#more like gleefully anguished vague posting

[asleepinawell]

moodboard of how to motivate me into doing something monumentally stupid

[regrettablewritings]

I dare . . . to Dew both 😎 . . . Oh wait that sounds bad especially considering the image I chose --

Who the fuck put the Peeps in the microwave?: Oh come on, you know exactly who did it. . . .  Okay, technically, it was a team effort with you egging Dewey on. The man was a bottomless pit that seemed to derive amusement from your horror at what he’d be willing to consume. A stale pack of Peeps found at the back of a shelf at the bodega was far from being an exception. But if this bozo was about to profit off of your disgust, you were at least going to have fun with it. Warm marshmallows? Fine. Good, even. Warm Peeps? Evil. Cursed. You both knew this. But Dewey had a reputation to uphold . . . Besides, maybe if he squinted at the pulsating, gooey mass, it could look like . . . Fuck, he didn’t know, something actually edible? Suffice to say, Dewey wound up spending the next few hours curled up on his side on the couch. You weren’t sure if the ordeal was necessarily that bad, but given the slips of anguish that crossed your boyfriend’s face as he attempted to scarf down the sticky blob, you weren’t quite ready to completely dismiss it.

Who forgot to put the cat outside before sex?: Luckily for you, you don’t have a cat~ It’s Dewey. Baby boy just gets lost in the kissing/caressing sauce. It takes a few times but eventually, even photos or action figures nearby have to go face-down before anyone takes a trip to Pound Town.

Who posts Vines/TikToks of the other doing embarrassing shit?: You do, mainly because while also being his significant other, you double as his social media expert. The job of attending and recording his rehearsals and shows both with and outside of SoR falls on your capable shoulders, and sometimes that means you wind up getting golden footage of Dewey doing a split gone wrong, or pushing his ancient twenty-something-year-old body too hard and releasing an almost death metal-like croak in response. And by sometimes, I mean often. At first, it frustrated him that you went on to pose these things -- he wants to look cool, dammit! -- but the comedy gained him enough traffic to also grab some new followers. Even the view counts on his actual songs went up! . . . Okay, yeah, maybe you’re more than just capable of being his social media expert. Good job, babe.

Who breaks the most phones: Sometimes, Dewey forgets his phone in his bands or hoodie. He only remembers it all too late when he makes a leap on stage and sends that bitch soaring. Other times, it’s because he’s zoused and it slams to the concrete outside of the bar. In a puddle.

Who dies first: . . . I mean . . .

Which one I could see as being lactose intolerant: Neither party, really. Though I feel like if Dewey were, he’d think it was “rock-n-roll” to completely disregard that and keep horking down the cheese-sprinkled meatball subs from the deli and chase it down with a milkshake. As far as he’s concerned, lactose intolerance is just The Man to his body, telling it what it can and can’t digest. Stick it to The Milk Man! 🤘😤

Who thinks they can do something really well even though they can’t: Oof. Well, without getting into the psychology of Dewey Finn, I think it’s safe to say that deep down, Dewey is a rather insecure guy who’s at least somewhat aware of his shortcomings. There’s a good chance that he covers most of that with a sort of confidence that he has to believe in, otherwise it means everybody who ever doubted him was right. So in a way, I think he’s at least somewhat aware that stardom -- or, at least, stardom the way he always imagined he’d experience it -- just isn’t for him. He’s a very talented musician, that can’t be denied, but being a Rock God just isn’t in the cards for him. At least, not in the way he spent all those years focusing on. His immaturity and tendency to showboat make that job proposition even further than what it probably could be if he had a bit more going for him, humility and awareness-wise. That being said, Dewey is The Heart of his projects, and has a skill in leadership that he’s only just recently become aware of thanks to interacting with the kids of Horace Green. That is where his focus needs to be for the time being. And it’s through honing those skills in, and doing some maturing, that he stands a better chance at paving his own way to becoming a musician of some fame.

