#vocal synth people or . vocal synth covers so i just slapped them in

[mspaint-flower]

https://youtu.be/1Y9sHyTLBWY

here’s music

OHHHH SEECUN OMG i've heard a lot of their music and i actually have this one in my playlist too!!! this is one of my favourites

[seasquared]

the young boys of summer

Even if there are four seasons in this world, one season stands alone as the ultimate vibe in kpop, and that's the summer bop. This could be, and usually is, a song released late into spring or in the doldrums of the season itself, but timing of the release is not determinative. If you are lucky, the song will advertise itself as such (GFriend's "Sunny Summer," ITZY’s “IT’z Summer,” f(x)'s "Hot Summer"). But like most vibes, you know it when you hear it, like the first time you are graced with Sistar's legendary, iconic, never-to-be-duplicated "Touch my body.” When you hear these songs, you instantly recognize the canonical kpop summer accent, big bold brasses and sounds that seem slapped joyfully out of their instruments and maybe a Spanish guitar. They demand to be played during cookouts, on outdoor patios, through a portable poolside speaker, with a silly little nonsense chorus that only makes sense because the sun has baked off a few of your braincells (ATEEZ’s “Wave”, I’m looking at you). You play these songs around other people, because sharing things makes them hotter, and thus you cooler.

If the "Red Flavors" and "Alcohol-frees" of this world are the accent of summer, then there are the kpop songs that are intended as [Erik Singer voice] evocations, meant to suggest summer and, in some cases, its eventual passing. It's my personal opinion that the slightly jazzy, very r&b, midtempo jam is the sound of autumn, but even if you don't agree, you can hear how Heize in "And July" uses Dean's khiphop vocal stylings to hint at the eventual cooling down of summer and the relationship. A touch of synthwave (IKON's "But You"), EDM (AKMU's "Dinosaur"), or sultry poledancing (After School's "First Love") are all quick shortcuts to this kind of song, one that never quite mentions summer by name but could only be played on a hot summer night. And you couldn’t ask for a better example than Winner's discography, which is littered with summer hits of both kinds. "Island" is a dictionary-definition perfect rendition of the canonical mid-summer accent, while "Everyday" despite its beachy, swimsuit-packed MV and April release date is an end of summer evocation, and “Really Really” somewhere in between. 

My favorite summer kpop evocation is the emotional rock anthem. Seventeen are such masters of every variety of the summertime bop ("Healing", "Swimming Fool," "Very Nice") that at some point you just have to lovingly roll your eyes at them releasing a thirst trap song in the middle of summer and naming it "Hot" because, of course. "Rock with you" was released smack dab in the fall months of October, but when I heard it I knew what it was: a "goodbye summer" song, too melancholy for summer vacation and too exuberant for going back to school but just perfect for convincing you that you have one last chance to tell your summer crush that you like them. Others in this vein: a little bit of BTS' "Run," a little bit of Stray Kids' "Time Out," and a whole lot of TXT's "0x1=LOVESONG."

And so too with NINE.i's "Young Boy." Released in November of last year, it too is a summer evocation, rock anthem subspecies, opening with a combo of synths and rhythmic strumming that drives you recklessly forward through the song like a car barreling down a mostly empty highway covered in the bruised purples and pinks of sunset. It is stuffed full of all the typical (post?) 4th gen markers: video cameras, stickers, spray paint, a tightly focused shot of someone boxing in a dimly lit warehouse, sparklers, the vague sense that you are intruding on a Lost Boys paradise. No kpop MV has captured the turbulent and contradictory angst of being a teenager better than the 0:32 mark, when Vari laughingly looks back on footage he's filmed of his groupmates while lipsyncing the line "When I get sick of it and say, 'Hate this.'"

It's no secret that kpop centers youth: in its performers, its intended audience, its aesthetics, in many of its lyrics. When BTS closed out their adolescent period, they released a two-part mini album whose English title is usually rendered as "The Most Beautiful Moment in Life." For BTS, there is no ambiguity as to when that moment happens: it is when you are young, which Suga underscores in the intro track that shares the album's name. Perhaps at the time BTS meant the title a little ironically, more question mark (the most beautiful?) than exclamation mark. (This is, after all, the group that wrote a song called "War of Hormone" that includes a lyric about squeezing pimples every day.) But when it came time to join the mini-albums into one full-length album, they doubled down, giving the compilation the subtitle "Young Forever" and releasing a song with the same name which declares over and over again "forever / we are young."

"Young" is, of course, not a number. BTS was not declaring the members' intention to remain physically immortal, kpop vampires who never age past their 20s. To be "forever young" is "endlessly run towards my dream," to push forward despite being lost in a maze, to "fall and hurt myself" but still get back up and keep pushing. "Forever we are young" is also an acknowledgement that BTS may always be remembered by some of their fans for this era, caught in glorious high definition high concept music videos that celebrate a carefree "live fast die young" aesthetic. In the MV for "Epilogue: Young Forever," these images, distorted as if on VHS tape, trap the members in a cage of fences. When they escape, it is to an empty runway while a plane flies overhead as if towards heaven. Is this freedom, or death? The only way to remain young forever may be to die young; or put another way, to remain young forever is to die.

Don Henley knew this when he wrote "The Boys of Summer," the summer evocation to end all summer evocations. It is, as everyone knows, not an ode actually to the boys of summer but rather to what remains after they are gone. Its best lines ("Out on the road today / I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac") are about the contradictions of growing up, realizing that you may have to betray the idealism of your youth. It is, in other words, not Maverick and Iceman playing beach volleyball in Top Gun but rather a much older Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick finally having to sit down on the sidelines to watch his students carry on playing beach football without him. The "you" of the song is a girl that Henley's singer still longs for, perhaps one he met when he himself was a boy of summer. But for a very long time, I thought Henley's singer was addressing himself as a younger man. (Can you blame me, when he sings about hair "slicked" back, wearing Wayfarers like one of Top Gun's flyboys?) Through the course of the song, Henley makes peace with the death of youth as best as he can. "Those days are gone forever," he says. He has had to grow up. But in his heart, he still sees his lost love—and maybe himself—forever young.

Perhaps that is what NINE.i is summoning in "Young Boy," when they sing "I can even die." For a moment you may think they are singing "I can't even die," and in a way, both are right. To stop being young is to die, spiritually, but growing old does not mean you stop being young. You can always return to that state. NINE.i's young boy is one of Henley's boys of summer, always shining in the sun, smiling at everyone. He is gone only if you, like Henley's speaker, let him go, turn your back on him and turn him into a sticker on the back of your Cadillac. The young boy of summer is immortal, not because he can't be hurt, but because he is mythological. Youth is not an interlude in one's life. It is a state of possession, like an ancient god that descends upon your body. It is a bit unfamiliar but, NINE.i assures you, as long as you can dream him, he is "forever."

[cricket124]

143 Honest Review

This album has been very polarizing for a lot of people, with some saying it's horrible and others saying it's some of Katy's best work. I mean, just take a look at the dislikes on Woman's world... yikes.

These comments are also pretty scathing

I listened too the entire album because I felt I couldn't complain abt it unless I gave it a fair shot. I promise I am being unbiased even though I have been frustrated by Katy Perry recently.

(these are just my opinions. If u liked the album that's okay with me idc)

Let's start with the positives: I thought ARTIFICIAL was pretty decent, though mainly the parts with JID. I feel like it could have been a little longer, and the ending was kind of abrupt, but I thought the lyrics and production were unique from the others on the album. I also thought it was cute that Katy Perry's daughter was in WONDER. That's it.

Lyrics + meanings: 1/10. This is the worst part of the album. What even is this album about and what does it stand for? For an album about female empowerment, it's kind of weird that most of the songs are generic love songs. And I can't figure out is WOMAN'S WORLD is trying to be serious or camp, but either way it comes of as a slap in the face. All the lyrics are just so basic, and I think the worst example of this is the song CRUSH. These are some of the lyrics:

Is it a crush? Makin' me blush

Here I go again, I'm falling in love

Catchin' my breath whenever we touch

Here I go again, I'm falling in love

My heart goes

La, da-da-dee

La, da-dee

La, da-da-dee

My heart goes

La, da-da-dee

La, da-dee

La, da-da-dee

(all this repeats again)

It hurt me just writing that out, but it doesn't end there. Lifetimes gets worse... all the lyrics suck but the last ones are just insulting:

Baby, you and me for infinity

My eternity (my eternity)

Baby, you and me for infinity

My eternity (my eternity)

I'll love you for, I'll love you for life

Lifetimes

I'll love you for, I'll love you for life

Lifetimes

I know you feel it

Can you believe it?

I'm gonna love you 'til the end

And then repeat it

I know you feel it (feel it)

Can you believe it? ('Lieve it)

I'm gonna love you 'til the end

And then repeat it

For life

For life

For life

For life

and then all of that repeats AGAIN, just like Crush. This song just feels like a 15 second loop repeated for 3 minutes.

Production: 2/10. I would describe it as serviceable, but really bland and lacking. Most of the musical backing remains the exact same pretty much throughout the song. In general all the songs sound like demos, because for some reason they all sound empty and unfinished. None of the samples or beats sound unique in any way, and WOMAN'S WORLD's synth and drums sound SO similar to Stupid Love's. And while we're on that topic, the ending of TRUTH is literally just the end of Telephone by Lady Gaga + some cringe dialouge. It reminded me that I could be listening to TFM rn instead of this.

Aesthetics: 2/10. I cannot figure out what the visuals of the album are supposed to be giving. The album cover is futuristic, but the music vids look so generic and there's nothing visually unique about them. The album cover, photoshoots, and the lyric video for gorgeous look a little too similar to Lady Gaga's Chromatica, some of Arca's aesthetics, and many other pop albums we've seen already a couple years ago. No creative ideas were presented in the studio.

Melodies: 3/10. most of the songs on this album sound pretty similar, and none stood out to me as catchy, maybe with the exception of I'M HIS, HE'S MINE, but even that was still pretty repetitive. I wish more of the songs had bridges because the song structures were pretty much the same across the board. The songs just seem to go nowhere.

Vocals: 4/10. Not great. She sounds like an AI Katy Perry. There is no emotion in her voice. I don't even think I have to elaborate.

Overall, the writing was just so uninspired. Why would she bother working with Dr. Puke if the songs were going to be flop anyway? But I think the worst part is that the Katycats all think this will be her huge comeback and she'll get popular again. But the thing is is that nobody will talk about you or your album if you don't have unique ideas or messages. Even if the music was bad, it maybe wouldn't be such a flop if they had some deeper meaning to them. But they don't.

It's albums like these that give pop a bad name. 2.4/10 overall. If you want an actually good and unique new pop song, listen to Kesha's new music especially now that she's independent from Dr. Luke.

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 27/05/2023 (Lana Del Rey, Beyoncé, Kylie Minogue)

Content warning: Brief mentions of alcoholism and... robot sex, yes really

For a seventh week, Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding reign at the top of the UK Singles Chart with “Miracle”, and as for the rest... well, we’ll get to it. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

As always, we start with our notable dropouts and since last week was Eurovision madness, naturally damn near everything from the contest that wasn’t in the top 40 is off of the chart – but to clarify, notable dropouts are songs exiting the UK Top 75, which is what I cover, after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40, which means that “Mountain” by Sam Ryder – otherwise completely irrelevant – can for once in its miserable life be considered notable. Outside of that, we say farewell to “Forget Me” and “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi thanks to the three-song rule – more about him later – as well as “LosT” by Bring Me the Horizon, “Double Fantasy” by The Weeknd featuring Future (seems premature), “Never Felt So Alone” by Labrinth featuring uncredited vocals from Billie Eilish, “Flip a Switch.” by RAYE and finally, “Creepin’” by Metro Boomin, The Weeknd and 21 Savage.

What’s filling up the gaps? Well, we could look at our returns, but we mostly see bottom-feeders: “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers at #75, “live more & love more” by Cat Burns at #74, “B.O.T.A. (Baddest of Them All)” by Eliza Rose and Interplanetary Criminal at #73 and “Afraid to Feel” by LF SYSTEM at #70. We do also have the welcome return of my favourite Lewis Capaldi song, “How I’m Feeling Now” at #48 as well as a bizarre return for “Late Night Talking” by Harry Styles at #37. Maybe it’s the tour, who cares? We then have some notable gains like “Relax My Eyes” by ANOTR and Abel Balder at #63, “Maria Maria” by TECH IT DEEP at #52, “TMO (Turn Me On)” by Luude and Bru-C featuring Kevin Lyttle at #50 off of the debut, “Satellite” by Harry Styles at #49, “Area Codes” by Kali at #44, “Side Effects” by Becky Hill and Lewis Thompson at #40, “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals at #29, “CUFF IT” by Beyoncé at #19, “Dancing is Healing” by Rudimental, Charlotte Plank and Vibe Chemistry at #14 and... sigh, newly entering the top 10 at #8, becoming her second top 10 hit, “Giving Me” by Jazzy. There are some notable gains here but it’s one of those weeks where it would be more accurate to describe it as a chart one week after a busy week replacing the biggest smashes of last week with more new songs, which is a chaotic form of chart movement honestly, especially when we have a top 10 debut from Lana Del Rey of all people.

Speaking of the top 10, we have a pretty standard top five this week: “Calm Down” by Rema at #5, “Tattoo” by Loreen still holding on at #4, “Wish You the Best” by Lewis Capaldi at #3, “Daylight” by David Kushner at #2 and of course, “Miracle” at #1. Now for what matters in this series: the new entries, and it’s pretty star-studded this week from the bottom to the top.

NEW ARRIVALS

#65 – “Dance Around It” – Joel Corry and Caity Baser

Produced by Joel Corry and Punctual

Yeah, no nobodies with viral hits or underground acts on this episode. The closest we get is here with Caity Baser, but she’s just an up-and-comer so it makes complete sense for her to hop on a personality-less EDM cut for a quick guaranteed hit. I say that but honestly, this one’s kind of weird and not one that’s guaranteed success – it’s based on a minimal bass synth and squawk that sounds mind-numbing, but I’m actually using that as a compliment this time since it builds a tension fitting for Baser’s unrecognisably manipulated vocals about using the dancefloor as escapism for the daily stresses, and it’s damn near a mantra once we get to the slap house drop... then where the vocaloid drops would come in we then get a BIZARRE sound that is half-Zelda flute and half-charismatic soundbites, but it works for me somehow. The stuttering mystery of it all has me really intrigued and I didn’t think Corry of all people would be this odd. Hell, it continues with the bleeping synths and a rap verse of all things, and over the course of that second pre-chorus, those synths get even louder and more blaring, only for it all to disappear once she’s on the dancefloor. It’s honestly not far from something I would make... and I’m not sure if these four should take that as an insult – probably should – but I think this is honestly pretty great and I hope it sticks around like I started this review predicting. Again, not something I expected to say for either artist.

#58 – “UNHEALTHY” – Anne-Marie featuring Shania Twain

Produced by Connor McDonough and Riley McDonough

I think I just need to admit that I like Anne-Marie now – not necessarily as a hit maker or songwriter but just general presence. She’s got a unique voice and decides to take wildly different paths to those that I expect of her, so she’s kind of promising to me now? It does help that she’s consistently releasing stuff that has a lot of personality, even down to the album covers, and this new song “UNHEALTHY” is once again a complete left turn. Country pop legend Shania Twain returns to the chart after 18 years as a feature on this folk-pop pivot and once again, it’s a really damn great song. Anne-Marie doesn’t have a twang but her slight rasp smokes up her normal register and makes her falsetto sound really frail, which fits for the vague country aesthetic she’s going for here, though it’s honestly closer to the soundtrack of a western film with all the sound effects and the galloping drums as well as those enveloping strings of guitar intensifying the pre-chorus. The song is about a toxic relationship, in the very unsubtle way you’d expect from Anne-Marie – the opening line is “your love is worse than cigarettes even if I had 20 in my hand”, which honestly kind of convinced me immediately – but there’s not an issue of overplaying or downplaying the stakes, which means Shania’s wiser, heartier voice fits in like a glove and adds a lot to the song, especially considering the smokier atmosphere the song is required to have for this kind of content and sound. Sure, I wish there was a bridge – Hell, a guitar solo next time please – but the outro adds a little underlying layered vocal that fits up with the western guitar and it’s such a nice additional touch, one of those songwriting tracks that makes Anne-Marie stand out as a character in pop. Maybe I’ll listen to that new album even, because this is great.

#57 – “Little Things” – Jorja Smith

Produced by P2J and New Machine

I did like that last single from Jorja Smith well enough, so I am still excited to hear this second single, now coming from the officially announced sophomore album, falling or flying, and is she gearing up for a sophomore slump? Well, I wouldn’t go as far to say that, but it still has a very similar problem to “Try Me”: the production is excellent but I’m not compelled by the lyrics. The jazzy piano jabs are tense and Smith has a very slippery presence on the tunnelling bass soundtracked by extra drum fills and filtered vocal riffing that makes the song feel really awkwardly tense and kind of chaotic whilst still remaining its hypnotic groove. I don’t know why the lyrics are so sweet and loving, though – it’s a song about going out with her partner and appreciating the little things that are intimate between them. It’s definitely easier to ignore the lyrics in this case because they’re better-written than on “Try Me”, even if there are less of them, and the production is so dynamic with the addition of the ghostly vocal loops and the unique soundbites added in as interludes. The warped bass in the outro is so janky but goes so hard against the subtle screeching and clips of clubs in the background, with the dusty UK garage beat allowing for this to reach a lot of highs I don’t think it would have if not for the great production, which I think I should be focusing on with this next Jorja Smith record. It’s probably easier to tell when the album is taken together as a whole, but it doesn’t seem that the lyrics or Hell, even the vocals, are of much priority but rather the sound design, and on “Little Things”, it’s not just fitting or good, it’s genuinely impressive considering the attention to detail on display here, as well as the sheer amount of fun they seem to have been having, so yeah, even with the non-compelling lyrics, I still endorse this as a performance and especially production-wise. I hope this lands with the public unlike the last one.

#35 – “Mourning” – Post Malone

Produced by Post Malone, Louis Bell and watt

Posty is in an... interesting place currently, and it’ll be interesting to see where he ends up going in terms of his sound considering the odd career limbo he’s found himself in. Part of me thinks – thanks to “Chemical” – he’ll just end up drying the same old wells from the past decade as long as they still do well, and does this new song prove that thesis? Damn, I guess people are just set out to prove me wrong today – this is also GREAT! The frailness from “Chemical” is still here, but it sounds a lot more purposeful here, as Post sounds absolutely helpless lamenting his alcoholism over this blend of cascading strings and down-to-Earth acoustics that represent the main dichotomy of the song: being over the Moon when you’re drunk and absolutely rock-bottom when hungover. This is one of the few times where a clipping mix works in pop music: the bass is so overwhelming over a pretty minimal, snap-focused beat that it further elevates that balance of extremes. Post is rapping again, and he’s taken a lot of the charisma he got in his singing back to his original craft which is pretty cool to hear, and his flexing sounds really dry and depressing here, especially in his higher register with the hiccups and one-liners – “turns out everyone’s free when the dinner is” is just great. In the second verse, he’s at his most paranoid, giving himself empty compliments on his tile floor of all things, before the bass drops and it took me completely by surprise the first time, especially with Post’s sudden intensity. This is honestly transcendent and might actually be my favourite Post Malone song ever. No notes – more of this please, it is fantastic.

#28 – “Haven’t You Ever Been in Love Before?” – Lewis Capaldi

Produced by Nick Atkinson, Edd Holloway and Lewis Capaldi

Let’s keep this up. Capaldi, impress me. The new album is called Broken by Desire to be Heavenly Sent and of course, it debuts at #1 – and it’s actually alright. Capaldi portrays himself as a bit of a young dumbass with no experience in love here, being basically condescended to by his partner as he tries to understand why she’s – or he’s, I don’t actually know about Mr. Capaldi – not as close to him as he wants to. In fact, Capaldi fully knows how unlikeable he is here – sure, he has the piano melodrama backing him but he’s using more emo inflections on the chorus as he cries “and she said this!” – it’s furthered by his flailing inflections and voice cracks too. He’s driven insane by how much his partner just doesn’t care for him, and it’s hilarious. On the second verse, he tries to logically negotiate with her, with phrases like “that’s something I could accept” as if he has a success criteria. The strings from Wired Strings sound great as they act as more than embellishments this time but actually commanding the melody which is a really nice switch from Capaldi’s usual piano-and-guitar foundation; it’s still here but de-emphasised for melodrama’s sake, with that bridge being a pretty wonderful example of it. The final chorus hits pretty hard and yeah, I love this too. Goddamn it, Capaldi – I still prefer “How I’m Feeling Now” but it’s closer than I thought it’d be... maybe I just am a sucker for strings and breakup melodrama.

