#but the negative kind instead of the positive one that puts out bangers

[qualityrain]

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The Rain Review Year 4 (2014)

Welcome back to the Rain Review! This time, we’re tackling the comic’s fourth year. It spans Chapter 19: Vincent’s Story all the way through Chapter 23: The Flaherty Siblings.

This one’s the last full year of the comic’s run that I was round for. In Year 5, we’ll get into all new territory. For now, here’s another recap-style post.

Summary

Vincent’s Story is a chapter that I can summarize fairly quickly. Rain’s therapist is actually Aunt Fara’s ex. Fara’s family, particularly her brother-in-law, was not approving at all. Vince ended up disappearing on Fara because he didn’t want her to be troubled with the backlash. In hindsight, he knows this wasn’t the best play because he’s worried Fara big time. Anyway, Jessica and Rain conspire to get them talking again.

Next Chapter!

Aiken is rooming with his twin sister Kellen now. They talk about Rain and it turns out that Aiken is... actually trying to get it. Kellen still doesn’t understand or approve of her sister’s life.

Emily goes to hang out with Rain for a “Quiet Weekend” where they share another cute chat. Ky comes over and Emily gives her a word to put to her gender feels. Also, Emily shares with Ky that she’s pregnant. And pansexual also. Yes, they do make THAT joke, but it was 2014.

Gavin’s date is going really well. Like, he hits it the hell off with Ana.

Also, I usually don’t talk about any of the bonus art or the Rain Delay filler comics in these posts, but I NEED to call attention to the fact that I got Attack On Titan Jumpscared going into the next chapter.

No, no, it’s fine... it was 2014. We didn’t know. Everyone was talking about i- OH COME ON.

It truly was a different time, folks. It was almost 10 years ago...

In news that’s positive to me but probably still negative for everyone else there was also a Danganronpa filler art. Not to derail too hard, but most of these cosplay choices are banger. Except, Gavin is clearly Togami because there just wasn’t another guy that wasn’t annoying. If I believed the fandom perception of that character instead of the actual text of the game, I’d say he should be Mondo.

Anyway, back to the STORY!!!

Brother Arthur tells Chanel and Maria to tone it the hell down before they get caught, but goes out of his way to NOT give them detention for it. This leads directly into the two of them making plans for a Valentine’s Day date in which Chanel treats Maria to dinner.

Maria decides to talk to Rain about Emily. She explains that she eavesdropped on Rain and wanted to know if Emily was pregnant for real. You see, they dated in Freshman year and things ended ROUGH, which is why Maria has such a grudge against Emily.

School ends and Rain and Fara leave for therapy. In this scene, Fara kind of explains Rain’s character development to her. Were I Cinemasins, I’d be like, “Erm, that’s bad writing.”

BUT, I’m not Cinemasins and I acknowledge that Rain is the kind of girl that NEEDS someone to tell her that shit. She won’t give herself any credit without it.

This scene is one of the ones that makes me think about how even as I grow up, I see myself in Rain. She’s So Concerned About Her Friends all the time. She doesn’t give herself enough credit for all the good shit she does. She’s constantly fighting back negative self talk. And yet, she continues on anyway. I love Rain. She’s kind of the prototypical trans woman of the 2010s, but in some ways that makes her easy to relate to.

In the next chapter, Collin tries to patch things up with Fara by actually going through with getting Rain her con tickets. More on that later.

In the mean time, Fara and Vincent meet once again and at least try to patch things up. They’re not dating again, but they do end up on pretty good terms by the end of the night.

I don’t know how involved Vincent will be going forward though. He fills Rain an HRT prescription and says he’ll set her up with one of his co-workers because he’s too personally involved considering his ex-girlfriend is her aunt.

Ky, Gavin and Rudy end up hanging out because they’re all single on Valentine’s Day. Which is fine and dandy until Ky spills The Beans.

We return to Rain after her therapy session. She’s so excited to share the news... but all the friends that know her deal are busy. So she decides it’s time to tell Emily the truth. The emotional height of the entire year follows from this point to the end of Chapter 22. There are 4 different scenes overlapping, but I want to talk about them one at a time.

Emily is... really positive about it. She says she thinks she may have figured it out, but she elected to let Rain come to her when/if she decided to.

There’s a fun thing Samara does with the art in this section is playing with the distance between Rain and Emily. When the conversation starts, it’s clear that they’re in two separate locations on the phone. Emily is in her house, the blue background. Rain is in the therapists’ office, a green background. After Rain tells Emily her secret and Emily accepts her wholeheartedly, the lines start to get a little blurrier. Eventually, They’ve pulled their phones away from their faces and are standing face to face in a panel with a gradient background between their two locations. They get closer as the conversation goes on. so close that it feels like one of them could reach out to hug the other.

This was a really fun way to play with the comic’s... shall we say “lack” of backgrounds?

Now that Rain has gotten everything off her chest, she gets an idea. Remember those tickets I was telling you about? Well, Rain decided she could invite Emily to go to the con with her. But what about the other 2 tickets? THOSE are for Kellen and Aiken.

Meanwhile, at Jessica’s job, a familiar face walks right on in. That’s right, Jessica and Chase are going to go on a DATE. And that’s TERRIBLE for Jessica. Holy shit. Once again, more on this LATER.

The other really important plot line from this chapter to me is the resolution of Chanel and Maria’s date. When the night is winding down, Maria says something I’ve felt personally. She doesn’t want to go home. For once, she’s actually happy because she’s unabashedly spending time with someone she loves. In her house, all she’s got on her side is Rudy. They’re both miserable there.

If you’re a queer person with a shitty family and you’ve EVER been out of the house with your friends, I’m sure you’ve felt this one. The feeling that everything in your life is good... until you go home. Once again, I think this comic’s strong suit is exploring situations that are familiar to experienced queer readers and can be lessons to younger readers. This one hit me in the heart for sure.

Also, Randy and Ky meet again and they decide that they can give each other a shot.That’s cute.

Now, the final twist of Chapter 22: Anastacia! How many trans people are in this comic? One more than you thought before!

The final chapter of the night is “The Flaherty Siblings”.

Rain and Fara go to pick up the con tickets from Collin, who is being a lot more polite than Fara last described him. If you’ll look back, Fara broke up with Collin off screen. We don’t know what exactly he said to her until now, except that it PROBABLY involved Rain. Collin presents Rain with her tickets and Rain decides that Fara should give him another chance. So, in the future, we’ll be seeing a little more of him.

The day before Rain and Emily leave for Kellen’s house, Rain does some introspection. She finally admits to herself what we’ve probably all been thinking: She is in love with Emily. She is in love with Emily but is scared to say anything about it because they’ve got a lot on their plates and also they call each other Sis all the time, so she thinks it’d be weird.

The day finally arrives and Fara drops Rain and Emily off with her other niece. Things do not start well, but there’s an unexpected MVP in this scene. AIKEN is the one to reach out to Rain and tell her to give Kellen a chance.

I’m starting to care for Aiken as a character a lot. He’s Literally Trying. He’s putting more effort into things than my own family ever has. He always calls her by her name and almost always gets her pronouns right. He’s clearly making an attempt and he deserves credit for it.

Kellen, on the other hand, is like, MY MOM tier transphobic. She assumes that Emily is ALSO trans and directly refers to Rain as “Not a real girl” multiple times this weekend.

Emily is Rain’s number 1 shooter this weekend. Like, she does NOT let Kellen miss a goddamn beat.

My favorite Emily clap-back is this one below:

We cut to Jessica, who finds out what Chase’s deal is and is PISSED about it. I’m pretty sure things between them are over as quick as they started. I mean, dude admitted to dating a high schooler on the FIRST DATE.

