the jewishness of the 'daidle daidle deedle daidle dumb' in the orginal is changed to a 'na na na na na' in this version and only a part of the original melodic lilt remains, a part that is completely ironed out in the Gwen Stefani version's 'na na na na na's. The downsides of wealth morph too, in the original it's simply not a part of God's plan, in this version it can't buy love, is the root of all evil (is a  worldwide thing / rich is getting richer while the poor are getting stink) and only leads to more trouble (you reap but you never did sow / rich today you could be poor tomorrow / mind your back and watch your enemies grow) but in the Gwen Stefani version being rich is amazing on its own and the only thing that can top it is your love.

Santa Teresa - EOB: Tricked into enjoying ambient side projects once again. Ed O'Brien from Radiohead's new side project came up on my Discover Weekly without me realising it was him and I absolutely loved it. It’s expansive and cinematic and nice in a way that feels rare in ambient experimental stuff like this, to not be morose or depressing and gloomy for its own sake. It’s sharp and angular, or as sharp and angular as a song as slow moving as this can be and reminds me in part of HEALTH’s Max Payne 3 soundtrack, and Emma Ruth Rundle’s Electric Guitar One which are both masterpieces on their own.

Rough Sleeper - Burial: Reading Mark Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life I was pleasantly surprised to see his Burial interview in there that I remember reading years and years ago before I knew who Mark Fisher was. I’ve thought of parts of that article here and there ever since and finally placing it in the wider context of Mark’s work was very satisfying, it’s funny how people come back to you in different forms over your lifetime. I don’t listen to Burial much now, or at least not as much as I used to at the height of my depression a few years ago where he was on near constant repeat and as a result his music became completely waterlogged with the feeling of that time and I couldn’t listen to him at all for a while without the memories completely marring any appreciation. But time passes as it does and it’s a nice feeling to finally be able to listen to Untrue again and not have it be so permanently soaked with memories of the worst time of my life, and now with a different mindset and viewpoint I can really see different sides of his music. Where before all I could hear was the bleak and empty future haunted by the ghosts of the past, now new colours appear - a warmth of hazy, pleasant memory and imagination. Reds and oranges creep into the black and grey and this song can feel like staying under covers while it storms outside instead of standing in the rain.

Night MXCMPV1 P74 - Venetian Snares & Daniel Lanois: I really don’t think I’ll ever hear another album like this in my life. The push and pull of the humanity of Lanois’ pedal steel and the digital nightmare of Venetian Snares percussion is just so engaging, and the moments where they overlap and move together in harmony contrast so beautifully with the times they feel like they’re playing two different songs altogether. Then they overlap, the effects overpower the steel guitar and it moves into a leaping angular digital realm and the percussion coalesces into an altogether human rush, or as human as Venetian Snares can be.

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord - Marisa Anderson: I can't find the quote but somewhere when she was doing interviews about this album Traditional And Public Domain songs, Marisa Anderson said part of the reason she likes traditional songs so much is because when she was coming up and playing in cafes around town she mistakenly thought she'd have to pay royalties if she did covers of popular songs, so she only did public domain songs instead.

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord - Johnny Cash: Another side of Were You There When They Crucified My Lord, one that expands magically into an amazing many-layered harmony led by June’s high and lonesome howl.

See That My Grave's Kept Clean - Blind Lemon Jefferson: Jefferson was buried at Wortham Negro Cemetery in 1929. His grave was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas historical marker was erected in the general area of his plot; however, the precise location of the grave is still unknown. By 1996, the cemetery and marker were in poor condition, and a new granite headstone was erected in 1997. The inscription reads: "Lord, it's one kind favour I'll ask of you, see that my grave is kept clean." In 2007, the cemetery's name was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery, and his gravesite is kept clean by a cemetery committee in Wortham.

