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theeverlastingshade · 2 years ago

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Favorite Albums of 2022

10. Ants from Up There- Black Country, New Road

After the klezmer-fueled rush of BCNR’s promising debut LP, For the First Time, it was hard to say where they were going to take their sound for LP 2. The initial excitement behind the Speedy Wunderground bands began to wane, and just days before the release of BC,NR’s seemingly make or break second LP, Ants from Up There, the frontman of the band, Isaac Wood, announced that he left the band due to mental health issues. If AfUT was even just a merely good record the surrounding circumstances could easily still have completely de-railed their momentum. But AfUT is an absolute triumph of a record, one that folds art rock, chamber pop, and post rock into an exhilarating whole that defies expectations at every turn. In melding the catharsis, sprawl, and ambition of these disparate stylings BC,NR have reshaped their sound into something grand and imposing that defies expectation at every turn, yet remains unfailingly human.

AfUT is an album gleefully overstuffed with ideas, but the band execute with a deft touch that gives each individual instrument plenty of space even as they’re colliding towards one another. “Chaos Space Marine” and “Mark’s Theme” retrofit their post-rock maximalism with relative concision while the last 3 songs continually expand from their roots into towering, chamber pop epics. The music throughout is consistently dense and adventurous, but never showy, and consistently imbued with sharp dynamics at every turn. The music unfolds patiently, with songs like “Bread Song” and “Haldern” continuously building momentum into new, soaring movements without ever releasing their respective bundles of tension. But as the closer “Basketball Shoes” reaches its colossal coda all of the pent up intensity from the preceding 9 songs erupts into a string and horn-laden curtain call that achieves that sense of sweeping, communal transcendence that only this sort of music can really pull off. Despite Isaac Wood’s abrupt exit, the future of BC,NR has never seemed more thrilling and full of possibility.

Essentials: “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade”, “Snow Globes”, “Basketball Shoes”

9. Natural Brown Prom Queen- Sudan Archives

Sudan Archives, aka Britney Parks, quickly became one of the most exciting new voices in r&b after the release of her 2019 debut LP, Athena, and while her follow-up, Natural Brown Prom Queen, doesn't drastically alter her approach it's a colossal leap forward by every conceivable metric. NBPQ decimates notions of conventional r&b, folding electronic music, art rock, trap, chamber pop, neo-soul, and psychedelia into her swirling, genre-agnostic compositions without ever sounding gimmicky or unfocused. Parks recorded NBPQ with a plethora of different musicians that include Ben Dickey, Simon on the Moon, and Nosaj Thing among many others in a home studio that she built with her boyfriend (who happens to be the rapper Nocando), and it exudes a communal feel through the idiosyncrasies of all those involved coupled with its themes of community, race, female identify, and self-love. But while NBPQ is an intensely collaborative affair, there's no mistaking the voice at the forefront belonging to anyone other than Britney. NBPQ is simultaneously one of the year's most accessible and forward-thinking records, and it cements Britney's status as one of the most compelling current voices in r&b.

Despite the sonic variety on display throughout NBPQ it's a remarkably cohesive record that's held together through tight mixing, and the strength of Sudan's voice and violin playing. The 18 songs on NBPQ unfold like a single suite due to the impeccable transitions and tight mixing. The glossy trap of "OMG BRITT" practically melts into the lush neo-soul of "ChevyS10", while the patient comedown of the 808 shuffle on “Freaklizer” segues seamlessly into the narcotic sway of “Homesick (Goregous & Arrogant)”. Each song carves out a distinct sonic identify, but Sudan’s voice and omnipresent violin playing provide a distinctive through line. Throughout NPBQ Britney addresses race and identify (“Selfish Soul”, “NPBQ”) the power of class dynamics in relationships (“ChevyS10”), what domestic roles say about who we are (“Homemaker”) and so much more with a sharp wit, and a sympathetic, but critical eye. On closer “#513” Sudan throws her hands up in their air and resolves to move back from L.A. to her hometown of Cinncinatti “I don’t really wanna follow/Tricky, trendy little things/Hollwood will make you hollow/I’m too rooted in my ways”. It’s a perfect cap to a record that’s steeped in confronting uncomfortable truths, and it, along with the rest of NBPQ, represents some of the most forward-thinking pop music that I’ve heard this year.

Essentials: “Homemaker”, “NBPQ”, “Selfish Soul”

8. Labyrinthitis- Destroyer

Dan Bejar has released many great records as Destroyer throughout the 21st century thus far, but everything that he’s released following his 2011 lounge-pop opus, Kaputt, has lived under the shadow of that record to varying degrees. Bejar’s latest LP, Labyrinthitis, is his first post-Kaputt record to escape that distinction. On Labyrinthitis, Bejar continues to keep the listener at an arm's length with his proclivity for for obscure references, cryptic allusions, and some of the dryest jokes this side of the Ben Shapiro WAP discourse, but his music soars with a newfound sense of scale. This time around, Bejar's lush art pop was spiked with the frenetic pulse of disco and synth pop, rendering the music more lively and dynamic without shattering the spell that Bejar so carefully casts. This fresh backdrop seemed to loosen Bejar, inspiring some of the strangest, and most striking writing of his career to date. Despite having released albums as Destroyer for nearly 30 years, Labyrinthitis still somehow sounds like a fresh start.

Labyrinthitis was recorded by Bejar's usual band with John Collins returning to his executive producer role. The songs were shaped from demos that Bejar and Collins traded back and forth with one another, and then subsequently fleshed out by the band. A few of the songs here, like singles "June" and "Tinteretto, It's For You" are bigger, and bolder than anything that Bejar has ever done while others like "Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread" and "Suffer" luxuriate in tight grooves while a variety of different textures weave in and out of the mix. There's a nice balance between ambitious, dramatic strokes and understated acoustic reveries, with great pacing and tight mixing that helps sustain the initial momentum through to the end. The title track is a borderline ambient reprieve that provides a much needed breather after the synth breakdowns that erupt throughout "Tinteretto, It’s For You", while the succinct lullaby closer "The Last Thing" snaps things back into focus following right on the heels of the faded disco centerpiece, "The States". The actual music on a Destroyer record hasn't done this kind of consistent heavy lifting since Bejar’s sublime 2006 LP, Destroyer's Rubies, and it's thrilling to hear him begin to really let loose without breaking form.

And, as with all Destroyer albums, the writing throughout Labyrinthitis is relentlessly thorny and obtuse, but never less than engaging. The disco breakdown of “June” alone has more than its fair share of some of his most iconic lines to date “But I do radiate a certain glow/It flutters and fades, a Ferris wheel on the run from the the snow/You have to look at it from all angles/Says the cubist judge from cubist jail” each subsequent line more daring and bizarre than the last. “Eat the Wine, Drink the Bread” finds Bejar surprisingly direct “I don’t know/Where I’m going/It’s insane in here, it’s lunacy out there/And everything you just said/Was better left unsaid” while on “Tinteretto, It’s For You” he’s at his most impressionistic “The celling’s on fire and the contract is binding/Your little one’s sick at the sight (insert three syllables here) at night/They drop you from a great height/Into a war that you were born to lose”. The thrill of Bejar’s writing throughout Labyrinthitis is in how he stitches provocative non-sequiturs into a deeply affecting whole. It's unlikely that Dan Bejar will become any less inscrutable as he continues to age, and that, coupled with an increasingly adventurous interest in arrangement, bodes extremely well for the future of the Destroyer project.

Essentials: “June”, “The States”, “Suffer”

7. Endure- Special Interest

Special Interest differentiated themselves from the thralls of disco punk rockers with their terrific 2020 LP, The Passion Of, which highlighted the intensity and raw magnetism of front person Alli Logout, and the band’s seamless fusion of punk, disco, techno, and glam. On the band’s 3rd LP, Endure, they’ve gotten nastier and more tuneful, as their blistering rage began to calcify into bracing rhythms, seething arrangements, and dynamic hooks. The band have only gotten tighter, and have continued to hone their sharp chemistry with each subsequent release from their scrappy 2018 debut, Spiraling, to the present. Their commitment to craft has resulted in songs on Endure that ripple with confident, calamitous energy, further accentuated by each of Alli Logout’s stunning vocal performances. Their pointed writing takes on a heightened level of poignancy on the club tribute “Midnight Legend”, a fresh coating of venom on call to arms standout “Concerning Peace”, and an anthemic tilt on early 4 on the floor stomper “(Herman’s) House”. On Endure, Special Interest have struck a newfound immediacy that's amplified the impact of their blistering resolve.

