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sole-cuore-amore-e-droga · 6 years ago

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Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Lithuania to Eurovision with a rampaging mess that gave a lukewarm conclusion

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Oh dear.

When it comes to my country to choose, they’re often chosen to be overlooked by the Eurofan community, especially because of our insanely long procedure of choosing, that would often cause everyone to hear the songs live more times than they’re supposed to. And it seemed to be a similar case this year because while not as long as usual, we still had 7 shows + an additional week break (that allowed me to watch some more Destination Eurovision! Woo!), and a big pile to songs to swim through, usually submitted by all ranges of songwriters who’re willing just to get their names known to the world creditswise (looking at you Ashley Hicklin and co.) and often are paired with our talent show rejects that fade away as soon as they come in if their song and their chances crash out before the final (see Germantė Kinderytė - she didn’t make it to the lives of The Voice Lithuania, had a killer song though that didn’t make it to the semis thanks for the jury annihilating her pointswise TWICE and only ended up lucky the televoters’ 10 was enough to get her through. Another example: Benas Malakauskas, who got lucky to be on the selection for two years in a row, but did not go beyond the AUDITIONS in said talent show! Yet progressed to the second round at farthest both of his years). And even then, you’re never sure if these songs ARE even on the lineup. Last year we had angry Erica Jennings pulling her song out of the comp just because of having to hear the juries critique others so abrasively (at least abrasively I guess?) one show in, but then it suddenly re-emerged back, but instead sung by Monika Marija - fresh off her The Voice Lithuania victory. This year we had some names pulling off for no reason, some names pulling for A reason (like Sasha Song who couldn’t turn up for the live recording of Heat 4 because of his song not sounding the best way possible, and was fined for it lol), and some names being added last minute or even changed unexpectedly (Tomas Sinickis, you heard of him? Now he underwent by Tommy Modric... yes the footballer Modric). Which is as crazy as MIIIIHAAAAIIIII deciding not to compete in the Romanian NF because “it’s all rigged and me a tryhard won’t feel too safe enough to finally win on this one” oh boo-hoo, think of the kids who never liked your sorry ass anyway. And think of the kids in general before showcasing your half-naked or mostly-naked body in front of them.

Excuse me for my long ass paragraph number 1, BUT we were actually so dang dramatic this year that I cannot contain myself without letting y'all know why this NF deserved a much better winner to come out of it rather than THAT that actually came to be. I'm a native so I know every single detail. So if ya wanna know why exactly I'm underwhelmed, read 'em up. If you wanna know that I'm just underwhelmed, just skip ahead to the review, idc. Did you make your choice? Well then. Let's delve into the details:

• The first clear competitor, Monika Marija, releases a song that people really want to see in the selection but she assures everyone it’s not THE song. Then she shows her other one, and people honestly want the first one back, but grow to adapt to it.

• Lineup reveal happens with her in it, wbk. Along with some other interesting names like Jurgis Didžiulis (off InCulto), Jurgis Brūzga and etc.

• First show is filmed and broadcasted as normal. But, after the broadcast, a pissed-off parent is mad at his son’s result on Facebook (and the result seemed fair enough to me actually despite liking the song because it’s such a second-hand NF tier entry that isn’t meant to last that I’d even see fizzle out in... A Dal for example).

• Also a minor lulz related to one contestant’s song lyrics sounding like Russian swearwords (you know the ones the kids are yelling on CS:GO) but that was fixed

• Lineup changes that include Sasha Song, the second-most-recent X Factor Lithuania season winners at the time 120 (yep that’s the band’s name) and some other guy who came and went last minute without a word from him back as to why lol. (As well as one of the lost starlets of 2018, Emilija Valiukevičiūtė, was initially announced in the first lineup reveal but fizzled out by Heat 4 as well.)

• And it turns out Monika Marija chose both of her latest releases (including the first one she said she won’t enter) to participate because her fans want it so and she felt like it, although fans were more attached to the 1st one she entered.

• Jurgis Didžiulis brings Erica Jennings with him - yep, the same lady who withdrew because of the jury has grew some thick skin over a year and joined the lineup too. Among other things.

• Second show had a major televoting issue that affected the scores massively (basically only a few hundred votes were missing lol), and had the issue affected any of the nonqualifiers enough for them to qualify, they’d be added to the semis as a wildcard. So naturally, someone of the NQs complained about it BUT it turned out it did not affect anyone anyway. Another act got pissed for being mistreated by juries too by the way.

• Sasha Song withdraws last minute for reasons above, and his fine is 2000 euros. Well, now you have to know that if you, fellow Lithuanian, want into Eurovizijos, you need to be a bit rich to accept circumstances like these, otherwise you’re totally fucked.

• Heat 3 happens as normal BUT Heat 4 brings in some fire as it turns out that one of the contestants’ stepfather was offering his company’s services (like, those outside children play parks’ assets) for televotes to her dear stepdaughter’s song, with her EVEN NOT SEEING ANYTHING WRONG WITH IT. LRT, as clever as they are, decide to null her televotes in protest. Shame tho as the song was good, and way better Laurell Barker submission than the ones she got on ESC this year.

