#OUT OF 22 SONGS ONLY THREE SURVIVED

[titsthedamnseason]

which songs from your surprise song list survived the first U.S. leg (plus mexico city weekend) of the eras tour?

[ventismacchiato]

stuck with you — windblume !

˗ˏˋ profiles ´ˎ˗

yn — main vocalist which makes you the most popular member. you go viral every other week for getting into petty arguments on twitter and weverse with scaramouche. should definitely learn media training because you tend to rant about him too much during lives. ‘compilations of scaramouche and yn bickering’ are super common. you’re also the only member to release a solo album which gets you guys a lot of new fans. became an idol after being a trainee for way too many years, which is why you’re salty about scara debuting so quickly when he became an idol trainee after you. [🍰]

xiao — main dancer. choreographs a lot of the dances if not all. very introverted in public but talkative in behind the scenes vlogs with his group. xiao stans have it hard because this man hardly posts anything. fans call him the dad of the group because he’s always sneaking food onto everyone’s plates and keeping them hydrated during practice. when you guys first debuted everyone thought he was mean and cold when really he’s just a quiet sweetheart. has a tattoo sleeve that the fans haven’t seen the entirety of yet, jungkook vibes in that sense. most expensive photocards after you, the one of him in cat ears and winking goes for hundreds. [🦊]

lumine — leader of the group and one of the only responsible ones. strict about keeping everyone on schedule and trying to appear presentable at music and award shows. tries to drag you all to the gym at five in the morning but to no avail. she vlogs her gym routine and whatever member she dragged that morning is usually seen in the back sitting on a yoga ball the entire time, talking as she runs miles on the treadmill. always setting trends for workout routines and makeup looks. once it touches her face it sells out. her twin is also an idol so they both do a lot of tiktoks and videos together. it siblings. [☀️]

fischl — one of the lyricists for the group. so chronically online. she’s always active at odd hours of the night and interacting with her fans. posts the most too, so fischl biases are always full with content. wears an eyepatch as part of her idol persona, and still manages to perform with it on. will do book club livestreams where she’ll talk about her current favorite book with her fans for two hours or more. lumine has to shut the live off everytime because she will just keep yapping. [🦉]

venti — writes most of the group's songs and runs production. most unserious member and should really attend a public image class because he does not know how to be a celebrity. fans are constantly finding vapes in the back of his photos and videos of him drunk at award shows. went viral once for showing up to a music show high off his mind but still managing to perform. will dye the ends of his hair different colors every comeback from his fan’s requests. loves to go live and sing covers for whatever people ask for. he does qnas and takes the tmis too seriously. [🌱]

yoimiya — visual and vocalist, will bring out her guitar during concerts a lot. the only member who will go to the gym with lumine. became an idol because she used to busk in her hometown and got picked up by your manager while she was on vacation. would be the type of idol to adore fancalls and do decorating photocards on livestreams. gets invited to a lot of variety shows and was probably a judge for a survival show at one point. [🧨]

windblume —one of the idol groups underneath sakura entertainment,  a six member mix gendered idol group known for their whimsical and indie comebacks every year. think of txt’s brand when it comes to your guys’ style of music. have been a group for about three years. members range from 21-22. their debut album Temptation got them to their popularity today. fandom name: bloomies

stuck with you !

masterlist — next

for my nonkpop fans the emojis are their assigned ones for when people post their livestream quotes, will make more sense later 😓 and weverse is basically twitter but just for idols to interact with fans

tried not to describe yn too much because i want it to be inclusive, any photos showing yn are just to depict the pose! not gender, race, or body type 🙏

spent way too long making custom instagram templates and for what help so pls look at them xx it’s so u can visualize what these 2d mfs wud look like in this au

pls lmk in the masterlist comments if i can use ur username and make you a fan in the au!

synopsis — after the disaster that was the live award show, where you and scaramouche got into an argument on stage after both of your groups got a tie for top artists, your guys' PR teams have been in shambles trying to scrape up your mess. that's when the idea to send you both off with some other idols to a remote location for a survival dating show to mend your public image comes up. before you know it your bags are packed and you’re on a plane to a remote island. the only obligation is you need to end up with scaramouche at the end of the show, whether you end up liking him or not doesn’t matter to your managers as long as the show’s ratings stay high. whatever you do in between to get there is up to you!

notes — it’s my exam week so all i have to give you is profiles for now </3

taglist is closed!

taglist — @na1lea @cindywasneverhere @lunavixia @sheraeera @aestherin @mlaakai @camvrin @retiredmommylover @kitsuvil @iheartpieck @crystalcrys @cartierfiles @loveariel @silly-ez @mochipls @pomeiu @chuuismylife @flowerypesky @creammpuff @justanothertiredreader @boxdisappeared @kissmiere @crucnhice @kissingkzuha @webbywill @kazusboyfriend @s3xpistolss @pjsucks @bunns-wonderland @lordbugs @localgirlywithnolife @kosumos @danfelions @scarasmood @featuredtofu @pinxeajin @herebyaccident0 @scaradooche @pglt19 @chemiru @childesbabygirl @simonisferal @shutingstar @vxcmx @domimiki @ttalgi @esuz @tokkishouse @lilachasawesomehair @xxrexx

[girlactionfigure]

THURSDAY HERO: Barney Ross

Dov-Ber Rosovsky was a world-champion boxer and injured World War II hero whose fierce Jewish pride made him an icon to American Jews.

Dov-Ber was born in New York in 1909, the son of a Talmudic scholar who fled to America after surviving a pogrom in Belarus. Dov-Ber grew up in Chicago, helping out in his father’s small grocery store in a poor neighborhood and studying to be a rabbi.

His life was changed forever when his father was shot dead resisting a robbery at his store. Dov-Ber’s mother suffered a nervous breakdown and the kids were farmed out to foster homes.

Dov-Ber became bitter and angry. He turned his back on religion, changed his name to Barney Ross, and took a job working for Al Capone. Barney’s goal was to make enough money to buy a house and reunite his family. He soon became such an effective street fighter, however, that he gave professional boxing a try. Strong, fast, and determined, “Barney” became a world champion in the three different weight classes. He was known for his exceptional stamina and his street smarts.

In the 1930’s, when Hitler was rising to power, Barney Ross became a hero to American Jews by showing pride in his heritage and taking a public stand against Nazi Germany.  He was determined to end each fight on his feet to show that Jews fight and don’t go down. In Barney’s final fight, he defended his title against fellow three-division world champion Henry Armstrong. Barney got brutally pummeled and his trainers begged him to let them stop the fight, but he was determined to stay on his feet. He’d never been knocked out in his career and wasn’t going to start now. He retired from boxing in his early 30’s with a record of 72 wins, 4 loses, 3 draws, and two no decisions, with 22 wins by knockout. He achieved his goal of having no career knockouts.

After retiring from the ring, Barney/Dov-Ber enlisted in the US Marine Corps to fight in World War II. The Marines wanted to keep him stateside as a celebrity morale-booster, but Barney insisted on fighting for his country. He was sent to Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. During his time in Guadalcanal, Barney became friends with Chaplain Frederic Gehrig. Father Gehrig found an old pump organ on the island, and Barney was the only one who could play it. On Christmas Eve, before Barney and his fellow Marines were to go to battle, Gehrig asked him to play “Silent Night” and other Christmas songs for the troops. Barney happily obliged, finishing off the concert with “My Yiddishe Momma,” the song he used to play when he entered the boxing ring. Father Gehrig would later describe Barney Ross as a “national treasure.”

One night, Barney and three other soldiers were trapped under enemy fire. All four were wounded but Barney was the only one able to continue fighting. He gathered his comrades’ weapons and fought 22 Japanese soldiers, killing them all. Two of the American soldiers died, but Barney carried the third man to safety, even though the soldier weighed 230 pounds, while the wounded Barney weighed only 140! For his courage, Barney Ross was awarded a Silver Star and a citation from President Roosevelt.

Barney was hospitalized for his battle injuries, and the pain was so bad that he became dependent on morphine. After the war, he returned to America and opened a bar lounge. However, his drug addiction intensified as he turned to heroin, which was easier to obtain than morphine. Barney became hooked on heroin, an addiction that cost him $500 a day, as well as his marriage, his business and his life savings. Finally he hit rock bottom, and checked into a veteran’s recovery facility. He kicked his habit once and for all, and became a public speaker who educated high school students about the danger of drugs.

In the 1960’s, Barney made his living as a celebrity spokesman. After a brutal struggle with throat cancer, Barney Ross died in 1967 at age 57.

For his wartime heroism and for modeling Jewish strength and pride, we honor Dov-Ber “Barney Ross” Rosovsky as this week’s Thursday Hero.

[boygiwrites]

TWD Harley D. Dixon Chapter List

Daryl Dixon & Daughter OC.

Gen Tags. Found family, Daddy issues, Abuse, Hurt and comfort, Gore.

Summary. Harley D. Dixon is a tough yet sweet little girl who until the dead started eating the living, thought she had seen it all. Alongside a mismatched group of survivors in rural Georgia, Harley and her Dad are forced to leave their small life behind and learn how to survive all over again through the horrors of the apocalypse.

— TW: This fic contains canon typical violence and gore, abuse, mentioned suicide, off-screen suicide, main character death, and has been described by my lovely readers over on Ao3 as 'gritty', 'intriguing', 'intense', and 'special'. Please read with caution!

— Note: Canon is only loosely followed. Some changes have been made to certain plot points to keep it fresh and interesting / account for the added character.

❤️Cross-Posted from Ao3.

Season 1 - 2 Word Count: 180,000 Season 3 - ? Word Count: 48,000

SEASON ONE.

Chapter 1: Them That Mourn.

Chapter 2: No More Songs.

Chapter 3: My Brave Girl.

Chapter 4: Not Quite Yet.

Chapter 5: Black Out Days.

Chapter 6: Angels and Devils.

Chapter 7: Nothing's Ever Ours.

Chapter 8: In Sheep's Clothing.

Chapter 9: Rest In Piece.

SEASON TWO.

Chapter 10: Play Stupid Games.

Chapter 11: Win Stupid Prizes.

Chapter 12: Daddy Dearest.

Chapter 13: A Plan And An Execution

Chapter 14: If Heaven Weren't A Lie.

Chapter 15: Mockingbird.

Chapter 16: Custody Battles.

Chapter 17: Every Corner.

Chapter 18: Custody Battles, Part II.

Chapter 19: Dreams Don't Go Unpunished.

Chapter 20: And Still Very Beautiful.

Chapter 21: Thoughts and Prayers

Chapter 22: Growing Pains.

Chapter 23: The Type Meant for Dying.

Chapter 24: Church and State

Chapter 25: And The Type That Ain't.

Chapter 26: The Last Sunday on Earth.

Chapter 27: A New Life, Pursued.

Chapter 28: These Old Homes.

SEASON THREE.

Chapter 29: From Little Seeds.

Chapter 30: Red Handed.

Chapter 31: Maturity.

Chapter 32: The Best of Us.

Chapter 33: Picket Fences.

Chapter 34: Fresh Air.

Chapter 35: A Short Walk.

