#i have played a lot of other sonic games though i promise modern sonic stuff just interests me a lot more . sorry

[sonknuxadow]

been playing sonic 3&knuckles for. well i dont wanna say first time because i Have tried to play it before i just never really got that far into it before giving up/getting bored until now. anyway. the barrel of doom was something i knew about already but never really bothered to look at exactly how it worked i just knew there was an annoying section of the game that had the barrels in it . well when i got to it i wasnt able to get past it without looking it up and i felt so stupid when i finally figured out what to do. on one hand i can only imagine how frustrating that must have been for little kids in the 90s who couldnt look it up as easily but on the other hand theres something kind of beautiful about how its still annoying people who werent even alive yet when the game came out 30 years later

[viostormcaller]

Ego Headcanons: Jackieboy Man

I meant to do this yesterday night but I had schoolwork and then I had a headache and was burnt out, so whoops! But I'm doing it now! Just like the others it's probably gonna be long so ya know. Here goes:

Jackie has adored superheroes since he was little. The superhero persona he is seen as is actually just a silly character he made up when he was younger, but he kept the name because of the sentimental value behind it. It took the city a long time to take him seriously, and even then not everyone does

Jackieboy Man is transgender! He was born female, and over time saved up to get top surgery. He wasn't able to get bottom surgery because he had to start focusing his money into upgrades for his suit and equipment, which he figured was much more important

This is also the reason why his hero name is Jackieboy Man. When he created the character as a kid he was adamant about being seen as a boy. The name meant a lot to him, so he refused to change it when he became a superhero

Jackie's real name actually is Jackie -- it was the name he was born with. Because he sees it as a gender-neutral name, he didn't feel the need to change it after his transition

Jackie went to a fancy prep school in high school. It was around then that he got his powers. He still doesn't know how it happened. He had been trying to get his phone that slid underneath a parked car, and for whatever reason his brain told him to lift it. He did, and found the car weighed virtually nothing. He almost dropped it on himself in surprise.

He became a student by day, crime fighter by night. This made his studies difficult, but he managed through it. Once he graduated, he got a job at a comic book store and used any extra money he had to try and design a suit for himself. For the time being he wore a red hoodie fitted with shoulder and chest pads, he wore kneepads over a pair of leggings, and he wore gloves and boots as well as his signature mask.

Jackie is insanely intelligent. Like, insanely. He's an absolute master at puzzle solving and is extremely well versed in technology. He invents things often and is an impressive coder.

Once he saved up enough to make his first armored suit, he started taking on more difficult enemies rather than just fighting robbers and criminals. However, because the police saw him regularly turning in these people, they grew to trust Jackie and eventually partnered up with him. He began earning money through the city and was able to quit his day job before long

On the side, while Jackie was hunting down the supervillains that lived in the area, he was also on a secret mission to hunt down people on the Deep Web. He was forced to give up the case after he had been kidnapped, his captors not quite realizing who they were dealing with

He met Marvin when a powerful villain attacked a theater. At the time, this villain's skills were about on par with Jackie's, so taking them down prover to be tough. When Marvin revealed he knew real magic, they teamed up to take the villain out

Jackie, figuring a partner was just what he needed, offered to meet up with Marvin that next weekend to get to know him better. Marvin accepted and they went out for pizza and talked everything over

After a while of teaming up and growing close, the pair moved in together.

They may not be brothers or related by blood in any sense of the word, but they might as well have been. They were rarely seen without each other. They never fought, and their interests overlapped so they always had something to talk about

They made it a habit of theirs to always cook something for every meal. Marvin was an exceptional cook, while Jackie was still learning. Marvin taught him some things that he knew, and on mornings and at night they both cooked together. Every meal was home cooked, no matter how simple it was

They were both usually home during the day; since they both earned money from the city, they didn't have any obligations. They both dedicated this time to research and studying, and they would spar occasionally

Jackie and Marvin both suffer from gender dysphoria. On a day that it was particularly bad, Jackie revealed to Marvin that he was transgender. After Marvin revealed he was genderfluid and he understood where Jackie was coming from, Marvin offered to use transformation magic to finish off Jackie's transition. Jackie agreed, and while he swore he had never been in so much pain in his entirel life, he still feels eternally indebted to Marvin because he did that for him.

They met Schneep on a night Jackie was gravely injured. The three felt a connection between each other and stayed in touch after Jackie and Marvin both recovered, and refused to see any other doctor after a while. They moved in with him once Schneep bought a house.

Jackie, like Schneep, is also pansexual. Unlike Schneep, however, he hasn't been in many relationships because he was too afraid he'll put his future partner in danger by being in a relationship with him. Moreover, he's constantly busy doing hero-related stuff, so he doubted he would have the time.

Schneep once made Jackie a picture of him in a comic-book style. Jackie had it framed and hung it up in his room, right over his bed. When Schneep found out Jackie did that, he teared up

Jackie is up the earliest out of all the Egos. He spends the mornings doing research, and then cooks with Marvin once he gets up. He goes on patrols at night

Jackie's powers include super strength, super speed, the power of flight, the ability to envelop his fists in green flames, and a sonic clap (which he only uses if he absolutely must; it's extremely dangerous and destructive). He excels in melee combat which compliments Marvin's ranged combat

When Jackie's using his powers, his eyes will glow a bright green, and if he's under a lot of strain his veins will glow faintly green as well. When this happens he knows he's reaching a limit

Jackie is the most optimistic. He's also the most silly (with Chase coming in close second). Chase and Jackie share a lot of jokes together, which is how they grew closer. Jackie often uses his optimism to cheer Chase up when he's feeling low.

Jackie can actually be one of the most serious Egos when he needs to be (though Schneep will always hold first place on that front). He knows when to joke and when to be focused, and is often seen as the leader of the household because of his commanding presence when he's serious

Jackie and Jameson often work out together. Jameson is almost as physically fit as Jackie is, because in his time he did all his own stunts. He may not do them anymore, but he didn't want to stop exercising regularly, and knowing Jackie often worked out he went to him for advice on keeping a good regimen.

During the day, when he's not researching, Jackie is more often than not checking in on Schneep and making sure he's doing alright. He feels the need to he Schneep's protector, just as Marvin does with Chase. Especially after his kidnapping, Jackie wants to keep Schneep safe. He's usually there to ground him during flashbacks and panic attacks. The two are rather close and spend quite a bit of time with each other talking about work or venting general frustrations. Jackie's optimism and general bubbliness counteracts Schneep's serious attitude, and while Schneep reminds Jackie when to be serious, Jackie reminds Schneep when to loosen up.

Jackie loves movies, but sadly doesn't have a whole lot of time to watch them. He also adores retro video games, but agrees the modern ones are super cool, too. His favorite game is easily guessed.

Jackie's favorite superhero, like Jack's, is Spiderman. He sees a lot of himself in Spiderman, and on the days he doesn't go on patrols or research he's often seen playing the most recent Spiderman game on the PS4. He wants to 100% complete it.

Jackie doesn't rely on coffee as nearly as much as Schneep does, but he does drink a cup to help wake himself up in the mornings. He drinks his with a bit of cream, that's it.

Jackie can easily lift the others. Sometimes he'll sneak up on someone and lift them up, carrying them in his arms and spinning them around while laughing.