• One contestant, Alen Chicco (also from X Factor Lithuania, may or may not even be from the same season that was won by 120), causes a bit of controversy by having a black man on his performance

• During the semi stage, Monika Marija asks her fans not to vote for the 1st song she submitted to the selection, but rather support her 2nd song that won the semi comfortably, way after the folks were attached to her 1st song already and claiming it’s better for Eurovision (no it’s not), but it backfires spectacularly when the jury has enough guts to make her qualify with it, even if the televote for it was rather low.

• But before semi 2 happened and Monika Marija sang her weaker song, a contestant with the name of Migloko resorts to middle-finger the audience during her performance for no reason in semi 1.

• Monika Marija succesfully goes on to withdraw one of her songs (the one from semi 2) just to not split her fanbase even further when it comes to the final, therefore not lose. Also has to pay a fine of 2000 perhaps.

• Jurijus Veklenko, which was one of the front-runners along Monika Marija, was accused of having his song published on Soundcloud a year too early, but as a demo version, therefore not commercially viable enough for ESC rules. Later he was let off easy by LRT, but decided that EBU should investigate and report if they think it’s not fine, but if he was allowed to compete with that, he was possibly not in danger afterall.

• And since Monika Marija has got only 1 song, her final spot she got with that other song was given up for the aforementioned Alen Chicco.

• Finally, Monika Marija was still THE front runner of all this, having a sizeable amount of a fanbase enough to support her, even more so than the eventual winner... yes, she did happen not to win in the end. U mad?

And even if Monika Marija would have honestly been an anticlimactic winner, this next guy is even more so, because although shocking, his song is pretty much by-the-numbers Eurovision NF pop you’re gonna get, although not as cheap as the one written by constant NF failures that submit their stuff for countries like Moldova, Belarus, Romania and Malta (that until Malta ditched their NF). And the one that ended up winning is the said person whose song was uploaded a year too early as a demo - Jurijus Veklenko, but for now, he’s pretty much needed to be addressed as Jurijus. No wait, he’s back to being Jurijus Veklenko, but he dropped the “us” from his name, that’s odd. (By the way, he’s the only ounce of Ukraine you’ll ever have this year - his father is of that nationality, hence why the ever-so-Slavic Veklenko surname)

“Run with the Lions” is the song name, and for a title as anthemic as this, the song... not so much. Like I said, it’s pop, and it’s good that it’s pop, but it’s just pop. I doubt that Jurijus’s songwriter team did anything to distinguish the demo from its final product, hence why it was so easily autodetected somehow. Like, the structure is there, the lyrics are there (but what even ARE they? “if you wanna see, just open your eyes”?? “if you want a voice, just open your mouth”????), but where’s the depth, man? I really felt like I needed more of this song, especially in the choruses. Like, some additional background instruments like strings wouldn’t have hurt? In fact, this song has a slight revamp (I’m saying “slight” because no marginal changes had been done) that adds up some acoustics in the background of the 2nd verse and only changes one line (”there’s no need to be afraid” now is “you don’t have to be afraid”. Wow, revolutionary. What about “You don’t got to hide away”?? Why repeating “You don’t” twice in the prechorus???!!!... ooh I’ll be here all day if I only talked about nitpicks)... and it yet still feels too little. Thankfully the choruses have someone shouting something like “huh huh hoo” synthetically to liven it up somehow.

Yet somehow, out of nowhere, I admit liking this? Our boi is capable of singing live - both high and low; his voice and the song fit in delightfully with each other; and while basic, the melody is pleasant, non-offensive, non-ear-grating... perhaps the problem of it all is that it’s too inoffensive? Something that flows away in the wind and passes you by without you knowing. Something that you’re told that it’s not background filler and you were just not paying attention to the actual music that was playing. Something so algorithmic, you’re easily able to make your ears cancel it out as it were just some sort of white noise!

Yeah, I don't think I want to describe us all that much. It's a pretty okay pop song, it's nothing groundbreaking (bar the message of being free to do all you can do), I enjoy the sound of it, it doesn't annoy me, I can fully be down to supporting Jurijus and his voice. Too bad it's in a year AND a semi where MoR pop songs DON'T dominate - we're way past those ages. To stand out, it needs to be anthemic, it needs to have a stage presence, it truly needs some X factor, and our staging nor our song offers it. And guess what, various other people are still mourning over the loss of Monika Marija, which I find perfectly reasonable, but who would have to lend us their final spot instead if she won? Armenia? Romania? Denmark? So many questions, so little time left to answer them all.

Right now I will just conclude with me saying that I like this. It's inoffensiveness is pleasant, and in any other year we'd be the perfect filler songs for the final, like we were in the past. Cool cool.

Approval factor: Anything that will make me forget how much of my nerves did I waste over stanning someone in our selection while knowing that Ieva will win is a good noodle in my book. Jurijus wasn’t exactly one of my favourites (you’ll see why when you hit the unfortunately long NF corner section), but that’s perfectly fine, seeing that I can finally be a proud supporter of my own country’s song.