Meanwhile, Kellen continues to be a fucking problem and bring up stuff that was actually just Rain’s Childhood Dysphoria. Then, Rain goes to sleep that night and has a trauma nightmare about her father. Again, I relate. I’ve been there.

Emily is once again The Best Person for Rain’s sake.

and that brings us to the end of Year 4.

Final Thoughts

Another year, another group of really emotionally fulfilling scenes. Holy shit. It’s crazy to me how consistently quality Rain’s character writing can be. It definitely helps that it draws from real life experience. Everyone in this comic feels like someone I have known or could know.

Rain is nothing if not consistent, honestly. That’s a blessing and a curse. The writing is always just right but the art style never leaves the way it always has been. Samara tries new things in this batch of chapters, though. More shot feature furniture and background details than in previous years and that one scene with the gradient background worked really well!

I look forward to seeing where Rain goes from here. Join me next time for year 5, 2015!

[popculty]

52 Films by Women: 2020 Edition

Another annual challenge complete!

Last year, I focused on diversifying my list. This year I kept that intention but focused on watching more non-American films and films from the 20th century. Specifically, I sought out Agnès Varda’s entire filmography, after her death in 2019. (I was not disappointed - What a filmmaking legend we lost.) 

I also kept a film log for the first time and have included some of my thoughts on several films from that log. I made a point of including reviews both positive and negative, because I think it’s important to acknowledge the variability and breadth of the canon, so as not to put every film directed by a woman on a pedestal. (Although movies directed by women must clear a much higher bar to be greenlit, meaning generally higher quality...But that’s an essay for another day :)

* = directed by a woman of color

bold = fave

1. The Rhythm Section (2020) dir. Reed Morano - Not as good as it could have been, given Morano’s proven skill behind the camera, but also not nearly as bad as the critics made it out to be. And unbelievably refreshing to see a female revenge story not driven by sexual assault or the loss of a husband/child.

2. Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962) dir. Agnès Varda - If you ever wanted to take a real-time tour of Paris circa 1960, this is the film for you.

3. Little Women (2019) dir. Greta Gerwig - Still my favorite Little Women adaptation. I will re-watch it every year and cry.

4. Varda by Agnès (2019) dir. Agnès Varda & Didier Rouget

5. Booksmart (2019) dir. Olivia Wilde - An instant classic high school comedy romp that subverts all the gross tropes of its 1980s predecessors.

6. Girls of the Sun (2018) dir. Eva Husson

7. Blue My Mind (2017) dir. Lisa Brühlmann

8. Portrait of a Lady On Fire (2019) dir. Céline Sciamma - Believe the hype. This film is a master thesis on the female gaze, and also just really effing gorgeous.

9. Belle Epine (2010) dir. Rebecca Zlotowski

10. Vamps (2012) dir. Amy Heckerling - With Krysten Ritter and Alicia Silverstone as modern-day vampires, I was so ready for this movie. But it feels like a bad stage play or a sit-com that’s missing a laugh-track. Bummer.

11. *Birds of Prey (2020) dir. Cathy Yan - Where has this movie been all our lives?? Skip the next onslaught of Snyder-verse grim-darkery and give me two more of these STAT! 

12. She’s Missing (2019) dir. Alexandra McGuinness

13. The Mustang (2019) dir. Laure de Clermont-Tonnere - Trigger warning for the “protagonist” repeatedly punching a horse in the chest. I noped right out of there.

14. Monster (2003) dir. Patty Jenkins – I first watched this movie when I was probably too young and haven’t revisited it since. The rape scene traumatized me as a kid, but as an adult I appreciate how that trauma is not the center of the movie, or even of Aileen’s life. Everyone still talks about how Charlize “went ugly” for this role, but the biggest transformation here isn’t aesthetic, it’s physical – the way Theron replicates Wuernos’ mannerisms, way of speaking, and physicality. That’s why she won the Oscar. I also love that Jenkins calls the film “Monster” (which everyone labels Aileen), but then actually uses it to tell the story of how she fell in love with a woman when she was at her lowest, and that saved her. That’s kind of beautiful, and I’m glad I re-watched it so that I could see the story in that light, instead of the general memory I had of it being a good, feel-bad movie. It’s so much more than that.

15. Water Lilies (2007) dir. Céline Sciamma – Sciamma’s screenwriting and directorial debut, the first in her trilogy on youth, is as painfully beautiful as its sequels (Tomboy and Girlhood). It’s also one of the rare films that explores the overlap of queerness and girl friendships.

16. The Trouble with Angels (1966) dir. Ida Lupino – Movies about shenanigan-based female friendships are such rare delights. Rosalind Russel is divine as Mother Superior, and Hayley Mills as “scathingly brilliant” as the pranks she plays on her. Ida Lupino’s skill as an editor only enhances her directing, providing some truly iconic visual gags to complement dialogue snappy enough for Gilmore Girls. 

17. Vagabond (1985) dir. Agnès Varda – Shot with a haunting realism, this film has no qualms about its heroine’s inevitable, unceremonious death, which it opens with, matter-of-factly, before retracing her final (literal) steps to the road-side ditch she ends up in. (I’m partly convinced said heroine was the inspiration for Sarah Manning in Orphan Black.)

18. One Sings, The Other Doesn’t (1977) dir. Agnès Varda – Probably my favorite classic Varda, this film feels incredibly personal. It’s essentially a love story about two best friends with very different lives. For an indie made in the ‘70s, the diversity, scope, and themes of the film are impressive. Even if the second half a drags a bit, the first half is absolute perfection, engaging the viewer immediately, and clipping along, sprinkling in some great original songs that were way progressive for their time (about abortion, female bodily autonomy, etc) and could still be considered “bangers” today.

19. Emma (2020) dir. Autumn de Wilde

20. Black Panthers (1969) dir. Agnès Varda

21. Into the Forest (2016) dir. Patricia Rozema - When the world was ending (i.e. the pandemic hit) this was the first movie I turned to - a quiet, meditative story of two sisters (Elliot Page and Evan Rachel Wood) surviving off the land after a sudden global blackout. Four years later, it’s still one of my favorite book-to-screen adaptations. I fondly remember speaking with director Patricia Rozema at the 2016 Chicago Critics Film Festival after a screening, her love for the source material and desire to “get it right” so apparent. I assured her then, and reaffirm now, that she really did.

22. City of Trees (2019) dir. Alexandra Swarens

23. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (2020) dir. Eliza Hittmann - To call this a harrowing and deeply personal journey of a sixteen-year-old who must cross state lines to get an abortion would be accurate, but incomplete. It is a story so much bigger than that, about the myriad ways women’s bodies and boundaries are constantly violated.

24. Paradise Hills (2019) dir. Alice Waddington

25. *Eve’s Bayou (1996) dir. Kasi Lemmons – I’ve been meaning to watch Kasi Lemmons’ directorial debut for many years now, and I’m so glad I finally have, because it fully deserves its icon status, beyond being one of the first major films directed by a black woman. Baby Jurnee Smollett's talent was immediately recognizable, and she has reminded us of it in Birds of Prey and Lovecraft Country this year. If merit was genuinely a factor for Oscar contenders, she would have taken home gold at eleven years old. Beasts of the Southern Wild has been one of my all-time favorites, but now I realize that most of my appreciation for that movie actually goes to Lemmons for blazing the trail with her story of a young black girl from the bayou first. It’s also a surprisingly dark story about memory and abuse and familial relationships that cross lines - really gutsy and surprising themes, especially for the ‘90s.