Chapter 36: Paradise.

Chapter 37: A Piece of Me.

Chapter 38: Heroes, Old and New.

[sargeantposting]

ARTICLE: The Florida Man of Formula 1 (2023)

Source: Michael M. Grynbaum, The New York Times Series: F1, 2023

Logan Sargeant, the only American driver in Formula 1, is zipping around the narrow streets of Baku, Azerbaijan, at roughly 200 miles an hour. His head bounces inside the cockpit as a wheel shudders over a rumble strip. It’s hard to hear over the banshee shriek of his V6 engine, carrying three times the horsepower of a run-of-the-mill Porsche Carrera.

Then the noise stops, and Baku vanishes. We’re inside a low-slung brick building nestled in the Oxfordshire countryside. The track, projected onto a CinemaScope-sized wraparound screen, was a mirage, part of a sophisticated training simulator. (F1 rules prohibit driving the real cars between races.) Mr. Sargeant climbs out of a replica driver’s seat wearing athletic pants. He won’t need a fireproof suit until later.

In three weeks’ time, Mr. Sargeant will do this for real: wind whipping his visor, G-forces of up to six times his body weight pressing on his neck, the ever-present threat of a catastrophic crash as he is watched by roughly 70 million people around the world. For now, it’s time for lunch. “Is chili bad for you?” he asks, digging into a bowl at his team’s commissary. “I don’t think it’s that bad.”

Williams Racing, in Grove, England. It was founded in Oxfordshire in the 1970s, but it’s now an American subsidiary: a Manhattan private equity firm, Dorilton Capital, bought the company in 2020 for an estimated $200 million.

F1 teams employ hundreds of employees and spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing the world’s most sophisticated racecars.

Reaching Formula 1, the highest level of international motor sport, is a big step for Mr. Sargeant, 22, a South Florida native who began racing rudimentary cars known as karts at 6 years old and this year joined the Williams Racing team as the first full-time American F1 driver since 2007.

For Formula 1 itself, finding a hometown hero for American fans is a giant leap.

Although it is enormously popular in Europe, F1 struggled for decades to break into the United States. That began to change in 2016, when the sport was purchased for $4.4 billion by the Colorado-based Liberty Media, owned by the cable magnate John Malone. Liberty ramped up its social media — F1 had barely kept a YouTube page — and backed a popular Netflix documentary series, “Drive to Survive.” Once geared toward aging white men, F1 now has a younger and more diverse fan base. American TV viewership is up 220 percent from 2018, and the sport made $2.6 billion in revenue last year.

Still, a subset of F1 devotees complain about what they see as an overemphasis on entertainment and ginned-up drama. Under Liberty, they argue, pure racing is taking a back seat to cheap tricks to reel in casual viewers. And they often use a dirty word for it: Americanization. “It is becoming more and more like Formula Hollywood,” Bernie Ecclestone, the 92-year-old Briton who built F1 into a global business, griped last year. “F1 is being made more and more for the American market.”

The backlash reached a crescendo at last week’s Miami Grand Prix, which was added in 2022 as a showpiece for American fans. In a prizefight-style pre-race ceremony, the rapper LL Cool J introduced the 20 drivers one by one amid swirling smoke and a squad of cheerleaders. Nearby, Will.i.am conducted a live orchestra playing the rap song he recently recorded with Lil Wayne as part of a “global music collaboration” with Formula 1. (The lyrics rhyme “Max Verstappen,” the name of the sport’s top driver, with “your champion.”)

“Pandering to the American audience is killing @F1,” wrote one fan on Twitter, echoing criticism that bubbled up across numerous F1 websites. Even the racers complained: “None of the drivers like it,” groused Lando Norris, a Briton who drives for McLaren. Undeterred, Liberty announced that the bombastic pre-race sequence would be featured at several more grands prix this year.

In the United States, F1 has long been associated with a certain European mystique, most famously, the louche glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix.

In the United States, F1 has long been associated with a certain European mystique. Its drivers race across the Ardennes forest (Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium), the plains of Lombardy (Italy’s Autodromo Nazionale di Monza) and, most famously, the louche glamour of the Monaco Grand Prix. The sport’s stateside image could be summed up by the 2006 comedy, “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” which featured Sacha Baron Cohen as a pretentious French F1 driver named Jean Girard, a snooty Eurotrash foil to Will Ferrell’s macho NASCAR cowboy.

In 2023, F1 can feel a bit more Ricky Bobby than Jean Girard. In Miami, drivers circled a track built in the parking lot of the Dolphins football stadium, past an artificial Monaco-style “harbor”: blue-painted asphalt topped with ersatz yachts. A new Las Vegas race in November will have cars zooming down the Strip past Caesars Palace. Meanwhile, traditional races in France and Germany are gone.

Katy Fairman, a journalist based in Brighton, England, who runs the F1 podcast “Small Torque,” said she was surprised by the spectacle when she attended a race in Austin, Texas. “There were girls with pompoms,” she said. “I remember watching it and thinking, Oh my gosh, this is so different from anything I’d seen F1 do in a long time.”

Ms. Fairman conceded that some Europeans find the American hullabaloo “tacky.” But she added: “When it’s something to do with America, I think Europeans are quite judgmental. I think it’s just a bit of lighthearted fun. You guys like to have a party.”

The arrival of Mr. Sargeant, who grew up about an hour’s drive from the Miami racetrack, has spurred new interest, including a profile and photo shoot in GQ, and he’s happy to play the part. “What’s up America, let’s bring that energy!” he shouted to the cameras after LL Cool J introduced him as “the local boy done good.”

But as with F1, there are growing pains. In Miami, Mr. Sargeant finished last, his race ruined on the first lap when he damaged a front wing. After the checkered flag, he apologized to his team, his voice barely a whisper: “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe it.”

Weeks earlier, in an interview in England, Mr. Sargeant had demurred about the pressure of wearing the stars and stripes. “I try not to get too caught up in the talk of the role of ‘first American,’” he said. “It’s still very early for me, and I have a lot to learn still.”

If Mr. Sargeant doesn’t perform, there are dozens of drivers eager to take his spot. “At the moment,” he said, “I just have to worry about staying here.”

For a globe-trotting athlete, Mr. Sargeant can be soft-spoken and endearingly self-conscious. 

‘I just want to get back in the gym.’

Before his tough Miami weekend, Mr. Sargeant was asked how he would celebrate a top 10 finish. “Honestly, it might sound lame, but probably just go back to my house and get in my bed for another night before I go back to London,” he replied. “That’s all I want to do.”

For a wealthy, handsome, globe-trotting athlete, Mr. Sargeant can be soft-spoken and endearingly self-conscious. It’s not unusual for someone who, like a tennis prodigy or Olympian gymnast, has devoted their life since childhood to a sole pursuit.

Mr. Sargeant was 6 when he and his brother Dalton got a kart from their parents for Christmas. “No one in the family was really even that much into racing,” Logan said. “We just picked it up as a hobby, something to do on the weekend.” He began winning junior races around the country — too easily. To reach the next level and pursue Formula 1, he’d have to leave behind his friends and beloved fishing excursions for life on a different continent: “We just needed a higher level of competition, and at the end of the day, that was in Europe.”

Mr. Sargeant left Florida before his 13th birthday, bouncing between Italy, Switzerland and Britain as he raced on the European junior circuit; in 2015, he became the first American to win the Karting World Championship since 1978. “As a kid, it was tough,” he recalled. “Coming from Florida, being outdoors all the time on the water, great weather — it was literally vice versa.” He eventually settled in London, where he spends most days working out with a trainer. “I get away from a race weekend, and I just want to get back in the gym,” he said. “I hate that feeling of leaving slack on the table.”

It is incredibly difficult to nab a seat in Formula 1. Today’s drivers are physical dynamos trained to optimize their reflexes and performance levels down to how well they can withstand jet lag — critical in a sport that this year will include 23 grands prix spread over five continents. F1 teams employ hundreds of employees and spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing the world’s most sophisticated racecars. But it’s ultimately up to the driver to execute.

It also helps to have money. Lewis Hamilton, the seven-time world champion and F1’s only Black driver, is an exception, having grown up on a London council estate. Many F1 competitors are the sons of multimillionaires (and some billionaires) who can bankroll pricey travel and high-tech cars.

Mr. Sargeant falls into the scion category. He hails from a wealthy Florida asphalt shipping family. His uncle, Harry Sargeant III, is a former fighter pilot and onetime finance chair of Florida’s Republican Party who has been sued by the brother-in-law of King Abdullah II of Jordan and whose name turned up, tangentially, in the 2020 impeachment of former President Donald J. Trump. (Harry was not accused of any wrongdoing.)

Logan’s father, Daniel Sargeant, worked alongside Harry until the brothers had a falling out. In a 2013 lawsuit, Harry accused Daniel of misdirecting $6.5 million in corporate funds “for the purpose of advancing the international cart racing activities” of his sons, Logan and Dalton; that litigation was eventually settled.

In 2019, Daniel Sargeant pleaded guilty in federal court in New York to foreign bribery and money laundering charges related to his business dealings abroad. He is free on a $5 million bond and is awaiting sentencing. A Williams spokesman said that Logan Sargeant was not “in a position to comment” on any of the legal matters involving his family.

In F1, none of this particularly stands out. The mother of Mr. Sargeant’s Williams teammate, Alexander Albon, was jailed in Britain for swindling millions of pounds in fraudulent sales of high-end cars. A Russian racer, Nikita Mazepin, was booted from the sport after his oligarch father, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, was sanctioned following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

James Vowles, the Williams team principal, said in an interview that he hired Mr. Sargeant for his speed, not his U.S. passport. “I’m incredibly pleased that the sport is growing in America, but I think it would be anything but disingenuous to say that Logan’s here for any other reason than I think he’s got this pure talent,” he said.

In his F1 debut in Bahrain in March, Mr. Sargeant finished 12th, outpacing this year’s two other rookies. “He has this insatiable desire to be better, to want more,” Mr. Vowles said. “He’s a perfectionist, and I like that in him.”

Tooting around in a Vauxhall Astra

Britain, where Formula 1 originated in 1950, remains the sport’s spiritual home, where most of its 10 teams are based. Williams was founded in Oxfordshire in the 1970s, but it’s now an American subsidiary: a Manhattan private equity firm, Dorilton Capital, bought the company in 2020 for an estimated $200 million.

It was an important cash infusion for a team that had struggled to keep up with rivals. Manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz pour enormous resources into their F1 teams, which double as an elaborate global marketing campaign and an in-house innovation farm; tech developed for F1, like engines that recycle braking energy as an accelerant, can trickle into consumer vehicles.

Formula 1 car simulators at the Williams Racing factory.

Formula 1 drivers practice on sophisticated training simulators.

The Williams campus is a humdrum brick pile that could be mistaken for an office park — a far cry from McLaren’s space-age complex an hour’s drive away. Many F1 teams provide their drivers with a high-end sports car for personal use; Mr. Sargeant commutes in a Vauxhall Astra, a compact.

