#I have also been elsewhere in the uk but those are my favs

[monstersandmaw]

You know, when I moved to the UK, I hated the city I live in (still not a fan) and of the ones I've visited, I thought York was my favourite. But after I visited Whitby in 2019, I just fell in love. I was walking towards the Abbey and they were doing a theatre of a few scenes from Dracula and I was like???? Vampires???? I never read Dracula so I didn't know about Whitby! It was such a nice surprise to me though! And I could stare at that stupid cliff with the abbey on top for HOURS and not get sick of it!

And I went to the goth weekend on Saturday, and it was so much fun! I think I might go again in April!

I've never been to the goth weekend, but Whitby is a special place, and York too. I've only been to York once, but loved it. I hope you've found some other places here in the UK to balance out not enjoying where you currently live. If you ever want recommendations for the south at least, I can offer a few, but other than that, I've been to the Lake District, Forest of Bowland, Yorkshire Dales and Moors, and some of Wales :). Forest of Dean is on my major list - particularly Puzzlewood

[jams-sims]

With Philza stream being over that mean I got start on that fucking thesis paper about how Forever and Philza relationship. Makes me come un fucking glued. (I am also listening to Jaiden as she tries to reason with the white bear)

But right now I can only sit back and process it in small bits. Because it everytime they interact the Phissa in me is fighting for their fucking life. Like Philza has amazing chemistry with Missa. Missa is so wet cat-coded, he respects Philza, and he wants Philza to be happy. He is hopelessly in love with him but he fears rejection from Philza. That he feels the need to hide it in the way he speaks. Like that one of my fav old tropes when a multi language character says they love someone in a language they can't understand. Like that shit is so fucking fluff and insanely sweet.

Then on the other side we have Forever. Oh how this relationship is fucking complicated. What started off as a "oh you look like my ex" slowly became. "Oh no I think I'm actually in love". But the relationship is so tragic coded because it was too late. Phil's had already cemented that Forever did not care about him. Because he does not know him. Couple with the mistakes of not realizing philza is an anarachist, and from the uk. (lol)

During a wedding Forever again fails to capture Philza when he's trying to be genuine. An it breaks his hurt, while Philza desperately tries to tell him that just because he does not return his romantic feeling. Does not mean Philza does not like him. We see the contrast of that Philza trust Forever ALOT.

We enter the friendship arc (which we are still in) Forever says "Oh I'm over you" which Philza thinks he's lying and Philza is right. Because every time Forever sees Philza he gets heart eyes and he just pushes those feelings down. He kept pushing them down and went to find love elsewhere. An yet and yet! Somehow, Philza and Forever are closer than ever.

Not even touching on the lore from tonight!

When Forever and Missa talk, it another layer of how complex it gets. Because Missa is more than willing to bend and break to make sure Philza is happy no matter what. An that love is repaid in undying devotion. Forever had to learn from Missa how to love Philza. And that's why he's been honoring the "I no longer feel anything" lets just be friends. But it keeps creeping up, crawling up through forever fucking throat. An it drives me insane-

[nebulastyles]

how are fiona and harry doing? what do you think they're up to right now? i miss them a lot, crooked heart is my fav fic of ALL TIME (caps intended) so i think about them from time to time. i like to think they're constantly bickering :)

hmm well fee will have been out of uni for a while now, and she’s just working and trying to get by. i think she and harry have travelled a bit, mostly in europe (while its still easy ya know) and are talking about leaving the uk to live elsewhere. maybe the us, but i could actually see them living in toronto tbh........maybe i will think about writing that.............hmm

and yes of course if those two are moving in together you know it’s going to be constant arguing over curtains in ikea and what not

also thank you for the message!! it’s nice to know that fee and harry are still in people’s minds now ch has finished :) 

[lizziecq-blog]

i won’t let you go

the other day saw the release of an album that has likely flown under the radar of most people i know, but to me represents the culmination of something ancient and ambiguous, whose precise contours will likely take much more time to sound*.

If We Ever Live Forever by Longwave

historically, longwave are one of the least-remembered members of the so-called “class of 2001,” which was one of those vanishingly rare moments in music history where a bunch of bands in NYC got popular at the same time and thereby, for a time, held the rudder of popular rock music. this was the same moment that introduced us to interpol, les savy fav, and even the national, alongside a swath of much less memorable swoosh-gaze fluff like the exit, i love you but i’ve chosen darkness, etc. within a couple of years this moment had expanded and germinated into the “post-punk revival,” which in true punk fashion was capitalized on most enduringly by the brits, and blessed us with bands like the futureheads and field music while cursing us with boneheaded dross like franz ferdinand.

of course we’re ignoring the biggest driver of this wave: the strokes. is this it dropped that year (on rough trade, of course), and apparently it was so good that brandon flowers felt forced to rewrite what was to become the killers’ hot fuss from scratch. nice work boys! “mr. brightside” is still pretty good!

coming to the point: while longwave technically can’t be grouped in with the class of ‘01 (their debut had dropped the year before, and their major label “breakthru,” such as it was, had to wait until 2003), they had enough sonically in common with interpol and their derivatives to earn a spot on the dais; and at any rate, they were such good bros with the strokes that the latter invited them to open their first UK tour, which is what finally convinced the majors to give longwave a shot.