#26 – “Padam Padam” – Kylie Minogue

Produced by LOSTBOY

The chart week is already great and they just dump a Kylie Minogue song on me? In the top 40? My day can’t really get much better, huh? This new single sounds like an aged version of what the future probably sounded like to someone when Kylie was in her first burst of popularity, and in a weird coincidence, ends up emulating elements of her second great era in the 2000s, except with a modern slap house feel. The title refers to the onomatopoeia of a beating heart, with Kylie looking for a fling that ends up taking his heart in a very cute strangers to lovers story that starts with a night out and ends with them getting to know each other well... but mostly each other’s bodies because there’s still a focus on sex here, and I mean, at 54, she can still sell it. Sure, she’s filtered with tons of Auto-Tune and almost robotic effects, but it makes her sound like some kind of seductive robot, and combined with the mechanical percussion, stiff bass and alarming synths, it’s one of those songs that seems like it would be lifeless but ends up being really charming just because of how well it’s sold. LOSTBOY’s production is mixed perfectly for this kind of compressed dance-pop, with the Auto-Tune being laid on really thick for some of her runs, and Kylie is always desperately trying to reach out of the lane that the groove gives her. Oh, and it’s also insanely catchy, so this Kylie Minogue sex-robot song will be stuck in my head forever. Hopefully it gets stuck in the charts too, this is so fun.

#22 – “AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM” – Beyoncé

Produced by Beyoncé, The-Dream and MIKE DEAN

I loved Beyoncé’s RENAISSANCE – in more ways than one but specifically not in one way. First of all, as a collection of songs, it is fantastic, with infectious hooks and grooves, no-stone-left-unturned production, and as an album, it’s seamless both in its sequencing and in its theme, using a plethora of samples to represent Black and LGBTQ+ club culture... though that’s where it also kind of loses me, since as a political statement, RENAISSANCE is misguided. It’s never preachy but it’s also never coming from a place where you can always confirm its genuineness, especially considering all the bragging that’s simultaneous with attempts to relate to – or at least use the aesthetics of – marginalised groups often finding themselves at an income around 0.01% of what Beyoncé sees in her bank account every other afternoon. That’s the one problem I have with “AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM”, as I otherwise love its production, especially considering its context within the album – seriously, that tail-end of RENAISSANCE gets REALLY weird. The solo version that’s on the album – and of course, the one OCC credits for whatever reason – samples Kilo Ali’s song of the same name, turning its reference to cocaine into a sensual house groove. Of course, Bey’s harmonies are unmatched, and MIKE DEAN is on the boards so the sound design matches each melody perfectly, and the bass is incredibly fluid. The pre-chorus is heavenly and the synthwork is... again, it’s MIKE DEAN. The only issue here is that it takes the War on Drugs and makes it a sex song with constant reference to “big business” and the racks Bey’s getting, which is a fascinating twist of the sample and definitely a creative one... but it also feels like honest-to-God clickbait especially with that as the title. Oh, and it’s no “ALL UP IN YOUR MIND” – many songs on that album are great, but none of them go as transcendentally hard as that one. So what does Kendrick Lamar add? Nothing. He adds a completely irrelevant and honestly incoherent flex verse that would fit on Mr. Morale but does not fit on this track at all, especially as Kenny has never worked as a rent-a-rapper guest. He does a good job here as always, but to put Kendrick on a song called “AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM”... again, it’s clickbait, right? It doesn’t help that I’m way harder to please when it comes to Kendrick than most others, so his sheer presence has never been something that immediately makes a song better to me unlike, well, Beyoncé. At least Kendrick kind of shows up – even if subtly – for the rest of the song as if he had any relevance or involvement outside of the verse. Also, he does MadeinTYO ad-libs for some reason in the final refrain, which is... only going to appeal to me. Next.

#9 – “Say Yes to Heaven” – Lana Del Rey

Produced by Rick Nowels

Lana did not seem to want to release this one, at least not for a while. It’s been in the vault since 2013, originally intended for Ultraviolence (her best!), and she’s just been desperately trying to put it on an album since it leaked in 2016, with outtakes from various album eras showing up, gaining a lot of traction on TikTok until I suppose she just gave in and recorded an official, non-album single to feed the fans’ craving for unreleased material. In a weird twist of fate, it hits the top 10, and is it any good? Well, it’s this week. Of course it is. Like many of the songs that have debuted, Lana takes a really simple concept and injects so much life into it that it becomes really compelling. Lana’s begging this partner to say yes to her and as a result say yes to Heaven – now that could mean a Hell of a lot of things, no pun intended, but here I prefer to think that it’s the simplest reading: their love would be a spiritual experience, and she doesn’t want either her or especially not him to miss that, so she’s always going to be there. The distant acoustics are drowned out by that excellent 60s guitar, and Lana’s as intimate as usual, as she wants him to allow his fears and the storm outside to dissipate just for this moment with her. You could definitely have a darker reading considering the pre-chorus and the echoing Wall of Sound production, but not every love song has to sound cutesy, since love is as nuanced a topic as anything a song can be about. If Lana wants her love song to have eerie strings, well, so be it, because I’m still convinced she’s in love, and the detail from Rick Nowels in ensuring everything has so much echo and reverb really elevates this into that spiritual experience she’s promising... and of course, she’s got the red dress on, which if you’ve been following on with her chart-wise, is also what she had on in her last solo top 10, “Summertime Sadness”. The red dress allows for chart success, I suppose, it’s just destiny.

Conclusion

I could honestly give Best of the Week to any of these songs and this was a fantastic showing from pretty much everyone involved. So naturally, there’s no Worst of the Week or a Dishonourable Mention – Best of the Week is tied between Lana Del Rey and Post Malone – that’s a collaboration I need to hear – for “Say Yes to Heaven” and “Mourning”, with a four-way tie for the Honourable Mention. Those two may be transcendent, but these four are still fantastic tracks, those being “Haven’t You Ever Been in Love Before?” by Lewis Capaldi, “AMERICA HAS A PROBLEM” by Beyoncé, “Dance Around It” by Joel Corry and Caity Baser and “UNHEALTHY” by Anne-Marie featuring Shania Twain... and honestly, probably in that order as well in terms of from best to worst. The next episode will have Lil Durk and Taylor Swift so unless some miracle happens, it won’t continue at this rate of quality but I mean, a woman can dream, right? Thank you for reading, rest in power to the legendary Tina Turner, and I’ll see you next week!

[spishidden]

Ranking the Nijisanji EN debut songs

This is just my opinion so don't take it seriously. I'm also not trying to hate on any of the people involved I love them all very much and think that they're all incredibly talented! This is just for fun.

4- Hope in the Dark

I'm srry Luxiem you guys are my favorite but compared to the other songs here this is at the bottom for me. I think that the instrumentals shine the most here ESPECIALLY with that beat drop in the chorus that's my favorite part of the song. The beginning is also rlly great it builds up the hype rlly well. My biggest issue is I don't like that rap part with Ike and Vox the lyrics don't sit well with me and I think it lasted too long. The song would've benefitted from more vocals in general and it would've been nice to hear more of the guys' singing. The small Japanese lines actually fit nice they didn't feel out of place at all. Finally I imagine if there was one more incredibly powerful chorus at the end to finish it off it would've made the song wrap even more nicely. Overall it's great but could've been better, 6/10 would listen again

(Also why is there album cover so much lackluster than the others c'mon the boys deserve some cool art too > <)

3- Black Out

AAA this was hard but Black Out is gonna sit at number 3. Just like the last song THE INSTRUMENTALS GO SO HARD HERE! I absolutely love the build up at the beginning and the atmosphere it created in the intro gives me chills. The best part of this song is the pre-chorus, most specifically the second pre-chorus. I love that they brought in the acoustic guitar it just blended so well with Petra's vocals. Speaking of the vocals I do think sometimes the instrumentals were overpowering their singing especially in the chorus but at the same time a part of me rlly likes the chaos there. Selen's rap is great didn't have much of a problem with it. Line distribution was good and the song ended with a bang I loved it. 7.5/10

2- God Sees All

I've replayed this song so many times omg the replay value is very high for this one. This and Black Out feel almost the same it's that I've listened to this one more so it's at number 2. Another strong intro and yes EVEN MORE AWESOME INSTRUMENTALS! This is the same producer that made Hope in the Dark so I'm not surprised that both choruses go so hard. Those short "tick tick"s in between the lines are so good??? I would like to take this time to express my confusion over the line "Somewhere someone is still thinking about someone else". It doesn't flow well idk why it's here it's my least favorite part I wish it was replaced with a different line. Anyways the part after it though is SO GOOD the melody change is awesome. "We're Ethyria Yea" yes queens go off 8/10

1- Diamond City Lights

This was easy omg I love this song sm. BEST LYRICS THIS HAS THE BEST LYRICS OUT OF ALL OF THEM. While it doesn't have the hardcore edm instrumentals of the other songs I think the guitar, synths, and percussion bring out a more natural feel that fits well with the vibe of the song. Whenever I listen to this song it lifts me up and makes me smile. AND GROUP CHORUSES I LOVE GROUP CHORUSES. It has both a strong beginning and ending, it has that last chorus that I absolutely love, the instrumental break doesn't feel out of place, pre-chorus slaps the buildup is wonderful. This song is just the whole package and Lazulight's vocals make it even better. The only minor issue is some of the lines might've sounded better if it was a bit higher cause sometimes it feels like they're struggling to hit the low notes but it's not that noticeable and even then they killed it. "Diamond City Lights illuminate what's inside" 9/10

Thanks for reading my review hoped you liked it! Plz be respectful and remember this is just my opinion

Photo is by @sakumanuts check out their layouts they're great ^^

[passionate-reply]

This week on Great Albums: lots of people love Gary Numan. But they tend to love his very early work, and his very recent work, without a whole lot vouching for the stuff in between. My favourite work of Numan’s is 1984′s Berserker, a true gem buried in the sands of many, many mediocre albums. Find out what makes it so great by watching my video, or reading the transcript below!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! This time around, we’re looking at a fairly famous artist, and at one of his not-as-famous works: Gary Numan’s Berserker, first released in 1984.

For the most part, if you’re a fan of Numan, you’re either a fan of his earliest work, and/or, his recent work since the 1990s, and there’s a substantive slump in between these two. In 1979, the artist made a tremendous splash with his initial hits “Cars” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”, but after the release of his second solo LP, Telekon, only the following year, the public rapidly began to sour on Numan’s android antics. While his early work is held in high regard, and perhaps even unassailable for synth fans, most of his other work in the 1980s is met with a lot more scrutiny.

Numan’s bad days arguably came to a head with 1983’s Warriors. Warriors was initially meant to have been produced by the great Bill Nelson, whose work Numan evidently much admired. However, the artists’ clashing personalities allegedly made it impossible for them to work together, and Nelson left the project and had his name removed from it. Besides this period’s poor aesthetic decisions, showcasing Numan with blond hair and head-to-toe leather like a very sorry Billy Idol clone, Warriors feels like a mess of disjointed sonic ideas, losing the nucleus of what had made Numan special.

Music: “Sister Surprise”

Like most of Numan’s work from this period, Warriors was not only a flop in the eyes of critics, but also an arguable commercial failure. It would go on to be the final record he released on the Beggars’ Banquet label; after its release, he decided to take matters into his own hands and start an independent label, Numa Records. This is where Berserker comes in, having been the first independent release Numan got to make. And I think it shows, in that the album comes across as extremely focused in its themes, as well as very willing to do things that are more novel and unique.

Music: “Berserker”

The album’s title track was its lead single, as well as its opener. As it opens the album with the line, “I’ve been waiting for you,” I can’t help but feel that I, too, have been waiting for Gary Numan, whose true genius lay dormant for some years, like the fabled king under the mountain. The title track’s screeching guitar is, perhaps ironically, more reminiscent of Bill Nelson’s famous guitar work than anything on Warriors. Overall, I can’t help but feel it resembles the general template of Numan’s celebrated later work, with its emphasis on jagged electronic textures rather than traditional instruments, as well as its lyricism, portraying an abstractly menacing narrator who seems as inscrutable and inhuman as they do dangerous. In that sense, it’s a bit of a glimpse into Numan’s future. Still, one can’t deny that Berserker remains an album that feels “of its time,” take it or leave it, as on the second and final single, “My Dying Machine.”

Music: “My Dying Machine”

“My Dying Machine” seems to revolve around its woodsy, sample-based percussion track, perhaps reminiscent of Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s work with gamelans and jegogs for the soundtrack of the famous film Akira, later in the 1980s--albeit less organic and more precisely mechanical. It’s a sound that I can’t get enough of, personally, but it’s also something that springs directly from the advancements in sampling technology that were becoming more accessible by this time. The use of female backing vocalists, heard on many tracks throughout the album, is another touch that grounds Berserker in a mid-80s context, as it was a fairly common trend at the time. But I’d argue that the employment of this technique enriches the album: Numan’s backing choir seem no less haunting than he does, surrounding him like sirens on a desolate crag, harrying us with hooks that in the past might have been played on an early synthesiser instead. The contrast of these female voices also helps highlight the greater vocal range that Numan himself attempts on this album. Squawking at higher pitches had been serviceable earlier in his career, when he remained more indebted to punk, but on Berserker, we really get a lot of his chest voice, and he proves himself to be a surprisingly competent vocalist on tracks like “Cold Warning.”

Music: “Cold Warning”

Earlier, I argued that Berserker’s title track prefigured Numan’s later albums, but I was mainly comparing lead singles to lead singles. “Cold Warning,” I think, sounds a lot like the typical album track on a recent Numan album: slower-paced, somewhat atmospheric, and ominous in a more moody and subtle manner as opposed to directly threatening. Note also its intro, with its prominent use of a viola, which really stands out against Berserker’s overall more electronic soundscape. By this point, Numan had been no stranger to incorporating traditional instruments; earlier in his career, he’d been impressed by the work of Billy Currie of Ultravox, who played not only synthesisers, but also string instruments like viola, in the context of a rock group. Numan had gone as far as to hire Currie to perform on his 1979 LP The Pleasure Principle, and its accompanying tour. Still, I think “Cold Warning” reminds me less of The Pleasure Principle, and more of Numan’s more recent efforts--particularly his 2021 album Intruder, which features Gorkem Sen playing the yaybahar, a novel string instrument of the latter’s own invention. Still, for as much as Berserker stands out as one of the least commercial endeavours from this period of Numan’s career, it’s not totally devoid of pop influences. Take, for example, the track “This Is New Love.”

Music: “This Is New Love”

From its title alone, “This Is New Love” seems to announce itself as something more conventional and accessible, and indeed, its lyrics are more straightforward than what you’ll find elsewhere on Berserker. Those omnipresent backing vocalists are given a pleasingly hooky assignment here, and the instrumental arrangement, dominated by that oh-so-80s slap bass, is also less abrasive, and an apparent nod towards pop. If this track were also a scrying crystal, I’d say it looks ahead to Numan’s near future, and lighter, more funky tracks like “Your Fascination.”

Of course, I can’t do Berserker justice without talking about the visual side of this period in Numan’s career. Front and center on the cover of the album, as well as contemporary supplemental releases like singles, we see Numan in the distinctive makeup associated with this era: solid white skin, with striking, solid, deep blue hair, eyes, and lips. On one hand, his appearance here shares a lot in common with where he got started, generally painted white with a lot of dark eyeliner, but there’s also an element of newness about it, in the use of that brilliant blue. Visually as well as musically, Berserker feels to me like the ideal thing for an artist to be doing by the time of his eighth major release: whittling down to the very best elements that defined their initial work, while incorporating and experimenting with new ideas at the same time. The last time we saw a headshot of Numan on the cover of an album was the aforementioned Telekon, but in contrast to the ambiguous and perhaps diffident expression Numan had there, on the cover of Berserker, he seems much more sure of himself. Staring directly forward, with perhaps a hint of anger suggested in his brows, he seems to regard us with confidence, and a certain single-mindedness.

Taken together, Berserker is an album that “convinces,” expressing a clarity, certainty, and cohesiveness of creative ideas. Like the savage and frenzied warriors of the Old Norse skalds, Berserker comes after us relentlessly, invoking something otherworldly as it does so.

But as much as Berserker seems like such a determined statement, Numan never necessarily made an album that was exactly like it. He seems to have a relative soft spot for it, in that he still performs tracks from this album in live sets despite largely snubbing the rest of his 80s output, but Berserker didn’t exactly revolutionize the way he approached music at the time. For Numan, the 1980s were largely a time of throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, and, as mentioned above, we know he wouldn’t find what stuck for him until a decade after the release of Berserker. If you’re looking for more of this sound, your best bet might be the 1985 single “Change Your Mind,” a collaboration between Numan and Bill Sharpe of the jazz-funk outfit Shakatak. While combining Numan’s sound with funk may sound a bit strange, it’s something that many of the synth whizzes from earlier in the decade had started doing to remain relevant in the mid-to-late 1980s, and at least on this cracking single, it seems to come together pretty well.

Music: “Change Your Mind”

My favourite track on Berserker is “The Hunter.” While I’ve emphasized the extent to which Berserker is a forward-looking album for Numan in a sea of mostly forgotten mistakes, “The Hunter” is the track that feels the most to me like it could be a classic Numan work, and I can easily imagine a lower-tech version of it appearing on Telekon. Just listen to that delightful air-raid siren synth rendition of the main vocal hook, and I’m sure you’ll agree! That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!

Music: “The Hunter”

[ask-the-crimson-king]

Music Shill of the Day: "JUDAS" by Lord of the Lost

PART 1 of 2: "DAMNATION"

Welcome to my Music Shill on the album "Judas" by Lord of the Lost. I think it's the first or second time I've shilled them, and it's honestly due to the fact that I've only found them quite recently. And they just so happened to be releasing a new album. Lucky me.

I will be going through each of the tracks with various ratings, gushing, and general nerdy bullshit on why I like them. Don't expect anything to be really technical, I'm just an average listener. And if you want the theological side of things, ask my friend @hoholupercal-adopts for that. Overall this album is fucking beautiful and is generally fantastic. There are some I like more than others, but please go out and give these songs a listen. And maybe buy the album as well if you vibe with it.

LINKS WILL BE PROVIDED TO THE SONGS MENTIONED. I will also be doing a 1-10 rating system, where this is the scale: 1 - garbage. Horrible. Wow this just sucks. 5 - average. It's decent. It's workable. Not horrible, not great either. 10 - fantastic. An absolute banger. Holy shit. This is so great.

Yes it is entirely subjective. And since this rambling has taken up so much space, I will be putting the actual songs and ratings under the cut, but have a link to the album via Youtube anyway.

ONWARDS, FRIENDS!

1. "Priest" - 10/10

Starting off EXTREMELY STRONG with the song that really got me hyped about the album, we have Priest.

What is there not to love on this album? The drums at the beginning, the ethereal and light singing, and how Chris' vocals pair with them right into those nice, deep "PRIEST." screams. The first verse builds on the opening with that nice riff in the background as intensity builds, and then...

That. Fucking. CHORUS. It sounds so fucking good. I can't accurately state how much I love it actually. Chris' vocals sound wonderful. I love how flowy it is and how much power is within the chorus, I love Pi's backing "We're all at- we're all at - we're all at fault", I love everything about it. I just can't understate it. The fucking sheer intensity this song brings all the way through, then the break for that moment of calm, and then going right into the last chorus...

Perfect. Wonderful. Beautiful. I listened to this song non-stop when it was originally released as a single. It inspired a small piece of writing from me too. It's so good. It's too fucking good. Fantastic opener for the album. What could possibly succeed this amazing fucking track?

2. "For They Know Not What They Do" - 8/10

Another great one. Not as great as Priest, but still a great song overall.

The opening is very interesting but kinda thematic for the album moving forward. It uses a chorus in the opening and closing of the track, which happens to be only 5 people layered over each other many times, and this chorus shows up in several tracks throughout the record. With only the exception of "Viva Vendetta", which had a full chorus of 386 people. That aside, it does sound quite nice. It is indeed a banger.

The lyrics are very repetitive, but it works very well for the song. They don't sound boring or tiring, but the song is more low-key than Priest. Though its chorus is much more reliant on Chris' screams than its predecessor, and the screams do sound great when contrasted by his cleans for the rest of the chorus. The piano melody in the back also sounds beautiful for the entire duration of the song.

A wonderful song, it still slaps immensely. So the album is going pretty strong, but already these two songs were released ahead of the album. What does the first 'new' song of the album have to offer?

3. "Your Star Has Led You Astray" - 8/10

It has a LOT to offer, actually.

It is more intense and a bit more powerful than For They Know Not What They Do, and I do like this song a bit more. I just don't want to do something like '8.3/10' cause if these songs were on a tierlist they'd be in the same tier.