Even the team’s sponsors are relatively down-market; whereas the official watch of Ferrari is Richard Mille (starting price: $60,000), Williams has a deal with Bremont, whose timepieces retail for significantly less. (On a recent visit, a Williams press aide was quick to extract a spare Bremont watch from his pocket and ensure Mr. Sargeant was wearing it whenever a photographer hovered.)

Given the huge costs, corporate partnerships are crucial to F1, part of the reason the American market, with its abundance of affluent consumers and wealthy brands, has proved so tempting. Gerald Donaldson, a journalist who has covered F1 for 45 years, recalled how cars were gradually taken over by corporate logos starting in the late 1960s.

“Marlboro paid all the Ferrari bills, including the drivers, for many years,” he said in an interview. “There are eager companies who want the publicity.” Mr. Sargeant’s car features ads for Michelob Ultra beer and an American financial firm, Stephens. In Miami last weekend, beachgoers spotted an airborne banner reading “Go Logan!” alongside the image of a Duracell battery.

Last year, the Miami race was viewed on ABC by 2.6 million people, the biggest American audience for a live F1 telecast. Ratings for this year’s race fell about 25 percent, perhaps a result of a duller-than-usual season dominated by one team, Red Bull.

Still, viewing data show that F1 is expanding beyond affluent cities associated with elite sports: In 2022, its top five American TV markets included Asheville, N.C., and Tulsa, Okla. ESPN is clearly betting on more growth. When the sports network renewed its broadcast rights last year, it agreed to pay $90 million annually — up from the $5 million-a-year deal it signed in 2019.

Liam Parker, a former adviser to Boris Johnson who now leads communications at F1, said the sport was intent on rectifying past mistakes. “We were too arrogant,” he said. “We couldn’t understand why the American fan base wasn’t falling in love with us.” But he also pushed back on the complaints that Liberty’s efforts to raise the entertainment factor had stripped F1 of something essential.

“This whole argument of ‘Americanization,’ it’s a very crude way to describe things,” he said. “We shouldn’t ignore things that can improve things for new and core fans. It’s about giving people more choices in the modern era. It’s modernization of access to everyone.”

Mr. Hamilton, arguably the biggest celebrity of the current F1 lineup, has offered his own endorsement of Liberty’s approach. “I mean jeez, I grew up listening to LL Cool J,” he told reporters in Miami. “I thought it was cool, wasn’t an issue to me.”

For all the debates over elitism, good taste and corporate rap collaborations, the core appeal of F1, when you get right down to it, may be something simpler — something Mr. Sargeant got at when asked in the interview if he had loved cars as a kid.

“I absolutely love driving, as you can imagine,” he said. “But to be honest, I’m not one of those people who studies cars and, you know, likes to know every detail of every single car. It doesn’t really interest me.”

“The part that interests me,” he concluded, “is driving them as fast as I can go.”

Eliza Shapiro contributed reporting from Miami. Kitty Bennett contributed research. Michael M. Grynbaum is a media correspondent covering the intersection of business, culture and politics.  A version of this article appears in print on May 14, 2023, Section BU, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Florida Man Of Formula 1.

[cinderkaliningrad]

Targtower family and the cost of war.

Listen to this with the Sabaton song - Lifetime of War. and 1916 (Another Sabaton song).

Aemond: Should not now us prevail?

Alicent: Not like this.

Okay, Alicent. "Not like this?" I ask for the VAR. ⬇

Let us remember the famous phrase: "I wish to believe that honor and decency will prevail." - A hypocritical phrase said from the mouth of a person manipulated by her father, who is trying to survive as a woman in a man's world. (We are talking about the hypocrisy of the Greens, not the crimes of the Blacks.)

Alicent blames Aemond for starting the war by killing Lucerys. But it was Otto Hightower (the series' ultimate villain) who manipulated her into marrying Viserys. The House of the Dragon, aka "the place where those who are at fault never pay what they owe."

LET'S START.

Otto Hightower starts it all off by drooling over the Iron Throne and plotting to dethrone Rahenyra.

Otto manipulates Alicent into believing that Rahenyra is ruthless enough to kill her children. Something that seems to be corroborated when Rahenyra asks that Aemond (her younger half-brother) be tortured to find out where she got that her children are bastards.

Cole kills a lovely grandpa council member and no body gives a fuck. Nothing new, because he killed Laenor's lover in his wedding (Laenor and Rahenyra) in front the whole nobility of the realm.

We all have recorded the multiple payments that Alicent makes to her allies by offering her body. Very much like Cercey: "Tears are not a woman's only weapon. We have the best one between our legs." We talk about her walking by the sword of Ser Criston Cole and showing her feet to the depraved Larys.

The use of the death of a child prince to win over the people. Causing great suffering to the parents of the child Jaehearys, Kings Aegon II and Helaena. The two characterized by not being the most mentally stable people in the world, let us also remember that they are 22 and 20 years old at the time of the boy's death. (They are literally, in today's terms: university students).

No shame in using a boy who is barely two decades old from birth for their own selfish plans. - Poor Aegon, he just wanted to get away and live in peace.

Espionage, the elimination of witnesses. Shatter the minds of three generations for a throne. (Queen Alicent, her children the princes and the princess, and their children). - Alicent has not hesitated when it comes to using them for its benefit. For "honor and dignity."

Queen Alicent wants to crown her son Aegon, after her dying and senile husband talks about some King Aegon guy and a weird prophecy. When we know 3 Aegon so far: Aegon the Conqueror, Aegon the drunk prince, and Aegon the Young (son of Rahenyra). Did anyone thought that maybe the words of the dying king weren't too logical? Aegon (the drunk one) was right about not being the chosen one.

A long etc.

How do you want to win, Alicent? Your son Aemond is little nothing more than a child trying to fulfill the desires that have been imposed on him all his life: to keep his brother on the throne no matter what the cost.

How are wars won, Alicent? Sending people like Aemond to die: children who have grown up with the wrong ideas, who have grown into fanatical men for a cause. People forced to grow up fast and therefore die young. And of course, dirty game. A lot of dirty game. So that? Alicent (spoiler alert) will spend the rest of her life crying for her children. And the realm will never recover. The saddest thing is that Aemond and Aegon will die thinking they did the right thing.

What was the cost of your greed, House Hightower? If you are not prepared for war, don't do it. You could have stopped it, Alicent, too late to regret it. No? War is like lighting a fire, once it starts, it will destroy everything in its path without control. And it is foolish and naive to think that you can enter a war without dirtying your hands and everyone around you.

WHERE THE 7 HELLS IS HONOUR AND DECENCY, HIGHTOWERS!?

[regaliasonata]

Mini Head Canon Thread #1

Trent and Gemma being friends + Flynn getting involved

-Dimensions In Danger isn’t the only time RPM has crossed over. After the two times with SPD and Overdrive’s “Once a Ranger” situation Dr K sensed some unnatural patterns of energy and opened a portal for Gem and Gemma to go through. It was secretive and kept from the other rangers.

-They found out about the main universe and had to fight a piece of venjix searching for a strong ranger to be a host for him in this new world. The year was 2008 and he went after Trent, who at the time was finishing up college but that didn’t go when the twins came along.

-He got along with Gem and Gemma but was a little shaken up at the fact that other universes exists…what does that mean for him and the others? Meh it’s fine, he’s 22 and has other things to worry about anyway right?

-The three team up against the Venjix Virus and defeat it, sadly they needed to go home in a few days. They exchanged numbers or contacts…whatever works for inter dimensional communication, Trent didn’t tell Tommy for good reasons…no need in getting him involved with universal situations that aren’t needed.

-They came back eventually and brought Flynn who was a huge comic person and he actually got to read continuations of series that were destroyed in his world, Trent took a liking to him and the two started to hang out even more. Gemma turned out to be a very good wingman, Gem was there for support. They also became a quad team of rangers to help each other out with any dimensional issues they had between their own, honestly went well tbh.

-When Dimensions in Danger occurred everyone was a little weirded out by Trent and Gemma’s formalities, most of them were put off by how energetic she was, Trent enjoyed it. He didn’t make much friends outside of high school and while the Dino rangers were in his contacts they didn’t hang out like they used to so honestly it was just nice to have some company(plus she brought along Flynn).

How did the Dino Thunder team react?

-Kira was a little shocked, she couldn’t imagine terminator actually being a thing and wanted to know ASAP if she survived in this other world. With the twins she preferred Gem more than Gemma, mainly because he’d show up to her concerts being one of the loudest attendees cheering in the crowd, unsure about Flynn but he seems fine. As long as Trent’s safe then everything will be alright, she made a song about the apocalypse due to RPM and it sold out in a week upon release.

-Ethan…he was over the moon with excitement wanting all the info about dimensions, he told Trent he’d pay for the dates and stuff as long as he brought Flynn to his workshop to discuss cool ideas and inventions. They were blue rangers and got along easily, “Can I classify him as my brother in law?” He said to a horrified Trent.

-Conner…dude does not trust Flynn at all and he’s threatened to gut him like a fish if he hurts Trent. It’s been a tough road for the dude, first Anton/Mesogog happened, the white ranger fiasco and just overall wanting him safe so its just natural to be protective of not only Trent but the others on the team. He might also be a little jealous but we don’t talk about that😭, he actually turned around a new leaf and they went to one of his famous soccer games, even attended a few of the movies he directed.

-Tommy, well he’s alright with it? He mainly wanted to ask Flynn and Gemma about their teams but Trent was very against this as he doesn’t want dude getting involved where he’s not wanted, it’s a very big issue of his(probably got it from Zordon). He did meet Dr K when Beast Morphers happened and she tried burning his lab down when he mentioned spandex.

-Anton is pretty much okay with everything as long as Trent is happy, he’s been very supportive ever since the situation back in 2004. Maybe it was just the guilt overshadowing everything when it came to his son but hey everyone loves a supportive parent.

[klaineccfanficlibrary]

Some fave multichapter with angst and fluff?

We recently listed some favorite longer fics here.

Check out Lynne's list of recommended fics here.

Some of my favorite longshots - often with more than one part as well. These weren't mentioned in previous list drawn up above as they are all before 2020. ~Jen

The Symphony Verse by Shandyalls

Blaine has spent most of his life feeling like the only thing people notice about him is that he stutters. He’s working hard to overcome his (mostly self created) roadblocks when he meets Kurt in an online class the summer after his freshman year of college.

~~~~~

Love Song by andiheardeverything

A hate crime leaves Blaine damaged and Kurt refuses to let it bring them down.

~~~~~

100 days by @borogroves

Kurt and Blaine have been best friends (and nothing more) since the age of six. Now 22-year-old college graduates, they take a roadtrip around the USA, visiting every state in 100 days. Fifty states. Two boys. One love story.

~~~~~

The Empty Nest series by @coffeegleek

Burt Hummel was an empty nester who discovered a teenager sleeping under his porch. Kurt was just trying to survive in a world that was against everything he was. This is their story.

