#Q. verse; Singing In The Dead Of Night (MAIN)

[dustpiled]

Qrow tags.

[crowblessed]

@rosescattered

--- “Hey, Shrimp.”

   Qrow’s tone carries low, soft in the silence of the large, opened area deemed to be a living room--despite the fact it was foreign, and merely a temporary stay that hadn’t much LIVING to be had. Each room was occupied by their array of strays, the group only seeming to grow larger day by day--not that there was much QUALM with such, the more the merrier, and the safer their little group would be. 

   Though, given the quiet of midnight the dim light that lit the room, it seemed a little odd to find none other than Ruby Rose herself sat alone and occupying the couches comfort. Accompanying the crow’s footsteps is the soft rattle of metal to porcelain, and over the back of the couch comes forth a small, cream accented bowl filled to the very brim with chilled, pink icecream with a spoon sticking out the very top of the treat. 

--- “Strawberry still your favorite? Made sure to get a shi--...uh, crapton of it.”

[grimelords]

October Playlist

My October playlist is finished and it’s complete from Rico Nasty to Rachmaninoff. I absolutely guarantee there’s something you’ll love in this 3 and a half hours of music, and probably something you’ll hate too! Something for everyone!

If you’d like to have these playlists delivered to your inbox instead of having them randomly appear on your dash, please subscribe to my tinyletter here.

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Santeria - Pusha T: In anticipation of Jesus Is King I relistened to the entire Wyoming Sessions project a few times, and a year removed from all the hype and controversy here's the thing: it's fucking great. The individual albums ranged pretty widely in quality and felt slightly unfinished for how short they were sometimes, but taking the project as a whole 5-album 120 minute playlist it turns out it's a masterpiece. My personal tracklist goes Ye/Daytona/Nasir/KTSE/Kids See Ghosts, which isn't release order but I think makes it flow the best - both Kanye albums bookending it and the less impactful Nas and Teyana Taylor albums buried a bit further in where you can appreciate them now that you're deep in the mindset of the whole thing rather than alone on their own.

Puppets (Succession Remix) - Pusha T & Nicholas Brittel: This remix is such a perfect match: Pusha T’s corporate villainy finally given a context and prestige it deserves. It’s also short enough that it could feasible be the actual theme song next season, which would be a marked improvement imo.

Use This Gospel - Kanye West, Clipse & Kenny G: I am and remain a Kanye stan, even after everything. It’s nice to see him going back to the extremely uneven mastering of MBDTF era, it’s a sound that is uniquely his and it’s fun to see him revisit it. The thick vocoder harmony is so soupy you get lost in it, and the way it opens up to include the full choir in the No Malice verse is beautiful. Kanye reunited Clipse through Christ and we have Him to thank for that at least. The Kenny G break is great, and the grain and dirt on the whole track when the beat kicks in is so gritty you can feel it.

Man Of The Year - Schoolboy Q: I didn't love the Chromatics album they surprise released but it did thankfully remind me of the time Schoolboy Q sampled Cherry for Man Of The Year. Taken exclusively on lyrics, Man Of The Year is a triumph: he's the man of the year and it's all worked out but the sample and the beat underscores the dead eyed melancholy that runs through the whole of Oxymoron of never winning even when you've won.

Cold - Rico Nasty: This song fucking tears your face off. Imagine STARTING your album at this level of intensity. She just goes straight to 100 and burns the house down. Outside of Lil John so few rappers can get away with just straight up screaming in the adlibs but the way she just lung tearingly screams GOOOO through this is fucking sick.

Fake ID - Riton & Kah-Lo: TikTok songs are becoming their own genre, but it’s a very nebulous sort of a mood encompassing everything from aughts pop punk hooks to skipping rope raps like this. It’s a strange new way for songs to blow up that everyone seems compelled to write articles about but my take on it is it’s exactly the same as ads were in the old days. Remember how many songs did absolute numbers because someone put it in a Motorola ad? Same thing except you’re not being sold a phone this time, so in some ways it’s better. Anyway, this song bangs. The spirit of 212 era Azealia Banks lives on even if she’s doing her best ever since then to kill it.