Jackie is a HUGE cuddler, and has a very tight hold. He's also a heavy sleeper, so if he falls asleep, good luck getting back up! He's always the big spoon

Most of his research is dedicated to tracking down Antisepticeye. He has Marvin help with this, since Marvin has more knowledge on demons than he does. However, Schneep, Chase, and Jameson also all have had direct contact with Antisepticeye and offer up any information they gathered. They all work together as a team to gather knowledge and keep track of common traits, symptoms, and telltale signs that Anti is active. Jackie also relies on the community and Jack's channel for information, since the community finds things first. This information is given through Chase. Jameson has only been in contact with Anti once, but his knowledge that he gained in his experience is also helpful to Jackie and isn't overlooked.

Jackie doesn't get sick often, but when he does he gets hit hard. Schneep is the one who takes care of everyone when they get sick, so every time Jackie comes down with something he gets all sappy and thanks Schneep for being a doctor and helping them. When he's sick, he's an emotional mess, but he does mean everything he says.

Jackie never makes a promise he can't keep, but he also never breaks his promises either. He's probably the most dependable out of everyone

I think that's everything for Jackie! The headache hasn't gone away so if I felt I missed something I'll probably add it in a seperate post. Same with any of the Egos, actually. If I need to add something I'll just make a continuation post and add it there. In any case, there's one more Ego to go! After that I'll clean out my inbox, though because I'm currently feeling shitty and moody I may not open prompts for a little bit, like a few days or so. But yeah, that's Jackie's list done!

[grimelords]

Hello and god bless, I have finally finished my November playlist a week and a half into december. Disco, Guns N’ Roses, an entire doom metal album and everything in between. Please enjoy.

​Extraball - Yuksek: Aside from the extremely nice electro bass I think what I appreciate most about this song is that the chorus seems like the sort of thing you could sing in a round, or as some kind of children’s clapping game.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: Let me be the first to apologise for putting an 80 minute doom metal album as the second song on this playlist. I’m sorry. It was selfish and it won’t happen again. That said, please listen to this because it is transformative. I’ve listened this a lot this month and it’s really affected my mood I think. Doom metal is one of the only genres that takes itself seriously enough to release an album that’s just one 80 minute track but I really can’t fault them for doing it. This is a piece of music that demands to be listened to in full, and while it does naturally divide into movements like anything else this long would, it would be weaker overall if it were split into individual tracks or listened to individually. A lot of the playing on here, which is very sparse in long sections feels like ritual music of some kind - a feeling that’s compounded by the length when you’re absolutely lost within it. It makes electric bass and drums feel like modern ritual instruments and this album feels like an invocation of the spirit of loss itself.

Sixteen Tons - Merle Travis: For some reason I keep thinking about and listening to different versions of Sixteen Tons. This is Merle Travis, the orginal songwriter, but this is a new recording he did in 1989. Notably I love the very plaintive solo in the middle of this, but I especially love that he changed the lyric at the end to say “I owe my soul to Tennessee Ernie Ford” which feels like an agressive rebuke or a solemn nod but I can’t tell which.

Looking Up - Michael Smith: My girlfriend sent me this song because she heard it on the podcast Good Christian Fun which as I understand it is an exploration of the bizzare world of american evangelical christian media. Anyway this song rocks. It sounds like Todd Terje remixed the theme to some lost 80s sitcom and I really can’t get enough of it.

Wild - Beach House: This is such a beautiful song. I love the tinny drum machine and the live drums that sound programmed constrasting against the huge wall of guitar and synths. I used to listen to this album a lot a few years ago when I worked night shift and it reminds me of standing on top of wine tanks in the cool night air at 2am texting my now girlfriend as she went to bed. Sorry.

Piano Concerto No. 3 In D Minor, Op.30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto - Sergei Rachmaninoff: I had a friend in school who did his licentiate degree in piano in year 12 and was obsessed with this piece. One day he took me through the whole first movement and showed me how the theme is established and comes back in different forms over and over again throughout and basically taught me how to listen to classical music which was very kind of him because it’s something I’m only really appreciating now.

Verklärte Nacht, Op.4: String Sextett for 2 Violins, 2 Violas and 2 Cellos - Arnold Schoenberg: This is an early Schoenberg piece before he got into that good good atonal serialism, but it does still have moments that presage what was to come. I don’t really have much to say about this other than it’s a very good place to start with Schoenberg because it’s like proof that he was a human man at one point.

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - Harry Belafonte: I’ve really been thinking about how work songs like this and like Sixteen Tons become international hits. This one especially, in the 50s, was it because it was a really good song (which it is) that a lot of people related to or was it a sort of exoticism about funny banana song (which to be fair, it also is).

Boogie Wonderland (12" Version) - Earth, Wind And Fire: This is the song you hear playing from the other side of the door when you get to heaven.

Apollo’s Mood - The Olympians: This album is basically a collection of Daptone All-Stars under the name The Olympians just doing their thing and it’s really amazing. I especially love the harpsichord in this, an instrument that doesn’t get nearly enough of a workout in soul music. Also, I don’t really know how to describe it but I really love the way the snare roll that starts it off and comes back a few times sounds - buzzy and busy without rushing anyone.

Saturn - The Olympians: This is the song you use for your montage at the end of a James Bond movie that’s just four minutes of him relaxing and drinking different cocktails by himself that the critics called ‘wholly unneccesary’. In the drums and bongo break he does a little dance and falls over.

November Rain - Guns N’ Roses: As far as overblown classic rock epics go, I really wish November Rain had the cultural place of bad song Bohemian Rhapsody or Stairway To Heaven because underneath the 9 minutes of stings and bullshit it’s actually a very beautiful and sad song written by an idiot.

Sisters Of The Moon - Fleetwood Mac: With the current wytchy cult that Stevie Nicks has around her it’s easy to forget that she wrote songs like Sisters Of The Moon, a song explicitly about a witch converting other women to witchery. I love the big extended phrase of guitar chords in the chorus and I’m very mad about how this song fades out just as it’s absolutely going off.

When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin: Rounding out this unexpected classic rock trio is When The Levee Breaks which I was thinking about because I was thinking about The Big Short. This song sounds so good and there’s been so much written about the famous drum sound and the production but what I only learned this month is that it was apparently recorded at a faster tempo and then slowed down afterwards, which explains a lot about a lot of the sounds in here.

Bad Liar - Selena Gomez: This is maybe the pop song of the year honestly. It’s so good in every single aspect, especially the when she says’ oh baby lets make reality, actuality, reality’ which is a very weird lyric. So is 'you’re taking up a fraction of my mind, every time I watch you serpentine(?)’. Great stuff all around.

Hello Miss Lonesome - Marlon Williams: I saw Marlon Williams a year or so ago and it was one of the best gigs I’ve been to because things just kept going wrong. Broken strings and misunderstandings and all that sort of thing, and the highlight for me was in this song the drummer got overconfident and started pushing the tempo near the end and eventually tripped over himself so badly they had to stop and start again.