The Giza Power Plant - Blood Incantation: What I find so appealing about Blood Incantation is how dedicated they are. Zealots to the cult of being long haired death metal guys who wholeheartedly and sincerely believe in interdimensional aliens and the pyramids being the remnants of an ancient advanced technology. The dedication extends to them being maybe some of the best players in the genre I’ve ever heard, and them recording this whole album analog live in studio is such a feat of performance that adds another layer of intensity to this already extremely intense music.

listen here

[disco-vampire-thing]

Gothoughts - 3.15, How the Riddler Got His Name

SO!

I’ve decided to do a bit of a review for the newest episode of Gotham, along the lines of my comics and movie reviews.  Spoilers, unsolicited opinions, and undignified squeeing behind the cut. :)

As far as I’m concerned, Gotham’s return with “How the Riddler Got His Name” is a home run.  I know some fans were worried, looking at the earlier promos, that Oswald would be too quickly forgotten or we wouldn’t see the emotional fallout from his murder.  Instead, what we get really surpassed my expectations, with some fantastic interplay between Ed and his hallucination of Oswald, as Ed struggles both to come to terms with what Oswald really meant to him, and to take the next step into truly embodying the Riddler.

Speaking of which, I love the fact that Ed knows who he is, but is struggling to become that.  I love that, for him as it was for Oswald, the birth of the legend as we come to know him is not easy.  I think that’s one of Gotham’s real strengths.  While most supervillains do get their own origin stories in comics, I’ve found that a lot of versions then skip straight from the origin story to the villain as a fully-fledged threat, as if the decision to become a criminal meant you got a welcome basket with a pre-tailored costume and a starter pack of henchmen.  I know that it’s often done to make the villains seem more mysterious and, therefore, more threatening, but I think there are a lot more storytelling opportunities in letting us see, not only Batman’s training and struggles and failures, but those of his rogues’ gallery, too.

Something that’s interesting about Ed’s origin story in particular:  Okay, so Gotham always kind of rides this line between gritty deconstruction and comic book show, and sometimes teeters a little too far in one direction or the other. When I first heard Ed describe what he’s doing in this episode as “becoming a villain”, it made me wince.  “Villain”, in this sense, is basically a metafictional concept, and it’s not one that people would generally apply to themselves.  You know the saying, “Everyone is the hero of their own story”?  When you make yourself a villain, you’re essentially making yourself an obstacle in someone else’s story, and in real life, people don’t tend to do that.  

And Gotham is usually fairly realistic in this respect.  I’m pretty sure this is the first time anyone in this show has called themselves “a villain” unironically.  Mobsters like Carmine Falcone or Fish Mooney wouldn’t think of themselves that way – they’re powerful, ambitious businesspeople. Even someone unhinged like Jerome or Barbara would probably only say it in an ironic echo of how they think the world sees them.  I don’t think Oswald, in real life, would have said it about himself.  His path hasn’t been driven by the urge to become a villain, it’s been driven by the urge to rule Gotham. Even his becoming “the Penguin” was kind of unintentional.  He claimed that persona, but he didn’t set out to construct it.  (And hallucination!Oswald even unpicks this onscreen: he didn’t teach Ed to be a villain, he taught him to be Edward Nygma, “a man who could run the underworld and hide in plain sight”.)

But I have to say, this episode won me over in this respect.  I came to realise that out of all the rogues in Gotham, Ed is the one for whom this explicit “becoming a villain” shtick actually works.  I can see Ed deciding, “I recognise myself as a villain/recognise the villain in myself, and I will set out to embody him.”  It’s a reflection of how Ed tends to approach life and interactions with people in general:  it’s this attempt to apply high symbolism and abstract systems of rules to the real world. Which, incidentally, is also a pretty good description of how riddles work.