The songs on Endure find the band continuing to distill the thrills of their influences into idiosyncratic shapes that defy easy categorization at every turn. Opener “Cherry Blue Intention” instantly tear into a tight, infectious disco groove as Logout sets the stage with an instantly iconic line “Enigmatic super psycho/I can be whoever you want, just for the night though”. The music seamlessly spills into the siren call of the aforementioned “(Herman’s) House”, which quickly ignites with the band’s nastiest bassline to date set against a thunderous 4 on the floor rhythm, resulting in one of the band’s most iconic hooks to date. “Love Scene” finds Logout delivering a series of creeping verses that spill over into an ignited, multi-tracked hook over a thunderous floor tom rhythm laced with sinister sounding synths, while “My Displeasure” utilizes a chugging, industrial low-end backdrop as a springboard for Logout’s musings on what scans like perfectionism “As I walk through the valley of a mirage of sanction/I confess I won’t mind if I die/I come undone the more I try”. The band self-produced Endure, and it’s remarkable to hear how much bigger and richer sounding they were able to render these songs beyond their past work while still amplifying the chaotic spirit imbedded within.

While the music throughout Endure seethes with an unbridled intensity the writing only amplifies the hardened resolve that the instrumentation exudes. “LA Blues” (And if you don't like it you can fuck right off/Them boys in blue don’t come around this block, ha-ha-ha-ha-oh/Streets and seas stay winding, they don’t stop/And if you don’t like it you can fuck right off”) and “Foul” (“Dirty money (Dirty boss)/End is nigh (U.T.I)/Pissed and drained (Much disdain)/How to measure (What you’ve lost)/Time is ticking (Rich stay sittin’)/Tedious chat (Eek, a rat)/Call it in (Off the clock)/Much to prove, more to rot”) make their contempt for power structures crystal clear through visceral imagery and an incendiary tone. The record’s most bracing moment arrives on late album highlight “Concerning Peace” as Logout unleashes a barrage of scorched earth sentiments with remarkable poise “Who gets offered the American dream?/To O.D. on fent in a fascist regime/Who can’t afford shit/’Cause the price is fucking gouged/Don’t even have a house/The landlord kicked us out”. These songs pull no punches and state their intentions without any pretense of irony, but the overt rage seething just beneath the surface never prevents the band from delivering strong hooks and infectious rhythms. On Endure, Special Interest’s mission comes into focus with a heightened level of clarity and thrilling execution.

Essentials: “Concerning Peace”, “My Displeasure”, “Midnight Legend” ft. Mykki Blanco

6. Blue Rev- Alvvays

Ever since Alvvays became an indie household name with their iconic 2014 single, "Archie, Marry Me" they've cultivated a very specific jangly indie pop sound that's proven easy to imitate, but difficult to pull off with any real ingenuity or personality. It's hard to think of many indie bands that have been ripped off more than Alvvays throughout the 10s. And while Alvvays have never made a bad record, they've historically come off like more of a singles band that had yet to make the leap. Their 2014 self-titled debut and 2017 follow-up Antisocialites both hung together more like a collection of strong singles with some filler than front to back engrossing album experiences. On the band's 3rd LP, Blue Rev, Alvvays have made the leap. BR consists of 14 tight, multi-faceted pop songs that seamlessly span jangle pop, dream pop, and power pop within the course of 38 minutes without breaking a sweat. The band's scope and ambition throughout BR exceed everything that they've done previously by several orders of magnitude, but thankfully they retained the infectious melodic sensibility at their core. Like the best pop music, the songs on BR have a simplicity that belies their ingenuity and an undeniable immediacy.

The songs on BR are still snappy, 3 minute pop songs, but they're among the tightest, most well-crafted songs that I've heard all year. The grand production comes courtesy of Shawn Everett (who was responsible for similarly blowing open the sound of records by The War on Drugs, Kim Gordon, The Killers, etc), and he infused these songs with an abundance of rich detail that helps allow them to pop even at their most subdued and understated. Structurally speaking, there isn't much of a shift on BR, but the verses, bridges, and hooks on these songs are more dynamic and fleshed out. Opener "Pharmacist" and early cut "Tom Verlaine" imbue shoegaze guitar textures into driving power pop, coming off like Flying Nun’s answer to My Bloody Valentine. There are songs like "Pressed" and late album highlight "Pomeranian Spinster" that actually rip in the mold of classic alt-rock, and late album anthems like "Lottery Noise" and "Belinda Says" that erupt into dazzling coda's bursting with catharsis. And then there are the little details, like the keyboard riff on "Very Online Guy", the way the guitars roar back into action after frontwoman Molly Rankin sings "It's only wind outside" on "Easy on Your Own", or the way that Molly adopts a more affected delivery on the last hook of "Many Mirrors", that elevate these songs beyond just great songwriting. Alvvays are the tightest that they've ever sounded on BR, and their personalities bleed through the music at every turn.

While Alvvays have made the most substantial leaps forward musically on BR, Rankin's songwriting is also at its sharpest and most direct. The much buzzed about single "Very Online Guy" isn't so much a commentary on reply guy culture so much as a psychedelic observation of a specific online guy sitting around, shifting his identity with each passing trend "He's incredible animal/Front of the wedding trains/He laps up all the domains/And he loves a patio" draped in glistening, effects-laden keys. On the spectacularly titled late album ripper "Pomeranian Spinster" Rankin lays into what she perceives as society's perception of her with gleefully rendered venom "I don't wanna be nice/I don't want your advice/On the run in my tights" while early cut "After the Earthquake" explores the sensation of an unnamed conflict between lovers hanging in the air after one of them endures a potentially fatal accident "Those days, I'd never let you fall apart/But things fade like the scent of a brand new car/Why would I ever fall in love again/When every detail is over the guard rail?". These songs are some of the richest yet nuanced vignettes that Rankin has ever penned. Everything comes into focus on the cathartic centerpiece "Belinda Says", as Rankin riffs on Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven is a Place on Earth" while she acknowledges that both heaven and hell can be simulated on earth through the love (or hatred) of other people "And I find myself paralyzed/Knowing all too well terrified/But I'll find my way". BR is the sound of Alvvays figuring out how to carve out a slice of paradise for themselves on earth.

Essentials: “Lottery Noises”, “Pharmacist”, “Belinda Says”

5. Time Skiffs- Animal Collective

Animal Collective spent the better part of the 2010s engaged in various solo albums and side projects, many of which were beginning to completely overshadow their main releases. But the collective’s 2020 EP, Bridge to Quiet, signaled something new on the horizon. Murky, jazz-tinged, and even dubbier than usual, BtQ was a relatively understated full band record that teased some of what was to come with their 11th LP, Time Skiffs. On TS, the band strip things back, and indulge in some of their lushest and languid tendencies while still keeping things relatively tight. In a welcome change of pace from the chaotic zeal of their last two LPs, TS is imbued with the free-flowing spirit of jam bands, and comes off like the band’s approximation of dad rock distilled through their own idiosyncrasies. The band’s singular characteristics (giddy harmonies, dense soundscapes of samples, sparse, tribal percussion) are all in steep supply, but they’re in service of some of the most immediate music that they’ve ever made. TS isn’t as adventurous or daring as their best work, but it’s an infectious course correction that highlights the strongest elements of the band while still managing to push their sound forward in a few exciting new directions.

On TS, Animal Collective are at their most restrained since Campfire Songs, but the album packs far more sonic character. Panda Bear returns to the drum kit, delivering tight, dub-flecked rhythms that establish a sturdy foundation for each of these colorful compositions. Deakin swapped out his guitar for keys, Avey took up bass, and Geologist, naturally, is still locking it down on keys, synths, and samples. The different instrumental setup breathes new life into these songs, which are easily among the prettiest and most patient sounding that the band have ever released. Aside from the vocal eruptions in “Strung with Everything” and the keys/hook in “Car Keys” the music on TS consistently basks in tranquility. The songs on TS are tighter and more focused this time around than anything that the band has done since their great 2009 EP Fall Be Kind, but thankfully they move at a more relaxed pace and are each packed with plenty of space. One of the more notable shifts is the greater presence of Deakin, who wrote the lush closer “Royal and Desire”, and contributes vocals to several more of these songs. His voice has a more nuanced edge that splits the difference between Panda’s glowing frequency and Avey’s animated yelps. There are songs like “Dragon Slayer” and “Walker” that distill their manic energy into snappy pop songs while songs like “We Go Back”, “Passer-by”, and the aforementioned “Royal and Desire” bring back the drone in service of spacious lounge pop.

The thematic concerns expressed throughout TS take adopt a more macro view than usual as references to an unstainable climate and unmitigated greed begin to seep into their typically idyllic surrealism. The desperation of the current moment is unmistakably woven into these songs, but the band remain resolute in their optimism in the face of impending destruction. The vibrant early single “Strung With Everything” erupts into a cacophony of glee that shrouds Avey’s increasingly exasperated suggestions “Let’s say tonight you and me/We’ll watch the sky fall into pieces/And for a moment imagine strings/Holding the trees from falling down“ before reaching the triumphant realization “And even though all hearts are strange/We’re all strung with everything”. “We Go Back” puts a premium on learning from the mistakes of history to work towards a better future while “Walker” folds a lovely tribute to the late avant-garde musician Scott Walker into a reminder of the importance of living in the moment. The album’s graceful centerpiece, “Cherokee”, evokes privilege, colonialism history, commercialism, and self-growth, in its rollicking dub sprawl as Tare depicts being mistaken for a foreigner, traversing in a Jeep over stolen land, and pondering the meaning of identify “Out there in Black Mountain sprouts education, see/But you can learn a lot, just take a walk above my tree/They gathered round the easel and spelled community”. These songs are much less insular than usual, and while far from imbued with simple Hallmark platitudes, they don’t shy away from the band’s tried and true wholesome demeanor either. Even after over 2 decades of recording and playing music with one another Animal Collective are still challenging themselves and keeping their audience guessing. Here’s to the next 20.