The Voice Of Q - Q: Here’s how you can tell a song is good: you can only find it on Spotify on a compilation album called 'Cocaine Boogie: 24 Kilos Of Underground 80s Dance’. This song seems like a classic case of 'somebody bought a vocoder’ and it’s very very good, another fantastic entry in the canon of interplanetary disco. I also love the children sadly pleading with Q to come back at the end, because the song hasn’t really given you any understanding of who or what Q is other than a being with a voice who is from space.

Take A Trip - Rev. Utah Smith: If I were, hypothetically, to start, for example, a UFO cult, I would definitely have my congregation sing this song. I love it so much. Outside of the fun premise it does what good gospel music should do and completely uplifts my spirit by promising a better life after this one, and if I get to go there by rocket ship, well that’s all the better.

Normal Person - Arcade Fire: I love the little 'do you like rock and roll music? 'cause I don’t know if I do.’ he sings at the start because it sounds like they’re into their 13th hour of recording or something. I love the lead guitar that sounds like it’s severely undernourished but trying its best and I love how strangely heavy the bass and rhythm guitar is compared to a lot of their other songs. A good song to sing along to while you’re driving.

Top Of The World - Kimbra: I don’t know exactly how or why but Kimbra made a Kanye song. Playing the dual roles of Kanye and Featured Artist she does a great job and once again defies whatever I thought she was going to do next. I can’t wait for the album, I hope it has even more Raps.

Eric’s Trip - Sonic Youth: I’ve never gotten much into Sonic Youth because they seemed way too New York Cool for me, so imagine my heartbreak when I found out the lyrics to my favourite song of theirs are wholesale lifted from an Andy Warhol film. I still have a lot of love for 'my head’s on straight, my girlfriend’s beautiful, it looks pretty good to me’ though.

I Hope I Sleep Tonight - DJ Seinfeld: God I’d be embarrassed if I blew up on soundcloud with the name 'DJ Seinfeld’ and then had to keep it when I put my album out. This album varies pretty wildly in quality but I really love this track, the synth melody that just careens around wildly while the rest of the song happens nearby is what does it for me I think.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: “In an interview with Self-Titled Magazine, Jaar said “I was watching a documentary about bugs. It said that if they looked at the sun, they’d die. I thought ‘Oh, that’s funny; that’s cute’ and I wrote a track about it (…). If you find something really special in a tiny story about bugs, it could have a much bigger meaning than that. I like the idea of turning life into this miniature thing”.” He’s used this particular voice modulation on a couple of song and it really cracks me up because it so thick and textured and just plain silly but somehow it suits the song perfectly.

Long Strong Diamond - Baggsmen: This is a song I remember seeing on Rage late at night years and years ago. The guy was dressed up as a werewolf and kidnapping some girl but he gets so distracted by his song about being a werewolf that she ends up escaping. Extremely mad to find out that the guy in this song from years ago that I love is none other than personal enemy of mine Jake Stone from Bluejuice.

XO/The Host/Initiation - The Weeknd: Trilogy could well be the best album of the decade. Remember when The Weeknd was this mysterious anonymous guy who was firmly a character and not an actual guy who seems to actually believe what he’s singing? I love Trilogy because the progression across the three discs from like 'cool indifferent party guy’ in House Of Balloons to extremely deranged cult leader in Echoes Of Silence is very satisfying. Initiation especially is great because it’s like a cool fun song about a party mixed with some extremely dark shit about the clocks not working so you can’t tell the time and the blinds not working so you can’t see outside in a scary pitch shifting voice. “And all I wanna do is leave 'cause I’ve been zoning for a week and I ain’t left this little room, trying to concentrate to breathe” but you absolutely MUST meet my boys.

This Guy’s In Love With You - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass: Anyway here’s a change of pace. A very peaceful song about just fucking dying if she won’t be your girl. I love how dramatic this song gets before completely stopping and starting again into a very relaxed trumpet line.

Jasmine (demo) - Jai Paul: I’m obsessed with the cult that develops around guys like Jai Paul and Jay Electronica, who put out two songs that are so good that it drives people insane when they don’t put out any more. There’s apparently a bunch of stuff happening with Jai Paul currently that I haven’t been keeping track of but The Fader had a really good article earlier this year about how the Jai Paul leaks and how insane it made everyone. Aside from all that, the song is pure magic - just listen to it and you can understand why everyone was obsessed as they were.

Freaking Out The Neighbourhood - Mac Demarco: I remember I saw an interview with Mac Demarco talking about this song and he described the riff as just some dumb little thing he made up which is shocking to me because I am totally obsessed with how good it sounds. It’s perfect!

Bob - “Weird Al” Yankovic: Yes baby it’s Weird Al’s all-palindrome Bob Dylan parody! I was telling my girfriend about how this is actually really good songwriting because even though it’s essentially gibberish it has enough good imagery and fun sounds that it works anyway and really how different is 'may a moody baby doom a yam’ to 'transient jet lagged ecto-mimed bison’ from the Mars Volta which also appears on this list? Anyway she hated it, and rightly so.

I Have Good News To Bring - Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Live from the basement church of my UFO cult, a beautiful version of Take A Trip that sounds like it was recorded on the organ of an empty baseball stadium at night.

Julia - Jungle: I have been desperately waiting for three years now for another Jungle album and they finally posted about new songs the other day and I got very very excited. This is an amazing song, every sound in it is so perfectly placed and the vocals are very beautiful and have such a rich bass for such a high tenor. I love the way the drums subtly get very busy in the last few choruses, I could listen to this song for hours.

Ray Gun (feat. DOOM) -BadBadNotGood & Ghostface Killah: I love that this song is maybe 20bmp faster than Ghostface or Doom are expecting. Doom especially sounds far more excited than he has in years and they both do really well with it. Also, I was certain the melody it breaks into in the last third was some Lalo Schifrin bit I’ve heard before but I can’t seem to find any info corroborating that. If it’s familiar to you or you know where it’s from, please reply to this post because it’s been driving me crazy.

Confessions Pt. III - BadBadNotGood & Colin Stetson: Any song where Colin Stetson has to play with others is funny to me. He’s such a self contained ball of power that him joining a traditional group like it just wouldn’t work. Sure, this song does sort of sound like him doing his own thing for seven minutes while the band sort of reacts to him but it is absolutely fantastic anyway.

Everyone Nose (All The Girls Standing In The Line For The Bathroom) - N.E.R.D: Remember when Pharrell was crazy? This song is total chaos. The pitched down sample in the hook, the two note bassline, the sax that just hoots once a bar. And I absolutely love the contrast of the beautiful bridge, especially the 'achooo’ backing vocals.

Parties - Shlohmo: Bad Vibes was such a moment. It is such a beautiful album, and a very easy album to fall asleep to and then wake up 20 minutes later terrified and choked by your headphones because Trapped In A Burning House, the song that sounds exactly like its title and nothing like the rest of the album, came on. I have such a strong emotional reaction I really can’t explain to the cutoff samples of people laughing near the end of this song.

Bering/Human Till Born -Talkdemonic: I have no idea how I came across this album but I’ve been listening to it constantly for ten years now and I still find new things to appreciate in it. The drums especially in Human Till Born are a source of obsession for me.

