#maybe for the re-re-release in 40 years

[fadeintolight]

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[undergroundbillions]

Raggedy Ann art style masterpost!

Sorry this is a long one, but I need to make examples! After over a hundred years, how Raggedy Ann is drawn in books and merchandise has changed a LOT, and I'm obsessed with identifying different eras of the art styles and how they're combined. These aren't all of them of course but here's a few major ones.

First off, the original Johnny Gruelle & Co. style. These are the books from her first appearance in 1918 to the late 40's, when she was now being drawn by Gruelle's family. Early on they look more like literal dolls, but as the years go on they look more lively and round.

We get different illustrators throughout the 40's to the 60's, but the little physical merchandise outside of the books continues to lean toward the Gruelle style.

In the 70's, Hallmark owns the licensing, and as expected they go ALL out on merch. This era is defined by childish proportions with large heads, big eyes, and a checkered-shirt Andy.

In 1977 we get the Raggedy Ann and Andy Musical Adventure movie! Here's the most commonly used promotional art:

But this barely gets a chance to exist on its own, because in next two years both Chuck Jones holiday specials are released. As a result, there's a whole lot of promotional stuff that combines these two styles in a very strange way. Often, Ann and Andy (and Arthur) are in the Chuck Jones style, with the title and Camel from the movie. Sometimes side characters from both pieces of media make it in!

In the late 80's, the CBS Adventures of Raggedy Ann and Andy show along with the corresponding Grow and Learn series of books are released, with a new art style:

It's similar to the 1977 movie again, but as if they re-designed it from that above promotional shot alone. They're very much stuck in the one shape, instead of squishing and stretching like rag dolls as they do in the movie.

In the 90's you have the Snowden Target collab, which is pretty easy to spot since it's the most blatantly red & green christmassy thing you've ever seen.

Aaaaand last (and maybe least) we have Simon & Schuster's Classic branding in the 2000's. These are recognizable by solid black eyes with no whites, having the exact same expression in every picture, and visible stitches.

I will release you from this Raggedy Ann prison now. Go forth and be free with your new unnecessary Raggedy Ann knowledge.

-𝕸𝖔𝖉 𝕲𝖊𝖓𝖊𝖗𝖆𝖑 𝕯.

[dangermousie]

Finished.

God, what a glorious, glorious, glorious ride, a truly solid epic drama in a way I haven't seen in a very long time - there were two other flawless cdramas for me this year - Lost You Forever 1 and The Ingenuous One - but TIO was a smaller scale story and LYF ended in medias res. AJTL was the only complete, epic cdrama this year for me, but oh boy, was it beyond.

First, my two tiny niggles - this is a drama where the 40 episode limit fit badly, like tightly pinching shoes. You can tell how they had to speed and cram to get in the resolutions of dynastic struggles in An and Wu and the war with Beipan. This drama really needed to have been 50 eps. (The cramming also resulted in the sole plot arc that made me go huh - LTG random decision to try to marry Ruyi before he rides off to what he thinks is his last battle and his just as random decision to go "oh well" and agree to release NYZ and then when NYZ shows up before he can be released because he broke out and wreaks havoc, let them walk out. Maybe if they had more time, it would have made more sense, otherwise it felt like an aberration in a character arc that before and after was consistent and made sense.) Second niggle is not really one because it's clearly due to censorship - the last minute redemption of the Wu emperor etc - the writer made is as believable as she could but you could feel the censorship sticky hands all over it.

But those are minor complaints. Overall this was solid from beginning to end, very adult and with secondary characters who all felt real and complex and interesting. A few thoughts:

Our main OTP was incredible. So adult, so competent, so badass but still feeling human. I bought that those two were larger than life legends AND flesh and blood people. And that chemistry!

I loved that this drama allowed relationships to be messy. Yes, we have our epic main couple but I especially loved what happened with Chu Yue and Shisan and LTG and Ying. I loved that neither was an epic romance. With CY and Shisan, I loved that they didn't make him realize he loves her forever blah blah - he was an incredibly consistent character - charming, loyal and utterly clear he's incapable of permanent commitment to a single woman and she never could change that. And yet he died in large part to protect her, and it's in keeping with his character and it makes sense that this solidified her remembering him forever - he's not just the one who got away, but he DIED for her. It's very clear if they both lived, this would have gone nowhere and ended with him wandering off or her moving on wanting commitment from someone who is capable of it, but as it is, it froze the possibility of love in ember.

And I loved the narrative of LTG and Ying. They both come into marriage in love with someone they can never have (Ruyi and YL), they both have similar backgrounds (royals but neglected and looked down upon), they both share the same goals (power but to take care of people) and they really are friends. I love that when we last see them, they have what is a great period marriage - no love but respect and common goals. And she still mourns YL and he probably still thinks of Ruyi but the thing is, I love that the narrative leaves the possibility of them eventually falling in love with each other (or other people) because as she tells him - you think you will always love a particular person but life is long. (And it's so true - she will remember YL until she's old, once again in part because of the unfulfilled possibility of it - but it doesn't mean she won't be able to open her heart to someone again.) It's a surprisingly hopeful ending for them and I love it. I'd totally watch a show where they discover love with each other tbh.

I did love that no character (except possibly Prince Danyang) got everything they wanted even if they emerged alive. They got some and had to give up some.

I loved what it had to say about having to be worthy of your power and position - you are not owed fealty by birth but you have to earn it. It was a surprisingly anti-imperial show for a recent cdrama.

All the deaths of our faves gutted me, none as much as Yuan Lu's. Oooof.

As to the ending, I can tell people are gonna have fits but I like it. I love many an ending legendarily reviled in cdrama fandom (Princess Agents and Novoland Eagle Flag have perfect endings in my opinion; I realize that opinion, especially about PA is enough to get me throttled in certain quarters but it is what it is) and I came to cdramas back when pretty much every costume cdrama ended horrifically tragically - think of the endings of the Chinese Paladins, The Myth (for a long time my n1 drama even though it made me cry so hard I threw up, ending-wise), The Young Warriors, Little Fairy, even Lan Ling Wang, Glory of the Tang Dynasty and Bu Bu Jing Xin if we are going somewhat later. I mean, one of my favorite dramas ever is Royal Nirvana and that ending is like drinking a thermos full of depression. This is nothing.

Honestly, I would have been fine if the ending for our OTP really was them dying pretty much together, in their different battles. That hint that they are alive and living with their kids is lovely and welcome, but I'd have been fine without it and it raises a lot of questions (though if anyone could fake their deaths and survive that sort of thing, it would have been them so fair enough.)

Anyway, this is basically my love letter to this drama. It was amazing and I am so glad I watched it.

[abattoirstars]

im back, and would love you to share your hypothesis on Why The Band Hate Arc

— out of town for the day anon

back to music discourse. i'll have to get c @hellkitepriest to mine for the interview footage where jon especially recoils a bit from Arc because it's the foundation of this take BUT if we take that as read, the timeline goes like this:

Cough Cough drops as a single in October 2012 and charts (still the band's only top 40 single). Then in January 2013, three days before Arc releases, Bastille release Bad Blood with Pompeii on it and completely explode the whole scene.

I reckon Pompeii especially stings because it's doing SUCH a similar thing to Cough Cough but through a combination of factors (including Dan Smith being a much more indie-darling quiffed up frontman) it completely overshadows literally every other song released that year. It was the UK's most streamed song of all time until mid-2014.

So my take is that the band (Jon especially) has a residual bitterness about Arc and Cough Cough/Kemosabe because THEY should've maybe been the percussion heavy, rnb influenced indie pop album that went Huge or at least charted well that year, but instead their first major label release got swept out from under them by a band I guarantee they thought were making much less musically interesting decisions than them (even if Bastille do sing about Twin Peaks).

Interestingly, Bastille ALSO then release Wild World in 2016 which is doing the exact same Farage and Brexit thinking as GTH/AFD and again outsells, though at least this time GTH/AFD become cult classics.

(I have wider thoughts on the Dan Smith being hot and marketable thing but they start to sound quite parasocial. I will just say that Arc is notably the only album cover of theirs to feature their own faces until it's deliberately referenced/parodied/bastardised by Re-Animator, and they've really tried to beautify the FUCK out of them)

[ayeforscotland]

Hi Aye,

I live in Aberdeen and the council is about to vote on the budget of the city tomorrow at 10.30am. One of the most extreme option they consider is cutting down up to 40 millions. Including up to £800,000 in the culture sector of the city. Here's an extract from the P&J newspaper (https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/5442847/aberdeen-budget-arts-cuts-belmont-cinema-reopening/):

"The local authority faces a black hole of more than £46 million.

In an attempt to try to stem it, a raft of public resources including schools, the arts and support for those living in poverty have been earmarked as areas for severe cuts.

Arts leaders have already warned that slashing Aberdeen’s culture budget would cost jobs and “tarnish the city’s reputation”.

And now a petition has been launched in the hopes of conveying how much the sector means to the people of Aberdeen."

THERE IS A DEMONSTRATION BEING PLANNED TOMORROW AT 10AM outside the town house on Broad Street.

The info has been released in a media release by Aberdeen Trade Union Council.

I was wondering if I could ask you to spread this info. If Aberdonians came across this post on their dash, maybe they'd be happy to know.

I don't belong to any organisations myself but I'll be there tomorrow morning. I'm sick of this circus. They're stealing from the working class over and over again.

There's also a petition launched by the team of the Belmont Filmhouse going around: https://chng.it/BsvY9ZjFdG The Belmont was the only independent cinema venue of Aberdeen and it's been shut last October. They were hoping to re-opening it but with this happening, nothing is less certain. We're being robbed!

Important info for the folks in Aberdeen^^

Council budgets are being passed this time of year. Labour and Tories have banded together in Edinburgh and a few other places so far. It’s not great to see.

[readingoals]

End of Year Book Tag

With the end of the year approaching, I've seen a few people on youtube doing this End of Year tag and I thought it'd be fun to do it too, as a kind of followup to the mid year freak out tag. I've adapted the questions a little based on a couple different versions I've seen but I believe the original tag was made by Ariel Bissett. Anyway, onto the questions!

I am definitely on track for my 2024 reading goal! This year I set a goal of 40 books and as of today (Nov 2) I am sitting at 38 read which I am obviously stoked with. I am a little behind on the Read Christie challenge this year but only by 4 books so I shouldn't have any trouble finishing the challenge.

What I am behind on is posting about what I've read (oopsie) so I defs want to try and get caught up before too long.

(Originally this prompt specified an autumnal/winter read but I live in Australia and we're entering summer so I changed the wording a little.)

