#anyway. music. its good. i want to make dramatic weird goth metal.
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Blood drooling from my mouth I neeeeeeeeed to get back into making music i neeeed to i do i need to. I fucking. Foaming at the mouth frothing at the mouth i haven't played an instrument in so long.
#jay talkin#ok so see the situation is i am not good at any instrument but i play guitar and bass (and keyboard sometimes) and drums#i have issues with my arm that on top of affecting my ability to draw also severelly impact my ability to play#and i also live with people one of whom works in the room directly below me so im so paranoid about making noise#i cant be loud i cant be disruptive but jesus christ i need to play more often#im not going to get GOOD if i dont PLAY#yeah id have to fix my bass and ahit but. UGH I JUST WANT TO PLAY#WHATS THE POINT OF OWNING AN ELECTRIC GUITAR AN ACOUSTIC GUITAR AND AN ELECTROACOUSTIC BASS IF NOT TO PLAY THEM#i did have an electric drumkit and my dads old 80's synth but ppl all but stole them back away from me so lol. lmao#whatever. i still have my guitars. even if ppl do take them sometimes#ugh really what i need to do is figure out if i can route my guitars through my pc rather than an amp so i can record and mess w that in fl#god. fucking biting my own arms off i wish i lived elsewhere#for more reasons than just the freedom to make music and have ppl not take my shit. but yknow. itd also help that#everybody prayer circle for jay transitioning and moving out in under thirty more years ok. its a longshot but heres hoping#anyway. music. its good. i want to make dramatic weird goth metal.
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My Favorite Songs of the First Half of 2017, RANKED
This year, I decided, you know what, fuck it? Iâm gonna indulge myself. I like talking about music, writing about music, and just generally being able to turn the âoh my god this SONGâ in my head into actual coherent prose. This is super informal though, Iâm not trying to impress The Journalism Godsâą, just doing this for me mostly. Â And Iâm also really curious how different my end-of-year list will look from this midyear list (and by extension, how my end-of-year list will compare to my end-of-decade list). Also we might all be blown to bits by the end of this year so I just wanted to do this for once okay????
ANYWAY Iâm rolling out albums tomorrow, but hereâs my songs of the year so far. Iâm starting you off with an alphabetical honorable mention section of 10 songs, and then I ranked my top 10 songs. For the honorable mentions, I gave a four word description so that, if you havenât heard the song, you know whether you might dig it. Then itâs full on WORDS for the ranked top 10. Oh, and did I mention each section has a corresponding Spotify playlist? BOOM
Honorable Mentions
Presented as Artist â Album (Label), and * = I work with this artist; ^ = I previously worked with this artist
Arca â âDesafioâ (XL) (weird, beautiful electronic ballad)
Balun â âTeletransporteâ (Good Child Music) (entrancing, ambient pop journey)
Blanck Mass â âSilent Treatmentâ (Sacred Bones) (hell on the dancefloor)
Blessed â âHeadacheâ (Coin Toss Records/Kingfisher Bluez) (art punk with math)
Chelsea Wolfe â â16 Psycheâ (Sargent House) (metal, but goth rock)
Fufanu â âLiabilityâ * (One Little Indian) (post-punk in the club)
Leyya â âZooâ ^ (Las Vegas Records) (sassy, smack-talking deep cut)
Shame â âTastelessâ (Fnord Comms (however, this band just signed to Dead Oceans)) (classic post-punk done modern)
Yoke Lore â âOnly Youâ (Independent Label Alliance) * (late morning sunshine inspiration)
Zola Jesus â âExhumedâ (Sacred Bones) (overwhelming, symphonic electronic drama)
Honorable Mentions playlist:Â https://open.spotify.com/user/126489514/playlist/2AzLWfVloJH07fnmV0QeOE
Ranked Top 10
Playlist at the very bottom
10) Big Thief â âShark Smileâ (Saddle Creek)
Youâll see in my albums list tomorrow that Iâve opted to exclude Capacity, Big Thiefâs newest album, from consideration just because itâs so new that I canât really hold it up to things Iâve been enjoying for much longer, even though itâs pretty fuckinâ goddamn great. I donât have that dilemma with songs, since theyâre much shorter, but either way, âShark Smileâ has been around for at least a month longer than the album, and it hasnât entirely left my head since I first heard it. Last year, Big Thiefâs Masterpiece was #9 on my albums of the year list, and Capacity sees the band moving further inward, far less pop-oriented, as vocalist/songwriter/guitarist Adrianne Lenker explores her formative traumas; âShark Smileâ sounds like Lenker negotiating the space between the sound she wanted to achieve with each album, and itâs overwhelming and amazing. Itâs a searing, painfully detailed recollection of a pretty gnarly car accident, its intensity building over the songâs course just as oneâs adrenaline might accelerate while theyâre in a car going over the guardrail. This is the exact scenario Lenker describes at the songâs peak, when her snarl and the bandâs racket come bursting from their seams, overtaking me so strongly I usually play this song three times before moving forward with the rest of the album. âHumans,â from Masterpiece, was in my Top 5 songs last year, and this shit makes that song seem like childâs play.