Don Caballero 3 - Don Caballero: For a long time I never 'got’ Don Caballero or Hella or any of these supposedly legendary math bands, despite loving so many bands obvously influenced by them. But then one day this album, and this song especially just clicked for me. It also happened to coincide with one of the most surreal weeks of my life when I was on a cruise ship and all I listened to was this and a field recording album that seems to have completely deleted itself from my computer since then. The best advice I’ve heard for listening to this is, and bands like it is that it’s backward. The drums are the lead instrument and everything else works around that, if that helps. This song has a twisted sort of morose quality that’s really hard to pin down. Some days it is absolutely heartbreaking, which sounds silly but it’s true.

B.Y.O.B. - System Of A Down: There’s a few reasons I was thinking of this song. First and most importantly it’s because of that dog vine but the other reason is I was thinking about how there hasn’t been a good anti-trump song yet outside of YG’s FDT, and that came out before the election. This and American Idiot came out in 2004/5, and I suppose it’s only been a year since the election so we’ve got a few years yet until the real hits come out I guess. Or I suppose he’d have to actually properly declare war, which, you know.

4D/MTI - Koreless: These songs are so intertwined in my head I feel like you can’t have one without this other. 4D is such a simple, beautiful piece of music. The synth that sounds like glass and the chopped vocals getting more and more contorted as the song goes on contrasted with the propulsion of the drums is so great. Both of these songs have a meticulousness and restraint to their sound, every single piece is perfectly where it should be and nothing else is allowed. Even MTI using so much white noise feels incredibly controlled and when it totally drops out it feels like coming up from underwater.

New Lands - Justice: Remember when Justice took 4 years to write a follow up to their album that lit the world on fire and instead of doing the same thing again they made a classic rock album? Everyone was so mad. Luckily this song is incredible and everyone was wrong once more.

You Discovered The Secret And Juiced It For All Its Majesty - Venetian Snares: This is from an EP called Cubist Reggae which I think a lot about in concept alone. This is probably the song that illustrates the idea worst but I love it a lot. My incredibly unpopular opinion is that Venetian Snares is miles better of Aphex Twin and whoever but everyone’s written him off as the Rossz Csillag guy so he doesn’t get no respect. I love how detailed his music is, how every one of the million sounds seems to be perfectly placed. I think he’s in a similar position to Autechre where he’s been making and listening to only his own music for so long now that he’s forgotten how normal music sounds, which is good.

Blues Run The Game - Jackson C. Frank: I made a playlist a couple of years ago of all the songs I sing to myself when I’m just walking around or whatever and it turned out about 6/10 had 'blues’ or 'hard times’ in the title, which is tough but it’s ok, and this was one of them. If you want to read a wiki article that’ll make you cry, read Jackson C. Frank’s, but mostly you should just listen to this, his only album.

Thermal Treasure - Polvo: I played this song for my girlfriend and during the intro she said 'you have such a wide variety of tense, off kilter music seeminly designed just to put people on edge’. I’m a huge fan of this very defensive sentence in Polvo’s wiki article 'Their sound was so unpredictable and angular that the band’s guitarists were often accused of failing to play with correctly tuned guitars’.

FML - Kanye West: This is such a strangely affecting song and it’s hard to be sympathetic to Kanye as a narrator sometimes (especially when he insists on doubling down on dogshit lines like “'I'mma have the last laugh indian cause I’m from the tribe called chekaho’��) but against all odds you can identify and relate to his struggle to hold onto the woman he loves and not be undone by his own worst instincts. Musically this is the best The Weeknd has ever sounded and I already love him a lot, and the way the drums lead into the sample at the end is just perfect.

Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) - The Mars Volta: This is the album I’ve probably listened to the most in my life. As a teenager I would listen to this album every night for easily a year and somehow there’s still something new to hear in it. It’s almost hard to listen to it now because I have so much Teenage Feeling attached to it but it’s still an incredible piece of work. Jon Theodore deserves a statue for his drumming on this album, and this song especially, in my humble opinion.

Life’s A Beach! - Studio: God I love Studio. I think if you tried to describe them on paper you could never make it sound like good music. “It’s sort of, balearic , reggae, guitar-led dance music and the songs go for about 15 minutes most of the time.” But it is good music! I absolutely promise it’s incredible music!

The Number Song (Cut Chemist Remix) - DJ Shadow: I love this remix because it feels like theseus’ ship as demonstrated via remix. How many parts can you swap out for similar but not identical parts before it’s a completely different song. The drums are almost the same beat, but a totally different sample.The Jackson 5 horns in the original that signal the transition to the second half are still here with the same function, but it’s an entirely different horn sample, and an entirely different second half save for 'the party’s already started, and it’s about to end’. 

listen here

[keegames]

Sonic Forces Review: Chains of Future Past

Ah, Sonic Forces. To many, it’s the OTHER Sonic game to come out this year. A few previous articles have mentioned my history with the series, and I promised a review of this game, so without further ado, here goes.

Sonic Forces is an odd little game, in that it seems it was made to please all types of Sonic fans. The core of the gameplay of both Modern Sonic and your custom character (more on that later) is the tried-and-true racing-platfomer-hybrid first used in 3D Sonic by Sonic Unleashed and then adapted into Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations. However, it also features levels starring Classic Sonic similarly to Generations, and it has a few levels based on Genesis Sonic zones (though with more changes to their aesthetics than Generations; more on that later). It also features an attempt at a more serious (some would say “edgy”) story, similar to that of the Sonic Adventure games, and a create-a-character feature sure to appeal to the series’s more imaginative fans. The premise of the main plot is even similar to the SatAM show and the early Archie comics. Unfortunately, it would be a lie to say that all these discrete elements come together strongly. Still, despite its flaws, there’s a lot of fun to be had in Sonic Forces. Hopefully this lengthy write-up gives you a better idea of the game’s pros and cons.

Gameplay

Sonic Forces features four gameplay styles that the player is shuffled between across its various stages (30 main stages/boss fights, plus 13 or 14 short secret levels that are entirely 2D platform challenges based on singular level gimmicks). Unlike other Sonic games that feature multiple gameplay styles, however, three of the four styles control relatively similarly with a single core mechanic differentiating them (or, in the case of “tag team,” not differentiating them).

Let’s start with Modern Sonic. Modern Sonic, in terms of abilities, is most similar to his Colors incarnation, featuring a double jump and a boost that is only filled by either collecting Wisp Capsules or destroying enemies. His levels swap between 3D and 2D smoothly. Unlike Colors, he can perform the Quick Step (a short shift to the left or the right) at any point with the shoulder buttons, though like Colors, a few context-sensitive sections have him do this with a push of the joystick to the left or right as well. He also has the stomp and slide moves. Strangely, his drift ability is completely absent, which you may miss in a few parts of Metropolitan Highway, but generally won’t worry about otherwise. Like the previous games of this style, Sonic takes turns kind of wider than you’d expect from most 3D platformer characters, but it’s managing his momentum and movement in that way that makes this style unique and interesting. Set aside the assumptions put in place by Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot, and you’ll be well on your way to mastering the game and blazing across the land.

