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persephonestourrp · 7 years ago

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♫ You're not the big fish in the pond no more, you are what they're feeding on ♫

Fiona Hudson was born, more or less, without a father. Christopher Hudson, a shell of the man that was once her father, was there, but that was it. Carole, Fiona’s mom, did her best to take care of Fiona and her husband, a former army man going through a painful addiction, but it was way too much to ask of anyone. Eventually Christopher ended up dying of a drug overdose, leaving behind a beautiful wife and daughter.

Of course, Fiona never really knew about this. Fiona was always told the story that her father had died a respectful death in the army. Carole didn’t want her daughter thinking anything awful about her father and grow to resent him being gone. Thankfully, it worked out that way pretty easily. Fiona was proud of her father and would tell anyone who listened that exact same thing.

Besides that, Fiona wasn’t necessarily the most talkative child. She was more physical in her expression. Fiona loved playing the drums, and she also loved running around. She was always playing one sport or another, and Carole always made sure to have enough money to support her daughter’s atheletic ventures - swimming, basketball, soccer, volleyball - and all the uniforms and trips it required.

By the time middle school started, Fiona, though awkwardly tall for her age, was a huge success on the soccer and basketball teams, and she ended up rising up the popularity ranks. She was the superstar the school needed, the girl who scored winning points and rocked the teams. And if she sometimes noticed the cheerleaders more than her other teammates did, well, that was her own business.

High school was pretty similar to middle school. Fiona was sporty but cute, and she cleaned up well when she needed to. Sometimes her teammates got jealous since it seemed like everyone had a crush on her, from the guys on the football team to the choir geeks to even some of the girls. Hell, it was pretty obvious that Katrina Hummel, pretty much the only out lesbian at school, had a crush on her. Fiona didn’t necessarily reciprocate it, but she was never outwardly mean to her, or her cousin, Marley Rose. Which was honestly enough for Kat to crush on her in the first place, but that was another story.

When Fiona wasn’t at a team practice or working out, she was most likely hanging out with friends and partying a bit. Sometimes she played video games or watched football with her mom while curled up in her dad’s old chair. So the whole homework thing...? Yeah, it never really happened. She just never got into academia in general. Fiona passed her classes, and not just because she was a jock, but she just never really did more than the bare minimum. She just did enough to get into the University of Kansas; like a lot of Kansans, she was a Jayhawk fan and she had always wanted to go there. And as long as you had some passing grades and a decent enough ACT score, KU automatically let it most everyone from the state. Fiona’s basketball skills also definitely helped, getting her a full ride to the school after she graduated from high school. Her future was looking bright.

♫ So what are you gonna do when the world don't orbit around you? ♫

Fiona couldn’t believe she ever thought her life was busy before. Being on a popular sports team at a Division I school was a million times worse. She was constantly conditioning or practicing. Her grades weren’t doing so hot, either, but she figured it was okay since, well, she didn’t really want to do anything with school. She was good at basketball, so Fiona always figured basketball would just be her thing. She could totally go professional and then maybe become a coach when she got too old.

Yeah, her senior year kinda tore that dream apart. In the very first game of the year, Fiona got injured. Really injured. Like, the doctors weren’t sure she’d be able to play basketball again, at least not on the level she had been playing before, and not for some time.

Fiona was miserable and left KU; she didn’t want to pay for a final semester of school when she didn’t even know who she was outside of basketball. Fiona moved back in with her mom and spent months wallowing in misery.

After a few months, she was helping her mom clean up and came across a picture of her dad, which gave her a great idea. Why didn’t she join the army? While she wasn’t completely recovered from her basketball injury, she could do some desk job or something, right? Her mom tried to dissuade her, but Fiona was determined.

So Carole finally had to tell her the truth about her father’s death. Fiona was crushed to find out the man she had looked up to her whole life was essentially a lie, even if she understood where her mom was coming from with the lie. Her dreams of joining the military ended and she ended up sinking into a deeper depression. Her mom got her a job coaching a kids’ basketball team and she started to feel better, but she spent the next several months pretty miserable as she tried to figure out what to do with her life.

Around a year after what was supposed to be Fiona’s graduation, her mom got into a minor car accident. No injuries or anything, but her car was pretty busted, so Fiona had to drive hers over to pick her up from the shop. And when the two Hudson women left the garage later that day, Carole had a phone number for the garage and for the man who ran it, Burt Hummel.

It was the first time Carole had dated in a long while, and Fiona wasn’t sure how to feel about it at first. Fiona was wary due to some of her mom’s past boyfriends, but she also wanted her mom to be happy, and Burt was definitely doing just that. As Carole kept dating Burt, Fiona started to get to know him and she started to really like the guy. Burt was what Fiona always thought having a dad would be like: they watched football together, went to baseball games together, and discussed basketball teams together. Fiona ended up eagerly moving in with him along with her mom just a few months into their relationsip.

The only weird part was that she was living in a house where genuine celebrities used to live, since The Sirens were one of the hottest bands and were touring the country by that point. Millie Rose had just moved into her own place, but pictures of her along with Marley and, obviously, Kat were all over the walls. It was just even weirder since Fiona barely noticed either of them in high school, and there they were, making bank and having millions of twitter followers and showing up all over the place. And basically being her family.