Essentials: “Cherokee”, “Car Keys”, “Strung With Everything”

4. God Save the Animals- Alex G

Alex G has managed to cultivate an incredibly impressive discography on Bandcamp before he was ever signed, and while he's had access to far more resources than your typical bedroom pop act since his first Domino record, Beach Music, his music has only continued to revel more thoroughly in his idiosyncrasies. Like the work of Cocteau Twins or Gang Gang Dance before him, the more polished and clear sounding that Alex G's music becomes the stranger and more difficult to pin down it continuously reveals itself to be. On Alex G's 9th LP, God Save the Animals, Alex leans furthest into pitch-shifted vocal manipulation and formal pop structures yet, revealing an album flush with faith in the existence of a higher power and the influence of hyperpop. There are still flecks of thorny dissonance scattered throughout GStA, but this is by and large one of his most approachable records; one imbued with a renewed melodic warmth that animates its every moment. Alex is still generally keeping the listener at an arm’s length with his cryptic character studies, but the songwriting on the whole feels more personal this time around. With each subsequent record it's become increasingly clear that Alex is a peerless producer who continues to write some of the most striking songs of his generation. GStA isn't necessarily the best Alex G record, but it's one of the best pure distillations of his sound yet, and an easy entry point into his peculiar universe.

Alex G's music has always split the difference between sour, stripped down, lo-fi indie rock and queasy, experimental electronic music, but GStA strikes the strongest balance between those impulses yet. Songs like the immediate singles "Miracles" and "Runner" stick to tried and true acoustic guitar pop, allowing his increasingly idiosyncratic songwriting to shine through, while deep cuts like "No Bitterness" and "Immunity" filter hyperpop textures through the sort of auto-tune balladry that's become a staple of his latest few records. The incorporation of hyperpop is the most notable shift in Alex's sound this time around, but unlike a typical gimmicky shift towards the zeitgeist these occasional pivots to hyperpop feel like inspired, and logical extensions of the electronic detours that he's slowly been perfecting for years. The sharp sequencing accentuates just how much range there is on this record, and it's thrilling to hear the fried synths on "Cross the Sea" bleed into those that open "Blessing", or to hear the scattered piano notes that close "Immunity" seamlessly transition into late album instrumental stomper "Headroom Piano". The vocal manipulation is more pronounced throughout GStA than on any of his prior records, and while the pitch-shifted melodies can feel borderline excessive at times (like on S.D.O.S.), it generally remains a tasteful choice that works in service of the individual songs themselves. Even as Alex's sound becomes increasingly defined he's still throwing inspired curve balls in every direction.

The songs on GStA continue in the vein of Alex's usual character sketches, but he seems to have let more of himself into the music here than on any past records. This time around the writing was informed by the heightened presence of religion in the lives of people close to him, and while the songs aren't necessarily about them, per se, they seem very much informed by those experiences and conversations. References to faith and a higher power abound in songs like "After All", "S.D.O.S." and "Forgive", but the desolation that marks his best work continues to lurk around every corner. "Runner" paints a sympathetic portrait of a drug runner from the vantage of their boss "I laugh when you say the wrong thing/Mouthing off to everyone but me/They hit you with the rolled up magazine" while "Early Morning Waiting" finds its narrator lying around waiting for judgement day questioning whether they've made the right decisions up to the end "Haven't I given enough/When will I run out of love?/Was I wrong to call his bluff?". On late album centerpiece and show-stopping single, "Miracles", Alex seems to get unusually personal "How many more songs do I have to write/Before I can turn it off and say good night" offering a peak behind the veil over softly strummed acoustic guitar, pedal steel, and one of his warmest vocal melodies to date. GStA is the most personal that he's ever allowed himself to be on record, but thankfully his music still exudes its surreal, singular sheen.

Essentials: “Miracles”, “Blessing”, “No Bitterness”

3. A Light for Attracting Attention- The Smile

While Radiohead never formally broke up, their last LP, the austere, and insular A Moon Shaped Pool, suggested a sense of finality to their 3 decades long art rock journey. It was loaded with several fan favorite live staples from various eras, and its string-laden chamber pop sound, seemingly informed by guitarist Jonny Greenwood's film scoring side gigs, achieved a dour sense of cohesion befitting a legacy band closing a chapter of their lives. Since wrapping up the tour for AMSP each member of Radiohead was seemingly working within the confines of solo work, until it a new band called The Smile debuted material for a concert video produced by the Glastonbury Festival. The Smile consists of Thom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead, and the drummer Tom Skinner from the recently defunct avant-garde jazz group, Sons of Kemet. The Smile's debut LP, A Light for Attracting Attention (which was produced by Nigel Godrich, the longtime producer of Radiohead) exudes the striking, singular qualities of Radiohead's music along with plenty of fresh new wrinkles that render The Smile far more than just another Radiohead side project.

Eschewing the grandiose expectations that arrive alongside a new Radiohead album seems to have revitalized Yorke and Greenwood's chemistry. The music feels urgent even at its most sedate, and the presence of Skinner behind the kit loosened up the pair to indulge in their most far-flung impulses. Skinner's delicate touch provides a superb counterpoint to the arrangements and Yorke's vocal melodies while imparting a slight improvisatory feel to the proceedings. On ALfAA The Smile navigate art rock, post punk, afrobeats, ambient, and light shades of jazz with ease. Having Godrich behind the boards ensures that the comparisons to Radiohead go far beyond just Yorke's voice, but it also allows for an accentuation of the fine details in the music of The Smile in the same way that it did for the music of Radiohead. The music unfolds on a much smaller, more intimate scale then Radiohead's work, allowing for a more raw, personal touch that lends itself particularly well to Yorke's voice.

As expected with any album that has songs written by Thom Yorke, ALfAA is a bleak, foreboding record that deals primarily in disillusionment. Opener “The Same” sets the tone for the album with Yorke pleading for peace in the face of rising fascism across the globe “People in the streets/Please/We all want the same“ as synths erupt around him. “There are songs like “You Will Never Work in Television Again” and “A Hairdryer” that take jabs at Harvey Weinstein “Curtain calling for the kiss/From the nursey rhyme/Behind some rocks, underneath some bridge/Some gangster troll promising the moon” and Donald Trump “Shame on you/Blue-eyed fox/A slipping shroud/Way up loud” respectively while acknowledging the broader social failings that allowed men like them to come to power. “Thin Thing” addresses the narcotic pull of social media “First she’ll pull your fingers off/And then she’ll pull your toes/And then she’ll steal the photos from your phone” while “Open the Floodgates” laments the disposable nature directed at everything that’s branded as content “With no tricks and/No struggling/Then no one gets hurt/We absorb you/We absolve you/Throw your rubbish away”. These songs inhibit familiar thematic territory for Yorke without lapsing into tired retreads.

The songs on ALfAA run the gamut from scorched earth post-punk rippers to gorgeous ambient ballads, and everything in between with a disarming level of assurance. Early single ,"You Will Never Work in Television Again" and late album highlight "We Don't Know What Tomorrow Brings" are the most propulsive tracks from the band members sans Skinner since In Rainbows, with the former taking on gnarled post-punk while the latter brings driving krautrock into the fold for an anthemic jolt of energy just before curtain call. "The Smoke" gets a ridiculous amount of mileage out of a slinky bassline, finding the sweet spot between funk and afrobeat without letting the stiches show while "A Hairdryer" showcases some nimble drumming over jangly chords that build to a fervent, multi-tracked Yorke wail. The album's strongest songs arrive back to back in the middle of the record in the form of "Open the Floodgates" and "Free in the Knowledge", two songs so achingly beautiful that if they were arranged with less ingenuity they could almost pass for Coldplay ballads circa Viva la Vida. On ALfAA, The Smile escape the common fate of offshoots and super groups, cultivating an aesthetic informed by their prior bands but distinctly their own.