I don't often pick books based on the season but this year I do actually have a couple of summery reads that I'd like to get to. The first is Every Time I Go On Vacation Someone Dies by Catherine Mack. The other is Everyone This Christmas Has A Secret by Benjamin Stevenson which it the third in his Australia set mystery series so I'm assuming it'll take place in the summer too lmao.

If you'd asked me last week I would have had a few titles on my list but currently there's only one. Ghosts: Brought To Life was released in October and I have ordered it so I'm just waiting for it to arrive.

Oh I have so many more than three lmao but the one's I'm focusing on most are the Agatha Christie's I have left to read - Hickory Dickory Dock (which I just started today), The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side, Third Girl, and Passenger To Frankfurt. Aside from them I also have a few books I'd like to get to if possible just to tick off challenges I've been doing through the year (namely the Buzzword-a-thon and a bingo board I made in my reading journal). So that includes Artemis by Andy Weir, Not Now Not Ever by Julia Gillard, and There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh, amongst others.

Absolutely. Most of my five stars this year were re-reads and, honestly, nothing stands out as my absolute fave at the moment, so there's defs a possibility. I think maybe the most likely would be Every Time I Go On Vacation if I get to it before the end of the year.

Nothing solid yet. I will be doing the Read Christie challenge again next year (although I'm getting close to having read all of them so I may have to stretch some prompts to get to everything lmao)

The other thing I've kind of had at the back of my mind is to move my Frankenstein thing I've been doing in October to a different month next year, maybe something around the april/may/june/july part of the year. This year October's reading did not go as planned, I spent 3/4 of the month reading and annotating Emma and then only got through one Frankenstein related book. October tends to be an especially busy time of the year for me with work and I usually have to read the book I'm annotating to exchange with Lauren around that time too. Plus the weather doesn't really give the right vibe. I don't celebrate Halloween so I didn't time it to coincide with that when I started doing it, it was just coincidence, so there's really no reason to keep in in October. But I am thinking of maybe making a lil mini bingo board or something for anyone who wants to join in on it. idk it's all very much just a vague idea in the back of my head right now.

[friendlifyre]

The quest for Dan Heng's age - the Essay tm

we know the sedition happened roughly 700 years ago (721 to be exact if i remember right ??). alas we are also told that vidyadhara egg cooking (while it varies from individual to individual) can take up to 700 years as well, leaving us no historical hints as to how long ago imbabytor lunae re-hatched (not that it would have helped, due to this aforementioned fact, but we also dont know exactly how long dan feng was kept imprisoned before molting). as such we must turn to other hints.

we know vidyadhara live up to 700 years old, and that they age proportionally to that lifespan (unlike xianzhou natives who age as quickly as regular humans but physically plateau at their prime and stay there until the mara sets in at around 1,000yo). if we consider that (regular) humans can live up to 100 years old (to make it a nice round number), we can deduce that 1 human year = 7 vidyadhara years.

(dan feng for example, who i personally estimate was between 30 and 40 in 'human' years, was therefore somewhere between 210 and 280 years old.)

this is only pertinent because i will be using 'human' years to estimate dan heng's age.

we know dan heng was an adult when he was released - primarily due to his light cone showing that he didnt look noticeably younger than he does now (whereas light cones for other playable characters do sometimes); it also makes sense narratively that he was only released once hed come off age so that he could effectively take responsibility for the conditions of said release. as such, we can deduce he was released whilst the equivalent of 18-21 years old.

we know dan heng is still considered to be very young by vidyadhara standards, as alluded to in (iirc) his and/or Blade's stories. perhaps reinforcing this argument is the fact that dan feng who is, by all accounts, genetically identical to him, was taller than him (theres an official concept art with a height chart going around that shows df being 1-2 inches taller). this implies dan heng may not have reached his full physical maturity, which typically concludes for humans between 25 and 30yo. as such, we can deduce that he is no older than the equivalent of 25 years old.

we have no way to estimate exactly how much time has passed between his release and the present day, but we know Blade has joined the Stellaron Hunters since. maybe there's further hints to a proper timeline in the SHs stories that i havent seen, but i certainly get the feeling that Blade has been running with that crew for at least a few years, hands down. as such, we can infer that dan heng is (probably) between the equivalent of 22 and 25 years old.

convert that to vidyadhara years, and dan heng is between 154 and 175 years old.

he has spent 126 to 147 of those years imprisoned;

he has (personal but calculated hc) been on the express for roughly 3 years as of writing this;

therefore, he has worked for the IPC for something between 4 and 46 years.

thank u for coming to my ted talk

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Contemporary decades in Disney animated features made at Walt Disney Animation Studios...

During the Golden Age, there was at least one Disney animated feature that took place in a contemporary setting. That was DUMBO, which is set right around the year of its release, 1941. However, it's a modern setting portrayed and told in a timeless, colorful, storybook-esque way.

Post-war package features often depicted contemporary settings, like THE THREE CABALLEROS and FUN & FANCY FREE. They're very '40s movies. Throughout the 1950s, the feature-length pictures were all period pieces: CINDERELLA and SLEEPING BEAUTY being fairy tales, ALICE IN WONDERLAND starts off in Victorian England while PETER PAN begins in Edwardian England. LADY AND THE TRAMP is the Midwest United States at the turn of the century, set around Walt's childhood years. (1909 had been cited somewhere as a possible year setting.) 101 DALMATIANS, released in 1961, was a thoroughly modern animated Disney picture, and a rare one for a long while.

Past Walt Disney's death in 1966, the studio still stuck to period pieces. THE ARISTOCATS is set in 1910 Paris, ROBIN HOOD in Merry Olde England, and THE FOX AND THE HOUND in rural America around the turn of the century (note the cars and lack of modern tech). The cobbled-together MANY ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH could be set around the time A. A. Milne wrote the original books, 1920s England, maybe not. It could be more up in the air. THE RESCUERS stood as an exception, and it does in many ways feel like a 1970s movie. It didn't seem to stand the test of time when re-released and put on video, not holding up the way - say - CINDERELLA and THE JUNGLE BOOK regularly did.

The 1980s had one modern-day Disney animated feature, and that was the very '80s OLIVER & COMPANY... that was deemed to have aged like milk within a few years of release...

THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER is set around the time of its making and release (late 1980s, released in 1990), that didn't do great upon release.

The rest of the '90s Disney Renaissance crop was... Period pieces and fairy tales. THE LION KING is ambiguous as to when it's set, but I've come to interpret THE LION KING as a mythical story that lions in the African wildernesses tell to each other. Like an animal kingdom folk tale, of sorts. That could explain the absence of humans or any form of civilization in that film, Simba does seem to travel a very long distance in it. From roughly Kenya (going by the old filmmakers' commentary) to what appears to be the Sahara... Maybe it's not a geographically-accurate African continent, but a fantasized one... though how the heck does Zazu know the lyrics to "It's a Small World" and how do Timon and Pumbaa know what "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is? Let alone the Hawaiian war chant? So looking past LION KING, the latest-set '90s WDAS film is TARZAN, set around the 1800s. Victorian England again.

1995's A GOOFY MOVIE, which was a Disney MovieToons (later Disneytoon Studios) production, was a contemporary-set picture. That really set it apart from the Renaissance movies, among other aspects of it.

The 2000s... LILO & STITCH was modern day, and jumping to CGI... MEET THE ROBINSONS (albeit with the bulk of it being set in the future) and BOLT, in 2007 and 2008 respectively. 2010s Disney Animation gave us some modern-day films like WRECK-IT RALPH and its internet adventure sequel, and ZOOTOPIA's made-up all-animals world is very contemporary, as they all have smartphones and the city has stores that are parodies of real-world stores. BIG HERO 6 looks to be the near-future, given the technology and San Francisco being San Fransokyo. Maybe it's an alternate universe America where history and geographical aspects played out much differently.

This decade... None so far. RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, ENCANTO, STRANGE WORLD, and WISH are either period pieces or fantasy world-set stories that look like they're set a long time ago.

Fascinatingly, if you ever wanted to see a modern-day setting depicted in Disney Animation more often, you had to look to the short films. The majority of the Mickey Mouse cartoons made from the beginning up until Disney slowed down production of them in the 1950s are largely contemporary-set. Few exceptions include shorts like THE BRAVE LITTLE TAILOR and KNIGHT FOR A DAY.

And every once in a while, Disney would put out a standalone short like SOCIAL LION (1952) that would also be set in the modern day. A lot of educational films in the '60s, such as the Goofy highway safety ones and the Upjohn "Triangle of Health" films, do that as well.

The shorts continued to do that in some way or another, into this millennium even. INNER WORKINGS and some of the Short Circuit stuff immediately come to mind.

I wonder if they'll try again in a future feature.

[mzannthropy]

Sam Claflin and the Ageism Comments

I've been meaning to make this post for... well, months now, the reason why I've been dragging my feet on it is that, honestly, it's such a non issue for me, but I just cannot abide how fucking stupid people can be.

So, what's up with all the "Sam Claflin looks too old on Daisy Jones and The Six", "Sam Claflin has aged" comments?

If these comments came only from incels of 4chan and Reddit, I wouldn't have thought anything of it, bc that's the type of stuff I expect from them. But, disappointingly, they came from DJATS fans.

Also just the sheer perplexity over people being surprised that a person is, gasp, ten years older than what they were ten years ago. Therefore, I have to speak up.

More under the cut.

Around the time DJATS was released, I re-listened to the audiobook, and I distinctly remember Daisy saying, upon meeting Billy for the first time, that he had lines around his eyes, even though he couldn't have been older than 29. Sam was 35 during the filming of DJATS, so yeah, he is older than his character, but I don't understand why this would be such a huge problem? Actors often play characters younger than them, but it's not just that. Maybe they couldn't find a suitable 29yo actor to play Billy, which is not an easy role. (Even Sam didn't get it on the first try, but they gave him a chance bc they knew he was good.) Also I just don't see what difference the ages of characters make in this story. They could be anything from late 20s to late 30s, even early 40s. It's a documentary about a band, not a coming of age story. I think that... it seems to me (and I could be wrong in my assessment) that for whatever reason, this fanbase is really young. (Didn't the book blow up on tiktok?) Maybe they presumed the characters would be closer to their own age, especially as gen z have this weird thing when it comes to age. I don't know. It's bizarre.

So what did Sam really look like on DJATS? Well, most of all, he lost a lot of weight. And sometimes it happens that when a person loses a lot of weight, depending on how thin they get, it might age them. I don't know how you can expect someone to get down to a size where they've left with hollow cheeks without this making them look older. In addition, Billy is a recovering alcohol/drug addict. Those things are generally not good for you.

So even if Sam did look older on DJATS--what does it matter? Is it not bringing the character to life that matters, the talent, the hard work he put in becoming Billy? Learning to play a whole musical instrument, making sure to get it right with regards to his character's struggle with addiction, by consulting the people who worked with actual rockstars who had the struggles in the 70s? Is that not what it is about?

