#you will not like it if you are a music/cover purist.

[tomandgeriatric]

so this is a cover. I really like it? lmao? it's nothing like the original. it's groovy

[littlexlioness]

Lucanis’s Head Cannons:

- This man loves the opera ( Not so much musicals, but the proper opera. Will try to take you to a show entirely in Antivan – forgetting you don’t speak a word of in and has to translate the entire thing for you. It ends up being a very cute date, as a whisper tibits bout characters and the plot to you quietly throughout the show)

- This man thinks flavored coffee is the devils work ( don’t look at me, I LOVE my Carmel macchiato flavored coffee as much as the next person – but this man is a purist who would gag at the idea of his lovely beans being covered with a fake ass flavoring to make them palatable)

- Can sew quite well ( you can’t convince me this man hasn’t tended to enough of his own injuries that he’s become very well versed with a needles and thread. Maybe he’ll even make something for Rook. The stitched would be perfectly spaced and stick straight but the fitting of any garment would probably be a mess. He should probably just stick to skin)

- He wears cheaters to read (obviously his far sight has to be 20/20 but there’s something I just love about the idea of him curled up with a cup of coffee, a pair of readers, and trashy romance novel.)

- Boxed wine is an affront to all wine ( I have a feeling if Rook brought this home, mostly to get a rise out of him, he would refuse to try it. Poor little rich boy, only drinking from crystal glasses and premium vintages. While Rook drinks box wine out of a coffee cup and thinks it’s heavenly)

- His love of reading came from not being able to sleep ( He liked to read before the Ossuary, but once Spite came into the picture he started reading more as a means to keep his mind busy, and to have something to focus on late at night when everyone else is already asleep. It definitely does not help with all his pinning after Rook – but he does get a few good ideas.)

- The tort idea absolutely came from one of his romance novels ( He absolutely read about it in a hurt/comfort romance about a jaded baker who doesn’t believe in love and the sunshine regular who adores his cooking)

- Asking Emmerich for the tort recipe was one of his top ten most embarrassing moments, especially when Emmerich mentions just how much Rook loves hazelnut ( right behind crying during his first day of training as a crow, giving that knife to Viago but to be fore scorned and the time the first talon caught him and Illario playing make believe wyverns as children when they were supposed to be studying)

- He taught Spite how to speak Antivan while in the Ossuary ( he had nothing better to do, and it kept his mind busy and present during some of Zara more difficult experiences)

- Lucanis loves and hates Mage!Rook being able to hear Spite. It helps that he’s not the only one who can hear the demon, but it’s awkward when creature forgets about decorum and saying something a little too honest or blunt. Especially if they’re trying to be romantic

- As much as he wants cooking with you to be a romantic experience, he can’t stand having another person in the kitchen when he’s cooking. There’s too many moving parts, and Rook always seems to be right where to he needs to be when a time goes off, or something needs to be done.

- This man has a sweet tooth, he used to sneak into the kitchens to learn how to cook (eat churros) you can’t convince me that he doesn’t have a secret stash of chocolate that he’ll break into for Rook after a hard fight or just a bad day.

- Loves to dance. This is non-negotiable, there is no way this man can’t dance. There’s no way Caterina raises this man and didn’t teach him every appropriate step in both ballroom dancing and modern dancing like salsa and tango. I’d be after coffee, and wine – his favorite date to take you on is dancing. ( brownie points to using Spite’s wings to do an impressively ridiculous lift too)

[thydungeongal]

This is not my entire perfect Vampire: the Masquerade soundtrack but a snippet of it + my reasoning.

First of all, it's best understood that Vampire: the Masquerade is a really 90s goth ass game. So of course, to set a baseline, we're simply going to crib the most 90s goth ass movie soundtrack onto this: The Crow (1994) has one of the most banging soundtracks ever so let's just take it in its entirety. It's got bangers like "Burn" by The Cure, Nine Inch Nails' cover of Joy Division's "Dead Souls," and like in general it just kicks ass.

Second of all, I'm not a prescriptivist when it comes to goth music, although I definitely used to be that guy (I got better and became a girl). Most of The Matrix soundtrack wouldn't qualify as goth according to purists, but for the sake of our trenchcoats and leather 90s goth it definitely works. Also, it includes the best remix ever made of Rob Zombie's "Dragula" by Hot Rod Herman and that song absolutely fucks.

Thirdly, and this one's a bit of a reach: anyone who's played Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines will tell you that the song that plays in the main menu of the game sounds eerily similar to Massive Attack's "Angel," and if they don't tell you that it's because they haven't listened to Massive Attack's "Angel." Anyway, the similarity is due to the fact that they were supposed to license the song "Angel," by Massive Attack, for the soundtrack, but the deal fell through, and the game's composer just made their own legally distinct version of that song.

Anyway the reason I'm staying as far away as possible from the official Vampire: the Masquerade soundtracks is that even though they're extremely 90s trad goth I feel like they fail to sell the juxtaposition of gothic horror and modern urban decay, which the aforementioned songs all exemplify really well imo.

[yj-polycule]

No One Asked but I have over 300 kpop albums and am not above shoving my two interests together so uhhh. Batfam and what kpop groups / style of kpop they listen to:

Bruce: He’s into the classics, a true 1st Gen enjoyer. Give him that good H.O.T and BOA. He doesn’t keep up to date with the current stuff but he will go out of his way to listen to any remakes of 1st gen songs that newer groups will release (Think Candy by NCT Dream)

Kate: 2nd Gen Purist. She refuses to listen to anything modern, stating Kpop peaked in the 2nd gen and hasn’t been able to recover since. Shinee, 2ne1, Bigbang, the whole works. She loves her 2nd gen and will only listen to new releases from those groups and their solo stuff. Nothing else.

Dick: MY MANS A GIRL GROUP STAN THROUGH AND THROUGH! It does not matter the generation, the style, it does not matter, if it’s sung by Woman he is seated and ready. He probably has a soft spot for 2nd Gen / Early 3rd Gen. Definately a Reveluv.

Barbara: She isn’t all that big into Kpop as a whole but will happily take recommendations from the others. Most of her kpop playlist consists of Gfriend or Seventeen, but she will listen to anything once and adds what she enjoys. (She is also the designated Ticket getter whenever tickets drop. She has ungodly good luck with Ticketing)

Cass: She goes one of two ways, either the softest most heart wrenching ballads you can think of or the loudest, most obnoxious noise music and there is no in between. Her playlist is a disaster, easily going from IU’s Love Wins All to NCT’s Sticker and you are given 0 time to prepare.

Jason: With his whole chest will claim he listens to underground K-Rap or K-R&B and then you listen to his playlist and it’s the most bubble gum kpop you can imagine. Twice and I.O.I are 90% of his playlist this man is not fooling ANYONE!

Tim: K-Bands all the way, especially K-Rock. NFlying, Day6, Xdinary Heroes, you name it and he has probably listened to their full discography over and over again. He doesn’t really search out the groups all that often but if he had to name a favorite Group it’d probably be Dreamcatcher.

Steph: GIRL POWER GIRL GROUPS. EXID, (G)-Idle, Le Sserafim, IVE. If their concept is woman empowerment she is eating that shit up like no ones business. She has forced Tim, Cass and Duke to learn dance covers with her and she will not stop. She will be blasting Queencard over the coms during patrol don’t think she won’t. She also has a soft spot for ZB1 and will refuse to elaborate in the slightest.

Duke: Definately a 4th Gen Boy Group Stan. Man loves his Stray Kids, Ateez, Enhyphen and so on. But he also is the type of person who will hunt down the Nugu Boy Groups and support them with his whole chest, the threat of them disbanding got nothing on him. Vanner, Drippin, you name it. He also is tied with Steph in knowing the most choreographies. Those two do a mean troublemaker cover

Damian: The actual KR&B listener in the family. He loves DPR IAN and Big Naughty but will listen to R&B style releases from standard groups. He also has a soft spot for Red Velvet’s Velvet-style tracks (mostly due to exposure because of Dick).