In the fall of 2016, just a few months after the Hudsons moved into the Hummel residence, Burt and Carole got married. It was a surprisingly simple event despite Kat’s involvement in the planning. Fiona was, of course, her mom’s maid of honor, and one of Carole’s best friends was an additional bridesmaid. Kat was her dad’s best woman and Marley was an additional grooms-woman. They hired a band for the reception, though The Sirens did do a few songs dedicated to the happy couple, including some exclusive previews at songs on their upcoming album.

Then the band went back to recording Persephone in the Underworld, and Fiona started working at Burt’s garage. She was really starting to love the family set up she had, but she had to admit that she still felt lost. It didn’t help having two step-family members who were major successes in their field, especially Kat, who was starting to conquer some fashion fronts as well. As much as Fiona loved working at the garage and working with her stepfather, she knew it wasn’t what she wanted to do with her life.

...So what did she want to do?

Burt knew his stepdaughter was lost, so he called Kat and Marley. With some persuading and a tiny bit of guilting, Kat agreed to get Fiona a job on tour. After all, as Burt said, she needed to get to know her sister.

Fiona thought she could easily play drums for The Sirens, but Kat said they already had a drummer joining them on toure. After some interviews with Sabrina Smythe and some training, Fiona joined as a general roadie and as a drum technician, meaning she set up the drums to perfection at every stop.

Well, that was the original plan. Then the original tour drummer fell through, and after an audition, Fiona was chosen to play drums for The Sirens on tour. And doing something she loves every day at practice has been some of the best time of her life. So will she continue to feel that way, or will this fail like her other attempts at her dreams did?

♫ Ain't it fun living in the real world ♫

Katrina Hummel: Kat wasn’t someone Fiona particularly noticed in high school past the fact that she was actually out as a lesbian and that meant she got bullied quite a bit. Fiona had no problem getting her friends to cut it out when they got too mean, but she never really interacted with her outside of that. So imagine how she felt years later when her mom remarried and suddenly Fiona had a famous stepsister...and step-cousin. And that those two were people she technically knew for years. It was crazy. While Fiona took some time getting used to the idea of having this new family, she’s now accepted it completely and wants to get to know her sister better. The problem is that Kat is not interested. But, hey, at least Kat got her a job. But now that they’re practicing together and Fiona’s trying to actually kind of be part of the band, will that put even more of a strain on their relationship? Kat might smile and try to joke around with her, but Fiona can tell she does not like her at all.

Marley Rose: Again, Marley, like Kat, is suddenly part of Fiona’s family. Well, sort of. Marley’s a step-half-cousin or something, so they would barely count as family if Kat and Marley hadn’t grown up like sisters. But because they’re like sisters, Marley’s basically her stepsister as well, though she does seem to be more on Kat’s “side”. She’s been a lot nicer to Fiona and definitely a bit more open to having her around. Kind of like Sweden -- that’s the neutral country, right? Well, whatever, Marley at least makes it easier for Fiona to talk to Kat and Marley obviously wants some peace between the two of them. Fiona also owes Marley a lot for that and hopefully Marley can help get Kat to calm down around her.

Norah Puckerman: Okay, finally, here was someone who also actually played sports. Like Fiona, Norah had a scholarship for playing a sport, but she played volleyball. While Norah’s school wasn’t as competitive as KU, they still bonded over years of conditioning and being spread thin between academics and practice. The two have formed a friendship since the tour has started, since they have a lot of other random things in common, like growing up with a single mom and having such a strong love of family. Because of that, Norah also seems interested in getting Fiona and Kat to get along better, which Fiona appreciates. Now that Fiona’s going to play for The Sirens, Norah’s showing her the ropes and is even giving her some showmanship tips. She’s been by far the most supportive of Fiona’s new position in the band.

Quinn Fabray: Like all The Sirens, Quinn was invited to Carole and Burt’s wedding, and Fiona met her a few other times when the band was in town or her family visited them elsewhere. And the thing is...Quinn’s really pretty. Like, ridiculously pretty. And Fiona kept tripping over her words in front of her. But she eventually found her voice and started talking to her. And while they don’t really have much in common, she likes talking to her. She likes her. And maybe it’s a crush or maybe she just sees her as a friend, but regardless, Fiona really likes hanging out with her. Now that she’s playing for her band? It’s kind of getting embarrassing how little she can say around her.

Sam Evans: Much like Norah, Fiona and Sam just seemed to get along really easily. They both have laid back, simple personalities, and Fiona loves hanging out with her. Sam’s also really helpful with Fiona and the other roadies and has no problems lending a hand when needed. And her impressions? They’re honestly hilarious. Often times Norah, Fiona, and Sam all end up hanging out together and watch comic book movies or TV shows and sports games and it’s honestly a lot of fun.

Santana Lopez: At first, Fiona and Santana didn’t have much to talk about. After all, Fiona wasn’t anything more than a lowly roadie, right? But Santana got all up in her business about social media and the like because of the being semi-related to celebrities and stuff. Fiona didn’t really get the point, since it wasn’t like she posted anything that interesting in the first place, but she tried to post occasional photos of Kat and Marley to make it look like they all got along, just like Santana wanted. Now that Fiona’s playing the drums, Santana is demanding more out of her and she’s getting more followers and getting instructions on interviews...it’s a lot to handle. But at least she’s getting coached by someone really hot, right?