If you only like films and shows with young people under a certain age, then watch those. There's plenty of YA out there for you to peruse.

Sam has been in the business since 2010. In that time he played such a variety of roles that a chunk of the audience don't even realise it's the same guy. He likes challenging himself, he has lost and gained weight as his roles demanded.

Sam is 37 now and he looks exactly how a normal 37yo man would look. He's just more handsome than most. He is a very down-to-earth person and doesn't hang out with the Hollywood elite. He doesn't shoot up his face with botox. And good thing he doesn't. I'd rather have him with a few lines in his face than lose that smile, his most valuable asset.

I'd like to bring attention to another feature of Sam, not something that perhaps many notice, and not something you'd immediately notice when it comes to Sam, bc he mostly keeps them in his pockets--his hands.

These are not the hands of a person that looks too old.

But hey, it's okay. You don't have to like Sam. There's plenty of young male celebs for you to fawn over. Us oldies will keep Sam, thank you very much.

(Note: yes I know women get it worse, but I made this post about Sam.)

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 21/09/2024 (The Weeknd, Tate McRae, Chappell Roan, Teddy Swims, Playboi Carti)

For a fourth week straight, Sabrina Carpenter is at #1 on the UK Singles Chart with “Taste”, and it seems like everyone on the pop music roster has returned this week. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

content warning: language, brief discussion of Palestine, allegations, queerphobia

Rundown

As always, we start the episode with our notable dropouts, those being songs exiting the UK Top 75 - which is what I cover - after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40. This week, we bid farewell to: “Red Wine Supernova” by Chappell Roan (I’ll explain why towards the end), “Houdini” by Eminem, “Pink Skies” by Zach Bryan, “Like a Prayer” by Madonna, “i like the way you kiss me” by Artemas and “The Man Who Can’t be Moved” by The Script. It’s not that large a list of songs, but these are all pretty big hits during the past year, this is almost a clear-out week of some summer tracks.

As for what takes those songs’ places, well, we have plenty of new arrivals to fill that void but there are also some notable gains, and returns, for that regard, with “Fortnight” by Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone back briefly at #75 from when it dropped out to #76 last week (“Gata Only” has company, I see), and a much more interesting re-entry with Charli xcx bringing “Talk talk” back to #24. The song peaked at #47 on album release week, but with the Brat remix compilation announcement, Charli released alongside it a new, mediocre version of this track featuring Troye Sivan - who’s credited by the Official Charts Company, for once - and Dua Lipa - who’s not credited by anywhere. As for the gains, we see solid boosts forEDM to-be-hits “TOO COOL TO BE CARELESS” by PAWSA at #66, “Cry Baby” by Clean Bandit, Anne-Marie and David Guetta at #51 and bizarrely enough, the song I literally nearly forgot to review until the episode was finished last week has scooted up to the top 40 - “Embrace It” by Ndotz is at #36 because, sure, I get the appeal. Other than JADE’s “Angel of My Dreams” at #19, however, much of what we need to talk about in the top 40 is relegated to tracks debuting there this week.

As for our top five, “Die with a Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars continues a rise at #5, but the rest should all be standard: Sabrina Carpenter has “Please Please Please” at #4 and “Espresso” at #3, Chappell Roan has “Good Luck, Babe!” at #2 and of course, Sabrina also has “Taste” at the very top. Now there are many… interesting debuts up and down the charts, mostly in the top 40, but we start with, well, maybe the least coherent.

New Entries

#72 - “KEEP UP” - Odetari

Produced by Odetari

Okay… so, this might require some explanation. Odetari is a rap-singer from Texas who has been carving out a place online, particularly TikTok, through his success in bringing some underground hyperpop-adjacent trends into a more mainstream place. Alongside other acts like 9lives and 6arelyhuman, who, trust me, have names just as alien to me as they are you, his work encompasses distorted club beats using a similar bitcrushed technique to “hexd” or “surge” music, rapping like a digicore artist over Jersey club, and generally, being high-pitched and annoying. Bizarrely, he’s been popping up mostly on the US dance charts for a year or so now, and has attracted an audience that probably belongs in some form to the “scene revival”, with his woozy, punched-up rave beats and Auto-Tuned vocal fitting right into that sound. “KEEP UP” has crossed over to a more general audience to give him a breakthrough outside of his demographic, so part of me was hoping he did something a bit different in this one. Uh, no.

This is far from a bad thing necessarily for as much as I feel like I’m some boomer trying to hear most of this guy’s material, there’s something about this track in particular I actually really enjoy, and I think it may just be up to the fact that it is so relentlessly catchy. The self-produced saw sounds straight out of the NES, sure, but it’s overwhelmed by the punchy hardcore kicks, which soon evolve into a drum pattern so distorted it becomes a bitcrushed mesh alongside Mr. Odetari’s hook which has already made itself home in my head. Genuinely, it’s an annoyingly catchy, stuttering hook that has such a good first half to the main melodic idea that it doesn’t matter that the second half of the phrase trails off into barely-words bullshit. It’s nothing new, it’s just addictive, and I think I understand the virality now, even if I get the feeling that I don’t fully “get it”. As for the lyrics, Odetari is genuinely not saying anything. There is no lyrical conceit or motif to the song, and I am absolutely confident in saying that I’m not missing anything in that regard, as the verses, similarly full of vocal manipulating and stuttering ad-libs crowding the mix, sound like loose freestyles he decorated with production to fit in with the one good idea he had: the undeniable chorus. I also enjoy how this is one of few songs to do the cheap, TikTok-variety slowed-down outro with tact and reason: the transition is solid and exciting, the synths take on a new, eerie tone with the pace shift, and the third verse - or I suppose, bridge - is the most focused on the song, being a whole lot of flexing but more cohesive than anything else he has going for him. So, yeah, oddly enough, I really enjoy this, though I don’t think I’m fully there into delving into the Odetari back catalogue. If you can call having barely two years worth of singles and EPs a back catalogue.

#59 - “Disco” - Surf Curse

Produced by Jarvis Taveniere

Surf Curse are, fittingly, a surf punk band from Nevada whose back catalogue has been bubbling under for years now: they seem to have very little success, even now signed to a major label, with their new output but every so often, their years-old songs will get a viral buzz and streaming traction, with some popping up on the charts. I actually covered them way back in 2021 when this happened for the first time with “Freaks”, a song that was originally released all the way back in 2013, but hey, it’s been three years since, I’m sure that people have caught onto their newer work and no, this “new” song is five years old and has already sold 95,000 copies overall. I liked “Freaks” for as much as the Nick Rattigan-fronted band could get me to like a lo-fi indie snippet that didn’t have much to it, so I was honestly hoping to get a refresher on these guys that involved actually fully-fledged songs. This is closer, even if it’s barely longer than “Freaks”, mostly because of a more professional mix, though still with some imperfect lo-fi elements that punch it up a tad, though the song is still barely there. The lyrics about seeing a girl at the disco and being in adoration about the way she dances are… unbefitting and ultimately not interestingly phrased, the stop-and-start rhythm in the chorus’ end is not that inspired, almost expected, and the main riff just reminds me of “Freaks” again, which the entire song resembles quite a lot, and maybe a bit of early Vampire Weekend. Some of the lyrics come off as somewhat obsessed or creepy, especially given the allegations that followed the year after this song’s release, but it doesn’t have the rougher, darker edges of “Freaks”, which I relistened to and still enjoy, to integrate that into its appeal. I have heard better in indie surf-rock, but I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the least interesting of it is what ends up charting. I guess it’s okay, but it’s definitely not original or even likeable.

#47 - “Tony Soprano 3” - Nines

Produced by RQ1of1 and JC3

UK rapper Nines is back with an album on the 27th, and what better way to announce a forthcoming project than with completing the trilogy of his “Tony Soprano” series of freestyle-liked tracks just meant to serve as Nines talking his shit to convince you to care about the project on the way. The last installment peaked at #10 but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t upped the quality with this latest edition and… well, the spoken part at the start seems to indicate this forthcoming record is his last, but other than that, there’s absolutely nothing of interest here. Nines is sloppy as always, with a vocal mix that is obsessed with stuttering and other effects that seem completely unnecessary for a song that should be about bars, of which Nines has very little, over this basic trap beat that admittedly has a nicer loop this time. There are sone nice references and I do respect ending the track by calling out social media for allegedly shadow-banning his account after he showed support for Palestine, but considering the rest of the track is about how he thinks he’s the GOAT and this is tacked on clumsily to the end, it instead appears somewhat self-serving, unfortunately. Overall, like I say about most of Nines’ tracks that end up charting, I don’t think it’s much of note at all, but this one is perfectly serviceable outside of odd production choices, which is more than Nines sometimes provides so that’s something, surely.

#32 - “ALL RED” - Playboi Carti

Produced by F1LTHY, Lukrative, Lucian, Ojivolta and Twisco

Atlanta legend and trap pioneer Future has just released his rawer, messier set of hype anthems, MIXTAPE PLUTO, which may have an impact next week but more importantly for us today, makes this lead single from Playboi Carti nearly entirely obsolete. Carti has been teasing singles for the entire year and a bit from an upcoming release, I AM MUSIC, but much of this has been on YouTube and other platforms instead of the major streaming services, whether that be for sample clearance, label nonsense, general “mystery” or because the guy hates his fans, probably a mix of all of the above. A lot of those newer songs and leaks have featured Mr. Carter experimenting with his voice in strange ways, but primarily using his newer, deeper voice he introduced on “FE!N” last year, to mostly boring results outside of “2024” (released in 2023), I like that one, though that features a mix. There is something really funny to me, therefore, that after a mish-mash of genuine experimentation and unwarranted hype and acclaim from fans and industry alike, that his proper lead single is just a Future impression on a F1LTHY beat. The beat’s obviously hard-hitting enough with his twisting synth loops and bass-heavy menace that comes naturally with F1LTHY territory though with six producers credited here, two of which being the very creative Ojivolta, I did expect more detail or at least some progression here beyond just plugging some new synth flares in and out. Carti is in typical lyrical territory, though I don’t think I understand the main conceit of the chorus that his neck tattoo is shutting anybody up, exactly, because if anything, the Satanic imagery is what gets people talking about the mysterious and violent “red” aesthetic Carti’s been working with since he discovered rage beats. He does end up sounding more distinct from Future on the one verse, but by that point it’s just a middling Whole Lotta Red leftover. I can’t call it bad because there is energy and intensity here to justify its existence, I just feel like it could have been much more.