Follow-up factor: we're a completely and utterly random nation, sending anything our juries found amusing the most at the time. So don't bother about follow up consistency every being good or bad. We're just going with our own flow and... that's basically it. Though we could, on an occasion, do better with picking songs, that's for sure. And maybe finally we will not have a song that's littered with "oh oh oh, yeah yeah yeah" kind of sounds... like seriously, "Run with the Lions" has a bridge that mostly consists of "ooooooohhhhhhh" and then one actually non-interjective line at the end. (At least in Tel Aviv you'll be hearing the backings murmuring "run with the, run with the, run with the lions" during it, and that's something.) I love it that we never change in our random tactics, I'd just love it more to see some actual change in the song quality, y'know? THEN will it be a good follow-up.

Qualification factor: I’m so devastated at saying this, but foreigners say that we’re probably going down to deat meat levels this year. But I still have hope in us qualifying. Believe it or not, the people out there still don’t buy into the Lithuanian diaspora power, and genuinely believe that our harmless tune is chanceless. I only understand that it cannot work its magic when we send something risqué and incredibly opinion dividing (but most people dislike it anyway), but just look at our results on the years when we were generally received bad when we were just boring. “C’est ma vie” qualified. “Something” qualified. Back when Donny Montell was such an unknown in the Eurovision lore because 2012 was his first year and his song was considered “dated”, he still qualified. See something here? We still can, and WILL, be able to pull through possibly, and I don’t doubt it that diaspora will lap up our mediocre song because Lithuania. Patriotism strong! (Oh and a handful of votes for Jurijus for being so hot.)

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

I already discussed the Eurovizijos drama in lenghty detail, so expect me not to re-iterate everything down here shortly, but what you need to know off it is that it had every single drama aspect you’d ever want - faulty line-ups, voting frauds, televoting malfunctions, forced plagiarism accusations, too-early-published-song accusations, late entry withdrawals, qualifier replacements, technical difficulties allowing to repeat a performance and some contestants being visibly pissed off by the jury (and to some extent, the overall) results. A total jumble <3 Never change, Lithuania. (except for the godawfully smug-ass HoD, I started to get tired of him AND his bald head doing this to us. It's been 10 years, retire already.)

So it’s better to talk about all the non-dramatic things I liked about our NF this year! From songs to performances, from shits and giggles to something serious - I’m taking you for a hefty ride.

• First and foremost, I actually didn’t mind one of the Monika Marija’s songs? Yeah, “Light On” was a good and polished pop track that has THAT power to get you good, with them strong sublime female vocals. Even if it kind of sounded like an Ikea store version of "Stay with Me" by Sam Smith. Not that there's anything bad with it, but any kind of plagiarism cases have and will always be barred from Eurovision if noticed by the organizers. This is not 100% dead-on ripoff, but there are shades of knock-offery here and there. And it's even a better "Stay with Me", and with a better message - Monika Marija reminisces of that one time she was almost dying herself, but she's here, she's survived, and you musn't hang her off the lifeline. At least it's "Light On" that got all the love in the NF in the end and not the painfully mediocre "Undo" ripoff wailfest "Criminal". It was so slow and plodding and I never got why so many people loved it. If "Undo" was a product, "Criminal" would have been its "made in China" counterpart. Anyway, here's "Light On". And please don't spam me messages with how much this would have been a contender for top 10 over Jurijus. :P In Eurovision it's an added bonus if your faves do well - the fact that they were in Eurovision is the most important thing, and I perfectly understand why do you miss it here on ESC grounds. Just... I'm tired of "MM top 10, Jurijus bottom 3 in semi", okay? Monika Marija can try our NF again. She’s very talented, and there’s a possibility that we’ll see her in ESC in the end anyway. Pave the way for our Polyglot Queen, Eurovision 20xx! ^^

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• Now here's for once a cool Lithuanian artist that didn't come from a TV talent show! Antikvariniai Kašpirovskio Dantys ("antiquarian teeth of Kashpirovsky") is probably one of the coolest Lithuanian bands that I know - doing absolutely any kind of genre they're pleased with - from folk to rock to ska to acoustic pieces - I admire them for being so diversive! Too bad they entered with one of my lesser favourite tracks in their entire discography - "Mažulė" (one of the many ways to say "baby", as in, trying to call your lover cute, female gender case. Can also mean "baby girl" in this context). I have nothing against this kind of track they thrown in the selection, ska music and Eastern musical elements are gooooooood, plus I finally got to know what is a "forró" that doesn't mean "hot" in Hungarian - it's a music style popular in Brazil! However, the chorus could have at least sounded more "party"-ier. It doesn't really excite me to dance the window-cleaning dance to it. (Oh yeah and do you remember that this song is about a car, not an actual lover? They're basically confessing their love to an automobile. How they're protecting it from vandals, how did they dream of getting the car since young age, how wouldn't they change their car for any other. Romantic, I'd say.) However I am happy for the over 30 year olds that find this song completely and totally amusing when I can't quite seem to. I do say that I like those elements, the brass and all that. It was the only Lithuanian song in the sea of English ones in the final (just like A Dal was, but inverse - almost all songs in Hungarian but one English (and a bit Russian), and that's an achievement. AKD should be proud of themselves for impacting both our nation AND the international viewers which found fun in this! Respect. Maybe they'll win our NF soon if they keep on winning the audiences, or they'll probably GTFO forever. IDK, the latter is more plausible, sadly. They're so unique that they cannot be just a thing for more editions - just one for a try out, and that's enough.