26. Blow the Man Down (2019) dir. Bridget Savage Cole & Danielle Krudy - Come and get your sea shanty fix!

27. Touchy Feely (2013) dir. Lynn Shelton - R.I.P. :(

28. Hannah Gadsby: Douglas (2020) dir. Madeleine Parry - If you thought Gadsby couldn’t follow up 2018′s sensational Nanette with a comedy special just as sharp and hilarious, you would have been sorely mistaken.

29. Girlhood (2013) dir. Céline Sciamma

30. Breathe (2014) dir. Mélanie Laurent

31. *A Dry White Season (1989) dir. Euzhan Palcy

32. Laggies (2014) dir. Lynn Shelton

33. *The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood – Everything I’ve ever wanted in an action movie: Immortal gays, Charlize Theron wielding a labrys (battle axe), kinetic fight choreography I haven’t seen since the last Bond movie…Watched it twice, then devoured the comics it was adapted from, and I gotta say: in the hands of black women, it eclipses the source material. Cannot wait for the just-announced sequel.

34. Morvern Callar (2002) dir. Lynn Ramsay

35. Shirley (2020) dir. Josephine Decker

36. *Radioactive (2019) dir. Marjane Satrapi – The story is obviously well worth telling and the narrative structure – weaving in the future consequences of Curie’s discoveries – is clever, but a bit awkwardly executed and overly manipulative. There are glimpses of real brilliance throughout, but it feels as if the director’s vision was not fully realized, to my great disappointment. Nonetheless, I appreciated seeing Marie Curie's story being told by a female director and embodied by the always wonderful Rosamund Pike.

37. *The Half of It (2020) dir. Alice Wu - I feel like a real scrooge for saying this, but this movie did nothing for me. Nothing about it felt fresh, authentic or relatable. A real disappointment from the filmmaker behind the wlw classic Saving Face.

38. Mouthpiece (2018) dir. Patricia Rozema - I am absolutely floored. One of those films that makes you fall in love with the art form all over again. Patricia Rozema continues to prove herself one of the most creatively ambitious and insightful directors of our time, with this melancholic meditation on maternal grief and a woman’s duality.

39. Summerland (2020) dir. Jessica Swale - The rare period wlw love story that is not a) all-white or b) tragedy porn. Just lovely.

40. *The Last Thing He Wanted (2020) dir. Dee Rees – As rumored, a mess. Even by the end, I still couldn’t tell you who any of the characters are. Dee, we know you’re so much better than this! (see: Mudbound, Pariah)

41. *Cuties (2020) dir. Maïmouna Doucouré – I watched this film to 1) support a black woman director who has been getting death threats for her work and 2) see what all the fuss is about. While I do think there were possibly some directorial choices that could have saved quite a bit of the pearl-clutching, overall, I didn’t find it overly-exploitative or gross, as many (who obviously haven’t actually watched the film) have labeled it. It certainly does give me pause, though, and makes me wonder whether children can ever be put in front of a camera without it exploiting or causing harm to them in some way. It also makes one consider the blurry line between being a critique versus being an example. File this one under complicated, for sure.

42. A Call to Spy (2019) Lydia Dean Pilcher – An incredible true story of female spies during WWII that perfectly satisfied my itch for British period drama/spy thriller and taught me so much herstory I didn’t know.

43. Kajillionaire (2020) dir. Miranda July - I was lucky enough to attend the (virtual) premiere of this film, followed by an insightful cast/director Q&A, which only made me appreciate it more. July's offbeat dark comedy about a family of con artists is queerer and more heartfelt than it has any right to be, and a needed reprieve in a year of almost entirely white wlw stories. The family's shenanigans are the hook, but it's the budding relationship between Old Dolio (an almost unrecognizable Evan Rachel Wood) and aspiring grifter Melanie (the luminous Gina Rodriguez) that is the heart of the story.

44. Misbehaviour (2020) dir. Philippa Lowthorpe – Again, teaching me herstory I didn’t know, about how the Women’s Liberation Movement stormed the 1970 Miss World Pageant. Keira Knightley and Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s characters have a conversation in a bathroom at the end of the film that perfectly eviscerates well-meaning yet ignorant white feminism, without ever pitting women against each other - a feat I didn’t think was possible. I also didn’t think it was possible to critique the male gaze without showing it (*ahem Cuties, Bombshell, etc*), but this again, invents a way to do it. Bless women directors.

45. *All In: The Fight for Democracy (2020) dir. Liz Garbus and Lisa Cortes – 2020’s 13th. Thank god for Stacey Abrams, that is all.

46. *The 40-Year-Old Version (2020) dir. Radha Blank – This scene right here? I felt that in my soul. This whole film is so good and funny and heartfelt and relatable to any artist trying to walk that tightrope of “making it” while not selling their soul to make it. My only initial semi-note was that it’s a little long, but after hearing Radha Blank talk about how she fought for the two-hour run-time as a way of reclaiming space for older black women, I take it back. She’s right: Let black women take up space. Let her movie be as long as she wants it to be. GOOD FOR HER.

47. Happiest Season (2020) dir. Clea Duvall - Hoooo boy. What was marketed as the first lesbian Christmas rom-com is actually a horror movie for anyone who’s ever had to come out. Throw in casual racism and a toxic relationship treated as otp, and it’s YIKES on so many levels. Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, and an autistic-coded Jane are the only (underused) highlights.

48. *Monkey Beach (2020) dir. Loretta Todd

49. *Little Chief (2020) dir. Erica Tremblay – A short film part of the 2020 Red Nation Film Festival, it’s a perfect eleven minutes that I wish had gone on longer, if only to bask in Lily Gladstone in a leading role.

50. First Cow (2019) dir. Kelly Reichardt – I know Kelly Reichardt’s style, so I’ll admit-- even as I was preparing for an excellent film, I was also reaching for my phone, planning on only half paying attention during all the inevitable 30-second shots of grass blowing in the wind. (And yes, there are plenty of those.) But twenty minutes in, my phone was set aside and forgotten, as I am getting sucked into this beautiful story about two frontiersman trying to live their best domestic life.There is only one word to describe this film and that is: PURE. I’ve never seen such a tender platonic relationship between men on screen before, and it’s not lost on me that it took a woman to show us that tenderness. Reichardt gives us two men brought together by fate, and kept together by a shared dream and the simple pleasure of not being alone in such a hard world; two men who spend their days cooking, trapping, baking, and dreaming of a better life; two men who don’t say much, but feel everything for each other. The world would be a much better place if men showed us this kind of vulnerability and friendship toward each other. Oh, and it’s also a brutal take-down of capitalism and the myth of the American Dream!

51. Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) dir. Patty Jenkins - My most-anticipated film for the past two years was...well, a mixed bag, to say the least. Too many thoughts on it for a blog post, so stay tuned for the upcoming podcast ep where we go all in ;)

52. *Selah and the Spades (2019) dir. Tayarisha Poe

I hope this gives you some ideas to kick off your new year with a resolution to support more female directors!

What were your favorite women-directed movies of last year? Let me know in the tags, comments, or asks!

[blxxdyvalentine19xx]

Internet Killed The Rockstar - Mod Sun Album Review by blxxdyvalentine19xx

Derek “Mod Sun” Smith’s 11 track Album Internet Killed The Rockstar debuted at midnight on February 12th, 2021, compared to his usual Hippy Hop as he calls it, IKTR is a much more Punk Rock sound. It opens with the lead single “Karma”, followed by both “Bones” and “Flames” I woke up this morning and hopped onto Spotify to give it a listen to.