The organ underlying everything is a very subtle touch, and it's a very welcome one. It lends to this feeling of this being a prayer or a confession within a church, perhaps of someone confiding in some sort of priest. Or someone being scorned by a priest or religious figure.

The choir in the background, which also comes out more prominently towards the end of the song, also lends more to this preacher/church vibe that the song has. The instrumentals outside of that act as almost a sort of contrast, at least with the guitar/bass lines. They feel very heavy, very intense, while the piano, vocals, choir, and organ have a more light and almost somber feel. It blends very well and makes for a wonderful song.

So far, so good. Now, what's next?

4. Born With a Broken Heart - 10/10

ABSOLUTE. BANGER.

And I almost thought this may be a Primal Fear cover when I first saw the track title a few weeks back.

While the two tracks proceeding it were more low-key, with some nice heavier feeling added in, this returns to a more heavy and weighty and intense sound. The verses sound groovy and almost bouncy, with the guitars taking a bit of a backseat when the vocals begin. I think it's a great contrast to the rest of the song itself, where they have that same sort of constant sound that they had in Priest.

The chorus is slower, but still carries all the power and weight of the verses right along with them. The vocals on this track are beautiful and wonderful and I adore the immensely. Once more the organ is a very subtle and great touch. Once more, the choir in the back sounds wonderful, and the singled out solo voice of Scarlet Dorn (I believe that's her) sounds as light and moving as it did in Priest.

Overall, amazing song. Absolutely slaps immensely. Love it.

Already a third of the way through disc 1. What can follow this pattern?

5. "The 13th" - 7/10

It is a good song. It is above average. It isn't entirely my style, but I can see others definitely vibing to it. It's very somber, it's very slow, but it still carries weight to it. Also the tie-in to Born With a Broken Heart is nice.

The organs here take a more prominent role in the song, which is nice. The synths in the back of the song are something that I find to be interesting, but not something that I really vibe with. They almost sort of clash with the overall feel of the song in my opinion.

The chorus is very nice, and feels on the same level of Born with a Broken Heart in terms of emotional intensity. This is most certainly a more somber piece for sure. It's much more sorrowful. The vocals are great, the overall instrumentals are fine, this is a good song. Just not one that I enjoy as much as other entries.

With all that being said, onward to the next song!

6. "In the Field of Blood" - 9/10

Alright. I can see people waving phones and lighters to this song already.

Another slower, somber sounding song. But this one is done better than The 13th in my humble opinion. There isn't the odd synth, the piano returns, there's some nice bits of stringwork done around the verses, and it feels more like a classic metal ballad. The piano in the chorus paired with the vocals sounds very, very nice. I love it.

It picks up a bit in terms of intensity for the bridge, when there is a small key change and the introduction of some screams. It transitions very smoothly into a nice chorus, and then there is a nice, pleasant sounding groove to lead the song out.

Heavy, slow, sad, but wonderful. Remorseful as well. Very well done.

7. "2000 Years a Pyre" - 8/10

A really, really good song. Another slower, heavier piece. But it sounds very nice.

The only thing I don't like is how this is the third track now with a chorus that sounds kinda samey. It's another with a beautiful piano accompaniment to the vocals, and sounds alltogether very sorrowful. Which is a good theme since this is the "damnation" of Judas thus far.

However, the song has a nice vibe and beat to it. The choir backing the chorus sounds great. The ending distortion and the ramping of how heavy it is for a bridge is very cool as well. Not quite an absolute 10/10 banger, but still a very good song.

8. "Death is Just a Kiss Away" - 10/10

I. AM. A. BITCH. FOR. GOOD. STRINGS.

AND THIS SONG DEFINITELY HAS THAT. AND! It has the leitmotif taking a much more central role. It's the tune of the verse, and it comes back several times across the record.

And man do I love how its played in the opening. I love the strings, the organ, the piano, how everything slowly keeps building and building over the course of the song. It doesn't just feel the same sort of somber and sad as some of the other tracks do. It builds and builds and builds, ending with Chris' vocals sounding more powerful and much more confident.

The lyrics sound almost like a conversation or some sort of Shakespearean lament. Okay, sure, the other songs do too, but I still love them nonetheless. I also like how the guitars and most of the heavier elements of LOTL as a band take a break for this piece.

I love this song. Love it to death. The choir at the end is a great touch as well. So good.

9. "The Heart is a Traitor" - 9/10

AH, YES. The 90s metalcore sounding song. Hell yeah.

This song kicks ass. A return to the intensity found to open the album, and a style that is reminscent of Born with a Broken Heart but with more of that heavy metal feeling for the chorus.

Here, the instrumentation of the song relies more on the classic bits of LOTL - guitars, some piano, the drums, and some bass. There is also some synth added in, but of course there is. I was almost nervous cause I didn't like the vibe or feel of the synths used in The 13th, but they work really well here. It follows the guitars really well, and it blends into the overall song wonderfully. Plus it helps out that 90s vibe.

The vocals are wonderful as well, with nice screams mixed among the powerful, gravelly sounding choruses and cleaner verses. Overall, wonderful song.

Almost done. ONWARDS!

10. "Euphoria" - 8/10

It sounds very nice. It is slow, deliberate, it has good pacing. The piano sounds very light, and I get visions of something like A Christmas Carol from the song. It has the late December or just a cold winter's night vibes.

Once more, the heavier elements are absent for a good deal of the song, but they do eventually kick in. The build up is great, it is well done, but not as well as Death is Just a Kiss Away to me. Still, the song is very good. Powerful and soft vocals with a nice slow rhythm on drums and a pleasant piano in the back works wonderfully.

A great song, to be sure.

11. "Be Still and Know" - 9/10

The first instrumental track on the record, and it's got the entire band on display here.

The intro is intense, and it brings back the leitmotif as well. The guitar solo is grand, especially how it ties into the leitmotif towards its end.

The song itself serves as a good almost-midway point for the album. A chance to breathe and feel, a chance to listen and enjoy. Of course, you can get that with the other 10 songs too, but there's just something about an instrumental track acting as a great checkpoint that's very refreshing. Even with one that carries such a heavy and powerful rhythm to it.

A wonderful, beautiful piece. Very, very well done. Very enjoyable.

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

12. "The Death of All Colours" - 10/10

An acapella piece to see the end of disc 1, and once more the leitmotif is on display through the vocals themselves.

Well, of course they are, there's only the vocals to be heard. But you know what I mean -- last track had them in the instrumentals, this one has them in the vocals.

I love the lyrics here. I find myself singing this song often. It's simply too good not to. This song was already released a few weeks ahead of the album itself, but I hadn't heard it until I heard Priest.

It has power that slowly dwindles as the song ends, and carries with it these sadder and more somber themes. It's a wonderful piece in and of itself. In fact I didn't even realize it was acapella until I saw the "Track by Track" video for it on LOTL's YT channel. It feels whole and complete. A great song. Absolutely fantastic. Great way to end the first half of the dual-album.

Final thoughts will be shared in a separate post, but overall, already there are plenty of really, really solid songs here. I love all of them. Not one do I think is particularly bad or even really just 'meh' thus far. Will this change in disc 2?

FIND OUT IN... About an hour and a half? Maybe? Or maybe just wait for the reblog that'll come at a more reasonable hour.

[taste-in-music]

taste-in-music’s Year End Wrap-Up

Hello everybody! We’ve finally reached the end of 2020. While I’m glad to leave this miserable year behind, one of things that undeniably got me through it was the vast amount of awesome music we got. In past years I’ve made favorite album and EP lists, but this time around I’m going to tackle them all in one go, giving reviews on the projects that had some significances to me over the course of the year. I’m going to make a post for my favorite songs too, so keep an eye out for that in coming days. Now, without further ado, let’s get started, shall we?

folklore by Taylor Swift: This was an incredible year of growth for Taylor Swift. As much as I’ve enjoyed her past music, the way she constantly felt the need to address what people thought of her always irked me, (though after watching her documentary, I do understand why she did it.) It wasn’t Taylor Swift the public persona that was most interesting, I thought. It was Taylor Swift the artist, the songwriter, the storyteller. What I wanted was an album focused on that. This year, I got one, (well... more on that later,) and it’s my favorite project she’s ever done. The tales Swift spins on folklore span across love triangles, heiresses, and battlefields, and she nails each and every one. While the chilly indie-folk influence from the likes of Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon is prominent, Swift’s warmth and charisma always cuts through the fog like a beam of sunlight. So yeah, this is my undeniable album of the year.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple: I only started listening to Fiona Apple last year and had thoroughly enjoyed her music, but this album cemented her as one of my favorite songwriters and performers of all time. Everything about Fetch The Bolt Cutters is so idiosyncratic yet fits together in just the right way, like watching an entire house being dropped from the sky and falling perfectly into place. It is a testament to the creative process, emotional honesty, and breaking free from all the cages you may find yourself in, whether they be societal, personal, or those of your own making. And in a year that was so isolating, it felt like Apple was whispering everything I needed to hear right into my ear, just when I needed it. In short, my boltcutters have been motherfucking fetched. 

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers: When Punisher was announced, I had no clue how Phoebe Bridgers would match the quality of Stranger In The Alps. Upon first listen, I wasn’t sure she had. By the fifteenth time I was listening to this album and every lyric was hitting like Cupid’s arrow to the jugular, I knew she’d surpassed it. Punisher presents a sonic scope that both comforts and crushes all at once, like with the upbeat yet mournful horns on “Kyoto” or the cathartic swell on standout “I Know The End.” In my opinion, Bridgers is one of the greatest songwriters of our generation in the making, and I can’t wait to see what the future brings for her. She may know the end, but she’s far from it. 

SAWAYAMA by Rina Sawayama: This is the album I see becoming a new shorthand for the true potential of pop excellence, a cult hit that never got its time to shine but is beloved by pop music geeks to the ends of the earth, like EMOTION by Carly Rae Jepsen. SAWAYAMA so effortlessly blends diverse genres and influences like disco, nu metal, and arena rock, and it yet it remains cohesive due to Rina Sawayama’s sheer strength as a performer. She deserves a spot on the pop girlie hierarchy, and one near the top. 

Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa: I really enjoyed Dua Lipa’s debut album, but even I didn’t expect her to come through with such a fully realized, consistent, downright fantastic follow up. Future Nostalgia is a pop album that feels studied, like Lipa did her research of pop’s past as she made it. The result is an album that synthesizes several different sounds under her vision, one that is always trained ahead, and it simply slaps. In a perfect world, nearly every song on this album got spun off into a hit single. 

evermore by Taylor Swift: 2020 was already my year of listening to Taylor Swift, (I went through her whole discography, cultivated a favorites playlist, and at the end of the year I was in the top 2% of her yearly Spotify listeners.) evermore was a lovely cherry to top it all off. While folklore enchanted me with its stories, evermore captivated me with its melodies. I haven’t been able to get snippets of this album out. of. my. head. for weeks now. It’s a bit less consistent than it’s older sister, (and likely to live in its shadow,) but there is still so much to love. 

I’m Allergic to Dogs! by Remi Wolf: This EP is so much goddamn fun. It’s a blend of many different sounds, indie pop, electronic, maybe hip hop, I think reggae at points? It’s such a colorful, textured, quirky listen bristling with energy and undeniable hooks. “Woo!” conquered my Summer, and months later the bridge of “Photo ID” conquered TikTok. Keep your eye out for Remi Wolf in the coming year, she’s going to make a big splash. 

Good At Being Young by Charli Adams: Good At Being Young was the first EP this year that I could not get enough of. It drifts through dreamy indie-pop sounds, with melancholic guitars and cloudy synths, and Adams has a deep vocal timbre that delivers tales of adolescent tribulations with just the right amount of wistfulness. Overall, it builds the perfect soundscape for a late-night drive.

Cape God by Allie X: Allie X has been keeping us FED with content. It seems like only yesterday that Super Sunset came out, and yet her output remains impressively consistent. This album has impressive highs, some lower moments, but the danceability, duets, and enticing darkness under its shiny pop veneer make it a record you won’t want to skip. 

La vita nuova by Christine and The Queens: Perhaps the biggest flex of 2020 was Christine and The Queens dropping a fantastic EP and accompanying short film right out of the gate. The grooves on this are infectious, wiry, and air-tight, (the Caroline Polachek feature was another added bonus,) but that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of emotional weight too. 

Lighter by Donna Missal: This was one of my most anticipated albums of the year, and it’s hard to determine whether it disappointed or not. I think the only thing holding Lighter back is that This Time was such a formative album for me, (my favorite of 2018, to the uninitiated.) In fact, this album flows way better than This Time, more cohesive with its storytelling and more consistent in folk-rock sound. And, of course, Donna Missal’s vocals stun on both the bangers and the ballads. 

SURF by BLACKSTARKIDS: There was no record this year that was more instantly likeable than this one. The blend of low-fi indie pop and hip hop makes for a whirlwind of sunny fun and youthful malaise that would make the perfect soundtrack for a road trip to the beach. Standouts include the opening track “SOUNDS LIKE FUN,” the chill “WIGS,” and blissful title track “MUSIC TO SURF TO.”

The Baby by Samia: I’ve had my eye on Samia since “Milk” dropped years ago. Seeing her live sparked my belief that she was an indie darling in the making, and The Baby confirmed that she definitely was. The lyrics on this album mix quiet contemplation with just enough sardonic wit and raw emotion throughout a varied selection of sunny rock bops and gut wrenching ballads. If you enjoyed Punisher, then I can’t recommend this enough.

Season 2 by Nasty Cherry: Nasty Cherry is a group that I will not stop rooting for. Their EP from last year showed their potential for nailing monster hooks, but this sophomore effort shows just how versatile they can be. This EP covers everything from Dylan Brady produced hyperpop to early-2000s reminiscent pop rock to emotional balladry, and they pull it all off flawlessly. 

A Little Rhythm and a Wicked Feeling by Magdalena Bay: This album became a fast favorite way late in the year, there is such a sweetness to Magdalena Bay’s music that makes it stick in your brain like a piece of blue raspberry bubblegum. This EP is spacey, catchy, and filled with electronic synthpop mastery, with countless catchy hooks that’ll make you feel like drifting and dancing all at once.

Miss Anthropocene by Grimes: The bubblegum bombast of Art Angels fully redefined my taste in pop years ago, so I was fascinated to see how Grimes would follow it up. On Miss Anthropocene, she leans into darker, more industrial textures, but also anchors it back to Earth with acoustic touches and some of her most introspective lyrics to date. Grimes painted a version of a world on the brink of disaster on this album, a picture that was hypnotically beautiful. And in a year where the word was a certified disaster, that was strangely comforting.

Plastic Hearts by Miley Cyrus: I’ve been wanting Miley to go rock for so goddamn long, Plastic Hearts was bound to make this list by pure validation alone. But what can I say? This breed of glossy 80s rock suits Cyrus’s rougher voice so well! I hope she stays in this lane a bit longer, but as we know, she’s one of pop’s most chameleonic figures. Only time will tell. 

Where Does The Devil Hide by Zella Day: I have been patiently awaiting new Zella Day music ever since getting hooked on Kicker back in 2017, so this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. This EP sounds nothing like Kicker, and I couldn’t be happier. It shows Day leaning even more into her influences from the past, (the 60s/70s vibes are intense with this one,) but also breathing a refreshing new life into them. 

SOUL LADY by Yukika: When I imagine the ideal of pop music, what it would sound like in a perfect world, this is what it sounds like. SOUL LADY is full of pristine, glossy production and catchy hooks that feel like they’ve come down from the clouds. I’ll admit that I can have trouble forming a connection with music when I don’t understand the lyrics, (it’s something I’m working on,) but this album cleared that hurdle with ease. If you’re curious about city pop or K-pop this is a great place to start. 

Heaven Is Without You by Love You Later: Give me lush pop production and heartbroken lyrics finished off with a heaping helping of nostalgia and I’ll eat it up with a spoon. Love You Later has been feeding my addiction to this genre for years, and this latest helping is particularly sweet. 

IN A DREAM by Troye Sivan: Troye Sivan has always supplied the bops, but it was about time that he started experimenting with his sound a little bit more. This EP offers some harder-hitting electronic textures, but also the addictive hooks that’ll keep you coming back for more.

Ungodly Hour by Chloe X Halle: These women are so TALENTED! If there is any word I’d use to describe this album it would be “effortless,” the harmonies, grooves, and chemistry between Chloe and Halle feels so natural and free-flowing. Charisma just rolls off of them in droves, I see full-blown stardom and several Grammys in their future.

Watching You by Robinson: This EP was one of the first on this list to arrive this year, and it still hits months later. Robinson’s confessional lyrics work wonders over the buoyant pop grooves, and “Don’t Say” remains one of the best pop songs of recent years. 

Manic by Halsey: I respect Halsey for dipping her toes into a myriad of different genres, (synth pop, rock, hip hop, and acoustic balladry,) but it does make for a jumbled listening experience. Still, I appreciate that this album features some of Halsey’s strongest tracks and writing to date, offering greater experimentation and emotional imtimacy than album’s past. 

We Don’t Stop by Aly & AJ: Should this count? It’s more a compilation of their past EP and singles... I don’t care, I’m counting it because there’s some new stuff too. This is an excellent display of Aly & AJ’s pop prowess in recent years, the hooks, vocal chemistry, and shimmery production are undeniable. 

Under My Influence by The Aces: The Aces returned in 2020 with a more laid-back, groovier record than their debut, exploring a wider variety of sounds. They’re as magnetic and likeable a group as ever, each member giving it their all, but I think I’ll return to the debut more often. 

Strangers/Lovers by Dagny: I’ve been anticipating a longer Dagny project, as she’s been drip-feeding us singles for a while now. This was a lot of fun, with Dagny pairing her upbeat earnestness with stories of romantic tribulation. While the hooks aren’t as memorable as her past offerings, there is still so much to enjoy. Lead single “Come Over” and “Let Me Cry” are my favorites.

DUALITY by Tatiana Hazel: I came across this via recommendation on Tik Tok and it’s a solid pop record! The music is swooning, synthy, and tinged with disco and Latin influence. The record doesn’t waste a second of its runtime, clocking in at less than half an hour and grooving the whole time.

After Hours by The Weeknd: The sonic palette of After Hours is so engaging, a neon-drenched blend of synthwave, electropop, and R&B. I’ve always felt lukewarm on The Weeknd’s musical persona of brooding, villainous party monster, so the strongest moments on this album tend to be when he subverts that in some way. Still, in full, this album is an undeniable force of smash hits, stadium-shaking ballads, and cinematic flair. I can’t wait for his Super Bowl performance. 

Petrol Bloom by LAUREL: It’s no secret that this year was chock-full of 80s revival albums (there’s what, five others on this list?) LAUREL wasn’t an artist I was expecting to go in that direction after the brooding folk pop of her debut album, but her deeper timbre works great alongside the synthy soundscapes. 

positions by Ariana Grande: I’ve just come to expect that nearly all of Ariana Grande’s albums are going to be growers to me. My first listen to positions was underwhelming, but the songs have grown on me more and more. This album feels like being let in on a giggly, fun slumber party with Grande and her friends. I wouldn’t call this her strongest album by far, and while I tend to prefer when she favors the more powerful parts of her range, (and her enunciations could still use some work,) there is a lot of good material here. 

THE ALBUM by BLACKPINK: We may just have to stan. I checked this out after watching their Netflix documentary, and while this breed of cacophonous, in-your-face electropop isn’t something I can listen to all the time, the hooks and charisma are undeniable. It certainly makes me feel like a bad bitch whenever I’m working out. 

Kid Krow by Conan Gray: Conan Gray burst onto my radar offering dreamy tracks rich with teen malaise and suburban restlessness, and a good amount of that initial appeal carries over onto this album. Kid Krow has both a larger instrumental scope and more stripped-back moments. In the end, it still feels like Gray is finding his voice as an artist, but he's giving up great bops to jam out to as he does.

Petals For Armor by Hayley Williams: Hayley Williams is one of my favorite vocalists, so seeing her venture out for a solo project was exciting. This album offers a mixed bag of danceable jams, emotive moments that showcase Williams’s powerful voice, and a few skips. But overall it showcases Williams’s strength as a performer as she tackles her past with vulnerability and versatility.

Apart by LÉON: Oh, man. This one was kind of disappointing. For context, LÉON’s self-titled debut was my favorite album of last year. This follow-up is by no means bad, but every song on her first album was instantly memorable. This one, not so much. LÉON’s vocals are beautiful, and there are some stand-out tracks, but I don’t see myself returning to this nearly as much. 