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• So, Alen Chicco. What’s so special to have him in the final instead of Monika Marija's weaker entry? Well, he's just a fantabulous persona, unique in every step he takes. And surely I was excited to see him preparing something for Eurovizijos after I read his name on the participants list. And then his entry did come. I wasn't quite sure what to think of "Your Cure" at first but the chorus is a pop beauty I hold up to myself somehow <3 now I find the song nice as a whole, the theatrical-like verses peak my curiousity though the prechoruses feel too drawn out a bit and could have had some big pauses be shortened or removed... yeah. But the most interesting thing is HIS LOOKS <33 his wardrobe and level of expressiveness is vast, I love it how eveything here was different each and every time he performed, and it all was always presented incredibly differently. I admire ONE (1) chameleon

which Alen Chicco are you today? ✨

• And that's almost basically it I have to show you concerning my faves? Yeah, I definitely had enough of our NF having this many songs too, I almost had no good favourites that made it to the semis and people would care about slightly if they'd be willing to. Nothing I could be excited over, nothing I could be passionate about as I was last year about my fave. Well I did like some qualifiers to semis but I don’t think they are THAT worth y’all’s attention all THAT much... However, I will definitely let you in on two of my personal non-finalist faves. Allow me to introduce the first band whose song is a guilty pleasure of mine only - it's Laimingu Būti Lengva ("it's easy being happy") with "Pasaulio vidury" ("in the middle of the world"). Now, it's not very competitive or anything, in fact the guys looked like hobos on their live performance and one of them was randomly shouting "heeeeyyyyy" a LOT of times, like a random heckler that's supposedly livening(??? is that a word???) up the performance, and they sang disappointingly... but the studio version, man. I dare you to not get hypnotized by the slow electric guitar feel. (You probably won't but idc.) I love it, I love the beats and how trappy but cool they sound on those verses, I love the slow soft rhythm, I definitely love the whole melodic execution, and the vocals actually sound alright on there (mainly thanks to autotune but yeah whatever). I have problems though - with a band like this, I barely see how can I get genuine enjoyment out of this song myself without having to slap myself in the back for admitting to actually like this. So I call it my "guilty pleasure" quite a lot of times. The song's structure is quite interesting, but it's mainly the repetitive verses and choruses smeared across the whole song at random. I get the song's point so much that I hate the band for hammering it into my head all this whole time - the song's protagonist met a red-haired and blue-eyed girl named Isabel in Portugal (the supposed "middle of the world"), they fell in love, that's it. But they emphasize it a lot that the girl was blue-eyed... not even I would if I had to write this song, and *I* have a blue-eyed people bias. The whole package was completely unappealing and with how they showed it it didn’t really look like something that even needs a staging or Eurovision at all, but I still keep this song to myself, and will definitely replay it a lot this summer. Just as much as the song that you'll actually get to watch the performance of down below - it's "Song of My Life" by Soliaris & ForeignSouls. It's cool, funky, catchy, vibey, laidback and summer-fun-infested. I cannot really describe separate parts all that much because all flows in so well. It's a good song to chill out and have a cocktail too. And it features a rap part that doesn't bother me at all! Good one, Soliaris. I didn't like your music back when you did mediocre 00s R'n'B, but you positively surprised me, both by returning to our NFs after like 9 years of absence AND bringing this gem. It didn't need an extreme staging - just some dudes having fun and that's it. And they brought it. It saddens me that these kind of songs don't stand a chance to qualify to the very final in our NF anymore, as they kind of would have in 2012 or so, but I'm still happy they exist. I only have had some issues with the lyrics laying out the words in sentences ("spend with me this beautiful night" bothered me a bit because if you translate it to Lithuanian in the exact same sentencing way, it'd make even more sense than it does to me now), but other than that, I fucking loved "Song of My Life". It might as well be my overall NF winner, haha.

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• Oh and how could I forget Tiramisu??? That's perhaps my biggest discovery of this year. They moved on from utter unknowns to... still unknowns, but more known for the Eurovision fandom that does care about Lithuanian NFs. Here you have an oddly titled song, "The Smell of Your Eyes" (and you thought Safura smelling lipstick was extreme - but to her credit, lipstick DOES have a faint odor, doesn't it?), which is both insane AND original, and insane original is obviously encouraged. And the whole song sounds pretty damn good for a band that no one heard of and that used to do jazzy-ish and inoffensive musical flairs before. Here we have slight influences of folk even! And the violins, too. A generally charming piece that draws you into a pagan forest. Too bad the staging was completely misunderstood - they definitely had to put on some guy with a cheap Iron Man mask to pretend to give the band some intensity... lousy move. It could've looked way better if it were more mysterious and forest-like and had a more enchanting camerawork. And a little more colors than emerald and forest greens, too. The video clip looked way better and more high-budget than the staging came to be. Observe:

Felt like everything beautiful was stripped of it because the music video could not be repeated on stage. Ah well. The televoters gave them love but the jury did not let them to improve, and down the Bermuda triangle of fallen female violinists from the 2019 season went a lady of the name Rima Tamo, together with Gabriella Laberge and Tilla Török (who did not even appear on stage at that time of need!). Here's a spooky fact for all these 3: female violinists that all featured on songs in E minor, performed 1st in their respective heats/semis, were really loved by televote but hated by the juries, missed out on the next stage of the NF by 1 place. Coincidence? A curse? Tiramisu were obviously disgusted by the jury trashing their staging so they talked about hating them on Facebook. What's worse that they could have actually qualified if they've gotten at least 9 more telepoints that could've pushed them to get 10 televote points in general rather than 8, all thanks to a televote count error that removed large portions of votes. And that way they could have been wildcard qualifiers instead because they would have still gotten 8 televote points with the actual televote numbers, but the organizers of the NF said that if the televote failure would have hurt anyone's place in the final, they would have wildcard-qualified instead. No one did not, so screw it. At least "The Smell of Your Eyes" remains THAT song - lots of folk, lots of violins, lots of effort put into it, and the people actually loved it for that. Just that it's so sad that the jury didn't let them improve overtime... just like Hungarian jury didn't let Leander Kills go further... a shame, really.

• And now, onto the non-entry-events and stuff that happened, besides some actual good jury shade (like the one time at least one juror says that “you wouldn’t win even if all the contestants got sick”, technical errors in the production (thanks to one of them, one of the semifinal acts actually got to perform again... but the televote didn’t give her votes anyway lmao) and the constant reminder of one of our charities which gives tickets to Eurovision for the best disabled person story.. I don’t know where that is but our NF somehow acquired a skit from an Austrian man that’s been exploring stuff in Israel (I think) because of Eurovision this year... and man did I think that this skit was rather... hmmm... middle-ground funny? Slightly too annoying but still kind of alright to look at? It was fun, but certainly odd to find out about that it even exists.

• After feeling so disappointed with Hungarian juries's decisions on the night of February 22nd, I left my room to watch our NF's final on our living room TV, hoping for everything just to end already because I did not expect anything good happening on this final. I haven't even decided to go back to watch A Dal and see AWS reprise their song a little less louder than when they competed last year. And then our NF gave me a complete and utter surprise - The Roop reprising THEIR Eurovizijos 2018 entry. If you've been long enough here on Tumblr to know me, you would probably guess that I'm a big fan of "Yes, I Do" by The Roop, which I wanted to see winning our NF so badly last year, but in the end... you finish the quote so I don't have to. And it's odd because this year I felt the exact similar way with Hungary as with Lithuania last year - I have clear favourites I root for in both of those but deep inside I knew there was gonna be a different winner I only find okay and nothing else. (The difference is that "Az én apám" has grown on me since, "When We're Old" did not at all.) So back to discussing the interval act instead. For this one guest number of the NF's, the song began on a piano, "pretend" played by The Roop's lead singer, and then he got his butt off from the piano chair (unlike Duncan in Tel Aviv), to the microphone stand, and the song continued off sounding like its original version that was sung in last year's NF. I still love this song and even loved that version with piano at the beginning, but why did it not take over the whole song though? Just to not let the audience fall asleep before the Carousel would've? (Yes by the way, we got guest acts from other countries performing on our NF as well! But Carousel were the only ones to have a guest appearance, the other acts were either unchosen or perhaps busy doing Tel Aviv preparations, lol.) Well, good for them. I may or may not still would love The Roop entering and winning our selection someday, if they ever decide to participate again. They could've this year but they did not return, so maybe in 2021? Let this girl dare to dream for once, Lithuania ^_^

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• I love when our NF has postcards, no matter at which stage of introduction they are on. In 2016 the postcards were present in every show (the ones for the final were the best), in 2017 they were only introduced in the round 3 of heats (sometime before the semis), in 2018 - from the 2nd round of heats onwards, in 2019 though they were only for the final... what’s the punchline for this paragraph? Oh, there IS none. I just confessed my love for our NF postcards. Just keep scrolling :)

• Okay so I know no one really pays attention to our heats because we have too many of them AND we have too many songs in them, and the eliminated ones always stop mattering to everyone right away. But I'm here to bring you a favourite meme of mine that hailed just from the heats alone: miss RÙTA, who could have done much better during her performance if she didn't constantly look like she's incredibly constipated. I don't know what makes her look like that - the lipstick? the grin? her over-dramatic entry about wordly disasters, "Paradox"? I may never know, but I will let you have a good look at it if you don't want to watch the whole video I linked. Personally, I liked the red staging this song had, and the song wasn't bad, but the singer felt agonizingly nervous and never got the chance to do better, sadly. Oh and look at that sleek tattoo, mmm.

• Oh and our NF featured a metal song but it’s so formulaic and by the numbers dad metal that I didn’t even support it all that much.... however I’ll let you listen to it if you’d really like. And there's this best alternative song of this year's NF that I've heard that also ended in the semis, and it's way better than Fusedmarc's alternative (despite having some ugly beatboxing skills). Check it out too if you will.

And thankfully, that’s that for another year. I’m getting so awfully tired to compress my own NF even further more, especially with my enthusiasm for the actual quality of this NF going down the shithole with every single heat show coming after each other just like that, with more mediocre songs after more mediocre songs. I’m also openly declaring that I have barely any energy left with continuting these writeups, seeing that there’s too many to go and most of them are STILL undercooked drafts. But I’m tryna pull through. I have another completely completed review underway afterwards - just a few edits here and there on it and I’m done with it, m8s! And then I’m piling up new paragraphs after new paragraphs on other reviews.