As for the way this episode explores Ed’s relationship with Oswald, I basically have nothing to offer but delighted shrieking. :)  I was expecting Oswald’s “ghost” to be tormenting Ed, the way Kristen’s has in the past; the fact that Ed takes such genuine pleasure in seeing him (even to the point of thanking Oswald for being there, as if he’s real) and is even taking drugs to be able to see him – a pretty big departure for someone who’s as invested as Ed is in control – came as a pleasant shock.  The moment where he finally says goodbye to Oswald, and admits how much he cares about and misses him, is genuinely heartwrenching.  And hallucination!Oswald is a delight throughout, from his eating popcorn to his exasperation with Ed selecting Jim as his archnemesis. :)  He’s wonderfully salty (as with his line about how he’s “not really a fan” of the view from the docks), but he also knows exactly where and how to slide the knife in under Ed’s defences.  Robin Lord Taylor is a tour de force in this episode – his performance as hallucination!Oswald is an exaggerated version of Oswald (because this is Ed’s mental reconstruction), but still nuanced, and he’s just fantastic to watch.  And holy shit, but that serenade makes me happy.  Ed actually hallucinates Oswald, dressed in gorgeous clothes, singing him a sexy ballad under a red spotlight.  I’m not only really pleased that the creators took it that far (making it pretty undeniable that Ed at least has some attraction towards his friend), I’m also impressed that they pulled it off. That scene could have so easily tipped over into being silly, but it’s executed with a deft hand and grounded in two really strong performances, making it erotic and eerie instead.

(Also it seems somehow cosmically unfair that anyone is as good looking as RLT, just saying.)

I’ll admit, I was underwhelmed by how the reveal of Oswald’s survival was handled. Granted, I don’t think anyone was actually going to be shocked, but I was hoping for something a bit more dramatic than him waking up in bed in an admittedly charming chintzy sweater.  What, no surge upwards out of the water of Gotham bay, mirroring the first episode?  Not even a scene of Oswald being discovered washed up on shore?  Just, oh, hey, you’re awake, isn’t it handy that gunshot wound and the accompanying near-drowning weren’t fatal?  I realise the episode packs a lot in and the creators probably didn’t want to spend too much time on the mechanics of how Oswald survived, but it still felt like a bit of a letdown. (However, pretty much the only letdown in a stellar episode, so I’m not too fussed.)

Speaking of Oswald’s survival:  Ivy was also absolutely nowhere on my list of prospective rescuers.  I assumed, as I think a lot of fans did, that the most logical person to pulls Oswald out of the harbour would be Fish.  She believes in his potential, so she might well think he could be useful to her long-term; she may also feel like she owes him for sparing her; she’s got access to Hugo Strange’s revival technology; and it would open up some pretty heady symbolism (Fish fishing – hee – Oswald out of the water after he pushed her in, the maternal imagery of her bringing him back into the world). Jim was also a possibility, as was Gabe, or the Court of Owls (who’ve shown an interest in Oswald before), or even Selina. I never would have thought of Ivy, though, and it seems somewhat out of character for a woman (a girl, really) who’s never really shown much of an altruistic streak.  (This wasn’t just a spontaneous moment of kindness, either – she’s apparently nursed him and hidden him for weeks!) However, I’ll admit that I’m intrigued.  Oswald and Ivy make an odd pair, but one with a lot of potential.  Both shunned as children for being different, both grown ruthless largely out of necessity, and both (as we’ve now learned about Ivy) with the capacity to be selfless, even self-sacrificing.  I can see them as a team.

So, that takes care of the Nygmobblepot elements (the Nygmobbleplot, if you will) – what about the rest of “How the Riddler Got His Name”?

I think one of the standout elements, for me, is the rivalry that’s shaping up between Ed and Lucius Fox.  We’ve seen them square off a few times before, providing a foundation for their evolution into archnemeses here, and I’m really glad that the show went in the direction of making Lucius Ed’s foil, rather than Gordon.  It helps break up the recurring theme of “Jim Gordon is the central figure in everyone’s life”, which made some sense in the first season, when Jim was the only honest cop in the city (and therefore naturally the most likely to be complicating the life of your average Gotham rogue), but has started feeling increasingly forced.  More than that, Lucius fits the role perfectly.  He’s a lot more willing to pursue Ed through all the labyrinthine twists of his games than Harvey or even Jim would be.  He’s as frighteningly brilliant as Ed, and (as Chris Chalk confirmed on Twitter), Lucius recognises a similarity in the way both their minds work.  (Hell, they’ve also both scientists who’ve been on the receiving end of what Lucius has called the GCPD’s “fascistic meathead culture”, so I suspect Lucius may understand all too well some of the forces that shaped Ed.)  And Lucius hasn’t given up on Ed, which I think is fascinating – especially as Ed seems shaken, at least temporarily, by Lucius’s sympathy.  I’m so looking forward to seeing how this plays out.