Karma: The opening track to the album, Angry and loud. I didn’t much care for it at first, It took me a while to love this one. His ex girlfriend was quick to jump onto youtube with a storytime video, in which she suggests it’s about her, some believe it to be and others believe it to be about Bella Thorne. I was under the impression that Mod and Tana were on good terms last year so I don’t really know, I’m more convinced that it’s about Bella. It’s a banger of an opening track though.    

Bones: There’s a lot to this song, I remember the teaser he released for this piece. I’ve listed to the song almost as i have to that teaser. He explains in the breakdown of the track that it sounds like what the first few seconds before a car crash feels like, calm. This song absolutely put me through it, I lost a family member to a motor vehicle accident a few years back and never really moved on from it. Somehow through this song, Mod brought me the ability to heal from it and move on from the weight I carried with the accident. So thank you Mod Sun for a track so beautiful.

Flames (Ft Avril Lavigne): The only feature on the entire album and it’s a literal piece of art! It starts out with Avril’s melodic voice before jumping into Mod Sun’s explosive screaming vocals in the post-chorus. His vocals on this track doesn’t make me love it any less, in fact i’m in love with the track. Mod threw all he had at this track and gave us something that will hopefully stand the test of time. As many times as I have heard this song, I never tire of it.Avril has been the voice of a couple generations now and It’s amazing to see such a powerful collaboration as this one.

Betterman: I don’t know, I’m not really feeling this track so I don’t have a lot to say about it. He does say in it that someone makes him want o be a better man and that the same person saves him.To be nice about it I’m saying little about it. He does say at one point that he doesn’t want to die lonely, that’s a line i can vibe with, being lonely is one of the worst feelings in the world. It’s a beautifully worded track.

Prayer: I just listened to this song again, there’s a part of me that feels the message Mod puts out. I’ve saw what those white lines do to people, I nearly lost a friend to them in high school so Mod hit me with a load of built up emotions here. My life had been impacted by someone who hit their worst on drugs and I carry those thoughts everyday. The way he delivers this track is melodic and gives you a way to look positively on your future. Every action is a reaction. I know i’m rambling but  I don’t know just how to word what this song does to me, it makes me feel numb as I reflect on things I’ve been through. 2020 was my year to find my a better path and jut like Mod, I’m trying desperately to try on it.I wasn’t in a good place and this song feels like what my past was in words.

TwentyNUMB: It sounds to me like it starts out as a rap track before quickly reminding me of ‘Circles” by post malone mixed with an early 2000′s track that I can’t remember the name of now. As of right now I don’t have a clear explanation of the track. It’s good but it’ll have to grow on me. It may to chaotic for me as I’m neurodiverget and there’s so much to try and focus on in this that I start to get panicky and can’t focus on the lryics of it at all. it’s upbeat though so that’s a good thing.

Smith: We know this is about his father from the voice intro it carries. The lyrics carry you through a mostly negative father - son relationship, as it progresses, Mod goes on to say there will always be a room in his house for his late father. It’s a tough one for me as my relationship with my father is beginning to fade and this song brings up the pain that i’ve endured the past few years seeing the father I once knew and loved change into a man I no longer know. I can’t help but cry hearing the pain in Mod’s voice when he delivers this track, even though my father is still living, i’m tasked with having to grieve the man I looked up to and that’s what this song does for me, it’s started the process of me letting go of what I have to for my sake. I don’t know how much longer I have with my father due to his health but this sing will forever make me think of him. No matter what a parent puts us through, there’s still that little kid locked inside us that loves them no matter what.

Rollercoaster: I’ve linked the song. The lyrics explain themself. Noting I can really say about it aside from being proud of Mod and the effort he’s made to staying sober.

Annoying: Shit’s cute! I will definitely be dancing around my kitchen to this song. It’s such a feel good song. My one qualm about it though is the “ for your eyes only” line, the One Direction fan in me only ever hears “ass” instead of “eyes” I can’t do much else but laugh over the line because of it. The song sounds as id Mod is declaring unrequited love to whoever this mystery girl he speaks of in numerous lyrics across the album. Whoever she is, she must be pretty damn special. The bridge make sit sounds as thought she makes him tongue tied when all he wants to do is tell her how much he loves her. Overall, Annoying is a really cute song.

Pornstar: This song starts out with Mod portraying himself as a really kind of shit guy, from missing his girls birthday to not being there after her surgery, like man, that’s low. The lyrics later sate that he’ll make up for his dickish behavior and fuck her like a pornstar, now we can assume he’s referring to himself as the pornstar here. He also talks about her sending him a paragrah every morning, he barely reads it and sends the ever dreaded one word answer, I’m a guy and that boils my blood, i’m a romantic at heart and a poet, one word answers are my least favourite thing. The chorus to Pornstar is damn well catchy almost as catchy as herpes, thank you to @triplexdoublex​ for that golden line. it’s been out a little over a day now and it’s already my fifth most listened to song, that’s saying something.

Internet Killed The Rockstar: I was in a dream driving in my Ford Explorer at 16 years old by myself. I snuck out of the house, not to go fucking spray-paint the side of a building or go meet up with a girl. No, so I could go ride around my city and scream the lyrics of a song and pretend that it was my song. That’s literally what I did as a kid. The song that was playing was ‘Internet Killed the Rockstar.’It painted the story of when the kid inside me essentially died and turned into a person that was living in a new age. I grew up quickly, but I’ve remained able to be in touch with this childlike sense inside me. [The song] is my tribute to the kid who literally thought he was never going to make it. And guess what? You made it! You made it. Direct quote from Mod’s Genius Music page. Nothing more to be said here other than I feel this on a personal level, I was in a place once where I never once thought I’d see my senior year of high school let alone where I am today. I’ve had to grow up quick lately and this song gives me comfort.

[grimelords]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

listen here

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Latvia to Eurovision with a cinematic French rendez-vous

Supernova with their strict-on decision to only focus on all that’s radiofriendly this year went to hell for me. I mean, I like me some pop tunes, but not those that are purposefully marketed to be enjoyed by the massive sheeps of the Eurofandom who usually fall for those songs by Michael James Down, Will Taylor, even Ylva & Linda... because at the end of the day they’re all just shallow and pointless outside the ESC bubble.

Well the best they could do is to accept some different winds out of nowhere! And so they did when the audition stage hit place and we guys got to witness the 33 shortlisted tunes for this year, among which of them are loudly and proudly different - like “Alligator” and “Grow”, which I did not fathom but I was also raging for their not qualification for - more precisely “Alligator” which was way more outstanding of those two I mentioned. The guys that performed that song were fun, their performance choice was fun, they could have totally rocked on Supernova... but alas.

In fact not that many alternative songs made it to the final down-to-16 cut! There might have been a couple of those that sound nothing a radio would play unless it’s not playing pop on its purpose (Laime Pilnīga’s ”Awe” comes to mind right away), but in the end of the day, not many of those survived and we were graced with some... choices, like letting Samanta Tina waste herself on a cocky-ass tune with terrible chorus rhyme-scheme and unbearable charisma and putting through the most Eirodziesma-like mess-fest with the Beaver guy on top of it. Honey I like you in costume but... not in this emploi.

I don’t blame them though, as one of non-blatant-pop tunes conquered the Latvian hearts for this year. These next Latvian people in Laura Rizzotto’s succession are collectively named Carousel and their song is “That Night”.

It sets a romantic mood throughout, like we all are reliving this magical last date - it was in a restaurant, the candles were lit, the restaurant looked vintage with bordeaux satin tablecloth on the table, and the couple is having a smooth evening... until the love runs out to the probably cold and rainy streets and the other half of the couple starts longing for one's love. That's all I can imagine with this.