Maps: Bright concept Boy Groups and Nugu Girl Groups. She loves fun and bright songs. Think boy groups with TWS or The Wind and Nugu Girls like Saturday or Alice. She also is the biggest fan of Orange Caramel (unaware it’s a subunit, Broke Steph’s heart with that) and had done a full on Catalena cover with Steph and Cass.

Alfred: Probably the boring and predictable answer, but man listens to Trot. We respect some good Trot in this house and Alfred is a man of taste. He is also a Lim Young Woong fan much to the dismay of the rest of his family (nothing against his music, they just hate how he dominated the charts constantly)

[saltlickmp3]

BOB DYLAN LYRIcS AND CRAZY NOVEL LIKE RELATIONSHIP WITH JOAn bAEZ

okay i'm gonna answer this cos i was listening to joan earlier SO (and no i dont know why this is in greentext format just roll with it i'm so sorry) (this is uhh veeeeery very long too)

>1962/3

>some scruffy loser calling himself bob dylan shows up in new york with a guitar and pretty much cosplays as woody guthrie for a bit

>joan baez, who is the same age, made her debut self-titled album at nineteen years old and is well liked by everyone, her music is generally appreciated by everyone on the scene, she has a beautiful voice and strong vibrato and really good at guitar, involved in activism stuff, played with lost of older respected musicians, the whole folksinger package

>but she doesnt really write her own stuff

>bob dylan write copious volumes of material but his performance is uhhhh less than amazing and technical ability has uhm room for improvement

>his debut self titled album flops hard

>scene is pretty small so they inevitably meet

>joan is like lol look at this loser isnt he cute hehe--his songs are pretty good too huh

>she invites him to play with her, they do a bunch of shows together etc and eventually get romantically involved. joan introduces him to civil rights stuff & anti-war stuff & anti nuclear and all that stuff

>bobs stuff was already political but in a sort of abstract way, his work gets a lot more specifically activist-ey in a very powerful way

>they're still doing a lot of shows together-bob is pretty famous on the folk scene at this point, largely because of joan endorsing him pretty much lol, still romantically involved. music press starts paying attention to bob dylan and he releases quite a few albums with famous songs on them. people kinda shit on him for his voice its a whole thing but i really like his voice so whateverr

>but by 1965 music is starting to get Weird, beatles are happening etc, lots of new styles of music, new youth culture, drugs are also happening

>bob releases bringing it all back home - some of these songs have electric band backing, where previous All Bar One of his songs were solo acoustic guitar, vocals, maybe some harmonica. some people are vaguely put out by this but i think most people find it pretty cool

>20th july 1965 bob releases Like A Rolling Stone, arguably his most famous song. it is very electric and a banger and much Much more rock (it was pop then but yknow) than folk. young people go YAY YIPPEE

>newport folk festival 25th 1965 (five days later) bob plays with an electric band (later to be known as The Band) to Outrage from folk purists who thought he was their god etc. someone shouts 'judas' at the stage implying he was betraying folk music by going electric and that guy must absolutely shit himself every time he remember that he did that because goddamn. pretentious twenty-somethings who hadnt even liked folk music before bob dylan get mad at him, old folk singers are mad at him, popular myth says the famously pacifist pete seeger threatened to cut the power cable with an axe. everyone is Big Mad except like a rolling stone goes hard and people who care a bit less about Proper Folk Music think its a banger

>highway 61 revisted comes out and bob dylan is now a major sensation amongst music enjoyer everywhere, like his stuff is really really cool, new and exciting, also decidely Not Folk but like really very cool. bob also starts smoking weed and taking speed b/c ofc he does & if you look him up he looks like twelfth doctor with the sunglasses and the hair and i'm right on that

>joan is still doing traditional folk music mostly. she is less than amused at bob going electric but iirc mostly polite about it. later that year she released 'farewell, angelina' an album of covers of bob's songs. a lot of them are Very Good, all sung with much more skill than bob could ever hope for sorry bob. which is like. Damn Okay Joan Thats A Move but it was probably finished before newport.... idk..........

>england is suddenly like OMG BOB DYLAN????????? at around 1964/65 but it takes a long time for music to get over there b/c the british music industry had a thing about only selling uk artists so american records were special import it's a whole thing. so people are just getting his famous folk stuff riiiight as he changes his mind about that and starts doing rock music instead, though still with a very poetic bent

>on a related note uk albums were often released differenet in north america to 'appeal to american audiences'?? so the version of the beatles rubber soul that inspired bob dylan and like lou reed and Everyone is kinda of.... wrong...... its weird

>bob n joan's relationship is kinda strained at this point, due to musical differences and yknow relationship stuff, not helped by the fact that bob could be a bit of a prick and was also quickly accumulating A Legend around him. not helped by his insanely cryptic and often nonsensical interview responses.

>at some point in the middle of all this bob marries Sara Lownds in secret. no one knows. he doesnt tell joan. he's not With with joan anymore but she didnt know he was literally marrying someone else. apparently sara wasnt really a music person and didnt know exactly why he was so famous.

>1966 uk tour (this is filmed in d.a. pennebaker's DONT LOOK BACK (no apostrophe. cos dont & look & back all have four letters so it fits on a poster and the apostrophe would muck up teh symmetry also they were all really fuckin pretentious)). bob is playing mostly electric sets with The Band (known then as the Hawkes) which was A Choice To Be Sure

>some people love it but all the folk purists think he's awful and bad and terrible boo him offstage etc which is pretty terrible

>he starts taking a lot of drugs. music gets Weirder. he's kinda not doing too good

>joan shows up partway through the tour and its......awkward....... to say the least. he'd kind-of-not-really-ish broken up with her & then got married to someone else but she just inserted herself in there. idk why. the whole of dont look back he's kinda dismissive of/rude to her ngl

>meanwhile his Mythos has built to uncontrollable levels. he doesnt exactly help this b/c he's very clever with words so people would obvious find meaning in his lyrics, and when he spit nonsense in interviews people would often find a method in the madnes yknow?? like he's smart. he's also really weird. but people have started reading WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY too much into EVerything he says and does. like everything. like idek what a modern comparison would be. gaylors have nothing on this shit. understandably he gets pissed off at people asking stupid questions

>joan has a girlfriend at this point also. like yeah in a lesbian way. she says she's straight but she did have a girlfriend her name was kimmy

>blonde on blonde comes out in '66. its his most......... 60s album if you know what i mean. like its lots of drugs and lots of instruments and plays on words and its very good, big double album, he's looking super hip on the cover, songs rumoured to be about edie sedgwick, the whole shebang. the lyrics are inspiration for batshit insane theories for decades to come even though a lot of it likely is just in there cos it sounds cool and rhymes.

>includes the song 'sad eyed lady of the lowlands', which is about sara. joan thinks its about her and says so. bit awkward. its a beautiful song and bob never plays it live, it was recored at like three in the morning and the band didnt know how long it was gonna be etc etc lots of myth

>in november 1966 bob dylan has a motorcycle acciedent near his home in woodstock new york state and is in hospital. music enjoyers everywhere Very concerned. he's okay, and after this more or less disapears from public life for a bit. has a bunch of kids. just chilling in the countryside. does a bunch of jamming with The Band, lives of royalities etc. tries to avoid people mostly. this mysterious disapearance combined with blonde on blonde fuels a lot of theorising by fans which he thinks is stupid

>in just five years bob did more musical innovation than most muscians could ever hope to, and he Never WOuld Have been Famou s WIthout Joan.