Their confrontation on the stairs, playing mind games for Harvey’s life, is just brilliant.  It’s a shining moment for Lucius – not just for the way he solves Ed’s puzzles, or even because he manages to best him at the riddles game by coming up with an answer Ed hadn’t thought of.  It’s the fact that Lucius actually pieces everything else together just from the few, tortured fragments that Ed lets slip.  And ohhhh, that moment where Lucius picks up that something’s wrong, that Oswald’s gone and Ed is coming unglued without him, that something happened.  So good.  

I also like how the riddles tie into the wider themes of the episode.  Ed’s answers are all solitary, in keeping with his mindset (loneliness, an individual, a reflection), whereas Lucius’s are more upbeat.  But Ed’s insistence that, “You have to come up with my answer,” mirrors what he’s been doing for the entire episode.  He knows, deep down, that he killed a part of himself when he killed Oswald, he knows he can’t really replace him, but he’s still pushing to get an answer he likes better, to get his answer.  (And of course, the answer to the third riddle being “a reflection” is fitting, as it’s normally a bit of poetic licence to say that your reflection “knows your every thought” because it mimics your expression, but for Ed, his reflection really does know – and is a manifestation of – his thoughts.  And then the “reflection” imagery becomes terrifyingly literal in the next scene when Bruce spots his clone in the mirror.  I love it.)

Incidentally, you could also call this episode “How Harvey Bullock Flirted Shamelessly with Lucius Fox for the Entire Length of an Investigation”, and it is glorious.  I’m not saying I don’t love Jim Gordon, but I’m starting to wonder if we really need him back in Gotham, at least right away.  I would watch the shit out of a show that was nothing but Lucius being a jaw-droppingly brilliant investigator and conducting Interrogation Via Weirding People Out, and Harvey, as his partner, showering him with fond looks and ten-dollar words (“Did you see how I used that word, ‘allocate’?”), fishing for compliments on his suits, and generally failing at pretending he doesn’t fancy Lucius rotten and also getting tied up occasionally because hello kink I didn’t realise I had.

I can’t wait to see where all this goes next week.

Random points:

I do have legitimate questions about why all scientists in Gotham work in big glass cages, but that’s by the by.

Robin Lord Taylor isn’t the only one showing off his acting chops here by playing with different versions of a character.  David Mazouz is amazing at getting across the subtle distinctions between Bruce, clone!Bruce, and clone!Bruce pretending to be Bruce.

You have to wonder if Harvey ever just flops down at his desk and contemplates what his life has come to, that he’s now in charge of frantically dredging the river for the guy he once arranged to have shot and dumped in the river.

Speaking of which, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when Harvey (presumably) first interviewed Ed after Oswald disappeared.  Neither of them is all that keen to find him, but they’re both forced to pretend that they’re desperate to – and on top of that, they both loathe each other. That would have made for some interesting viewing.

There is no limit to my love for Ed’s fruit messenger. (Why IS he a bunch of grapes?  Who knows?  It’s brilliant.)

It’s probably a testament to how many gimmicky serial killers Gotham has that not one of the people who used to work closely with Nygma, know him as the riddle/puzzle guy, and know he’s murdered people connected him with this rash of puzzle-related murders.

It is pretty comical how much shabbier Harvey’s nicest suit is than anyone else’s suit.  It’s also a little bit heartwarming.  Remember when Harvey had a few Italian suits that had just wandered into his closet after they were confiscated during a bust?  Now, his nicest suit is clearly something he bought on his un-supplemented, honest cop’s salary, and takes good care of.  It’s this bit of meta sweetness.