Essentials: “Open the Floodgates”, “Free in the Knowledge”, “The Smoke”

2. Diaspora Problems- Soul Glo

Hardcore is a genre that thrives on constant motion. There's that cliche about the energy of the music played live being impossible to capture on record, and the difficulty of sustaining that kind of unrelenting propulsion for longer than 15 minutes before it begins to wear thin. And that's not to say that there aren't plenty of great hardcore records, but they tend to get canonized like secondary items with respect to the live show. On the hardcore Philly band Soul Glo's 4th LP, Diaspora Problems, the band expand the possibilities of where hardcore can go with massive, positively seething swings at the police, fake alias, and capitalism at large. Soul Glo's first 3 LPs had plenty of promise, but on DP their songwriting hit a dramatic new peak as they cultivated an idiosyncratic sound that seamlessly blends hardcore, hip hop, and industrial music, and is now theirs alone. There's a refreshing bluntness about their approach, both sonically and lyrically, that makes it all go down that much sweeter even at their most incendiary. On DP, Soul Glo break apart from the pack of their peers through talent, guts, ingenuity, and sheer force of will.

Soul Glo consists of frontman Pierce Jordan, guitarist, bassist, and programmer GG Guerra, and drummer TJ Stevenson (they had a second guitarist named Ruben Polo who played on DP but was kicked out shortly afterwards due to sexual misconduct allegations). They play loose and fast with a whiplash inducing intensity, but the music has far more sonic character than your typical hardcore record. With 12 songs spread across an almost 40 minute runtime DP is an unusually robust record, but it justifies its length through smart pacing, strong mixing, and a remarkable level of range. Programmed beats, horn sections, and guest rappers all coalesce into a dynamic sound that seems to gleefully flip the bird at purists and gatekeepers. DP doesn't have peaks and valleys so much as it just has one continuous sprint that dispenses the occasional breather through vocal samples that emerge at the beginning of ending of various songs, like the clear standout that closes "John J" "Them n***** are trying to kill all of us/I will never let anyone convince me otherwise/Especially not white liberals" before the intensity of the music ignites once more.

On DP Soul Glo channel their righteous energy into songs that are far more than the sum of their disparate elements. DP opens with arguably the band's strongest moment to date in the form of the bristling "Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)", which folds increasingly unhinged shrieks, several breakdowns, and a strutting rhythm into a statement of purpose that almost collapses under the weight of its conviction. It's the sonic equivalent of a shot of adrenaline, and a good litmus test for whether or not you can endure the rest of DP. "Driponomics" injects an industrial thrust into their chameleonic hardcore and features a show-stopping verse from Mother Mayrose "Fuck being good, I'm a bad bitch/If he buying bags/I'ma fuck him like a savage/I be popping tags/Cause a bitch livin' lavish/Bitches gon' hate cause they know they can't have this, ya" while "GODBLESSYALLREALGOOD" finds the band shuffling through funk and nu-metal with equal conviction. Closer "Spiritual Level of Gang Shit" begins with Jordan rapping over a simmering guitar progression and builds into a horn-laden, rollicking anthem with Jordan screaming "It's a spiritual level of gang shit" at the top of his lungs as the music swells with urgency around him. The songs on DP are some of the nastiest that I've had the pleasure of listening to in years, and are rendered all the more potent by the band's provocative poise.

Soul Glo's outlook is unmistakably anti-capitalist, and throughout DP they thoroughly peel back the band-aid of reform to reveal the festering wound of a system seemingly broken beyond repair. "Jump!!" rails against state sanctioned violence against black people and the parasitic nature of the music industry (especially with respect to black people) "Livin' on Juice Wrld, Pop Smoke time/I'll be in my future, come try to remove it" while "The Thangs I Carry" bemoans the delusion of liberals in the face of encroaching fascism "I'm so bored by the left, protests, and reluctance to militarize/No one's left blind by an eye for an eye unless you make the same mistake twice". The scathing sentiments come to a head on the dense centerpiece "John J" which starts with Jordan rapping about a suicide attempt before switching gears towards an examination of the 2020 protests and the futility of trying to reform something that's fundamentally exploitative regardless of how you dress it "Anyone who's on reform is really an informant/I take the bullet, you take the ballot, peaceful protest is fucking boring/Between torching PD's and taking knees, oh my god I take the former/You can eat this dick and swallow the whole clip, that's on God and Chris Dorner". Soul Glo's unrelenting vitriol is a balm for a world that's grown too complacent to confront its shortcomings.

Essentials: “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)”, “Driponomics” ft. Mary Motherrose, “Spiritual Level of Gang Shit” ft. McKinley Dixon & lojii

1. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You- Big Thief

No other band throughout the last half decade has released records as uniformly strong as Big Thief. From their sparse, 2016 folk rock debut Masterpiece to their visceral, second 2019 LP Two Hands, Big Thief have matured into the sort of ambitious, creatively relentless act that comes around maybe once in a generation. On the band’s fifth LP and first double album, Dragon New Mountain I Believe In You, Big Thief stretch the parameters of their sound in several new directions without reaching diminishing returns or exceeding their depth. DNWMIBIY is the platonic ideal of a double album; there’s too many good ideas to settle for a single disc, and the band are at a point in their career where they’ve reached the confidence and ability to perpetually shift the idea of what Big Thief are supposed to sound like without sacrificing their essence. DNWMIBIY is the sound of this generation’s most creatively vital band at the peak of their powers and figuring out what they’re capable of.

Big Thief are a 4 piece folk rock band that consists of guitarist Buck Meek, bassist Max Oleartchik, drummer James Krivchenia, and singer/songwriter and guitarist Adrianne Lenker. Their first four albums found them thawing out from an insular, homespun indie folk act into a versatile indie rock band, with tighter playing, stronger imagery, and sharper chemistry emerging throughout each subsequent release. DNWMIBIY is the most stylistically far-flung record of Big Thief’s to date, and incorporates country music, trip-hop, jaw harp, and the sound of Max playing icicles into their dynamic wheelhouse. DNWMIBIY packs 20 songs into 80 minutes, and nothing overstays its welcome, sounds slight, or feels forced. The sequencing is impeccable for an album with such bold sonic shifts, flowing seamlessly from song to song while succeeding as both an exhaustive mood board to showcase the band’s range as well as a cohesive listening experience. While it’s understandable that some longtime fans might lament the loss of the band’s more understated halcyon days, the music here is the most thrilling that they’ve ever recorded. The band’s scope on DNWMIBIY is remarkable, and the album towers over the sum of its parts.

Opener “Change” is a low-key folk song in the vein of where they left off on TH, with the band rising softly with lush strokes around Lenker’s quiet rumination, but the following song “Time Escaping” takes us somewhere totally unexpected for them. Here, a looped percussive tone barrels through the mix as the foundation for sprightly indie rock as Lenker sings about the passage of time. The sharp contrast between those songs sets the stage for where the rest of the album goes. DNWMIBIY was the first album of theirs to have been produced by James, and his keen ear allows songs like the aforementioned “Time Escaping” and the distortion-laced sensual highlight “Flower of Blood” to blossom with vibrant urgency. The largest outliers here are the strutting trip-hop of “Blurred View”, the sleepy folktronica of “Heavy Bend”, and the drum-machine propelled jog “Wake Me Up to Drive”, all of which would have seemed completely out of place on prior records but work perfectly within the context of the record’s sprawling framework. And while the band have always had a twangy element to their sound, songs like “Spud Infinity”, “Blue Lightning”, and “Red Moon” find the band trying their hand at full-blown country rock and it’s the most inspired pivot that they've pulled of yet.

While there are plenty of attention demanding standouts and impressive experiments littered throughout DNWIBIY the record is often at its most arresting in its quieter moments. Early single and highlight “Sparrow” builds from several minutes of sparse acoustic guitar centered around Adam and Eve imagery into an increasingly cathartic vocal performance from Lenker as the music softly swells with feedback around her. The mesmerizing title track and “The Only Place” call back to the dream-folk of U.F.O.F. with their use of space and the emphasis on nimble finger picked guitar set against Lenker’s soft croon, while songs like “Certainty” and “No Reason” are understated true to form transitional songs that highlight the tight interplay between Lenker and the rest of the band. Even the most conventional sounding Big Thief songs like “Promise is a Pendulum” and “12,000 Lines” hardly feel like retreads, with the former showcasing some of Lenker’s most striking imagery “I could never build the ether or the grass overgrown/I could never build the river with a mouth full of foam/I could never build the winter with her cold tears of glitter”, and the latter taking the shape of an unusually urgent camp fire sing along “Some nights, barely breathing at all/Waiting for my woman to call”.

The greatest draw of Big Thief’s music is still the infectious interplay between each member of the band and the way that they all operate as equally creative forces working in perfect harmony with one another, but there’s no denying that Lenker’s voice is the most dynamic element of their sound. Her versatility allows the band to tear through upbeat cuts like “Little Things” with as much conviction as the hushed whisper of songs like “The Only Place”, while her writing casts a sympathetic gaze over everything from the beauty of nature and human connection to heartbreak and death. She’s at her most warm and rousing on “Red Moon” and “Spud Infinity with iconic lines that reference her grandma and potatoes respectively, her most gripping on “Sparrow” “She talks to snakes and they guide her/She has the poison inside her”, and “her most contemplative on the title track “When the topsoil/Is kicking up into the storm/And the dust goes dancing/And a billion planets are born”. The sincerity and depth of her writing coupled with her consistently magnetic performances are what elevate the band’s music from consistently great to something far more idiosyncratic altogether. DNWMIBIY is the full-realization of the sound that Big Thief have been cultivating since MP; the perfect encapsulation of ambition for ambitions sake coupled with inspiration so potent that it can barely be contained. Listening to DNWMIBIY you get the sense that Big Thief could go anywhere with their music, and while it’s hard to say what that might look like it’s pretty clear that they’re still far from saying everything that they have to say.