>joan is getting even more involved in activist work as the vietman war drags on and on. still doing folk music. she has electric instruments in her stuff eventually but still in a definitively Folk Style. she plays at the Woodstock Festival in 1969, she got married too, doing lots of activism stuff, everyone still really likes her music. 1969 bob relases his country album which most people (bob included) think is kinda trash

>1972 joan releases 'to bobby' (she called him bobby a looooong time after everyone just called him bob). which is. Wow. its uhmmm. well. it's a song beseeching bob to come out of retirement and help out with the anti-war cause. lots of musicians though that is he wrote a good new anti-war song it would really help the cause like he used to in the early sixties. bob was pissed at this like relaly annoyed he though she was being far too presumptuous and i really gotta agree with him there like dude's been through enough.

>1975, bob's been back touring for a year -ish. he decide's he gonna put together the ROLLING THUNDER REVUE which is pretty much him & all his friends who are also folk.country.rock whatever you wanna call it musicians and they go arund a whole bunch of little venues and generally have a good time. lineup includes joni mitchell robbie robertson roger mcguinn emmylou harris, a very cool violin player called scarlett (i think) allen ginsberg the poet who had a gay crush on dylan in the sixties, the blonde guitarist from ziggy stardust AND JOAN BAEZ :D there are like ten people on the stage at once and loads of guitars and various string instruments etc and they redo all these dylan songs in new and exciting ways.

>they film some of it to make this move called Renaldo and Clara. i havent seen it (yet) but its like a semi-fiction semi-documentary film about the tour and also some sort of plotline they string together from somewhere idk. joan is in this film too. from what ive seen there are some uhh. some fairly OUGH scenes, on top of bob n joan singing together on stage all the time. there s clip of bob saying that he n joan could sing together in their sleep. she is still a wayyyy better singer than him but his voice is really good these years and they way they do the songs together is veeeeryyyyy cool. theres a scene in the film where bob says (and i quote) 'it really displeases me that you went off and got married' (OUT OF NOWHERE MIGHT I ADD) and joan says 'you went off and got married first and didnt tell me' and he doesnt really have an answer to that. like GODDAMNIT BOY

>there another scene where there was a bit of a script but joan went off and said something like 'do you know why we never couldve got married?' and bob was apparently bad at improv so he wasnt saying anything and so joan just kept talking going through all the reasons why they never got married and all the issues between them. On Camera. like damn.

>also in 1975 joan's album Diamonds & Rust comes out. the title track is one joan wrote herself and it is Very Clearly about bob and its uhhh a little bit scathing. also very very good. generally regarded as one of her best songs. awkward as you can imagine. 'my poetry was lousy you said' 'we both know what memories can bring / they bring diamonds and rust' 'you burst on the scene already a legend'

Now you're telling me You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague 'Cause I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes, I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid

LIKE GODDAMN JOAN OKAY

>bob gets divorced from sara in 1976? 77? idk that happens too. i think joan gets a divorce too but not sure.

>theres a bit gap in my knowledge here idk what happens to them specifically after that. like i know a bunch about bob but nothing relevant rn. hes christian for a bit. makes some albums that suck and some that are good. joan still does folk music & mostly covers.

>in 2003 bob releases a memoir called Chronicles Vol. I (supposedly of three but theres only one lol). he talks about joan a bit, how could he not, describes how he was so envious of her when he was 21 and saysing 'she looked like a religious icon, like somebody you'd sacrifice yourself for'. super normal thing to say about your ex ahaha.

>2022 the rolling thunder revue film comes out (its a netflix film but also. internet archive) and they're both interviewed for it. some iconic moments. i think most interviewers sort of stopped asking joan about bob out of politness after a while but obviously she talks about him there thats what the films about. yeagh.

>joan baez like hangs out with lana del ray n stuff now & has books out or her little drawings. she also paints. and bob still tours at 82 (almost 83) years old. and still relreases new stuff. yeagh

ANYWAYS the concise history of Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. sources: dude trust me ahahah no but the source is the 2022 rolling thunder film, dylan's chronicles and around a year of being obsessed with bob dylan. he was my real life old guy blorbo fr.

[hotfuss]

happy week 299, 23-29 january 2009. photos by torey mundkowsky

translation from greek by Vassiliki Kotzia/ vkotzia on instagram

Are they human or are they The Killers? 

Four years ago, when we first heard Somebody Told Me by The Killers, we probably didn’t expected we’d still be talking about them after all this time – let alone see them on the covers of Greek magazines! We couldn’t even believe they were in fact American, from the most unlikely place: Vegas. 

But now we know what hit us! They’re a band with musical depth and original ideas, no ruminations and cookie-cutter songwriting, with solid good songs, not just chart hits and -last but not least- Brandon, a frontman who may not be good looking but has managed to emerge as one of the coolest people of 2008. 

The Killers are here with their third record, a super-mega hit, Human, and according to rumours they will be visiting Greece soon for a live show. Let’s see what they have to say about all of this and especially what is their answer to the question “are they human or are they The Killers”. 

What does it feel like for a band like you to be waiting for their new record to come out?

Dave: We’re just impatient. 

Brandon: We’re excited, yeah. Of course we had to wait until it was perfect and ready to release, so there was a lot of anticipation. We hope this translates in many ways. 

The Killers, as a band, have always been a very visual-conscious band. Do you think art and image really go together?

Brandon: Image is an important part of art. 

Dave: Everyone’s got an image. Even if they wish to be invisible, that’s their image. 

Brandon: We actually follow our songs, it’s the opposite to what a purist would say or do. They’d probably say that a song is some sort of an exaggerated version of a true story or, at least, a fragment of our lives, but we do the opposite: we make the song and we let it pave the way for us. But the song is us, it is who we are! We’re changing, we’re not the same four guys who wrote Sam’s Town or Hot Fuss and we’re doing our best to represent that. 

There’s a lot of saxophone on your new album, maybe even too much…

Dave: Mark, our bassist, has always said he wanted a saxophone solo on a song. We’re open to introducing any new instrument, but the truth is we had no idea how big a change we were making when we decided that. 

…maybe not until journalists started to point it out… 

Dave: You know, we were thinking “let’s add some saxophone”. I like the way it turned out. 

Brandon: There’s no such thing as a non-compatible music instrument. We were really open to new ideas when making this record and the saxophone made the whole thing sound more cheerful. 

In this new album the sound of the 80s is still present. I can hear traces of bands like Talk Talk, The Human League and the Pet Shop Boys. But in some songs, I can hear the sound of Motown or Chicago. 

Dave: We do have a lot of influences, it’s true. It’s interesting that you mention soul music. It’s definitely in there somewhere. 

Brandon: Actually, we got to soul music via David Bowie. But yeah, Motown is impossible to bypass, it’s the essence of American music. 

Your song  Spaceman talks about an alien abduction. I know you come from Vegas, near the infamous Area 51, but how do you expect the audience to perceive the lyrics of this song?  

Brandon: There’s quite an obsession with all things alien! I think we all got that. We all talk about those things with a spark in our eye. Like Fire in The Sky. Have you seen Fire in the Sky? 

Dave: No, how old is that?

Brandon: I was 8 and I’m 27 (he was actually 12, the movie came out in 1993). It’s supposed to be a true story with some guys camping out in the forest, and one of them gets abducted in the end. You gotta watch it, it’s pretty good! 

It seems you don’t want to stick to a specific sound style for long. Each record is an opportunity for something new. Do you fear repetition? 

Dave: Yeah, we’ve always been like this. We have various different influences and we’re not afraid of trying new sounds and going in new directions. It depends on the phase we’re going through while making a record. 

Brandon: Change is inevitable. We’re not afraid of sounding the same, but we’re also not afraid of embracing something new. We could easily make Sam’s Town vol.2 but when we got together in the studio, it just didn’t go down this way. 

Lyrics-wise there seems to be some nostalgia for a rather old-fashioned way of life. Is it a response to the fast-paced life we live or is it just the result of growing up, having kids etc? 