Doctor Pressure - MYLO & Miami Sound Machine: There was a very good era in the mid-2000s where you could just put mashups out as singles and they’d chart, it was sick. My only two examples are this and Destination Calabria but I’m sure there’s more. Drop The Pressure is a masterpiece but as an alternate version this mashup is equally masterful.  

If You’re Tarzan, I’m Jane - Martika: Martika is unfortunately best known for the 1989 one hit wonder Toy Soldiers, a sort of boring overdramatic ballad which is best known for being sampled by Eminem in 2004 in his quite bad super duper serious song Like Toy Soldiers. I say unfortunately because every other song on her first album is great, it’s all hypercolour 80s synthpop and I love this song especially because it is so completely stuffed with activity it becomes dizzying. It gets so lost in itself that they completely abandon the dramatic pause before “I’m Jane” for some reason toward the end and instead just layer three different tracks of vocal adlibs. Every part of this song is great, the weird ‘o we o we o’ chant before the second verse? The neighing horse guitar before the bridge? The musical tour of the world IN the bridge? The part where she says ‘I want to swing on your vine?’. This song has everything.

You Got Me Into This - Martika: Every part of the instrumentation in this is amazing. The bass sound, the main synth, the extremely athletic brass, the wonderful echoing 80s snare that’s as big as a house. I just love it. She also does some really intriguing slurs on the word ‘love’ all the way through, just moving it around absolutely anywhere.

Space Time Motion - Jennifer Vanilla: I love when someone has such a clearly defined aesthetic and mission from the very beginning. Jennifer Vanilla is the alter ego of Becca Kaufmann from Ava Luna who I've had in this playlist before but never competely investigated. Jennifer Vanilla feels like an episode of Sex And The City where Samantha gets really into Laurie Anderson and she is incredible. This video is the best mission statement I’ve ever seen and is currently criminally underviewed so please do your part and support the Jennifer cause by watching these two videos.

So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings - Caroline Polachek: Caroline Polachek said watch me write a Haim song and did it. Apparently the very early versions of this album started when she was in writing sessions for Katy Perry, but then it started to turn into something else and she took it for herself, and I think you can hear that. With more normal production and a little faster this is a hundred percent a Katy Perry song, but instead it’s completely uniquely Caroline Polachek and it’s all the better for it. And also Katy Perry must be furious because her new songs are simply not good at all.

Electric Blue - Arcade Fire: I just love the obsession of this song in the outro, chanting over and over and over “Cover my eyes electric blue, every single night I dream about you”

Promiscuous - Nelly Furtado and Timbaland: I got a youtube ad for one of those Masterclass videos the other day and it was Timbaland teaching production. This ad went for five minutes for some reason and I watched the whole thing and it made me admire Timbaland even more. He’s demonstrating his compositional technique which is basically to just beatbox, and then loop it, and then add some extra percussion layers with more beatboxing and hand percussion, then loop that and add a little melody by singing or humming. ‘It’s that simple’ he says. Then later he goes back in and puts in actual drums or synths or whatever. I was stunned because suddenly a lot of his music makes sense. Without the barrier of instrument or timbre to get hung up on it allows him to write from this instantly head-nodding place of just making up a little beat you can sing and dance to immediately. Listening to a lot of his music now you can hear the bones underneath everything so clearly, all his beats are supremely beatboxable and all his melodies are very hummable, they’ve never overcomplicated by instrumental skill or habits, they just exist to serve the song.

Serpent - TNGHT:  TNGHT are back baby and this song is like nothing I’ve ever heard before. It feels like afrofuturist footwork from another dimension, the mbira sounding lead against the oil drum percussion in this cacophony of yelps and screams that just builds to an irrepressible energy without a bassline in sight.