So yeah, I really like this! It's got lovely instrumentation that doesn't need all the over the top instruments - just guitar, simple drums, etc.; the noir flair is distinct on here and that's not bad on here; this is just a simple and soft song that you too could play in your own restaurants when all the lovely couples have romantic dinners and sip wine. And in some kind of a French movie, too (with the lead role being a curly redhead artiste with striped sweater, looking for love in Paris (because it’s so romantic in there honhonhon). I'm not sure if the revamp touched upon this one little problem I noticed but the problem kinda seems to be that the chorus repeats. A lot. And verses are way too short that they could be easily forgotten against the 4th and 5th time one would be hearing the "lo-o-o-o-ove, where? Are? You?" line, and then lulled into sleep at how peacefully relaxing it is. Which is indeed of a problem because repetition has quite a bit of a negative effect on people. Yes, it gets the song onto your brain more easily, but the repetition drives people insane too. Just like it was suspected for “Story of My Life” (Belarus 2017) on its original version to be unable to be ‘stood’ - after the 2nd chorus, the rest of the song just went like “hey hey hayayayaho” until the end. Naviband fixed the problem by throwing in another vocal onomatopoeia in a form of the song bridge and I loved them for it, even if there still were too many “hey hey hey”s at the end, haha.

Final conclusion? Yep, issa good entry, and if anything it’s helluva underrated. Say what you want about it being “boring”, to me it’s somewhat fresh and exciting, because the melodies are pleasant, the instrumentation is top notch and Sabīne’s vocals are relaxing. Delightful starry night music, oh yes, thanks a lot for it, Carousel, I’m taking it.

Obviously, after they won Supernova, there was a lowkey uprising from fans who were dead certain on wanting Edgars Kreilis or Markus Riva to win, eek. Honeys, honeys. I do like those two as well, BUT for a bit of a mess that Supernova 2019 was with some of their decisions to include, I think it’s for the better they finally let themselves go lighthearted over it all rather than blatant tryhard to sound radio for the masses just cuz the NF wanted. Just forgive Carousel for winning, okay? Okay. ^_^

Approval factor: Definite yes from me, because why wouldn’t I rate it a yes. Yay brotherland!

Follow-up factor: For me personally this is miles better than Laura Rizzotto's last year's melodrama. Overall I think it just flows nice and is a delightful addition to the Latvian collection.

Qualification factor: This I cannot think about all too often but I am not sure if they'd... stand a chance anymore? I'd use to think it did, but that was weeks before supposedly much stronger entries rushed in, squeezing Latvia into an uncomfortable position. But I really hope it's just charming enough to kind of get through. Sort of. A little bit. I'm positive about it happening, but not that much. And a lot of older audiences might love it enough to vote it, too.

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

I admit that I got way too heated about hearing Supernova’s new approach to selecting entries, but in the end it turned out that I didn’t need to worry all that much in the first place - some of those alternative entries we got were very nice (or at least the entries out of the standart overbearing radio-pop norm), both in their actual auditions (this time they were on an actual stage in front of a jury instead of the listeners pick-pocketing the submissions themselves) AND among the actual picks. But what else is there to be note-worthy in this year’s edition of this show?

• Well, among of the auditionees there were those too-weird-ass bands/artists (some of them I mentioned), and you saw me mention the “Alligator” song to you beforehand, which is done by an ambitious project ATOM.LV (so did I mention “Grow" by Waterflower and her show is worth mentioning as well <3 Those flowers in her hair, the hair color, the makeup, her overall image (it’s like Jamie-Lee upgraded) and the dance moves are ADORABLE <3333 but the song is... hmm... :c). And I’ll repeat myself - those guys rocked! I may have not been a massive fan of this but I can at least commend them - they had a good song structure going on, a clear message (alligators from the stars *catchy trumpet fanfare part* trying to probably conquer the world, yeah!) and an outrageous tribal image with that facepaint on! Awh hell yeah! Who wouldn't want THAT through the live shows??? Ah, only the Latvian juries ofc. (And me because I never got the appeal of this but I sure felt sad for 'em kids hoping and wishing for them through :x)

• Thank Goodness I had my faves through - all hail Double Faced Eels! They're the little legendary pop band who went all their way to compete in some Youtube contest and have had sung with Bebe Rexha as the prize for winning it almost 1,5 years ago :o Believe it or not but I have heard of them way before their Sulernova stint - I got introduced to them through a friend, known on Tumblr as Soupgeist. :3 And I don't regret stanning a name I know, as "Fire", their entry in this year's 'Nova, was a pop-rock banger with some electro in! Granted the vocaliat might've had some troubles singing live but he still pulled it off nicely in the finals, with that energy coming out on top! Yeah yeah, uguns. 🔥

• Like I mentioned earlier, there were people rooting for other favourites this year so heavily, and that annoyed the hell out of me, because I thought that Eurofans have some sort of evolving tastes that accept more than just pretty pop boys/girls with not-so-special songs? Well, I mentioned that Eurofans’ targets were Edgars Kreilis and Markus Riva. The latter felt so attacked about him trying to achieve his representation dream over and over he even tweeted about it once... well I did like his song “You Make Me So Crazy”, but I found it a little too overrated with the fans. So I did Edgars, but his song was way catchier and had way more personality than being a club track, I tell ya. Why would his song be renamed from “Fire” (yes, he partially shared a song title with that Double Faced Eels’s song!) to “Cherry Absinthe”, anyway? It gives it a bit more of an exciting feeling, tbh. ^_^ So I ended up rooting for him a little bit more out of the two ‘pretty’ pop boys, if I had to accept one of those kind of winners that everyone wanted (like everyone wanted just either yesyes or The Middletonz for Hungary this year).

• There were a lot of other nice chosen songs too that I would’ve loved to discuss, but I just can’t not mention the Riga’s Beaver as one of the more memorable moments here. I did write earlier in this that I was disappointed though. Not because of the beaver being out of costume and coming at us as a young-to-middle-aged stunning lad, but because the Beaver-entry, “Tautasdziesma”, was a “Supernova”-times cluster-mess. I think of this as a charity music medley-parody of some sorts, and that doesn’t bode with me well, and sometimes I like parodies, like the one Klemen Slakonja (aka the guy who portrayed Putin for a musical number once) did in his country’s NF in 2012 (that he hosted) was fairly nice (although a bit too much), but... ehhh... at least the men are fine and their costumes were dandy.

• Let’s not forget that those auditions had this one glorious thing going on during the performances - we saw shots of the jurors judging all of the 33 shortlisted acts with... rather less-than-enthusiastic looks, and man oh man were they fabulously done with this shit <3333

if that’s not a big indicator of them being too dead inside to be judging anything that day, then idk what is...

Anyway, I am finished with this review also, and I’m happy about it! I don’t think I can move any of this at a more quicker pace (seriously, I have to do so many more even during rehearsals!!!), but I am still trying to do my best. Good luck to the Carousel quartet and may they not flop in May! To hell with the naysayers sweeties, you’ll do just fine x ✨

[ollyarchive]

LET IT BURN: YEARS & YEARS

With Years & Years’ second album ‘Palo Santo’, Olly Alexander is smouldering away all negative energy and shaping communities from the dancefloor.

