#American Pleasure Club

[koopabeach]

Tag game 💚

Tagged by: @cicadas 🍂✨

What to do: Post covers only of your top 6 albums, either of all time or currently vibing to, and tag 6 people

Tagging: @smb3 @crystalis @cat-mermaid @r-6-6-y @estranged-empress @powerbook145⭐✨

[not2menotifitsyou]

Depths of my Spotify

Radiohead, Knives Out // Car Seat Headrest, Twin Fantasy (Those Boys) // Basement, Earlgrey // U2, New Year’s Day // Teen Suicide, Oranges // The Frights, Of Age

[rivcoop]

Really can’t believe I got to see Teen Suicide live last night. I found this band back in the day on tumblr…. 💗 So awesome….

[hellofromthewired]

meow

[mercurys-in-retrograde]

I have dreamt about what it's like to die and I saw myself becoming shadows again just like I did when I was a kid I saw my bones crack open and all the things I've been hiding from you spill out. All of the secrets that I never thought I'd tell anyone about; I am warm and I am bored and I am drifting through this place. It's no better or worse than anything else that's ever happened to me, but I wish that I've never met a lot of the people that I've met. Not because that I don't like them but because I only let them down, when you disappoint everyone all the time it's hard not to want to die. And constantly I get this weird, shameful, feeling like I'm being watched by a thousand hungry vengeful eyes in fogged over mirrors in public bathrooms and metro cars, and everywhere I go I know that I'm not welcome.

[ilovemeatwad]

[musimood]

Current Mood:

[backcombsanyway]

pretty as a postcard

[xe-5aj1700155-024]

Midwest Emo/Alternative/Indie - Tribute (Project Node ,,Source)

Merchant Ships_ Sleep Patterns,, (2010)

Merchant Ships_ Long Term Relationships Were Only Cool When Divorce Wasn't,, (2010; Demo Recorded in 2008)

Lyric Excerpt;; "A spoken sense of burning down"

Crywank - Memento Mori,, (2013)

Lyric Excerpt;; "I want to find peace of mind / Maybe no mind is the answer to that conundrum", "Oh, I want pure thoughts in my head", "Oh, I want to forget"

Casket - Nothing Left,, (2013)

Lyric Excerpt;; ((As Above))

Bedroom - Nothing Lasts ,,(2014)

Lyric Excerpt;; ((As Above))

[draggingstarsinmyjaw]

“Watching you push off

In the bathroom, on the sink

It's all I ever want

It’s everything to me”

[not2menotifitsyou]

Smoking Rock With My Angel In Milwaukee ..

[3ndl3ss-v0id]

I don't know how should I live my life but I'm pretty sure I'm not doing it the right way

[doming000]

Fav band 🖤

[lovejustforaday]

2022 Year End List - #15

Teen S****de - Honeybee Table At The Butterfly Feast

Main Genres: Lo-Fi Indie Rock, Indie Folk

A decent sampling of: Post-Rock, Emo, Slowcore, Dream Pop, Neo-Psych, Noise Pop, Folktronica

WARNING: Too many potential triggers on this one to make a proper list. It's even in the band name (which I am uncomfortably ambivalent about). If you are going through a very rough time mentally, this could either comfort you or make things worse. Proceed at your own discretion.

So I decided to start off my 2022 year end list with a little bit of back story as to how I discovered the album which ended up placing at number 15. There’s a fair bit of context that I want to explain first, so buckle in.

I have been a big fan of the often underappreciated electro pop / synth pop / trance / chillwave rapper/singer Kitty for a few years now. The unlikely Tumblr girl who rose to semi-prominence as an ‘internet’ rapper  — before such a phenomenon became widespread thanks to soundcloud rap and the rise of music streaming services — has often been ahead of the curve when it comes to fusing pop and hip hop with very online aesthetics and sounds.