Who is more likely to get kicked out of bed: Both of you, but for different reasons. With you, it’s more literal: Dewey is an active sleeper, and sometimes those dramatic routines from his fantasies of partying atop Mount Rock integrate themselves into his dreams. If you’re lucky, you just wind up with his arm flopping onto your face. But on particularly excitable nights, you wind up with his foot turning your lower back and legs into a stage upon which he gleefully stomps some vague rhythm. If you haven’t made it out of bed by then to just move yourself to the couch, then it’s already too late and you’ll son find yourself slamming to the actual floor. (And God, Odin, and the rest of the Mount Rock’s inhabitants help you if Dewey left some Legos on the floor.) In Dewey’s case, it’s because he’s still awake but trying not to be -- and failing at it. He tries to listen to music but even if the playlist starts off soft and relaxing, it inevitably turns into him singing and air-guitaring or air-strumming along while his mouthing of the words turn into whispers before eventually just becoming full-on singing. What had started off with “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” transforms into “Highway to Hell”, which sends him packing on a highway to the couch so you can catch some shut eye.

Who uses the computer the most?: Given that Dewey is an instructor and keeps working on music even outside of SoR, he always needs technology in his reach. But at the end of the day, what with the technicality of smart phones being miniature computers, you both are pretty even.

One again, thank you for participating and I hope the week turns out better!!!

[mint-sm]

LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: Romance is Boring

Let’s talk about a word for a minute: Tryhard.

In an (at the time of writing at least) mildly recent interview with Noisey on the subject of this album, lead guitarist Tom Campesinos! (Tom Bromley) described “Romance is Boring” as “probably the most self-conscious record, and it's probably the most try-hard record as well,” describing it as a reaction to that whole “twee” and “pop” label they were most popularly recognized with from “Hold on Now, Youngster…”, and even after the release of “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.”

Like I said on my reviews of both albums, I feel that “Youngster” was an excellent release if only for the sound it ended up with, and not necessarily the band’s initial visions, which would then be addressed and accentuated in “Doomed,” which more clearly defined the groundwork that the band wanted to pursue underneath the indie pop exterior roof formed with “Youngster.” With this album, “Romance is Boring,” they definitely wanted to challenge that idea even further; become more experimental, create much more blaring, aggressive songs in unusual time signatures and beats, with more complex and detailed production alongside Gareth’s self-deprecatingly bitter, but intricate and atmospheric lyricism. In other words, “Romance is Boring” was a self-imposed challenge, and if they wanted to be “try-hard,” they succeeded.

At the same time though, Tom seemed to be somewhat disappointed about what the band would make in the future in comparison to this album, saying “I would never make songs like that again, at the moment I'm not in that frame of mind where I would, so when I listen to them I'm like 'shit I can't believe we made this'.” The sad truth about trying really hard to be as fucking wild and complex-sounding is that it might be something you never wanna try again because you might never, ever reach that adrenaline-fueled mindset you were in to originally craft it again in the future, and as we’ll discuss with “Hello Sadness” next time, reality just might hit you hard enough to stray away from that.

It’s a shame, but as an artist who often gets fatigued of just trying to work on a passion project for years that burns out for a while after releasing a thing, I can sympathize a bit. Creating and experimenting is very tough, and it takes a lot of time, and you will be often be surprised as hell by what you make in the end, but at the same time it can be really straining, only made bearable by sheer passion and emotion (mostly frustration, it sounds like) that, sad to say, can dissipate just like that, and getting it back isn’t something you can just “do.” And “Romance is Boring” is passionate and emotional, and the experimentation clearly did pay off, but was their process something they should be willing to go through again? Well, I don’t know Gareth and the band well-enough to decide for certain, but I’m gonna say… probably not?

CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?

But anyways, let’s talk about “Romance is Boring” itself. Simply put, as you probably might have inferred from other reviews, “Romance is Boring” is my favorite Los Camp record. They put a lot of fucking effort into this album, likely more than with any other record they’ve ever made, and it shows. It contains basically everything I think the band excels at, and even the parts it doesn’t normally do the absolute best in, they do exceptionally well here. Witty, poetic and dense lyrics, blaring, catchy, and diverse instrumentals, wild and conflicting yet consistent moods, and hauntingly vague but vivid imagery following and exploring complex and dissonant themes and narrative, such as the idea of falling in love, disappointing mental anguish, depression, creepiness, selfishness, bitter sarcasm, and regret, among others. It sounds a lot better than the emo shit it just came off as, honest.