So I hope I let you know why do I think that the end result of ours is lukewarm - from a dramatic NF there should have been a slightly dramatic winner tbh, but in the end we got a pop song that only a few people like. Brutal. And with the biggest hopes in my eyes for our success I’d like to finish this off with two words. Sėkmės, Jurijau!

#eurovision 2019 #tel aviv 2019 reviews #lithuania 2019 #jurij veklenko #run with the lions #lithuania

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grimelords · 7 years ago

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I finally finished writing up my February playlist for your enjoyment but mostly mine. It’s 48 songs ranging from italian screamo to Celine Dion and you have my personal guarantee you will enjoy at least one of them.

Halftime - Young Thug: There's two parts in this song that are maybe my top two Young Thug moments ever. 1) when he says "I got water I look like I'm fresh from Hawaii" and then makes a noise like a dog shaking himself off 2) the world's longest tyres screeching sound, at about :47, it goes for fully 12 seconds and is absolutely perfect.

Hydrogen - M|O|O|N: Hotline Miami is a good ass game and this song is great but I've got to admit that I only really know it because someone edited a video to make a dog bark the melody line and I think that's very good.

Vale - Bicep: The way the fuzzed out bass rhythm contrasts against how crystal clear and plastic futuristic everything else in this song is is just great. This song reminds me that I should probably listen to Kelala because I've only heard her in features so far and they've all been great.

Sittin' On The Edge Of The Bed Cryin' - The Drones: This is a sort of atypical Drones song because it's not about about a particular thing, it's just about a bad feeling and not being able to see your future because of everything lurking ahead of you. I think that's why I like it so much, because it's just sort of a song about saying 'I feel bad!!' and not having to give a reason.

Golden Dawn - Gospel: I really do think that The Moon Is A Dead world is an all time great album and that it rarely gets talked about anywhere is one of the greatest crimes of underappreciation in music. It's understandable, because it takes a lot for an uncool genre like screamo to get mainstream critical attention the way something like As The Roots Undo did, and mixing that kind of aggression with extremely uncool lengthy 70s prog keyboard solos... look, I get it. But somehow there's nothing uncool about any of this music; it's just deeply felt, radically composed and authentically performed. It's absolutely one of my favourite albums of all time and this is the centrepiece. I was taken with a fantasy this month of doing something very cool and transcribing the drum part of this song just to see it laid out in front of me because it is really a masterpiece. Also there is something very special about imbuing a lyric like 'hey you, you got a cigarette man? you know I know you got one on ya.' with so much gravity that you can't help but yell along.

I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times) (feat. Popcaan & Young Thug) - Jamie xx: Young Thug says he's gonna ride in that pussy like a stroller in this song and that’s when I knew I was in love.

Crow Jane - Skip James: Yet another good song in the pantheon of songs about shooting your wife for being too proud and then immediately regretting it because now you have no wife.

Le Merle Noir - Olivier Messiaen: I think it's really funny that in the classical music canon there is about one hundred freaks who got singularly obsessed with putting their best approximation of bird song in their music. Birds don't even sound that good but in the old days its the closest you had to a markov chain I suppose. Anyway this is a really nice piece that my girlfriend did as one of her flute performances in her music degree and I like it a lot.

Obsession - Animotion: I started watching Comrade Detective this month and the soundtrack is all sorts of very good 80s synthpop. This song especially stood out because in the show it was being performed with accordions in an illegal Romanian casino, but this version is good too.

Back To The Trees - Adele H: Nothing worse than being a musician named Adele and having to go by Adele H because Adele is well and truly taken. I found this album on a random blogspot and it truly felt like 2011 again. This song is like a primitivist hymn sung with a loop pedal, and if you're in the right state of mind it's very moving.

Aries - Lynx: I was doing some googling and ended up finding the band that Dave Konopka from Battles used to be in. This band is good because they're called Lynx and they have a song called Mrs Lynx, and I think it's both prudent and wise to write a wife for your band. This song however, is called Aries. I was hooked from the start-stop drums right at the start, but this is some of my favourite type of math rock. Clean, clear, concise and purposeful and never losing sight of the structure of the song as a whole.

Westham United (live) - Tera Melos: This is the best version of Westham United I've ever heard, and you can hear the lyrics a lot better here than the album version. Tera Melos live are so unbelievably tight it's insane, This is ferocious, god bless Audiotree.

You Let My Tyres Down - Tropical Fuck Storm: Tropical Fuck Storm is Gareth and Fiona from The Drones' new side-project and it sort of just sounds like the Drones with more female harmonies in the background which is good as hell. I love the weird little guitar frills in this where it's mostly pretty chordy and then he does these little hammery runs now and then that really liven the place up.

Fool - Mia Dyson: I have a big thing about Mia Dyson because she made three incredibly good albums and then left Australia to try to make it in America and unfortunately failed, and ever since then all her music has felt like she's aiming toward some kind of crossover appeal instead of just doing what she really wants. But luckily it's finally paying off because this new song sounds like Haim's first album and it's really good so everyone wins.

Are You Ready For The Country? - Neil Young: This is the song I envision playing over the air raid speakers through the city when it all goes down.

Living Through Another Cuba - XTC: Continuing that theme, Stereogum had a very good playlist of the other day called 80s Nuclear Anxiety and I discovered this incredible song in it. This song is good in headphones because someone's doing some very restrained zither playing every 4 bars and once you notice it it's impossible to stop hearing it.