Blush by Maya Hawke: Maya Hawke’s Blush was to my 2020 what Tōth’s Practice Magic and Seek Professional Help When Necessary was to my 2019, (and that makes sense, as they’ve collaborated in the past.) This album is so blissful and nonchalant, and Maya Hawke has a gentle, soothing voice that feels wise beyond her years. While the writing isn’t as hard-hitting as, say, the Phoebe Bridgers album, sometimes I just want to listen to something that could rock me off into a dream world. If you like folksy, down-to-earth ballads, you’ve got a solid collection of them right here. 

Dedicated Side B by Carly Rae Jepsen: Of course Queen Carly would pull through with B-sides for Dedicated, did we expect anything less? Jepsen’s brand of controlled yet carefree shimmery poptimism drenched in 80s nostalgia that never fails to put me in a good mood. This album has some lusher, more tropical instrumentation than Dedicated proper, but works great alongside it.

Missing Person by Kelsy Karter: To the Plastic Hearts fans out there, your homework now is to give this record a listen. This rock album presents pop hooks, but a lot of reckless rock fun too. Kelsy Karter has so much irresistible swagger and carefree spirit as a performer, speeding through the emotional highs and lows like she’s burning rubber in a cherry red Cadillac. 

how i’m feeling now by Charli XCX: I’ll admit, this album was a bit abrasive to me on first listen. But tracks like “anthems” and “forever” made me return, and it’s a huge grower. If you listen closely, you’ll find the sugary-sweet hooks and relatable sentiments nestled deep in the crunchy hyperpop textures, begging to be discovered and eventually loved. 

Jaguar by Victoria Monét: If you enjoyed positions, then check out the debut from one of that album’s most prominent co-writers. Jaguar’s concise collection of silky R&B slow-burners show that Victoria Monet’s is a superstar in her own right. 

Some great albums I listened to that didn’t come out this year: Blue by Joni Mitchell, BLACKPINK IN YOUR AREA by BLACKPINK, I Need to Start a Garden by Haley Heynderickx, Plastic Beach by Gorillaz, Out in the Storm by Waxahatchee, 7 by Beach House, Dummy by Portishead, Lovers Fevers by Babygirl, and Red by Taylor Swift. 

Whether you liked, reblogged, or commented on a post, sent me an ask, or interacted with this blog in any way, thank you so much for all the support throughout the year! I can’t express how much I appreciate it. 

What were your favorite albums from this year? Did I miss anything? Send me an ask and let me know. I’ll tell you my thoughts, or put it on my to-listen-to list if I haven’t heard it. 

Here’s to 2021! May it clear the extremely low bar set by this year. 

[sinceileftyoublog]

Pitchfork Music Festival 2021 Preview: 15 Can’t-miss Acts

black midi; Photo by YIS KID

BY JORDAN MAINZER

While yours truly won’t be attending Pitchfork Music Festival this year, SILY contributor Daniel Palella will be covering the actual fest. If I was attending, though, these would be the acts I’d make sure to see. 5 from each day, no overlaps, so you could conceivably see everyone listed.

FRIDAY

Armand Hammer, 1:00 PM, Green Stage

Earlier this year, New York hip hop duo Armand Hammer released their 5th album Haram (BackwoodzStudioz) in collaboration with on-fire producer The Alchemist. It was the duo’s (ELUCID and Billy Woods) first time working with a singular producer on a record (though Earl Sweatshirt produced a track), and likewise, The Alchemist actually tailored his beats towards the two MCs. Haram is the exact kind of hip hop that succeeds early in the day at a festival, verbose and complex rhymes over languid, cloudy, sample-heavy beats, when attendees are more likely to want to sit and listen than dance. And you’re going to want to listen to Armand Hammer, whose MCs’ experiential words frame the eerie hues of the production. “Dreams is dangerous, linger like angel dust,” Woods raps on opener “Sir Benni Miles”, never looking back as he and Elucid’s stream-of-consciousness rhymes cover everything from colonization to Black bodily autonomy and the dangers of satisfaction disguised as optimism. (“We let BLM be the new FUBU,” raps Quelle Chris on “Chicharrones”; “Iridescent blackness / Is this performative or praxis?” ponders Woods on “Black Sunlight”.)  There are moments of levity on Haram, like KAYANA’s vocal turn on “Black Sunlight” and the “what the hell sound is this?” type sampling that dominates warped, looped tracks like “Peppertree” and “Indian Summer”, built around sounds of horns and twirling flute lines. For the most part, Haram is an album of empathetic realism. “Hurt people hurt people,” raps Elucid on “Falling Out of the Sky”, a stunning encapsulation of Armand Hammer’s world where humanism exists side-by-side with traumatic death and feelings of revenge.

You can also catch Armand Hammer doing a live set on the Vans Channel 66 livestream at 12 PM on Saturday.

Dogleg, 1:45 PM, Red Stage

It feels like we’ve been waiting years to see this set, and actually, we have! The four-piece punk band from Michigan was supposed to play last year’s cancelled fest in support of their searing debut Melee (Triple Crown), and a year-plus of pent up energy is sure to make songs like “Bueno”, “Fox”, and “Kawasaki Backflip” all the more raging. Remember: This is a band whose reputation was solidified live before they were signed to Triple Crown and released their breakout album. Seeing them is the closest thing to a no-brainer that this year’s lineup offers.

Revisit our interview with Dogleg from last year, and catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Subterranean with fellow Pitchfork performer Oso Oso and Retirement Party.

Hop Along, 3:20 PM, Red Stage

Though lead singer Frances Quinlan released a very good solo album last year, it’s been three years since their incredible band Hop Along dropped an album and two years since they’ve toured. 2018′s Bark Your Head Off, Dog (Saddle Creek), one of our favorite albums of that year, should comprise the majority of their setlist, but maybe they have some new songs?

Catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Metro with Varsity and Slow Mass.

black midi, 4:15 PM, Green Stage

The band who had the finest debut of 2019 and gave the best set of that year at Pitchfork is back. Cavalcade (Rough Trade) is black midi’s sophomore album, methodical in its approach in contrast with the improvisational absurdism of Schlagenheim. Stop-start, violin-laden lead single and album opener “John L”, a song about a cult leader whose members turn on him, is as good a summary as ever of the dark, funky eclecticism of black midi, who on Cavalcade saw band members leave and new ones enter, their ever shapeshifting sound the only consistent thing about them. A song like the jazzy “Diamond Stuff” is likely impossible to replicate live--its credits list everything from 19th century instruments to household kitchen items used for percussion--but is key to experiencing their instrumental adventurousness. On two-and-a-half-minute barn burner “Hogwash and Balderdash,” they for the first time fully lean into their fried Primus influences, telling a tale of two escaped prisoners, “two chickens from the pen.” At the same time, this band is still black midi, with moments that call back to Schlagenheim, the churning, metallic power chords via jittery, slapping funk of “Chondromalacia Patella” representative of their quintessential tempo changes. And as on songs like Schlagenheim’s “Western”, black midi find room for beauty here, too, empathizing with the pains of Marlene Dietrich on a bossa nova tune named after her, Geordie Greep’s unmistakable warble cooing sorrowful lines like, “Fills the hall tight / And pulls at our hearts / And puts in her place / The girl she once was.” Expect to hear plenty from Cavalcade but also some new songs; after all, this is a band that road tests and experiments with material before recording it.

Catch them doing a 2 PM DJ set on Vans Channel 66 on Saturday and at an aftershow on Monday at Sleeping Village.

Yaeji, 7:45 PM, Blue Stage

What We Drew (XL), the debut mixtape from Brooklyn-based DJ Yaeji, was one of many dance records that came out after lockdown that we all wished we could experience in a crowd as opposed to at home alone. Now's our chance to bask in all of its glory under a setting sun. Maybe she’ll spin her masterful remix of Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” from the Club Future Nostalgia remix album, or her 2021 single “PAC-TIVE”, her and DiAN’s collaboration with Pac-Man company Namco.

Angel Olsen; Photo by Dana Trippe

SATURDAY

Bartees Strange, 1:45 PM, Red Stage

One of our favorite albums of last year was Live Forever (Memory Music), the debut from singer-songwriter and The National fanatic Bartees Strange, one that contributor Lauren Lederman called “a declaration of an artist’s arrival.” He’s certainly past arrived when you take into account his busy 2021, releasing a new song with Lorenzo Wolff and offering his remix services to a number of artists, including illuminati hotties and fellow Pitchfork performer (and tour mate) Phoebe Bridgers. Expect to hear lots of Live Forever during his Pitchfork set, one of many sets at the fest featuring exciting young guitar-based (!) bands.

Catch him at a free (!!) aftershow on Monday at Empty Bottle with Ganser.

Faye Webster, 4:00 PM, Blue Stage

Since we previewed Faye Webster’s Noonchorus livestream in October, she’s released the long-awaited follow-up to Atlanta Millionaires Club, the cheekily titled I Know I’m Funny haha (Secretly Canadian). At that time, she had dropped “Better Distractions”, “In A Good Way”, and “Both All The Time”, and the rest of the album more than follows the promise of these three dreamy country, folk rock, and R&B-inspired tunes. Webster continues to be a master of tone and mood, lovelorn on “Sometimes”, sarcastic on the title track, and head-in-the-clouds on “A Dream with a Baseball Player”. All the while, she and her backing band provide stellar, languorous instrumentation, keys and slide guitar on the bossa nova “Kind Of”, her overdriven guitar sludge on “Cheers”, cinematic strings on the melancholic “A Stranger”, stark acoustic guitar on heartbreaking closer “Half of Me”. And the ultimate irony of Webster’s whip-smart lyricism is that a line like, “And today I get upset over this song that I heard / And I guess was just upset because why didn't I think of it first,” is that I can guarantee a million songwriters feel the same way about her music, timely in context and timeless in sound and feeling.

Catch her at an aftershow on Saturday at Sleeping Village with Danger Incorporated.

Georgia Anne Muldrow, 5:15 PM, Blue Stage

The queen of beats takes the stage during the hottest part of the day, perfect for some sweaty dancing. VWETO III (FORESEEN + Epistrophik Peach Sound), the third album in Muldrow’s beats record series, was put together with “calls to action” in mind, each single leading up to the album’s release to be paired with crowdsourced submissions via Instagram from singers, visual artists, dancers, and turntablists. Moreover, many of the album’s tracks are inspired by very specific eras of Black music, from Boom Bap and G-funk to free jazz, and through it all, Muldrow provides a platform for musical education just as much as funky earworms.

Revisit our interview with Muldrow from earlier this year.

Angel Olsen, 7:25 PM, Red Stage

It’s been a busy past two years for Angel Olsen. She revealed Whole New Mess (Jagjaguwar) in August 2020, stripped down arrangements of many of the songs on 2019′s amazing All Mirrors. In May, she came out with a box set called Song of the Lark and Other Far Memories (Jagjaguwar), which contained both All Mirrors and Whole New Mess and a bonus LP of remixes, covers, alternate takes, and bonus tracks. She shortly and out of nowhere dropped a song of the year candidate in old school country rock high and lonesome Sharon Van Etten duet “Like I Used To”. And just last month, she released Aisles, an 80′s covers EP out on her Jagjaguwar imprint somethingscosmic. She turns Laura Branigan’s disco jam “Gloria” and Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance” into woozy, echoing, slowed-down beds of synth haze and echoing drum machine. On Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s “If You Leave”, her voice occupies different registers between the soft high notes of the bridge and autotuned solemnity of the chorus. Sure, other covers are more recognizable in their tempo and arrangement, like Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell ballad “Eyes Without a Face” and Alphaville’s “Forever Young”, but Aisles is exemplary of Olsen’s ability to not just reinvent herself but classics.

At Pitchfork, I’d bet on a set heavy on All Mirrors and Whole New Mess, but as with the unexpectedness of Aisles, you never know!

St. Vincent, 8:30 PM, Green Stage

Annie Clark again consciously shifts personas and eras with her new St. Vincent album Daddy’s Home (Loma Vista), inspired by 70′s funk rock and guitar-driven psychedelia. While much of the album’s rollout centered around its backstory--Clark’s father’s time in prison for white collar crimes--the album is a thoughtful treatise on honesty and identity, the first St. Vincent album to really stare Clark’s life in the face. 

Many of its songs saw their live debut during a Moment House stream, which we previewed last month.

The Weather Station; Photo by Jeff Bierk

SUNDAY

Tomberlin, 1:00 PM, Green Stage

While the LA-via-Louisville singer-songwriter hasn’t yet offered a proper follow-up LP to her 2018 debut At Weddings, she did last year release an EP called Projections (Saddle Creek), which expands upon At Weddings’ shadowy palate. Songs like “Hours” and “Wasted” are comparatively clattering and up-tempo. Yet, all four of the original tracks are increasingly self-reflexive, Tomberlin exploring and redefining herself on her terms, whether singing about love or queerness, all while maintaining her sense of humor. (“When you go you take the sun and all my flowers die / So I wait by the window and write some shit / And hope that you'll reply,” she shrugs over acoustic strums and wincing electric guitars.) The album ends with a stark grey cover of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s “Natural Light”; Tomberlin finds a kindred spirit in the maudlin musings of Owen Ashworth.

Get there early on Sunday to hear select tracks from At Weddings and Projections but also likely some new songs.

oso oso, 2:45 PM, Blue Stage

Basking in the Glow (Triple Crown), the third album from Long Beach singer-songwriter Jade Lilitri as Oso Oso, was one of our favorite records of 2019, and we’d relish the opportunity to see them performed to a crowd in the sun. Expect to hear lots of it; hopefully we’re treated to new oso oso material some time soon.

Catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Subterranean with fellow Pitchfork performer Dogleg and Retirement Party.

The Weather Station, 4:00 PM, Blue Stage

The Toronto band led by singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman released one of the best albums of the year back in February with Ignorance (Fat Possum), songs inspired by climate change-addled anxiety. While the record is filled with affecting, reflective lines about loss and trying to find happiness in the face of dread, in a live setting, I imagine the instrumentation will be a highlight, from the fluttering tension of “Robber” to the glistening disco of “Parking Lot”.

Revisit our preview of their Pitchfork Instagram performance from earlier this year. Catch them at an aftershow on Friday at Schubas with Ulna.

Danny Brown, 6:15 PM, Green Stage

The Detroit rapper’s last full-length record was the Q-Tip executive produced uknowhatimsayin¿ (Warp), though he’s popped up a few times since then, on remixes, a Brockhampton album, and TV62, a Bruiser Brigade Records compilation from earlier this year. (He’s also claimed in Twitch streams that his new album Quaranta is almost done.) His sets--especially Pitchfork sets--are always high-energy, as he’s got so many classic albums and tracks under his belt at this point, so expect to hear a mix of those.

Erykah Badu, 8:30 PM, Green Stage

What more can I say? This is the headliner Pitchfork has been trying to get for years, responsible for some of the greatest neo soul albums of all time. There’s not much else to say about Erykah Badu other than she’s the number one must-see at the festival.

[nobody-knose--archive]

well, today i figured i didn’t have anything better to do & liveblogged the pingry ep. it’s probably a better stepping stone further into the tally void than incomplete demos, coming right off of complete demos, at least.

-from what i know this one basically includes all the mmmm songs that weren't on complete demos (andrew singing ones wahoo) & the expected demos that didn't end up anywhere else + just a friend. i also believe this one was recorded similarly to complete demos so i really have no clue what to expect for taken for a ride's vocals. anyway here i go

-the bidding sounds impressively professional to start things off, but i suppose humming isn't a terribly complex technique anyway. the intro feels a little longer th

-whoah there if that aint a marked difference in audio quality here we go

-guitars also sound different & i don't remember if this album has steve or ross on it i now realize

-goodness the mixing is wonky for rob's segment. the backing vocals do not need to bounce between channels

-why do they have kinda weird voices for the chorus. sounds like they're trying an accent or something. i can barely recognize who's singing

-the keyboard backing in zubin's segment sounds the same as usual, as in, it sounds so stupidly similar to the questions answered backing music that i'm offended i couldn't pick up they're the same for so long

-less echo on disappear actually. at least they still had the brass section

-still a weird sound on the chorus but maybe i can chalk that up to different mixing & more red

-outro sounds not super different. still very good drumming on display which will give me the push i need to decide it's ross drumming

-however i don't hear him shouting out the auctioneer stuff, and given that it was presented as a video during the mmmm recording, i might assume it was done specially for the mmmm releases, so maybe he didn't drum for this album after all

-it does have a greater similarity to the live performances even if the keyboarding is using a different synth

-well now. that's a real piano

-and as any piano will be when played that low, it's out of tune. very

-and everyone's singing? i can't hear andy in the slightest. this is interesting

-i mean i can certainly hear him doing plenty on the piano. but. it's interesting

-i suppose given the ep's hallmanac description, as a compilation of acoustic/one-take recordings i shouldn't be surprised taken for a ride is this different. but boy is it jarring. sounds incredibly different without the heavy synthesizing and complementary instruments

-barebones certainly. not much more of a way to describe it. that's what i expected just not in this way. i like the sound of this bridge though

-do very much wish i could hear andrew's actual voice. even at acoustic live performances he would sing at the very least. then again, that was years later i suppose.

-and it's only now at the final chorus that i realize, somehow, this is a piano-only song. no guitar, no drums even. that's really interesting. even the album version had some drums & bass

-red's singing isn't as impressive here. not as many high notes. understandable. bitch

-different rhythm on the quick part! bet steve feels lucky he didn't have to drum this part although i am hearing some sort of. pants-slapping? now that would be a sight to behold irl

-and that's the end

-goodness. be born. considering how this song was always & every time performed acoustic live i really expect to hear nothing here i haven't from concert recordings

-we're missing whatever the hell that skittery little shaker is called. alas i am not a percussionist & do not know the name of every auxilliary instrument ever

-rippin it up on the melodica bay be. a suitable replacement for whistling considering that never was all that good live. nobody can compare to bora karaca at whistling

-there's extra bass harmonies on display here. swell

-also no percussion i'm realizing

-da-da-da!

-but yeah normally ross uses brushes on a box/seat drum (also don't know what that's called!) for some good gentle percussion & it's not here. really hoping this won't be a trend because i'm fond of drumming even if it's from stebev himself

-bah (chorus) bah

-wait a minute that's not a bah! that's a doo! big difference! what are you doing rob

-i can tell it's one-take because rob has to take a breath in the middle of that final long bah there

-ooh dropping off the guitar there real quick are you? and not even doing the full outro too. good way to spice things up at the end.

-honestly maybe the reason i & so many other th fans dislike be born so much isn't even the country sound and weird subject matter, it's the fact that this song lacks a whole lot of the variability that might separate it from other music. in the album versions there are violins/fiddles, and the live versions... don't have that. maybe some halfway decent whistling at best. it just is what it is. especially compared to the rest of mmmm- g&e could often be more faithfully recreated on stage, but mmmm got to mix things up most of the time, except for be born. food for thought

-anyway. of all the songs i would expect to be absolutely completely identical (other than be born) the whole world and you definitely takes the cake. a delightful song. i should listen to it more.

-but yeah it was a toy orchestra piece long before a tally hall piece, and toy orchestra was & is nothing but silly little live performances. how on earth could they make this one completely different

-other than. the "punk rehearsal" i've heard of from incomplete demos. that's just. a thing i think

-oh hold on i didn't even listen to the end of be born there was a tiny outro with chat at the end oh that's adorable

-hey i can hear andrew's voice! nice!

-starting off with a full ensemble vocals, all sorts of harmonies in action, and a normal piano instead of a toy piano, so already i'm being proven decently wrong on this song's inability to be greatly altered

-other than that. i kinda like how it sounds as if they're stumbling over their words at points

-boy has andrew's voice changed hasn't it. i know i haven't listened to the solo albums so i'm not exactly one to speak but he really developed his singing a lot over time

-clapping live & not in a studio sure sounds a lot worse, especially when it's like 4 people max doing it and not a whole crowd

-zubin (i'm pretty sure) flexing on us all at the end there. good for him

-ayyyyyyy

-it's the song that's sure to invoke an emotional response out of me >:}

-it's also the song i was convinced had andrew vocals in the background (the badadum's between verses) for a good while. still not 100% certain it's rob instead but it's not like i can ask them themselves

-yeah i'll admit it right here this is the song i listen to when i'm going through emotional turmoil. not this version of the song, and no, i don't mean i listen to i'm gonna win or even the tally hall rock version of this one. i mean i listen to the cover of it from we think we're playing in a band. and that's enough on this subject!

-however given the above information yeah i am pretty familiar with this song already. not a new experience right here

-i greatly appreciate the heavy piano work. it's one of my favorite parts about the song

-oh and i should stop talking about that subject right there as well. actually i think i should just say nothing about this song in general. you'll see why in about uhh pauses video

-this friday or so? damn that's sooner than i thought lucky me

-everything will be fine! i'll be making it through!