9) Gabriel GarzĂłn-Montano â âThe Gameâ (Stones Throw)
You could look like a piece of ham growing mold between two pieces of American cheeseâwhich isnât even real cheese!!âand still be sexy as hell if you were the person behind âThe Game.â JardĂn, Gabriel GarzĂłn-Montanoâs newest album, is rife with nu-soul influence, and âThe Gameâ is its most addicting example of how GarzĂłn-Montano toys with the genreâs pervasive sexuality. It starts by asking its central character why heâs comparing himself to some other guy (some real lame-o, it seems), then tells him he could just roll up with swagger out the ass and have no problems anymore. Musically, itâs a soundtrack to someone running into a casual, heavily seated jazz bar and weaving his way through scores of womenâthis is very straight music, honestlyâhoping to magically recruit one to a sensual dance and follow that with a Miguel-style Coffee In The Morning. I wonder if snarling ânow walk like a tangerineâ on loop in the club could find me the love of my lifeâŠprobably not, but thatâs because Iâm not an architect of lively, jittery soul anthems like this fuckinâ guy.
8) Dream Wife â âSomebodyâ (Lucky Number Music)
âI am not my body/Iâm somebody.â This song came out two months after the Womenâs March, yet its chorus couldâve been the basis for so many of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of signs boldly donned across the worldâs major cities. This line is preceded by vocalist Rakel Mjöllâs sarcastic reciting of some dude who doesnât believe in rape cultureâs bullshit justification for some scumbagâs actionsââYou were a cute girl standing back stage/it was bound/to happenââone of the most memorable and clearly audible lyrics to grace rock music recently, perhaps intentionally so because the point of view itâs shitting on is so despicable. Of course, even the most pointed social commentary in music is still music, so it helps that the gently overdriven guitars here are just as natural to latch onto as Mjöllâs chameleonic voice. Dream Wife donât have to reinvent rock to make it enjoyable; mining its longstanding strengths and not beating around the bush on a frustratingly omnipresent social issue in music do that just fine.
7) Lorde â âGreen Lightâ (Republic)
Melodrama is nearly as good as the hype says, but itâs also a June release (see Big Thief above), and I also donât always make it past the first track 'cause godDAMN this song is impossible to dislike. âGreen Lightâ is like if the overproduced bullshit âgracingâ the airwaves on Top 40 radio had a conscience, seriously great songwriting, and a semi-intentionally clunky lyric or two to give it character (âshe thinks you love the beach/youâre such a damn liarâ shouldâve been the basis of more memes this year). The chorus is accessible as fuck, and by that I mean, teenage girls, pop critics, electronic fans, and straight up alternative listeners should have no trouble finding catharsis in how that enticing piano bop from the pre-chorus goes full-steam big party singalong in the chorus. Canât you imagine this song just lighting up diverse folks occupying the same karaoke bar? Donât you just want to get out of your seat and start dancing every time this song comes on? Itâs as graceful and innately thrilling as big-bucks pop gets; even someone as pretentious and picky as myself is absolutely helpless when I hear it.
6) Perfume Genius â âWreathâ (Matador)
âWreathâ trembles throughout its entire, far too short run. Thereâs a constant shaking, the semblance of a heart beating its very fastest, in these incredibly fascinating synths that are equal parts bony and glitzy. This song is as celebratory as it is uneasy (a pretty apt description for No Shape at large), riveting in its experimental sounds and dramatic vocal delivery. As though Mike Hadreasâ descriptions of sunsets and sunrises demarcating new days werenât unusually harrowing, the way his voice transforms from a relatively gentle bellow into an all-consuming howl is nothing short of arresting. Does it sound like he gradually shifts from singing the word âgraveâ to the word âdeathâ in the songâs outro, or is that just me? This is seriously rattling shit, the kind of transformative experience thatâll take you out-of-body for a hot moment before you dive right back into it, because thereâs no playing this song just once.
5) Palm â âWalkie Talkieâ (Carpark)
Palmâs gotten its finite yet rabid fanbase from its deconstruction and subsequent repair of rock norms. There is no verse-chorus-verse, no common time, no mere sequence of eighth notes with Palm; instead, there are incredibly brainy runs of guitar-drum polyrhythms, passages where the only thing more difficult to trace than the beat is the reason you keep even trying to trace the beat when you know how futile that is. Also, there are flares of dissonant, fanged noise rushing at you from every conceivable angle.Â
âWalkie Talkieâ is one of Palmâs most compelling runs to date, a portrait of an art-rock band continuing to focus equally on art and rock. Whereas so many new releases depart in some manner, subtle or otherwise, from their predecessors, âWalkie Talkieâ doesnât too fundamentally fuck with Palmâs established domain of janky, demanding noise rock. Itâs just another incredibly strong entry into the Palm canon, and since this band has spent its existence doing something that so few other artists are doing, thatâs really all we can ask for. And Iâm pretty sure the phrase âtrading basics,â which is the title of their stellar 2015 album, pops up a couple times on this song, and I donât remember hearing it ever said on the album. So sometimes sticking with what made you amazing in the first place is the right move.