Sabrina Smythe: Fiona owes Sabrina a lot. Like, a lot a lot. If it wasn’t for her agreeing to Kat’s request and then Marley’s, Fiona wouldn’t have this amazing opportunity to change her life and make money and see the whole world. It’s amazing, and Fiona is forever in her debt. Now Sabrina has been talking about making her a permanent fixture in the band if the tour goes well. And Fiona wants that. Like, a lot. Or at least she thinks she does, even if her relationship with Kat is weird. So it’s time to kiss her ass and do her best to hide any family drama, even if all Fiona wants to do is kick over a chair sometime.

Blair Anderson: During a break in one of the first rehearsals, Fiona went back to the rehearsal space to check in on the drum-set. There she saw Blair practicing a song she had written, and Fiona was honestly really impressed. When Blair spotted her, the two of them started to talk, and she turned out to be charming and sweet. Blair still takes time to smile at Fiona whenever she sees her and just seems like a really sweet girl and a good friend to have. And since they’re in similar positions with having to suck up to Sabrina, it’s kind of nice having her around. They’ve even started working on an encore act together to show they can do this, with Fiona playing the little bit of guitar she knows and Blair on the keyboard. It’s worth a shot, right? And if The Sirens won’t accept her, maybe Blair will.

Jackie Puckerman: Jackie is a pretty solid person, since she often helps Fiona with carrying things when she can and has no problem lending a hand. She’s also been really cool about letting Fiona let off some steam about the whole Kat and family thing. Despite being an only child, Jackie seems to get trouble with sibling relationships really well, which is cool. The two have also taken to hitting some gyms together, when she’s not hitting the gym with Norah and/or Sam; while Fiona can’t go as hard as she used to, she still does some gym work post injury. Fiona normally isn’t the best at reading between the lines or anything, but something tells her Jackie is hiding something, and while Fiona doesn’t want to, like, force her to say anything, she’d like to help her with whatever it is.

Rachel Berry: If Sam has been a welcoming member of Divine Influence and Kitty the least welcoming person on the tour, Rachel is kind of in the middle. From Rachel’s background to her fame level to her love of musicals, Fiona doesn’t have much in common with the girl at all, so they don’t talk too often. But as Fiona’s nerves are starting to build up over playing live in front of thousands of people, Rachel always appears so cool and collected on stage despite her nervous energy. So maybe Fiona can get some advice from her? It seems worth a shot, though Rachel seems hesitant to say anything about stage fright.

Kitty Wilde: Fiona isn’t someone looking to dislike anyone. She likes being friends with people. But Kitty...Fiona does not like her. She doesn’t get it. All Fiona does is her job, and she was trained well in it and she knows drums like the back of her hand, but Kitty second guesses her every move. She follows her around and criticizes Fiona at every turn. Fiona might actually be a little bit afraid of her, which is ridiculous since Kitty’s so tiny and Fiona just isn’t, but, well...she’s terrifying, okay? And with Kitty getting closer to her stepsister, it’s really complicated.

♫ Ain't it good being all alone ♫

Do you miss playing basketball?

[answer here]

Do you think you and Kat will ever find common ground and get along?

[answer here]

JBI asks: What’s it like being step-siblings with a celebrity?

[answer here]

#fiona hudson #bio #c #bts #switched #fh #o

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everysuperherofighting · 6 years ago

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The Best Music of 2018

2018 was a strange year for me. It should go without saying that the politics were grim, as the United States continued to embrace gestapo-esque tactics and concentration camps as a way of dealing with the “immigration crisis” (a lot of this happened under Obama too of course). The planet continued to slide into a dystopia of global warming as more and more animals became endangered or went extinct all-together. The mid-terms happened, with typically mixed results. Elon Musk called someone a pedophile on twitter for some reason.

On a personal level, in 2018 I moved to Ohio from Oregon (again). My band put out an EP. And I lost my father, something that I still grapple with on a daily basis, though it gets less present over time.

I’ve become interested in how I discover new music, as I’ve gotten older and can’t really consider myself to be fully plugged into any sort of youth culture, sub or otherwise. Finding new music has become a very intentional process; if I didn’t seek it out deliberately, I probably wouldn’t end up hearing much of anything. But that’s always kind of true for arty-weirdos like me.

For better or worse I discovered a lot of music the last two years through Youtube. As you probably know, if you play a song or an album on Youtube, there’s an autoplay feature that will automatically play something else when it’s done. I’ve found a lot of my favorite music lately this way, and in some ways it’s kind of filled the role that “cool record store clerk” or “late-night college dj” might have filled in the times past. This is not necessarily a good change. I’ve heard you can find a lot of white supremacists that way too.

Youtube has also become invaluable if you’re someone who wants to make a list like this one, and can’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on albums. I think sometimes the artists even get paid a minuscule amount for the clicks! Hooray free information! I hope we can all find decent jobs someday.