This is such a weird thought, but – how did the Court duplicate Bruce’s clothes?  Do they have an entire wardrobe based on his wardrobe (how?), and when he left the house some surveillance van called in to say, “It’s the black turtleneck and the three-quarter-length black coat today”?  Or did someone run out and try and buy those clothes based on a photo, and dress clone!Bruce in them, all in about half an hour?  How do you go out shopping in a city the size of Gotham for ten minutes and manage to exactly match clothes that could have been bought a year ago?  Am I overthinking this?  (The answer is yes.)

Is it just a thing in Gotham that when you want to test someone’s loyalty and maybe kill them, you take them to a cabin in the woods?  At least Jim’s uncle isn’t trying to hold his hand romantically over the breakfast table.

[mint-sm]

LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: Romance is Boring

Let’s talk about a word for a minute: Tryhard.

In an (at the time of writing at least) mildly recent interview with Noisey on the subject of this album, lead guitarist Tom Campesinos! (Tom Bromley) described “Romance is Boring” as “probably the most self-conscious record, and it's probably the most try-hard record as well,” describing it as a reaction to that whole “twee” and “pop” label they were most popularly recognized with from “Hold on Now, Youngster…”, and even after the release of “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.”

Like I said on my reviews of both albums, I feel that “Youngster” was an excellent release if only for the sound it ended up with, and not necessarily the band’s initial visions, which would then be addressed and accentuated in “Doomed,” which more clearly defined the groundwork that the band wanted to pursue underneath the indie pop exterior roof formed with “Youngster.” With this album, “Romance is Boring,” they definitely wanted to challenge that idea even further; become more experimental, create much more blaring, aggressive songs in unusual time signatures and beats, with more complex and detailed production alongside Gareth’s self-deprecatingly bitter, but intricate and atmospheric lyricism. In other words, “Romance is Boring” was a self-imposed challenge, and if they wanted to be “try-hard,” they succeeded.

At the same time though, Tom seemed to be somewhat disappointed about what the band would make in the future in comparison to this album, saying “I would never make songs like that again, at the moment I'm not in that frame of mind where I would, so when I listen to them I'm like 'shit I can't believe we made this'.” The sad truth about trying really hard to be as fucking wild and complex-sounding is that it might be something you never wanna try again because you might never, ever reach that adrenaline-fueled mindset you were in to originally craft it again in the future, and as we’ll discuss with “Hello Sadness” next time, reality just might hit you hard enough to stray away from that.

It’s a shame, but as an artist who often gets fatigued of just trying to work on a passion project for years that burns out for a while after releasing a thing, I can sympathize a bit. Creating and experimenting is very tough, and it takes a lot of time, and you will be often be surprised as hell by what you make in the end, but at the same time it can be really straining, only made bearable by sheer passion and emotion (mostly frustration, it sounds like) that, sad to say, can dissipate just like that, and getting it back isn’t something you can just “do.” And “Romance is Boring” is passionate and emotional, and the experimentation clearly did pay off, but was their process something they should be willing to go through again? Well, I don’t know Gareth and the band well-enough to decide for certain, but I’m gonna say… probably not?

CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?

But anyways, let’s talk about “Romance is Boring” itself. Simply put, as you probably might have inferred from other reviews, “Romance is Boring” is my favorite Los Camp record. They put a lot of fucking effort into this album, likely more than with any other record they’ve ever made, and it shows. It contains basically everything I think the band excels at, and even the parts it doesn’t normally do the absolute best in, they do exceptionally well here. Witty, poetic and dense lyrics, blaring, catchy, and diverse instrumentals, wild and conflicting yet consistent moods, and hauntingly vague but vivid imagery following and exploring complex and dissonant themes and narrative, such as the idea of falling in love, disappointing mental anguish, depression, creepiness, selfishness, bitter sarcasm, and regret, among others. It sounds a lot better than the emo shit it just came off as, honest.