this is about where i come in. having joined my first band around the time is this it had hit - i’ve got my story about the first time i heard it just like everyone else** - i absolutely devoured it, along with the rest of the family. even at age 11 i was jaded enough not to credit the whole “saviours of rock ‘n’ roll” thing the critics had been trying to pin on them (also on the hives, and the vines, and the white stripes, and... man, rock ‘n’ roll is really just a gasping beached fish we’ve been spritzing with water every now and again for the last 40 years or so, huh?), but still it was hard to resist the lure of a bunch of drug-addled sex robots chugging straight eights into fake subway tunnels painted onto brick walls - like everyone else, i wanted dry, lazy, mechanistic beats, and i wanted them now. incidentally, this being the heyday of MTV2, this was the last time i can remember purposefully turning on the tv in the hopes that i might stumble onto the strokes playing something or other.

well, almost. because it was one of those times, maybe a year later, that i saw for the only time an ad for an album called the strangest things by a different new york band called longwave. 

the ad must have only been about 15 seconds, and i remember little of what it contained other than it was probably a bare sample of some of the band’s trademark atmospherics underneath the band’s name being repeated a few times. i couldn’t tell you what made me interested in it based on that, other than i was hungry for identity and i had access to kazaa, so now that i had heard of it there was no good reason not to give it a try. 

so i got on kazaa and the first thing i found was this:

not that it’s too surprising considering i was 12, but i hadn’t even considered anything beyond power chords by that point (my family had recently driven all the way to new york to see a reformed television play; i slept thru it) - and this was an entire song that didn’t use chords at all - i suppose it sounds a bit dated now, but this was an entire song that depended on textural variation rather than harmonic motion to define its structure, and how the hell were they even making those sounds to begin with? 

i bought the album: the strangest things. i still remember feeling my bedroom rock and scatter my bones when the first track hit:

i researched them on the allmusic guide; mackenzie wilson described one song as “just as charming as ride’s ‘vapour trail’” - who were ride? pitchfork was less enthusiastic, lamenting that producer dave fridmann, with such distinguished credits to his name as the flaming lips and mercury rev, would stoop to making something so bland - but who were they? 

this last piece was key as a matter of fact. there was no one i could get to muster as much enthusiasm for this sound as i could. my older brother, my only musical collaborator at that time, was positively venomous toward them, as he was with basically everything i liked that i had found on my own. but for my part i was done with power chords - i wanted to play this new thing i had found called “shoegaze.” and if my brother wouldn’t do it with me, well, i had just borrowed a cheap 4-track and orphaned delay pedal from my dad - it was time to strike out on my own. i picked up the guitar, started writing my own songs, and named my band day sleeper, peevishly dodging REM comparisons for about the next ten years:

and so: longwave, for all their virtues and shortcomings, were officially My First Indie Rock Band. i’ve extemporized at length about what i love so much about them elsewhere, but to paraphrase a good friend of mine who may have been my only convert across all this time, it’s not easy to be this simple and still be true. 

the real story i wanted to tell, however, is this one:

i grew up in the boston area, and the first time i got the chance to see longwave play live was when they played at tt the bear’s in cambridge (now sadly defunct, but i have a whole other trove of stories about being nurtured by this sweet little club). i was 14, and couldn’t get into the club by myself; thankfully my stepmom was able to convince my dad to get off his ass and take me down there, and even more thankfully, tt’s knew us both well enough to let me in the club (with X’s on my hands, obviously) as long as i stuck by my dad and didn’t try any funny business at the bar. i didn’t, but with my age i made a pretty strong impression on a very friendly (and very drunk) couple standing up front with me - i’m not sure how, but i’m certain they spread some kind of aura of protection around me that night, even if they mostly just gave the band a hard time for not playing any of their older songs***.

the show was stellar - they even made fun of the aforementioned i love you but i’ve chosen darkness, whom i had missed anyway - and fucking loud. and since this was tt’s, after the set the band stepped off the stage to talk to the audience. and my drunken friends introduced me, perhaps more loudly than the bar staff would have liked, as a 14-year-old.

and i talked to steve, their singer, and the first thing he asked me was if i played music.

i got to tell him all about how i had found his band, how it had inspired me to make music on my own, and without irony, tell him i had named my band after one of his songs. he spoke to me as an equal, promised to listen to my music, and actually fucking followed up. on myspace, no less! he even remembered my name, and spelled it right in his message!

point being, a new longwave record in 2019, long after the band’s commercial fortunes rather whimperingly flared out - this is, in fact, their second reunion album - is a big deal, at least for me. its very existence has implications that reach thru my ambitions straight into my identity, all of my ideas about what makes music important outside of the shitty capitalist structures it’s forced to accommodate, and inside them for that matter. all of my ideas about how music should be appreciated that often seem so opposed to how it is. not to mention how i feel about the standard metrics for success in our world, and how ultimately cynical and meaningless they are. 

because now, nearly 20 years on, the wider world has largely forgotten longwave, and is unlikely to be dented by them anew in 2019. but i like to think they they and i have been sustaining ourselves all this time on that same little trickle of meaning their music brought into the world all that time ago, and beyond that, neither of us need a reason to keep going now. everywhere you turn there’s always something there - that’s enough for us.

*the first song on longwave’s last album secrets are sinister was called “sirens in the deep sea.” get it? heh

**it was the video for “last nite” on MTV2, obviously. but the thing i remember striking me the most about it was that it was clearly an unsimulated live performance - the drummer knocks over one of his mics near the end, and you can hear the difference. fuck good charlotte - this is punk rock.

***a few weeks before, the band’s rhythm section had abruptly quit on them with no explanation offered. they had some new guys with them who messed up a fair bit - but this actually thrilled me at the time, because i got to feel like i knew the songs better than anyone by being able to identify the mistakes.