Ghosts Of My Life - Rufige Kru: I'm reading Mark Fisher's Ghosts Of My Life right now and some good person has put together a spotify playlist of all the songs he mentions. He has a whole essay about why this song is sick so I’m not going to go into it here but it’s interesting to hear about someone growing up with jungle when it’s a genre that has always felt very niche to me. I guess partly as a result of it never really making it mainstream as a genre here, and also me being a little too young for it.

Renegade Snares - Omni Trio: My biggest introduction to drum and bass comes from the game Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition and this really great song from the soundtrack that is finally on spotify after a very long absence. At almost the exact same time as I discovered this song with its spacious piano and repitched snares, I discovered Venetian Snares and breakcore in general. Having no particular frame of reference for breakcore as an offshoot of drum and bass only amplified its appeal to me as a completely alien genre that sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard, and so my personal history with drum and bass is a story of walking backwards into it after the fact which is interesting if not helpful.

Punching In A Dream - The Naked And Famous: The Mark Fisher book also mentions the Tricky song which I’ve never heard from which The Naked And Famous got their name and I thought ‘man remember The Naked And Famous, they were sick?’. The sort of harder edged Passion Pit instrumentation mixed with pop punk, a winning combination.

Vegas - Polica: My favourite part of this song is the unexpected blastbeats after the chorus, using their two drummers to their full advantage and just shaking the song by its foundations every now and then lest you get too comfortable.

Right Words - Cults: I’m beginning to suspect I may be the last surviving Cults stan but if this be my lot I’ll gladly do it

Running From The Sun - Chromatics: The new Chromatics album got me to relisten to their definitive document Kill For Love, and something new I appreciated this time about an album I love a lot is its length. Kill For Love is almost 80 minutes long and it luxuriates in that length. It’s sequenced perfectly so it never feels like it’s long for no reason, but large chunks just completely space out and go out of focus in the soft neon light and the second half of this song is a good example. The whole thing just evaporates into smoke and it feels perfect. If this were a shorter and more concise song that had a proper ending it wouldn’t feel right, this whole album has no straight edges at all and it’s all the better for it.

Chance - Angel Olsen: I cannot belive this song. This feels like she wrote her own version of My Way looking forward instead of back. Instead of the ruefully triumphant "I've lived a life that's full / I've traveled each and every highway" it's “I don't want it all / I've had enough / I don't want it all / I've had a love." before the turn from the future to the present at the end, where she gives up on a forever love in exchange for right now. I love how raw this vocal take feels. It's not her best voice but it feels very very honest as a result. She's just singing her heart out in this huge showstopping closer. In an interview she said "I didn’t love the recording of it very much, and now I just feel in love with it as a closing statement, because it’s a way of saying, ‘Look, I have hope for the next thing in my life.’ I’m not going to anticipate negativity or hate or an end. But instead of us looking towards forever, why don’t we just work on right now?"

Something To Believe - Weyes Blood: This album just keeps paying dividends. I’m systematically going through long obsessive periods with every single song on it and now it’s Something To Believe’s turn.

Don’t Shut Me Up (Politely) - Brigid Mae Power: Without meaning to, Brigid Mae Power seems to have created some incredible fusion of folk music and stoner metal. The way this song absolutely sits unmoving on one deep and resonant chord for so long is amazing. When it does change chords it feels like a full body effort to get up and shift. She has a similar feeling to Emma Ruth Rundle, who more explicitly wears her metal influences, but Brigid Mae Powers' strength is in how much it resembles the traditional folk side of the spectrum. Her voice is also amazing, with the huge effortless runs she goes on about halfway through just coming unmoored from the song completely and floating off into space.

Sweetheart I Ain’t Your Christ - Josh T. Pearson: I had a real problem with Josh T. Pearson for a long time because of how he presents as so authentic on this album, and as I’ve previously discussed in these playlists the concept of authenticity in country music is a source of neverending anguish for me. But his newest album The Straight Hits! has largely cured that for me because it’s not good at all, is extremely contrived (all the song titles have the word ‘hit’ in them) and he’s shaved his beard and replaced it with one of the worst irony moustaches I’ve ever seen. So now I’m free to enjoy The Last Of The Country Gentlemen as a character construction, which allows me a far deeper and truer engagement than the idea of a man actually living and thinking like this which is frankly a little embarrassing.