4) Run the Jewels â âThursday in the Danger Room (ft. Kamasi Washington)â (self-released)
Literally nobody came to RTJ3 to cry. Everyone who loved RTJ2âs potent mix of absolute bangers and still-necessary, eternally relevant political commentaryâitâs honestly so frustrating that, even though weâre having such good conversations and Black Lives Matter has gained serious political weight (and used it amazingly), Philando Castileâs murderer was nevertheless just recently entirely acquittedâcame to RTJ3 expecting the same. And they got no less of the commentary, but generally, the album is less bombastic. Not that these are ballads or anything, but holy fuck is âThursday in the Danger Roomâ beautifully close to that. (Also, before we go any further, yes this song/album were technically released in 2016 but FUCK IT (also more on this in my albums list tomorrow))
I remember seeing El-P tweet that he and Killer Mike almost left this song off the album since itâs so goddamn personal. Elâs verse about watching a friend slowly dieâheavily implied to be a battle against something like cancer or another fatal diseaseâends with some seriously tear-jerking shit, and then these two have the audacity to throw in a chorus with not just Kamasi Washingtonâs most solemn sax run to date, but these actual lyrics oh my god:
And I guess I'd say I'll see you soon
But the truth is that I see you now
Still talk to you like you're around
And I guess I say you left too soon
But the truth is that you never left
'Cause I never let myself forget
And then thereâs Mikeâs verse about a friend he lost to a mugging, and how he tried to help this friendâs family through the emotional and financial turmoil in the fallout. If somehow RTJ2âs tales of police brutality werenât thoroughly humanizingââEarlyâ is especially movingâthis song right here will slap the shit out of your tear ducts and really get you going. This song is as devastating as it is gorgeous, and I canât really think of another hip-hop song with the capacity to make me tear up like this one.
3) Kelly Lee Owens â âAnxi (ft. Jenny Hval)â (Smalltown Supersound)
To be perfectly clear: the best song on Kelly Lee Owens is âCBM,â which stands a good shot at making my Top 30 or so Songs of the Decade, but since âCBMâ first appeared on last yearâs unreal, near-perfect Oleic EP, it doesnât count for this list. âAnxiâ is pretty fucking stellar, though, so Iâm actually glad I didnât have to decide between the two. When I chatted with Kelly Lee Owens for FLOOD Magazine earlier this year, I mentioned to her that she and featured vocalist Jenny Hval have startingly similar voices, and before I could even ask her if thatâs something she gets a lot, she went off on how even she remains fascinated by how much the two sound alike. As blasphemous as this is to say, Jenny sounds even more natural on this beatâthe yearâs best electronic beat, in my opinionâthan KLO herself might. âAnxiâ is two immensely talented experimentalists bringing out the best in each other.
âAnxiâ starts out innocuously enough, with a beat so subtle and murky only Kelly Lee Owens couldâve crafted it. Itâs pretty amazing that KLOâs already such a distinct beatmaker this early on in her career, and having Jennyâs voice hereâboth in singing and spoken word formâmakes the beat all the more alluring. Anyone in tune with KLOâs soundalikesânamely, IDM and especially Aphex Twinâmight gauge that more is to come, so the handful of chugs that come after Hval wraps up her main appearance arenât surprising. But that bass-heavy groove that comes in about 10 seconds later? That shit slaps, even though itâs more restrained than about 99% of electronic music. Itâs a great example of KLOâs charm: her beats are really, really tightly tethered, yet theyâre as body-shaking and freak-out-worthy as something by, say, Grimes or Caribou. âAnxiâ is methodical, ominous, and just a fucking banger, even though itâs incredibly quiet. For lack of a better word, itâs magical.
2) (Sandy) Alex G â âBrickâ (Domino)
âBrickâ is a shitty song, and I mean that as high praise. Itâs really just Alex G having a temper tantrum; its lyrics detailing the final stages of a relationship are clunky as shit, and there are moments where itâs just him screaming against a drum machine, and also the guitars are so muddy and loud theyâre indistinct, and also these are the exact things I love about it. It verges on being bad by way of just being immature and petulant, but honestly in this era when we all want to punch everything in the face and everything is infuriating, who am I to judge? Instead, when âBrickâ comes on, I give in to my visceral, unpretentious senses and go out smashing windows, toppling over newspaper stands, knocking pedestrians to the sidewalk, and lighting shit on fire.