Release - Christoph De Babalon: I found out about this extremely bleak album from the really good reissue review pitchfork had the other day, and this is probably my favourite song on it because I'm basic and it's the most straightforward dnb on here. This album reminds me of Zomby a lot, not only in the music but in the approach where the structures seem to simultaneous reflect someone putting a lot of care into their music and not giving a fuck about it. The individual sounds are so meticulous but the structures of all the songs here are very meandering and feel like they could end at any time or go another ten minutes and you wouldn't notice.

Preachin' Blues - Son House: The idea of joining the preisthood as a way to get out of having to get a real job is a timeless idea that appeals to the teens of today more than ever.

1 di 6 - Raein: What I love about the internet is the way you can just type words in and it will manifest whatever you wish, like a sort of cursed wishing well. In this instance the words I typed were 'italian screamo' and the gift it bestowed was this incredible one-long-song album from Italian screamo band Raein that completely kicked my ass.

A Little Change Could Go A Long Ways - City Of Caterpillar: I've been investigating early 2000s screamo, and in particular Circle Takes The Square's contemporaries and it seems crazy that I've never heard this City Of Caterpillar album until now because at long last it's something that sounds comperable to As The Roots Undo. The extremely brooding, crescendocore post-rock intro that dominates more than half of this 10 minute song gives way to a complete storm. I am absolutely desperate for a screamo revival but it seems like nobody else is.

Jupiter - Cave In: This song is good but it also sounds like it's from a musical, I think it has to do with the clarity of his lyric delivery. It sounds like the difference between American Idiot and American Idiot: The Original Broadway Cast Recording, but it's also a very good song.

I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) - Pitbull: I woke up with this song in my head one day which is always a very good song. Also this song has a good sample chain: the beat's sampled from 75 Brasil Street by Nicola Fasano, which samples the horns from The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind) by The Bucketheads which in turn sampled the horns from Street Player by Chicago. How good is music!

Introduce Me To Your Family - Otoboke Beaver: My friend sent me this song because it came up mysteriously in his Discover Weekly and I'm so glad he did. It's good to know that japanese punk has been continuing on and getting more and more insane without me noticing.

Part 5/ The Sun's Gone Dim And The Sky's Gone Grey - Johann Johannsson: RIP to a good man. I was so sad and shocked to hear that Johann Johannsson had died last month. This album is a favourite of mine, and while this song doesn't have the weight it should outside of the context of the rest of the album it is still an incredibly heavy mood and a beautiful piece of music.

Heart - Bertie Blackman: This song feels like the alternate, evil version of Single Ladies by Beyonce to me and I get it stuck in my head all the time.

Acetate - Metz: I'm obsessed with the rhythm of this song, how it just tumbles over itself over and over in this lopsided way and the way that plays against the big straight forward power line of this song: I. WANT. YOU. TO. TAKE. IT. AWAY.

Bodysnatchers - Radiohead: It's funny to think of Johnny Greenwood as a film composer, and especially as the composer of the Phantom Thread when he does songs like this. This song is just straight up Riffs. The most air-guitarable Radiohead song outside of Creep.

Nameless, Faceless - Courtney Barnett: I'm so glad Courtney Barnett is back and her new song is an absolute killer! I can't get enough of it and I cannot wait for the album.

Can't Fight The Moonlight - LeAnn Rimes: This is a song written from the perspective of a vampire, and a banger. The instumentation in this is a perfect distillation of everything good about 90s pop. Especially the bizzare chunky guitar and orchestra stab that starts it off. The big bass sound and orchestra stabs in the chorus? I'm kissing my fingers like a chef right now.

Lava Lamp (Chopnotslop Remix) - Thundercat: It sounds strange but the chopped and screwed version of Drunk is fast becoming my favourite version. Firstly because it's very appropriately named Drank and secondly because the biggest obstacle to me getting heavily into this album was that it was just way too busy sometimes, a flaw that has been perfectly surmounted by chopping but NOT slopping the entire thing.

Someplace - Yamantake // Sonic Titan: I am desperate for more from this band. I absolutely love this mix of airy guitar and vocals suddenly moving into very classic metal. It's very theatrical and I absolutely love it.

Jejune Stars - Bright Eyes: Remember how Bright Eyes last album had extremely heavy Rastafarian But Not Reggae influences for some reason? I loved that. The guy talking about Pomegranates at the end of this song, and especially the way he pronounces pomegranate has become a staple of my inner monologue.

New Coke - Health: God Health are just so powerful. I want them to score a film some day soon, because they did a great job with Max Payne 3 and their sort of singular aesthetic is just so intoxicating. I go through stages of not listening to Health for months and then it's all I want to listen to for hours and hours very loudly.

3AM - Matchbox Twenty: Check this out: Rob Thomas has the exact same voice as Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance

Is That All There Is? - Peggy Lee: I was thinking about Trump's weird brain, which I believe to be a sort of smooth pebble covered in mashed banana, and so I googled his favourite song, and it is this. He says "It’s a great song because I’ve had these tremendous successes and then I’m off to the next one. Because, it’s like, “Oh, is that all there is?” That’s a great song actually, that’s a very interesting song, especially sung by her, because she had such a troubled life.". Listen to this extremely nihilistic song and imagine him swanning around with his weird body and singing along to it please.