Codeine Dream - Colter Wall: I love this song, it has that feeling that great folk songs do of feeling like you’ve always known it. The strongest moments on this Colter Wall album to me are in songs like this that chase this particular feeling of morose isolation, and where he leans away from storytelling like his biggest hit Kate McCannon - a kind of cliche country murder ballad. This song is fantastic because of the way it wallows in this black depression not as a low point, but as a reprieve from the lower previous point. Things are as bad as they get now, and they’re always going to be like this, but at least I don’t dream of you anymore.

Motorcycle - Colter Wall: I only just found out about Colter Wall this month and have been listening to this album over and over. When I first heard him I though it was strange I'd never heard of him before because he's obviously some old country veteran based off his voice, but it turns out he's 24 and this is his first album he just sings like he ate a cigar. I love this song especially because it's so straighforward. It's a simple and supremely relatable mood: what if I bought a motorbike and fucking died.

Who By Fire - Leonard Cohen: I watched American Animals a couple of weeks ago and it’s a great movie, highly recommended. This song plays near the end and I waited for the credits to find out what this great song was, and like a rube found out it’s only one of the most celebrated songwriters of all time. I’ve never had much of a Leonard Cohen phase, somehow. In my mind I always get him mixed up with Lou Reed, which I’m learning is actually way off. I love the harmony vocals in this, and the way they move around into the shadows in the ‘who shall I say is calling’ parts.

Words From The Executioner To Alexander Pearce - The Drones: Alexander Pearce was a convict who escaped Sarah Island’s penal settlement in Tasmania with seven other convicts in 1822. He was recaptured two months later alone. In 1823 he re-escaped with a fellow convict, Thomas Cox and again was returned alone.He was executed by hanging later having eaten six men during his escape attempts.

It Ain’t All Flowers - Sturgill Simpson: I found this album going through the Pichfork 200 albums of the decade list and I feel like a fool for not having heard it sooner because now I am completely obsessed. Sturgill Simpson is doing the very best work in country music right now because he's looking backwards with one eye and forwards with the other and this song is a great illustration: a perfect Hank Williams Jr type country song with big voiced hollers that morphs into a surprise psych freakout for the whole second half.

Desolation Row (Take 1, Alternate Take) - Bob Dylan: I’ve always liked Desolation Row a lot as a song but the acoustic guitar on the album version is simply not good, it's just kind of mindlessly playing this long directionless solo the whole time and over the course of a song this long it really adds up to just being annoying. Luckily because it’s a Bob Dylan song there’s a whole universe of alternate takes and mixes and this is a great pared down version I found without it. The best kind of Bob Dylan songs are the ones where he just makes an endless stream of allusions and bizzare imagery, and this and Bob Dylan's 115th Dream are my favourite examples of it.

Living On Credit Blues - El Ten Eleven: This is a groove I get stuck in my head a lot, and this is also a song I think would work well as a theme for a tv show. I've been meaning to do a 30 second edit of it just for my own amusement, maybe I'll do that soon. El Ten Eleven are a duo where one guy plays drums and one guys plays a double necked guitar/bass and looping pedals and somehow against all the odds of that description they manage to make emotional, driving instrumental music of very deep feeling, like this song which is one of my all time favourites.

Dusty Flourescent/Wooden Shelves - Talkdemonic: This is sort of a companion Living On Credit Blues, and Talkdemonic are similarly an instrumental duo with good drums. This entire album from 2005 is highly recommended, it's a sort of halfway between the post rock of the time and a kind of acoustic hiphop instrumentals that ends up sounding very rustic and homemade, like a soudtrack for a winter cabin.

Turnstile Blues - Autolux: This is a perfect song, built around a perfect beat. Every part just fits perfectly.