1) CAMP COPE - HOW TO SOCIALISE & MAKE FRIENDS

I debated with myself about whether to put Camp Cope at number one, as they’re not the most musically complex or adventurous of my favorite albums this year. However I can’t think of another band that felt like it lyrically captured the zeitgeist of the times in such a powerful way. The whole album is great, catchy and upbeat jangly indie/punk with tinges of early 90s midwestern emo, made by three woman from Melbourne, Australia. Singer Georgia McDonald has a great voice, imbued with urgency, and her accent is a lot of fun to listen to too. Her lyrics have that same emotional rawness and honest specificity that early emo has as well - on “The Omen” she sings about loving someone since they were 17 and wishes for rescue dogs and a house by the sea, while on “I’ve Got You,” she bounces from the death of her father to police shootings, the loss of her childhood home, and the grappling with mental illness, and it all feels thematically relevant as this great moment of exhaled catharsis.

The stand-outs for me, however, are “The Opener” and “The Face of God.” “The Opener” is a scorching indictment of the indie music scene, as McDonald calls-out all the garbage women in bands have to deal with, from accusations that they only succeed based on their gender, to men continually explaining things, to men showing up to lay down a big steamy pile of unrequited love BS. These aren’t new observations, but hearing them all laid out in a row like this highlights their invulnerability and their ubiquitousness, the daily microaggressions that lead up to a larger picture of persistent inequality. On “The Face of God,” McDonald narrativizes the Me Too movement from the perspective of an abused fan, musing “could it be true? You couldn’t do that to someone. Not you, nah your music is too good,” her tortured delivery capturing the rage, shame, disbelief, and sadness of all the Me Too revelations about artists that we liked, and who abused that power again and again and again and again and again and again and again an

2) IDLES - JOY AS AN ACT OF RESISTANCE

Image by Paul Hudson via Flickr

Idles was one of my favorite discoveries of last year. I was actually a little concerned with this album since I’d heard the band was “embracing positivity” , and what I loved about Brutalism was their raw, unhinged sound and clever but cynical and pissed-off lyrics. There’s also a recurring thing for me of finding a really cool raw sounding band, punk adjacent but not necessarily fully in the scene, who then get less “punk” (and to me, less interesting) with each subsequent release as they sort of turn into just another indie dude band who like Big Star or the Replacements. This band sounds raw as fuck, I’ll say, and then later they’ll put out their fucking mandolin album.

Joy as an Act of Resistance is dope though, as their music continues to embrace a raw, chaotic sound of guitars that both swirl and jab like shards of glass, pounding “Lust For Life” toms, and stripped down basslines, while frontman Joe Talbot howls sarcastic indictments of masculinity, homophobia, and racism. In a similar way to last year’s Pissed Jeans album, they tackle ugly toxic masculinity with ugly, tough sounding music, hearkening back to a punk rock that was less rigid in sound. There’s this infectious positivity that runs through the whole thing however, a joy that comes from casting off the fixed roles that the patriarchal society tries to put upon us and embracing our (ironically) gentler natures. “I wanna be your best ever friend forever” Talbot says, sincerely on “Love Song.” “Let’s hug it out,” he repeats on “Never Fight a Man With A Perm,” and though the song is making fun of a coked out bruiser, I have a feeling it’s a sentiment he would share.

3) THE ARMED - ONLY LOVE

The synthesis of hardcore punk with electronic music is something I’ve been anticipating. There’s definitely been forebearers (Horse the Band comes to mind, though there’s probably other stuff in the underground), but this is the first time I’ve heard it done so well. The Armed sound like if you took one of the better mid-2000s screamy hardcore bands and mixed it with the noisiest and most frenetic parts of a chip-tune song. That may sound like a nightmare to a lot of you, but again, it’s done so well here that it just sounds like a noisy chaotic mess in the best and most elegant possible way. This is not to underplay the tightness of the song-craft at work here - the chaotic sound seems to me to be carefully orchestrated. Glitchy, brutal, climatic, and beautiful. (And the parts where the lady sings remind me of Blatz. The world could use more Blatz.)

4) SCREAMING FEMALES - ALL AT ONCE

Image by Jason Persse via Flickr

This band is kind of a mainstay on my year end list at this point, but I feel like they continually top their previous efforts, a rare quality for most bands. Incredible vocals, incredible song-writing, incredible guitar playing, as they reach ever greater levels of accessibility and hookiness, while still maintaining that slight edge that would put them forever as at home in a basement as a venue.

5) KALI UCHIS - ISOLATION

Kali Uchis lands at that sweet spot where pop, hip-hop, jazz, soul, and psychedelia intersect that’s occupied by similar weirdos like Janelle Monae, Miguel, and the Internet. It’s no wonder that one of the all-time prophets of future-looking pop, Boots Riley, shows up on one of the singles. There’s a real bossa-nova, latin jazz vibe on a lot of these tracks, and a kind of retro-sheen even as it pushes into the future. “It’s no fun to feel like a fool,” Kali Uchis croons while straight up wall of sound style saxophones blurp in the background. “Pussy is a hell of an addiction.”