Brandon: It’s the pursuit of a more simple life. You know, we’re living in interesting times. You never know when the next great inventor will show up and give us something that will make our lives a lot easier, and that’s great. But at the same time, it seems our fundamental values are fading away. That’s why I want to bring forward things like romance, devotion etc. It’s kind of sad these things seem out of fashion nowadays. It’s sad they sound out of place to the kids of today. 

It's true people don’t even communicate properly anymore. I rarely make any phone calls, it’s all texting and messaging… 

Brandon: Yeah, and don’t get me started on simple things like saying hello to people out in the street! They just freak out, it’s insane! I still do it though, just to see people’s reactions. There’s always someone who looks at me in disbelief like “why did this dude just wave at me?”. Both Dave and I grew up in small towns and let me tell you, I still got this picture of my dad in my head, waving at cars passing by. You don’t get to see that any more. 

The chorus of Human was inspired by Hunter S. Thompson. Are you a fan of his?

Brandon: Aren’t we all… You know, I found out that in France, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” has been translated as “Las Vegas Paranoid”! You always learn something new! 

Are you inspired by literature in general? 

Brandon: I don’t read too much, to be honest. I’m obsessed with writing lyrics and I’m trying to get to read more. Only recently, I read “On The Road”, at the same time when we were making this record. I’m a bit of a laggard but that’s a new world for me. 

Do you think you’d be making different music if you lived somewhere else? 

Brandon: Nevada is beautiful. I love going to New York, London or Paris -its romantic side, especially. But after 10 days or so, I’m scouring the horizon for the mountains. It’s a simple place, where we live. 

Dave: I love playing live. It’s hard being away from home, but we love what we do. Our job is to play music and entertain people with our songs, that we try so hard to write and record. 

Brandon: We go places we’d never visit otherwise. I don’t think I’d even know about, let’s say, Panama if our music didn’t take us there. 

I understand your music is received differently in different places around the world. 

Dave: There are dramatic differences, yeah. In Europe audiences differ from one country to another. In Germany, for instance, our fan base is growing steadily. Hot Fuss did pretty well but Sam’s Town smashed it. And Human is huge there, from what we hear. 

Brandon: You may think we got big overnight, but if you take a closer look you’ll see that we did it one step at a time. A lot of people think we just shot to stardom but that’s not what happened. We tried to do everything based on a plan, from the way we formed the band to the way we perform live. And I have to say, things are going according to that plan. 

Even with all these additions to the music & arrangement, your new album sounds a little stripped compared to your previous work. You’ve given your music more air to breathe. 

Brandon: Yes, there’s more space. That’s a sign of maturity and it feels good that we’ve got to this point, but I also kind of suffer with all this space at our live shows! I mean, I’ve got used to our tight live performance, you know, I’m running around throughout the show. But now, Dave has this long guitar solo at the end of Losing Touch… what the hell am I supposed to do? 

Dave: Come have fun with me! 

Brandon: I mean, I love the solo but what am I doing there? I’m still learning, I guess…

You’ve said you’ve done a lot of work with Stuart Price via email. How does this work? Have you tried it before? 

Brandon: Yes, it’s true and he made it sound fresh! It felt like he started working on pre-production before we even hit “send”. Then he’d send his ideas back to us and we’d either agree or disagree. Then we got together in the studio for about a month and we recorded the songs. I read about this new record Brian Eno did with David Byrne. They did the same thing and only got together for a couple of weeks and finished the whole thing. They totally outran us! 

Is it a convenient way to work?

Dave: It’s convenient. Even if you’re in another city or another country, if you come up with a good idea you can email it to the rest of the guys. You don’t even have to get out of the house. And then the other guys can work on it and when we go to the studio we already have the backbone of a song.  

Killers bits & pieces 

Brandon & Dave met in August* 2001 and started writing songs together right away. 

When they started the band they had a different drummer and bassist, but they were replaced by Ronnie & Mark in early 2002. 

The were named after a fictional band appearing in the music video of New Order’s Crystal. 

Their main influences include artists like the Rolling Stones, U2, New Order, Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, David Bowie etc

They say that the best thing about being in a band is that you don’t actually “go to work”

Before becoming famous, full-time musicians, the members of The Killers worked various jobs. The worst ones? A Telemarketing company and a fast-food restaurant. The first one was bad because they had to bother people that didn’t want to be bothered and the second one…just stank. 

Their journey to stardom began from the UK. In early 2004 they were completely unknown in their native US. 

They have sold over 12 million  records worldwide. 

Brandon is a practicing Mormon and his son is named after a Mormon prophet. 

Dave recently lost his mother and Brandon’s mother is currently fighting a serious illness. The closing track of Day & Age “Goodnight, Travel Well” is dedicated to both of them. 

A Dustland Fairytale is about Brandon’s parents who met in high school and are still together, after 44 years. 

Stuart Price’s real name is Jacques Lu Cont. He has worked extensively with Madonna, Keane and Gwen Stefani, just to name a few. He first collaborated with The Killers in 2005 when he did a fantastic remix to the (twice as fantastic) Mr. Brightside. 

Brandon says “I know I shouldn’t be reading reviews but I do. It’s so easy, it’s just a click away. It’s stupid and I’m stupid but I still do it”. 

Another stupid thing the otherwise lovely Brandon has done back in 2004-2005 was to systematically trash-talk other bands like The Bravery, Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco. He’s taken it all back. 

Notes: 

The interview is from early 2009, just a few weeks before TK were announced as the headline act at Rockwave Festival, Greece’s biggest festival at the time. The show got cancelled at the last minute, due to a freak thunderstorm. (In Greece, open air concerts don’t go ahead in the rain)

[celticbotanart]

*Squid Squidward wide awake meme* ALRIGHT, hear me out - I've been saying for a while how much Witcher 3 reminds me of the Brazilian countriside (more specific Minas Gerais). And ever since I had this madlad dream of a Brazilian Witcher except we called them Bruxeiros (the X here is pronounced like "SH" not like the American "X" - its kind of a meme here, kind of a "literal" PT-BR translation, it's complicated), and they fight Brazilian folklore badass stuff like Boitatá (fucking giant fire snake), Iaras (river mermaids) and un-curse women that became Mula Sem Cabeça (literally headless mules running around with fire coming out their necks). These are all some of our most well-known folklore for real, lol (HIGHLY recommend season 1 of Brazilian Netflix show Invisible City if you wanna see more! It's REALLY good!)

ANYWAY. I was in my kitchen making toast at midnight, when it occured to me. I had A VisionTM. Brazilian Witcher battle music would be like. Floral Fury.

For those unfamiliar, this specific Cuphead theme is 200% oldschool Brazilian samba - yeah the "weird straw-against-plastic-lid" sound is an actual instrument, it's called cuíca lol "Nah, but this is too happy and cheerful", you say. Alright, you are correct, maybe it doesn't fit to be a battle theme for the Bruxeiros. HOW ABOUT SEPULTURA, THEN

SEPULTURA, THE BRAZILIAN METAL BAND, who performed this song as soundtrack for the BR movie "Lisbela e o Prisioneiro" (one of my fucking faves btw), and it the theme song for Frederico Evandro, a character who's ruthless hitman ("Matador").

BRO. IMAGINE. The peaceful and colorfully bucolic countryside of Minas Gerais and you are there fighting a Brazilian Werewolf (cause they are different from the European werewolf, we have several types btw), with THAT playing as battle theme.

Another good contender is Break of Reality's rendition of "As Bachianas n5" by Villa-Lobos (guy was a badass proeminend classical music composer who loved to mix in Brazilian folk elements with the classical music sttuff, pissing off a lot of purists in the process lol, good for him)

"As Bachianas n5" is probably Villas' most famous piece, it's originally a GORGEOUS aria, classically sung in Brazilian Portuguese.

SEVERAL people covered this song, including Sandy from sibling duo Sandy & Junior (they were EXTREMELY POPULAR with kids and teens back in the 90s/early 2000s); also people from all around the world covered it. You get it, it's pretty legit and famous AF.