Essentials: “Red Moon”, “Flower of Blood”, “Spud Infinity”

#big thief #soul glo #the smile #alex g #animal collective #alvvays #special interest #destroyer #sudan archives #black country new road

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jadenvargen · 8 months ago

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free online james baldwin stories, essays, videos, and other resources

**edit

James baldwin online archive with his articles and photo archives.

---NOVELS---

Giovanni's room"When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy. This book introduces love's fascinating possibilities and extremities."

Go Tell It On The Mountain"(...)Baldwin's first major work, a semi-autobiographical novel that has established itself as an American classic. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Baldwin's rendering of his protagonist's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves."

+bonus: film adaptation on youtube. (if you’re a giancarlo esposito fan, you’ll be delighted to see him in an early preacher role)

Another Country and Going to Meet the Man Another country: "James Baldwin's masterly story of desire, hatred and violence opens with the unforgettable character of Rufus Scott, a scavenging Harlem jazz musician adrift in New York. Self-destructive, bad and brilliant, he draws us into a Bohemian underworld pulsing with heat, music and sex, where desperate and dangerous characters betray, love and test each other to the limit." Going to meet the Man: " collection of eight short stories by American writer James Baldwin. The book, dedicated "for Beauford Delaney", covers many topics related to anti-Black racism in American society, as well as African-American–Jewish relations, childhood, the creative process, criminal justice, drug addiction, family relationships, jazz, lynching, sexuality, and white supremacy."

Just Above My Head"Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses--and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land."

If Beale Street Could Talk"Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin's story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions-affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche."

also has a film adaptation by moonlight's barry jenkins

Tell Me How Long the Train's been gone At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo's childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo's loyalty.

---ESSAYS---

Baldwin essay collection. Including most famously: notes of a native son, nobody knows my name, the fire next time, no name in the street, the devil finds work- baldwin on film

--DOCUMENTARIES--

Take this hammer, a tour of san Francisco.

Meeting the man

--DEBATES:--

Debate with Malcolm x, 1963 ( on integration, the nation of islam, and other topics. )

Debate with William Buckley, 1965. ( historic debate in america. )

Heavily moderated debate with Malcolm x, Charles Eric Lincoln, and Samuel Schyle 1961. (Primarily Malcolm X's debate on behalf of the nation of islam, with Baldwin giving occassional inputs.)

----

apart from themes obvious in the book's descriptions, a general heads up for themes of incest and sexual assault throughout his works.

#james baldwin #motivated by i think people here think it's harder to find resources and read than it actually is. so much stuff online!#motivation nr 2 wtf

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read-marx-and-lenin · 2 months ago

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I'm asking this in good faith, but this is something I'm genuinely confused about. Regarding the Holodomor, or the Soviet famine of 1930 in general, why does it matter if it was a genocide or not? At best it seems to be a natural famine exacerbated by poor decision making, and while that is far different from a genocide, I don't understand why that specification matters, because it was still made worse by Soviet intervention, unless I'm getting the facts wrong which I probably am.

It matters to the Western propagandists who were insistent for decades despite zero evidence that the famine was used to commit atrocities against the people of Ukraine. The refrain the whole time was that once the Soviet archives were made public, they'd finally have the proof they needed. The archives are eventually opened, and surprise surprise, there's not only no evidence of the deliberate withholding of grain, there's evidence of significant amounts of food aid being sent to help alleviate the famine. The myth of a Ukrainian genocide began as Nazi propaganda and was adopted as part of the "double genocide" narrative by Western reactionaries after WW2 to downplay the crimes of the Nazis and to maintain a narrative about liberal opposition to "authoritarianism", painting Western capitalists as the "free world" fighting against both fascism and communism. (Don't ask them why they stopped fighting fascism after WW2 though.)

As for the human elements of the famine, it is also part of the typical Western narrative, even among those who admit the Holodomor was not a targeted anti-Ukrainian genocide and who admit that there were environmental factors, to try and put substantial amounts of blame on the Soviet collectivization of agriculture. I am not going to lie and say collectivization went smoothly with no issues, but you cannot ignore the factors of reactionary sabotage by kulaks (including the destruction of animals and grain and the outright murder of party officials) and the effects of Western sanctions and sabotage on the economic development of the USSR.

While some have argued that there was a complete "gold blockade" on the USSR during the famine and so the Soviet Union was forced to export grain to facilitate international trade, the blockade was never enforced by all Western nations at the same time and the Soviets were still able to export gold and silver at various times throughout the 1920s. It is true, however, that gold reserves were stretched thin at the time and the Soviets simply didn't have enough gold to cover their international debts. Soviet gold mines had never been extraordinarily productive and the rest of the Soviet economy was still developing at the time, so grain was one of the few things that they expected to have in surplus. In addition, there were various other sanctions in place by 1930 that did limit who they could trade with and what they could trade with, but the export of grain was almost never restricted. The famine caught them off guard at a very bad time.

While international grain exports were restricted during the famine as grain was diverted to famine-stricken regions of the country (and grain imports were increased as well), the problems with hoarding only worsened as in the panic of the famine, kulaks sought to exploit the people and create a profitable black market on grain. A struggle against the kulaks coincided with worsening environmental effects and the spread of disease among both crops and humans.

The famine was not man-made, it was not entirely natural, and it was not the inevitable outcome of collectivization. It was a perfect storm of a variety of factors. Stalin was not some heartless monster condemning millions of Ukrainians to death for daring to defy the glorious Soviet Union. He was not some idiot who had no idea what he was doing, plunging the nation into famine out of ineptitude. He was not a stubborn maniac who refused to abandon failing economic policies even at the cost of human lives. He was a human being, one of many in charge of the Soviet Union, dealing with concurrent disasters as best as they could.

#communism #socialism #leftism #ussr #soviet union #anon ask

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slaybey · 8 months ago

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act ii COWBOY CARTER 3.29

Today marks the 10-day countdown until the release of act ii. Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of the supporters of TEXAS HOLD ‘EM and 16 CARRIAGES. I feel honored to be the first Black woman with the number one single on the Hot Country Songs chart. That would not have happened without the outpouring of support from each and every one of you. My hope is that years from now, the mention of an artist’s race, as it relates to releasing genres of music, will be irrelevant.

This album has been over five years in the making. It was born out of an experience that I had years ago where I did not feel welcomed…and it was very clear that I wasn’t. But, because of that experience, I did a deeper dive into the history of Country music and studied our rich musical archive. It feels good to see how music can unite so many people around the world, while also amplifying the voices of some of the people who have dedicated so much of their lives educating on our musical history.

The criticisms I faced when I first entered this genre forced me to propel past the limitations that were put on me. act ii is a result of challenging myself, and taking my time to bend and blend genres together to create this body of work.

I have a few surprises on the album, and have collaborated with some brilliant artists who I deeply respect. I hope that you can hear my heart and soul, and all the love and passion that I poured into every detail and every sound.

I focused on this album as a continuation of RENAISSANCE…I hope this music is an experience, creating another journey where you can close your eyes, start from the beginning and never stop.

This ain’t a Country album. This is a “Beyoncé” album. This is act ii COWBOY CARTER, and I am proud to share it with y’all!

#beyonce #beyoncé #edit #by milla #femaledaily #dailywomen #userbbelcher #chewieblog #flawlessbeautyqueens #wonderfulwoc #ladiesblr #dailymusicians #cowboy carter

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 months ago

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Utah’s getting some of America’s best broadband

TOMORROW (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Residents of 21 cities in Utah have access to some of the fastest, most competitively priced broadband in the country, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/month. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading and downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.

This broadband service is, of course, delivered via fiber optic cable. Of course it is. Fiber is vastly superior to all other forms of broadband delivery, including satellites, but also cable and DSL. Fiber caps out at 100tb/s, while cable caps out at 50gb/s – that is, fiber is 1,000 times faster:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

Despite the obvious superiority of fiber, America has been very slow to adopt it. Our monopolistic carriers act as though pulling fiber to our homes is an impossible challenge. All those wires that currently go to your house, from power-lines to copper phone-lines, are relics of a mysterious, fallen civilization and its long-lost arts. Apparently we could no more get a new wire to your house than we could build the pyramids using only hand-tools.

In a sense, the people who say we can't pull wires anymore are right: these are relics of a lost civilization. Specifically, electrification and later, universal telephone service was accomplished through massive federal grants under the New Deal – grants that were typically made to either local governments or non-profit co-operatives who got everyone in town connected to these essential modern utilities.