Kitty is also married to Sam Ray, a prolific artist who has been making music since at least 2009 as part of nearly a dozen solo projects and bands such as Ricky Eat Acid, American Pleasure Club, The Pom Poms, and of course Teen S****de (not the literal band name, but please bare with me as I try to get this review past the Tumblr and Instagram filters). As part of these projects, Ray has made music that ranges anywhere from indie folk to stuff like ambient, industrial, and even miami bass.

As I follow Kitty's instagram, I was made aware of Sam Ray's hospitalizations last year due to chronic respiratory problems. At one point, his condition was considered potentially life-threatening.

Fortunately, Sam is still alive and kicking. As you could imagine, the events of last year significantly impacted the music on this new record.

I myself had not listened to a full-length release from any of Sam Ray's musical projects up to this point. But I was inclined to check this one out, especially since the man had clearly gone through so much hardship to reach its completion. As an added bonus plus, Kitty also sings backing vocals on some of the tracks, so that’s pretty cool.

Upon listening, I have this to say: Honeybee Table At The Butterfly Feast is not an easy record. It is a folksy, watery, haphazard mishmash of three or more indie subgenres per song, with transient reflections from a man who has come very close to death on (as it turns out) more than one occasion. It is a collection of songs that are tenderly pessimistic, at times embracing something more like a nihilistic bliss (From "complaining in dreams" : "Everything is everything is everything is nothing / And when they finally kill me, I hope at least they make it funny").

Dropping another disclaimer right here: this album is not at all congruent with where I personally am in my life right now. All things considered, I have had a pretty good 2022 (and 2021 for that matter). I am mostly past the messy depressive/anxious episodes that rocked my life in waves between the years of 2017 and 2019, and I have a modestly comforting sense of security in where I am right now with my life.

And yet, this still resonates with me emotionally. I may be far in my current state from sharing the grim outlook that this record maintains almost religiously, but like most good music, it manages to transcend whatever my current mood is and make me feel its affecting pulse in a way that resonates. Several of the songs in particular managed to not only resonate, but access deeper pockets of the emotional faculties in my mind.

“get high, breathe underwater (#3)” is a mesmerizing lament of neo-psychedelic piano folktronica. The piano riff floats somewhere above and around the listener while remaining mostly static, sustained in an awkward stasis that mirrors lyrics describing the feeling of being completely stuck in one’s life position.

“new strategies for telemarketing through precognitive dreams”, apart from maybe being the best song title of the year, is also another major highlight, with compressed lo-fi indie guitars churning and decaying into wounded howls.

The album peaks with "coyote (2015-2021)", a long instrumental trek of slowcore-post-rock through a forest of once-forgotten memories. I imagine myself growing very old over the course of the song, years of life becoming mere footnotes and chapters that are part of a longer story, where I’m the protagonist nearing the end of a tragic young adult romance novel.

“complaining in dreams” is a dreamy lo-fi lullaby, musically not unlike something by The Radio Dept. This one has a particularly defeatist attitude towards the future of humanity, but the words are expressed in a manner so leisurely and whisper-soft that it’s as if these musings are the typical end-of-day thoughts passing through your head right as you fall asleep, only hoping to wake up in some universe completely different from our own current version of reality.

I have to say that not all of this stimulates me musically as consistently and successfully as it manages to resonate with me emotionally. Sometimes I feel like Teen S****de are bringing new ideas and breathing new life into the well-established tradition of ‘slow sad indie with folk guitars and noisy lo-fi’, while other times it feels like this record is paying a lot of homage to those artists in a similar vein that came long before this record, such as The Microphones.

Still, I simply had to include this record on my 2022 list, even if it was a pretty darn close choice for number 15 between this and at least three or four other albums that I ended up omitting. At the end of the day, this one formed a stronger connection with me than those other records. Honeybee Table At The Butterfly Feast is an album meant to be appreciated by the deepest recesses of the right side of your brain, marked with murky paintings of the adult imagination and overflowing with profoundly uneasy sentiments needing to be felt as much as they are heard.

8/10

Highlights: “coyote (2015-2021)”, “get high, breathe underwater (#3)”, “new strategies for telemarketing through precognitive dreams”, “death wish”, “complaining in dreams”, “you were my star”