6) THE INTERNET - HIVE MIND

Another year-end list staple for me, the Internet have been consistently putting out some of the best, solid-ass R+B since 2011. The whole thing is smooth as hell, but weird or tasteful in all the right places; the “hoo hoo” on “Humble Pie” or the building horns on “Mood.” And retaining just a hint of that old Odd Future off-kilterness around the edges. OG Dungeon Family poet “Big Rube” shows up on “It Gets Better (With Time).”

7) JEAN GRAE AND QUELLE CHRIS - EVERYTHING’S FINE

Quelle Chris is a new one for me, but I rocked Jean Grae when I first started getting into indie rap back in high school. I always wondered what happened to her since then, but apparently she’s been putting out a steady stream of mixtapes and underground releases pretty much the whole time, self releasing a lot of them through bandcamp. She’s a wicked lyricist, and her and Quelle Chris trade off bars of dense wordplay and biting commentary on the current age of “self-care” and neoliberal hellscapes over beats that are just weird enough. Much of their verses are delivered through a lens of ironic detachment, but it’s especially affecting when the irony cracks into real urgency or emotion, as in “Breakfast of Champions,” a reflection on the grueling, consistent presence of racism in America. “It’s bound to wreck your body or straight burn your body out” they muse, and then later, as if realizing the gravity of it all, “it’s like damn, shit, fuck, wow…”

Also Quelle Chris apparently taught himself to program 8-bit video games for one of the videos.

8) SELF DEFENSE FAMILY - HAVE YOU CONSIDERED PUNK MUSIC

Yeah dude, you know I like punk rock that don’t follow no rules. This is definitely more in the vein of Fugazi, or maybe even a slightly more jagged Wilco, than a NOFX or 7 Seconds, with nods to Americana and a vocal delivery that reminds me of a raspier Craig Finn. A central preoccupation of the album seems to be the delicate balance between art and maturity, made all the more so when you’re tied to a subculture that’s only “supposed” to last you through your early 20s. There’s some great lines throughout: “ “Explaining motherhood to a man, cold observation but he’s not capable of understanding; detailing math to a dog, won’t retain a word but if you’re lucky he may be a good boy and nod” and “The world’s not turning for you and the road never rises, you’re eking out a living like every other asshole” are highlights for me, but I think my favorite bit of cleverness is actually just the juxtaposition between the titles of tracks 6 and 7. “Have You Considered Punk Music?” asks one. The other: “Have You Considered Anything Else?”

9) SINGLE MOTHERS - THROUGH A WALL

Image by CRUSTINA! via Flickr

And here we have a release that’s a little more meat and potatoes, with steam-rolling drum beats, distortion, and yelled vocals about the desperation to be found in modern life’s mudanities, “dog parks and IPA.” This album’s just some fucking ferocious non-screamy hardcore, with that same relentless quality that the best hardcore albums have. “Catch and Release” even has some double kick on it. Interestingly, I find some of the core anxieties the same as in the album above however: “Better people than you or I have lost that spark for life,” Andrew Thomson bellows on 24/7, a Cassandra portending the potential pitfalls of age.

10) HOP ALONG - BARK YOUR HEAD OFF, DOG

Singer Francis Quinlan has an incredible voice, powerful and worldly, and she paints quick snapshots of narrative with her lyrics like a Lydia Davis story. The music has shades of mid-western emo, with some kind of funky, almost Jackson 5 style guitar lines. This one is definitely a step up in terms of instrumentation from their earlier records, with strings, acoustic guitars, and other orchestral touches. The title refers specifically to a dying dog from one of the tracks, though it also seems to apply to all the characters briefly given voice throughout the album.

11) CINDER WELL - THE UNCONSCIOUS ECHO

Beautiful, haunting folk from Amelia Baker of Blackbird Raum (and a few other fellows mostly from the folk punk/bluegrass scene). A little more straight folk than Blackbird Raum’s high energy mix of folk, metal, and hardcore. Stripped down and evocative, with one foot firmly in an irish folk tradition. Like Blackbird Raum, there is a foreboding quality to much of the music, like a warning of dark things to come.

12) NONAME - ROOM 25

A micro-trend I noticed in hip-hop this year was short albums, notable from a tradition that often includes massive releases and mixtapes stuffed with skits and interludes. This is the first of example of this on my list, clocking in at a respectable 34:48. Noname is a great rapper with an intricate flow, technical without being too dense for a more casual listener, keeping her ideas and narratives clear and present over funky neo soul beats. At times she can be extremely candid, rapping about her sexual escapades, emotions, and insecurities. In one of my favorite moments, the track titled “No Name,” she discusses the spirituality behind her stage name: “When we walk into heaven, nobody’s name gon’ exist; just boundless movement for joy, nakedness radiance.” She’s funny too though. “I’m just writing my darkest secrets like wait and just hear me out; saying vegan food is delicious like wait and just hear me out.”

13) JEFF ROSENSTOCK - POST

More noisy power pop from former Bomb the Music Industry frontman Jeff Rosenstock (though I suppose by this point his solo career is at least as significant; Bomb albums never made it to Pitchfork). I think this one’s a little less varied than “Worry” before it, and a little rawer around the edges. The title is seemingly referring to the time post-2016 election, though it seems to often be more interested in profiling the anxious mood than making specific political points (which you probably all know anyway). I can’t think of another song writer off the top of my head that more consistently exemplifies the anxieties of the millennial generation, whether it’s the mid-20s woes of joblessness and friend loss often detailed in Bomb the Music Industry, or this current outing. On “Yr Throat,” he talks about the ease he has talking about relatively frivolous matter like video games and vinyl records, verses more important matters. One of my favorite lines in the song is a little more direct however, commenting on you-know-who: “It’s not like any other job I know; if you’re a piece of shit they don’t let you go.”