Today – thanks to decades of neoliberalism and its dogmatic insistence that governments can't do anything and shouldn't try, lest they break the fragile equilibrium of the market – we have lost much of the public capacity that our grandparents took for granted. But in the isolated pockets where this capacity lives on, amazing things happen.

Since 2015, residents of Jackson County, KY – one of the poorest counties in America – have enjoyed some of the country's fastest, cheapest, most reliable broadband. The desperately poor Appalachian county is home to a rural telephone co-op, which grew out of its rural electrification co-op, and it used a combination of federal grants and local capacity to bring fiber to every home in the county, traversing dangerous mountain passes with a mule named "Ole Bub" to reach the most remote homes. The result was an immediately economic uplift for the community, and in the longer term, the county had reliable and effective broadband during the covid lockdowns:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Contrast this with places where the private sector has the only say over who gets broadband, at what speed, and at what price. America is full of broadband deserts – deserts that strand our poorest people. Even in the hearts of our largest densest cities, whole neighborhoods can't get any broadband. You won't be surprised to learn that these are the neighborhoods that were historically redlined, and that the people who live in them are Black and brown, and also live with some of the highest levels of pollution and its attendant sicknesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/10/flicc/#digital-divide

These places are not set up for success under the best of circumstances, and during the lockdowns, they suffered terribly. You think your kid found it hard to go to Zoom school? Imagine what life was like for kids who attended remote learning while sitting on the baking tarmac in a Taco Bell parking lot, using its free wifi:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/02/elem-s02.html

ISPs loathe competition. They divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "new world" and do not trouble one another by trying to sell to customers outside of "their" turf. When Frontier – one of the worst of America's terrible ISPs – went bankrupt, we got to see their books, and we learned two important facts:

The company booked one million customers who had no alternative as an asset, because they would pay more for slower broadband, and Frontier could save a fortune by skipping maintenance, and charging these customers for broadband even through multi-day outages; and

Frontier knew that it could make a billion dollars in profit over a decade by investing in fiber build-out, but it chose not to, because stock analysts will downrank any carrier that made capital investments that took more than five years to mature. Because Frontier's execs were paid primarily in stock, they chose to strand their customers with aging copper connections and to leave a billion dollars sitting on the table, so that their personal net worth didn't suffer a temporary downturn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

ISPs maintain the weirdest position: that a) only the private sector can deliver broadband effectively, but b) to do so, they'll need massive, unsupervised, no-strings-attached government handouts. For years, America went along with this improbable scheme, which is why Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave the carriers $45 billion in public funds to string slow, 19th-century-style copper lines across rural America:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/all-broadband-politics-are-local/

Now, this is obviously untrue, and people keep figuring out that publicly provisioned broadband is the only way for America to get the same standard of broadband connectivity that our cousins in other high-income nations enjoy. In order to thwart the public's will, the cable and telco lobbyists joined ALEC, the far-right, corporatist lobbying shop, and drafted "model legislation" banning cities and counties from providing broadband, even in places the carriers chose not to serve:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

Red states across America adopted these rules, and legislators sold this to their base by saying that this was just "keeping the government out of their internet" (even as every carrier relied on an exclusive, government-granted territorial charter, often with massive government subsidies).

ALEC didn't target red states exclusively because they had pliable, bribable conservative lawmakers. Red states trend rural, and rural places are the most likely sites for public fiber. Partly, that's because low-density areas are harder to make a business case for, but also because these are also the places that got electricity and telephone through New Deal co-ops, which are often still in place.

Just about the only places in America where people like their internet service are the 450+ small towns where the local government provides fiber. These places vote solidly Republican, and it was their beloved conservative lawmakers whom ALEC targeted to enact laws banning their equally beloved fiber – keep voting for Christmas, turkeys, and see where it gets you:

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

But spare a little sympathy for the conservative movement here. The fact that reality has a pronounced leftist bias must be really frustrating for the ideological project of insisting that anything the market can't provide is literally impossible.

Which brings me back to Utah, a red state with a Republican governor and legislature, and a national leader in passing unconstitutional, unhinged, unworkable legislation as part of an elaborate culture war kabuki:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media

For more than two decades, a coalition of 21 cities in Utah have been building out municipal fiber. The consortium calls itself UTOPIA: "Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency":

https://www.utopiafiber.com/faqs/

UTOPIA pursues a hybrid model: they run "open access" fiber and then let anyone offer service over it. This can deliver the best of both worlds: publicly provisioned, blazing-fast fiber to your home, but with service provided by your choice of competing carriers. That means that if Moms for Liberty captures you local government, you're not captive to their ideas about what sites your ISP should block.

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, Utahns in UTOPIA regions have their choice of 18 carriers, and competition has driven down prices and increased speeds. Want uncapped 1gb fiber? That's $75/month. Want 10gb fiber? That's $150:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/15/utah-locals-are-getting-cheap-10-gbps-fiber-thanks-to-local-governments/

UTOPIA's path to glory wasn't an easy one. The dismal telco monopolists Qwest and Lumen sued to put them out of business, delaying the rollout by years:

https://www.deseret.com/2005/7/22/19903471/utopia-responds-to-qwest-lawsuit/

UTOPIA has been profitable and self-sustaining for over 15 years and shows no sign of slowing. But 17 states still ban any attempt at this.

Keeping up such an obviously bad policy requires a steady stream of distractions and lies. The "government broadband doesn't work" lie has worn thin, so we've gotten a string of new lies about wireless service, insisting that fiber is obviated by point-to-point microwave relays, or 5g, or satellite service.

There's plenty of places where these services make sense. You're not going to be able to use fiber in a moving car, so yeah, you're going to want 5g (and those 5g towers are going to need to be connected to each other with fiber). Microwave relay service can fill the gap until fiber can be brought in, and it's great for temporary sites (especially in places where it doesn't rain, because rain, clouds, leaves and other obstructions are deadly for microwave relays). Satellite can make sense for an RV or a boat or remote scientific station.

But wireless services are orders of magnitude slower than fiber. With satellite service, you share your bandwidth with an entire region or even a state. If there's only a couple of users in your satellite's footprint, you might get great service, but when your carrier adds a thousand more customers, your connection is sliced into a thousand pieces.

That's also true for everyone sharing your fiber trunk, but the difference is that your fiber trunk supports speeds that are tens of thousands of times faster than the maximum speeds we can put through freespace electromagnetic spectrum. If we need more fiber capacity, we can just fish a new strand of fiber through the conduit. And while you can increase the capacity of wireless by increasing your power and bandwidth, at a certain point you start pump so much EM into the air that birds start falling out of the sky.

Every wireless device in a region shares the same electromagnetic spectrum, and we are only issued one such spectrum per universe. Each strand of fiber, by contrast, has its own little pocket universe, containing a subset of that spectrum.

Despite all its disadvantages, satellite broadband has one distinct advantage, at least from an investor's perspective: it can be monopolized. Just as we only have one electromagnetic spectrum, we also only have one sky, and the satellite density needed to sustain a colorably fast broadband speed pushes the limit of that shared sky:

https://spacenews.com/starlink-vs-the-astronomers/

Private investors love monopoly telecoms providers, because, like pre-bankruptcy Frontier, they are too big to care. Back in 2021, Altice – the fourth-largest cable operator in America – announced that it was slashing its broadband speeds, to be "in line with other ISPs":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right

In other words: "We've figured out that our competitors are so much worse than we are that we are deliberately degrading our service because we know you will still pay us the same for less."

This is why corporate shills and pro-monopolists prefer satellite to municipal fiber. Sure, it's orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Sure, it costs subscribers far more. Sure, it's less reliable. But boy oh boy is it profitable.

The thing is, reality has a pronounced leftist bias. No amount of market magic will conjure up new electromagnetic spectra that will allow satellite to attain parity with fiber. Physics hates Starlink.

Yeah, I'm talking about Starlink. Of course I am. Elon Musk basically claims that his business genius can triumph over physics itself.

That's not the only vast, impersonal, implacable force that Musk claims he can best with his incredible reality-distortion field. Musk also claims that he can somehow add so many cars to the road that he will end traffic – in other words, he will best geometry too:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Geometry hates Tesla, and physics hates Starlink. Reality has a leftist bias. The future is fiber, and public transit. These are both vastly preferable, more efficient, safer, more reliable and more plausible than satellite and private vehicles. Their only disadvantage is that they fail to give an easily gulled, thin-skinned compulsive liar more power over billions of people. That's a disadvantage I can live with.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

Image: 4028mdk09 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rote_LED_Fiberglasleuchte.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #fiber #broadband #physics #public goods #utah #utopia #red states #ole bub

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raven-at-the-writing-desk · 11 months ago

Text

book 5 part 6 thoughts!!

***THIS POST CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR BOOK 7 PART 6 OF THE MAIN STORY!!***

If you’d like to watch a rough part-by-part summarized translation, please check out this archived stream!