~~~~~

Westerville Abbey by @hkvoyage

Blaine is the second son of the earl of Westerville, and is considered the spare heir. After his 18th birthday, he attends the London Season to fulfill his duty of finding a wife. He soon realizes he is more attracted to the new footman. Kurt, who has just arrived at Westerville Abbey to work alongside his father, becomes equally as smitten with the earl’s youngest son. Will Blaine and Kurt be able to overcome their class differences in 1910s England? Will their forbidden love survive WW1? A Downton Abbey inspired historical Klaine AU.

and Life in the Big Apple by @hkvoyage

Sequel to Westerville Abbey. Kurt and Blaine are reunited, but their happily ever after comes with a whole new set of challenges: relationship hiccups, jealousy, sabotage, war memories, and family troubles. Yet with love and perseverance, they can make it through. A Klaine historical AU set in the 1920s.

~~~~

Gilded Cage by @canarian

In the winter of 1895, Blaine Anderson, the son of a wealthy doctor, and Kurt Hummel, the son of a middle class mechanic, cross paths at a luxury hotel in the quiet seaside town of St. Augustine, Florida. With everyone and everything working to keep them apart, can they find a way to be together?

~~~~~

Sweet DREAMers by @perryavenue

Blaine Anderson is a business major at Baruch College of the City University of New York (CUNY). Blaine came to the United States from the Philippines on a tourist visa with his mom when he was three years old and since then, has lived in Woodside, Queens with his mom and cousin Marco. As a gay, undocumented student, he has the questionable good fortune to belong to two marginalized populations. One day, while at his part-time job at a book store, Blaine meets Kurt Hummel, a theatre major from Ohio attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and begins a tentative friendship. Before it has the chance to bloom into more, Blaine’s immigration status is revealed, creating issues for both of them.

[ironfey-42]

Life is a Game and True Love is a Trophy [PHOTO EDIT]

For @rangels

I was the pinch-hitter for Rangels. I chose prompt 3 which was: I take anything. And I’ll cherish it. I ended up choosing this prompt because I wanted to do this idea I had and to make it into a moldboard and playlist.

AO3

Spotify Playlist

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In this AU, Tony and Pepper end up breaking off their engagement but are still best friends. Tony survives at the end of Endgame because the Guardians of the Galaxy remember what they did when Peter held the Power Stone. Tony’s got some damage to his right arm as bad that he loses it. He does a lot of physical/occupational therapy to get any movement back in his hand and hand. Tony is retired but he still plans to train Harley to take over in the future for the iron suit.

Tony is at home in his small mansion and is bored, so he decides to get a switch cuz Peter-Man once mentioned it before the Blip and he’s heard about the new Animal Crossing game, New Horizons, and Fire Emblem Three Houses. Breath of the Wild was already out a few years ago, but he decided to also get that cuz open world. It also helps that he’s able to use the controls as a way to help with coordination for his right hand.

(LET’S PRETEND THAT THOSE GAMES CAME OUT A FEW WEEKS BEFORE ENDGAME OKAY. WE ARE ALSO GOING TO PRETEND THAT NINTENDO ALREADY CAME UP WITH THE NOVEMBER 5 BIG UPDATE FOR ANIMAL CROSSING AND ANY DLCS FOR IT, FIRE EMBLEM THREE HOUSES. BOTW HAS ALREADY BEEN OUT SO ANY DLCs ARE ALREADY AVAILABLE)

Tony ends up getting both games and is learning to just chill and relax without getting too anxious about what’s happening superhero-wise. He’s actually having fun with video games. Stephen visits Tony and they just hang out with each other, almost every other day because Tony has a schedule of who is visiting on which day, but he likes it when Stephen visits outside of his scheduled day. Stephen also gets to learn who Tony really is, because, in those 14,000,605 futures that he saw, he only saw what Tony was like in those fives years until the end.

(Stephen only sees that one future where Tony dies, so he thinks that he just sent Tony to his doom, he doesn’t take into account the quick jumpstart of the memory of the Guardians with the power stone)

Anyways, he learns what Tony is like after those five years and slowly they end up falling in love with each other, Stephen falls in love all over again as he fell in love with the Tony from all those 14,000605 futures and not the Tony after Endgame.

1. Fight ‘Til the End

2. The River

3. I Lived

4. Heading Home

5. Theme Song (From Animal Crossing: New Horizons)

6. How Lovely

7. 2:00 AM (From Animal Crossing: New Horizons)

8. I Think I Love You

9. 5:00 AM (From Animal Crossing: New Horizons)

10. High Hopes

11. Stale Cupcakes (From Animal Crossing: New Horizons)

12. HandClap

13. Only Me (From Animal Crossing)

14. Fairytale

15. Nook’s Cranny - Before Closing (From Animal Crossing: New Horizons)

16. I Hear a Symphony

17. Main Theme (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

18. I Want You

19. Life at Garreg Mach Monastery (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

20. Underground

21. A Place to Rest (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)

22. Photograph

23. Breath of the Wild (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

24. Arcade

25. Life in the Ruins (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

26. Don’t Deserve You

27. Mipha’s Theme (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

28. Echo of 2008

29. Great Fairy Fountain (The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild)

30. Your Eyes Tell

31. Somewhere to Belong (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)v

[alteon77]

*IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm copying everything over from AO3 to here because this series has a sequel coming out in the Fall, and I'd rather be prepared just in case AO3 goes down again. This is an old, complete story. So if you recognize it, you're not imagining things. 😂

Chapter Publication Date: 10/21/22 | Word Count: 5,291

All the Precious and Fragile Things (so easily do they break): Chapter 1

Part I: All of This Past

After banishing his lover to the waking world for her deception, Morpheus learns she’s been captured by a revenge-seeking Alexander Burgess.

And that she’s also very pregnant with his child.

Unknown to the both of them, this will set in motion a cascade of events that threatens the whole of existence itself.

AO3 here, Masterlist here

ONE HUNDRED AND THREE YEARS PAST...

Time, like many things in the Dreaming, is only a fluid concept. As opposed to the Waking, in which its beat is as steady as the constant tick of a metronome to a song, time in the Dreaming has a wholly wilder nature. With no rhyme or reason, it will settle down and rush forward only to stagnate flat for a while before it seemingly tires of the resting and rises up in a great swell of movement. 

It is for this reason that Lucienne is unsure of precisely how many years Lord Morpheus has been absent from the Dreaming when she is taken.

Outside the gates of the realm earlier, there had been a spike of energy (pulsing starlight bright) that she had thought was the Dream Lord returned at last to his home. Worried for him and what could have kept him away for so long, she'd rushed out to reach the Endless, to assist him in whatever way she could. 

When she gets to where the light was, though, he’s not there. Nothing is, and she barely has a moment to confusedly consider the emptiness before something is grabbing her tightly from behind. So surreal is the occurrence that she cannot process the cold jut of armor against her back, cannot brace herself for the blow as she's hit across the head with something hard, cannot make sense of her attack even as her vision blurs and then goes dark. 

When she awakens, she's no longer near her home, instead confined to the darkness of a dungeon where her tormentors try and wring information from her through pain and hurt and atrocity that she doesn't think she will ever heal from. Not really.   She'd grown used to the gentle peace of the Dreaming, where none of its denizens within knew injury or hunger or need under the meticulous care of Lord Morpheus, and so the razor sharp survival of her imprisonment here is like nothing she's known. It makes her miss home with a sorrow that pits inside of her belly like the hunger from the starvation she endures regularly now.

Time in this realm, wherever hell this is, has a much more steady cadence. Its beat is reliable, fast for all that her captors and the pain they inflict makes it feel as if it thrums agonizingly slowly here. 

And then one day, everything abruptly changes.That they've dragged her out of her small cell is strange, a variance to the pattern of their usual violent treatment that puts her on instant alert. Trepidation curls viciously in her stomach as her captors start their long journey with her, forcing her to stumble along beside them despite that her legs seem ill suited to carrying her. While they make their bawdy, threatening jokes at her expense, the time around them crawls, going far more slowly than the furious staccato of her heart. She is a creature of the Dreaming, and yet she feels as if she is being carried further and further into a hellish horror that makes the nightmares of her own realm seem but child's play. 

The room she ends up in has tall, gold columns, light filtering through the high windows on either side of it, and a dangerous looking male sitting on a throne of iron. Lucienne can only catch a furtive glance, but she sees a crown atop his head of crackling power, crimson and snapping violently where it hums with energy. He's glaring at the figure on the bottom of the steps as they fling Lucienne down before them, and Lucienne chances the minute to lift her gaze and sneak a longer look at this newcomer, only to be caught off guard by the strange blue she can see shining from this woman's eyes, something in them glowing as if it should not exist, a cerulean manifestation of great magic shimmering amongst the dreariness of this reality. There's a gentle power that emanates from her as well that's peculiar to feel here of all places, but it strangely soothes some part of the librarian that she didn't even know needed soothing. 

The woman seems to notice her inquisitive stare but she does not smile at Lucienne. Instead, she simply tilts her head in a nod that speaks of acknowledgement. 

"I thank you, Hadrius of the Adirae." Her voice is like the sweetest song despite the words twisting Lucienne's gut in apprehension. She doesn't know this female, can't fathom what she might want of Lucienne, but she's suddenly very worried that it's not for anything good. She knows well enough how the beauty of immortals tends to mask the darkness festering inside of them. And for a moment, she balances the dichotomy of relief at being away from this place and its torture against the very real fear of the raw power she senses coming from this unknown entity. What will this woman do to her? What could she want from her? Is Lucienne exchanging one nightmarish existence for another? Possibly one even worse? Though, in truth she doesn’t believe she can imagine anything more horrible than what she's already been subjected to, anything that might... damage her as this ordeal surely has. 

"Follow me," she tells Lucienne, and the librarian scrambles to her feet to do just that. The woman does not say anything else to her then, but she does walk a little slower as if to allow Lucienne to catch up, and that sliver of possible consideration sparks something like hope within her. Perhaps this new terror of Lucienne's is simply panic, a completely understandable malady to be suffering from in her opinion. This could all be fine, she thinks, despite that there's a voice in her head telling her otherwise. When they're outside the castle and settled squarely in the desolate, eerily empty town that Lucienne is quite certain must be deserted, the woman lightly rests a hand on the librarian's arm, seemingly taking care to avoid the worst of the bruises there, before she summons her magic to shift them from the realm. 

When they arrive, Lucienne expects a grand entrance, a palace, a fantastical place the likes that magic wielders tend to keep, but they absurdly enough land before a rather ordinary looking house. It strikes her as something that might appear the Waking, with its white siding and large front porch. Trees sprawl around it lazily, leafed limbs drooping to the ground, colorful flowers blooming vibrant on the bushes around the perimeter of the house and fence. Lucienne glances around confusedly as the woman leads her up the stairs, inside the home, and to a kitchen. An exceedingly normal kitchen, she thinks. Light here filters in through the windows where shelves of herbs and plants soak up the sun. Another whole wall of the space is crammed with books, their leather spines carefully organized and obviously kept free of dust. Mouth-watering soup boils on the stove, and the scent of fresh bread pleasantly permeates the air, making her stomach twist in want for food. 

"You can call me May," the woman supplies while she carefully helps Lucienne to a chair to sit, and even in the whirl of thoughts and emotions rushing through her mind, Lucienne has the distinct impression that May isn't this entity's true name. She recognizes, however, that she's really in no position to argue anyone over lying about such a thing at the moment, especially not this creature of power before her. "You're safe now."