14) DEATH GRIPS - YEAR OF THE SNITCH

Image by Montecruz Foto via Flickr

Supposedly the album title has something to do with Charles Manson, at least according to their very vocal and sometimes uncomfortably affiliated online fanbase. It’s pretty rare that I can fully decipher what a song is about, other than generally surreal lyrics that hint toward a dirty and unsettling underground, whether urban, suburban, or solely online. Death Grips, if you don’t know, make experimental and abstract hip-hop, featuring dark and somewhat unconventional beats, with a live drummer, seeming to draw as much from the tradition of noise music than from rap. For as weird as all this is, however, there’s usually a pretty solid song structure underlying each track, and they create some sticky hooks out of all the electronic chaos and bellowed raps. This time around there seems to be a bit of a shoegaze influence as well, which…. doesn’t quite fit their aesthetic? But is pretty interesting all the same.

15) RAVYN LENAE - CRUSH

Steve Lacy from the Internet (the band) produced this 5 track long EP of retro/future funk and R+B. “Sticky” is as catch a song as ever there was, and Ravyn Lenae does a great job kind of floating over the beat, mixing up her delivery. These artists nod a lot to 70s R+B and funk, and I love that they preserve the strangeness of a lot of that stuff, that otherwordly vibe, whether it’s the “oooo-HOO-hoo-hoo” on “Sticky” or the blunted synth stabs on “4 Leaf Clover.”

16) HINDS - I DON’T RUN

Image by Paul Hudson via Flickr

Indie rock from Madrid with several lady vocalists that’s just a tad sloppy, in a good way. Catchy and relationship oriented, but scratching at something deeper beyond the surface. I love the way the vocal mics all seem to distort slightly. Maybe I’m just an old now, but it makes me nostalgic for college in some way, smoking cigarettes and being heartbroken. Which was probably not actually as fun as I remember it.

17) JPEGMAFIA - VETERAN

Hard as hell raps over jittery noise beats that sometimes merge into moments of dreamlike beauty from a hip-hop auteur who handles all the production himself. This kind of reminds me of when Pitchfork called Odd Future “/b/ boys” (referring to 4chan). This is the new Extremely Online hip-hop, endlessly irony poisoned, vaguely left-wing but mostly cynical, inside jokes upon inside jokes. It seems like there’s some real anger in here too, and his raps often involve promises of violence, usually upon various members of the alt right: “Look, it’s the young alt-right menace; What’s the pistol to a pennant?”

18) MILO - BUDDING ORNITHOLOGISTS ARE WEARY OF TIRED ANALOGIES

Milo reminds me of the best of the older backpacker rappers, dropping classic lines so fast that you miss about 2/3rds of them the first couple times through. Equally at home dropping a reference to a video game, a philosopher, the harshness of race in America, and the Guggenheim fellowship, like one of those memes that eradicates the distinction between high and low culture by putting references to existentialist philosophers over a picture of Spongebob. Of course, hip-hop has always been doing that, hasn’t it?

19) EARL SWEATSHIRT - SOME RAP SONGS

Image by Anna Hanks via Flickr

Another notably short album, at a brisk 24:39. The songs are short too, often coming across as sketches, though really this is the kind of project made to listen to in one sitting. Like a lot of the rap albums on here, this is a project that takes the beats as well as the rhymes seriously, pushing forward into avant garde territory, but in a mellower way than JPEGMAFIA or Death Grips. They have an almost hypnotic quality to them, as Earl raps in his slightly aloof manner, though here the aloofness feels more like a mask only thinly hiding a deep sense of melancholy. The samples on here are thick with that old record hiss - even the vocals are hissy, like a transmission from someplace far away.

20) SUDAN ARCHIVES - SINK

Sudan Archives is a violinist from Cincinnati who makes pop music that sounds like nothing else out there, though it takes cues from hip-hop, R+B, electronica, and world music. The beats are stripped down but still lush sounding, the violin often leading in a way that sounds strange and otherwordly, utilized for it’s ability to create rhythmic hooks, while her lyrics meld the personal with the empowering with the political.

21) TEYANA TAYLOR - K.T.S.E.

Kanye West produced 5 different 7 to 8 track albums this year, with mixed results. A lot of people stan Pusha T’s Daytona, but this one was my favorite, a short and sweet album that’s mellow, romantic, and a little dirty. Teyana Taylor puts in a very versatile performance, and her voice is perfectly suited to ride over the old soul samples that make up the bulk of the production. Kanye’s musical output was of course overshadowed by his various bizarre political statements and right wing flirtations, but it would be a shame for this gem to get lost in the fray.