Please note: this is NOT meant to be a summary or a translation; these are only my initial thoughts on the events that unfold. There may be details overlooked or misunderstood in this post, so PLEASE do not use this as a translation.

Ew, we're starting off with another map segment... TWST REALLY WANTS TO TIMEGATE OUR TEARS, HUH

Yuu and gang are going to follow the night fae soldiers to Black Scale Castle beyond the mountains. They can't stay too far from the owner of the dream, Lilia! (If you'll remember, they're now taking Tamago-sama there for safety while Meleanor stays behind to fight the Silver Owls.)

Silver hasn't seen Sebek use his UM??? Sebek tells us he learned his UM when Silver got into NRC and Sebek was training by himself. He wanted to be able to rush to Malleus's side at a moment's notice. He knows it is able to turn his own body into lightning and then can use it to move and to attack. However, the spell will damage his body while using it since he has yet to reach mastery. Sebek can't use his magic to rush to Lilia and the others because he wouldn't be able to fight by the time he does.

... ISN'T HIS UM SIMILAR TO ROLLO'S.... JUST TRADE FIRE FOR LIGHTNING...

AW, SEBEK WASN'T PLANNING ON USING HIS SPELL UNTIL HE MASTERED IT... BUT HE STILL USED IT TO SAVE SILVER 😭

Oh, they finally asked the question we were all having. If Malleus made this dream with the intention of it being a happy ending, then why do only sad things happen in Lilia's dream??? Also, why did OB Malleus not come after them yet or kick them out of the dream??? Maybe there's a reason why Malleus can't supervise or enter Lilia's dream??

BAUL LEFT THEM MAGIC TO GUIDE THEM THE RIGHT WAY... HE TRUSTS US TO HELP THEM NOW

Baul fights with an axe. IS HE ABOUT TO HAND IT OVER TO SEBEK (Sebek seems to be holding one in his limited time card)????

Lilia "I won't forgive you if you die!" Vanrouge.

Not both grandpa and grandson volunteering to stay behind to fight and then catch up later... Sebek tells Silver to go ahead and protect Lilia, "You go and protect what is most precious to you. I'm going to protect what is precious to me," (Sebek about Baul) 😭 The night fae are so confused why a human would willingly help them... THI S IS SEBEK'S CHARACTER ARC

SEBEK PROVES HIMSELF A CAPABLE FIGHTER TO HIS GRANDPA!! His hair gets all messy like what's shown in his new SSR. It's raining as well (like in the card art), so this is likely the context for the illustration. The groovy artwork is of Sebek being knighted!!!

adgkuvaodv8yfefvyyeft8wen Sebek makes a big speech about wanting to be their strength!! BAUL ACKNOWLEDGES SEBEK BY NAME INSTEAD OF "HUMAN" AND GRANTS HIM A SOLDIER'S UNIFORM, SEBEK'S BEING OFFICIALLY KNIGHTED FOR THE BRIAR COUNTRY'S IMPERIAL GUARD AND GIVEN A NEW WEAPON... BAUL EVEN GIVES SEBEK HIS OWN CROCODILE MASK

Zigvolt family lore!! Baul doesn't get along with his human son-in-law, but never distanced himself from his grandchildren. When Baul's only daughter wanted to marry a human, they argued so much about it. To this day, he still doesn't particularly care for humans. Even so, Baul's house has a lot of storybooks and candy prepared for his mixed grandchildren. He won't open them warmly, but it's clear he loves his family.

Silver saves Lilia!! And then Lilia asks Silver to take the egg to Black Scale Castle in his place. There are too many human soldiers on their trail, and Lilia cannot fight them while holding the egg (plus he's already injured from previously protecting Silver at the easternmost fortress).

Yuu has to hold Tamago-sama...

Silver proceeds to carry Lilia like a baby in spite of Lilia saying he'd stay behind and distract the Silver Owls 🤡 NOT SILVER USING LILIA'S OWN TEACHINGS TO TELL DREAM!LILIA THEY STILL HAVE TO TRY AND SURVIVE

The mountains are called the "Forbidden Mountains" and it is said that this is where Maleficent once lived. If you are not blessed by the dragons, the lightning (according to legend) will strike you down. Beyond the mountain is Briar Country's capital city and Black Scale Castle.

Surprisingly, Silver suggests an ambush method (hide and strike at soldiers from behind when they've let their guard down). I guess NRC really did teach him how to be backhanded after all/j

Silver says maybe Malleus can't follow them since he wasn't born yet in Lilia's dream. Magic relies on imagination, and since Malleus cannot imagine what life was like before he was born... that's probably why he can't monitor these circumstances.

Would you look at that 💀 The first real time the story acknowledges that Yuu is in bodily danger; Silver Owls shoot arrows at Yuu because they're holding the egg. Grimmu protects us!! Baby... Best buddy...

SEBEK ARRIVING TO SAVE SILVER (aksldnbaksdbaydasl lol at Sebek being smug about his knighting and trying to act cool even though the lightning is definitely still hurting him...)

Silver Owls retreat!

Oh wow, so they see creeping black thorns similar to when Malleus OB'd; everyone suspects that maybe Meleanor Overblotted too.

Silver mentions that he lives near the Forbidden Mountains but has never climbed them before. The rocks there are very sharp and dangerously jut out. AW, Lilia gives Silver and Yuu his cloak to protect them from the rain and cold. Lilia says the mountain range is full of magic, so its restorative to fae, who draw power from nature.

The way they came from was sealed off by rocks... but Lilia fully intends to go back and help Meleanor...

THEY MADE IT TO THE CASTLE!! It's called Maleficia's castle; we have an official English spelling for Granny Draconia's name. Something, something, Lilia wants to prepare something called the "Cradle Tower".

WE CUT BACK TO WILD ROSE CASTLE

Like father, like son... The Dawn Knight seems remorseful and wonders where they went wrong, if everyone could have been friends if they had chosen some other way. He wants to dream of a world where all races can live together in peace. "One day, it won't be just a dream, it will be reality." It's phrased very similarly to the wish Lilia made in Wish Upon a Star!

The stormy weather clears up and the dawn makes way... IT'S A SIGN THAT THE DAWN KNIGHT PREVAILED AND MELEANOA'S MAGIC HAS DISAPPEARED... Lilia just lets out the most guttural cries... He says if he were stronger, he would have taken Meleanoa with him against her will, HE WASN'T ABLE TO KEEP HIS PROMISE TO PROTECT MELEANOR FOR HIM

I still want to see Mallemom's on-screen death though.

Side note: they force us to play through a scripted loss battle between the Dawn Knight and Meleanor 💀 Sick fucks on the dev team…

This is delicious content :)))))))) We're eatin' well, boiz

Uhhh okay so there are greenish spirits floating around; they're the senate??? Apparently they've already died but their spirits linger and serve as advisors.

… Idk why doesn’t Mallemom do this too???

NAUR, NOT THE SENATE BLAMING AND SHAMING LILIA, SAYING HE RAN AWAY AND LEFT HER TO DIE IN BATTLE... THEY CALL LILIA A MUTT AND BAT, JUST A DIRTY ORPHAN WHO CAN’T BE TRUSTED… AND THAT HE ISN'T FIT TO SERVE, THAT HE'S USELESS (this must really sting seeing as Lilia has insecurities about not being wanted 😭)

Baul defends Lilia's honor but Lilia still resigns from the Imperial Guard. HE'S TELLING THE SENATE T HEY CAN PUNISH HIM SO THEY FORBID HIM FROM STEPPING INTO THE CAPITAL AGAIN

The senate uses magic to take the egg away from Lilia AND LILIA SAYS GOODBYE TO MALLEUS BY NAME

"I'm not an Imperial Guard anymore, I don't need to follow orders" — Lilia (when Baul tells Lilia he still has a duty to hatch the egg). LILIA HAS GIVEN UP and that seems to have summoned the darkness of the dream to them. Lilia thinks Meleanor and/or Levan are in the darkness so he wants to "go there too".

When a general retires, they are gifted a lavish home near Black Scale Castle. Sebek says it now makes sense why Lilia lived humbly in a forest cottage far away from the capital. Silver says it must be why Lilia dislikes the atmosphere of the capital and why he never took Silver there.

In a flashforward, Lilia is asked to come back 10 years later. At this point, Tamago-sama has developed more sentience and is actively rejecting the love magic from everyone, even his grandmother. He has only been receiving magic for the first 5ish years or so. Maleficia had Baul act as a messenger to bring Lilia back for a special mission BECAUSE OTHERWISE MALLEUS WILL DIE WITHOUT IT.

Malleus’s egg is being kept in Cradle Tower! It keeps the egg safe and essential incubates it for the royal family.

Land of Briar becomes Briar Valley? The queen cannot always be with the egg because Briar Valley and its surrounding are lands are left in chaos after the war. Briar Valley fae specifically are not allowed in human territories.