Safe. That word. She wonders if she'll ever feel safe again, if she's even capable of doing so anymore. Having information might help her, given that there's a sort of protection in understanding the details of what exactly is happening around her, a protection that she sorely needs in this present situation to anchor her amidst the roiling storm of her own fear. Lucienne has a million questions on the tip of her tongue, waiting for her to voice them, and yet she doesn't speak. She's honestly not even sure if she can right now.

"Apologies it took so long. I didn't realize that they had you at first. When I was finally made aware, I had to wait overly long for an audience with that broveshne ."

Lucienne, despite all her knowledge, doesn't know what that word broveshne means, but May says it as if she would like to stab Hadrius with it, and it makes the librarian irrationally pleased.

The woman- May- goes on, "I thought we could change into something more comfortable, maybe wash up, and then eat? It's been a while since I was held captive, but I definitely recall the starving as being one of the worst parts."

Lucienne still doesn't speak, and her silence seems to trouble May, who crouches before her as one might a skittish animal, like she’s trying to make herself look as non threatening as possible. "You're really safe, sweetling. This isn’t a trick. We'll get you healed up, and then we'll go and fix the Dreaming until we can find the Dream King."

"The Dreaming?" Lucienne finally croaks a response out as if she's repeating a deity's name, reverent despite that her throat burns with the words, and May frowns at this.

May stands at once to pour a glass of water and then stoops before Lucienne again to offer it as she cautions, "Drink it slowly."

The coolness of the water in her mouth feels like the best comfort in the universe. It reminds her of her library, the smell of paper and ink, the creak of leather when she first opens a new tome, the crackle of the library fireplaces on colder days, the light shining in through thick-paned windows, and the plushness of the chairs dotted throughout its sections for reading. She gulps greedily of it until May tilts the glass away from her.

"I'm sorry," she says with a wince, "but you really will get sick if you drink it too quickly."

"I…. understand." Lucienne's voice is still rough, but it feels easier to speak, less painful, and for that she's grateful. How long had it been since she'd had water? Since she'd had anything on her raw throat save for screams? May hands her the glass back, and Lucienne focuses on taking small sips, not wanting this magnificent gift to be taken from her anew.  

"I hope you like vegetable soup." May smiles at her and gets back to her feet from where she'd been sitting on her haunches in front of Lucienne. "I didn't know what you'd prefer, but most everyone will eat that, so I thought it the better choice."

"Vegetable soup is... fine." 

"I know you have more questions, but lets get the filth of that place off of us, and then we'll eat and talk. I'll answer anything you ask then." 

But Lucienne doesn't believe her. Not really. She wishes she could, despite that she's sure there has to be a catch in this exchange. What does this woman want of her? Why is she being so polite? So kind? It makes no sense, and to someone as logic oriented as Lucienne, that is horribly unsettling.

Nonetheless, she does as her rescuer suggests, and an hour later, they're both sitting at this odd woman's simple wood table, steaming bowls of soup and fresh bread and butter before them. Lucienne has to admit, she does feel better to have the stink of that place off of her. May had given her a pair of pants and a loose night shirt that feels as if it's made of the softest cotton lawn, and she smells of the lavender from the soap in her bath, with which she'd scrubbed the blood off of herself until she'd worried she might accidentally remove skin as she did so. 

"Eat slowly," May warns, her voice threaded through with what Lucienne thinks is more kindness, a puzzling thing to hear even if May has been nothing but considerate to her so far. "The food will make you sicker than the water if you go too quickly."

The woman sounds not unlike she's giving advice from experience. She had said "since I was held captive" earlier, hadn't she? Lucienne stores that particular curiosity away for later, saving the question since it's not important, and she's expecting to have to wheedle and bargain for what she actually needs to know. When dealing with immortal creatures of magic, it's not unusual to have to barter a bit for answers.

"You know of the Dreaming?" Lucienne asks, preparing herself for a roundabout, useless reply the likes of which the Fates might provide.

May nods, surprisingly direct in her response as she blows at a spoonful of her soup to cool it off. "We came across a group of nightmares that were preying on humans. I couldn't figure out why your ruler was allowing them to roam free. He's usually much stricter with his creations, as I'm sure you're aware."

Ah, yes. Lucienne is aware of that. The Corinthian. Lord Morpheus had left to bring him back from the Waking, and he had not returned. As far as Lucienne knows, he still hasn't done so. "There were stray nightmares? And you... thought to inform him of this?"

"Not... quite. I honestly thought only to tell him to get them back in line, to curb their bloodlust or something." May, rather nonchalantly for an entity that's just admitted she'd wanted to chastise Dream of the Endless like he was no more than an errant, misbehaving child however long ago, takes a bite of her soup and gestures towards Lucienne's own as if she should do the same. "I went to the Dreaming to request an audience, but he wasn't there. It felt... strange, abandoned, as if he hadn't been there for a while. I even tried to summon him in all the old ways, but I couldn't get an answer." She huffs out a sigh. "I went to Destiny of the Endless after that and basically harassed him until he very begrudgingly told me that Dream was imprisoned by mortals and there I discovered your plight."  

"How did you secure my release?" Memories flood Lucienne's mind then, recollections of pain, of torture and torment. Hadrius and his interrogation, his joy at seeing her cry, at hearing her scream, runs through her thoughts with all the force of a physical blow. Her fingers unconsciously brush over the branding mark that they'd burned into the back of her other hand, tracing the raised edges of it as she's done for years since being abducted from her home. It had been a soothing gesture then, one of the only things she'd been able to do in her efforts to ground herself in that hell.

Now, however, May narrows her eyes on the injury as if she's only now noticing it, and Lucienne is bewildered to see an expression of pity cross her features. 

"I have compromising information on him," May supplies. "I very politely informed him that I was an emissary from the Dreaming, and that if he didn't hand you over I'd tell everyone what I knew." A faint smile turns her lips up. "Believe me, he doesn't want that to happen."

And May says it as if it was the easiest thing in all the worlds, as if decades of torture and pain and fear were as easy to end as a bit of blackmail and the word please. 

"I had planned to get you healthy again, and once you're mended, I'll take you back to the Dreaming," she goes on. "I've already got my brother and his contacts looking into where your lord might be."

"He's been imprisoned?" Lucienne queries, her mind working more slowly than it should to parse out all that May is telling her freely, no persuasion or manipulation or cleverness needed. It's a drastic but welcome change from the usual immortals she deals with, and she is oddly grateful for it. 

May nods again as she pushes Lucienne's bowl closer to her in what the librarian thinks is a more insistent gesture that she should eat. "By humans at that. I'm sure that's going to put him in a most charming mood when we finally get him out," she adds dryly, and Lucienne can't help the tiny smile she gives in return.

"And then?"

The woman huffs out a faint laugh, like she's amused. "Well, I suppose then he can finally take care of that nightmare problem, can't he? Goodness knows I'm getting tired of listening to my brother complain about having to do it."

Lucienne can't help her relief at this answer, at the effortless trust she seems to have for this entity. It might make her foolish, but for the first time in a long time, she feels hope swell in her heart for some reason, hope for the future, hope that maybe, just maybe, things might eventually be fine after all. 

PRESENT DAY...

"My lord…." Lucienne's voice is hesitant, an oddity in and of itself. 

Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, glances up at her from the leather-bound register he'd been going through and frowns. The dappled light filtering in from the windows behind him does little to mitigate the gloominess of his throne room, but he can easily see that his librarian is standing rigid in her usual place, her spine stiffened in a way that he thinks reminds him all too much of fear. As he studies her from where he sits, he takes note of her creased forehead, of her furrowed brow, of the vein in her neck that thumps furiously, far faster than it should. It is a strange thing to see her so clearly shaken, and he decides immediately that he does not care for it.

"We must… speak." Her words are halting, as if it takes some great feat of strength to force them from her mouth, and she looks so unsure of herself that he knows she must have something either important or catastrophic to tell him. Perhaps both. Carefully, he closes his book and places it on the pile he had been reading from, gathering from his librarian's apparent apprehension that she might require his full attention for whatever has happened. With an unusual feeling of alarm, he walks slowly down the steps of the tall dais until he's but a few paces from her.  

"Very well," he grants, still regarding her curiously.

"Viego has been trying to contact you," is her reply, and he thinks he now understands why exactly she had seemed so reticent to begin this conversation. 

Morpheus feels his face darken in warning, his whole body going taut with anger at the mention of this. That Viego, May's brother, has been trying to contact him is not unknown to the Endless. He's felt the pull from the summoning several times and resolutely ignored it.  "Do not concern yourself with the makers," he growls out, and what he means is do not speak to me of anything to do with her, with my once betrothed.

Lucienne, however, only draws in a sharp breath, regret written plainly on her face. "I fear I must, my lord."

He's surprised, which seems a paltry descriptor for the magnitude of sheer shock that wells up within him. His librarian has always been unfailingly loyal, even in her early days when she was a wild raven that grappled with leaving her mortal life behind. To see her now disobeying him for that deceiver of a female sets his teeth on edge. Had his betrayer truly infected everything in his realm so thoroughly? Would the damage she wrought ever be completely purged from this place? He knows that Lucienne had been overly attached to her for some reason that he never did and still does not understand, but her first duty remains to him and the Dreaming. 

Without waiting for a word from him, she continues on. "When you were first taken and bound by Roderick Burgess, I was captured by Hadrius of the Adirae," Lucienne admits with the slightest tremble in her tone, her eyes downcast as she relays this to him. 

Morpheus stiffens in confusion, the words so unexpected that he's momentarily unable to parse what she's just said. How has he never heard of this? That his own librarian was taken by that monster and he had not known is wholly startling.

"Hadrius?" he repeats, almost hoping that perhaps he's misunderstood her. Morpheus will confess that he does not know much of that malevolent being, save that which he imagines everyone else does. Hadrius currently resides in a realm utterly destroyed by his own violent brutality, and he has existed for eons, possibly even longer than the Endless themselves have. But beyond that and the rumors which circulate every now and then, he is an enigma lost to time, a puzzle on the outskirts of reality that few have been brave enough to try and solve. 

Lucienne nods and finally looks back up at him, a latent terror present in her expression that Morpheus has never seen from her before. "Some of his men abducted me outside the gates during your absence. They…. questioned me on various aspects of the Dreaming and details regarding its function, seeking secrets and information that I could not give them."

They had sought details of the Dreaming? Whatever for? Surely they could not be fool enough to step foot in his realm? Not with his power returned to him in full as it is now. He decides that he will mull over that later, however, believing it irrelevant to what Lucienne seems to be trying to tell him. He turns his attention to her anew, thinking over her words as he does.

The way she had said questioned tightens his chest in both pity and concern. He's heard gossip of the savagery displayed by that mysterious entity called Hadrius, heard the tales of him torturing his wife to death and burning his own children alive after a cruel imprisonment in the dungeons. He doesn't need her to tell him that her interrogation was likely painful, likely horrendous.