The album is much more narratively flowing than “Youngster” or “Doomed,” and as you might expect from the title, it’s about romance, but not necessarily in a completely despondent way as it also might imply. While an overall theme it provides is one of dissatisfaction and heartbreak, once again, Los Camp’s ability to simultaneously yet fluidly meld together multiple diametrically opposed emotions shines through here.

The second track, “There Are Listed Buildings,” is a very good example of this, because the instrumentation is by far the poppiest and free-flowing track on this album, almost “Youngster”-ey in quality, with these cheery “BAH BAH, BAH BAH, BAH BAH BAH, BADDADA” choruses with what I think is a tuba or trombone, and just a wonderfully-sounding electric guitar riff pre-chorus, it all feels so bright and carnival-ly, and honestly, so are the lyrics, which are playful and strangely optimistic for the band. I think it’s about a like a couple deciding to actually pursue a relationship, with lyrics like “I think I'd do it for love, if it were not for the money / I'll take any scraps that you can give,” which is made honestly kinda cute and sweet-sounding in a sepia-tone, sarcastically hipster kinda way.

I REMEMBER BEING NAKED TO MY WAIST, THOUGH NOT IN WHICH DIRECTION 

[YOU ARE A GLUTTON FOR LOVE, CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME ROMANCE? I'M A GLUTTON FOR SIN]

However, the opposing feeling from this song comes from the exact details and the context in which this song ends up in, because other lyrics seem to reflect more of this idea that the girl is actually really a little too desperate because “You dangle fishing line for crabs, but they're not interested /  I'm your only bite,” which kinda reminds me of that XKCD comic discussing that “nice guy” that at first seems sweet and caring for a lonely girl but is actually disturbingly manipulative and creepy as shit (which some people unfortunately seem to unironically agree with). Plus, as was shown by Los Camp songs before and after, Gareth has simply never believed that “true love” exists, and this budding relationship is uh… yeah, it’s kind of doomed to not end well.

It’s made so much clearer with the song right after it, the title track, and I just love it for how utterly SPITEFUL it is. Whether these characters played by Gareth and Aleks are supposed to be the same throughout the entire album, I don’t know, but this relationship has gotten incredibly bitter and sarcastic, the instrumentation is so fucking blaring and distorted and crashy and violent at times, and the chorus features the band absolutely screaming “YOU'RE POUTING IN YOUR SLEEP, I'M WAKING STILL YAWNING, WE'RE PROVING TO EACH OTHER THAT ROMANCE IS BORING,” it’s so gleefully hateful. I don’t think I’ve heard many tracks of a mutually mentally abusive relationship that sounded this damn cathartic.

WE ARE TWO SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 

YOU AND I, WE ARE NOTHING ALIKE 

I AM A PLEASURE CRUISE, YOU ARE GONE OUT TO TRAWL 

RETURN NETS EMPTY, NOTHING AT ALL

Really, I could go on with these tracks all day and pick apart the little intricacies of each song to dissect how great each one is, because this is probably the absolute densest Los Camp has ever gotten instrumentally and lyrically. There’s so many little moments as to what makes every track work so much, and rarely is it just as straightforward as the title track, but even when it is, the production and poetry just feel so incredibly potent, it’s essentially like instead of listening to a song and being gradually surrounded by atmosphere, “Romance is Boring” fucking clocks you with it.

Just getting out of the way, I think maybe the least experimental track on this album is “Straight in at 101,” because instrumentally, structurally, it really does feel the most straightforward, even with little moments with like a sudden blast of distortion at one point or how it immediately goes from feeling bright and upbeat to somber, then complete silence as Gareth sings about how “the talking heads count down the most heart wrenching breakups of all time / imagine the great sense of waste, the indignity the embarrassment when not a single one of that whole century was mine.”  It, and maybe “A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte” are probably the most “standard-sounding,” or like baseline to Los Camp, which doesn’t mean they’re bad, but yknow.