#28 - “Bad Dreams” - Teddy Swims

Produced by Julian Bunetta, Matt Zara and John Ryan

Colour me surprised that Teddy Swims is sticking around. “Lose Control” seemed out of nowhere but is one of the biggest songs of the decade so far, despite sounding like pretty much nothing out, and “The Door” is the kind of follow-up that he probably needed to show an upbeat side, so I was interested in this newest single, not from his breakthrough album, that might just be the deal-maker - or deal-breaker - for if Mr. Swims can continue his hit-making career past that one good year, as this was released last Friday and didn’t have the slow burn of the others. Given the high debut, I have a feeling the Swimster does fill a void and will be here to stay, but as to how I feel about the song, I am somewhat disappointed in the producers going for a more typical, 2020s subdued indie-pop guitar lead and tone amidst the more classic soul groove, because whilst it mixes the guy better into his closest contemporaries on the charts - he’s closer to Sabrina Carpenter of all people than anything - it also takes some of the loveable bombast from his prior hits out of the occasion, with the malformed post-chorus, consisting of a weak “woo”, rising strings, and stray claps accompanying some brief phrases that feel more like vocal riffs than a fully-written conclusion to the chorus, wherein he longs for his partner not to leave him because without them, he gets “bad dreams” - probably more so referring to how distraught his mental health can be without relying on someone else. Obviously, he sounds great, though he has some room to belt here and shows some restraint, which could be odd for that kind of content that almost comes across as begging, so I feel like even his vocal performance is slightly underwhelming here… which sums up the song in general. It’s fine, it’ll be successful, but it also doesn’t seem like the most memorable third act to me.

#21 - “Pink Pony Club” - Chappell Roan

Produced by Dan Nigro

We switched out our Pokémon, so to speak, with “Red Wine Supernova” and thanks to the three-song rule, Chappell Roan’s fourth-biggest song currently has dropped out from the top 40 and been replaced with the third. OCC are ridiculous, but to be fair, this rule was built to prevent album bombs, not the - somewhat unforeseeable - case that an artist would have an entire album be full of sleeper hits that have been out for at least a year but seem to all have a domino effect on each other until she���s one of the year’s biggest new stars. Those following this year would know I’m still somewhat torn on Chappell’s hits thus far, not really fully convinced by them outside of “HOT TO GO!”, and honestly mostly for somewhat nitpicky reasons, songs just not connecting nearly as much as they should for me due to lyrical gripes or structural oddities that put me off from the entire package and I’m glad that we finally have one that’s a bit simpler to explain: I think it’s boring. With that said, I really enjoy the idea of the lyrical narrative here, functioning as the clearest example of her album’s story regarding the young queer girl in Middle America - Tennesee in this song’s case - longing for the fictional, openly gay nightclub “the Pink Pony Club”. Her attendance would disappoint her mother but might be worth it for the joy and self-realisation, and she eventually progresses into actually being at the club and promising that her hometown still means a lot to her.

Now, like all Chappell Roan hits, here comes the “but”: I don’t actually like the way the lyrics progress with little variety that changes tenses but doesn’t have a meaningful impact on the content despite her journey, there’s not much nuance to how Tennessee is depicted outside of just the generic hometown she loves but has to get out of. More detail to why either Tennessee or Santa Monica actually matter, or if there are any specific areas outside of the fictional club that stand out to her journey, justifying why Tennessee still matters and not just her mother’s love. It relies in part to a sociopolitical content that it barely discusses, and it extends its length with an incessantly catchy and incredibly well-performed chorus but one that fails to have more of a gut-punch impact like it could, alongside solos that more often than they should go for warping down instead of soaring like they should when working in an 80s synthpop and AOR framework. The staccato string and synth stabs in the pre-chorus are cool enough but the mix stays too minimal with its gated drums to really have that full feeling, to make the club actually seem like either a dream or alien to the Tennessee girl. It even fades out like a classic 80s song, which is just a cop-out nowadays, and whilst I do have these specific problems… the main thing they all contribute is taking my interest out of vocals and drums that I otherwise would really love, making a song that, to me, is kind of a bore. I know I’m not making any friends by being consistently critical of Chappell Roan on Tumblr of all places, but I’m sorry, she still doesn’t excite me the way she has many others.

#14 - “It’s ok I’m ok” - Tate McRae

Produced by ILYA

I won’t even try and resist the easy joke of Ms. McRae outright stating what could well be my opinion of the song and her artistry in the title of the track. Thankfully, I don’t really agree with that statement - last year’s Tate McRae album was far from OK, more just outright garbage, but this one could be better. As in, this song really could be better, it’s not enjoyable at all. I’m nicer to late 2000s and early 2010s crunk-influenced pop but the mix emphasises this thin high-frequency DJ Mustard synth before emphasising an even more annoying sound, a clambering drum loop that completely demolishes the mix outside of Tate McRae herself, who was clearly listening to Ciara because she’s whispering incoherently about relationships, except without her Petey Pablo. It’d be The Kid LAROI, by the way, which should show how far we’ve fallen as a society. This half-rap chorus is honestly kind of pathetic in its attempt to sound carelessly “cool”, mostly because of the layers of background vocal riffing that refute that, and I genuinely could not make out half of the second verse so I’m not sure if I should even be trying to dig into the kiss-off where McRae - lying to herself, presumably - allows her partner’s new girlfriend to just take him because she’s TOTALLY over it. It’s not a bad idea for a song, I could see these lyrics working, maybe in a peppier context, but this production’s too dire outside of a genuinely nice atmosphere in the echo-drenched, sprawling outro, which really just sums up and repeats the song’s main conceit in less time than the rest of this mediocrity. Once again with McRae, I think I’ll pass. Also, Ryan Tedder is a co-writer, do not think you are safe on this one, Mr. OneRepublic, I’m actually pinning most of the blame on you just because I know your track record.

#12 - “Dancing in the Flames” - The Weeknd

Produced by The Weeknd, Max Martin, Oscar Holter

The Weeknd is back… but he’s also seemingly going away for a long time. Abel Tesfaye is finishing his trilogy that started with 2020’s After Hours, continued with 2022’s Dawn FM and now concludes with 2024’s Hurry Up Tomorrow out later this year. At a concert in Brazil, the singer teased a multiple of songs, including a Playboi Carti collaboration that has gone pretty viral but naturally in the era of TikTok slow-burn marketing, and the fact that Carti doing a normal, respectful and successful rollout for an important release, like The Weeknd has a track record of doing, is unheard of, that one will hate until the album, and for now, we get the Max Martin lead single because… who else? The two never miss together in making something that will most likely be a hit but I understand how one could be tired of the 80s synthpop pastiche by now and whilst this is anecdotal, I do feel like there was significantly less hype, at least from what I’ve seen, about not necessarily the album, which is still exciting for everyone, but this song in particular, which is yet another one of those pastiches. It’s got the same gated drum effect though they feel a bit thin outside of the fills, it’s got the same cute synths but with a much wonkier lead this time around, and whilst Abel will always sound great on record, he also phones that chorus in a tad, and it sounds especially so in the droll verses, with his now signature “Hey!” added in seemingly as a reminder that yup, this is the “Blinding Lights” guy. I don’t know about this one, it just seems like a mediocre rendition of something he’s done before that also misunderstands part of his appeal, with poetic but unsubstantial lovelorn lyrics that hint towards being more about his relationship with the music-listening audience given the reference to his “final odyssey”. It does intrigue me to where that outro is leading on the album, with the pattering out of the song into a darker atmosphere that will give this overly light and fluffy song some more balance, but other than that, I don’t care about this one way or the other.

Conclusion

That seems to kind of just be the theme of the episode: a lot of generally okay songs but mostly filling in for what I’ve already heard before. We really have three unique songs then a set of reruns, like the network ran out of new shows midway through the primetime block. Embarrassingly enough, Odetari runs away with the only song I even like here, “KEEP UP”, as the Best of the Week, whilst Tate McRae takes Worst of the Week for “It’s ok I’m ok” - though it may not sound like it in my review, “Disco” by Surf Curse was awfully close as the Dishonourable Mention, what a lazy and off-putting song. As for what's on the horizon, I could hazard a guess that Future and maybe Katy Perry land a song each, but it's a long shot regarding everything else. For now, thank you for reading, rest in peace to Tito Jackson, and I'll see you next week!

[skysometric]

why, thank you for asking! i've been thinking it through for the last few days, i just wanted to make sure my answer was all written and ready to go first. all... checks notes... 4,000 words of it.

ICYMI, last week i sent asks to a bunch of my friends with a simple question: "what's your favorite game you played this year?" as i hoped, y'all gave a bunch of EXCELLENT answers, all of which i reblogged on my side blog @autumatically! (if you didn't get an ask like this and you want to join in, ping me – i sent too many asks to keep track of and i probably just forgot to send one your way!)

of course i wanted to answer this myself, but i wanted to write about more than just one game! and when i sat down to write, i just kept going, and going, and going...

so we're splitting this up! every day this week, i'll be counting down my top 5 games that i played in 2023. not all of these are games that i've streamed, and only one of them has shown up on anyone else's lists so far, so i'm really excited to reminisce and share my experiences this year 💖

maybe you'll even find a new game to try out? i'm certainly really excited to dig through y'alls lists and try some of the ones i missed out on this year!

to kick things off, let's start with:

Honorable Mentions

two games came out this year that i would probably put in my top 5, no competition. so why didn't i? because i didn't actually play them!

see, as much as i love to play video games, oftentimes i also like to watch them just as much. this has always been great for games that i never intended to play in the first place, like the Final Fantasies and Fortnites of our day… but lately it's also let me take turns with my partner on who plays which new releases.

in fact, for both of the games i'm about to list, i watched my partner play them in full and i've watched no less than two separate people stream them as well. which means, with all that oversaturation, it's probably gonna be a while before i play them myself…

either way! here's my top two games that i didn't play in 2023.

Pizza Tower

this one likely needs no introduction! Wario Land 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, and the way Pizza Tower extends those basic concepts is a masterclass of game design. the moveset is perfectly geared toward accessible speed tech, the level layouts are top notch, the different forms are unique and funny, the art style is GORGEOUS, the combo system adds incredible replay value and pushes the player to their limits…

honestly the only thing stopping me from playing this right now is that the levels are too fresh in my mind, and i'd like a little time to let those memories fade before i dive back in and experience everything in a wave of nostalgia. seeing so much of the game already was totally worth it, though – i had the distinct pleasure of watching my partner learn how to P Rank most of the levels, and the simple joy of watching her build up her skills is one of my standout memories of 2023. proud of you, love!

god, Pizza Tower is a perfect slice of video game. i can't WAIT to play it myself!