By El Hunt on 27th April 2018

Years & Years’ ringleader Olly Alexander - clad in a magnificent pair of PVC overalls; his second costume change of the day - is currently milling around an East London photo studio, thoughtfully munching on cookies, and discussing Mariah Carey in great detail. The megastar pop icon has hit the news this same week after speaking publicly about her bipolar disorder diagnosis for the first time, and Olly’s quick to commend her bravery in letting down her barriers. “I think it would be nice to believe that pop stars and famous people are just incredibly happy and fabulous; that they move glitteringly through the world, and that everything they touch turns gold,” he reasons. “But it’s a fantasy. Actually, I think vulnerability - and being able to be vulnerable - is a sign of real strength.”

You sense that Olly Alexander lives by these same words as he navigates the landscape of being a pop star in 2018. In the three years following Years & Years’ rapid rise to the highest echelons of the charts, Olly has gradually morphed into something of a public figure, too. A prominent spokesperson on mental health and LGBT activism in particular, Olly dedicated the band’s landmark Glastonbury show in 2016 - which took place roughly a year on from the release of their debut album ‘Communion’ - to pride, promising to “shove a rainbow in fear’s face” in an emotional speech to the assembled crowds. A year later, Olly took a camera crew back to his unassuming hometown for a moving BBC documentary titled ‘Growing Up Gay’, and was very honest in discussing his experiences with bullying, eating disorders, and anxiety. ‘Palo Santo’ - Years & Years’ second album - is a continuation of this, combining ridiculously overblown, brilliantly lavish sci-fi landscapes and gigantic pop ambition with an amped-up sense of honesty, and a space-reclaiming edge that defies the presence of negative energy. Today, Olly observes that one of his chief goals as an artist is to write the songs that would’ve lifted him up as a teenager still searching for a community.

After spending several years moving around the country living next to a variety of theme parks - the singer was born in Blackpool, where he lived next door to the Pleasure Beach, before moving down the road from both Alton Towers and Staffordshire’s Drayton Manor - Olly Alexander and his mum settled into rural Gloucestershire life when he was thirteen. Trading in the garish Blackpool illuminations for the distant glimmer of the Severn Bridge, it was a drastic change in pace .“It always gets described as sleepy, Coleford,” Olly grins, having swapped his neon-orange PVC vest and chain necklace (another of today’s outfits) for something a little more practical. Up until it became the hometown of Years & Years’ frontman, the small market town boasted a ukulele expert as one of its most famous residents, and was perhaps best known for being the location of the world’s only Ribena production plant. It wasn’t exactly the epicentre of queer culture for a teenager searching for a community, especially given that the nearest gay bar - Flamingos - was thirty miles away in Bristol, and located the other side of a toll bridge.

“I was actually too scared to go to Flamingos,” Olly remembers, laughing. “I love that as a name for a gay bar. Flamingos!” he announces, with grand intonation. ”[Coleford] was never a place that felt connected to anything queer when I was growing up.”

“I did like growing up around trees and fields, pretending I was a fairy,” he adds, chirpily. “I enjoyed getting that experience.”

“Being able to be vulnerable is a sign of real strength.”

Rather than heading to the now-closed Flamingos (R.I.P), Olly surrounded himself with a sea of pop bangers growing up instead, worshipping at the altar of Christina, Britney and TLC. And speaking of worship, he also remembers taking notice of another prominent community in the town: the church next door to his house. Though organised religion wasn’t his bag, the strange rituals - decorating an orange for Christingle, reciting the Lord’s Prayer at his local Church of England primary school - proved intriguing. Later in life, he’d grow to view songwriting as a cathartic and mysterious kind of healing ritual, as well as noticing odd parallels between a church’s sense of belonging, and the celebratory freedom that exists in a space filled with dancing, thrashing bodies, and filthy, sexy pop.

As Years & Years were starting to etch out the first strokes of ‘Palo Santo’ at the beginning of last year, Olly explains he was “newly single”, and reading a lot of books in his spare time. Besides taking on the mammoth task of conquering David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, he also picked up Andrew Holleran’s cult novel Dancer From the Dance; set amongst New York City’s LGBT disco scene in the 1970’s. As well as being flamboyant and fun - presenting a campy, fabulous surface world that’s soundtracked by The Marvelettes and Sister Sledge - it’s also a heartbreaking read, documenting the “psycho-sexual drama” of desire, and touching on both loneliness and immense inequality. It’s a double-edged sword that also exists in ‘Palo Santo’.

“It talks a lot about how the club is like a church; a church for gay people to go and dance, and I was like, yes!” Olly says, excitedly. “This is putting into words how I’ve been feeling for so long, and what I’ve been trying to communicate in music. It really inspired me to write a lot,” he says. One song on ‘Palo Santo’ directly credits the book as an influence. ‘I breathe the rituals of the dancer’s dance,’ Olly sings on ‘Sanctify’.

“When I see dancers, their body is their medium,” Olly notes. “The art is their body. What an amazing embodiment of creativity, to literally be your limbs and your expression and movement! I’ve always been enchanted by dance,” he says. “Plus, I think a pop video should have dance in it, too. It’s a prerequisite! A bit of choreography! You want that fantasy moment where everybody’s going to burst into dance. Some choreo! I just think, if you can’t do that in a pop video, where can you?”

Such considerations rule on ‘Palo Santo’, an album that pushes every last bold facet of pop to the maximum extreme. Set in a high-concept, futuristic world which plays on traces of real life to sneaky, allegorical effect, it also sees Years & Years more fearless than ever. One pulsing highlight, ‘Hallelujah’ dives straight onto the dancefloor to find healing in letting loose, while Olly’s current favourite ‘Lucky Escape’ confronts the more unlikeable aspects of our own emotions. “It’s such a petty song!” he reasons. “I was quite sick when I recorded the vocal for it, and I can really hear when I listen to the song that I’m not feeling very well. I don’t like the person that’s saying those words in a way, but it’s an honest reflection of what I was feeling at the time. I’m proud to put that on there.”

“I’ve always been enchanted by dance.”

Over the past three years, Olly says, he has started to realise that pushing his own boundaries reaps creative rewards. “Putting yourself in an uncomfortable position - in terms of the creative process - it usually means you’re going to get something worthwhile,” he adds. “I really had to get past the levels of pettiness…. sometimes it made me laugh. I’d be writing a song when I was so angry at my ex boyfriend. I would never want to present this to the world, where I’m just this bitter ex who’s still hung up on him!’ Olly admits. “[But] actually, sometimes we are hung up! It’s an ugly, but also truthful and beautiful, side to our humanity. I had to be okay with it.”

Another standout track called ‘Rendezvous’, meanwhile, contains hints of Jennifer Lopez’s euro-banger ‘On the Floor’ (“it does!” Olly exclaims in agreement) and explores hook-up culture, along with unpacking his immediate feelings as a relationship draws to a close. “After a relationship you think, maybe the things they did weren’t as well intentioned as I thought they were?” Olly says. “I was in my petty, angry phase. I have had a lot of experiences with guys where the sex has felt like this depressing inevitability. We’re gonna meet up, and we’re going to have sex. That’ll kind of be it, and then onto the next person. What’s happening in that interaction, and what happens in that interaction when it’s someone you want more from?” he asks, pausing. “I also just really wanted to write a song called ‘Rendezvous’!” he adds. “I think I’d smoked a really big joint before I wrote that song, so there’s that, too. Beyonce would have a song called ‘Rendezvous’ and she’d kill it! She has ‘Deja Vu’, of course. Britney loves a French moment, too. With stuff like that, you just need conviction.”