Not actually, but thatâs what âBrickâ makes me want to do, and I love songs that can make me do that without sounding gross. As I described before, âBrickâ should sound gross, overdone, tawdry, and all that, but it somehow finds a perfect balance of aggression and homespun emotion to be an endlessly replayable song. Honestly, I didnât even know what its lyrics were before I looked them up; I was enthralled enough having a punching bag song, the sort of anthem that can sympathize with me on my bad days, remind me that the world at large sucks on my good days, and drown out the hysteria of the subways on any ordinary day. Iâm not really much of a mosh pit guy, but âBrickâ brings out the animal in me and makes me want to run headfirst into a crowd of angry showgoers and punch some faces. Everyoneâs got some anger in them, and this song brings out the minimal amount that lies in me.
Also, this is essentially a hardcore punk song on Rocket, a country-lite album?! Yooooooooooooo
1) Priests â âJJâ (Sister Polygon)
âJJâ is like âShut Up Kiss Meâ but punk. I just had to say that because itâs me writing this, regardless of any true analogy there might be. But there kind of is one. (Also, yeah this song came out in late October 2016, but itâs the best song on Nothing Feels Natural, which came out in January, donât @ me).
My eternal âShut Up Kiss Meâ obsession comes from many places: its tongue-in-cheek pop tropes; its catchy-as-hell guitars; its fiery, thrilling vocals; its joke-filled lyricism that can also be taken at face value as wholly serious; its incessant replayability. âJJâ has all this, but in an entirely different context. Itâs a post-punk song with surf rock elements infused throughout, and its structure affords some novelties even though itâs mostly familiar terrain; still though, after long enough, the way Katie Alice Greer snarls âWhen I met you/you were just a bad attituuuuuude!/You dated a model/one time she stuck her finger in a light socketâ feels more like an in-joke than a send-up of some bad exâs even worse ex. âYou were just a rich kid/low-life in a very big jacket in a very big wayâ precedes a diss about the entirely commonplace cigarettes this guyâletâs call him JJâsmokes, and then Katie disses her own cigarette habits before moping, with more than a hint of satirical self-pity, âYou thought I was disgusting/You thought I was disgusting.â Of course, this can also be taken as an entirely serious remark, one relating her own self-image issues to this exâs abusive words. When Katie tells us that âall the jock frat boysâ called JJ a âhipster fag,â sheâs simultaneously mocking him, mocking herself for dating him, and lambasting the frat culture that allows homophobic slurs to be so commonplace in the first place. As the song moves into its final chant of âWho ever deserved anything, anyway?/what a stupid concept,â itâs just as easy to imagine an angsty teenager shouting this as a friendship ends as it is to envision Katie seriously lamenting the fact that she actually held JJ to any sort of high standards. So yeah, that whole âwhatâs a joke, and whatâs serious?â thing is on full display here.
And then, of course, thereâs the music. As tongue-in-cheek pop tropes go, theyâre a bit fewer and farther between here than on âShut Up Kiss Me,â but the assertiveness that Katie presents on whatâs a relatively standard structure song fits that mold. G.L. Jaguarâs catchy-as-hell guitars and Katieâs fiery, thrilling vocals and especially the incessant replayability are real as fuck, though. The guitar line that opens the song and later commands its second verse is stupidly catchy, and even when the six-string takes a bit of a backseat, its faint melancholy is pervasive; when guitars introduce the interlude following the second verse, theyâre pure firebrand. Katieâs voice throughout is loaded with vibrato and drama, at times veering on parodyââI wrote a bunch of songs for youâ sounds like sheâs teasing JJ rather than castigating himâand itâs also a stellar fucking performance. Hereâs someone who can belt, sing straight from the gut, and mutter introspectively as she sees fit. And you know whatâs really great? Everything happening here goes down in under three minutes, so of course youâre gonna hit replay. Iâm gonna be listening to this song constantly through the end of the decade, when I expect itâll crack my Top 10 Songs of the Decade list. âShut Up Kiss Meâ will still be #1, but god Iâm happy to have a punk version.
If you think the âShut Up Kiss Meâ comparison is a huge stretch (it definitely is, letâs be real), I have an argument in your favor. I still donât hear the pianos on âShut Up Kiss Meâ that Angel Olsen details on Song Exploder, even though Iâve listened to that goddamn song like 500 times. Pianos on âJJâ? Everywhere, baby. And they really make all the difference.
Ranked Top 10 playlist:Â https://open.spotify.com/user/126489514/playlist/4gt4kP3aZ5bEJoJNvn6zGH
#mid-year recap#best of 2017 so far#favorite songs of 2017 so far#best songs of 2017#best songs of 2017 so far#things i wrote mostly for myself
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