Lilia is sent off on to find a way to fix the situation. He says he will see where dragons live in other continents and research. Omg, this must be how he started his travels and learned more about other races and their cultures 😭

“Don’t you dare die, Malleus” — Lilia (AND THE LOVING DEATH THREAT ACTUALLY MAKES THE EGG GLOW)

We see some of Lilia’s travels AND HE WAS IN THE CITY OF FLOWERS ON TOPSY TURVY DAY... The people there were friendly at first and worrying for his health until they realize he's a fairy, then they chase him out.

During one of his routine reports, Lilia is convinced by Baul to speak with Malleus's egg (which now glows green sometimes). Lilia shares stories of his travels with Malleus, trying to keep it positive for the baby to not make Malleus sad.

NEXT LILIA TRAVELED TO THE SCALDING SANDS, A MERCHANT IS ASKING IF HE WANTS TO BUY A MAGIC LAMP... Lilia learns about the importance of souvenirs as keepsakes from that merchant.

Okay, so it looks like between travels we're getting scenes of Lilia reporting back and telling Malleus about the place he most recently visited. He says that the Scalding Sands used to be such a small civilization but has since grown into a sprawling city. It's amazing what kind of progress humans can make.

Malleus is fussy and some days accepts magic, and other days he doesn't. Meleanor was also a really picky eater. Levan carries himself like an honors student but was the type to hide his veggies.

AW, HE SINGS MELEANOR'S LULLABY TO MALLEUS

Next Lilia visits some ruins...? It looks like a background from the Spectral Realm seen in Endless Halloween Night. Lilia says no one lives here, there is only furniture. No ghosts are mentioned though! He uses his UM for the first time here. Far Cry Cradle is probably going to be very useful for investigating ways to hatch a dragon's egg!

Lilia tells Malleus to come out of the egg, it must be boring just sleeping. He offers to read stories and change his diaper, tells Malleus his dad wants to meet him. Oh, and of course Lilia shares about his UM too! He tells Malleus that he went to the Land of Crimson Long.

Lilia ventures to Harveston!! An old man mistakes Lilia for a kid and takes him in, showing him warmth and kindness. He says he'll leave soon, but the old man and an old woman say he should stay until spring because the weather is harsh.

The lady notices Lilia is fae (but since time has passed, relations between fae and humans have improved a bit). No one is afraid of him here!! They apologize for mistaking him as a kid and want to share stories.

(Not confirmed but it could be interesting if these were Epel’s ancestors Lilia met… Rollo’s ancestors can be the ones running Lilia out of the City of Flowers www)

ABSHDBYOAFVYFAIAEUQRQEOUBFQ LILIA IS 430 AT THIS POINT BUT THAT NUMBER IS SO CLOSE TO 420 IT MAKES ME LAUGH

His feelings are changing... At 450 years old, Lilia tells Malleus that the world has changed so much and he has had the chance to visit many places. ahbyoaybadadB APPARENTLY PEOPLE USED TO THROW STONES AND ROCKS AT HIM.

Lilia says that fae may become things of the past, just creatures of fairy tales. But he doesn't want Malleus to be the main character of a fairy tale, forgotten by time. He wants Malleus to be able to see the world his parents weren’t able to see for themselves 😔

Another time skip, and it's come to a point where the egg is in critical condition. For 3 whole months it has been rejecting Maleficia's magic. The egg has since erected a lightning barrier to protect itself, even though its own heartbeat is growing weaker and weaker. (Malleus throwing another tantrum lol)

Lilia heard weird sounds but no one else could??? Is that a baby crying???? He tries to approach, but almost gets struck down many times.

Lilia realizes Malleus is crying because he's lonely. "Wait for me. I'm coming to you right now!" He gets hit by lightning, but perserves!

Lilia says he will offer his magic, even his lifespan (many fan theorists squealed now that this is confirmed), to Malleus if he needs it, and finally embraces the egg. (Physical contact like holding the egg is said to encourage magic absorption.)

TAMAGO-SAMA??????? 😭 HE SOUNDS LIKE A POKEMON… and he’s already blowing fire even though he’s freshly hatched???

WTF THOUGH BABY MALLEUS IS 1000000000000000000000x CUTER THAN GROWN UP MALLEUS 🫶 (I don’t like modern day Malleus’s looks at all www)

Silver understands why the dream is how it is, because it was all worth it for Lilia to finally meet Malleus. The moment of hatching has to be the happiest moment in Lilia’s life.

The senate shows up and starts praising Lilia as a hero.

OH????? Lilia seems to be waking????

HMMMM? this implies there’s limited suspension of disbelief each dreamer has 🤔 and if pushes past that threshold, then the dreamer is in a confused half awake state. Idia had these little moments of questioning his dream’s reality as well.

The senate’s voices distort, and they start shouting at Lilia for touching the prince, how it will be a scandal if a bat (… is Lilia a bat fae???) “dirties” the Draconias, etc. Mmmm, maybe this is the real reaction and the praising was part of the dream?? Since Lilia seemed to react strangely to being extolled. (I’m still over here wondering why their opinions hold so much weight compared to the queen; surely she would invite her friend Lilia back?? And doesn’t seem to blame him for the death of her daughter?)

Levan has a voice similar to Malleus, but lacks horns.

DVSUBILADUP9FFQEQFFAHAFBFEYBN OB MALLEUS JUMPSCARE, HE FINALLY MANAGED TO BREAK THROUGH INTO LILIA'S DREAM

Okay 😭 Lilia did in fact use his own life span so Malleus could hatch, and then Lilia had Maleficia swear to secrecy because he was concerned Malleus would blame himself. But it also feels like the senate purged or edited the records to hide the fact that Malleus hatched with Lilia’s love??

Malleus tries to convince Lilia to go back to sleep, to not feel pain. He says he can give Lilia a dream where the Draconias are still alive, a dream where Lilia can live peacefully, just take Malleus’s hand—

SILVER COMING IN CLUTCH, he and Sebek vow to break Malleus’s “blessing”. It’s this word that allows Lilia to fully awaken!!! ⏰ He’s so proud of Silver and Sebek…

They fight (well, Lilia distracts Malleus), then Silver uses his UM to hop into another dream.

They run into Ortho?! And then everyone is dropped off in front of Ignihyde.

FINALLY, SHROUD BROTHERS RETURN RIGHT AT THE VERY END!! I was wondering what they were doing while all this shit went down in Lilia's dream... It sounds like the next book 7 update will start off with Idia and Ortho, most likely told via flashback. I assume Ortho was able to help Idia wake up somehow?

This update felt like we got a lot of new lore!! But many of the events that played out were things we already had an inkling about prior to all of this (Meleanor dying, Lilia going on his travels eventually, Lilia helping Malleus hatch, etc.). It's nice to get the confirmation and to have the gaps of time inbetween filled in.

I really appreciate the story showing us just how hard Lilia's life was and then showing us just how important a nugget of happiness after all of that was so worth it for that moment. His VA did a stellar job with the voice acting this update, particularly the sobbing once Malleus hatched. I loved seeing Lilia's travels and how they gradually affected his own mindset over time... how he learned many different things from the people he encountered, and how he passed on that knowledge onto Malleus.

I liked seeing the origins of Lilia’s UM (he’s on a journey to find an answer)! Hearing about Sebek’s was also interesting; seeing as he’s a late bloomer with his magic and how he’s always competing with Silver, his UM manifested when Silver had been admitted to NRC and Sebek was training alone. I wonder if the UM also (in part) rose out of a feeling of inadequacy or feeling like he has to “catch up” to where Silver, Malleus, and Lilia are. No matter how hard it may be, he wants to push past his limits and serve as a knight. Maybe that, too, is why his UM prioritizes power and speed at his own body’s expense. It’s great seeing Sebek open up a little more and insist on fighting alongside fae; in modern day, Sebek has had to fight alongside humans. This is bridging the two sides of himself and helping him to reconcile with his own prejudices 😭

THE WHOLE DRAMA WITH THE SENATE MAKES ME UNDERSTAND WHY LILIA DROPPED THAT LINE ABOUT HISTORY BEING ALTERED OR REWRITTEN. It all makes so much sense now... Lilia himself (at least him hatching Malleus) was written out of history even though he did so much to help his country. He was so disliked, shunned, and shown animosity from the powers that be, and now he doesn't wish for that to happen to others, especially not to Malleus, the one good thing in his life and all that remained of the friends he lost along the way. You really see his teachings coming through in Silver and Sebek when they face off against OB Malleus towards the end. And the way I screeched when Lilia finally woke up after that...

The more I see OB Malleus, the more I get this skin-crawling feeling around him. I know the other OB boys have done arguably worse things (attempted murder, for example) but there's something so awful and insidious about the way Malleus speaks. He's intentionally gaslighting and manipulating others to just give in to his control, taking advantage of even Lilia at his lowest moments to dominate his thoughts. That's scary to think about... especially the dark inversion of Malleus urging Lilia to take his hand, when the game started off with a much more light-hearted and inviting "take my hand" offer.

Anyway!! I've been wondering for a long time what the Shrouds have been up to, and I'm so excited to see their story next update!!

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