Conviction is a world that springs to mind easily when you’re talking to Olly Alexander. As well as his commitment to sharing his own experiences with unwavering honesty, this new era of the group feels like a step onwards from the anonymous throngs of bodies that once grabbed at Olly way back when the band released their video for ‘King’. Performing solo gyrating routines for a panel of extra-terrestrial judges as Years & Years returned with ‘Sanctify’ - a bit like a filthier Strictly Come Dancing if it were set in an alternate universe - it’s the very definition of conviction. And with his bandmates Emre Turkmen and Mikey Goldsworthy also taking on a slightly different role this time around - acting as behind the scenes production wizards and, as Olly puts it, “his musical husbands” - there’s a sense that he’s also careful when it comes to handling his newfound platform responsibly.

“What is the point of a pop star in 2018? What should they be saying?”

“What is the point of a pop star in 2018?” Olly asks nobody in particular. “What should they be saying?”

Heading into ‘Palo Santo’ with the aim of creating a record that tackles the intricacies of belonging in a world that feels increasingly dangerous and fragmented, the band crafted an entire fictional landscape to explore the darker grit. “It felt too monumental, hard or depressing to set everything in our real world,” he reasons. “I thought a lot about where I could make a place where we take out all the rules surrounding gender identity and sexuality. I thought, well, why don’t we just have everybody be androids?” Olly laughs.

“I’ve always loved artists that take people to their mad world with them, like Bowie, Prince, Gaga. I thought, I want to do something like that, and go as big as possible,” he concludes with resolve.

In ‘Palo Santo’, Years & Years have done just that, flinging open the doors on a vastly ambitious universe that ignites life’s bullshit in a blaze of euphoria. Infiltrating the mainstream with dagger-edged pop - and doing it in fantastical, glittering style - Olly Alexander might just be the most important pop star we have in 2018.

[a-lucha-brother]

Forgot to make a post about Dynamite (02/02) so here’s a post about Rampage (04/02) instead with a positive and negative for each match/segment:

Adam Cole (W) vs Evil Uno

+ Uno looked good in the match, crowd loved him and commentary put him over, very nice, very wholesome.

- Match was barely 5 minutes long, I swear Cole’s entrance was longer. Match basically served to set up Cole’s 2022 goals within AEW

Samuel Elliot Guevara (W) vs  Isiah Kassidy

+ YES YES YES this match was fucking awesome and Isiah was made to look really damn good here (case in point that they’re sort of pushing him off this but also kind of sacrificing him idk).

- Bro, I am just not vibing at all with the whole Andrade/Hardy partnership, ugh, it’s overbloated and lacking any real chemistry. I love Private Party and Matt together, I think they’ve been great as the HFO, but the AHFO is trash. Also Darby’s random inclusion (not random but you know what I mean, he doesn’t fit in with this storyline and they need to axe it) was just a bit awkward for me and kind of out of character if you ask me.

(Bonus +: setting up Sammy vs Darby for the TNT Championship is hype though.) (Secondary Bonus +: Chris mentioning Sammy wearing his Inner Circle cut, making me emotional and reminding us about what’s coming on Dynamite)

+ Jade Cargill is going to become 27-0 and I dig it.

Thunder Rosa vs Mercedes Martinez (DQ)

+ Both women looked GOOD, which is great cause I love both of them, and didn’t really mind the finish as much 

- Having said that, whilst it doesn’t hurt either women going forward which is the main thing, it always leaves a bad taste in the mouth when something like this happens. Cause we’ll now just be having rematch after rematch, Rosa is entirely away from any title picture and Martinez has no real direction either. Still, banger matches to come.

(Bonus +: Chris Jericho I’VE NEVER SEEN A DQ ON RAMPAGE BEFORE THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN HERE!! - I see you Christopher and I love you)

- Britt sassing Jamie (STOP IT, leave my gf alone!!)

+ IT’S TIME FOR THE MAIN EVENT

Absolute Ricky Starks (W) vs Jay Lethal

+ OMG THE CHEMISTRY uuuuuuh it’s soooooo gooooood. This match was pure artform and that counter finish good lord I popped like a mf’er for that one.

- For the love of GOD (Ric Flair), can we juuuuuuuust stooooooop with the distractions and the run ins all the goddamn time, honestly there’s too many moving pieces in AEW and it’s exhausting. Also, what did this match do for any of these men, like Starks and Hobbs STILL just going to have matches with Dante Martin, yawn move on please, where does Starks (and Team Tazz) go from here, where does Jay Lethal go from here, I know his time won’t probably come for potentially another full year depending on what happens with ROH, but like.......

Rampage - :  Nothing really progressed with any of the storylines tbh. Rampage + : But my god were the matches on here amazing.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

my highlights list of Owl City songs

maybe you’ve only heard like “fireflies” and you dont have shit taste and aren’t a coward and so you’ve always hoped i’d make a list of imo extra standout owl city songs; maybe i just wanted to make something like this list even though i didnt try that hard to cut it down and it would change every day and i dont think i dislike any of his songs and could give reasons why i especially like some element of pretty much each of them

Assuming Everyone’s Also Heard: VANILLA TWILIGHT (Ocean Eyes), GOOD TIME (The Midsummer Station) they’re both amazing. vanilla twilight is intense and good for when you’re looking at a nice sunset and feeling brave. shaq is in the music video. that carly rae jepsen and adam young happened to team up was a great move by whoever initiated it, and good time is iconic, and there’s a version where carly rae jepsen is also singing the chorus and its better but i dont really know how to search for it in particular because its otherwise identical

***HELLO SEATTLE*** (Ocean Eyes) this was on the radio too so it couldve gone in the above section but it needs its own. im not sure i’d say this is officially my favorite owl city song but if someone hadnt heard anything by owl city this is the one i’d choose to represent his entire vibe and be the first impression. and you’d think nobody could possibly remix it but adam young himself did and its fantastic and relatable even though the only lyrics are the occasional words “hello seattle.” technically the first version of this song is on the album “of june” and theyre both good but i like the ocean eyes version best

DESIGNER SKYLINE (Of June) the most upbeat song on the album probably. adam young is very very good at lyrics and some elements of this include his imagery, rhythm, alliteration, wordplay, and general ability to make the words in a song both euphonic in the sound along but also be very Pretty content wise. ok im most serious about how good he is with lyrics so maybe i’ll be more concise after this one

FUZZY BLUE LIGHTS (Of June) owl city songs aren’t depressing or even really Sad even when they’re sad (w/ some exceptions…cough silhouette) but they’re good if you are / have been a Sad Person Who Lives In Their Head because thats what a lot of the songs are about / the perspective theyre from. this one sounds like that and also like an overcast day

***IF MY HEART WAS A HOUSE*** (Ocean Eyes) the Best love song of the whole discography imo. it goes hard as fuck. i don’t date but for the duration of this song i have a gf/bf/nb-f

THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG (Ocean Eyes) one of the best and another one of the best love songs. im especially partial to the winter theme now o course. this super cool thing happens in the middle with amazing lyrics and this volume effect. the instrumental versions of this and if my heart was a house are also killer

ANGELS (All Things Bright And Beautiful) adam young loves jesus a whole lot; this song is about literal christian angels. i love the alliteration of the lines “in the dust on the cellar staircase / a pair of footprints followed me / i saw a flicker in the fake fireplace”. not many owl city songs are from both an upbeat perspective AND have upbeat music, and this one’s chorus really goes for it. adam y.’s pretty excited about jesus stuff i think and so when he channels that in songs especially about jesus, it’s pretty energetic. but for the most part his songs arent overtly christian save maybe some passing references, so if thats a concern dont worry

***GALAXIES*** (ATBAB) for example, this one definitely has a jesus line. but this is just one of the references to an unspecified “he” which means it could also just be interpreted as gay. (owl city belongs to the gays btw) and this really is a song to go ham to and listen to it with stereo speakers because one of my fave parts relies on that. the intro is a bit jarring because the outro of “january 28, 1986” is meant to transition into this one