THEN came Break of Reality a few years ago

with THIS badass cover:

LOOK.

THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE VERSIONS OF THIS SONG. I STAN THIS COVER SO HIGH. I LOVE how it is sweet and emotional, but it brings a totally different, new, raw aspect to it that is so strangely fitting to this song (I can't explain, it just is). I can easily imagine this in the Bruxeiro!AU as battle music, even more cause a lot of the og Witcher 3 OST is full of slavic folk music that doesn't even reflect the Battling of Monsters thing - "...Steel For Humans" is like, a song sung by girls on wedding/harvest festivals, lol.

ON THAT NOTE, I think we could end this crazy ass post by including some of the folk / afro-Brazilian culture as well, which is only fair, and add this one, which I LOVE, "Caxangá / Escravos de Jó" by Milton Nascimento (my beloved <3) and folk singer Clementina de Jesus:

Milton is known to sing in high, ethereal vocalizations and extremely emotional lyrics. Guy is just A Fucking Legend fr. If there's a bard in my Bruxeiro!AU it's def Milton, I love his work so so so much! He's also known for mixing up influences from afro-brazilian culture, as you can see in here!

Stay tuned for more posts like this that can happen again at any moment or never again, lol

[a-wandering-ghoulette]

It's really something to see, again, endless and sterile debates about what is rock and what isn't. From where I'm wandering in the internet lately, and it includes Ghost's fandom, here's what I see:

Spiritbox doing a collab with Megan Thee Stallion is enough to categorise the band as not heavy enough and thus not truly metal and ofc no one talk about the song itself which is- like- good ?? I love the contrasts brought by the variety of sounds in both version of the song. Grammys having Olivia Rodrigo nominated for the "best rock song" award, with a song which... Sounds rock sorry to break it to you. SKZ, a "K-pop" band, dropped an EP titled "ROCK-STAR". I don't want to give you exemple of comments they're getting as the lvl of stupidity is ground breaking.

Maybe it is time to recognise that the richness you can find in rock/metal include pop and electro (and more). Maybe it's time to let other genres play with rock/metal codes too. Why should it be a problem ? You have crappy rock/metal perfo without pop and electro influences in it so I highly doubt this is what's dragging the genres down. I see Ghost fans spitting venom on Olivia Rodrigo's Grammy nomination in that "rock song" category. Ghost is using pop codes like it's nothing and y'all are trying to play the purists ? You're doing exactly what Ghost's haters do and you're the first to go cry when someone say Ghost is a pop rock Scooby-Doo ish band. The hypocrisy.

You can be a metal band and collab with a popstar. You can be a popstar and do a rock song. You can be a band playing with rock and pop codes at the same time. I see nothing wrong with that. And that's why I enjoy so much SKZ take on what makes a song sounds and feels rock nowadays without doing an actual rock song. Mixing trendy sounds, catchy melodies, and still experimenting, not fearing to make bpm and melodies changes, creating something different, something that screams "that's us" before sticking to one genre. Funnily enough, the main criticise they get is that they're not doing music but noises, they are too loud while keep doing their thing and growing despite evolving in a very formatted industry. On paper, they aren't rock artists, right. But fuck it, who cares ? Same to Megan Thee Stallion, Olivia Rodrigo... I don't fucking care anymore.

It's a Ghost fanblog so let's talk a bit more about them. Their Grammy nomination and people's opinion about it is telling a lot. First thing first, well, the Grammy- 🤡 Then, being nominated for a cover of Iron Maiden is definitely something you can flex about, yes, but also nominating them for this precise cover in the "best metal performance" makes me... Conflicted. Like, Iron Maiden, Metal's icons, revisited by Ghost sends both a signal of "let's keep things like Iron Maiden does" but also "let's renew this good old shit". I think they 100% deserve to win the award, like every other nominees in this category, sincerely.

I guess the conclusion of this frenchy-grump-dump is: stop being boring and play gatekeepers, that's the one thing that'll kill your fav music genre. Stillness is the death of every form of art. Let it feed and being fed by other stuff. You don't like it ? Go back to your old loves and wait to see what comes next. You might fall for something new soon or later, who knows.

[obsessivelollipoplalala]

I watched sweeny todd for the first time after seeing you gush about it, and I have to say the entire time I was thinking "this is pretty tame considering the premise" only for the last ten minutes to hit me like a semi.

I also listened to a few versions of the soundtrack and I think I might be in love with Sondheim. the Johanna reprise is probably my favorite even if the begger woman's bits are kinda jarring. Epiphany is a close second followed by the ballad.

*sweats, screams, cries, throws up, heart palpitates* I love that I convinced someone to watch it just by not shutting up about it lmao

First of all, what version did you watch? Did you watch the film and go listen to the ballads later, or did you watch a version of the stage show? I ask this because the film is definitely the most gruesome version of the show, and it's my favorite rendition of it (which would be much to the outrage of Broadway purists, but my justifications for my opinion would take up a long post lol). Sondheim pretty much intended to write a horror film for the stage, and the movie adaptation brought his vision to fruition in some ways. I feel like the whole show is dark without going edgy, you know what I mean? Like, it's never forced, while you have the protagonist singing a love song to his murder weapons lol

Secondly, I love "Johanna (Reprise)." I honestly think it's one of Sondheim's most underrated songs, perhaps because the Beggar Woman's parts are jarring, but people could easily take those out and make beautiful covers of the song. I love how the film version is able to juxtapose the beautiful lyrics and harmonies with blood splattering on the screen lol, but I do like Johanna's part in the stage versions of the song, too. I think "Epiphany" is probably my favorite song, if for no other reason, because of just how difficult its purpose was in the show and how brilliantly Sondheim pulled it off. Sondheim said that was the most difficult song of the show for him to write, and while I can pull out quotes from Sondheim On Music about it if you want, Sondheim also talked about (and partially performed) the song in this video starting at 39:30 if you're interested.

I love the last 10 minutes of the show. They're insane. So much happens, it has a plot twist I genuinely didn't see coming when I first saw it, and in the film version, it has some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard (if you did see the film, I'm talking about when Sweeney first looks down at [redacted] and Realizes; due to the nature of film, Burton was able to make Sweeney really take his time with that moment, and the music is more drawn out than on stage, but god, the way it swells is just so fucking good).

Please feel more than free to send me more thoughts about this show dnakjdnkajdfknjks

[thebreakfastgenie]

Like the thing about FOB we didn’t start the fire is that it’s structured differently than the og we didn’t start the fire. In my opinion it’s not really important that it covers 33 years of time instead of 40 because none of the events described in the song are described in linear order. The first verse of the song jumbles things from 1993 and 2020 in the same line.

This could be because FOB didn’t understand the brief but a charitable interpretation is that in choosing the cover the song they also chose to put a spin on it. Their cover may be “about” something different than the original song was about; in the days of the 24 hour news cycle and especially in the days of everyone being as online as they are, all sense of when events happen in relation to each other are lost.

Later in the song, by listing “Sandy Hook, Columbine”, that’s perhaps a commentary on how each new “biggest school shooting” calls back the discourse and the frenzy of the previous one.

As a Billy Joel purist that’s probably not something that you like, but it isn’t as though this is the first cover of a song — or hell, adaptation of a piece of media to recontextualise it and in so doing use the bones of the original to say something different.

And of course if you are not a FOB fan you might just want to be uncharitable and say that they weren’t trying to achieve anything by doing it and they just missed the whole point of the song. And that’s fine. But I think quibbling about whether the song spans 33 years or 40 (i.e: the singer’s entire lifespan) is really missing the point because the song isn’t about that anymore.

If they’re gonna do something completely different they should have just written their own song because the melody of We Didn’t Start the Fire kinda sucks. Like they’re not writing the next chapter of it because they went out of order so?? I don’t have a problem with Fall Out Boy, I'm not super familiar with their usual music but I think it's pretty good, but I think this song is bad and misses the point of We Didn’t Start the Fire and I’m gonna say so! I’ve been very self-aware about insane I’m being about this but at this point I think you’re being weirder??