Now, the custom character. You can choose your character’s gender, animal species, a few different head styles, eyes (shape and color), colors, voice, and victory pose. These options are relatively basic, which fits because Sonic characters don’t have much body variety anyway. Each species also has a special ability, but these are generally minor (wolf attracts nearby rings, rabbit has longer invincibility when hit, bird has a small double jump, etc.) You can still make some goofy looking faces with the right eyes, but the real meat of the customization is in clothing. Doing just about anything in the game will unlock more and more clothing pieces, from shirts to pants to jackets to capes to hats to glasses to shoes to kneepads to monocles to masks and more. There’s tons of this stuff and you can make some ridiculous creations. It’s actually one of the most fun things in the game.

The custom character’s basic controls are basically identical to Modern Sonic, though they lack a double jump unless you make a bird. Notably, however, they lack the boost, meaning that, though you still get moving at good speeds, you won’t quite be running over everything in your path. The custom character’s main form of attack outside of homing attacks is your equipped Wispon (Wisp weapon). Each of these serves two purposes: a regular attack that you can do at any time, and a special ability that you can perform when you pick up the corresponding Wisp. There are a variety of attacks and abilities, but they’re not all created equal by a long shot. For example, the Burst Wispon gives you a flamethrower that you can hold to torch enemies in front of you. This is one of the best ones due to not affecting your movement; you can run and jump freely while spraying fire, so you don’t lose momentum. Comparatively, the Lightning Wispon is an electric whip that forces you to either stop or move forward awkwardly while swinging (though its arc is pretty wide), and the Cube Wispon forces you to stop completely and attack twice to actually destroy enemies since its first swing traps them in cubes. (Destroying cubed enemies gives you extra rings, though, so at least it can get you more points than other Wispons.) Generally, you’ll find yourself annoyed by Wispons that stop your movement. One notable Wispon is the Drill, which gives you a powerful, super-fast charging attack that you keep your momentum from afterwards. It’s perfect for speedrunning.

The Wispon abilities that are activated from the item also vary. Burst lets you do a series of jumps until its meter runs out, Lightning allows you to dash along trails of rings and enemies, Drill grinds you across the ground and up walls, Asteroid makes you invincible for a period of time, etc. Some of these are good for finding alternate paths and hidden Red Rings throughout levels, while others are mostly utilities for making your life easier. Custom character levels are usually similar in layout and feel to Modern Sonic ones, apart from the changes made to make Wispons relevant.

Classic Sonic is the third character, and easily the worst. His levels are fully 2D, and on a basic level, he works like he would in Mania, right down to him having his Drop Dash. However, he just feels WRONG. Jump momentum is screwy, momentum when not rolling doesn’t work right, and he just generally feels like a brick with Sonic’s moves. Even without Sonic Mania’s release this year, he’d seem kind of off; with it, he’s just embarrassing. That said, his levels are designed competently apart from his final level, Iron Fortress, which is a giant pain in the ass, thanks to a forced autoscrolling section full of death pits. Classic Sonic is absolutely the worst part of Forces, and hopefully SEGA decides to re-hire the Mania team to appeal to Sonic nostalgia rather than trying and failing to make this sloppy gameplay style work. (Forces was in development before Mania, so it was likely too late to cut him out by time Mania started, so I give a slight pass in that sense.)

The fourth type of stage isn’t technically a new character; rather, it is Tag Team stages, where you control both Modern Sonic and your custom character at the same time. Controlling two characters at once is done very simply, as you are essentially controlling one character with both sets of abilities. There are the least of these stages compared to other characters. One notable thing about them is that there are very few 2D sections, with only one that lasts more than a few seconds. They also feature a “Double Boost” mechanic, where at certain pre-determined points you’re asked to mash a button, and after a few seconds, Sonic and your custom character rocket forward for a certain amount of time, running over enemies and gathering rings. It’s basically just a scripted sequence where you can rack up points, but it’s amusing to see your own creation as Sonic’s new best friend as the game’s cheesy vocal theme plays and you run over tons of enemies.

Notably, the game no longer has lives; you are instead awarded a bigger score bonus at the end of levels for dying less. Since previous 3D Sonic games already hurt your ranks for dying mid-level, having to spend lives to restart at checkpoints or retry levels would be a waste anyway. I’m not one to say that lives should be completely eliminated from games (and in fact I think Sonic Mania was better for having them, despite some complaints I’ve heard), but in this case they wouldn’t add to the experience in any meaningful way.

Level Design

Though level design is technically part of gameplay, it’s important enough in Sonic especially to need its own section. Since Modern Sonic, custom character, and Tag Team levels mostly hit the same design beats, I can talk about their design relatively interchangeably.

With pre-release footage, people were worried that levels were too short and too linear, with little to no shortcuts or things to do beyond blasting forward for a little bit. I can confirm, however, that the levels showcased pre-release are generally some of the least interesting, for whatever reason. Many of the levels have cool shortcuts and paths taken through either well timed jumps, sidesteps, homing attacks, or Wispon ability usage. Like previous Sonic games in this style, there’s more platforming in 2D than 3D, but generally rocketing your way through these levels, optimizing your performance, and finding the paths to take to collect all the Red Rings (there are five hidden in each level) is a lot of fun, with a single consistent caveat.

Many of the levels in Sonic Forces feel too short. This is less of a criticism of the actual time spent in each level, and more of a criticism of their pacing. Each level, consistently, feels sort of like two thirds of a level; each one seems like it should have a third section that brings together all the mechanics and layout techniques the level introduced and fully bring them to their conclusion. Instead, each time you get to where you think you’re about to reach that, the level ends instead. The thing that makes this especially sad is that what’s there tends to be a LOT of fun. You’ll be ripping through cool, interesting landscapes and you’ll wish you could do it more than you end up doing. As much fun as I ended up having with this game, I couldn’t help but feel a little short-changed from time to time.

Classic Sonic’s level design generally feels like a simplification of design you’d find in Sonic the Hedgehog 2; there’s nothing super special about it but it’s not bad either, apart from the aforementioned Iron Fortress. You’ll be more bothered by his actual control than with the levels.

The game also has its share of boss fights for each character, which range from “inoffensive” to “moderately fun,” though they’re never the best part of the game. The custom character probably has the best time with them, because using the Wispons to attack is more fun than homing attacking repeatedly, and some of them you can really speed up the fights with the right abilities. Unlike some other 3D Sonic games, they never really get frustrating, so I guess that’s a plus.

Graphics

Sonic Forces looks pretty nice. It varies by level, however. Forces’s take on Green Hill wasn’t quite as nice as Generations’s; it used more simple geometric shapes and less interesting foliage. Some of the other levels are much nicer looking, such as the Mystic Forest, Death Egg, Metropolis, and Empire Fortress stages. Many of the levels also have tons of action in the backgrounds, including giant robots, bombing runs, and in the case of the Empire Fortress stages, an all-out war. The lighting looks pretty nice, and the game runs at a rock-solid 60 frames per second on the PS4 version that I played. It won’t necessarily wow you, but it’s a game that looks pretty good.

Sound and Music

The game’s voice acting is cartoony and goofy, like you’d expect from a game about talking animals. Most of the levels have dialogue during them that advances the plot and describes action. There is an option to turn off all the in-level dialogue, which is useful when you’re replaying stages.