"You were hurt," he breathes out instead of voicing this, a fury rising in him at the thought of one of his own being treated thusly. He has a responsibility to them, he knows, and he fights the sudden urge to seek her captors out and violently rend them with his shadows for their trespass.

Lucienne nods again, and he thinks he sees a shine in her eyes, an uncharacteristic sheen of tears that threaten to collect and fall. "I was treated…. harshly. Over a decade into my captivity, she..."

Decade? While he had languished in Roderick Burgess' binding circle, she had been held and suffered likely unspeakable torment for over a decade? He thinks he should comfort her, should console her in some way. His hand twitches with the unfamiliar, nearly absurd impulse to rest on her shoulder, but she seems as if she's holding herself together by sheer willpower, and he fears that such a gesture, especially coming from him, might shatter the brittleness of her in this moment. "Yes? Go on."

"May... came and rescued me. She helped to heal me."

That name. Her name. It cuts through him with all the bite of a serrated blade. 

"Why was I not told?" he demands sharply, fury coursing through him at both the mention of her and the audacity of that rat Hadrius for daring to abscond with, to hurt, his librarian. 

"She wanted to, but I was…. uncomfortable with sharing such knowledge. She agreed that she would stay silent, and I could speak about it in my own time, when I was…. ready."

And while he is loathe to admit it, that seems something May would do if he's entirely honest, offering her unassuming help to Lucienne as she'd done for him. In a bittersweet way, he remembers how she had pestered him with her presence after he'd retrieved his tools from their scattered places in the Waking (likely knowing that he had to hate being alone after so much time spent in the complete isolation of that glass sphere). He remembers how she had taken to laying gentle hands on his arm (as if to give him the touch that he craved but didn't have the words to ask for). He remembers how she'd dragged him to the Waking to show him the kindness and goodness of the humans (to remind him not to narrow the entire world of their kind down to the hurt of his imprisonment and the evil of Roderick Burgess). He remembers her listening quietly as he'd told her everything he could one night while she'd pressed naked against him in the afterglow of their lovemaking, her hands stroking his chest, reaching for his hand, pressing kisses against the knuckles as she'd sought to calm him, to let him know that she was there for him. He remembers the way that he'd felt her love and had real hope for the first time in millennia that perhaps there was something more for him outside an existence merely lived for the sake of his function.

How utterly foolish he had been then. To believe he could ever be allowed to keep such happiness for his own when so often his history had demonstrated the exact opposite. Even now, the sting of his past idiocy burns his pride.

"And are you ready?" he questions, gentling his voice as he wills the memories of her away, unwilling to think overly about the taint of her deception on them at present. He focuses instead on Lucienne, his advisor, though he has never called her that to her face, never acknowledged her role in any formal capacity. 

Her eyes burn at him, an odd intensity in them. "No, sir, but…. I must."

"You need not, Lucienne. I am quite willing to wait as long as you require until you are comfortable discussing this," he offers, still mindful to keep his tone low and soothing. 

"Sir…. when we finally arrived back here, after she had nursed me back to health, the realm was already in decay. She…. put her magic into the Dreaming to keep it alive for the subjects. And then she threw herself into finding you, and finally…. into bringing you back here."

In an instant, his compassionate calm is no more. His jaw clenches so hard he'd break teeth were he a human. He hates being reminded of her rescue of him, no doubt an elaborate plot of one of his siblings. Desire, most likely. "I'm aware of both her efforts in the Dreaming and that she freed me, Lucienne. What point are you trying to make? That I owe her?"

"To remind you of all she has done for this realm. Her brother has been trying to contact you because she is in trouble. It's-"

"None of my concern," Morpheus bites out, finishing for her. 

His librarian is clearly taken aback by his refusal. "But we… we have located her, and-" she tries again.

"You have been working with him? Against my express wishes to avoid involvement?" His interruption is one of shock. He had known that she was friendly with May, but to risk his wrath is uncharacteristically reckless of her.

"She is bound, sir, in a perfect copy of the binding circle that you were trapped in," Lucienne finally tells him, the admission spilling from her in a rush.

For a few moments, he's silent as he processes this.

"She is bound with her own spell?" he asks at last, intending the words to come out cruel, but instead his heart twists at the reality of her being bound as he had been, captive to the same nightmare she had saved him from, no matter her actual motives for freeing him.

"I remain convinced that this has little to do with me," he decides, something in him tugging unpleasantly at the thought of her in such danger, "but I will contact her brother immediately and assist however I am able."

He assumes this will assuage Lucienne, but the librarian only seems to grow tenser at his offer of help. 

"Sir… she's held in the same binding circle that held you. The binding circle of an Endless," she repeats more slowly, as if there's something that she's trying to relay to him, but she can't quite muster up the words to speak it. 

He frowns at her, not understanding what she could possibly be getting at, but the idea of that specific spell holding her is passing strange now that he thinks on it. His once betrothed is many things, but an Endless is assuredly not one of them.

"She's held by it because she carries a part of you inside of her, a part that is subject to the binding of an Endless."

It takes him several long moments to comprehend what she's conceivably telling him, and even then he's sure that he's misunderstood. He has to have misunderstood, because the alternative is nothing less than appalling. "You cannot mean that she is…" he trails off in something like horror.

"With child," Lucienne finishes for him, her words short and simple despite the enormity of their meaning and all the many ramifications inherent in them. "Yes."

Morpheus sits heavily on a step, feeling strangely as if his legs might give out from beneath him. Doubt, shock, dread, rage, and disbelief are but a few of the many emotions roiling through his mind. How could this have came to be? Neither his kind nor hers are given to accidental procreation, and they had taken steps to avoid such a thing. Now, however, he's learning that he'd likely left her with child, that he'd nearly... 

His eyes squeeze shut for a moment, unwilling as he is to think on that. They had certainly not parted well, their relationship set aflame by her misdeeds and left as naught but ashes in the end. His love for her had been absolute, fierce, and with it his heart had been thoroughly broken. He’d thought that he had suffered all the pain he could from their fallout, but to know that she is currently trapped, his child growing inside of her, cuts at him in an all new way, something unfamiliar but gut-wrenching all the same. 

Outside the palace it darkens. Thunder rolls loudly, and a bolt of lightning splits the sky of the Dreaming before a torrential downpour starts, all of this a sudden manifestation of his turmoil.

"How… long....?" He's unable to organize his thoughts, but his librarian's face softens as she seems to take mercy on him and starts answering the questions he cannot form or give voice to in the wake of this news.

"She's been held for six months at least, and…. we feared her dead for some of that time. Only recently Matthew was able to find her while he searched the Waking, and it...  became very clear what had happened to her."

Feared her dead? They had thought her dead and never bothered to tell him? He is unsure as to why the possibility of that twists inside of him so sharply, why the possibility of her lifeless makes him feel almost ill.

"Is he... with her now?" 

Lucienne nods in response, hesitation clear in the way she falteringly informs him, "Sir… it is…. You might not wish to witness what... what he is in this... exact moment."

"Matthew," Morpheus calls, never taking his eyes off of Lucienne, something like betrayal churning in his gut alongside his newfound fear for the female he had once offered to make his wife, his queen. Fear for her and... fear for the child she carries. His... His child.

"Hiya boss," the raven greets, his tone sounding unnaturally nervous and the reply delivered far too quickly for Morpheus to think he had not been waiting for this very summons. 

"Show me," he commands tersely before he enters Matthew's mind, and he finds that he is wholly unprepared for the image that awaits him there.  

(May is in the circle, completely stripped and nude as he had been when he was imprisoned, and he's... alarmed... by her state. She's a gaunt thing, all of her unnaturally bone thin in what he believes to be... starvation? Despite the large swell of her stomach where a child obviously rests, her ribs are plainly visible, the knots of her spine protruding far more than they should where she's curled on her side, and he knows with a sickening dread that withholding sustenance must have indeed been one of the tools of torture that her tormentors used on her. She appears ill, near death he'd even say, and Morpheus feels as if he could tear a world apart from the sheer wrathful anger that rises up in him with this horrific understanding.

Beside her, drawn in that same haunting gold that he'd looked upon for decades, is a duplicate of the binding spell that holds her. 

"Call him." Her human captor snarls out his order, but May simply ignores him, staring off into the distance as if she's finally given up, her hopelessness a heartbreaking thing to see. Even through the thin slit of the window where the thick, black covering on it has peeled back very slightly, he thinks he can almost feel her despair as if it is his own. At Morpheus' bidding, his raven moves closer, and he observes with Matthew's eyes the presence of six long, ugly gashes that travel from her neck to the base of her back, all of them still sluggishly weeping blood. Rage, vengeful and all-consuming, takes hold of him then. What had been done to her? What terror had this monster dared to inflict on a woman weakened with child? 

"Call him, and we'll let you go." The mortal tries to bargain, but May seems... suddenly animated at this. Sitting up slowly, tentatively as if she's in a great deal of pain, she flicks angry eyes up at him, a fury swirling in their depths that he's never seen from her before, that he didn't even know she was capable of. Her expression almost distracts him from the dark bruising on her cheek, the jagged cut above her left eye.

"It's not happening. No matter how many times you ask," she answers, glaring at her jailer.

"Then you'll die." May flinches when he says this. "You're not as sturdy as he is, are you? He lasted for thirty years and seemed like he could have gone on longer, but you….you're dying now." He grins sadistically at that, leaning closer to her after he brandishes a knife, a very familiar, very cursed knife. Morpheus remembers it being brutally pulled out of her back once, remembers the look on Roderick Burgess' face when he'd yanked it from her flesh while May had been in the process of rescuing Morpheus several decades ago. "I wonder if Dream of the Endless would come for his bastard sooner than you? If I were to cut it out, would that summon him here? If I were to make it cry? Make it scream?"

She draws in a trembling breath at the sight of the cursed blade before seemingly forcing herself steady again.

"He won't come for either of us," she tells him, her voice almost desolate in its quiet. "You've picked very poor bait, Alexander Burgess, and the stain of what you're doing will see you in Hell when Death arrives for you."

Alexander Burgess chuckles, a depraved sound that has her tensing as if waiting for a blow, as if she has received many blows from this mortal and can't help but to instinctively fear more. Instead, her captor brings the knife down hard right outside the circle, plunging it deep into something that Morpheus cannot quite make out, though May jerks away from the threatening gesture. She moves as far away from her abductor as she's seemingly able to, her body near enough to the golden sigils of the binding that she hisses when her hand gets to close. "Very well. I think next time I'll put it in your stomach. That thing's death might not make him come, but it might make you cooperate."

After he's left, the gate of the basement creaking and then slamming loudly behind him, May stares as if she's on alert for him to return and... and hurt her anew. Several minutes pass before shakily, she cradles the swell of her belly where the child grows, brushing trembling fingers there as if she's trying to soothe the baby, as if she's trying to reassure herself that its still there and safe. Her eyes well with tears, and she gives a small, almost silent sob that rends his heart to hear.) 