Super Mario RPG

as a young kid, i always wanted a physical copy of this game. i could never justify it, though, because i already owned it on Wii Virtual Console, and it was one of the more expensive SNES games i had my eye on… a whole $40 in 2007 money! fast forward to the modern day, and not only do i no longer have easy access to that old Wii copy, but a physical cart now goes for like $90???

blessedly, along comes the Switch remake. i still can't believe this exists – it's a perfect remake in every way, shape, and form! the sprite-based animations are lovingly recreated, the battle system is rebalanced in fun ways, and the music is PERFECTLY re-arranged. even the dialog, which i expected to be completely retranslated… it's smoothed over, but mostly unchanged! the original game's unabashed weirdness and charm is fully intact, and i did NOT expect that out of modern Nintendo.

this is one that i didn't mind watching others play; Super Mario RPG is all about the vibe, and this remake captures that vibe perfectly. i'm excited to play it myself once it's had time to settle! but, for now, i'm perfectly content just vibing with others~

[wren-of-the-woods]

Thank you for tagging me @flowercrown-bard! This was very fun.

Rules: post the top 5 works you’re most proud of that you released in 2022 (not necessarily your most popular), your top 4 current WIPs that you’re excited to release in the new year, your top 3 biggest improvements in your writing over the past year, your top 2 resolutions (ways you wish to improve your writing/blog) for the new year, and your number 1 favorite line you’ve written this year!

Top 5 works:

Spectre's Soul (A modern Jaskier meets a cursed ghost Geralt. this became much longer than anticipated and was very difficult to get finished and edited on time, but I did it! It was the first fic longer than 8k that I'd finished in nearly two years and I'm extremely proud of it.)

Sometimes it Takes a Prison Cell (Jaskier and Yennefer meet when they're imprisoned in a dungeon together. This one also became longer than expected, I had a wonderful time writing it, and I really like how it turned out!)

Happy Birthday, Here's a Bard (Geralt finds his daughter's favorite musician, Jaskier, on the side of the road. I had a lot of mixed feelings about this one while editing it, which made it even more satisfying when I got it out in the world and so many people liked it!)

Home (Geralt and Yennefer comfort Jaskier after season two. Retrospectively, I think this one influenced my writing style a fair bit and I'm fond of it!)

Grow Me A Garden (Forget Me Not) (My first and probably only MCD fic in this fandom. I'm fond of the writing style and it was my first Witcher fic to feature lyrics I wrote!)

Honerable mentions go to Rest My Head At Night Content and Publicity Pandemonium!

Top 4 current wips:

Sometimes it Takes a Prison Cell again (it's mostly done, but there is still some editing to be done and maybe a scene to write in the later chapters)

It doesn't have a title yet, but I have an AU brewing where Jaskier is cursed to be a sandpiper and Geralt has to care for him while they figure out how to break it. I haven't stopped thinking about it since I got the prompt, so it'll probably be my next project after the prison AU!

Sandpiper's Song -- a fic about Jaskier as the Sandpiper that's been sitting in my drafts for ages, but that I'm a bit more motivated to work on after Blood Origin

An assortment of other plot bunnies that have been floating around my head but not yet written down (a movie star AU, a winged!Jaskier AU, and a silly modern meet-cute, to name a few)

Top 3 biggest improvements:

Re-learning how to write longer fics

Gaining general confidence (and practice -- I managed to achieve my New Years' resolution of posting something every month!)

Experimenting with poetry/lyrics

Top 2 resolutions:

Write a proper novel (something over 40-50k), maybe?

See how many of my WIPs and ideas I can finish before season three comes out

Top 1 favourite line:

I honestly have no idea, but I am very fond of this stanza from a song Jaskier sings in Spectre's Soul!

You’ve been alone so long A ship that’s lost at sea I want to be your landfall I want to set you free

I'm not sure who's already been tagged, but I'll try @dreamofbecoming @wanderlust-t @karolincki @dama-art @elder-flower @linzod @penandinkprincess @theheirofashandfire @samstree @ghostinthelibrarywrites @rebrandedbard and anyone else who's interested!

[fragileswift1313]

Speak Now (Taylor's Version)!

Hey!

So some of you will know this, others may not, but Taylor Swift recently re-recorded her 2010 album titled Speak Now, and it was released roughly 40 hours ago at the time of posting. When ‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ was announced back in the first week of May this year, I wrote a thing about how I feel about the original album. If you haven’t read that, you may want to to get caught up on how and why I feel things so deeply for this record in particular.

Since way back in February 2021, when Taylor first announced that she was re-recording a bunch of her old albums, starting with Fearless, I have been waiting for this moment. I won’t get into the whole sordid story about why she’s doing it, or how much I wish Scoote* B*aun would get hit by a car, but it’s a whole thing. What I will say is that in the long run, I am honestly happy that this happened because the re-recordings are flawless. Seriously, I’m just wonderstruck (lmao 😉). I haven’t listened to this record as much as I wanted to before writing this - I’ve listened a few times, but mostly I’ve just been thinking about it. I was b i g excited for this to come out, but I can’t lie, there was some anxiety too - this record is so important to me so it had to be flawless; and I think Taylor nailed it. Anyway, I have waited for this for a long time, and now that it’s finally here I have Some Thoughts.

I went back and forth in my head about how to do this, and I decided the best way would be to nail down exactly which songs I was most nervous or excited about, and then do a broader breakdown of the rest of the album, so here we go: starting with…

Mine

‘She is the best thing that’s ever been mine.’

Taylor always opens her records with one of the strongest tracks on said record, and this one is no different. I adore the original, and the re-recording is incredibly faithful to it. The only differences I noticed in this track versus the original were a few unsubtle moments where the growth and refinement of Taylor’s vocal range in the past thirteen years really shine through. It’s the same song, but new again.

Sparks Fly

‘The way you move is like a full-on rain storm, and I’m a house of cards,’

This song has always been one of my all-time favourites from any artist ever, and this new version is just as intense and moving as the original was back when I first heard it somewhere around 2012. This re-recording gives me chills. I am literally trying not to cry right now as I sit here writing this and relistening to it. Every line in this song is flawless. And oh my god, the strings. During the track, I find it difficult with my audio processing problems to tell if it’s a guitar, a violin, another string instrument, or all of the above, but whatever it is it makes this song so much more powerful.

Speak Now

“She floats down the aisle like a pageant queen,”

‘Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)’ is the first track here where Taylor’s strengthened and refined voice is apparent in almost every lyric. While it’s maybe not one of the biggest or strongest stand-out tracks on the record, but it has a very special place in my heart from when the original record made its indelible mark on me. Not a lot is different here, besides the sound of Taylor’s voice, and I think that’s okay.

Mean

“You, with your switching sides and your wildfire lies and your humiliation.”

Mean is so much fun, it always has been. The up-tempo of it contrasted against the subject matter has always worked really well for me. The opening is so peppy while she talks about how hard critics had been treating her, and how badly she used to take it when it happened. But I love how the song goes from ‘upset’ to ‘f**k you’ by the end. This re-recording feels really good, too, because the line “some day I’ll be big enough so you can’t hit me,” feels like both a prophecy from 2010, and a vindication in 2023 that she was right all along.

Better Than Revenge

“He was a moth to the flame, she was holding the matches.”

This is the one I was most anxious about going into this new version. For one, I really love the original song, despite its one glaringly large problem, but I was also nervous about whether or not she would change the lyric, and if so, to what? The first time I heard the new lyric, I was reading the prologue in the booklet that came with the CD hard copy of the album, and even though I wasn’t super paying attention I noticed it. I skipped back a few seconds to hear it again, and looked up the lyrics in the booklet so I could sing along and get it into my brain. I really like the new lyric a lot, and I expect I am going to think about it a lot in the future, too.

Haunted

“Something keeps me holding onto nothing.”

Haunted has always been a big favourite of mine to just scream-sing along to when I need to release some sadness energy, even the acoustic version is great. This version is… something else. It’s always been something of a rock song, but I feel like Taylor really leaned into that here, and the result is flawless. I sent Castles Crumbling to my sister (not a swiftie) during my first listen to the record, and she liked it so much that she listened to the rest of the album - during her listen, she sent me back this text:

This new version is incredible, and I’m so happy to have it in my life. And I’m stoked that ‘Haunted (Taylor’s Version)’ may have made a Swiftie out of my sister. 😁

Ours

“The stakes are high, the water's rough, but this love is ours,”

I love the way Taylor kept the little southern drawl from the original track here. This is the one track on this record that really makes my heart flutter. There’s very little in this track that feels different from the original, but I think that was a really inspired choice because it was honestly practically flawless the first time around. This song also has a really special place in my heart because the original video was the source of one of my favourite reaction gifs to use on social media or in texts (see below!).

Wrapping up… 🎁

The rest of the re-recorded tracks here are gorgeous, and you really can hear the different inflections and tones in Taylor’s voice as she sings these classics from her early career in the studio again. Altogether, I love this release of Speak Now and I really feel like if someone were to ask me which version they should listen to, my answer would be overwhelmingly this one; it truly is the definitive version of the record. It was honestly tough to nail this list down to just seven favourites out of the 22 tracks, even with excluding the From The Vault tracks which I will get to in a second. I’m so happy to have this space to gush about this record, and I really hope you enjoyed reading about my feelings!

From The Vault 🔓

As I said above, I excluded the From The Vault tracks from my list because I simply don’t have a ton to say about them yet. I have only listened to them a handful of times, so expect a follow-up post in a few weeks, once I’ve had more time to sit with them and form Some Opinions. What I will say right now, though, is that the immediate stand-outs for me were Electric Touch, I Can See You, and Castles Crumbling. I’m excited to listen to them a bunch more times. I also wanted to mention the Surprise Announcement video at the end of the album on Apple Music, too. Many hardcore swifties will probably have seen a version of it before elsewhere, but I had not - I have been avoiding any streams from The Eras Tour in hopes that I’ll someday get to see a complete version on Netflix or something - and y’all, this video almost broke me. I so wish I could have been there in person to feel the energy of the crowd!

The End 🔚

Well that’s it from me for this week, friends. Thanks so much for hanging out and indulging me while I am once again back on my Taylor Swift bullshit. If you want to see more writing from me, as I mentioned above you can go back and read about why Speak Now is so special to me, check out other things I've written on Substack, and as always you can check out my Letterboxd movie reviews. I recently reviewed Single White Female (1992) and Poseidon (2006)! Also! Please remember that if you have comments, questions, suggestions, or just want to say hi, please hit me up in the comments or at any of the socials in the links below.