DEMENTIA (The Midsummer Station) i’d put this as a highlight but recognize its coz its a personal fave. it sounds like it would be incredibly depressing of course but it has nothing to do with actual dementia thank god. it’s a love song and very upbeat in both sound and content. i’m hugely partial to the lyrics, especially the pairs “every light in the night flickered in and out / every bone in my back shivered up and down”; “every voice in my head shouted yes and no / every freight train of thought fought to stop and go”; “every tear in my eyes dripped and wouldn’t drop / every disc in my spine shook and couldn’t stop” and “every hand let me go that i tried to hold / every warm-hearted love left me freezing cold”

KISS ME BABE, IT’S CHRISTMAS TIME (single) he has a bunch of random christmas singles and this ones the best. the titles ridiculous and i love it, and the song isn’t really about anything and i love it. it is such a bop. “peppermint winter” and “humbug” are the other best xmas ones

SHOOTING STAR (Midsummer) half the songs on this album are summery dancey songs about having fun with other people (usually owl city songs are about being lonely or having fun with one other person tops by cloudwatching, so this album is unusual in that regard and rocks out a bit which is also unusual as per owl city’s tendency to sound really dreamy or otherwise fairly light. it bothers people who are in the “the old stuff is better” camp of everything) and the other half are upbeat summery songs that are encouraging and tell you you’re a good and special person. this one is the latter and a lot of fun. i like the lyrics and melody of the lines “fan a flame so hot it melts our hearts” and “let your colors burn and brightly burst / into a million sparks that all disperse / and illuminate a world that’ll try to bring you down” (but not this time)

GOLD (Midsummer) same category song as above (title refers to “i know you’re gold”). it’s great and sung to a person about to go off and do something and you’re telling them they can totally do it because they’re great. i maintain that one of the Owl City Signature Moves is The Affectionate Sigh: he’s very good at working in words sung with a rising/falling tone, a la a sigh, and its an upbeat delivery not like a “im sad” sigh. when it happens in this song is my favorite part of the whole thing, at the end of the line: “you’ll never be far, i’m keeping you near, inside of my heart, you’re he^re”

BEAUTIFUL TIMES (Ultraviolet EP) the songs on ultraviolet all have a super cool sound, kind of mixing the more loud/layered/noisy quality of midsummer station with the more introverted vibe he usually has, and are all kind of about being stressed and sad but looking to something or someone and kind of seeing a chance to feel okay. “this isn’t the end” is completely about a girl who’s dad kills himself but it has the really good line “you fight to survive cuz you made it this far” and otherwise has a technically uplifting end but without much of the “you shouldnt kill yourself because life is magical” bs which is useless and irrelevant imo but instead the “life is chaotic and you cant say the future is going to be good but it exists and meanwhile you’re not dead yet” which is an infinitely more thoughtful approach. but anyways, about beautiful times: its also about being happy but usually being really sad (“this fight of my life is so hard (so hard, so hard) but i’m gonna survive, oh oh these are beautiful times,”) and also isnt very patronizing about the subject (the prospect/aspiration of feeling happy when you’re a Sad Person) and frames everything in having had damagingly negative feelings while still being overall positive. i really like the way he sings into the first few verses with an echo of what will be the first couple of words, overlapping slightly and growing in volume before taking you right into the actual start of the verse. this is the most upbeat sounding song of the EP imo

THUNDERSTRUCK (Mobile Orchestra) the intro alone is killer. one of the most Go Hard to songs of the owl city discography. proudly carries the tradition of singing about ghosts (see: plant life, a fun-to-sing-along-to song all about an actual haunted house)

BACK HOME (Mo Orch) this album has a lot of sounds that, while familiar, are different from any of the other albums, like this one which is very very country. it goes hard as fuck. it uses the word “fireflies” for the first time since fireflies. i love it

CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT YOU (M.O.) personal fave of the album is mostly why this is here. as the title suggests its a dramatic love song, i love how pumped the chorus is and the way the outro sounds. Love To Sing Along

***WHEN CAN I SEE YOU AGAIN?*** this is peak “happy music, sad lyrics” even though thats everywhere in owl city music, its pretty rare to find songs that are straightforwardly happy. this song is a banger and lyrically crushing. i guess its in the “bittersweet” category like a shit ton of owl city songs are, but still. this song changed our lives

I HOPE YOU THINK OF ME has this sick chill drumbeat throughout the song which is kind of rare. it kind of fuses his underwater type sound with his going hard as hell sound. like, it would be like the choreography of “bet on it” if i was listening to this song while standing up. you get really into the lyrics. i love this part at the end where the music pulls back for just a second while he goes “the thought is KILLING me!” shoutout to “kamikaze” where he yells half of it and its invigorating, shoutout to “paper tigers” which is an amazing song that hasnt shown up on an album

SUNBURN (Ocean Eyes) possibly the cutest owl city song. it has a sweet guitar riff. cute sweet, not sickass sweet.

HOT AIR BALLOON (Ocean Eyes) possibly the happiest owl city song. extremely cute but not as cute as sunburn but happier than sunburn.

BEAUTIFUL MYSTERY killer intro, really upbeat, the melody of the verses is great and the chorus goes pretty hard

RAINBOW VEINS (Maybe I’m Dreaming) another top level cute and happy song (“cheer up and dry your damp eyes, and tell me when it rains, and i’ll blend up that rainbow above you, and shoot it through your veins”) and has a top tier chilled out whispery interlude/bridge/whatever that then throws you into this pumped up finale

THE YACHT CLUB (ATBAB) speaking of being thrown into a pumped up finale, this does that too. so does “umbrella beach.” this one goes hardest imo and the live version of it goes even harder than that. plus the lyrics are amazing and the alliteration is stellar

***SUPER HONEYMOON*** (Maybe I’m Dreaming) consistently one of my top tier faves. i like the semi staccato delivery of parts of the lyrics, the music is fantastic, also very Classic Example of owl city

SKY DIVER (MID) super dreamy and pretty and bittersweet sounding, classic

HALCYON a bop!!! electronica on electronica

SLEEPWALKER so fun and sounds like a song to be going to the beach to

YOUTOPIA (ft. Adam Young) obvs not owl city but i’m putting it in, the full 4 min version. not only dreamy and bittersweet but one thing i always love in music is an unresolved musical phrase repeating on end. there’s also this part in the middle where his vocals kind of layer and grow and it has a long E sound and when he lingers on the long E its one of those things that would be grating except for its actually great because of that. see: honey and the bee

MR. HEARTACHE (ft. Adam Young) a total bop about being sad. like i wanna jump around to this song. see: tokyo, the song by adam young (owl city) featuring the artists of this one, SEKAI NO OWARI, which has my fave lyric “are you having fun yet, i’ll send you the sunset, i love the most”

FIREFLIES (Said the Sky remix) the intro to this is like, oh my god. the only fireflies remix the world needs.

UMBRELLA BEACH (Long Lost Sun remix) the original is great but i love this version even more. the finale is fantastic and exuberant

THAT’S IT i could include all the songs because i have good things to say and specific things to point out about each of them. for example: dental care is a masterpiece of puns. puns are a running theme in owl city. so is ghosts, the sky, the ocean, and The Affectionate Sigh. if you listen to enough songs you find repetitions of certain phrases like “oh darling i wish you were here,” “i feel like a postcard, i wish you were here,” “like hundreds of postcards, that say i wish you were here” and someone should make a post of all of them. it would be me if i had a laptop. anyways i like owl city you’re welcome for this post