-oh hello there. "ALBUM" is not a word beamed directly into my brain with great volume thank you very much

-so. it's the outro to good day done with weird haste. looping. no actual chord pro-

-this is. is this some sort of radio performance? what the hell is going on

-steven!!! hello there thanks for the confirmation & god is it surreal to hear his name truly uttered in the context of red rob zubin andrew. wow

-pingry school spring fling. how the hell have i never heard about whatever the hell this track is before

-wait- is it over? song listed as good day but it's in fact the outro to good day done on. a radio program maybe. and now it's a really strange sounding performance of yearbook

-i genuinely can't tell if there's a filter on rob's voice or if the micro- shit that's loud

-what in the hell is going on is this another radio performance or something? like ok yearbook at least was on songs about girls by listedblack but i really want this to be made clear soon

-all i really think i need to know about yearbook is that it's another rob "heterophobic homophonic" cantor angsty boy band song and. listening to it for the first time her. that impression sure isn't going away

-at least i get to hear andrew twinkling those ivories in the back. got a good sound. even if the mixing here is all sorts of wack. a song this complex should not be performed live with only like one microphone

-alright rob i get it you were in love with a girl- and it's over? ok

-live performance of just a friend holy shit hell yes hell yes hell yes for some reason i thought this would be the studio version but no

-i cannot imagine what this song will sound like with steve on the drums hell yes oh will there be banter will rob forget his lines will red say some random 4-syllable phrase will zubin be the best singer in the whole damn band give me an answer now

-already hearing some banter :}

-they're moving weirdly fast and andrew's already got the piano playing even in the beatboxing part. wowie

-ooh kick it andy do those riffs hell yeah

-"that sounded fishy... zubin sedghi!" i'm in love

-KICK IT ANDY

-AND ZUBIN

-and there's the drums! go stevie. go stevie

-good ness andrew just will not let up on the sick as hell keyboarding will he fukc yeah bro kill it

-rob sounds unbelievably tired for this i'm half expecting him to trip up the lyrics at any moment

-"i don't buy it" "don't gimmie that!" you say it boys. oh classic zubin line right there preserved on an official tally hall recording for all eternity, what a treasure this is

-hm isn't this a bit early to go into the pseudo-breakdown chorus? no it works. andrew still rippin it up of course

-and there's the tambourine bay be!

-buildup to the "oh snap" isn't as intense as it could get in later performances which i will gladly blame in its entirety on steve <3

-boy oh boy does rob's voice just sound generally different here. so young so so young

-shooby-doo-wah. well i had low expectations which were not quite fulfilled but it's technically more than what we got on the studio recording so. i won't complain

-THERE IT IS

-BARBEQUE SAUCE BAY BE

-what a fool i was to pause the moment he said it. silly old me <3

-no, no, thank you for coming! but hold on one second. is there not... one more track? technically not a song, technically something i think i've heard before, but if i take a step over to the tally archive...

-cell phone call.

-circus you say? if i had to guess it's the whole world & you given the 08 version of the song but that's a vague guess. can't think of anything better but my current answer isn't that good on its own

-ah! it's joey jo joseph. this wouldn't happen to be that phone call spoken of that, like, invited joe into the band in the first place, would it? i remember that story from an old bio or something, but it doesn't seem like the type of thing that'd be recorded & put on an album. hard to say

-pj? like a certain rob cator frat dude voice JP!?

-well well well now. i'm not sure what to say. i don't recognize that song they're playing as the outro. it could either be some vague listedblack or miscellaneous early tally hall song lost to the void or a demo. i wouldn't exactly know. anyway that ends the pingry ep. shorter than i thought it be, lucky old me. hope you enjoyed!

[glumvillain]

GlumReviews #7

As we continue to explore bands that have pioneered sounds we find ourselves on the 4th studio album from Faith No More.  A peculiar but unique band.  While the New Wave was waving, Faith No More blazed their own path of funk rock and blended it with metal to come out as one of the more interesting bands of the 90′s.

The 90′s is cursed with a playing-field of post-punk bands just doing their own thing and getting swept up in the Grunge era madness.  Faith No More I think is one of those bands that refused to be part of that wave and incorporated heavier metal with their funk and was looking to standout rather than be swept away by the wave.

1. Land of Sunshine

The album opens with a metal-esque satire about the parental state of the United States at this point in time.  Told in a theatrical spitfire of infomercial messages.  You get a real sense of alienated youth and rebelliousness, a band that really wanted to come out swinging.  To build upon--and sort of leave behind their old sound to go a new direction for a new era.

2. Caffeine

A chugging metal tune, that is no worse for wear than the previous track, we keep the momentum moving along.  I really get a sense of the Alice Cooper theatrical movements and big sounds all around.  It’s a loud album meant to be played loud, you try to digest it like a metal album but it perhaps is too interesting and weird to be taken at face value.  So far the album has my curiosity in its hostility and lyricism. 

3. Midlife Crisis

This is probably my favorite song off of the album, it stays in this very sterile space of not being metal, kind’ve poppy but also a little bit of that funk groove lays dormant in alot of their songs.  This song probably being one of the more cohesive and structured songs, also has this kind’ve strange “Pretty Hate Machine” bridge portion that I really dig.  You reach this point of the album wondering if this is a metal record or just an alt rock band flexing their styles for fun.

4. RV

I really don’t know where to approach this song from.  They dip their toes into this Primus style of storytelling and twangy bass, which I don’t necessarily hate.  I really think this song is just making fun of white trash ignorant racists and after 2020 I’m pretty comfortable making that judgement, especially if you check out the lyrics.  Humorous and fun, definitely different and not the direction you expected the album to take. “Toss me inside a Hefty and put me in the ground”  that line just really resonated with me for some reason.  

5.  Smaller and Smaller

Mike Patton is a powerhouse vocalist as far as I’m concerned, able to hit these beautiful clean almost operatic vibratos, ALSO while being able to nail the metal hardcore screams when needed.  You got this Anthraxy main riff, sprinkled with a Pantera-y guitar lick and can you really complain.  Maybe Patton’s vocal style is a bit different but the music on display in this album is pretty different from the saturated grunge playing field.

6. Everything’s Ruined

The lead guitarist, after touring this album quit the band.  Citing the direction of the band declining, calling it “gay disco”.  Admittedly this is my first Faith No More album so I don’t have much to compare it to.  Perhaps a 1985 single of theirs that sounds like a “Midlife Crisis” b-side.  Perhaps coming from funk metal, and ending up on this song may not seem like the coolest choice but it’s not bad music, the guitarwork is awesome and if at anytime you feel a lull in the energy you can expect Patton to delivery some awesome vocals.

7.  Malpractice

I don’t know how anyone could feel their band going the way of the dogs whenever they have such a random array of genres to lean into.  I initially wanted to remark on how much this chorus kinda sounds like an Alice In Chains type of song but stylistically it just makes too many twists and turns for you to really nail them down to a comparable band in their class.

8.  Kindergarten

One area you lose me is the rap/rock hybrid. And this song straddles that fence of Run DMC and Aerosmith if that makes sense.  White dudes trying to evoke the coolness of rap and mix it with basic metal noise is usually a way to get skipped in my playthroughs but again, the musical direction this album takes makes this it pretty easy to listen to because it is just different enough to remain interesting. One of the better songs off the album.

9.  Be Agressive

This is that funk metal you keep hearing about.  Like a badass Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Just another face smasher of a song, but again we get treated to these very theatrical.. heavy metal Phantom of the Opera moments.  This is one song I’d definitely wanna see live as it just has that big opener energy.

10.  A Small Victory

This sounds like a song written completely on synths and a drum machine and Faith No More just said “fuck it, transcribe it”.  Undeniably lighter than the album preceding, an underdogs anthem.  Gets a little repetitive and doesn’t come off as a highlight of the album for me.  Let’s call it filler.

11.  Crack Hitler

Did I tell you about that funk metal? And I mentioned how they kinda dip their toes in that strange strange Primus water?  Here’s the masterpiece of that.  Sweet funkitude.  This just has everything going for it with that badass bass slap, wah wah pedal is just working overtime to bring you the jam.  Maybe the previous song needed to fall short so this one could hit that much harder for me.

12.  Jizzlobber

This is where I unearth a Nu-Metal artifact.  I mean--name the band, this is that sound and Patton abandons his clean vocals for heavy distorted screamed.  Half rapped, half screamo, this is a pretty decent song and oddly stands out as the black sheep of the album.  What the hell are you doing in THIS album? This is their most normal song to me, oddly enough. I was gonna make a joke about JNCO jeans but it flared out.

13.  Midnight Cowboy (Theme From)

This is a pretty chill (mostly instrumental) jam.  Theatrical rock music if I had to give it an official genre that I made up.  I’d say more filler but I know there are a few people who enjoy a nice instrumental soundscape and this could be one of em for you.  It reins in the heavy and gives you a nice listening experience.

14.  Easy

Funnily enough, their one cover song that was only included on later reprints of the album--is the one that earned them most of the acclaim.  A cover of Lionel Richie’s laidback sunday morning jam.  Is it better? mmmm arguably.  But I’d say they’re in a tie for being good.  Faith No More doesn’t change it in anyway that makes it unique into itself but comes off as a pretty decent tribute to the entire energy of the song.  Carefree and fun, all this after an album full of chaotic guitar and operatic rock singing, and a beautiful way to end an album full of twists and turns.

As stated before, this was my first Faith No More album and I really didn’t know what I was getting into, even for being knowledgeable about their singles that really doesn’t set you up for what their album contains and that's largely an overlying mission of this review series.  Discovering bands past their singles, their one hit wonders, and perhaps there’s something to be learned in that journey alone.

this journey was a

⭐⭐⭐/5

The good moments of this album really shine, I don’t see it as something I can play through without skipping a few tracks though.  I enjoyed the heavy metal elements blended with funk and I think Mike Patton is one of the funner vocalists of our time.  Worth a one time listen at the most and I think you could very well come out liking a song or two.

[martianarctic]

Devin’s Playlist -2010s Part 1

This is an unfinished retrospective look at what I listened to during the 2010s. This decade was exceptional for me, as it was the first decade where, for almost all of it, I was not a musician myself. 

Being a musician forces you to listen to music like a musician, and being free of that, and able to listen as a listener alone, really made this a spectacular decade for me. I found dozens of incredible albums that were released during the decade, many of which received no significant recognition.

This was a very large project, and I did not finish it. I made it through Retrowave, Shoegaze, and Post punk. If anybody cares, I will finish the entire project, which will add Dreampop (the largest category), Vaporwave, and Dark Ambient.

Retrowave: Retrowave is electronic music that, at first listen, sounds like it may be from the 80s or 90s, mostly because the synths it uses to generate the music are either retro-inspired or literally retro equipment in some of the more extreme cases. It generally features original compositions, often, but not always, is instrumental. Rough vocals would impede the tightness and angularity of the music, so when vocals are used they are often pop produced and highly melodic. This genre gained significant exposure from Nicolas Winding Refn’s 2011 masterpiece, “Drive”.

Galactic Melt (2011) Com Truise

Electronic artist Com Truise rose to prominence off of this fantastic record, which rallies around the undeniable electro anthem of 2012, “Brokendate”. Starting with some found audio (chopped and screwed found audio becomes a big deal later on in Vaporwave) and then dropping in an absolutely thick beat we’re met with a song that eventually, as layers are dropped on, ends up being meditative, romantic, and melancholy. Emotions to that point, not well associated with dance music, but definitely would come to color the entire decade.

Era Extraña (2011) Neon Indian

Electronic solo bedroom pop was pretty cool at the end of the 00s being pushed hard by guys like Twin Shadow. I am not sure how I got ahold of Neon Indian but this album was, in a lot of ways, the true start of my musical decade. I had not been so excited and enthusiastic about a record since I had retired from making music. It really gives you a new perspective to not feel like you’re in competition with everything and trying to learn from everything- just as a listener, I was enthralled with this entire record.

Visitors (2012) Lazerhawk

I did not get into dark retrowave until after 2013 and thus discovered Lazerhawk and this record after the fact. Visitors is, in my opinion, the best dark retrowave album ever made, more consistent and listenable than competitors such as mega drive or carpenter brut. Also. This album absolutely sticks the landing with the street-strutting powerhouse “Arrival”.

I am the Night (2012) Perturbator

Made famous by soundtracking the indie game hit Hotline Miami (one of the best games of the decade), Perturbator carved a niche for himself with fast, brutal, high energy dark electronic music and absolutely bonkers live shows. Perturbator has a large catalog of content- I am the Night is definitely the starter kit. Starting off with a thick minor chord, a church bell, and a sample of Peter Finch’s speech from “Network” you immediately know what’s in store- dark, dystopian and undeniably French electronic dance music, complete with breathtaking beat breaks, big bass synths, and complex compositions.

Innerworld (2014) Electric Youth

I had mentioned that Drive was a major popularizer of retrowave- and one song in particular, a collaboration between another retrowave artist named College, who created the low fi, catchy bassline for the song “A Real Hero”, and the vocals and lyrics, created by an artist called Electric Youth. Their record, 2014’s “Innerworld”, is one of the best retrowave efforts, with the second track, “Runaway”, even better than the song that made them famous. The pop chorus “Maybe we could just run away for good/cuz we’re both mis understood” soaring over thick, atmospheric synth pads will have you slapping the roof of your car, as you race through the freeways of LA at 3AM.

Atlas (2016) FM-84

Speaking of roof-slapping bangers, “Running in the Night” is probably retrowave’s most popular anthem, boasting one of my absolute favorite vocal performances of the decade. A group claiming rock and roll city San Francisco as their home base (despite being both British), FM-84’s Atlas is absolutely packed with a mixture of the atmospheric instrumental Miami Vice type music suggested by the red and purple setting sun cover as well as vocal driven pop songs such as the single mentioned above.

Hardwired (2018) Mitch Murder

Mitch Murder is a retrowave institution, having made the soundtrack to the viral youtube movie Kung Fury, and also, I suspect, the original music used by twitch personality Dr. Disrespect. However, he almost entirely releases 3-5 song Eps, making it tough to pick out a standout. However that all changed in 2018 with the release of Hardwired, the most accomplished mitch murder release to date. Starting off with the Jan Hammer style “Altered State”, it stays on brand throughout but tells a very unified instrumental story of cyberpunk dystopian adventure. Vangelis-style synths bring in the closer track, “Revision Control”, one of Mitch Murder’s greatest tracks. Evolving through different moods, different scenes, we can imagine the “human” protagonist confronting his cyborg nemesis he has been tasked to execute.

Retrowave Album of the Decade:

Dark All Day (2018) Gunship

As the decade wore on, retro wave slowed down for me. I thought it might be over but- without warning, Gunship, an artist I had listened to but not been completely impressed by, released what is probably the most accomplished album in the genre. Spanning various tempos and musical themes, utilizing several guest vocalists, the scope of “Dark All Day” keeps you listening to the record again and again. This record represents an evolution in a format that was at risk of being just a fad. “Come on lost boys, lets stay alive” over a ripping saxophone lead suggests mere 80s fetishism, but there is more substance than just that. The following track, “When you Grow Up, Your Heart Dies”, takes an upbeat electro jam, and really goes for emotional impact with a series of samples of characters from pop culture saying inspirational things, my favorite being “Everything worth doing is hard” which I think is just Teddy Roosevelt. My favorite track of the record, the slow ballad “Artemis & Parzival”, begins with swooning, Vangelis-style pads and then into guest vocalist Stella Le Page’s gorgeous vocals. This track definitely belongs on anybody’s make out playlist. “Were all gonna die that’s just how it is, there’s no escaping the future, nobody gets what they want in this world, even for you and me” is one of the greatest lyrics of the decade.

 Nugaze/Shoegaze-Adjacent: Shoegaze is a genre of music that features highly layered guitar effects (often run through 10 or more effects, creating a signature “vacuum cleaner” sound with a ton of distortion and white noise) and breathy vocals. Relying heavily on the depth of character of the sound, shoegaze guitar tone and production is a major creative point and almost all of these records are self-produced. Vocal themes are usually depression-inspired and lovelorn meditations, the music sounds, to most, dull and dreary, but to some, it speaks deeply to their feelings about the past and future. Shoegaze is often mixed with other guitar genres on this list, from Post Hardcore(Nothing, Title Fight), Black Metal(Deafheaven), and Thrash Metal (Astronoid).

Road Eyes (2010) Amusement Parks on Fire

Around 2010, I was promoted at my job to a new role that would require a bunch of travel. I was not a big fan of riding on airplanes. Also around that time, my brother had moved into my apartment, then out of it, and I only had a few months left on the lease. My favorite shoegaze band of the 2000s, Amusement Parks on Fire, played a gig at 330 Ritch, a club in san Francisco. I had a fantastic time at the show, and particularly loved their new material, which made it onto a record they called Road Eyes. 2 months later I moved out of my apartment in San Francisco and never would go back to living as a single dude.

Anyways, the travelling. The opening and title track to the record came to symbolize change for me. And it also was the song I would listen to every time my plane would take off. It helped me deal with the fear that something might happen- no matter how insignificant the chance – and if it did, while that song was on, it would be okay. Indeed, this was, and I will warn you I am not qualified to treat mental illness, but this actually really made flying much easier for me and it is a ritual I continue to do to this day, whenever possible.

Pipe Dreams(2013), Sway(2014), Feels like You (2019) Whirr

San Francisco nugaze/dronegaze band Whirr, large and complex, problematic, aggressive, are behind some of my favorite music of the decade. Their three album career reflects to me upon the primary feelings of youth: euphoria, anger, and sadness.

Pipe Dreams is a blissful set of jams, meditative, energetic uptempo and with almost totally co-ed vocals. Noisy production casts a hydrocarbon haze over the songs, raw vocal melodies reach out of the fuzz and suck you in. “Junebouvier” and “Toss” capture the euphoric and  youthful energy of a summer in San Francisco: starting off with breakups May thru July, and hot hookups until September or October when people settle into relationships. Two hungry eyes emerging from straight-bangs to make eye contact with you, and hold it- the exhilaration of touching somebody new.

Sway, the band’s masterwork, starts off with a heavily muff-distorted major 7th chord suspending us until the massive drums, now a hallmark of the band’s sound, kick off the beat into the opening rocker Press. The band switches up rhythms between drums, guitars, and bass to bring rock and roll-type turnarounds and breaks that really keep you on your toes and engaged. The lead guitar is classic legato shoegaze, using delay to achieve a long, sustained scream. Compositions are key on this record- not following just simple A/B patterns there’s some thought to the structure of the songs and record. “Dry”, in particular, demonstrates some of these ideas. A/B sections, underscored with “Drown me everytime… Dry”, give way to breaks, ethereal echo guitar solos, giving a hint of the powerful ending. A 4 chord progression accented by breathtaking drum fills finaly flourishes into a screaming cymbal-laden guitar finish.

Feels like You, the bands purported final album, starts off with some quiet echo piano. The melancholy major 7 chords the band has leaned on throughout their music are laid bare as we press play on the record. Add guitar. At a little after 90 seconds the band jumps in after with a thick blanket of lonesome self-reflection and chemical depression. The bands penchant for composition remains to the end, with changes keeping you engaged as the noise soothes your heart. “Younger than You” is one of the band’s greatest tracks, starting with an almost Smashing Pumpkins/Silversun Pickups esque clean unison guitar/bass into distorted and layered noise, ending with a drum-guided, rock and roll style outro.

 Guilty of Everything (2014) Nothing

One of the things I mention in my preface to this is, for me, the 2010s were the first decade of my life that ended with me not being a musician. And it opened some doors for me, creatively, to be able to hear music and think about it purely as a listener and a person. Something others have frequently described to me, that I had never really done, was just spend an entire weekend listening to an album.

I saw Nothing on KEXP 5 years ago when Guilty of Everything was out and they were on tour. I’ve seen them twice in person since them and bought every one of their records. The weekend that I got Guilty, I was attending a close friend’s sisters wedding, and pretty much was in a hotel room drunk in overcast-as-fuck santa cruz all weekend. And you know what was being played through headphones at practically all times.

Nothing is mostly the musical project of a guy named Dominic Palermo, a punk from the Philly scene that had spent more than a year in prison for a stabbing. He isn’t much of a vocalist or guitarist, but he is a fantastic artist, writer, photographer, and visionary, and the creative force behind what is now a rotating cast of other musicians.

Guilty of Everything is definitely their best record, opening with the massive meditation Hymn to the Pillory, into the definitive single Bent Nail, a perfect marriage of hardcore punk and shoegaze elements, falling apart into the 90mph crash, into a wall, final outro chorus “If you feel like/letting go…” repeated over and over over pure drone guitars, seamlessly flowing into the romantic slow jam “Endlessly” The closing title track is one of the best closers of the decade, perfectly sticking the landing on this brilliant lyric: “My hands are up, I’m on my knees I don’t have a gun, you can search me please. I’ve given up, but you shoot me anyway, I’m guilty of everything. I’m guilty of everything”.