Stay safe out there y’all and have a great week. You’re the best thing that’s ever been mine! Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚

Rebecca

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[tyforthevnm]

L.S. Dunes: “We didn’t realise how much we needed this band until we started writing for it”

After two decades of interlinking friendship, L.S. Dunes saw five of emo and post-hardcore’s most respected figureheads finally get together. Rather than trading on old glories, however, debut LP Past Lives is about parrying their shared experience – from firebrand beginnings to fatherhood – into some of the coolest ‘dad rock’ the world has ever seen…

November 9, 2022 Words: Sam Law Photography: Nick Karp

Of the thousands of fans queued nearly a mile around Chicago’s Douglas Park on September 16, 2022, none were sure quite what to expect. From the Misfits to Jawbreaker, the Windy City’s annual Riot Fest has become world-renowned for facilitating the reunions of some of alternative music’s biggest names. This year, though, the gathered masses were jostling to see a band they’d only just heard of play their first-ever gig. Thrillingly, L.S. Dunes’ live debut did not disappoint.

“I’d already had the show in my head 100 times,” grins vocalist Anthony Green, with a relish that suggests he’s re-run it another 100 since. “Sure, we were a little nervous, but it was the same nervousness you feel before you kiss somebody for the first time. It was that excited anticipation. There was tension in the air, but it was a beautiful tension. The levee was about to break!”

Despite only one of the six songs performed on a dusty Rise Stage that blistering Friday afternoon having previously been released, there was an electricity in the air. Part of that was down to Anthony’s impossibly charismatic performance: exorcising demons, crowdsurfing headlong, daring us to keep up. Part of it was down to his bandmates – drummer Tucker Rule, bassist Tim Payne, guitarists Frank Iero and Travis Stever – keeping pedal firmly to the metal. Mostly, though, it was about five masters of their craft unlocking something untapped in each other.

“It was my favourite first show with any band that I’ve ever been in,” smiles Frank. “To be 40 and still be having these firsts is fantastic. We’d maybe played together only five or six times before that, and it’s not easy to have a first show outdoors at a festival, but I was like, ‘Hey, I trust these guys. I trust in the songs. It’s gonna be an experience!’ And it was fantastic. It went off like a riot.”

Catching up with three of L.S. Dunes six weeks down the line and just a couple before the arrival of feverishly anticipated debut LP Past Lives, the enthusiasm is undiminished. Frank fizzles during a flying visit home to New Jersey between My Chemical Romance’s two mega-headlines at Las Vegas emo gathering When We Were Young. Anthony and Tucker bounce off each other on break from Thursday’s autumn tour at Angels & Airwaves guitarist David Kennedy’s coffee shop in San Diego, sporadically interrupted by planes roaring into the nearby airport. “That was a big daddy…” the drummer delivers a running commentary. “That one had a little front propeller!”

On paper, no-one in L.S. Dunes needs this band. As well as his legacy with Pennsylvanian rockers Circa Survive, Anthony just started psychedelic side-project Fuckin Whatever with members of Grouplove and Taking Back Sunday, and is gathering momentum as a solo artist. Even aside from renewed commitments with MCR, Frank has a slew of ‘solo’ projects, with latest EP Heaven Is A Place, This Is A Place dropping just last year. Travis remains a mainstay of Coheed And Cambria. Tim and Tucker have plenty on their plates with Thursday, with the latter also featuring on a slew of other releases including Frank’s EP. Collectively, they have over 100 years tenure in other outfits.

So why why start another?

According to its members, L.S. Dunes’ “addictive” qualities are threefold: connection, creation, camaraderie. As we pick at that mysterious band name, there’s a reluctance amongst the group to give too much away – a desire to keep some secrets for themselves – but Anthony reveals how the imagery of shifting sands resonated, and notes the serendipity of how their chosen title became an “accidental monogram” for LSD: a drug taken for those trying to achieve more dazzling inspiration and deeper connectedness, “with people, with nature”.

They liked the rhythm of the name, too, which reminded them of the literary initials used by esteemed authors. Like J.D. Salinger or W.B. Yeats? “Like R.L. Stine,” the frontman grins, with just a touch of mischief. Perhaps most telling is Frank’s observation that they often joked about how the L.S. stands for “low stress”.

“At the heart of it is the love of creating”

Hear Frank on how the band formed through a shared creative connection

Where most professional bands resemble multilateral marriage, built on a shared spark but inevitably burdened by expectation, responsibility and the need for compromise that comes with such personal and financial union, L.S. Dunes is an attempt to set those things aside in the name of breaking new ground. The project started with the working title ‘Dad Bods’ as an acknowledgement not just of the members’ cumulative wisdom and encroaching middle-age, but also that their growing real families come first. Their group chat was labelled ‘Father Dads’.

“No-one’s a ‘slacker’ or anything,” Frank elaborates. “Those conversations always happen in other bands. There’s none of that shit when it’s like, ‘Hey, guys, I gotta go take my kid to soccer.’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, I do too!’” With all their outside commitments laid on the table, it boils down to the well-informed faith that when one player needs to go and handle something else, there’s enough enjoyment and investment in the music that they will get back to it. And they always do.

“Not to say our other bands aren’t fun,” Anthony nods, “but there’s a sense that we can do things with this project – and get things from it, personally – that we can’t with our others.”

“We didn’t realise how much we needed this band until we started writing for it,” Tucker expands, offering a vivid metaphor. “When someone first drives through Denver, they stare out of their window, like, ‘Oh my God, look at those mountains!’ But someone who’s lived there a while can begin to take it for granted. That’s what music was to us. We are all in love with it – writing it, playing it, performing it – but this project made us fall back in love with it. Sometimes, you need that reminder. Sometimes, you need to fall back in love with things.”

When he first began work on L.S. Dunes’ vocals, Anthony had no idea who else was in the band.

“We didn’t know if or when touring was going to come back,” he shrugs, reliving early 2021’s darkest days of lockdown. “And, if it did, we didn’t know how it was going to feel, or what it was going to look like. I was just stuck at home losing my mind, trying to get people in my life to send me music, trying to have new stuff to work on all the time. Then when this came up, it was exactly what I needed. Tucker sent me the music across and I thought it was just him and some of his dad-friends from the neighbourhood he lives in. I was like, ‘Damn! Tucker’s friends are really good!’”

In reality, the shared history between the five members of what would become L.S. Dunes is almost too stubbornly complex to untangle. Frank, for instance, remembers looking up to Thursday as a kid starting out with Pencey Prep when they were his labelmates on Eyeball Records, and how MCR were asked to play their first “really big” show when Coheed had to pull out of a support slot for Jimmy Eat World at the Allentown Fairgrounds in August 2002. Anthony, meanwhile, cherishes memories of driving out to New Brunswick, Jersey City and Philadelphia as a fan to catch early Thursday house shows, before supporting My Chem extensively in Circa Survive throughout the mid-2000s. Talk of deeper collaboration had kicked around for the best part of those two decades. All it needed to come to fruition was the world grinding to a halt.

“It was one of those things you talk about,” Frank reflects. “But it doesn’t happen because you’re on tour, doing other things. We all have like 85 bands, and sometimes you just wanna hang out and not play. But the pandemic was the time when everyone stopped. Everyone was at home. Nobody knew what the fuck to do or how long we were going to be here. So we became each other’s lifeline and were like, ‘Hey, let’s start that band we’ve been talking about for 20 years.’”

“New music became that life-preserver,” agrees Anthony. “It put a light at the end of the tunnel.”

The pieces began to come together at some point in the autumn of 2020. Broadly, writing was as simple as a musical version of Pass The Story, with one person laying down the beginning of a song, then passing the instrumental along to be built upon. “It was very much an organic thing,” explains Frank, “like when you start a band in high school and call your friends. ‘Oh, I know this guy who plays this.’ Then you just get together in a room – well, a virtual room – and start swappin’ spit!”

Of the almost-complete compositions passed over to Anthony, his soon-to-be-bandmates presumed he would initially have a crack at the couple of sparser pieces, seeking space in which he could detonate his explosive vocals. Instead, he gravitated towards the busy three-and-a-half-minutes that would become Antibodies – the first track on which they had also completed work. That piece of symbolic serendipity, coupled with the sheer effort the vocalist put in, without knowledge of who else was involved, galvanised resolve.

“The ‘blind date’ kinda thing made it even cooler,” grins Frank. “As soon as we got the tracks back from Anthony, I knew that this was a band rather than just a fun project for during the pandemic.”

The next few months went by in a blur. Although there weren’t originally plans for an album, the bangers continued to mount up. The full quintet were forced to flesh-out their self-recording expertise, with Tim stepping up as a de facto in-house engineer. They convened in person for the first time at Frank’s place in mid-2021, confirming their chemistry beyond the digital realm. Time was booked with red hot hardcore heavyweight Will Yip to record at the end of that year. Even as they went into a Jersey City studio to complete preproduction, the songs were still pouring from them, with eventual debut single Permanent Rebellion being written in the last half-hour of that trip.

At a time when scheduling shitshows had become the norm, L.S. Dunes had found calm by going with the chaotic flow. A fall just before the finish line came perilously close to derailing things, though, when on August 1, with studio time just over a month away, Frank suffered a six-stringer’s nightmare after slipping from a ladder, breaking his right wrist and severely spraining his left.

“To be totally frank...” the guitarist pauses with a wry smirk, before correcting himself to match the weight of his story. “To be serious, I didn’t know if I’d be able to play again. Everything exploded in that fuckin’ wrist. It was a real serious break. It was nerve-wracking. But it was something that I wouldn’t let myself say out loud because it was also super-scary. Not to get too serious, but I said to the doctor, ‘If you think that I’m not going to be able to play again, just leave me on the table, because there’s no point in waking me up. I can’t not play. I have to. And if you’re not the guy who can fix this, we need to find someone who can.’ I was meant to record in September, but my session moved to December, three weeks after my last surgery, with the stitches still in my arm. It was like my Through The Wire. Anthony had to wait for me. That’s why this record took so long!”

“I didn’t know if I’d be able to play again”

Frank talks about the potentially life-changing impact of breaking his wrist

From its lunging intro to the dreamy curtain drop, the record was 100 per cent worth the wait. More than just a set of songs, though, Past Lives is a glimpse into how L.S. Dunes see themselves.

‘I’m not all my mistakes, no matter what they say about it…’ howls Anthony on the outstanding title-track, admitting today that although “we came to this project to do something new, in the process of doing that, we were sort of shaking off the dust, baggage and resentments from some of our other projects.

”L.S. Dunes is no ‘supergroup’. There is no album-padding filler here. The striking simplicity of Gordon Douglas Ball’s album art – five equal elements in perfect harmony – is very much on purpose. But it is the result of all those miles on the road leading to this point.

“I think it’s a moment in time,” reckons Frank. “It’s about the people involved in that room at that moment. And it’s a fine line. We’ve all been in touring bands, running the gamut of the successes and failures. We’ve lost friends. We’ve gone through it. All that shit that we’ve done has gotten us to this point. I’m proud of it. I wouldn’t change anything. But it also doesn’t mean that what comes next has anything to do with those experiences. Those were our past lives. This is the new thing.”