Morpheus breaks off the connection, breathing raggedly. The ground outside trembles turbulently, the shudders of it stretching through the entirety of the realm. His stomach lurches, his panic an unfamiliar beast snapping violently inside of his very being while his shadows, the most nightmarish aspect of his power, chitter excitedly, ready to exact retribution for Alexander Burgess' offense, ready to savagely assist him in the undertaking he is soon to begin. Around him, a tense silence hangs heavy over the throne room as he forcibly gathers himself. 

"Where is Viego Westin?" he demands of Lucienne when he finally calms the impossible, too-fast beat of his manifested heart. "I must speak with her brother immediately."

As a general rule, Viego Westin doesn't like to get involved with the Endless. 

That's a completely fair stance, he thinks, given that him and his sister have survived for a hell of a long time on Earth by avoiding unnecessary attention, and those Endless bastards always seem to draw tons of that. Not that they can help it, really. They're concepts made flesh, the massive power of that jarring even to those who can't sense the magic behind it as he can. 

When it had came to the Dreaming and its ruler, Viego had very much wanted to avoid getting mixed up in that too. After all, what did it have to do with him if some Endless was trapped in a binding circle? It's not like any of them would actually lift so much as an eyebrow to help him or May if the situation were reversed, but his sister, stubborn to a frustrating fault, had overruled him. In the countless millennia they've lived and coexisted and survived together, he's learned well the valuable lesson of choosing what battles to pick with her, and at the time it had honestly seemed harmless enough. Their checklist went: keep realm alive, rescue Emo Endless, and celebrate with something alcoholic.

Of course, now, in hindsight he wishes he had chosen to pick that particular battle. 

Because the aftermath of it has… well, gone to absolute shit doesn't seem a strong enough way to describe how sideways it's all gone. 

He'd known after her first decade in the Dreaming that May had went and fallen in love with that mopey bastard Dream. Granted, she hadn't actually told him that, not then and not for about seventy years after that, but Viego isn't an idiot. And he'd have to have been not to notice the tender, loving glances that Dream and May would share (okay… fine), or the way that Dream would sneak her away to somewhere hidden just so he could brush a kiss against her hand (which… sickly sweet enough to be nauseating but mostly tolerable), or the fact that Viego could smell the Endless on May sometimes (uncomfortably disgusting at the absolute least) in probably the clearest sign possible that the two of them had been doing the old devil's tango. Viego isn't a prude, not by any stretch of any imagination, but knowing that Dream had been defiling his sister had required a great deal of effort on his part to keep his mouth shut and his magic calmed and his temper firmly suppressed. Honestly, his first thought when May had at last told him they were to bond had been fucking finally.

Then she showed up eight months ago, and he felt all that restraint disappear, gone as an urge grew within him to march straight into the Dreaming and beat Dream bloody, Endless or no. His sister, worn and pale as a corpse at his front door, was hurt and exiled and terribly, terribly broken. 

Oh, and pregnant. She was that too. Pregnant and unbonded , a death sentence for their kind, the very death sentence that had ended up destroying their own mother. 

("You didn't even bond with him?" Viego breathed out incredulously when she revealed her pregnancy, stunned disbelief in his eyes at her uncharacteristic stupidity. She knew better. "May…. what in the hell were you thinking?"

"I was an idiot," May answered him, self-loathing clear in her tone, her eyes shining with tears as Viego led her to their kitchen table and ushered her into a seat there. "I thought…. I thought he actually loved me."

Fear twisting in his gut, Viego considered this. He'd had his fair share of arguments with sexual partners over the centuries, and May had never really done the serious thing with anyone before. He entertained the idea that perhaps she just didn't understand how such fights worked. "Maybe he does still. Maybe this is just a lover's spat-"

"He's banished me. I can't even get in touch with him to tell him about the baby," she informed him as she ran a shaking hand over the swell of her belly. "He wouldn't even listen… didn't even give me a chance to… I don't even... don't even know if I could have told him, if I could have explained it..." 

Viego studied her then, and worry crept over him at how very off she sounded in her distress, how very... fragile she appeared in her grief. "Explain what, sis?"

She was silent for several minutes, her jaw clenching, her eyes watering even more as she stared over at a row of cabinets along the farthest wall, seemingly scrutinizing the knots and divots in the glossy wood grain of them. 

And then as if a spell was broken, May snapped. "About the stupid book," she bit out as she got to her feet and began pacing. "About that stupid grimoire and that stupid spell."

Viego frowned in confusion and felt utterly unable to make sense of what exactly she was telling him. "He's mad about that? You were a child. Did you tell him that you were a child?"

"Are you listening? He didn't even let me try. He just banished me because I had lied, because... I couldn't admit to him what I had done, what had been done to me. He didn't even let me say goodbye… to.... oh... Lucienne." At that name, May seemed to realize the totality of her loss, seemed to realize that she would not see her friends again. She sunk to the ground, stricken anew while she held herself tightly, and Viego knew that she was mourning those that she had been forever cut off from. His sister had always gotten too attached, after all, and he was under no delusions that she hadn't went and done the same thing this time as well.

But Viego was a hundred percent sure then that he would do anything, give or take or kill whatever the universe required, to never hear that broken, desperate sobbing come from his sister again. She was a hollowed out thing, her heart fractured before his very eyes, and Viego did not hesitate to wrap his arms around her. 

"Shh," he soothed as best he could, keeping silent on her trauma. Comfort wasn't really his thing. In truth, Viego had always been more hard edges than anything else, even before he had been shaped and molded as a killer, as a being who enjoyed the destruction at the end of everything. With his sister in his hold, he struggled to remember real genuine softness, the kind she needed as she broke apart in his arms. The solace of it was the least she deserved from him. 

He remembered the innocent, smiling girl she once was, when they were but children and the stain of power (or what some beings would do for said power) hadn't yet caused them any harm. She'd told him then that kindness wasn't weakness, and even as a youth he'd thought her foolish for it. It would be such a short time for him to be proven right, for the both of them to discover that kindness might not be a weakness, but it was definitely a luxury. One that was best left to happy moments and situations where they weren't being beaten and tortured and slowly starved to death in a dank dungeon. 

Too much like their mother, May had still tried to be kind anyway even there in that hellhole, even as a mere child suffering brutally under the order of those who should have seen to her safety. There had been other magic users in that place, chained up and drained, hurt severely, and his sister- willful and loving and stubborn to a fault- had tried to keep them as comfortable as she could, whispering stories and humming little tunes and asking about their lives. She'd tried to give them hope enough to make the inevitable dying as peaceful as it could be. 

May had comforted him too, more than even she could ever know. She'd treated his wounds as best she was able and held his hands (the only part of him he could bear to have touched) while he almost bled out in the aftermath of one of the guards deciding he had liked the look of an attractive boy, which Viego very much had been. He had found out the next time it happened (guards chatting idly by while that sadistic fuck tore him apart from the inside out again) that they'd been hurting her like that too, that she hadn't said a thing to him about it, and he had wondered why. Had she been protecting him? Sparing him? When they'd finally thrown him back in his cell, bleeding and burning in shame, he had let his little sister hold him and sob against his broken body, giving him all the solace she had left to give because he'd finally understood then that giving peace helped her find her own in some way. 

The damage of that time, Viego knew as he held his sobbing sister in the circle of his arms, was carved deep into their very souls, impossible to ever completely ignore. Even sweet, loving May had ended up changed before they'd gotten free of that place, but Viego tried not to think of that for the moment. Instead, he focused on her clinging to him all those thousands of years ago in their mutual pain and fear, used the memory as a guidepost of sorts to remember kindness when all of him thrummed with the need to find Dream of the Endless and unmake him for this offense. 

On the tiled floor of his kitchen, he tautened his hold around her, the hard swell of her belly between them as he brought his hand up to the back of her head, stroking her hair carefully as if she were frail enough that he might accidentally turn her to dust with just his embrace. 

"Shh, sis. We'll muddle through. We always have," he offered soothingly, "and you'll be a mother. Imagine that. You've always wanted children."

The truth, though he found himself unable to speak it aloud, was that she might not live long enough for that. Makers like her needed a bond to survive bearing. The lack of one had been the very thing that killed their own mother in the end, so Viego knew that May was probably aware of just how much danger she was in, of just how much danger Dream had left her in. His anger rose inside of him, and he quickly squashed it back down, choosing to focus instead on that dim, barely-there love inside of him as he wielded it clumsily to give her… well, hope. 

The Endless, he knew, could be handled later. Or so he thought.)

His sister was with him for almost a month, and he'd known her so well before, the countless millennia making every beat of her heart as familiar to him as his own, that the new changes had been… difficult for him, for them both. May had been many things in their many long years of sharing a home but never… pregnant . She slept a ton and vomited almost constantly and cried sometimes for no real reason that he could actually understand. They fussed and bickered as siblings of any age tend to do, worked together to come up with a solution to her bond dilemma, and then with that finished and behind them, they thought to settle in for the little one to arrive.  

Until May woke one morning, put off by the lack of decent food in his house. The baby growing inside of her made her equally nauseous and hungry in sporadic turns like a light flickering on and off after a toddler has figured out how fun it can be to flip the wall switch, and Viego learned very quickly that he should keep his mouth shut no matter what horrendous concoction she consumed in an attempt to appease the baby she was busy growing. She told him around lunch time that she was going on a supply run, gave him a quick hug, grabbed her keys, and then….

And then never returned. 

Frantically, he searched. Despite his disdain of the Endless fucker who'd shattered his little sister's heart, Viego wasn't too proud to beg. And beg he certainly had. As soon as the pulse of May's life disappeared from the edge of his awareness (an occurrence that hadn't even happened once during her near century in the Dreaming), Viego swallowed whatever pride he might have had left and started summoning the King of Dreams. He tried with blood and fire and burning his damn name in the old ways, but the bastard refused to answer. It was the librarian who finally reached out to him, none other than the Lucienne that May had been so heartbroken over losing, and he wasted no time in telling her what had happened, relieved when she seemed appropriately anxious about the news. She sent him rarer magical texts from the Dreaming library with a multitude of locating rituals that he cast to no avail, and eventually Lucienne, more worried than Viego would have expected given who her boss was, made the call to send a raven out to search for May. 

Weeks later, when the raven shows up at his window, Viego feels as if he might weep with relief at the prospect of news. He rushes to undo the latch and let the little guy in, but he doesn’t get the chance before something... changes. A heaviness filters through the air as his senses start to alarmingly burn. The magic of his house seems to swell and twist uncomfortably, bursting with a loud pop in his magic sense that only recedes with the arrival of none other than the Endless he most wants to punch in the face. 

"Fucking finally," he bites out at Dream, hiding his astonishment at his appearance. With how callously he had discarded May, Viego hadn't thought the Dream King cared enough to actually get involved in this. "You took your time showing up, didn't you?"

"I know where she is being held," Dream tells him stiffly, an expression of cold impassivity on his pasty face as he blatantly ignores the crude barbs in Viegos' words.  

Rage drains from Viego, and determined resolution takes its place. If the brooding bastard is going to provide him information, Viego can stow his own shit until later. 