Hyperview (2015) Title Fight

Nothing wasn’t the only Pennsylvanian post-hardcore band to bend their sound a bit shoegaze. Title Fight also sneaks onto this list with their outstanding record Hyperview from 2015. Appealing compositions and melodies combine with harmonized vocals, even some 16 beats on the hats- things we expect from post hardcore, but slowed down and smeared out a bit into the shoegaze aesthetic. My favorite track from the record, “Hypernight”, combines some screamo hype man chorus, math rock inspired guitar and bass lines, and is just all in all one of the most unique tracks to come out of the decade. “I don’t want to see things differently, its what I am taught myself to believe”.

Grandfeathered (2016) Pinkshinyultrablast

I admit that I bounced off of Russian electro-shoegazers Pinkshinyultrablast the first time I listened to them a few years ago. There was just too much going on and I didn’t really have the inclination to jump in and grab on. Operatic female vocals, noisy djenty guitar, shimmery, clean guitar, all swirl together in what is undoubtably a great record for having a tinder date IF, and I say IF, you’re willing to run a musicological acid test on them.

Whether it was listening to a bunch more music, particularly ambient music, or just changing taste now I can’t get enough of this band. They do slam from idea to idea in a song, but it’s a controlled speed- it’s not pleasant to a lot of people, but once you get yourself situated, you’ll wonder how you ever missed this band to begin with, if you’re not one of the people reading this and thinking, naw dude, I got this shit RIGHT AWAY.

The compositions on the record are, in fact, carefully considered and composed, combining noise rock with clean ambience deftly and changing up styles repeatedly throughout each song and the record. Everybody knows we can no longer control dynamics via volume in today’s world of headphone/device listening,  ultramaximizing mastering, laptop speakers, etc. So Pinkshinyultrablast controls it with style. This record is definitely the more guitar-driven of the albums from this decade, with their release 2 years later being more electronic and vocal focused.

Slowdive (2017) Slowdive/My Bloody Valentine (2013) mbv

There are two bands that are credited with creating and or popularizing the Shoegaze movement during the late 80s and early 90s. Those bands are My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive. Both of whom released albums during the 2010s. And frankly, both records are damn good for two bands that have been basically on hiatus for 20 years. Neither has really stood the test of time for me, although I listened to both exhaustively upon release. 

The opening tracks of both records are absolutely mesmerizing, this slow, sexy intro is clearly the part of them that became stronger with age. The manic rock energy of their more upbeat tracks however is absent or at least forced, and I think is what keeps these from being really what I’d call strong records. Nevertheless, both albums belong on any shoegazer’s playlists both for the quality of the music as well as the nod to the progenators of the genre we love so much.

Time n Place (2018) Kero Kero Bonito

KKB was already one of the biggest indie rock groups in the world when they released this their second full-length album. Making a big move sound-wise from super squeaky clean hip hop style production to sloppy shoegaze guitars and drums, they alienated a lot of fans with Time n Place, but I don’t see how. For me, coming in for Time n Place and then going back in the catalogue to Bonito Generation, I see it as a very natural progression. As the artists become more confident and mature, it’s natural they should explore some other emotions and moods.

That said I am not the usual KKB fan. Actually at their show in San Francisco in 2018 I was probably in the top 95 percentile of being an old fart. Around me, mostly twentysomethings on the first half decade, casually doing key bumps right on the show floor, something scared old gen Xers like me, still remembering their friend’s divorced dads in cigarette boats they sold for coke in the 80s, are still too paranoid to do. The crowd definitely starting pogo jumping at the chorus to “Only Acting” a grungy, poppy metaphor between acting on stage, and being young and in love.

Right after that, “Flyaway“ is the upbeat shoegazey manic anthem that really got me sucked into the band to begin with. Combining fuzzy guitars that are more reminiscent of Japanese rock bands of the 00s than shoegaze with a crystalline clear melodic vocal line from Sarah, this is the track where I grab a handful of dirt from my dying hill, and say if you don’t like this song, you don’t like the band, the record, or my musical taste.

Miserable Miracles (2018) Pinkshinyultrablast

Reinventing themselves record by record, Pinkshinyultrablast keeps on the cutting edge and doesn’t make a habit of anything. Miserable Miracles is more electronics driven, lead and pad synthesizers bringing in the music with their trademark soaring, operatic vocals. Guitars are present as well, but heavily stretched with cathedral reverb and long delay. A smoother sound than Grandfeathered, but well-poised to issue a majestic, meditative prayer such as “Find your Saint”, my favorite track. Like walking into a Germanic church on Sunday, the vocals rise to the ceiling forcing you to look up at the light breaking in through stained glass synthesizers. At about 100 seconds, all of the pieces drop in together to lift you into wherever it is you are going. “I used to talk- about it” brings the heavenly outro to bear, one of the most powerful musical moments of the decade.

Astronoid (2019) Astronoid

I am part of a few music groups on Facebook, and one of them mentioned this band, calling them “Dream Thrash”- a combination of dreampop and thrash metal. I’d say its more thrashgaze, with heavy effects/djenty guitar and the more whispery vocals than are a hallmark of the shoegaze genre, not the clear pop produced vocals that are the hallmark of dreampop.

That out of the way, this is possibly my favorite record of 2019. The opening track, “A New Color”, brims with energy and hopeful optimism and replaced Road Eyes as my airplane take off song. Right around 3 minutes in, when the plane is airborne and gaining climbing u to cruise, when we’re often breaking through the clouds, comes in possibly my favorite guitar solo of all time. On this record, Astronoid are unquestionably uptempo metal yet somehow at the same time being slow-changing enough to carry the emotional weight of shoegaze. The second track, “Dream in Lines”, is an aggressive, more metal-informed rocker, and the third is a power ballad that absolutely sealed the deal for me in terms of loving this album.

Other high points include the uptempo thrash jam “Breathe” and “Water”. Again infusing the metal, djenty mute strum guitar with soaring vocals and heavy backing harmonics, this record continues again and again to deliver head-banging jams that touch and heal a deep sadness in the soul. “Water” is a darker exploration, starting with a heavy chunky two-guitar & bass instrumental, virtuous breaks, and expansive echo and reverb. The band sounds like they are playing in the middle of an interstellar arena, fists human and alien in the sky.

The album sticks the landing with the penultimate track “Beyond the Scope”. This incredible song starts slowly, but upon reaching a turn, goes double-time as the melody and music climbs in pitch at 100 seconds in. This transition takes us into a greater urgency, with sustained, over-flying guitar notes keeping the harmony rich and complex.

Then, the beat drops out and a single guitar chord rings- “My hands are on my ears/They won’t stop ringing” smashes into your brain and your heart. Then again, the building section- “Feeble-minded/I can not decide/in my world, now I know/there’s no such thing as dying/so leave with a goodbye” and into another build and back to the chorus-

“My hands are on my ears/they won’t stop ringing”. I don’t think any lyric can better express the decade than that. If it were somehow possible for this album to end on this song, it would be at the head of this category.

Everything Starts to Be a Reminder (2019) Echodrone

As a former musician, I have a lot of friends who are musicians. I am very brutally honest about my feelings in music and that can make it awkward to have to comment on a friend’s hard work. Echodrone’s latest record made this very easy- the record is simply amazing. Echodrone’s earlier records bounced off of me a bit, but this one has just the right mixture of drone-drenched empty space, ethereal vocals, emotional anguish and euphoria, and a strong connection to the last 10 years in my mind. The tracks are named after the four seasons, starting with Winter and ending with Autumn. Interestingly, the tracks do not really stand out as being separate in my mind, much like how you cannot easily separate a season from another season in the same year.

“Winter” explodes with an epic, cymbal-laden meditation, that continues to grow and grow and expand, then finally becomes quieter, more melodic, and less drony in the second half of the 18 ½ minute song.

“Spring” features a finger-pick echo guitar interspersed with a beautiful co-ed vocal line guiding us down a pathway of different melodic and harmonic ideas. It then enters into a several-minutes long jammy contemplation that is utterly ecstatic to me- synths layered with effects-laden bass and more echo guitar into a full stop.

The best song on the record, “Summer”, begins with a vocal sample into a more or less straight-ahead rock and roll jam. This gives way to a downtempo effects section, then at right after 4 ½ minutes, gives way to a sound I can only call Olympian in hugeness. Fuzz bass, echoing guitars, and multilayered female vocals create this trance-like atmosphere that is rarefied and deeply marked with potent and everchanging imagery at the same time, like cream on top of coffee.

The sound continues to change and becomes quiet again once again with echo guitars carrying the music through. Back to a rhythmic return at 12 ¾ minutes. A synth flute melody flies over the whispered vocals, complex drum patterns- an opine to the end of life’s summer, the bitter sweetness of being old enough to not be hurt anymore by unlikely things failing to fly.

 Shoegaze Album of the Decade:

Sunbather (2013) Deafheaven

A single distorted guitar chord progression holding several notes through the chords for changing harmonics, exploding into double kick and even more guitars, into black metal screaming- this is the unmistakable beginning of Sunbather by San Francisco black metal band Deafheaven.

Due to its downtempo sections, overall distorted and layered production, and emotional scope, this album is loved not just by black metal fans but also by shoegaze fans such as myself. It is a perfect example of a successful crossover- not anticipated or forced in any way by the creators- but it just happens to work on so many different levels.

There are really only four songs on this record, the tracks in between them are much needed interludes. Something all Deafheaven songs do very well is compositioning. These tracks play out, in a way, like classical pieces, with many different sections, transitions, themes, changes, openings, closings, callbacks- it’s so incredibly dense and accomplished that you can listen to this album for weeks on end and still be surprised.

“Dream House” is the blazing opener of the record and puts on display everything we love about every song on here. To make this song the first track is insane, simply because of how over-the-top insanely powerful it is. After a brief interlude of just picked echo guitar, a single chord strum, the entire band comes back in a beat later, and this isn’t even the most emotional part of the song. That’s going to be at 7 minutes, 20 seconds in “I watched/It die!!!” screeches the vocalist as a guitar ostinado plays over the key notes that have been presented throughout the song in brutal crystal clarity. Then at 8 minutes- the vocalist and guitar break down, screaming and double picking guitar notes. It is difficult not to cry at this ending- and this is only the first song on the record.

“Sunbather” is both the title track and the album’s dark heart. Thrumming with a complex beat from the start, the other instruments are layered over this like a tangle of vines across an iron fence. Skillful use of double kick and drum fills keeps the band on target as we get to the breaks and turnarounds. The cymbals and guitars swirl creating complex patterns. Listening to this song from far away with extremely poor speakers would sound like static- similar to how Jupiter looks like a pale gold smear- turn up the volume a little, get a little closer, and you see the rich, threatening complexity of the swirling clouds of music and emotion. The song ends with a slow section about ¾ of the way through the 10 minute piece. An unforgettable echo guitar line plays sparsely over drums- invoking a Cure-like gothic sensibility. Then the band comes back in, playing the same melody and expanding upon it, a lighting bolt magnified to a thousand forks and twists going in all directions. It is the melodies at the end of Sunbather that were stuck in my head, unforgettable, after listening to this record. Unlike Dream House, this song ends on a down note, a question- the rest of the album is to give an answer, and incredibly, you will not be disappointed.

“Vertigo” is the longest song on the record at 14 ½ minutes, a blazing, minor key rocker that is meant to emotionally drag us down as far as we can go after Sunbather. The ending of the song invokes the Beatles “She’s So Heavy” before heading into “Windows” an ambient and spoken word piece featuring a drug deal gone bad- unquestionably a node to The Tenderloin, one of the more drug-laden districts in San Francisco and likely location of the band’s rehearsal studios.

Into “The Pecan Tree”, a song that has an seemingly impossible task: To somehow stick the landing of an extremely powerful and emotional record. We are looking for something coming into this track, but we are not totally sure what it is. We need something, but we can only follow the lights. The song opens up with insane double-kick guitar madness, 2 step rhythm, and then at 1:20 we see a glimpse through the storm, a hole of blue, that we can make it to, if we keep on going. Keep on going. Keep on walking. Smashing, swirling guitars and screams return, our view obstructed. Everything seems to be going at maximum at the end of this first section of the song.

At just after 3 minutes, the sonic assault finally begins to slow down, a march tempo into double kick continuous cymbals, back to march tempo, then, at 4 minutes 19 seconds, only picked echo guitar heralds us into the second section. The star of this section is a piano ostinato combined with the echo guitar, with a second guitar playing playful melodies over it. This is the starry night we can now see that the storm has cleared- this is the most optimistic and life affirming music on the record. A found audio recording of a detuned radio signals the ending of this section.

Eventually, this music fades just before four metal beats brings us to the conclusion- an octave-fingering guitar line and screeching vocal that is in my view one of the most awesome emotional turnarounds that I have ever experienced musically. The remaining outro sums up the entire record- life is big, difficult, unknowable, chaotic. Great albums stick the landing- and this ending does so, with incredible energy, on a record that did not even need it. Sunbather. One of the greatest rock records of all time and one of the very few of those albums to come out now, just about half a century after the 60s.

Post Punk Revivalists: The king of indie rock genres in the 00s, post punk was largely set down at the end of the decade with the major acts of the decade releasing milquetoast or downright laughable fare (are we human, or are we dancer?). However, post punk exploded back onto the scene in 2012 with The Money Store by Death Grips. Some returning groups from the 00s did end up releasing fantastic records, Roma 79 and Daughters being my favorites.

Cardinal Star (2014) Roma 79

I discovered north San Francisco bay area band Roma 79 through their single from the 00s, “Gold”, a sort of heavy, post-punk rocker with a few-thousand views on Youtube. I was very surprised when they reunited and recorded this followup album, which was one of my favorite records of 2014. Featuring a good amount of synth and dreampoppy guitar lines, the main standouts are the vocals and the brilliant drumming, which is a hallmark of great post-punk records of the 00s such as Fever to Tell or Turn On the Bright Lights. The strongest single on the record, “Seventeen”, features a complex drum lines, interlaced with vocals and synths. The song slowly builds up in emotional intensity and drops in layers of vaguely Phil Collins-esque drums and backing vocals, blossoming into a powerful meditative love song. “I’ll wait for it with you.” The final song on the record, is almost an answer to this track, closing the record on a strong point.

You Won’t Get What You Want (2018) Daughters

Daughters is another post-punk band that returned to release a followup nearly 10 years later with 2018’s “You Won’t Get What You Want”. Like all great post punk records, there are a number of characters in this room, and they all can be heard, each having their moments in the spotlight and their moments in the shadows.

One such character is the drums. A crushing combination of live and multitracking effects create a rhythm that provides both the constant heartbeat required by driving rock and roll based music, but also the texture, the complexity, that we seek out in the genre. Lots of tom toms used to keep the beat as opposed to cymbals, practically no hat. Invoking Killing Joke, except when they don’t want to right away, but bring it in later.

Another character is the vocals. Spoken word/sing song type delivery, where the mood and the words and more important than the melody. Lyrics invoke isolation, depression, contraction, abandonment, decline. It would almost be enough with just that, these drums and vocals- but this will also be added by another character, the music. The music seems to be generated mostly by guitar and bass, but there are clearly some synthesizer elements as well, used sparingly and to great effect. I can’t really describe the guitar tone, I would say, it shimmers, but not in an enlightening way. It’s like flashes in the dark, disorienting more than illuminating. The sound is like wood coming off a circular saw. It’s definitely this guitar sound that draws people into this record. All elements are moody, dark, aggressive, but it’s the guitar that really lays down flashes over the blackness.

“Satan in the Wait”, one of the best single tracks on the record, features an off-balance drum beat, carried by toms, and an air-raid siren like guitar sound. A throbbing, distorted bassline in time with the kick drum. At 1:30 in we are given a guitar riff that is beautiful and invoking of a banjo, lending a sensation of urban, southern gothic emotions. Horror film soundtracks come to mind, a combination of unsettling ambience and clear, unforgettable melodies. “Their Bodies are open” the chorus goes, making me think of world-ending events, a transformational death as seen in Arthur C. Clarkes Childhood’s End.

Another of my favorite tracks, “Daughter”, begins with a “bela legosi is dead” kick and snare rim drum beat, possibly electronic, along with a shimmery, surf-rock toned guitar riff. As the song proceeds, more elements are dropped in, and the drums are of particular note here, at 1:23 or so, they drop into a complex beat involving toms, cymbals, and snare. At 2:05 they drop in a clear guitar riff on top of raw noise, building to a climax with the vocal “There’s a war!” At this point, the noise drops out, just a clear guitar riff reminiscent of “Satan in the Wait”, drums coming in at 3:15 or so are particularly impactful.

The final track, “Guest House”, opens on a nearly unbearable sonic assault, the lyrics invoking somebody trapped outside of a bomb shelter during an apocalypse. Once again the gap between unbearable noise and beautiful melody is bridged, as the final dissonant chords give way to deep, harmonic, peaceful orchestra swells.

Post Punk Album of the Decade:

The Money Store (2012) Death Grips

The first time somebody played “Get Got” for me, it was during a really chillwave phase in my music taste and I was completely lost, and didn’t really understand what people saw in Death Grips. I was intrigued enough though, and circled back on some tracks from Exmilitary, their prior record. The more laid back tone and empty space present in tracks such as “Culture Shock” kept me interested enough to give The Money Store another shot a year or so later.

As my interest in chillwave started to fade, and I sought more emotional substance to my music, I returned to the Money Store, and was hooked. Each track is a relentless blast of aggressive drum beats, synthesizer driven melodies, and of course the unmistakable rap vocals of MC Ride.

A strong comparison for me, is between this record, and Joy Division’s second and final record, “Closer”. Relentless beats, but never getting boring, always inventing new rhythms to cast a texture over the musical landscape. Short, fast songs, transitioning from one beat and tempo to the other, never giving you a chance to catch your breath.

The music is highly influenced by hip hop, appearing to be a chopped and cut style, with synthesizers combined with production on the vocals, adding vocals, filter sweeps, reverses, etc- so much energy and craft went into creating what is on its surface very simple music- drums, vocals, and production. Standout track “Hustle Bones” does a fantastic job of expressing what is so great about every song on this record. Everything barely makes sense, but then it all comes together in a singular moment that anybody can nod their head to.

MC Ride’s best is on display in the classic hit, “I’ve Seen Footage”. In his relentless, attacking rap style, he tells us the story of watching gore or wtf videos from reddit or 4chan (or Stile Project if you’re really old like me)-  describing what he’s seen, and then underscoring that with the chorus, “I stay noided”- the character Ride creates is deeply anxious and paranoid, while at the same time being insatiable in the quest for knowing more, something I believe is nearly universal to the experience of the internet-informed human, a phenomenon that would later in the decade lead to diseases thought dead brought back by anti-vax movements, and the election of conspiracy theorist and popularizer Donald Trump as president of the united states.

And that’s the formula to each track on Money Store- working around something more or less literal, Ride’s poetry brings us into the dark state the world was only beginning to enter at the start of the decade.

Closing track “Hacker” opens with a recording of Ride, yelling, presumably at a concert “No ins and outs!!! You come out, your shit is GONE”, then into a 4-on the floor dance beat to end the record on an absolute banger. The music, carried by the beat and Ride’s systematic delivery, is left to its own devices, with glitchy, cut-off synth arpeggios, everything getting out of the way of the beat. “Having conversations with your car alarm”, “you speak with us in certain circles, you will be dethroned or detained”, and “Gaga can’t handle this shit” are some of the lyrical gems that Ride has saved for last here, closing out a post punk record that stands alongside Closer or Turn on the Bright Lights as one of the best of all time.

[willsff7rthoughts]

[REVIEW] Final Fantasy VII: Remake

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for both Final Fantasy VII (1997) as well as Final Fantasy VII: Remake (2020).

Introduction

Before I get into things, I feel like this review deserves a little bit of context. 

Final Fantasy VII (1997) is my favorite video game of all time. As a kid, I liked my Game Boy games; Pokémon Red and Link’s Awakening were good fun as I passed summer days at my grandparents’ house. However, it wasn’t until I played Final Fantasy VII that I fell in love with video games and realized the platform’s potential as an art form. The game packed a full and impactful punch – a vast and varied world to explore, an engrossing and gripping story, characters whose lives are changed forever, stunning graphics (at the time), a simple yet deep combat system, and a new way of keeping things fresh at every turn. All of this spanned across four discs and fifty hours of a completely riveting gaming experience. 