The album is much more narratively flowing than “Youngster” or “Doomed,” and as you might expect from the title, it’s about romance, but not necessarily in a completely despondent way as it also might imply. While an overall theme it provides is one of dissatisfaction and heartbreak, once again, Los Camp’s ability to simultaneously yet fluidly meld together multiple diametrically opposed emotions shines through here.

The second track, “There Are Listed Buildings,” is a very good example of this, because the instrumentation is by far the poppiest and free-flowing track on this album, almost “Youngster”-ey in quality, with these cheery “BAH BAH, BAH BAH, BAH BAH BAH, BADDADA” choruses with what I think is a tuba or trombone, and just a wonderfully-sounding electric guitar riff pre-chorus, it all feels so bright and carnival-ly, and honestly, so are the lyrics, which are playful and strangely optimistic for the band. I think it’s about a like a couple deciding to actually pursue a relationship, with lyrics like “I think I'd do it for love, if it were not for the money / I'll take any scraps that you can give,” which is made honestly kinda cute and sweet-sounding in a sepia-tone, sarcastically hipster kinda way.

I REMEMBER BEING NAKED TO MY WAIST, THOUGH NOT IN WHICH DIRECTION 

[YOU ARE A GLUTTON FOR LOVE, CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME ROMANCE? I'M A GLUTTON FOR SIN]

However, the opposing feeling from this song comes from the exact details and the context in which this song ends up in, because other lyrics seem to reflect more of this idea that the girl is actually really a little too desperate because “You dangle fishing line for crabs, but they're not interested /  I'm your only bite,” which kinda reminds me of that XKCD comic discussing that “nice guy” that at first seems sweet and caring for a lonely girl but is actually disturbingly manipulative and creepy as shit (which some people unfortunately seem to unironically agree with). Plus, as was shown by Los Camp songs before and after, Gareth has simply never believed that “true love” exists, and this budding relationship is uh… yeah, it’s kind of doomed to not end well.

It’s made so much clearer with the song right after it, the title track, and I just love it for how utterly SPITEFUL it is. Whether these characters played by Gareth and Aleks are supposed to be the same throughout the entire album, I don’t know, but this relationship has gotten incredibly bitter and sarcastic, the instrumentation is so fucking blaring and distorted and crashy and violent at times, and the chorus features the band absolutely screaming “YOU'RE POUTING IN YOUR SLEEP, I'M WAKING STILL YAWNING, WE'RE PROVING TO EACH OTHER THAT ROMANCE IS BORING,” it’s so gleefully hateful. I don’t think I’ve heard many tracks of a mutually mentally abusive relationship that sounded this damn cathartic.

WE ARE TWO SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 

YOU AND I, WE ARE NOTHING ALIKE 

I AM A PLEASURE CRUISE, YOU ARE GONE OUT TO TRAWL 

RETURN NETS EMPTY, NOTHING AT ALL

Really, I could go on with these tracks all day and pick apart the little intricacies of each song to dissect how great each one is, because this is probably the absolute densest Los Camp has ever gotten instrumentally and lyrically. There’s so many little moments as to what makes every track work so much, and rarely is it just as straightforward as the title track, but even when it is, the production and poetry just feel so incredibly potent, it’s essentially like instead of listening to a song and being gradually surrounded by atmosphere, “Romance is Boring” fucking clocks you with it.

Just getting out of the way, I think maybe the least experimental track on this album is “Straight in at 101,” because instrumentally, structurally, it really does feel the most straightforward, even with little moments with like a sudden blast of distortion at one point or how it immediately goes from feeling bright and upbeat to somber, then complete silence as Gareth sings about how “the talking heads count down the most heart wrenching breakups of all time / imagine the great sense of waste, the indignity the embarrassment when not a single one of that whole century was mine.”  It, and maybe “A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte” are probably the most “standard-sounding,” or like baseline to Los Camp, which doesn’t mean they’re bad, but yknow.