I’d still consider it a very strong track because it’s still very consistent, it’s got a very continuous but evolving groove to it, and the lyrics are still jam-packed with wordplay and description that paint just this really fucking selfish, but also really kinda(?) sympathetic narrator, who makes his utter disappointment with what I’m assuming was a one night stand very clear. Los Camp is a very self-aware band and Gareth’s a very self-deprecating writer, but the way he manages to be both really ugly but astoundingly relatable, and also so mean-spirited to a point where you can’t help but really laugh at how much of a shit he is is kind of admirable.

I THINK WE NEED MORE POST-COITAL AND LESS POST-ROCK

FEELS LIKE THE BUILD-UP TAKES FOREVER, BUT YOU NEVER TOUCH MY COCK 

AND WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN NOW BY, "WHAT CAN YOU EVEN EAT?" 

AND HOW DOES THAT AFFECT HOW I'LL GET OFF THIS EVENING?

Two of the most unusual tracks that I both love from this album are “Plan A” and “I Warned You: Do Not Make an Enemy of Me” (goddamn that title just makes me so giddy for some reason), with “Plan A” being probably the harshest, off-sounding and most punk-like track Los Camp has ever recorded, with its atonal, distorted mashing chords and screaming call/response vocals (it’s so fn weird hearing Aleks sound panicked and frantic, but goddamn I miss her) before suddenly segueing into like this sing-songy, but still distorted and oddly free-flowing, almost twee-like chorus, and “I Warned You” sounding so stilted and awkwardly tense yet cheery with its weird tempo and beat shifts, almost feeling kinda outsider-music-y at times.

BROKE DOWN LAUGHING AND SCREAMING FOR MORE 

BUT IF THIS CHANGED YOUR LIFE, DID YOU HAVE ONE BEFORE?

Another personal favorite track is the intro, “In Medias Res,” which starts off the album just perfectly, starting with like these gentle, but already kinda already compressed and messy acoustic guitar chords before slowly building up into this like surprisingly reverbed, ethereal and charming instrumental, with a backing that almost sounds like it came from like a shoegaze or dark dream pop track, but with like this really, dreamy and cute duet vocals and glockenspiel. It sounds so oddly saddening yet so weirdly uplifting, especially with that little breakdown near the end with all the distortion effects placed against the glockenspiel, keyboards and brass; I’m pretty sure you can hear at some points Gareth screaming some lines, but it’s so blended-in with the instrumental, but it sounds kinda… beautiful.

And the lyrics, oh god, the lyrics. For some reason, the first and last lines just have so much damn atmosphere loaded into something that just feels so… simple. I can’t explain it without the context, but the very first line, “But let’s talk about you for a minute,” just really gets to me for some reason, probably because within this album itself, it just says so damn much about its themes, that while incredibly toxic and awesomely angry at times, can also get really intimate, melancholy, and depressing, especially with the song’s outro lines:

“IF YOU WERE GIVEN THE OPTION OF DYING PAINLESSLY IN PEACE AT FORTY-FIVE, BUT WITH A LOVER AT YOUR SIDE, AFTER A FULL AND HAPPY LIFE, IS THIS SOMETHING THAT WOULD INTEREST YOU? WOULD THIS INTEREST YOU AT ALL?”

Keep in mind, Gareth believes that true love doesn’t exist.

And in a really cruel reality, despite how playful, giddy and sarcastic or self-deprecating it can be dancing around the topic, Los Camp STILL can’t prove to us that heartbreak, however, isn’t anything but incredibly real. The final 3 tracks on this album (not counting the bonus track, “Too Many Flesh Suppers”) perfectly reflect this mindset.

The fan favorite “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future” is simply put Los Camp’s most beautiful, poignant track they’ve ever made (and also one of the most devastating and emo), and it serves as one hell of an emotional climax for the album. While Los Camp hasn’t really been one for imagery and instead prefers mood most of the time, this track is the perfect marriage of the two; everything about it just seems to paint this incredibly vivid mindset about a depressed, suicidal and utterly broken lover (if it’s the same one from “There Are Listed Buildings,” it’s even more so), who I can just imagine is like sitting on the far end of a dock on a very gloomy beach with gray overcast and an sea, maybe like rocking her legs back and forth sitting on the edge with her feet just touching the salt water as she just stares hopelessly out onto the endless horizon. Y’know, happy stuff.