22) CHURCH OF THE COSMIC SKULL - SCIENCE FICTION

I don’t always love heavily conceptualized “revival” type bands, but this one is so much fun, not just doing pitch perfect 70s hard rock, but also spoofing (at least, I think it’s a spoof) the phenomenon of 70s cults. The members seem to dress in all white, and look like they just stepped off some Jesus-dude’s farm/compound. Of course it wouldn’t work if the music wasn’t so damn hooky. Harmonies, heavy organs, and hella riffs.

23) VINCE STAPLES - FM!

And another super short hip-hop album from one of contemporary rap’s best. Vince’s projects usually feature stripped down beats that would sound good in a car or a club, but the lyrical matter is dark as hell, another example of what a strange genre gangsta rap is when viewed from the outside. It’s hyper-masculine and braggadocios, but also equally often an expression of black pain that is then commodified into bangers for clubs, cars, and house parties full of white frat boys to dance and drink to. The contrast is all the more apparent every time Vince mentions one of his dead friends. I dunno dude, maybe I’m just getting old.

24) JANELLE MONAE - DIRTY COMPUTER

This didn’t grab me as immediately as her previous two full lengths, trending a little too close to mainstream pop for my tastes. But underneath the added sheen, it’s still a Janelle Monae album, bouncing gleefully from Prince-style funk jams to buoyant electro tunes. Monae drops the cyber-punk robo future concept to make an on-the-nose, album length celebration of queerness (though I think there may be some sci-fi on the Dirty Computer short film, which I haven’t watched yet.) The celebratory nature fits the larger, more conventional pop moves here, a sort of “queering” of mainstream pop. There’s also more rapping here than ever, and it’s always fun to hear Monae drop some bars.

25) FUCKED UP - DOSE YOUR DREAMS

Image by CRUSTINA! via Flickr

Similar to the above, this is an album from a long time favorite of mine that didn’t grab me as much as their earlier efforts, and that also seems to be making some moves toward a more mainstream pop sound, though here of course it’s pop music featuring a bellowing, gravel voiced hardcore singer and a bunch of loud Cock Sparrer style guitar lines. This is a concept album, apparently about a character who quits his job and goes on a drug fueled odyssey through the nature of reality, learning to reject an oppressive capitalist society, which sounds like the plot of an 80s British comic book, and hey, the cover is basically ripped straight from the pages of Watchmen, so there you go. They try out a lot of different styles here, which can be a bit hit or miss, but the core of Fucked Up, the interplay between Abraham’s bombastic bellows and huge sounding guitars, is as raucous and triumphant as ever, if a little more familiar.

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russiancircles · 8 years ago

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Russian Circles Interview // The Seventh Hex

With their sixth album ‘Guidance’, Russian Circles carry on in their quest to conjure multi-dimensional dramatic instrumental narratives and to scout out new textures from their respective instruments. Songs aren’t constructed out of highbrow concepts; they’re forged out of gut instinct and base emotional response. Every Russian Circles album has had its share of new sonic vistas, and ‘Guidance’ finds the band still searching out new sounds while continuing to play to the collective strengths of guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncrantz, and bassist Brian Cook… We talk to Brian Cook about sounding human, working within parameters and Brooklyn’s happy hour…

TSH: Talk us through the band’s creative process in the lead-up to ‘Guidance’…

Brian: I’m sure every band has their specific way that they work, and given the specific dynamic that exists between any random assortment of individuals, some things work and other things don’t. For us, given that we don’t all live in the same city and we don’t often get the opportunity to play together, and given the fact that we’re an instrumental group that values each individual component to the music, it makes sense for us to work in a manner that is very efficient on time while also allowing three voices to all have their input. If we practiced three times a week, I’m sure we would do more jamming. Instead, we only have the chance to work on new material with us all in the same room a few weeks out of the year, so there’s a lot more individual composition, and then the group practices are more about trying out ideas and putting all the pieces together.

TSH: With this record, was the band was interested in trying to achieve a kind of attention to detail and sonic diversity?

Brian: Any time you go into the studio you’re obsessing over details and trying to make something with enough variation and dynamics that it holds your interest over the span of forty minutes. At this point, I think the bigger struggle is learning how to let go of fixating on perfection and figuring out how to make a cohesive album. It’s never been easier to make a sonically rich and perfect album; that’s where modern recording technology has taken us. But how do you capture the kind of vibe that made albums from before 1975 stand the test of time? I don’t give a shit about making a record that sounds as flawless as modern active rock radio bands. Nor do I care about the current DJ-influenced obsession with making music that touches upon and references twenty different genres of music or four decades of recording technology. I just want to make something that sounds natural and human.

TSH: Was it a key aspect to have drones low in the mix on this record?

Brian: The drones were a source of debate at times. Mike employs a lot of long, sustained, looping notes when we play live, and that really helps fill out the sound and enrich a lot of the melodic elements of the band. It also makes for nice ear candy. But the more you layer a recording, the less impact each individual component has. So there were several conversations as to how many embellishments should be done on the recordings. I think we found a healthy balance.

TSH: In terms of production, how pleasing was it to have the songs produced by people who weren’t going to fall back on the current metal production techniques?