I want the song to span 40 years because I like the neatness of two 40 year installments, but there are a couple of other things behind it. First of all, 40 is a milestone age, and Billy Joel always talks about how he had just turned 40 when he wrote it and that was one reason he was reflecting on events that had happened in his lifetime. But also, I started the "not until 2029" refrain because when people call for an "updated" We Didn't Start the Fire, it's almost always in the context of "so much shit has happened recently" and suggesting it can or even needs to cover less time because "so much more" has happened. This feeling is contrary to the very point of We Didn't Start the Fire.

Billy Joel wrote We Didn't Start the fire after spending time with Sean Lennon and a friend of Sean's who had just turned 21. The younger men were talking about how hard it was to turn 21 in the late 80s, and Billy Joel told the how he felt the same way when he turned 21 (in 1970). Sean's friend responded by saying "yeah, but you grew up in the fifties, and everybody knows nothing happened in the fifties!" And Billy Joel said "have you ever heard of the Korean War?" The point isn't "so much is happening right now" it's "so much has always been happening." It's "everyone who came before you felt the same way you feel right now." It's about taking off the generational blinders and looking at the bigger picture of history. Things have always been happening and they're still happening. That last verse is probably a lot of the things Sean Lennon and his friend were stressing about: foreign debts, homeless vets, AIDS, crack, okay... maybe not Bernie Goetz, but you get the idea. "China's under martial law" is the penultimate reference because Tiananmen Square happened shortly before he finished writing the song.

"Haha, you'd need an entire verse just for 2020!" There are a ton of major headlines missing from We Didn't Start the Fire just from the year 1968. He rushes through the seventies because he realized he was running out of song. It doesn't mention the Cuban Missile Crisis! But there are two references to the Dodgers, because it's mostly things Billy Joel remembered (obviously some of the early stuff isn't direct memories).

I've actually come to believe that We Didn't Start the Fire can never be replicated in a way that does justice to the original, because without setting out to, Billy Joel documented the Cold War because of when he happened to be born and when he happened to write the song. There's another song on the same album called Leningrad that is intentionally about the Cold War and Billy Joel's place in it (and does mention the Cuban Missile Crisis) that also highlights that he was born in 1949. I'm not sure if there's a Fall Out Boy equivalent to that or not. I don't think it's necessarily bad to try. But I'm not sure what they did do, here. It's not chronological, so it's not a reflection on their lifetime. The only thing that's really impressive about We Didn't Start the Fire from a songwriting perspective is that it's chronological and it still rhymes. I also pity anyone trying to write a sequel because they have to make it fit the melody. Billy Joel wrote the lyrics first (something he never did with any other song) and fit the melody to them, but if you're covering that melody you have to reverse the process. I don't see what bones of the original are left besides being a goofy novelty song that lists a bunch of events and a pretty lame melody.

[it-brought-me-to-my-knees]

DIGICORE LOVE: MY FIVE FAVOURITE SONGS (AS OF RIGHT NOW) [#1]

recovery girl - "it’s love" / "it's love redux"

A big Hyperpop Moment for me, the loser who cares deeply about echoes of the past in the art of today: “wow this has the same chord progression as “Because The Night” by Patti Smith, that’s so crazy, I love that s- wait a minute, they’re ripping off the Cascada cover!!!”. The original is so stark that it reminds me of the days when “hyperpop” was often mentioned in the same breath as “deconstructed club music”, but it’s such a perfect pop song that it doesn’t feel like it needs anything more… and yet I’m equally smitten with the “redux” version that fleshes it out from a minimal pop song into a rock song that’s almost too much, the snarling distortion that crept at the borders of the original bursting through the walls: jazzy emo noodling, a roaring half-time breakdown, and a guitar solo that swoops in for just long enough for you to think “holy shit, a guitar solo!”. 

Man, that wacky bass intro - get a load of Tony Levin over here!

webcage - "0M61LY5M"

Makes me feel old that they namedrop Danger Days as an emo classic in this one. I mean, I like it, but my wife is an I Brought You My Bullets purist so DD is borderline verboten in our household.  But we did talk about My Immortal on the night we first met, so I’m sure she’d appreciate a hook as on-point as “Ripped skinny jeans, black nails and a septum / all the preps, all the posers, just forget them!”. 

Quite interesting to see how quickly and subtly nostalgic art can warp the recent past - I certainly don’t remember the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack being an emo touchstone, but tbf, the “MySpace rawr x3” vibe that I’m so fond of was already on the way out during my Peak Emo Years (‘10-’12), so maybe I’m equally guilty of sloppy romanticisation. Life is so hard for me, the oldest zoomer (27): the kids are a mess but if I try to join the millennials they might start gushing about “LCD Soundsystem”.

Another big moshy breakdown! Someone really needs to start a clubnight for cringe shut-ins like me, I can’t jump around to this in my bedroom.

SEBii - “STFU…ur done”

If you’re a fan of rap, you’re probably familiar with a few of the many, many “worst rappers of all time”; there’s a new one every six months or so. You don’t have to actually be a bad rapper to be “the worst”, you just have to somehow represent a threat to rap’s status quo (despite rap’s status quo being… already bad? Don’t overthink it, just open your third eye) - misunderstood innovators like Lil Wayne and Young Thug, “I’m not a fan, but the kids like it” oddballs like 6ix9ine and Lil Yachty, even fairly traditional rappers who committed the mortal sin of rapping over DJ Premier beats while not being Guru, like Group Home (one for the old heads there). 

A few years ago, if pressed, I’d probably have said Travis Scott, who is somehow like a less charming Drake - no charisma, no bars, barely anything that even resembles rapping, but his executive-producer role makes his fans worship him like the all-singing all-dancing second coming of Beethoven. It’s galling enough when they treat Kanye like that, and Kanye could actually sit down with an MPC and make great beats, once upon a time.

Nowadays, though, if you shift the goalposts just right and ignore the music itself, I think that SEBii might actually be the worst rapper of all time. In all my years suffering in the rap nerd mines I never, not once, heard an MC namedropping RhymeZone. Not even a self-admitted ex-textcee like Ab-Soul, and that guy once rapped “let me put my mouth where you potty, boo”. 

It’s hard to contextualise him, really. There’s a lot of black American artists and a lot of white American artists on this corner of the Internet but very few from China (shout-out to Alice Longyu Gao!). He looks like someone got the word “nerd” during a game of Pictionary and had five seconds to draw it, but he’s not nerdcore (although he does make anime references sometimes). He once intentionally mispronounced “chuckle” as “chickle” so he could rhyme it with “abysmal”... which he then unintentionally(?) mispronounced as “adysmal”. But as Guru once said, “it’s mostly the voice that gets you up”, and what a voice Seb has - a smirking prepubescent squeak, like a mischievous animal companion in a video game. 

He’s fully confident and capable with the instrument that God has granted him, flipping dextrously between flows, and thanks to his ear for melody it really clicks with his beats. On paper they should be typical modern trap/drill-influenced material, but they make great use of negative space - the texture of a typical SEBii song is very lean and deliberate without ever feeling *too* sparse, cycling through different combinations of thumping bassline, jittery synth lines and dynamic drum pattern, all three occasionally dropping out completely to let echoes of that voice linger in the virtual air. 

There’s a playful, colourful sense of melody to some of his beats—"TiiKKA MASALA" is downright jaunty—that wouldn’t really work with a rapper who was seriously trying to project menace instead of talking about shit like, Idk, Sword Art Online. I know I was shitting on Travis Scott fans for talking like this just a few paragraphs ago but the VVYELLOW EP is quite an impressive work of A&R, if I didn’t know better I could believe that every beat was the work of a single producer. Goofy music, but sleek and charming. Okay I immediately regret picking "goofy" as the adjective here, now I'm wondering if furry R&B is hyperpop (yes, obviously).