The lyrics on this track are just some of the most utterly concise and madly specific descriptions Gareth’s ever written, with simultaneously pointless yet (ugh I normally hate this word in this context but) deep and precise lyrics, and Gareth’s vocal delivery just slowly escalates to this heartfelt, like pouring-out-his-soul-in-desperation, perfect climax. Everything about this track just works, and it plunges you into this visceral, atmospheric world of gray skies, salty seas and contemplation, where it really does feel like that the sea is a great place to think of the future… or maybe a lack of one.

SHE SAID ONE DAY TO LEAVE HER, SAND UP TO HER SHOULDERS, WAITING FOR THE TIDE

TO DRAG HER TO THE OCEAN, TO ANOTHER SEA'S SHORE, THIS THING HURTS LIKE HELL... 

BUT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT!?

But like I said, Los Camp likes to dance around these sort of maudlin themes, and immediately after one of the bleakest tracks they’ve made, we suddenly get more cheery, upbeat, and snide in “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” whose first lyrics are literally the band shouting “CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?”, singing another almost-kinda-sorta indie-twee track about a couple stupidly in love, but we all know that it’s all unhealthy and it’s going to end poorly, right? Like, any song about love that has the chorus “The story of the winter I forgot how to speak, my mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak / How they dragged me to the hospital saying I had gone deaf / But I heard everything they said, it's just I had no interest,” no matter how crowd-pleasing and roucous and glockenspiel-accompanied it sounds, can’t have a story that ends well, right?

Well, considering how the album ends with “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,” a much slower, a lot more ethereal-sounding ballad with the lines “Run the water 'til it scalds, you know that I'm listening / Pitter-patter runs the shower, hits the bare porcelain” and “I fall to my knees, my piss-soaked jeans / The first time, the last time, all the times in between”... it’s probably safe to assume yes, it didn’t. Actually, considering “The Sea is a Good Place” and the chillingly repeated outro of “I CAN’T BELIEVE I CHOSE THE MOUNTAINS EVERY TIME YOU CHOSE THE SEA,”  it probably ended VERY horribly. And… that just fucking sucks, you know?

Goddamn, there’s still so many tracks I didn’t cover, but damnit, if I make this any longer, this is gonna just turn into a track-by-track thesis paper, since there’s just so much to talk about. These are basically the major elements I love the most and find the most worth-addressing, but the thing is that this entire album feels worth addressing, because once again, it’s just so damn packed with just about everything I feel makes an album work in my eyes. There’s not a single track that’s not worth analyzing and appreciating, but christ, there are only so many hours in the day! D:

BY NOW IT'S JUST THE THREE OF US

ME, YOUR SHADOW, YOUR ECHO

“Romance is Boring” is just a fantastic album. It manages to contain all of the things I feel an album needs to be heavily engaging, and the fact that most of them came from a band who normally doesn’t do that great in some of those aspects such as actual concrete description or instantly recognizable context makes this feel all the more surprising and welcoming.

And that’s where it all comes down to: it is just really, really engaging. It’s powerful without being overbearing, it’s noisy while being incredibly and consistently precise, it’s descriptive while being pretty accessible, and it’s varied but also manages to maintain a consistent sound Los Camp have finally pinpointed down as that which can be identified as uniquely their own. It plays up the band’s unique strengths just enough that you never feel alienated or feel forced or anything like that, and not only is it as adventurous as the band might ever get, it’s one hell of a fucking adventure. Hail try-hardiness. (5/5)

...So what happens now?

FAVES: “In Medias Res,” “There Are Listed Buildings,” “Romance is Boring,” “We’ve Got Your Back,” “Plan A,” “Straight in at 101,” “Heart Swells/100-1,” “I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know,” “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future,” “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,”