I’d still consider it a very strong track because it’s still very consistent, it’s got a very continuous but evolving groove to it, and the lyrics are still jam-packed with wordplay and description that paint just this really fucking selfish, but also really kinda(?) sympathetic narrator, who makes his utter disappointment with what I’m assuming was a one night stand very clear. Los Camp is a very self-aware band and Gareth’s a very self-deprecating writer, but the way he manages to be both really ugly but astoundingly relatable, and also so mean-spirited to a point where you can’t help but really laugh at how much of a shit he is is kind of admirable.

I THINK WE NEED MORE POST-COITAL AND LESS POST-ROCK

FEELS LIKE THE BUILD-UP TAKES FOREVER, BUT YOU NEVER TOUCH MY COCK 

AND WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN NOW BY, "WHAT CAN YOU EVEN EAT?" 

AND HOW DOES THAT AFFECT HOW I'LL GET OFF THIS EVENING?

Two of the most unusual tracks that I both love from this album are “Plan A” and “I Warned You: Do Not Make an Enemy of Me” (goddamn that title just makes me so giddy for some reason), with “Plan A” being probably the harshest, off-sounding and most punk-like track Los Camp has ever recorded, with its atonal, distorted mashing chords and screaming call/response vocals (it’s so fn weird hearing Aleks sound panicked and frantic, but goddamn I miss her) before suddenly segueing into like this sing-songy, but still distorted and oddly free-flowing, almost twee-like chorus, and “I Warned You” sounding so stilted and awkwardly tense yet cheery with its weird tempo and beat shifts, almost feeling kinda outsider-music-y at times.

BROKE DOWN LAUGHING AND SCREAMING FOR MORE 

BUT IF THIS CHANGED YOUR LIFE, DID YOU HAVE ONE BEFORE?

Another personal favorite track is the intro, “In Medias Res,” which starts off the album just perfectly, starting with like these gentle, but already kinda already compressed and messy acoustic guitar chords before slowly building up into this like surprisingly reverbed, ethereal and charming instrumental, with a backing that almost sounds like it came from like a shoegaze or dark dream pop track, but with like this really, dreamy and cute duet vocals and glockenspiel. It sounds so oddly saddening yet so weirdly uplifting, especially with that little breakdown near the end with all the distortion effects placed against the glockenspiel, keyboards and brass; I’m pretty sure you can hear at some points Gareth screaming some lines, but it’s so blended-in with the instrumental, but it sounds kinda… beautiful.

And the lyrics, oh god, the lyrics. For some reason, the first and last lines just have so much damn atmosphere loaded into something that just feels so… simple. I can’t explain it without the context, but the very first line, “But let’s talk about you for a minute,” just really gets to me for some reason, probably because within this album itself, it just says so damn much about its themes, that while incredibly toxic and awesomely angry at times, can also get really intimate, melancholy, and depressing, especially with the song’s outro lines:

“IF YOU WERE GIVEN THE OPTION OF DYING PAINLESSLY IN PEACE AT FORTY-FIVE, BUT WITH A LOVER AT YOUR SIDE, AFTER A FULL AND HAPPY LIFE, IS THIS SOMETHING THAT WOULD INTEREST YOU? WOULD THIS INTEREST YOU AT ALL?”

Keep in mind, Gareth believes that true love doesn’t exist.

And in a really cruel reality, despite how playful, giddy and sarcastic or self-deprecating it can be dancing around the topic, Los Camp STILL can’t prove to us that heartbreak, however, isn’t anything but incredibly real. The final 3 tracks on this album (not counting the bonus track, “Too Many Flesh Suppers”) perfectly reflect this mindset.

The fan favorite “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future” is simply put Los Camp’s most beautiful, poignant track they’ve ever made (and also one of the most devastating and emo), and it serves as one hell of an emotional climax for the album. While Los Camp hasn’t really been one for imagery and instead prefers mood most of the time, this track is the perfect marriage of the two; everything about it just seems to paint this incredibly vivid mindset about a depressed, suicidal and utterly broken lover (if it’s the same one from “There Are Listed Buildings,” it’s even more so), who I can just imagine is like sitting on the far end of a dock on a very gloomy beach with gray overcast and an sea, maybe like rocking her legs back and forth sitting on the edge with her feet just touching the salt water as she just stares hopelessly out onto the endless horizon. Y’know, happy stuff.