This is what real allyship sounds like btw.

threedimensionsapart - “dropdead”

I like how thin this one is lyrically - the one verse almost immediately shifts back into a chorus that gets repeated so insistently that a line as banal as “you don’t even follow me on Twitter” almost takes on mantra-like significance. And barely audible in the background, those warbling falsetto backing vocals! A stroke of mad genius. Feels like it should be laughable but tbqh he could do pretty much anything on the mic and it’d still be carried by this fucking beautiful glowing summer sky of an instrumental, an “in a dream you saw the pearly gates swing open for just a second and the tiny fragment you gleaned of the sights and sounds of Paradise was forever tattooed on your tender mortal brain” type beat. Dunno how to make those, I’m probably just not adding enough reverb.

wubz - “mania”

(That cat is so cute lmao.)

So many hyperpop/digicore artists are defined by their high voice - whether it’s trans women voice-training and pitch-shifting for obvious reasons or young castrato-sounding mfs like SEBii and kmoe who just sound Like That, there’s an abundance of countertenors and contraltos.

wubz, in stark contrast, seems to have gone “lol fuck that, I’m going the other way [devil emoji]”. I know “Pitched-down vocals? Wow!!!” is a funny thing to say about a rapper in 2023 but wubz never really sounds chopped-and-screwed to me - the vibe is closer to “original Japanese voice actor for an anime hooligan”, just like the angry schoolboy on the cover art for “walls”.

This description might make him sound less emo than his peers, but make no mistake: he’s emotional as FUCK, just like gruff emo OGs Guy Picciotto and Blake Schwarzenbach. (Those guys hate being called “emo”, which is how you know it’s a real genre. See also: Andrew Eldritch/Robert Smith/Peter Murphy and “goth”, everyone I mention on this blog and “hyperpop”). These emo ties are further reinforced by his affection for beats with prominent guitar - “FE4R” in particular is more like a rap-influenced post-hardcore song than vice versa, with actual (like, actual-actual. Like “skramz”.) screamo screams and violent lyrics that, in this context, feel closer to the noir-tinged moodiness of Senses Fail or Alkaline Trio than… who’s rapping nowadays, who do the kids like… Kevin Gates? Actually now I think about it Gates singing pop-punk hits in his croaky baritone kinda predicted this vibe… ugh, it’s so annoying that someone as deeply boring as Machine Gun Kelly managed to make “what if a rapper… went pop-punk” into a commercial prospect. Should’ve been a Deep South rap crooner. Please Rod Wave, consider recording a Victory Records cover album.

This blog is already dangerously close to me just saying “[new thing] is like [old music-nerd thing], probably a coincidence but pretty wild huh” fifty times in a row but the melodic feedback shrieks on this really do remind me of early Animal Collective. Hurts so good.

And that's all for this week! Maybe month, I find schedules scary! Byeee!!!!

[alwaysonthemend]

You really hit the nail on the head in your "gvf is a zep cover band" rant. I got into gvf BECAUSE of zep and so many other rock bands that they drew inspiration from, and I'm disappointed it took me so long to come around to them.

I spent so many years, especially around the time highway tune came out, being a music purist and constantly on my high horse. But I got over that elitist mentality and I'm so glad it has allowed me to find gvf again (in 2021) and to find comfort and joy in their music.

^^^^^

i feel like i was definitely on a high horse too haha. glad we have greta to help us grow 🥰

[naruko-hyuga]

Hot take: a remake of Naruto would be a waste of time and money. There are plenty of anime out there that have never gotten a second season that should get one before a remake of Naruto. Like, for what purpose? Just so we could cut out the filler that you could easily skip? This isn't like Bleach (2004), which I argue is far worse than Naruto in terms of pacing. In the canon material, outside of a few arcs, the Naruto anime is pretty well-paced. This is not like One Piece, where 85% of the anime is literal filler, which makes reading the manga a better option or watching One Pace.

Not to mention, many of the most iconic music tracks would not be used in the remake. Some of the voice actors for certain characters have passed away since the manga ended 10 years ago. There's literally no reason to do it other than to appease manga purists. I'd rather have new stories told in this universe, not a retread of a story that we've already seen with better animation. There are other mangas that have yet to receive a second adaptation that didn't even cover half of their stories. Why should Naruto, a series that adopted its full story, get a second adaptation when it hasn't even been that long since Shippuden ended?

[fantastica-daily]

“A Complete Unknown” Movie Review: Just Another Stone Down That Rolling Road

James Mangold’s “A Complete Unknown” wants to be this generation’s definitive Bob Dylan story. Instead, it ends up being what Dylan himself might call “a pawned diamond ring” – technically valuable, undeniably shiny, but somehow missing its original spark.

Don’t get me wrong – Timothée Chalamet does an admirable job channeling young Bobby Zimmerman’s transformation into the voice of a generation. He’s got the mumble down pat, the nervous energy, the occasional flash of trademark Dylan wit. But for those of us who’ve spent decades dissecting every Dylan head tilt and lyrical twist, there’s something almost too polished about the whole affair. It’s Dylan via Hollywood’s Instagram filter – carefully curated, aesthetically pleasing, but sanitized of the real grit that made him revolutionary.

The film follows the well-worn biopic path through Dylan’s early New York years, culminating in the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival “betrayal.” You know the beats: Minnesota boy meets Woody Guthrie, folk scene embraces wunderkind, wunderkind embraces electricity, folk purists clutch their acoustic pearls. It’s all there, meticulously recreated like a museum diorama of the Greenwich Village folk scene.

Monica Barbaro brings a refreshing steel to Joan Baez, though the script does her no favors by reducing one of folk music’s most powerful voices to something of a ��Dylan’s Greatest Hits” cover artist. Elle Fanning, renamed Sylvie Russo (because apparently Suze Rotolo was too historically accurate?), delivers the film’s most genuine moments in a scene about spinning plates – a metaphor that perhaps too neatly encapsulates the entire movie’s approach to Dylan’s complexity.

Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger feels more like a kindly PBS host than the radical folk warrior who would’ve wielded that legendary axe at Newport. Though I must admit, the scene where he contemplates said axe while staring at Dylan’s amplifiers is deliciously melodramatic – pure Hollywood mythmaking at its finest.

Mangold, who gave us the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line,” seems determined to walk that same line here: respectful enough to please the Dylan devotees, accessible enough for the TikTok generation. The result is a film that’s technically proficient but spiritually cautious. It’s like watching someone try to capture lightning in a bottle, only to end up with a very nice LED bulb instead.

The cinematography is gorgeous in that carefully curated “period piece” way, all desaturated colors and smoky rooms. The music, naturally, is fantastic – though Chalamet’s earnest covers might make some Dylan purists wish for the original nasal twang. And yes, for those keeping score, Dylan’s famously blue eyes versus Chalamet’s hazel is a bit off-putting. (Even “Old Blue Eyes” himself, Frank Sinatra, once told Dylan: “You and me, pal, we got blue eyes, we’re from up there … These other bums are from down here.” Also, Joan Baez wrote the ballad “Diamonds and Rust” for Dylan, stating in the lyrics that his eyes were “blue as robins' eggs.”)

Unlike Todd Haynes’ brilliantly fractured “I’m Not There,” which embraced Dylan’s chameleonic nature with six different actors, “A Complete Unknown” plays it frustratingly safe. It’s a good film, sometimes even a very good film, but it never quite reaches for that electric transcendence that made Dylan himself so revolutionary.