Fort Greene Park - Battles: The new Battles album is finally out and I absolutely love it. I cannot think of another band that has shed members in the same way as Battles; originally a quartet on their first album, then a trio for their second and third and now down to a duo for their fourth album - and somehow still performing material from their first album live. The paring down has seemingly only servers to focus them and the new album sounds fresh but still distinctively Battles, with no sense of anything lost or missing. This song is my standout so far, and the guitar line in particular is so good and interesting to me because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ian Williams play something so distinctly guitar-y in his whole career. This is a straight up pentatonic riff with bends and everything. Filtered through his usual chopped and looped oddness it feels like he’s almost gone all the back around the guitar continuum and is this close to just doing power chords next album. And I’ll support him!

Diane Young - Vampire Weekend: I've listened to this song a lot in my life and I only looked up the lyrics the other day to find out that the opening line is 'you torched a SAAB like a pile of leaves' which I somehow never noticed. What a power phrase. There's also this very good quote from Ezra about it: "I had this feeling that the world doesn’t want a song called ‘Dying Young’,“ says Koenig, "it just sounded so heavy and self-serious, whereas ‘Diane Young’ sounded like a nice person’s name.”" and he was right to do it. This song is 100 times better because he’s saying Diane Young than it would be if he was saying ‘Dying Young’. That’s a songwriting tip for you.

Monster Mash - Bootsy Collins & Buckethead: Hey did you hear Bootsy Collins and Buckethead did a cover of the monster mash? Thank god for freaks.

The Dark Sentencer - Coheed And Cambria: There's not that many bands that I absolutely loved as a teenager that I've completely abandoned. I've moved on from a lot but I'll still keep up with them if they have a new album or something. Coheed And Cambria are one that I've almost completely turned my back on. They've had 3 apparently pretty patchy albums since I stopped listening after Year Of The Black Rainbow, which was extremely bad and really taught me what people mean when they say an album is 'overproduced'. On a whim I decided to see what they're up to now and listened to their album from last year and guess what: it rocks. It's got everything you'd expect from them: big riffs, bad and confusing lyrics, his weird high voice, overwrought and overlong songwriting, cheesy muscleman solos. Everything about this band is sort of cheesy and embarrassing and takes itself way too seriously, but I'm discovering slowly that that's what's so good about it. The weird pulp sci-fi story and mindset that underpins this whole band is ridiculous and overwrought and as a result it gives the music a reason to exist the way it does. It’s so big and dumb because the story it serves is so big and dumb. It feels exactly like reading Perry Rhodan or some increidibly long and dense but not especially good series like that, it’s pulp music and that’s what I love about it.

Romance In A (6 Hands) - Sergei Rachmaninoff: Piano works for 4 hands (where two guys sit next to each other on the same piano) have always seemed to tend towards the realm of the gimmick or party trick, and works for 6 hands (where three guys do it) even more so - but this Rachmaninoff piece is just beautiful and I can’t believe I haven’t heard of it before this month. It doesn’t overload everyone with a million things to do, it just builds this very wide harmonic bed for the simple melody to swim in - then the way the melody transfers over to the middle register is just magical before the tension of the final section takes over and builds.

Love's Theme - The Love Unlimited Orchestra: I’m so glad I got to learn about the Love Unlimited Orchestra this month. Aside from having one of the best names in music, they were Barry White’s backing band and had their own solo instrumental records too. Here’s a fun aside: Kenny G was a member when he was 17 and still in high school. This is a genre of music that has seemed to totally disappear into the realm of parody and farce only which is sort of a shame because it is unironically very beautiful and dense in its own way.

Dancing In The Moonlight - Liza Minelli: Can you believe I thought Dancing In The Moonlight by Toploader was an original until the other day when my girlfriend played this Liza Minelli version that predates it by several decades? This also isn’t the original! It was written by a band named King Harvest in 1972, with this version AND a version by Young Generation both coming out in 73 and a whole bunch of others in between (including a Baha Men version in 94) before Toploader finally had a proper hit with it in 2000. Truly the world works in mysterious ways. This version is the finest I think, it just goes and goes, frenetically unwinding at a breakneck pace before opening up into a flute solo of all things and then winding up again even and finishing in a kick line breakdown. Absolutely no limits.