The music is pretty good, though not quite the series’s best. Each character has their own musical style in their levels. Modern Sonic generally has a mixture of guitars and synths in his levels. The compositions are cool, fast-paced, and sometimes kind of dramatic, but the lead synth in a lot of them isn’t quite idea. I still like a lot of the music, but I can understand it bothering you. The custom character has music characterized mostly by synths, other electronic instruments, and vocals. The lyrics are kinda cheesy, with the songs being about destiny, winning the fight, and other goofy things. You might find yourself singing along if you don’t take yourself seriously. Classic Sonic music actually uses Sega Genesis-styled instruments, though strangely enough it doesn’t sound like the kind you’d hear in a Genesis Sonic game. I can’t quite place the game I would hear these sounds in, though. A few are catchy and fun, but the others are pretty forgettable. Tag team stages have music similar to the custom character’s stages, but without lyrics (with the exception of one stage that reprises the game’s main hard rock vocal theme). They’re generally pretty forgettable.

Story

I can’t tell if Sonic Forces is taking itself seriously or if it’s being tongue-in-cheek about the series’s previous brushes with serious storytelling, but either way it’s pretty hilarious. Hearing goofy cartoon animals talk about the seriousness of war never stops being funny, whether intentionally or not. The story is always cheesy, going from an overly edgy cheesiness at the beginning to a more wholesome cheesiness near the end, where speeches about the power of friendship walk right out of your favorite anime into the dialogue. One notable bit of contrast is that, even in the serious parts of the story early on, Sonic himself is never particularly serious. He’s always chattering away and making wisecracks, which actually ends up being very entertaining due to everything else around him. If you only let yourself enjoy things that are legitimately good, you’ll probably be irritated, but anyone who can let themselves go and laugh at a B-movie atmosphere will have a lot of fun watching the cutscenes.

Replay Value

The game’s main story clocks in at only 4-ish hours over its 30 main stages/boss fights, but it doesn’t seem like it should really be any longer. It’s not particularly difficult to beat, either. There’s a good amount of replay value: like previous 3D Sonic games, you’re ranked on your score at the end of levels, so getting S ranks on every stage is one way to get a good amount of time from the game. Each stage also has five Red Rings to find, giving you a reason to revisit levels and find all the different paths. Once you’ve collected all the Red Rings in a stage, a set of Number Rings will appear, which have to be collected in order from 5 to 1 descending. And once you’ve collected all of those, a set of Silver Moon Rings will appear in a level, which must all be collected in a short period of time. Red Rings are the only of these collectibles that unlock extra levels; the others are purely for satisfaction, avatar items, and Trophies/Achievements. The extra levels aren’t particularly meaty; they’re purely 2D platforming challenges with either Modern Sonic or the custom character that are focused around singular gimmicks that don’t appear in the rest of the game. They’re fun enough, I guess, but they don’t really take advantage of what makes this kind of Sonic game special. Finally, the game has leaderboards for level times, though unsurprisingly they seem to be hacked to hell and back on the PC version. Since getting the best times in levels takes a lot of clever optimization, it can be a lot of fun to do your absolute best. If you’re not driven to better yourself, though, then Sonic Forces loses a lot of appeal, as a single playthrough will be over pretty quickly.

Conclusion

At its best, Sonic Forces is a fast-paced, fun action platformer where you’ll be blazing through cool environments and feeling the flow as you nail all your homing attacks, boosts, Wispon moves, quick steps, and slides. At its worst, you’ll be wondering why Sonic Team bothered to bring back Classic Sonic at all. Sonic Forces also doesn’t have much to offer in the way of exploration, nor is its main story all that long, so if you don’t like optimizing your performance then you’ll find yourself uninterested pretty quickly. Still, if you like the feeling of nailing every movement, Sonic Forces is a lot of fun, even if the levels feel like they should be a bit more fleshed out. If you already dislike the boost gameplay from Unleashed, Colors, and Generations, Forces won’t change your mind. If you enjoyed those games, or if you just have an open mind, most of this game can be a solid piece of entertainment. Plus, there’s a special joy that comes from dressing your cartoon animal up in completely ridiculous outfits. As a budget title (launching at $40), there’s a good amount of fun to be had in Sonic Forces, despite its issues. Hopefully Sonic Team takes the right lessons from this game and sticks to the fast-paced boost gameplay they’ve been building on and look to the future while leaving the imitations and celebrations of the series’s early days to the fine folks who made Sonic Mania.

Buy if:

you already like “Boost Sonic”

you enjoy optimizing your performance in short, action-packed challenges

you can stomach a couple of irritating bits

you enjoy chuckling at goofy, cheesy writing

Avoid if:

you’re looking for a solid Classic Sonic experience

you prefer longer games or exploration in your platformers

you’re not used to adjusting to controls that feel different from the genre standard

cheesy things irritate you

[weneverlearn]

R.I.P. Grant Hart

When some kind of celebrity death occurs -- and that “celebrity” can be Prince or Paul Hamann -- there’s often a genuinely heartfelt and/or morbid need to reach out and tell someone. Add the internet into that instinct, and this human action takes on more strange, conflicted, even narcissistic layers.

I woke up yesterday to a text about Grant Hart having passed away. I told myself my girlfriend was awake, and gently tapped her on the shoulder to tell her. She has been working a lot lately, and it was probably best to let her sleep and talk about this later. Telling her, telling anyone wasn’t going to bring Grant Hart back. Basically I just confused her, though she sweetly said “Sorry,” and went back to sleep, somehow.

The emotions were flooding through me, and it was one of numerous deaths that have occurred in my sphere of late, so the usual sinking heart feeling sunk as low as it’s been in awhile (and that’s saying something in this Trump era). One song popped in my head, “Think It Over Now,” from Hart’s excellent 1999 solo album, Good News for Modern Man. In a sea of great Grant Hart songs, it’s Ronettes-meets-rainstorm ramble makes it one of my favorites of his, and it’s positive message helped instantly assuage some sadness. I posted it on Facebook for whatever fucking reason, and went to work, unable to think about much else the rest of the day, into today, and I don’t know, maybe from now on.

It feels awkward to make a celebrity death personal with some tossed-out Facebook post. But I am at that point now in my life where the passing of such monumental artistic figures starts to occur closer to you, more frequently, and it’s inevitable that it spurs you to seek comfort from just telling others why this death is monumental. I mean, in my early 20s, if I had heard the bassist in the Johnny Burnette Trio died, oh, that’s sad. But had that bassist been close to my age, had I seen that bassist play live, got to hang out with him a bit, cranked his records through headphones throughout my teens, well...

It was early summer, 1985, I was 17, about butt-deep into a growing pile of records, increasingly punk records, and my au currant desire was to “get into hardcore.” I mean it was all over college radio, Cleveland had a decent scene of it (although in that odd Ohio-y, weather-beaten way), and I just thought, well, that’s what a guy like me should be doing right now. So I went to my local rack jobber and asked him for a great new hardcore album, and he hands me New Day Rising.