New Town - Life Without Buildings: Life Without Buildings reinvented songwriting and nobody even cared. It's unbelievable. This song is an incredible end to their incredible album that feels like it was written just for me. I love Life Without Buildings!

Music For The Long Emergency - Policia & s t a r g a z e: Polica's new album with the stargaze orchestra is unfortunately kind of mixed but luckily the title track is very, very good. It feels like a real textural expansion of everything Polica's been doing before, to have so many more layers to play with really benefits them but the songs are thankfully still rooted in the drums, bass and vocals combo like usual and haven't gotten lost in the possibilities of playing with an orchestra. The synth sound that begins about halfway through this is so thick and so nice and really takes the whole thing in a different direction for the second half.

Carnival Of Sorts (Boxcars) - R.E.M.: I'm really loving R U Talkin R.E.M. Re: Me? and so far and the main difference I've found between it and UTU2TM is that every single R.E.M. song sounds exactly the same. They're very good, but it's one song. So when they go through the album track by track and talk about what the love about each one it almost sounds farcical. They could be playing the same song 12 times in a row and I wouldn't notice. That said, this one differentiates itself by starting with a weird circus organ before beginning The R.E.M. Song so I appreciate it for that.

Give Me A Smile - Sibylle Baier: As I understand it, Sibylle Baier was warned about the existence of music blogspots some time in the early 70s and started living her whole life from then on in the hopes of being the source of a good post. This album was released in 2006 and is made up mostly of reel-to-reel recordings she made at her home in Germany in 1970-73, except for this track which was included on a 1970 compilation called Folk Is A Four Letter Word 2 which I think was the only commercial recording she ever made before quitting music and acting entirely, moving to America and starting a family. 30 years later her son made a cd of the songs to give to family and friends and somehow one made its way to J Mascis of all people and he had it released on his label Orange Twin.

III. Toccare - John Adams: This piece came up in my Release Radar playlist because of the day a couple of years ago when I listened to Nixon In China twice in a row. I don't know anything about it but I love it a lot and am particularly in love with the bass guitar that comes in about a third of the way through and then disappears entirely. What a choice.

Saturdays (feat. Haim) - Twin Shadow: On Twin Shadow's last album he made a swing at Big Chorus all-out commercial pop and it didn't go perfectly so I'm very glad he's back to his old ways because this song is just amazing. Every part of this song is catchy. The chorus is so satisfying because it has about it has about three different sections and it builds beautifully. Haim are here doing great. It's just perfect and I can't wait for the album.

Because I'm Me - The Avalanches: Wildflower didn't get the respect it deserved in my opinion. It quite literally sounds like it could have come out the year after Since I Left You, which is a very good thing! I'm also a huge fan of fading a whole song down right in the middle just to play a sample of someone quietly saying 'hello?' like they're answering a phone.

Bats In The Attic - King Creosote & Jon Hopkins: I've never heard another album that sounds like this one. Every part of the recording just sounds so beautiful it's like it was handmade from silk or something. Listening to this after literally anything else feels like a chilled glass of water on a hot day. King Creosote's voice also has the very beautiful paradoxical qualities of a scottish accent mixed with incredibly clear enunciation and I really love it. I'd love them to do another album together.

Another Man - Barbara Mason: Check out this song. First of all it sounds extremely good. Secondly it's about when your man turns out to be gay. It starts out good but by the last verse it is straight up hateful, calling him defective, not entirely a man and a 'facsimile of a man' which is unbelievably cruel. The way she says it is very good though because she says "Because in my case what I thought I had was not a entire whole man, but a facsimile thereof. Wasn't a clone or nothin', you know, I'm not.." and then she trails off. Glad she clarified this wasn’t a clone situation. Weird, mean, good song.

Monument (T.I.E. Version) - Robyn & Royksopp: The original version of this song is long as hell and a lot more on the ominous side of the ominous/menacing scale, whereas this version pushes the slider all the way up on 'menacing' with the huge distorted bassline leading the whole thing. A perfect song for obelisk worship in the grim electronic future, or even for carving your own obelisk in preparation.

Everybody Knows - Leonard Cohen: Hey remember when Leonard Cohen died and bleedingcool.com had the best headline of all time "Genius Songwriter Of Music From “Watchmen” Sex Scene Dead At 82". I think about that all the time. Anyway this song is great but that's obvious.

E-Mail My Heart - Britney Spears: Britney Spears first album is good cause Hit Me Baby One More Time is about pagers and this song is about emails. Teens love to communicate, and they've only grown to love it more since this song came out. In Britney's own words in 1999: "E-mail My Heart is a song that everyone can relate to, everyone’s been doing e-mails and it’s “e-mail my heart” so everyone can relate to that song.“ True.

It's All Coming Back To Me Now - Celine Dion: This song is deluxe. This song sounds like it was recorded in an expansive marble bathroom and I feel like I should have to be wearing a suit just to listen to it. This song has 15 cup holders and comes with power windows as standard. This song sounds like someone paid November Rain $100 to attend a fancy party with them and pretend to be their boyfriend but then they accidentally fell in love for real.

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