Girls - Royal Headache: The sheer amount of power and melody that this song manages to pack into a minute and a half is incredible, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more instantly relatable opening lyric than “Girl! Think they’re to fine for me! Oh girls! And I’m inclined to agree!”

Pov Piti - Matana Roberts: In anticipation of Matana Roberts new volume of her Coin Coin album series that just came out I relistened through the three previous albums and they are even more powerful than I remembered. This song serves as a pretty good mission statement for the whole project, and the heartrending tortured screams that open it set the tone for the rest of it. Matana Roberts sings the injustices of slavery into being, and her sing-song delivery highlights the trauma - her indifferent delivery mirroring the indifference of the world at large. The way she rattles off this story like she’s gone over it a million times and grown numb to the facts only accentuates the pain in the telling, a pain that rises to the surface in the screams of her instrument and herself.  

Kingdoms (G) - Sunn 0))): This new Sun 0))) album is one of my favourites they’ve ever done because it’s so straightforward and back to basics. Every song is just ten minutes of straight up no-nonsense, big, rich, drone. They even put the notes in the track names so you can drone along if you like.

listen here

[howyoustudythestars]

Don’t call me a heathen, but I don’t like “All My Friends”...

(Yes, I made a Twenty One Pilots reference in a post about Owl City, shoot me!)

I’ve never been disappointed this much with a new Owl City song until now.

Now, before you fill my inbox with hate like “You just want Adam to go back to Ocean Eyes days” or “You don’t like his new stuff” or even “Your no longer a fan”, read these posts of mine.  Furthermore, as a musician myself, I understand change is inevitable.  To ask him to keep writing 500 versions of the same album would be counterintuitive at best and nearly impossible at worst.  You’re essentially asking someone to return to the days when he only had a vague idea of what the world was like and spent times daydreaming at dead-end jobs, returning home at night, and turning them into what he remembered as songs and continued when he couldn’t fall asleep.  Now he has seen the world, he has a better grip on life, and he has new knowledge in his craft.  While I may miss that style from time to time, I understand his music will be different as he continues to grow as a musician and artist.

And I’ll always be a fan of Adam Young.  Nothing will likely change that.  But the thing is (and it’s something I’ve noticed with the HootOwl fandom from time to time) is that you can be critical of an artist and still be a fan of them.  That is not mutually exclusive.  Music is subjective by nature.  What someone got out of one song will be different from what someone else got out of it, and that’s regardless of whether or not they agree or disagree on whether the song is good or bad.  One of my favorite music critics, Jon from ARTV, has called himself an Owl City fan in the past.  He didn’t like The Midsummer Station, but it grew on him.  He still holds Mobile Orchestra as a bad album for various reasons, the main one being that the tracklist felt like a checklist of demographics his label wanted the album to appeal to.  (The college graduation song, the 90s nostalgic song, the old school Owl City-sounding song to please fans, the Christian song, the country-pop crossover song, etc.)  There’s nothing wrong with being critical of an artist you love, and up until now, I have enjoyed most songs that Adam has put out, including The Scores project that I initially had reservations about.  So what went wrong here?

Warning: Long post ahead!

When I heard Adam was going to be writing songs based on his personal stories and experiences, I wasn’t put off by it in the slightest.  He’s done it before numerous times: “Lonely Lullaby” was about his painful breakup with Annmarie.  “I Hope You Think Of Me” is believed to be about Taylor Swift, and his favorite song to have ever written, “This Isn’t the End”, was about his mother as a young child having to deal with his mother committing suicide.  I’ll even include the Christmas song “Humbug” in this list, as it’s about his experiences going Christmas shopping every year, and how the best gift he can give is the love in his heart.  None of those songs I had a problem with.  In fact, one of the artists I wish Adam would collaborate with is Matthew West, a Contemporary Christian artist who is well known for his storytelling style, including using his fan’s stories as inspiration for songs.  I think their styles would work well together.  If anything, I was more worried that a more personal style would give more ammunition to fans that he has changed too much and no longer is writing music true to himself.  I firmly believe this isn’t the case to this day, but I still feel let down by the new music we’ve gotten so far.