I took it home and played it, but I was a bit nonplussed. This wasn’t the bald-head dude screaming in a circle pit shit I thought I was searching for. It was loud and fast for sure, but not the polka-beat, the government and your parents suck spiel. Instead, as I noticed while I self-surprisingly kept playing the record over and over for the next week, was an instantly recognizable melancholy, damp atmosphere, and intense energy I’d already loved from midwest acts. Husker Du just felt like me and lots of strangers I was starting to get to know at Cleveland punk shows -- already a bit beaten by long winters, mall jobs, and terrible sports teams we didn’t care about, but you live in Cleveland, so you’re going to hear about the fucking Browns whether you like it or not. My image was the three Huskers sitting in their dank basement, from about the first week of October until the first week of March, with a space heater sparking in the corner, complaining about fucking jocks, drinking the cheapest local beer, excited only about the tunes they were coming up with, grasping for hopes maybe winter will end early this year (the last week of February), but knowing for sure it’s just gonna come around again anyway, so whatever, let’s go through that new one again.

I already knew enough about the California-based SST Records to know a shlubby band from Minneapolis with cutoff shorts and an almost sobbing seriousness to their loud fast rules, featuring lyrics about folklore and summer ending, was not that label’s raison d’etre. No doubt most of their bands had shitty lives, crappy parents, drug problems, and whatever. But to me, nothing I’d heard on that label (save some Black Flag), had this depth of pathos and seething spirit. I mean come on, it’s California. You don’t spend your teens hanging out on beaches and seeing pretty girls all the time all year and think, “Damn, remember those good times we had? Fuck! Where’s my copy of Being and Nothingness?!” (Well, maybe the Minutemen did.)

Indeed, from what I understood through the grape, er, hops-vine of the time, many diehard SST fans didn’t dig Husker Du. (Someone did, because I think Husker Du was the best selling act on SST, but you record scholars can correct me on that.) To me they were a sudden, jarring connection between the jangle of ‘60s folk and garage rock -- meaning they were contemporaries more with R.E.M. than Saccharine Trust or what have you -- and a huge leap into some fuzzed-out new world of extreme emotional and sonic confessional. Even moreso than the, truth be told, kind of cute Replacements, Husker Du were the gnarled heart pumping to where punk could grasp towards, to survive not just the winters but encroaching adulthood abyss. Even their name, from an old board game (fun!) that translated to “Do You Remember?” (sad), was reflective. They were 20-year olds and already nostalgic, wistful. But their own apocalyptic Reagan-era shakes were vibrating them out of that basement. They toured like fucking crazy, rust belt work ethic and all; and with hooks that finally put a relevant nail in skinny tie power pop’s coffin.    

New Day Rising has mostly remained my favorite Husker Du album since, the opening title tune being my favorite opener on any album (save maybe “I’m Stranded” by the Saints). But their whole catalog is worth churning through. And it wasn’t just Grant Hart’s massively manic drum pounds that hit you hard, but his and Bob Mould’s strained, splitting-at-the-edges voices. Like their Minneapolis contemporaries (Replacements, Soul Asylum, Magnolias), they sounded like they were incredibly pissed off and ready to fight, to the point of tears. Not to belabor the midwest/California dichotomy, but the Offspring never struck me as tearful guys.

Of course soon enough I gathered, via unexplainable gut impressions and gossipy fanzine articles, that there were gay men in Husker Du. And there’s no doubt that the usual animosity towards jocks for this punk band left larger scars.

The scar I personally got from their records was a band. When I first met New Bomb Turks’s guitarist Jim Weber at our college dorm, one of the earliest conversations centered on how Jim couldn’t get to the Warehouse tour stop in Cleveland, and hence never got to see Husker Du. I’d seen them twice, regaled Jim with some details, and made tapes of the Husker Du albums he didn’t have. You can ask him, but I think Bob Mould was his biggest early guitar inspiration. And further discussions involved the gender identity of the band, though being early-20s guys in the late ‘80s, we probably didn’t talk about “gender identity” as much as how/when we were called the ol’ “f”word in high school, and how the Huskers must have dealt with tons of awful shit from the more unseemly sides of the hardcore scene. 

Husker Du was a favorite band, but also our introduction to really thinking about these issues that were still pretty swept under the turkey at the family Thanksgiving meal back then. We were both raised Catholic, so...

So, Grant Hart. After the Warehouse show at the Phantasy Theater in Cleveland in summer 1987 (they would break up soon after the end of that tour), I made my way to the adjacent upstairs bar, whose backroom was being used as a backstage. I saw Grant and said, “Great show!” He looked at me a little cockeyed, then turned around, asking, “Does anyone have any heroin around here?” So, that was that.

I loved his 2541 EP from 1988, the first post-Husker Du release. By then I was best friends with the first friend to ever come out to me; and that happening right around the release of that EP, well, one should always appreciate life’s teachable serendipity.

Then, the first time I ever went to New York City and first time I went to CBGB in 1989 with said out pal, the first band I saw there was Hart’s Nova Mob. (Well, technically Run Westy Run opened up.) They were pretty good, and I was glad to see Hart still going at it, but it seemed soon enough that he wasn’t. Didn’t hear much except sporadic solo stuff after Nova Mob split up, and given the usual rumors, figured he was done. But then my band was pretty busy those years, and I was soaking up tons of new bands, so who knows.

Then, in mid-summer 1999, I get a request from an editor at the Cleveland Free Times to write a preview for Grant Hart’s solo show in Cleveland, and found out he’d be playing Columbus a couple days before. So we hooked up a meeting, which is a whole other story for another post, or if I had the power, a movie. It was a strange couple of days, involving breaking into the trunk of the early ‘80s Cadillac he was touring in (”Got it from Rent-a-Wreck, seriously”), the club, Bernie’s, not paying him what they promised, Hart rightly taking a monitor as payment (probably not worth the $250 he was guaranteed), and me getting a call from him at 3 a.m. asking to be a character witness in court on Monday. Nice dinner with him in there too.

After relative (college) radio silence for a few years, I didn’t know what to expect of the show, and without going into details, let’s just say this seemed like a “rent tour.” Hart was fairly disheveled, but super nice. He’d recently become close with Patti Smith, and I guess she told him her parents last names were Grant and Hart, and that once she heard of him, she took that as a sign from the stars to work with him. Anyway, standing in Berne’s with like 10 other people watching him, I was utterly floored once again. His voice was just teeming with the weight of all those slushy winters. I just kept thinking, this is unbelievable how intense he is, and how good these songs are, and how no one even in my circle of music heps even knew this show was happening, in the middle of summer no less, when campus is pretty dead anyway. Unfortunately, a horrible flu had also floored me, a 102 temperature, and I could only stay about four songs of his set before heading home to sweat in bed. “Ah, I’ll see him again.” That was the last time I saw him play.

R.I.P. Grant Hart.