Brian: It was good to work with Kurt Ballou because he’s definitely aware of how modern metal production works, but he doesn’t go that route. We’ve done a few of our past records at Electrical Audio in Chicago, which is an amazing studio that really pushes to do everything as live as possible. But we do so much stuff with loops that it makes more sense sometimes to record everything piece by piece. And because we don’t have a lot of time to write together in the practice space, we do a lot of writing and editing in the studio. So while we love Electrical Audio, it sometimes feels like we’re disappointing their engineers with our approach. On the other end of the spectrum, most current metal records are almost more like electronic records—everything is tracked on a computer grid, everything is corrected and edited to sterile perfection, all the drum hits are either squashed or triggered into sounding identical and mechanical. So with Kurt we had a guy that knows how to capture live, unruly hardcore bands, but is also very aware of how to construct things in the studio piece by piece in a way that still captures that energy. And that was ideal.

TSH: What was the thinking in placing ‘Asa’ as the album opener?

Brian: ‘Asa’ was just something I came up with on baritone guitar without any intention of it being a Russian Circles song, but it resonated with Mike and Dave and after jamming on it a bit it felt like a good way of building into ‘Vorel’.

TSH: With ‘Vorel’, was it surprising that with all the underlying melodies the song has, it ended up being more of a dynamic track?

Brian: ‘Vorel’ is a song that had so much surface noise and so many abrasive textures going on while we were writing it that when it started coming together in the studio and all the melodies became a bit more apparent there was some concern that maybe the song wasn’t dark enough. We always aim for ugliness but somehow the light creeps back in sometimes.

TSH: ‘Mota’ is a stunning track. Talk us through how this one came about from a compositional sense…

Brian: ‘Mota’ was a product of our gear. Specifically, the opening guitar riff was something that blossomed out of Mike fiddling around with settings on one of his delay pedals. It made for an interesting almost electronic arpeggio-like sound, so we tried to build an electronic groove around it, but with our standard arsenal of instruments. And then the second half tries to counter all the melodicism of the beginning.

TSH: Since the song titles have a phonetic quality, do you prefer the idea of the title’s literal definition being disembodied from the song?

Brian: Absolutely. I realise we give listeners very little information to provide context for the songs, and that can make people obsess over the titles a bit. We don’t have lyrics. We don’t have pointed album titles or artwork that’s heavy on iconography. We like mystery.

TSH: Tell us more about yourself incorporating a Moog Taurus for a lot of the keyboard parts and also playing a lot of baritone during the set live, how this gives more range overall…

Brian: Well, Mike has a lot going on with guitar, so I don’t want to impede on his frequency range, but we do want to have a broad spectrum of sounds and dynamics, so sometimes it just works out to switch over to the baritone. As for the Taurus, that originally entered the picture so that we could play “Schiphol” live, but now I’ve found those sub-bass frequencies to be a bit of a guilty pleasure, so I try to squeeze it in whenever I can.

TSH: Since as a live band you want to create an environment and atmosphere that people can get lost in, is it a challenge to figure out how to put that onto a record and have it translate?

Brian: Mike Watt once said something along the lines of “most rock bands tour to promote an album, but fIREHOSE makes albums to support tours.” I can’t say that’s necessarily the attitude of Russian Circles, but I would say that for me personally, I can understand Watt’s stance because I’m more concerned with creating music that functions in a live setting than in making a pristine album. Being a compelling live band is even harder today than it was twenty years ago, simply because we’ve been so saturated by live music. So while there’s definitely a concern with capturing atmosphere on a record, I’m more concerned with making sure the songs work well when the three of us play them together in a room. If they work in that arrangement, I assume they’ll translate onto record just fine.

TSH: How important is it to have the creative freedom and free reign to do whatever you want with no parameters?

Brian: It can be fun to work within parameters. I went out on tour with Mamiffer last year and it was actually kind of nice to take a step back and just help fulfill someone else’s vision. It was illuminating to see how someone else’s creative process worked and to figure out how to manifest their wishes. If that was the full extent of my musical life, I’d probably be unsatisfied, but given my circumstances I found it really rewarding. But overall, yes, feeling free to do whatever you want creatively is obviously a top priority for any artist.

TSH: Is Brooklyn’s happy hour a nice way for you to unwind?

Brian: New York is so hectic that the opportunity to sit somewhere quiet and have a drink is necessary sometimes. That said, I drink less here than I did when I lived in Seattle. Those Pacific Northwesterners love their beer.

TSH: What commonly brings about a pleasing and happy band dynamic during your touring travels?

Brian: Eight hours of sleep and good coffee. I mean, working with nice people at a club, having a decent stage to work with, and being able to grab a warm meal before doors are pretty crucial too, but if we have sleep and caffeine we can usually get through anything.

TSH: Finally, heading forward, what sort of progression and development do you relish with Russian Circles?

Brian: In some ways, I feel like we achieved something on ‘Guidance’ that we’d been working towards for a while—a certain balance of elements that we’d been experimenting with on prior albums. Going forward, it would be nice to branch out and experiment more, but at the same time, I don’t want to force anything. Our approach isn’t academic or conceptual. Our aim is to make something that works on a very primal, visceral level, and that kind of stuff doesn’t work with a bunch of pre-meditated ideas. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Article Here. Photos By Andrea Petrovicova.

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sargenthouse · 8 years ago