And the other day, I was super stoked to hear the Cinematic announcement.  After all, this will be his first project completed completely without the help of a label since Maybe I’m Dreaming.  The instrumental in the announcement video was gold, and part of my disappointment with All My Friends is that the instrumental is probably part of a different song.  It may not even be on any of the 3 reels for all I know.  But that will be a song that I will be looking forward to, together with the Twitter Q&A video’s instrumental from earlier this year.

One thing I’ve missed since Mobile Orchestra (barring the Scores project) is that music is his electronic melodies and synth lines.  Sure, we got that in Thunderstruck and his Waving Through a Window cover.  And based on the tracklisting now also including “Not All Heroes Wear Capes”, I certainly hope it isn’t in this more guitar-driven direction.  To be honest, the lines between Sky Sailing and Owl City is becoming a lot less blurred in terms of instrumentation.  And that’s not necessarily a good or bad thing, but I’m wondering why Adam keeps saying Sky Sailing isn’t dead if it feels like some of these acoustic-driven songs are now part of the Owl City canon more and more often.  Heck, I even consider “Paper Tigers” to be a Sky Sailing demo and not an Owl City demo for that very reason.

And, speaking of Not All Heroes Wear Capes, as I mentioned in the tags of a post around the time of that song’s announcement, I can’t relate to the song at all.  My dad was never in my life.  He left my mom before I could even remember, supposedly to go be with another woman.  I can’t say for sure because I was too young to remember and I don’t want to say that was the reason when I haven’t talked to him about it.  I’m now wondering if the lack of a father figure in my life has contributed in any way to my anxieties or my depression in any way, so it’s safe to say that my dad is no hero to me.  In some ways, minus the suicide and the gender being swapped, This Isn’t the End is more or less a better representative of my non-existent relationship with my dad.  I still wound up buying the song, but it more or less feels like a list of things Adam likes about his dad.  There is some emotion behind it, and like I said, I can’t really relate to it personally, so I can’t speak to it other than the lack of electronic elements.

But what turned me off of “All My Friends”?  If it was just the lack of electronic elements, I wouldn’t feel this way.  And to be fair, I don’t have a problem with Adam rapping or producing a spoken word track or anything of that sort, either.  To me, the lyrics can sometimes make or break a song, and I feel that was the case with this song, but it ultimately fell flat.  Honestly, it feels like a country rendition of “Good Time”, Part 2 (much like how “Can’t Live Without You” and “Embers” were part 2′s of “Tidal Wave” and “Shooting Star”, respectively), with the theme of staying true to yourself and to what you stand for, but it can’t even hold that message for long when it seems boastful in this repeated part:

And they'll be awestruck, sayin', "Aww shucks" They either got real good or they got real good luck

I mean, not to be too conspiratorial or pull a Summertime’s End, but that isn’t really biblical thinking.  And to top it all off, it’s the first Owl City song that I feel is so bland it no longer resembles Adam Young.  It feels like anyone could sing that song and it would work.  Furthermore, where are the parts that are “personal”?  Apart from talking about a dance, which I can only think of being a school dance or something of that sort, it’s not something that sounds like it’s personal to Adam, and if it is, I at least can’t relate to it.

A song that I feel would be better suited and even in a similar vein is the Outasight song “If I Fall Down”.  It has a similar theme and the story in the second verse sounds a lot like Adam’s story of making it in the music industry:

Welcome to my story Before the songs before the glory There was a boy in a town that’s boring Who let go of the fear he's holding Walked out of all his classes Followed his so-called passion Everyone said he was crazy And they were right but that was back then

Sounds more Adam like, right?  There’s a reason for that: According to ayoungmusic.com, the song was written and produced by Adam Young!

Now, I will still buy Cinematic.  I’m super excited for it.  The tracklisting has some promising titles like “Firebird”, “Lucid Dream”, and even the title track “Cinematic”, among many others.  I’m just a little nervous in the direction it will go.