Indeed, hammering through the album’s 11 tracks, there are flickers of familiarity, but they’re in service of breaking new ground. The ‘lonely shadows’ and ‘lost souls’ of Grey Veins are wrapped around a masterful emo composition and massive chorus, destined to tug at heartstrings for years to come. Blender packs a little of the brooding post-hardcore of Thursday, but feels more texturally mature, with guitars set to stun. Grifter starts with the angularity of Circa Survive, but builds into a shadowy epic capable of holding up against the most grandiose compositions of Coheed or MCR have to offer. Then superb closer Sleep Cult does something totally unexpected: delivering Anthony’s treatise on “self-hatred and dealing with self-obsession” via 225 seconds of music that simultaneously pays homage to and woozily updates 1950s doo-wop.

There’s a willingness to speak harsh truths, too, most notably in garotte-sharp political observations of Bombsquad. “This band became a platform for me to really speak on a lot of those things,” the singer explains. “It’s about everything that was going on in our lives, from dealing with the depression and anxiety of the pandemic, to having to deal with a corrupt political system – the most corrupt empire that the world has ever seen – taking over, isolating and dividing us all.”

Perhaps most illustrative of the lot is searing album opener 2022. Back at Riot Fest, it was a number Anthony described as, “the most fucked-up song I ever wrote… about learning to get through shit, so that you don’t want to kill yourself every day.” Having started life as an acoustic confessional intended for a solo record (‘If I can't make it ’til 2022 / Least we'll see how much I can take’), the song was a designed to process the personal suffering and isolation he’d been dealing with over the last few years, but it took the input of his bandmates to properly realise its potential.

“On the original version, it felt like I was stuck in the hole of it,” Anthony explains. “Rather than make me feel better about the things I was writing, it made me relive a lot of stuff. So I sent it to Tucker and was like, ‘Yo, this is too sad, make it heavy!’ He alchemised what I’d written into something that felt much more triumphant: less like I’m digging myself into a hole and more like I’m digging myself out. Listening to it as the year is almost over, the emotion’s still there, but we did it: we made it through.”

“This band was built around making songs that feel good to play in every atmosphere”

Hear Anthony on the importance of taking L.S. Dunes on the road

So where do L.S. Dunes go from here? Throughout our chat, it’s reiterated that this shouldn’t be a one-off. The logistical effort to plan not just East and West Coast tours of the United States, but also a four-date UK run beginning at the Glasgow Garage on January 27, 2023 is evidence of their will to see this through. Festival dates for the following summer have begun to leak through. Anthony and Tucker make the tantalising observation that, if this record was what they were able to write with Zoom links and Dropboxes, who knows what they’ll deliver in the flesh.

Still, with the world accelerating into the post-COVID era, and other projects getting back up to speed (MCR, Coheed, Thursday and Anthony all have live dates booked within days of our chat) are there concerns about continuing to fit L.S. Dunes in alongside so many competing interests?

“Always,” shrugs Frank, with an easy grin. “But that’s with anything. Everyone has commitments, but everyone has commitments to everything: we all have families, other bands, we’re just doing our best to have the calendar to do it all in. And, so far, there hasn’t been a lot of push-back. I don’t mind the work at all – I live for it. But I don’t like planning shit. I’ll say yes to everything, then leave someone else to arrange it. But we all have great teams behind us – many of whom [overlap]. Everyone knows that we want to do this, and we’re doing it as a real band.”

“I would love for L.S. Dunes to become my main band,” Anthony stresses his enthusiasm. With Circa Survive recently confirming their ‘indefinite hiatus’, it feels like that might be a real possibility, though the timing of one band stopping as another starts, he insists, is purely coincidental. “It’s rare to find people that you connect with so well. Everything they send makes me want to keep writing. That’s a special thing. When you find it, you want to keep a hold of it and nurture it. We’re in a dance, right now, where the music has taken the lead. We’re just seeing where it goes.”

Tucker cracks another gleeful grin, even more buzzed as we end our chat than when we started.

“The stupidest thing to do when the music industry seemed to be dying during a global pandemic was to start another project. It’s all against the grain. We’re taking a risk, but we’re here for it. Everyone is always in search of that sick leather jacket that fits them just right. For us, this is it.”

Past Lives is released on November 11 via Fantasy Records

[dontlookdown]

Nick’s Favourite Music of 2022

Those who have followed my work for a while know that I usually start the new year with a collection of reviews looking at my favourite songs of the year. This year, I’m only doing the one post. If my experience with burning out halfway through last years’ list taught me anything, it’s that I can’t commit to the traditional series of twenty-plus blog posts when I know full well that I don’t have the time or the energy to see it through. Maybe things will be different next year. For this year, I’m happy to compromise.

Below, you’ll find the list of my 20 favourite songs of 2022 (YouTube links in the headings, Spotify embed at the bottom), along with a few words about why I love each particular one. Let’s go!

Röyksopp – “Speed King”

I started putting this playlist together with the first and last tracks already in mind, due to their lengthy runtimes. Normally, I’d kick things off with a true opener, something loud and driving. Despite its name, “Speed King” is not that. It’s a slow, electronic burn that builds into something truly formidable. My immediate reaction upon first hearing it was “This is the Daft Punk track I’ve been waiting for since 2005,” but that backhanded compliment ignores how the way the bassline steadily bubbles away in the background is pure Röyksopp, a hallmark that you’ll find throughout their work. The duo released three albums over 2022 and, while there’s great songs on all three (especially the tracks featuring Alison Goldfrapp and Susanne Sundfør), they saved the best for last.

††† (Crosses) - “Procession”

We’re going to stay in a low-key mood for a bit with the next two songs. Considering how I fell in love with Deftones in 2020, it seemed right that I should check out Chino Moreno’s side project when they re-emerged with their first new material in nine years. The PERMANENT.RADIANT EP turned out to be the perfect taster for this group’s softer, more atmospheric sound. I particularly loved “Procession”, which is the perfect showcase for Chino’s distinct voice and a show-stopping bassline that kicks in at 2:40.

The 1975 – “About You”

I find it difficult to pin down my feelings about the 1975. They’re a band I always want to keep at arm’s length, and yet they’ve ended up my year-end lists three times now. That’s an achievement in itself, but doing it with three songs that sound nothing like each other is something else. “About You” is the most U2-ass sounding song of the year. And I like U2 a lot.

Asunojokei – “Diva Under the Blue Sky”

Here we fucking go. Asunojokei are a Japanese band that have picked up the “black metal but happy” torch from Deafheaven and ran a mile with it with their album Island. I keep getting Undertale vibes from “Diva Under the Blue Sky”. Something about the main melody feels very reminiscent of the excellent work Toby Fox did on that game's soundtrack.

The Beths – “Silence Is Golden”

A bit of blistering Kiwi indie rock to get the pulse up.

Phoenix – “After Midnight”

I was not expecting this. A beautiful reminder of what Phoenix are capable of, absolute masters of a slick, twisty pop-rock style that’s very much their own.

Fred again.. – “Jungle”

A true club banger. Turns out you can do an awful lot with a chopped vocal sample, a savage beat and a great sense of dynamics and timing.

Ibibio Sound Machine – “Protection From Evil”

I’ve got a lot of love for tracks that find ways to keep building and building upon themselves. Having a truly magnetic presence like Eno Williams front-and-centre on the microphone would’ve been enough, but having her vocals and the rhythm behind her slowly rising in intensity before colliding together with horns for the climax is downright magical.

Beyoncé – “Pure/Honey”

Never bet against Bey. There’s a reason RENAISSANCE was the near-unanimous critic’s pick for album of the year, that’s because it’s just so damn fun to listen to in full. “PURE/HONEY” splits the difference between the album’s two moods: hard-edged house to start, with shiny disco as a chaser. The way the songs shifts between those two gears makes it the perfect pick for this playlist.

The Weeknd – “Take My Breath”

I remember first hearing “Take Me Breath” and thinking “this needs something extra”. That something extra turned out to be the extended version on the Dawn FM album. Almost twice as long as the single version, it allows the backing beat room to stretch out, with the chugging muted guitar and arpeggiated vocoder properly setting the scene for song to make more of an impression. It doesn’t just benefit the song, but the album as a whole. The three-song-run of “How Do I Make You Love Me?”, “Take My Breath” and “Sacrifice” is a thrilling moment from an artist with a career full of them.

Spoon – “Wild”

“Wild” is my favourite song of the year. I knew that the second I laid ears on it. Spoon have been one of my favourite bands for a long time, and the fact that they can still come up with songs this good after 25 years is awe-inspiring. “Wild” is such a perfect Spoon-esque song, it’s honestly incredible that they hadn’t written it already.

Alvvays – “Belinda Says”

A blast of aural sunshine, with a key-change befitting of its namesake.

Camp Cope – “Running with the Hurricane”

This was a late discovery for me in December. While making my way through all of the hyped releases I’d missed, it was refreshing to come across music that was so direct and earnest. A true breath of fresh air, which I assume a hurricane would also have plenty of.

Shamir – “Reproductive”

By contrast, this was an early favourite that I rediscovered while combing through my existing collection. It always takes me a few plays to properly acknowledge the lyrics of songs. Once I noticed the streak of self-loathing running through this one, it just made the deep sadness of the music hit harder.

The Smile – “Free In the Knowledge”

Choosing my album of the year was tricky. This and the next four acts on the list were all contenders for the crown, though none jumped out as instant picks like previous winners have. In the end, I gave it to A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile (the new band featuring Thom and Jonny from Radiohead, and Tom Skinner from Sons of Kemet), simply because I had a nice little moment to myself while listening to it for the first time. Relaxing alone in the park, in the warm sunshine, feeling at peace with everything. By the time I’d gotten to “Free In the Knowledge”, I felt a calmness I hadn’t felt in months. Other albums just can’t compete with those personal moments.

Big Thief – “Change”

One last quiet moment before things pick up again. “Change” is a cool breeze of existentialism on a warm day, the kind of vibe Big Thief have been very good at for some time now.

Black Country, New Road – “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade”

I’d said in the introductory post for my 2021 blogs that, after being slightly disappointed by their debut, I was looking forward to Black Country, New Road delivering on their next album. And boy, did they. Ants From Up There is a record that was fascinating on first listen, and keeps revealing hidden layers on repeat plays, especially when digging into the lyrics. “The Place Where He Inserted the Blade” (it’s about cooking, not killing) is a rich portrait of domestic malaise, the kind Jarvis Cocker used to dabble in. It’s sad that vocalist Isaac Wood has decided to move on, but I’m glad he’s putting his mental health first. That can’t have been an easy decision. And, once again, I’m very interested to see where the band goes from here.