Video games have been my foremost hobby and passion since my first foray into this wonderful adventure, and thus it isn’t a stretch to say that Final Fantasy VII helped define who I am as a person. So, let me be the first person to say that I was nervous when Final Fantasy VII: Remake was announced. I wasn’t one of those people who obnoxiously kept asking for it, nor did I even really want it. The odds of this remake meeting the sky-high expectations set by the original were astronomically low, and the thought of recreating my first love in a modern gaming culture where games are more popular, more culturally relevant, and more heavily scrutinized than ever before was downright terrifying. Imagine that the thing you loved and championed for the most was vilified in the social media era. Indirectly, the part of you which that thing helped to define would be vilified, too. If, in the middle of the remake’s development cycle, Square were to suddenly announce that the plug was pulled on the project and it would never see the light of day, I wouldn’t have been upset because I was so fearful of being disappointed. Nothing could have eased this fear – not the news of the old guard getting together to make this game, not the breathtaking visual previews, or the overwhelmingly well received gameplay demo. I needed to see for myself if Square could re-capture lightning in a bottle.

The point that I’m hoping to illustrate here is that this isn’t a Kingdom Hearts III (2019) situation where Square could have put prison gruel on my plate and I’d still eat it up like a well-seasoned filet mignon simply because I’m happy it exists. Quite the opposite, in fact. Upon popping the disc in, I went in with a strict and critical mindset because this game had to be absolutely stellar; anything else would be a massive disappointment.

With that set up, and a thirty-eight hour escapade from the Sector 1 Reactor to the highway out of Midgar in the books, let’s get into it. I’ll be covering and assigning subjective scores to each of the following categories: Visuals, Sound, World, Gameplay, Characterization, Story, Ending. At the end, I’ll deliver concluding thoughts and attempt a final subjective score.

Visuals

We’ll start with the bells and whistles. Visuals, and then sound.

I’ve always been one to say that graphics are a low priority in the world of video games, that the “game” part is what should grip you moreso than the “video” part. In fact, I haven’t adhered to this more loudly than when defending the 1997 original because no game has been subject to more “polygon graphics” and “Dorito hair” memes.

All that said, good graphics are one hell of a cherry to have on top. And this game’s cherry is a sweet one.

Square Enix has always been at the forefront of graphical prowess for pretty much their entire history; they tend to set the bar in this department when it comes to a new Final Fantasy installment and this remake is no exception.

It’s pretty simple here: Everything. Looks. Fucking. Amazing.

We’ll start with the character designs. All stay true to the original; the biggest liberties that Square decided to take were Barret’s sunglasses to highlight that renegade, demolitionist aesthetic (he may or may not wear them indoors a bit too much, but I digress) and Tifa’s new stockings and sports bra underneath her iconic white tank to give her more of that sporty, martial artist look. Both are welcome additions. Zooming out and taking a look at the entire cast, everyone looks absolutely brilliant in their 2020 self. 

Facial expressions, lip syncing, and body language are of course impeccable and life-like for all characters throughout the game’s entirety. It’s important to note, too, that Square pushed the envelope so much on these character models that it’s often hard to distinguish whether or not in-game models or pre-rendered models are being used in cutscenes. 

Animations both in battle and out of it are extremely fluid and well-done. Battle particles and visuals are flashy and distinct without being overbearing or stealing the limelight away from the gameplay itself. Between Kingdom Hearts III and now this game, it’s probably fair to say that all of the chatter surrounding Square’s adoption of Unreal Engine 4 can now be put to rest. 

I’ll cover the visual quality of Midgar itself in the “World” section, but as you can probably imagine, I was blown away by that, too.

Visuals Score: 10/10

Sound

Let’s begin with the voiceover quality (I played in English). This is actually a harder obstacle for Square to tackle than people realize, I think. These aren’t brand new characters. People know them already. The original game’s dialogue was done completely in text, so if you’re Square, you face this challenge where your players have a distinct voice in their head for these characters based on their appearances, backgrounds, personalities and choices of words. Can you capture that exactly?

I think Square did a great job, for the most part. You can hear Cloud’s fake apathy, the sincerity underneath his front of not caring. There’s a distance and mysterious quality to his voice that I think is so essential to his character. Barret is likely the weakest in terms of vocal performance; when he gets loud, I can’t get the Internet’s early comparisons to Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder (2008) out of my head. However, when speaking at a normal tone, and especially when speaking at a somber tone, I think he’s absolutely perfect. Gruff and tough, yet absolutely empathetic and passionate. Tifa likely has the strongest vocal performance, perfectly capturing a character who is pensive and struggling to identify what’s right amidst the chaos around her while being put in the position of needing to be the voice of reason. Aerith’s voice is higher pitched and carries more whimsy than I had imagined, but I also really like this version because it paints Aerith as this ordinary, innocent and playful woman which is true to her initial characterization before we find out that she is connected to something much, much deeper. The rest of the characters are voiced beautifully, from the Shinra crew, to the entirety of Avalanche (shoutouts to getting Badger from Breaking Bad to play Wedge, how absolutely perfect), to the random scared citizens we meet amongst the slums.

Moving onto the soundtrack... just wow. Nobuo Uematsu, you brilliant son of a bitch. 

I’m of the opinion that Final Fantasy VII boasts the second best soundtrack in the franchise, second only to Final Fantasy IX (2000), and I really didn’t see where it had room to improve. Imagine if all of The Beatles were alive and said today, “Yeah, we’re going to remake Abbey Road, and make it even better.” Like... how? How do you improve upon a masterpiece? The potential and possibility is just outside of our comprehension, right? And yet, they would probably find a way.

Similarly, in a 2020 landscape in which Nobuo has a lot more tools, tricks, and experience up his sleeve, he managed to churn out a reimagined soundtrack that builds upon the core strengths of the original to create something new and grand. For example, from the jump, we can compare the Bombing Mission tracks. The original is fantastic, and a classic – a spunky baseline combined with anxiety-inducing synth horns create the perfect ambience for the mission at hand while setting up Midgar’s feel of a grungy, electric city. Nobuo’s version for the remake utilizes a sweeping orchestra to create the exact same feeling but with a much fuller sound fitting for a modern game. 

Of course, plenty of new tracks were created for this game as well such as the score for the Wall Market sections, and certainly deserve their place amongst the old songs that we fell in love with before. Because of this, no two areas of Midgar felt the same (which can happen in a world where everything is called a sector and a number), and areas from the original took on that received their own theme took on a life of their own. Finally, the collectible jazz tracks were an amazing touch that provided an alternative look at the game’s iconic themes without breaking the immersion of the world too much.

A few of my personal favorites from throughout the game:

The Airbuster – A remake of Final Fantasy VII’s boss theme, and it just... slaps, as the kids say.

Critical Shot – An alternate battle theme that we first heard in the trailers which was simply a lot of fun to fight to

Tifa’s Theme – Seventh Heaven – The iconic piano track blossoms into a wonderful and iconic orchestral experience. Beautifully done.

Aerith’s Theme – Sector 5 Church – This one’s a bit of an outlier; it’s not actually listed on the FF7R OST and is in fact original to Nobuo’s Final Fantasy VII piano collections, but it’s the perfect example of music tying a ribbon onto a scene. Cloud falling into the Sector 5 Church and meeting Aerith is something I’ve seen countless times, but I was still moved to tears by how beautifully everything comes together. 

On Our Way (Collectible Jazz Track) – We get the Kalm theme early with this one. Man, oh, man that saxophone.

Sound Score: 10/10

World

To be honest, it was basically a given that Square was going to nail the bells and whistles. Square-Enix games rarely, if ever, disappoint in the audiovisual department. With those out of the way, we can start moving to the meat of the review: How well did Square-Enix recreate this iconic world? In the case of this edition of the Remake, did they manage to bring Midgar to life in an acceptable way?

I’m going to make a confession. After the bombing mission, I felt bored. In fact, I turned the game off and called it a night. This isn’t to say that the bombing mission wasn’t recreated beautifully – it certainly was – it’s just that I've been conditioned by the original game to associate Midgar with being this slow, uninteresting opening act of the Final Fantasy VII story and that the bombing mission is just the first step to leaving Midgar so that I can start the real adventure. 

And then, I got to Sector 7.

Holy shit.

I hadn’t really put much thought into how many levers Square had at their disposal to bring Midgar to life. Sector 7 served as the first of many slaps to the face that absolutely nothing was off limits, and whatever Square was going to touch was turning into gold. What in the 1997 edition was simply one screen with the bar, a couple shops, and an apartment or two we could enter was transformed into a full-on city. A grid of streets, avenues, and alleyways littered with townsfolk whose conversations about recent plot points we could overhear as we passed by, which created a pulse within the slums. A bevy of different stores and buildings to explore. A fresh cast of characters and NPCs to converse with which deepened our connection to these slums. And the plate. I could talk for hours about this – in the original, such a big deal is made of the two layers of Midgar, and how the top plate on which the privileged live blocks out the sky and pollutes the air for the slums below. But we literally never see the freaking thing because obviously, how could they show it in a top-down view? And yet, in this remake, it’s very much omnipresent. The steel sky of dread and inequality spans omnipresent across the slums we traverse (I unashamedly spent a legitimate five minutes just staring up at it, like “Holy crap. There it is...” as if I were a kid catching Santa Claus on Christmas night). 

And of course, Sector 7 was just the tip of the iceberg. Sector 5 got a very similar treatment in addition to perfectly recreating Aerith’s house while capturing its vibes of being a diamond in the rough. Shinra HQ was downright gorgeous and more grand than we could have imagined. Something that stood out to me was Square’s ability to expand on areas from the original Midgar that were total afterthoughts – the journey from Sector 5 to the Sector 7 playground which in the original was a couple unremarkable screens became a winding stretch worth hours of exploration, puzzles, and battle. Other originally miniscule areas like the train graveyard, the sewers underneath Wall Market, and the climb up to Shinra HQ all got a similar treatment. Square didn’t stop there, either, introducing new areas such as a brief foray to the suburbs topside of the plate which showed new light upon this electric city. Honestly, what floored me the most was just how much life there was in all of Midgar. The conversations that the city’s inhabitants in virtually all areas that we pass through served to not only give Midgar a heartbeat, but also to make us as the player truly feel the gravity of our actions.

Truly, Square’s brilliance shone bright here – the bland and boring original Midgar only served as a blank canvas for the city to be invigorated in grand fashion for this remake.

World Score: 10/10

Gameplay

This is possibly the most important section. All the bells and whistles about this game are great, and the setting was recreated beautifully while capturing every vibe of the original and then some... but in the end, this is a video game, and aesthetics and soundscape don’t mean anything if your game isn’t fun.

Square-Enix had a monumental challenge before them when having to come up with a combat system for this remake. On the one hand, you have the classic Final Fantasy ATB system which longtime fans of the series absolutely love; this rewards tactical thinking, preparation, and methodically planning out and expending turns and resources to reach the outcome that you desire. On the other hand, turn based combat isn’t exactly premium gaming in 2020. I’m a Final Fantasy purist and even I can admit that. We’re just not as limited anymore. Developers have the ability to create these fantastic action-based games with better responsiveness, flow, and hitbox/hurtbox technology than ever before, and this style of gaming is obviously a lot more appealing and rewarding to a wider audience of players who frankly know better in this day and age.

So, Square did their best Dora impression and said “Why not both?”

And from it came perfection.

Yes, I said “perfection”. Square was somehow able to find a way to make old school and new school tango, and they are wonderful dance partners. 

A brief summary for those who are out of the loop: In a normal state, combat plays a lot similarly to a lot of action-based games we know and love today (think God of War, Kingdom Hearts, Dark Souls). You can move around freely, guard, dodge, and attack to your heart’s content. There are elements here that are absolutely necessary in a modern video game that were missing in the original Final Fantasy VII: Constant engagement. Real-time skill expression. 

The traditional Final Fantasy players don’t get left out either. By playing through combat normally – attacking, blocking, and dodging – the player builds up their ATB gauge. Once their ATB is full, they can enter Tactical Mode, which slows down time dramatically and allows the player to use their character’s skills, magic, summons, and items.

And the absolutely beautiful thing? You need both standard play as well as Tactical Mode to succeed in combat. The necessity of standard play is obvious – you need to be able to run around, attack, and defend to thrive in combat. But you won’t get anywhere with tougher enemies just by whacking them. You need to use your ATB gauge in order to pack a significant punch to enemies, to discover and exploit their weaknesses, and to heal up your party.

Speaking of the party, I deeply enjoyed being able to switch seamlessly between controlling the party members with the push of a button. AI-controlled party members’ ATB gauges fill up more slowly, which means constant switching, assigning ATB usage, and moving to the next party member are key to maximizing effectiveness. Hooray for even more avenues for skill expression!

And let me just take a second to gush. Perhaps my biggest criticism of the original Final Fantasy VII is that literally every character is pretty much the same in battle. Yes, their base stats vary slightly, as do their Limit Breaks, but aside from that, with enough materia and stat increase item shenanigans (and it doesn’t take much), every character plays and feels the same in combat.

Square completely shattered that criticism in this remake. Every character feels unique and satisfying to play:

What’s remarkable to me about playing as Cloud is how well Square nailed the speed at which he plays at. ‘Cause think about it, right? Dude’s holding a sword that weighs 80-100 lbs, so his attacks and moveset have to be able look and feel like they pack a heavy punch. But at the same time, we know that Cloud’s no rook, and he has some dexterity and speed to him. To find this balance, his combos from beginning to middle a great tempo and good flash, and they finish with a visible powerful and empathetic smash.

Tifa is far and away my favorite character to play as. Honoring her Final Fantasy monk inspiration, Square designed Tifa in such a way that she feels like she came straight out of a fighting game. Lightning quick, an emphasis on combos, and get this – you can animation cancel. As an example, I was fighting a boss and already had Unbridled Strength (damage boost) and Haste (ATB buildup boost) activated on Tifa. I dodged the boss’s frontal cleave with Focused Strike, strung some basic attacks together, threw in Overpower which links with your basic attacks, and finished by using Whirling Uppercut then canceling the landing animation by using Divekick. That’s. Insane.

Square nailed Barret’s awkward role as the supporty-ranged tank. His damage isn’t great, but he plays at a safe range and is your best bet to take down units at a far distance. He has some ridiculous HP and defensive stats and is a solid magic user so he was honestly great to switch to when my higher DPS characters needed a breather to get healed up. 

Okay first of all, thank God they gave Aerith a magic-based ranged basic attack. The sound of her whacking something in the original to the tune of, like, 12 damage will haunt my dreams forever. Aerith feels fantastic to play as well. I draw comparisons to the Final Fantasy XIV black mage – switch to Aerith, set up an Arcane Ward (doubles spellcasts!), don’t move, and watch as her ridiculous magic abilities burn enemies down. She’s also great to leave on AI-controlled standby so that she can attack safely from a distance and heal up the party as needed.

The battles themselves were great; each boss felt unique and had a weakness to discover and exploit. Seamlessly weaving in cutscenes and dialogue added a cinematic flair that was just another cherry on top of an amazing combat system. The typical monsters and trash mobs that we came across were all unique as well, and their variants encountered later in the game added twists of required tactical thinking.

I have only a couple points of discomfort with the new combat system, and they’re both very minor ones. First, the fact that skills/spells (and even Limit Breaks!) can be interrupted by enemy actions could be extremely frustrating – especially if there were larger amounts of enemies present, your character could get juggled quite easily. Filling up your ATB gauge and readying a skill just for it to be interrupted because some demon hound ran up and smacked you in the head has to be the least “Final Fantasy” feeling ever. That being said, this is easily where you can throw the term “skill expression” right back at me. The second point of discomfort is that enemies were very clearly agro’d to whoever you control as the player. This made playing a ranged character like Aerith annoying at times, because, dammit, I just want to DPS without hordes of monsters running at me! Again, “skill expression” is a double edged sword, but I found it a little strange that enemies would drop what they’re doing, stop fighting Cloud, and start running at Barret just because I switched to him.

Zooming out to other facets of gameplay! I really enjoyed how materia was implemented which may just be a derivative of how smart the combat system was that Square created, but I think Square really hit the mark of having to carefully plan out your party’s materia loadout and envisioning how it would execute in battle. The weapon level-up system adds an extra layer of depth and reminds me of Final Fantasy IX’s skill learning system, which is great. Finally, the large amount of minigames and side quests available added a good deal of variety to the game, without being overly complicated or time consuming.

This was probably the most enjoyable game in the Final Fantasy series from a pure “this is a fun game” standpoint.

Gameplay Score: 10/10 (would honestly be an 11 if such a thing were real)

Characterization

The Final Fantasy series is typically at the top of its class for its character building and development, but I was still slightly nervous heading into this remake that Nomura wouldn’t recapture that magic accurately. Maybe I was conditioned from Final Fantasy XIII (2009) and Final Fantasy XV, but I was especially worried about Cloud. “Please don’t make Cloud this typical brooding, angsty emo Final Fantasy protagonist,” I remember thinking to myself. Because that’s not who he is. Cloud Strife is a dork. He’s a dork who adapts incredibly poorly to new situations and puts on a front of apathy when uncomfortable, but he doesn’t hate the world.

I should have put more faith in the fact that the original game’s character designer became the remake’s director. For the most part, I truly feel like the cast’s Act I character arcs played out and were shown as they should be. Cloud starts out apathetic but that front really begins to melt after he meets Aerith. Aerith herself comes off as this fun and innocent girl but progressively drops more and more hints that she’s part of something much bigger. Barret begins as the loud and rambunctious leader figure which gives way to a total empath who’s still trying to process just what he’s been caught up in. Tifa is shown with her typical slow and steady struggle to come to terms with what has to be done to make things right in the world after traumatic childhood events made her averse to it all.

The rest of the cast’s characters were painted beautifully. Sephiroth made more appearances than normal in this Midgar section (more on that later), but we still don’t understand a word that’s coming out of his mouth. We see the distinct division in those under the Shinra umbrella between those who have morals and those who sip the Kool-Aid. We’re introduced to a new cast of characters in the slums who are working tirelessly to make life better for those around them despite being dealt a terrible hand, and they function to strengthen both the main cast and the story as a whole.

A particular gem that I was delighted by were the interactions between characters. The original was somewhat limited in this department, but we can visibly see the cast grow closer as the remake goes on. Cloud goes from being disinterested and saying “For a price” to any request that Avalanche have for him, to selflessly agreeing to help Barret search for his friends and family post-plate drop, to poking fun at his old self in front using his old “For a price” motto. Additionally, because the areas of Midgar to travel between locations were expanded immensely, things like conversations between characters with no other purpose but character development were added in as we made our way through these winding stretches. That’s a huge advantage that a modern voiced game has over the original that had to use text for dialogue – we had to literally stop everything in order for an interaction between characters to occur. Now, they can just be thrown in wherever. We see more high fives, cheers, ribs, jokes. hugs, and tender moments than ever before. And to me, what this establishes for the cast as a whole is such a beautiful change of pace from a classic Final Fantasy game. This isn’t just a collection of individuals with aligning goals. These are friends.

This in particular makes me really excited for future installments; we now have evidence that these characters are everything that they should be. That baseline allows for more interactions and development, and even the most hardcore old school Final Fantasy VII fans will get to know and enjoy these characters on a deeper level.

Characterization: 10/10

Story

Too often did I get one of my friends to try the original Final Fantasy VII, hoping they’d fall in love too, only for them to lose interest before leaving Midgar because that part of the game is downright boring. Everything is dark and dreary, we don’t really care about the people of the Slums so we don’t feel the empathy to want to help them, the story crawls along, the deaths we see are of characters we only knew briefly, and all of it seems for naught because we find out Sephiroth is the much bigger threat; not some greedy electric company.

But much like with the design of Midgar itself, I hadn’t really put much thought with just how much they can build upon that unexciting first act.

[rainydawgradioblog]

Rainy Dawg Radio’s Best of the 2010s!

ALBUMS

Palberta - Bye Bye Berta

Palberta is a band that somehow manages to scratch almost every musical itch I have. Nowhere else have I heard a band successfully hold three part harmonies over squeaky atonal guitar riffs and abstract drum thrashing. Although I wouldn’t categorize them as twee, noise rock, post-punk, indie pop, no-wave, or any other genre name for that matter, they distill everything I love from all these types of music and mush it into something beautifully stinky. In my eyes, their 2017 album Bye Bye Berta stands as the definitive statement of what Palberta’s all about. With 20 tracks clocking in at under half an hour, the album wastes no time on filler. Skronky punk riffs burst apart at the seams and a sweet little lo-fi love song comes out of the wreckage, only to be replaced by an abstract tape sample collage. The band also has an incomparable mastery over lyricism, as evidenced by such classics as Finish My Bread (Finish my finish my finish my bread, finish my finish my finish my bread, etc…) and Trick Ya (HEY! Don’t trick me, I’m gonna trick you! HEY! Don’t trick me, I’m gonna trick you!). Highlights include the endearingly ramshackle and stupid pretty “Honey, Baby” and their cover of “Stayin’ Alive” (Jenny’s eating burgers and everybody’s shakin’ and stayin’ alive!)