In the end, “A Complete Unknown” is like a really good cover version of a Dylan song – technically precise, aesthetically pleasing, but missing that ineffable quality that made the original so transformative. It’s worth watching, especially for those new to the Dylan mythology. But for those of us who’ve spent years parsing every line of “Visions of Johanna” or debating the meaning of “Mr. Tambourine Man,” it feels like one more stone down that rolling road of Dylan interpretations – polished and pretty, but not quite breaking any new ground. “A Complete Unknown” plays it too safe to truly capture the wild mercury sound of Dylan’s early years but then again, maybe that’s exactly what makes it perfect for our current zeitgeist – a time when even our rebels come with perfect PR packaging.

= = = S.L. Wilson

[greensparty]

Album Reviews: Sleater-Kinney / The Smile

This week it's like I'm nostalgic for the good old days of January 2024. Way way back in the beginning of this year, I got to review Sleater-Kinney's Little Rope and The Smile's Wall of Eyes. Both are easily among the best albums of this year so far. This week, I got to review the Deluxe Edition of Little Rope as well as The Smile's second studio album of 2024, Cutouts.

Sleater-Kinney Little Rope Deluxe Edition

The Pacific Northwest indie rockers Sleater-Kinney have been on my radar since 1997’s Dig Me Out (got my copy on vinyl). They’ve done some great albums, but that still stands as my personal favorite. I saw them headline the Siren Music Festival in Coney Island in 2002 and they blew me away. The band’s 2019 album The Center Won’t Hold was a polarizing album that was so polarizing drummer Janet Weiss left before its release, but I actually really dug it and I even named “The Future is Here” my #1 Song of 2019. Their first post-Janet Weiss album was Path of Wellness, which I named my #6 Album of 2021. There are purists who feel it’s not the same band without Weiss. But Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein have kept the band going and their album Little Rope, released in January. This week sees the release of Little Rope Deluxe Edition.

album cover

Deluxe album cover

In my review, I noted that after after Weiss's departure with the album Path of Wellness, "as much as I liked the album - it is a band trying to figure out how to go from being a three-headed monster to a two-headed monster. But with this one, Brownstein and Tucker are clearly past that transition and diving back into the indie rock sound they perfected over the course of the last 30 years." In March, I got to see them live on St. Patrick's Day in Boston at The Paradise performing a number of the songs off of Little Rope, doing 9 of the 10 album tracks. So you're probably wondering, why an expanded edition of an album that came out only eight months ago? Well it has all 10 of the Little Rope tracks as well as three new songs recorded during the recording session, live versions of some of the songs recorded in Australia, and the Frayed Rope Sessions EP, which had stripped back versions of some of the songs.

Brownstein and Tucker front stage at The Paradise on 3/17/24

Bottom line: The original album itself is one of the best albums released this year and you can expect to see it on my Best Albums of 2024 list. The Frayed Rope Sessions are actually rather interesting versions of some of the songs. It's not just a bunch of remixes where they all get lost in the shuffle and don't measure up to the originals, they are actually kind of interesting. The live tracks are good but are they worth re-buying the album you already have? Not really worth re-buying but I'd say some of the new tracks are worth buying on their own, like "Here Today", which could've been included on the album. As a fan I definitely dug these bells and whistles, but what really matters here is the original album!

For info on Sleater-Kinney

Little Rope: 4 out of 5 stars

Little Rope Deluxe Edition: 3.5 out of 5 stars

The Smile Cutouts

At what point does a side project become its own thing and not just a side project of a bigger band that is the "day job" of the members? That's, maybe, more of a philosophical question that encompasses more than just an easy answer, but you got to admit it's an interesting question! Singer Thom Yorke and guitarist Jonny Greenwood are among the strongest members of Radiohead, a band filled with strong personalities. Add to the two of them, Sons of Kemet’s Tom Skinner and their side project The Smile is a band that is bigger than the sum of their parts. I named their first album A Light for Attracting Attention my #1 Album of 2022! That album was good enough to be a Radiohead album. Earlier this year they released Wall of Eyes, which I’d go so far as to say it’s actually better than some Radiohead albums. After debuting some new songs on their UK tour earlier this year, they have surprised everyone with their third album and second of 2024 with Cutouts, which drops today from XL Records. Somehow they found time to record in Oxford and at Abbey Road Studios!

album cover

I am a huge fan of Radiohead and through this blog I’ve been fortunate enough to cover a number of the band members’ solo and side projects, i.e. guitarist Ed O'Brien AKA EOB’s album Earth, drummer Philip Selway’s album Strange Dance and the live album Live at Evolution Studios, bassist Colin Greenwood toured with Nick Cave last year, Yorke’s soundtrack to Suspiria, and a number of Jonny Greenwood’s soundtracks (You Were Never Really Here, There Will Be Blood and Spencer). Just this past April, Yorke released his soundtrack to Confidenza. Jonny Greenwood is currently scoring Paul Thomas Anderson's next film The Battle of Baktan Cross as well. But you need to differentiate the solo and side projects from Radiohead. Having said that, it can be hard when you notice the musical sensibilities coming out in their music. For example on Cutouts, one of the standout tracks "Instant Psalm" bears a clear correlation to the Radiohead outtake "I Promise" that was featured on the OK Computer 2017 box set OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017.

The Smile's Skinner, Yorke and Greenwood smiling

Bottom Line: I out and out loved Wall of Eyes and I gave it a very rare 5 out of 5 stars, so this is a tough act to follow whether it was released in the same year or years later. My initial reaction after listening a few times is that it's not as mind-blowing as Wall of Eyes, but it definitely has something special when these three play new music together. My goodness - if this is some thrown together last minute album, it's better than some albums that take years and years to make. It's also a grower of an album that gets better on each listen. The art rock and jazz sound coming into the alt rock is something these guys have perfected. Now if only The Smile would play the U.S. again! Or better yet, Radiohead releases a new album and when they tour, The Smile opens!!!

For info on The Smile

4.5 out of 5 stars

[skyrim-crossing]

Thank you for the tag!

Tagging: @confusedyonko @moffkyng @bougainvillea-and-saltwater @ask-demon-princess-astarte @soullessapple @hircines-hunter @eldritch-bastard

These are hilarious and basically all canon! 🤣

The Elder Scrolls

Obsidian Dovahkiin:

100% Girlie will stand up for basically anyone. She uses her talents and reputation as Dragonborn to help people out of shitty situations.

Vorcano Adorin:

This man overworks himself too much with his Daedrology work. When Obsidian goes to visit him, she'll often find him face down in his work. She'll cover him with a blanket and finish his work for him.

Hefdet:

If TES had Roblox, Hefdet would love playing games like Mogging Simulator, and Gym Tycoon.

Fallout

Evangeline House:

Goes without saying my one celebrity OC would be the one to get canceled. Probably canceled for preferring Nuka Cola to Sunset Sasparilla despite being from Nevada.

Victor Van Graff:

Yes

Baldur's Gate/God's Inside My Inkpot (my novel)

Of course he's Tumblr famous. In GIMI he's the ruler of the entire world, in BG3 he's a high ranking noble and politician. He is early 2000s brainrot incarnate. He asks people about their shoelaces daily and is upset when they don't understand.

Nagaz

He's the Dark Urge. He is the emo phase. He definitely is an obnoxious music purist and gatekeeper. Would hit someone with the "if you were a real emo, you'd know this is actually southern gothic 🤓☝️"

GTA

This just goes without saying 💀

Halo

Eli B-899:

This mf canonically cannot drive to save his life. His Fireteam will literally not let him near a steering wheel.

Star Wars

Agasu Maleta:

She grew up in the Sith Academy. This wouldn't surprise me.

tagged by @theoneandonlysemla to use this Headcanon Generator:

Honestly? I had waaaay to much fun with this. This is gold XD

tagging: @lady-iizsil, @natyhowlett, @takatuo

Morwen:

(Yeah she kinda isn’t XD)

Imirièl:

(yeah… she does… no… she won’t)

Corestir:

(CORESTIR NO!!!)

Bonus: Ancano (I know he’s a canon character but I couldn’t resist

(ok the first one probably really happened, the second one I just can imagine so well for him)