The lyrics on this track are just some of the most utterly concise and madly specific descriptions Gareth’s ever written, with simultaneously pointless yet (ugh I normally hate this word in this context but) deep and precise lyrics, and Gareth’s vocal delivery just slowly escalates to this heartfelt, like pouring-out-his-soul-in-desperation, perfect climax. Everything about this track just works, and it plunges you into this visceral, atmospheric world of gray skies, salty seas and contemplation, where it really does feel like that the sea is a great place to think of the future… or maybe a lack of one.

SHE SAID ONE DAY TO LEAVE HER, SAND UP TO HER SHOULDERS, WAITING FOR THE TIDE

TO DRAG HER TO THE OCEAN, TO ANOTHER SEA'S SHORE, THIS THING HURTS LIKE HELL... 

BUT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT!?

But like I said, Los Camp likes to dance around these sort of maudlin themes, and immediately after one of the bleakest tracks they’ve made, we suddenly get more cheery, upbeat, and snide in “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” whose first lyrics are literally the band shouting “CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?”, singing another almost-kinda-sorta indie-twee track about a couple stupidly in love, but we all know that it’s all unhealthy and it’s going to end poorly, right? Like, any song about love that has the chorus “The story of the winter I forgot how to speak, my mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak / How they dragged me to the hospital saying I had gone deaf / But I heard everything they said, it's just I had no interest,” no matter how crowd-pleasing and roucous and glockenspiel-accompanied it sounds, can’t have a story that ends well, right?

Well, considering how the album ends with “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,” a much slower, a lot more ethereal-sounding ballad with the lines “Run the water 'til it scalds, you know that I'm listening / Pitter-patter runs the shower, hits the bare porcelain” and “I fall to my knees, my piss-soaked jeans / The first time, the last time, all the times in between”... it’s probably safe to assume yes, it didn’t. Actually, considering “The Sea is a Good Place” and the chillingly repeated outro of “I CAN’T BELIEVE I CHOSE THE MOUNTAINS EVERY TIME YOU CHOSE THE SEA,”  it probably ended VERY horribly. And… that just fucking sucks, you know?

Goddamn, there’s still so many tracks I didn’t cover, but damnit, if I make this any longer, this is gonna just turn into a track-by-track thesis paper, since there’s just so much to talk about. These are basically the major elements I love the most and find the most worth-addressing, but the thing is that this entire album feels worth addressing, because once again, it’s just so damn packed with just about everything I feel makes an album work in my eyes. There’s not a single track that’s not worth analyzing and appreciating, but christ, there are only so many hours in the day! D:

BY NOW IT'S JUST THE THREE OF US

ME, YOUR SHADOW, YOUR ECHO

“Romance is Boring” is just a fantastic album. It manages to contain all of the things I feel an album needs to be heavily engaging, and the fact that most of them came from a band who normally doesn’t do that great in some of those aspects such as actual concrete description or instantly recognizable context makes this feel all the more surprising and welcoming.

And that’s where it all comes down to: it is just really, really engaging. It’s powerful without being overbearing, it’s noisy while being incredibly and consistently precise, it’s descriptive while being pretty accessible, and it’s varied but also manages to maintain a consistent sound Los Camp have finally pinpointed down as that which can be identified as uniquely their own. It plays up the band’s unique strengths just enough that you never feel alienated or feel forced or anything like that, and not only is it as adventurous as the band might ever get, it’s one hell of a fucking adventure. Hail try-hardiness. (5/5)

...So what happens now?

FAVES: “In Medias Res,” “There Are Listed Buildings,” “Romance is Boring,” “We’ve Got Your Back,” “Plan A,” “Straight in at 101,” “Heart Swells/100-1,” “I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know,” “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future,” “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,”