The only thing I can say in Adam’s defense is that the first song/lead single that's released is not usually representative of the whole album. "Fireflies" does not capture the whole of Ocean Eyes. "Alligator Sky" does not capture the whole of All Things Bright and Beautiful. "Good Time" does not capture the whole of The Midsummer Station. And "Verge" does not capture the whole of Mobile Orchestra. Here's to hoping that "All My Friends" does not capture the whole of Cinematic.

Finally, in my opinion, what made Humbug work as a personal song is that it has a tongue-in-cheek quality that is very Owl City-ish in nature.  Even though it doesn’t really have synths, it still sounds like an Owl City song.  I can’t say the same for this song.  It sounds too bland and not at all like an Owl City song.  I am still an Owl City fan and remain excited for Cinematic, but I can’t stand behind the song “All My Friends”.  I’m just hoping the album goes in a slightly different direction!

[crowblessed]

@ridrose

--- “Out of my way! Let me see HER--!”

   Rumors. Qrow never was one to follow the grapevine, as it often lead to nothing; only empty hearts and hurt feelings, the opposite of what one sought when traveling through the vineyards. Yet, when the talk in the wind lead to the awakening of a SLEEPING BEAUTY adorned in white and harboring eyes of striking silver, the avian had not thought twice before taking to the skies and seeking the very village spoke of. 

   Feet hit the dirt and he stumbles, yet never once loses the speed in his step when nearly knocking over the poor, unknowing citizen’s; pale eyes glancing down every alleyway and into every window, urgency heavy in his heart that it nearly chokes the Huntsman. Teeth bare and he snarls at any in his path, at any who attempt to stop the man or hold a weapon to his hostility, yet those, only present themselves as CHALLENGES. An older man donned in greens and yellows is grabbed, fingers curling into a collared shirt and pulling the man close; nearly nose to nose when his command comes forth.

--- “Where is she?! Where are you KEEPIN’ HER?”

   His voice carries, causing more than a simple ruckus. 

[crowblessed]

“ it’s nothing, i’m totally fine ”

It’s A Tough World - Accepting

— “Y’know, I know you better than that by now, kiddo.”

   There’s nothing but CONCERN that escapes the crow’s lips, head giving that subtle cant that forces black tresses to bounce and fall; the backs of rough knuckles brought up to brush uneven bangs from his forehead. Dulled, rose-like eyes soften, and the usual playfulness that seemed to accompany the man dwindles. They’d been through enough–they all had, and there was a time and a place for jests and nudges, and even Qrow knew this was not one of them 

— “C’mon, talk to me. Is this about Raven?”

   That name is nearly spat, a bubbling anger writhing in his chest to the mere mention of their recent BACK-STAB by none other than his own sister. Perhaps he shouldn’t have thought any better, how silly it felt to place trust in one who never seemed to hold it in return–…a breath, and a hand wafts the air in front of his nose, clearing his sight of the crimson that threatened to overcome. 

— “I’m not gonna judge you, you know that; and I know I’m not one of your friends, I’m just your good for nothin’ uncle, but hey, I’ve always been here, haven’t I? Or I’ve at least…TRIED to be.”

[crowblessed]

@lvnarstruck

--- “So.”

   There’s suspicion in his tone, voice quick and sharp--dulled eyes narrowed and nose giving that subtle scrunch. The Faunus is glanced over, and arms tired from battle raise and coil in a protective cross to his chest. 

--- “It was pretty LUCKY that you and your friends showed up when they did.”

   A silence follows, heavy in the air as it thickens like fog; the act is held for quite some time, though eventually, the avian can’t help but laugh. Luck--...what an unfamiliar concept. The sound that escapes his lips is rough, yet soft, welcoming almost, and battle-worn features settle with a crooked quirk of a smirk to the edges of thin lips.

--- “We don’t really have room at the stay for all of you, but since you’re my nieces’ teammate, I think we can make ONE exception.”