- Elliott Hansen

Alex G - DSU

Shit if you know me you know I live for that sad bastard indie music. That’s exactly what DSU does best. Probably my most played record of the 2010s, this album’s lo-fi indie rock overfloweth. The opener, After Ur Gone, is on the noisier side of the album’s spectrum along with the squealing guitar of Axesteel and Icehead (peep the scream vocals in his live performances), while songs like the instrumental Skipper exemplify why Frank Ocean tapped Alex for the Self Control riff on Blonde. The emotional core of the record, Sorry, gets right back to the Elliott Smith comparisons that we know and love: lyrics of trauma, drugs and apologies included. My favorite song is Harvey; it smacks me right in the younger brother emo spot, with “run my hands through his short black hair I say / ‘I love you Harvey I don’t care’”. While not as chaotic as House of Sugar, twangy as Rocket, or psychedelic as Beach Music, this record is Alex G comfort music at its finest.

- Max Bryla

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma

Picture this: J Dilla, Madlib, and Aphex Twin all come together to create an album with little more than some old Coltrane records and an original Xbox at their disposal. The end result is like a trip through the universe. Yet the album comes from the mind of a single individual, who sits in the cockpit with a mischievous grin on his face: Steven Ellison, known professionally as Flying Lotus. The opening track, ‘Clock Catcher’, feels like Ellison slamming his foot onto the ignition so hard that it snaps out of place, shooting into the heavens at the speed of light before the listener can even strap in. Whirling through the stars, the rest of the album is the journey home from the expanse, often melancholic, often wondrous, always changing. From the punchy, off-kilter rhythms of tracks like ‘Nose Art’ and ‘Computer Face//Pure Being’ to the fat synth melodies of ‘Dance of the Pseudo Nymph’, ‘Recoiled’, and ‘Do The Astral Plane’, Flylo is always striking the listener from a different sonic vantage point. You can tell he’s having the time of his life with each of these songs, wanting to share every bit of it with our eardrums. After countless listens, I’m still finding new things about this album to appreciate. A complete masterpiece of cosmic epiphany fuel.

- Trey Marez

Ott. - Fairchildren

People throw so much music at me. And I remember this album was recommended to me back in high school, and I listened to it for the first time in zero-th period -- I think it was someone who went by the name “phryk” on IRC. And dang, it’s still such a good album! In what sense? It’s so well-mixed; that’s the first part. Secondly, it is just a wonderful listening experience from start to finish. If you need a good album of reggae, dub, electronic, here it is. One thing you shouldn’t do with this album: use it to test out speakers at Goodwill. The bass of this album was so good that I bought home a pair of speakers that turned out to be so bad.

- Koi Nil

Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy

Bandcamp has been known for hosting some of our wildest dreams this decade, and when 2011 lobbed William Toledo’s first rendition of Twin Fantasy down my ears my life changed. Emotions are crushed to death in the back of parking lots, the lo-est of fi’s, and lyrics that trigger far and melancholy memories of the early 2010 zeitgeist swarmed with insecurity and Skype calls. The album is Toledo’s first cohesive piece, finally creating work with developed central themes, dedicating the first concept album of his life to falling in and consequently out of love. The album speaks as a mirror to itself, reflecting Will’s own joy and confusion towards falling conservatively and completely in love, until the sobering downward spiral back into isolation. I was only eleven when I let the album own me completely, and am only nineteen as I hold onto it for dear life. Twin Fantasy was never a perfect album, and Toledo recognized this as he re-released Twin Fantasy (Face to Face) in 2018, reinventing the album’s sound with a much higher fidelity, lyrical updates, and redone instrumentals that turn the original into an overture or prologue to be enjoyed separately for more context. Searing solos, cute doo-wop moments, sentimental lyrics, slap-happy drums, fish wearing business suits, dogs, coming out over Skype, smoking, not smoking, nice shoulders, waitresses, the Bible, the ghost of Mary Shelley’s frankenstein, cursive, they might be giant’s rip offs, not knowing SHIT about girls, stealing alcohol from our grandparents and grandparents, bruised shins, cults, fish, getting the spins, and being really really really sensitive to the sunlight. I’d fight for this album, listening to “Cute Thing” as I get RKO’d. Take the time to enjoy the ride, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. (It technically used to be a gay furry album, but now it’s techincally a straight trans furry album.)

- Cooper Houston

Sabaton - The Last Stand

Sabaton is every history teachers dream band. These Swedish power metallers educate the listener about the history of war by discussing various battles, conflicts, and figures. They do this through anthemic choruses, riffs that make your fist pump, and oddly enough synths that work surprisingly well. Since history interests me and I really like metal, Sabaton was pretty much made for me. This album will always have a soft spot in my heart and evoke fond memories as it was one of the first CDs I picked up after getting my license back in 2016. As I gained more independence and freedom as I approached adulthood, this was my soundtrack. This album lived in my CD player during this time as I listened to it over and over again, never once losing its replayability. Ranging from the American battalion that got lost in the Argonne Forest during WWI to Allied and Axis forces joining together to fight at the end of WWII, this album tells of various historical last stands. While this is certainly isn’t the best metal release of the decade, it’s still an extremely solid album. In this case, the sentimentality plays a larger role than anything. While it may not be found on any “Best Album of the Decade” lists, Sabaton’s The Last Stand will always hold a place in my heart and in my car’s CD player.

- Jack Irwin

CONCERTS

07/20/19: What the Heck? Fest @ Croatian Club, Anacortes, WA

Choosing a single favorite concert from the entire past decade seemed insurmountable until I decided to define it by the overall experience rather than exclusively the music. This past summer, I was lucky enough to be one out of barely over a hundred people at the first What the Heck? Fest in 8 years. The festival took place annually from 2001 to 2011, featuring PNW indie legends, K records icons, and all manner of dorky indie folk kids. WTH laid dormant until this past spring, when Phil Elverum (Mount Eerie) announced its return along with the revival of his long-dead initial moniker, the Microphones. I made the trip up from Seattle alone by train and bus, spent a little while wandering Anacortes (the Business was closed :( ) and made my way to the repurposed church which houses the Unknown and the Croatian Club. I ended up seated a few feet from Calvin Johnson in one direction and Kimya Dawson in another. I felt a little out of place at times, like a stranger in the middle of a 90s indie family reunion, but the atmosphere remained consistently welcoming. D+ opened the show, fronted by Bret Lunsford (formerly of Beat Happening), the founder and main organizer of WTH, and backed by Phil Elverum and Karl Blau, who played their own sets later in the night. K Records mainstays Lois and Mecca Normal were on next, delivering stripped down, socially-driven whisper punk/indie pop. Karl Blau led an outdoor sing-along and covered a Pounding Serfs song, who played the next set (their first in [a lot of?] years) for a total of two renditions of “Slightly Salted,” a song I could have listened to in every set that night. Phil hopped back onstage again alongside Lee Baggett to back Kyle Field from Little Wings, an indie-folk favorite of mine, with rambly half-nonsensical lyrics and plenty of soft strummed warm twangly guitars. Black Belt Eagle Scout delivered (comparatively) heavier sounds, coupling slow, soft sung melodies with fuzzed out shoegaze tones, building tension until the Microphones (Phil backed by Kyle, Karl, Lee and keyboardist Nicholas Krgovich) came out for the final set of the night. They opened with what I interpret as a 25-minute rendition of the then-unreleased Belief, which was later shortened to 7 and a half minutes as the opener to the new Mount Eerie record, Lost Wisdom pt. 2. Phil then played a handful of old Microphones tracks alone, including a version of The Glow pt. 2’s title track with reworked lyrics, as well as its closer, My Warm Blood, excerpts from the final Microphones album (confusingly titled Mount Eerie), and what I believe to be another unreleased song. I left with the most limited merch I’ve ever managed to snag: one of two Ziploc bags of lettuce with “the Microphones” and a small K records logo sharpied on the front. I felt bad eating my merch, but it sustained me through the cold Anacortes night as I wandered to and from poorly lit parks, killing time until my 4AM bus back to Seattle.

- Elliott Hansen

03/09/19: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (Solo) @ Vermillion Gallery, Seattle WA

Was really not sure what to expect from this one going in, but CYHSY’s s/t from 2005 has always been one of my favorite records. I hadn’t ever been to Vermillion in Capitol Hill, but it was hosting CYHSY on a “living room tour”, where Alec Ournsworth (vox, guitar, harmonica[!]) hit tiny spaces around the country. Vermillion sat 40 at most, and I got to check out some cool local art in the space as well. Alec’s trademark voice that (according to p4k) sounds “as if someone were pressing his vocal cords to a fret board and bending them” which is pretty damn accurate. Amongst CYHSY’s greatest hits (In This Home On Ice and Cool Goddess in particular), he also covered Pixies and Tom Waits through lively and exciting banter. Great dude, great music, great venue. My favorite of the 2010’s for sure.

- Max Bryla

11/14/18: Milo @ Vera Project, Seattle, WA

Milo, and the ruby yacht house band are poetic alchemists that constantly dish out hefty servings of succulent syllables with each new release. Kenny Segal who does the beats for a few of Milo’s songs (and other hip hop artists) opened by transporting the crowd into the ethereal realm with a few classics from his album: happy little trees. Once Kenny Segal finished, Milo accompanied by the ruby yacht house band jumped on stage. I was close enough that I could make out Milo’s squirtle tattoo on his bicep and waited for his vivid and veracious vocabulary to leave me in a state of decapitation. Crispy, potato chip like static (a Milo-live signature) was consumed ferociously by the crowd as he hit us with one banger after another. About halfway through the set Milo dropped the mic and went off stage into the back room. The ruby yacht house band was left Milo-less; their beat lingering in the air, festering with each hit of the snare. Milo returned a while later, wielding a pair of tap dancing shoes in one hand and a ukulele in the other. He put on the tap dancing shoes on stage, everyone in the audience screaming with his return. Donned with the tap dancing shoes and positioning his ukulele on his chest; he began to dance. Holy shit he was good too. Strumming the uke and tap dancing away I was utterly mesmerized. My eyes glued to his performance. Suddenly, as if stricken by some divine intervention, Milo seized the ukulele by the neck and smashed it against the ground, splintering into a thousand pieces. After his destructive fit, he picked the microphone back up and whispered into it emotionlessly: “Think about that”. I did. The whole experience was transcendental and instantly triumphed as my greatest concert of the decade. You KNOW I snagged a sliver of uke on my way out.

- Rocky Schaefer

08/07/17: Metallica @ CenturyLink Field, Seattle, WA

While Metallica has had its ups and downs throughout their career, they do one thing well, and that is putting on a damn good live show. Metallica built the best line-up I have ever seen, given the popularity of the bands they chose. With them they took Avenged Sevenfold, who I greatly dislike but are still a huge band, and Gojira, one of the best modern death metal bands on the scene. The sheer size of this concert was absolutely and extremely inspiring as Metallica was able to fill up CenturyLink Field, a venue usually reserved for pop artists who draw in thousands of attendees. The amount of people that attended signaled to me that metal is far from dead. While this tour was in support of their newest album Hardwired to Self Destruct, Metallica made sure to incorporate classics into their setlist including “Seek and Destroy,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and “Battery.” James, Robert, Kirk, and Lars delivered a killer concert will tight playing and outstanding individual performances. Being able to see my music hero, James Hetfield, play live was truly a special experience. The one thing that stood out during the performance were the visuals. Each song had a unique and individual video effect on the large screens behind the band which made each song special and memorable it its own way. While I wasn’t close to the stage by any means, the crowd interaction created a unique experience that made me feel much closer than I really was. This concert wasn’t just a concert, but also a life-changing experience. Seeing the band that truly got me into metal, the thing that I rest my individuality on, is something that defined the decade for me and will live with me forever.

- Jack Irwin

SONGS

“You Are Here” - Yo La Tengo

This one I don't think I can fully explain. By miles, this is my most played song of all time. It is the opener of Yo La Tengo’s 15th album, There’s A Riot Going On. The album, and song, starts with the meditative synth line that builds into a pulsing rhythm over the course of the first minute. The rhythm maintains through the rest of the song, as casual guitar strumming is added and another synth that doesn’t sound all that dissimilar to Jonny Greenwood’s Ondes Martenot. My favorite part of the song, though, are the drum fills of the latter half: they crash and roll like the ocean. With or without the title of the song, the audio conveys a degree of presentness and contentedness that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere quite yet. I’d recommend it.

[thesinglesjukebox]

ITZY - ICY [6.50] Cold summer...

Iain Mew: Hey hey hey! Yo! Eh eh eh. Beep beep. Bom bom bom. Oh oh oh. Ring ring ring! The pick'n'mix approach to ad-libs is as delightful as the deluge of hooks. That is, almost as delightful as a new group bringing back Lip Service but successful, surging through myriad scenes with just a wobbly Blackpink siren noise, the silliest bit of wordplay, and forward momentum to rely on. [9]

Kayla Beardslee: I respect how committed this song is to its relentlessly -- annoyingly -- cheerful aesthetic, but that doesn't mean I find any aspect of it pleasant. Constant shouting interspersed with flashes of forgettable melodies, a tuneless bridge that sounds distractingly ready to segue into "I Just Can't Wait to Be King," and sound effects out the ass: what is there to like about this? [2]

Katie Gill: This is less a song than a collection of noises. The background shouts, the chants, the instrumentation that seems to be composed mostly of "oh hey, I found this fun synth effect we can use!" -- "Icy" is trying to win an award for doing the absolute most. I suspect that some people will find it annoying. As for me, I find it weirdly endearing. It helps that barely any part of this song is memorable enough to be stuck in your head. [6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: JYP darlings Itzy's music is always busy and bustling, with different segments that, on their own, could make for several different songs, but they have given their all-over-the-place sound a solid direction and a consistency that is very impressive for such a young project. They're starting to at least solidify their place in the top-tier; the charts can prove. [7]

Leah Isobel: Itzy's take on self-confidence here veers cartoonish -- buoyant slap bass, snotty vocals, a general air of genial brattishness. There are some great production touches, like the high chimes in the pre-chorus or the stuttered vocals, but the chorus abandons the rest of the track instead of tying everything together; the result is fun but messy, covering the same thematic ground but lacking the clarity of purpose that "Dalla Dalla" demonstrated. We know the girls believe in themselves, and we know they have fun doing it. So what? [5]

Anna Suiter: Lia's telling me that this song is my favorite song? Not quite, but "I see that I'm icy" keeps playing in my head anyways, so she must be partially right. [6]

Alfred Soto: In contrast to the dead-eyed proficiency of "RNP," "Icy" brims with confidence: the raps, fills, and sung portions sound improvised when they clearly aren't, and the production gives the Korean group a jolt. [8]

Ryo Miyauchi: The lyrical emphasis on self-confidence, the metallic robo-bass drop and the overall focus of iciness as the language for stoic cool all check the boxes of the "girl crush" concept for Itzy. That said, "Icy" feels like a 13-year-old's vision of girl-group cool in the most endearingly dorky way. The hip-hop-inspired phrases in the single -- Ryujin's "shout to nae eomma" line and especially Lia's "they keep talkin', I keep walkin'" hook -- are proudly cheesy like the comic-book POW!'s popping up in the music video. While the noisy dial-up chirp adds some edginess to the production, it's the goofy slap bass that sums up the attitude of this song. By bringing a slightly not-cool version of industry-approved coolness, Itzy define their own "girl crush" concept. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: This is basically an update on 4Minute's "What's Your Name?" except with more seamless genre-blending, more palpable confidence, and an extended dance break. No other group right now does the girl crush concept better. [7]

Joshua Lu: Not altogether unexpected: Itzy graduating from the self-assuredness of "Dalla Dalla" to the cockiness present on "Icy," bringing to mind bratpop greats like Cher Lloyd. Completely unexpected: a chorus reminiscent of "Donatella" and the best use of a "Blah blah" hook since Missy Elliot in 2015. [8]

Jessica Doyle: They seem to be settling into a groove pretty quickly, and it's a nice enough groove, all color and self-confidence; once they get a more compelling chorus the momentum will be all theirs. (I appreciate the sentiment of "They keep talkin', I keep walkin'," but it seems to slow the song down without much compensation.) I feel a little nervous about supporting this group wholeheartedly, though; I'm not at all sure JYP provides the circumstances for the smiles and pride to extend beyond the concept. I'd feel better if I could believe that Lia might actually get to eat the burger once in a while. [5]

Michael Hong: Has any girl group's rapping sounded as good, as essential, as Itzy's? "Icy" follows the record-breaking "Dalla Dalla" and is similarly an almost violently maximalist banger stacked with a seemingly endless number of hooks where their raps drip with personality. "Icy" is a swirling mass of noise featuring video-game bloops and bleeps, pounding percussion, and shouted ad-libs that feel altogether exciting and remains completely enthralling. Unlike "Zimzalabim," (also-co-written by Caesar and Loui) which seemed to drop momentum at every turn, almost every moment on "Icy" seems to be seamlessly integrated, from the expertly rapped verses, the melodic pre-chorus, and the hook-laden chorus. For example, part of the instrumental drops out for Ryujin's rap on the second verse and this only emphasizes how strong Itzy are as rappers. Itzy also manage to match the energy of the show-stopping pre-chorus with one of the most hypnotic choruses of the year. It's Itzy's undeniable charisma that keeps "Icy" from ever falling into a unlistenable piece of chaos, and instead, solidifies them as the rookie group of the year and one of the hottest K-pop girl groups to watch. [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[rockandrollportlandor]

HADRIAN KINDT - Snooze Bananamousse

Fire Nuns are one of the greatest rock bands in Portland, and my appreciation of them only seems to grow with time. They mix a whole survey of rock history into their sound--the paisley-printed art-psych of the 60’s, the ham-fisted glam theatrics of the early 70’s, the elastic crudity of late 70’s punk, the tautness and punch of 80’s post-punk, and the revisionism of the bands of the 90’s and 00’s who reconstituted all those older sounds collage-style through the ironic lens of a giddily culture-free age. To watch and hear them play is like seeing time defying its own gravity--the early Kinks are influenced by the not-yet-existent Stooges, Syd Barrett never left Pink Floyd, Sparks are properly credited as the inventors of new wave, Roxy Music is muscular enough that the Sex Pistols’ love of them actually makes sense. Lead singer and rhythm guitarist Hadrian Kindt is the brains of the operation. As far as I know, he pretty much writes all the songs and does all the communicating for the band. One always wonders, when such a creatively determining frontman goes solo, what exactly is going to be different, and the first thing a Fire Nuns fan will notice about Kindt’s EP Snooze Bananamousse is that it’s a lot wackier than Fire Nuns, and it heavily features keyboards/synths, which don’t really play into the live Fire Nuns act. Kindt’s most inventive Fire Nuns songs slap the listener silly with sharp turns and melodic gymnastics, and, liberated from the confines of a standard two-guitars-bass-and-drums format, he pushes that tendency to the limit. It’s fun and crazy in a way which few local bands go for, but which I would only expect from Hadrian Kindt. Honestly, when I referenced Sparks in the paragraph above, it felt like a stretch, but after listening to this EP it would almost shock me if Kindt had never heard of them. At any rate, he covers a lot of the same ground, displaying the vital links between prog, glam and new wave, but with a harder, less baroque, more butch edge echoing his band’s more straightforward garage-punk punch. The tension between Kindt’s psychedelic excesses and his commitment to wam-bam-thank-you-ma’am rawk give this music may be the source of the delirious yet clear-headed energy. This is a quarantine dream of a pre-Covid party in the music scene, a sweaty, chaotic basement vibrating its concrete that opens into an endless warehouse psych festival, a crowd in shadows lit by shifting colors, as you wander, maybe just looking for the bathroom or the door outside to smoke, ecstatically fucked up on drugs that don’t actually exist, saying hi to people you’ve never met, running into people who don’t actually live in town or maybe are dead, all of them wearing absurd costumes with sequins and feathers, bell bottoms, animal masks and platform shoes, all of them speaking some impossible language that you somehow also know how to speak but still can’t understand. And then you wake up and it’s still 2020, but you’re pretty sure you had a better time--or was it a worse time?--in that dream than you ever had at an actual show. Really these songs are each an EP unto themselves, densely and carefully textured, festooned with ear candy, wandering (if not rampaging) through themselves in a manner more befitting circus music than your standard rock show. The lyrics are all over the place--I have no clue what he’s talking about but I also have no clue what I’m hearing so that’s perfect. Kindt plays everything and does all the vocals, demonstrating his formidable skill as an arranger and instrumentalist. He plays drums like a drummer, bass like a bassist, etc. etc. Overall, it’s a trip worth taking, and I’d very much like to see him put together a band to play this stuff live.