Black Midi – “Sugar/Tzu”

I’d lumped Black Midi together with BC,NR and Squid (or Black Midi, New Squidi, as I liked to call the grouping) in that 2021 post, but they really couldn’t sound more different from each other. While BC,NR spent the year chasing a deliberately pastoral sound with strings and all, Black Midi made a record that sounded like an arson attack at a Cole Porter recital. Hellfire is Black Midi’s most accessible record yet (not a high bar, admittedly), and it’s helped grow my appreciation of their previous work too. If you’re in the mood for hearing three musicians (plus a brass section) playing the ever-loving shit out of their instruments, “Sugar/Tzu” is the song for you. I’m a very big fan of the little guitar break at 3:20.

SpiritWorld – “Relic of Damnation”

My ferocious appetite for metal and hardcore did not diminish in 2022, and SpiritWorld’s DEATHWESTERN was the best the genre had to offer this year. It’s loud as hell, yes, but there’s a buoyancy to this band’s music that harkens back to the thrash metal of the late ‘80s. A song like “Relic of Damnation” isn’t just interested in pummelling your ears, it also wants to propel you forward, smashing through whatever boring chore you have to finish. This band is almost single-handedly responsible for me processing as many invoices as I did this winter. I’d listen to Randy Moore make that demonic horse neighing sound with his guitar all fucking day.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – “The Dripping Tap”

This isn’t the longest song I’ve featured on these year-end lists, and it sure-as-shit won’t feel like it either. Of the five (yes, five) albums worth of music Oceanic overachievers King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released this year, “The Dripping Tap” is the crown jewel. While I’ve found some of the band’s other work to be somewhat meandering, this song is 18 minutes of pure, focused, fast-paced psychedelic rock. It’ll take you on a wild ride without even leaving your living room, and the time flies by whenever I put it on. The way the opening verse returns with a vengeance (and the full band behind it) for the final minute feels like a real gift, and the perfect way close out both this playlist and 2022 in general.

Thanks for reading! I enjoyed writing this! If you fancy reading more from me, I’ve done similar series for every year going back to 2011 (and basic lists for 2008-2010). Just copy and paste this link (https://dontlookdown.tumblr.com/tagged/best-of-20xx) and edit the year to see them!

[90shaladriel]

My son just watched the Star Wars OT for the first time and some observations.

Ok this is a bit of cross-fandom random thoughts, but I wanted to put somewhere.

I'm a child of the 80s-90s. I grew up with Star Wars, was legitimately obsessed with it from ages 3-7 me and my brothers endlessly rewatched the Original trilogy (or just 'Star Wars' as it was known then) on VHS tapes in those years. I remember being so excited for the theatrical re-releases and later the prequels.

My son (4) doesn't watch a lot of non-educational TV or movies, partly we don't show him much, but also he tends to be easily frightened by any tension or scary villains. Probably the scariest movie he had watched before this was Cars 2 (which was weirdly violent!) I also thought that maybe the violence would be something he wasn't really prepared for, none of his books or TV shows really shows graphic deaths. The worst thing he's seen are clips from TV News about the war in Ukraine which isn't often.

Last year I picked up some old children's books from my parents, and I had a stack of books that were the Star Wars read along books (that used to come with a small vinyl record) for the OT and a Star Wars ABC books. I would occasionally read these books at bedtime and my son gradually became enthusiastic about them, so we would get other Star Wars books from the library, most of those were either Prequel-era or even now Sequel-era stuff which he seemed to like and get. I think what's important is that going into actually watching the films he had been "spoiled" somewhat on the basic storylines and characters, like he knew Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, but honestly I think at his age he doesn't follow stories that well, so knowing all the characters and places upfront probably helped him enjoy it more I think?

So I thought with this I would just sort of give some observations about my son's experience and also my own re-watching the films for the first time in years. I had the Blu-ray Special Editions that were released maybe 5-6 years ago?

A New Hope

On rewatch this is by far my favorite, it's funny, gritty, action packed. It is pretty violent, dead bodies seen in the first firefight on the ship, Vader force choking people, Owen and Beru's burnt corpses, but overall this didn't seem to be harmful to my son, we did talk a bit about it being a war and that people were 'hurt'. He seemed most affected by the death of Obi-wan, and kept asking where he went. My son seemed to like Luke and R2-D2. I will say a lot of the audio was kind of uneven on this edition, I had trouble hearing dialog and my son can't read subtitles so I was explaining stuff and then the action or score would be super loud.

I think that the special edition CGI additions are the weakest in the trilogy, particularly the ones on Tatooine. IMO they don't add much and look fairly cheesy by today's standards. To be fair a lot of the Cantina alien costumes also don't look the best now in HD resolution.

Sadly one of the areas I feel suffers the most now is the continuity with all the Prequels and series. Like the way Obi-wan talks about the past makes it sound like 30-40+ years ago when it was really more like 18 and, now with the Kenobi show, things like him meeting Darth Vader was <10 years ago. I'm only 40 and events 10 years ago feels like nothing. So Vader's line "I sense something; a presence I've not felt since..." just feels like doesn't carry the weight it should. The Jedi shouldn't be an "ancient religion" they were still be hunted down in recent years and Han would have been alive when the Jedi were fighting in the Clone Wars I would think? I kind of think George Lucas backed the franchise into a corner a bit by setting the Prequels too close to the beginning of the OT, I get why to somewhat explain Luke and Leia's ages. I dunno, I would have rather ret-conned them to be mid-20s or something.

Empire Strikes Back

Very enjoyable still. Son liked the Hoth battle scenes, loves AT-ATs. Kind of less interested in some of the Dagobah planet and Yoda scenes. He didn't understand at all what was happening in the Dark side cave which was pretty scary for him, eventually the explanation that stuck was "It was a robot Darth Vader, not the real Darth Vader" that Luke killed. He had little or no commentary on the Han-Leia romance, something I remember feeling cringey about it as a boy that thought girls were like the enemy, he doesn't seem to care, but doesn't like it either as far as I can tell. My son was shocked when Vader cut off Luke's hand, because the Read Along picture books sanitize this as "Vader slashed Luke's lightsaber away" or something more PG. These are violent movies!

I don't remember as much additional scenes or CGI in this one, the old models of Star Destroyers and Rebel ships looked amazingly good I thought, I think Executor and generally imperial navy scenes overall are so good still. I think they added a few shots of the Falcon flying around Cloud City and maybe the snow monster scene looked a bit cheesy now?

Something that struck me on this rewatch in particular was how good the lightsaber duel between Vader and Luke was. I always remembered it as Luke losing pretty badly. Which is true, but he seriously held is own for most of the fight, counterattacking even getting a few glancing blows on Vader. The fight was way more intense than I remember it being and super fun to watch especially with how later jedi duels in the prequel movies get a lot of praise. This really held up in my opinion.

Which is impressive with what we now know Vader to be, like the greatest Jedi warrior ever. Again some continuity stuff bothers me more about the prequels, especially in Kenobi the Darth Vader vs Third Sister fight where in the how Vader could basically force block her lightsaber, and she was pretty much fully trained in the force. Similarly the hallway scene in Rogue One he can toss people around, it's hard to imagine Luke being able to compete with him at all. I kind of prefer the OT Vader without the prequels, strong with the force yes, but not superhuman powerful.

One nitpick though. Several times The Falcon is being chased by TIE fighters, why didn't Han or Leia go back and use the turret cannons to shoot them down like in ANH Death Star escape?

Return of the Jedi

Confession, growing up this was always my favorite Star Wars movie. On rewatch for me it kind of felt the weakest of the three. I guess you have to be an adult to kind of see it?

My son seemed to get a bit bored at parts. I think the Jabba Palace scenes were a bit more subdued and slow-paced than I remember, and so was a few of the middle scenes with Yoda or Luke's revelation to Leia, very quiet and somber, but definitely nothing like what we saw in ANH or ESB in terms of action-pacing.

My son thought ewoks were kind of silly and funny, but doesn't seem like to make an impression on him since we watched, unlike the AT-ATs or some of the human characters. He was afraid of the emperor, on some level I think he "got" the dynamics between Luke and Vader as it's clear Vader is his dad and Vader used to be a good guy (Anakin) in contrast to the truly evil Emperor so that all seemed to work well for him. I have to say, as a Dad now myself the final fight scenes and what Vader did hit way more deeply than anytime I've watched before, definitely teared up a bit. One question I got from him which I struggled to answer was "What does it mean to turn to the dark-side?" I'm not really sure I have a good answer other than "be tricked to do bad things" which is as good as I could explain it to his level. I guess that is a pretty abstract and fictional concept for a 4 year old.

Overall I loved the Luke - Vader rematch, again, Vader seems to be slowing down with age or wear and tear when compared to even Rogue One or ESB but Luke is getting stronger. Since Luke is the only Jedi left at the time, it was never clear how strong he was supposed to be, also being physically a small guy he doesn't seem as impressive a hero but more of an underdog in the saga, yet he took on Vader 1 on 1 and defeated him, so maybe the Force is stronger with him than I used to give him credit for? The fight was good, emotionally intense, I almost wish the actual lightsaber battle was a little longer.

One new takeaway that never really struck me before was that the ultimate climax to STAR WARS was the hero throwing away his weapon and choosing Non-Violence and ultimately being saved by (a father's) Love. That's kind of a radical notion for the 2020s let alone the 1980s. Props to George Lucas for that unconventional twist there. I almost feel like this doesn't get talked about enough compared to other aspects of Lucas' philosophy or themes in the films.

The Battle of Endor still is one of the best space battles I've ever seen. I do think the Battle of Scarif in Rogue One is probably on-par with it, but for the 1980s it's so impressive what they were able to achieve with the technology then. Also my favorite minor character of the series is Admiral Ackbar. I'm glad my son enjoyed him as well (also I felt his costume held up better in HD than the ANH alien rubber mask costumes). I wish he had his own spin-off show or movie tbh.

Overall Thoughts

I was so happy to finally be able to share this treasured part of my childhood with my son, and he seemed to take as much enjoyment from them as I did. He still asks to read the books at bedtime and we have been trying to branch out and get more Star Wars books about the Prequels and Sequels. As far as toys goes, he likes LEGO in general so we've got him a couple of Star Wars LEGO sets. It's a far cry from the collection of action figures and space ships I had in the mid-80s, but he enjoys it.

Next Star Wars to Show Him

I think that I would like to show him some of the Prequels next. Those were never my favorites, but maybe they will appeal to him at his age? The prequels were released when I was in HS/College and already had a lot of head-canon for what I thought would be in them from the EU and other sources. Maybe the Clone Wars animated show would be appropriate? I've never actually seen it myself so don't know if it's good for him to watch, maybe it's more for older kids?

I think Rogue One is also a natural fit with the Original Trilogy, but that's probably a bit too dark/adult for him right now I think. I do wonder if there are any good sanitized kids picture books about it though 😂