[rockandrollportlandor]

DAZZLESHIPS RECORDS - “Raised by Women”

Note: normally, I don't even mention people's identity clusters in my reviews, because 90% of the time it's irrelevant to the music. However I wanted to preface this review with some of my thought about women in indie music, because this is a compilation which does stop and explicitly acknowlege the contributions of its musicians as women. By 2018, female musicians haven't just carved out a place for themselves in indie music--they're its driving force, and probably the only thing preventing the entire genre, which was for so many years dominated by white cishet collegiate and post-collegiate men, and which had never recovered from its brief heyday of dominance in the 1990's, from disintegrating into total irrelevance. This isn't to say that women in "the scene" are any less subject to the violence, offenses, and injustices that women have been subject to throughout human history. Going by the stats on assault, we have to assume that most male sexual assaulters continue to be protected in all social circles, even as many others are called out. Every manner of irritation still comes at women in indie circles. Seasoned musicians are given unsoliticed tips, male reviewers overtly or subtly focus on the artist's appearance over her music, and womanhood is frequently perceived as a genre unto itself, as the old maxim decries. The maginalization of women and, more broadly speaking, femme performativity in indie music isn't just bad for equity/equality, it's bad for music itself. And likewise, feminism is as important a practice in aesthetics as it is in politics. I don't want to miss out on a great experience of new music because I'm too busy staring at the ass of the person making it, or, on the other end of the spectrum, puffing up my ego because I fancy myself so enlightened to be enjoying this woman just for her music. I just want to hear the music, not myself. I hear myself all fucking day long. And I really hope I'm not rare in the world of indie rock, and the world generally. Women can shout until their voices give, but if men aren't going to finally let them into the spaces they're banned from, both physically and psychologically, and commit to cease a whole range of violent thought and behavior toward women, ranging from mere dismissal of their minds to actual murder, nothing's going to happen. Feminism is a task for everyone, and you don't have to march in a single protest or call out a creep online or whatever to do good work. The struggle in your own head, and how it plays out in small ways, might be your own greatest work. Or maybe, if you're Hunter Skowron of Dazzleships Records, you'll put out a compilation of some of Portland's choicest woman-fronted bands, and donate all the proceeds to Raphael House, a local non-profit providing a safe haven from domestic violence. Skowron has assembled a diverse collection of some of the choicest woman-fronted bands Portland's indie rock/pop scene has to offer. Though the excellent sequencing might make it less apparent, these artists have little to do with each other within the indie pop/rock spectrum and probably won't be together on the same compilation if it had a different theme, but this only makes it all the more interesting of a listen. It opens with the dark horses Skull Diver, who've generated signicant buzz since their arrival without--at least it appears to me--relying on the kind of neopotism we all know about... I know them best for their dirgey tragic numbers, but this tune, "Bad Star", feels more like Depeche Mode. Nonetheless, it still drenches you with the Skull Diver house mood of melancholic defiance, and it's a great way to open the record. Mini Blinds comes next, shrinking the paranoramic picture frame of Skull Diver to something more akin to an 18 inch cathode ray TV, a sound more like classic 80's and 90's indie pop. There's a bittersweet quality in singer Beth Ann Dear, and while song sounds kind of cute at first, the angst can be felt quietly rumbling beneath the surface. The title, "Happy" feels ironic, but I might be picking up the wrong vibes. Cat Hoch comes next, offering up a surprising pure pop tune rooted in very 80's-sounding synths, radically different from her early solo material, which was 60's-rooted, meandering, guitar-based psych pop well-suited to driving through the desert. This new track, "Say You Love Me", is bouncy and charming--you could almost imagine Jane Fonda using it as a background track for one of her aerobics videos. But what's most interesting is how Hoch's ethereal, almost completely breathy voice, a strength of her music from day one, has mostly remained the same in this new environment, where it's so different from what Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, Debbie Gibson might do over such a backing track. It's a little lighter and freer than the old Hoch, but it retains a lot of that wide-eyed mystical aura, making for an oddly delightful confection. Natasha Kmeto comes next, one of the more high-profile artists in a city whose best acts are often content to never venture beyond the West Coast. "Your Girl" is a primo piece of contemporary electronic pop dreaminess that gives me the impression of a glacier slowly melting, becoming grander and grander as its heart shrinks more and more. It's the kind of song you listen to in your car when you're heartbroken, outside your ex's house to get the last of your stuff and you just can't go in because you're sobbing. Okay that was random, anyway... Rilla, a group I've been personally familiar for several years due to connections with the Toads, contributes "Side Sleeper", an excellent example of their unique sound, strongly focused on instrumental interactions between the two guitars and bass that remind me so much of the perky melodicism of 8-bit video games, but without the stiffness--actually, Rilla can be quite romantic, and this song is one of those. Voices, almost ghostly, drift in and out, abstract commentary on the web woven by the guitars. They're excellent at structuring songs, departing from verse-chorus-verse and often making it seem like the tunes have more parts than they really do. Call it sleight of time. Johanna Warren takes us on another 180 with a self-probing folk song, which feels to me, sonically at least, like a complement to the Natasha Kmeto song two tracks ago, but in an acoustic instead of electronic mode. Warren's voice lingers on each syllable of her lyrics, compelling as much with her phrasing as the pensive fingerpicked guitar and spooky piano notes do, and most of all the negative space that engulfs the song like mist. DANDAN returns us to the realm of synths with a mostly instrumental track that sounds like music in a groovy retro-futuristic lounge on the planet Saturn. I wonder if this band is familiar with Dick Hyman and his album "Moon Gas", because I'm getting hard vibes in that direction. Next is one of the best Blackwater Holylight, "Sunrise", which I've described in my recent review of their first album. Laura Palmer's Death Parade, whose frontwoman Laura Hopkins is also a member of Blackwater Holylight, brings of the rear of her other band's song, contributing "Scrollin". Driven by a harsh, spikey electric rhythm guitar, it's a tune of romantic frustration, building in tension as Hopkins increases the vulnerability and resentment in her voice before it trails down in abject defeat. Her lover is gone, leaving her to be "destroyed by the light of [her] phone", a thoroughly modern sort of misery. A quicky and satisfying piece of songwriting. Haste brings up the energy a bit with "Let's Play with Ourselves", pushed along by a modified "Be My Baby" or maybe "Maps" beat, bobbing up and down for the most part on two chords (save for a bridge), like a little boat at sea. Singer Jasmine Linee Wood delivers a sleepy but heartfelt performance playing off the bands's rhythm section provides the consistent pulse, conveying maybe the purest expression of melancholy on an album that seems suffused with that emotion. Sheers, on of the city's most mysterious and unique pop acts, closes the album with her harp-driven song "An Occasion", offering a fine example of her jazz-inflected curiosities. I've also written about her music at length recently, so I won't repeat here, except to say it's a major highlight of this album. It's really a perfect closer to this overcast hashish dream of a record, which should be a welcome companion to get you through the rest of this Northwest winter. As I said, melancholy is the predominant note mood-wise in this collection, but there are so many flavors and states of it that it doesn't really feel as monochomatic as you might think. How good of a represenation of women musicians in town is it? Fuck if I know. I do know every song is great, and every song was made by women, so take that for whatever, in the end, it really means. AN ADDITIONAL NOTE: This is a long meditative post because I've reached the end of a year in which I promised to center bands and artists who were not white, cishet, or male. I ended up, due perhaps to a lack of adventurousness on my part and Portland indie rock's already poor diversity, mostly writing about white cishet women, but regardless of who I was writing about I ended up appreciating all the more the contributions of non-white, non-cishet, non-male folks in our music community. Mostly, I wish i had written more of anything on the blog this year, but you know how shit goes. In 2019 I'm going to go back to writing about whoever moves me regardless of identity cluster. Restricting white cis men didn't didn't feel any different, mostly, but maybe it's not supposed to. It's probably true that I wrote about a bunch of people I would have put on the back burner, and that's pretty good.