"Where?" Viego demands roughly, grabbing a dirty duffel off of his table as he starts to rummage around and pack it with things they might need. He's never been a boy scout (since they were after his time by thousand upon thousand of years and all), but he knows the value in being prepared, especially given that May could be hurt. Two knives, a regular first aid kit, a magical first aid kit, three waters, and a couple of protein bars all make their way into the bag.  

"Fawney Rig."

That damn place? Viego stops from his packing, a blanket still clutched in his hand, and stares at Dream. His gut contorts in apprehension as he asks, "What the hell is she doing there?"

 He just knows that he's not going to like any answer that comes out of Dream's mouth.

"Her captors," the Endless supplies tonelessly, "are attempting to lure me into another binding circle."

"Of course," Viego scoffs derisively. "You ever notice that a lot of her suffering these days has to do with you?" There's a caustic spite that's painfully clear in his tone as he finally shoves the blanket into the bag and roughly zips it shut.

Those words get a reaction. Dream's marble countenance tightens as he glares at Viego, but he does not meet the scorn with an actual answer. Viego thinks that him not defending himself is a tell in and of itself. "Will we require subterfuge to enter as you and she did last time?" the Endless questions, his voice even enough despite that Viego can sense he's anything but truly calm. 

Viego's own fury, always a carefully tended magical fire, expands and rises to the surface. The heat of it blazes just under his skin, ready and willing to destroy, to kill, to see all of May's captors in flame. His darkness chitters in glee, in anticipation. "No," he growls. "We'll blast our way in."

The Dream King nods in concurrence, his sand already rippling through the reality of where they're at, and there's a low thrum of violence from the Endless. Which is... good, in Viego's humble opinion. They don't really know what they're walking into, either of them, and there's no telling how much rending they'll have to do to secure May's freedom. A pissed off anthropomorphic personification might be just the thing to sway any fight in their favor. Viego slings the bag over his shoulder and grits his teeth before the power swells and bursts, chucking them out before the nightmare that is Fawney Rig.

NEXT CHAPTER

[mayorasmusings]

Could I possibly request some fluffy Tutyusa and Lisa head canons? Only because I feel this needs some love as well, and content around is far between 😔. Probably my third favorite ship tbh (of course not beats Tutyusa x his motorcycle )

It's set three years later after the IS-events and it's "everyone-survived-and-no-otherside-happened" AU-ish.

I got completely out of control with this. Enjoy 💗

Cut for length!

Tatsuya + Lisa fluff headcanons

When things calmed down, everyone remained in touch and they would have their weekly and sometimes monthly meetups to play boardgames, go to the movies or to the beach. Sometimes they just talked about what happened and how fucked up it all was.

This is where she gave up chasing him and started to focus on herself, her career as a musician (as another idol-agency noticed her) and her studies. For herself.

Within those three years, the friendship, respect and trust between Tatsuya and Lisa deepened.

He really enjoyed how confidently she carried herself and that's when he asked her out, one evening, when they were out again, as a group.

He asked her in an awkwardness, unbeknownst to him, if they could talk privately and this is where he asked her, if she wanted to go on a date, some time.

She hesitated a little, since she was a little scared to risk their friendship, but then she wholeheartedly said yes to his preposition. It was a part of her inner-child's dream come true and she wanted to do this for herself.

He thought a lot about where he could take her out, but then decided that they might enjoy a ride to the countryside, combined with a picnic.

Since his cooking-skills are impeccable, he would be the one bringing everything along. There was enough storage-room in his motorcycle.

Her standards for dating rose with the time she took, to work on herself, but Tatsuya exceeded even those standards.

It's not that she wouldn't have been happy with anything he would have taken her out to, but even if her view on him, is tinted by a childhood-crush, she also started noticing the less perfect parts of his personality.

While he started noticing the depth, warmth and capability she had.

So it was an eye-to-eye date. Not the lopsided dynamics they had before.

They really enjoyed their time picnicking on the countryside and she liked his cooking a lot.

From that time they start to go out more often and after three months they became an item.

Around their closest friends at first.

After a year, everyone else within their friends and family knew.

Yet, as a musician, she decided to shut down any rumors or questions in that way, since she was a little scared of obsessive fans going after him.

She knew, that he was capable of defending himself, but she also was scared that it might be a passing fancy of his.

There was still a lot of insecurity within her, even if she worked through the bulk of it, but he always reassured her. Hugging her tightly, when she was feeling scared, jealous or insecure.

It was after 1,5 years (now 2 years and 8 months) of dating, that he proposed that they should maybe live together, since she was at his place 24/7 anyway.

Six months later, she agreed and moved in with him.

He was the one who cooked the meals and took care of the household, while she worked herself to the bone to be taken seriously as a musician and not be that one-hit-wonder-girl her agency tried to reduce her to.

She wanted to break out from that idol-role and Tatsuya inspired and encouraged her to do so.

At 22 she was way too old for that industry's standard anyway.

Tatsuya was always the first one to listen to her own compositions and she always took his critique seriously.

She recorded her own songs, that she brought out under a different name, at the same studio at which Eikichi's band recorded their songs.

At times, she would include Tatsuya in her recordings, when she needed a tenor. His dark voice was a perfect contrast to her bright voice. This man had some pipes.

The duo gathered a good amount of cult following and on her social media-presence, a lot of people loved the songs, where he was present.

Sometimes, when he would be reading a book or the newspaper, she would just roll up like a cat in his lap and take naps on him, which he allowed, stroking her soft hair.

She studied to become a sound-engineer, dealt with a career as a musician and her own health (or the lack thereof), while he was studying to become a social-worker and working part-time in an organization to help troubled youth. They both had their fair amount of stress, but she was really thankful to be supported by him, in every way.

His brother Katsuya, was also very supportive, protective and loving towards them.

On their free days they sometimes just stayed in bed all day or went on a mini-vacations.

There were times, where Tatsuya had nightmares where he woke up screaming or crying, but she would always be there for him and soothe him. The memories of the past still haunted him.

One day, he took her to the Araya-shrine.

She thought it was another one of their annual memorial visits to that place, but little did she know, that this man was about to propose.

He felt extremely nervous, but Maya, Katsuya, Eikichi and Jun backed him up.

Lisa felt that something was off and he, as always (whenever she would ask him what is going on) would just non-verbally show it.

At this time, he just got out a really pretty, but not too expensive ring and just gave it to her. Eyes wide shut, face flushed.

He wasn't much of a classic romantic, but he also wasn't a complete cynic. After having been together for five years and almost being at the end of their studies, it was just the perfect timing.

Lisa asks him what this might be and he just flat out tells her, that he wants to marry her. Her mouth was agape, but he didn't give her a chance to ask anything.

He gets out an envelope and starts reading out a long letter, stating what he loved about her and how much he never wanted to lose her, ever again.

The gang helped him write it, mind you.

She just lost it and started sobbing. As always, he embraced her and stroked her hair.

A whisper escaped her lips: "Yes. I want to be yours. I always wanted to be yours." And he just hums gladly.

After that, she dumps her idol-agency and publicly announced that she would pursue other projects and would like to devote herself to her familial life.

This is where a nosy journalist asked the usual "Do you have a boyfriend?"-question, where she wholeheartedly expressed that she has a wonderful, supportive partner that she wants to never miss in her life.

After that she pulled out of the public life and started working as a sound-engineer at the studio where she and Eikichi recorded their music.

Things calmed down when they started working in the jobs they studied for and this is where they could plan a small, private wedding with their closest friends.

Both of them wanted to keep it simple and small, to save up for the honeymoon.

Maya knew a venue, Jun did the bouquets and took care of the decorations, Eikichi and his band took care of the music. Katsuya was the one who was in charge of the catering and Yukki and Fuji took care of the photos.

It was a wedding that was detached from any type of cultural norms. They did their own thing. Lisa's parents disapproved to a degree, but they came around after they saw, how happy their child was.

Nevertheless, it was a wonderful feeling to be surrounded by a set of loving, supportive friends and family.

To Lisa, it was a dream come true and to Tatsuya, it was the most natural thing to do, tying down this wonderful woman, he couldn't appreciate when he was young and stupid.

[chronurgy]

21, 22, and 27 for the durge asks? (from: @/gale-dekarios)

Hi! Thanks so much for the ask!

What are 2-3 songs that your Dark Urge would relate to?

Love Bites (So Do I) by Halestorm

So come and taste the reason I'm nothing like the rest I'll kiss you in a way You'll never forget about me That chick can eat her heart out... Love bites But so do I

I think this is my Vesper/Gale song for when Mystra starts sniffing around Gale again, first with Elminster's visit and then the summoning in act three (especially thanks to the line "with you I forget my goddess"). Yes they're acting like they and Mystra are in competition over Gale and yes they're acting like they would absolutely win and yes they absolutely think antagonizing mystra is something they can survive, because they have a normal and unconcerning level of wizard hubris. They're also not the best with feelings and their desire to protect Gale from someone they consider to be just another uncaring god using mortals for their amusement ends up coming out a little bit like this.

UNBELIEVABLE by Ethan Gander

I've created a mess with my own bare hands I've thirst for days to only find there's poison in the well Looked far and wide to realize I've poisoned it myself The things I've done to run away Are unforgivable

Because is isn't that exactly what the Dark Urge is looking at? They're searching far and wide for a cure to a plague that they engineered. This mess is all of their own making.

Absolution by Ghost

As a child, with your mind on the horizon Over corpses, to the prize you kept your eyes on Trying to be the chosen one All those things that you desire You will find there in the fire Put your hands up and reach for the sky Cry for absolution

They've been trying to succeed at being Bhaal's Chosen since they were barely more than a child, all that great intellect and insatiable curiosity turned to one fell purpose. And all the things they wanted, all the things they couldn't have they watched burn away in the ashes of their old life. But now they have a chance to try and make a better life, to ask to try again, and they're going to take it. Even if they'll never be a truly good person.

What first impression does your Dark Urge give off to strangers?

An unsettling one. Something about them doesn't look quite right, quite natural. Their black sclera and sharp teeth are obviously not right. There's also a hum of magic in the air around them (if you know what to look for) that marks them out as a very powerful caster. Combined with the confident way they hold themself, it all adds up to an unsettling picture of someone powerful, talented, and more than what they seem.

How does your Dark Urge feel about giving and receiving orders?

Giving orders? Fantastic! They always believe themself to be the smartest person in the room (they're usually right) and think that everyone should listen to them and do as they say.

Taking orders? Horrible. They don't really take orders. If someone orders them to do something, they think about it, consider if they think it's the best course of action, and then do whatever the hell they want. They've got an ego the size of Ramazith's Tower, they're not going to let some nobody tell them what to do (to them, everyone is a nobody).

[blizzardsuplex]

10

10. three favourite Halloween/spooky songs

Fun facts: Halloween (in the spooky sense) isn't a really big thing here and (despite what you might think Izzy @heartsinablender) I am a total coward when it comes to scary stuff. I still have some unsettling music to share though (all hip-hop LOL):

Kids See Ghosts by KIDS SEE GHOSTS -> I love love love the beat on this one: so quiet, so calm, so sinister. The wood block sound is addictive, the hook is awesome, and it legit put me in a trance whenever I listen to it (especially that spoken word parr at the end!) "Civilization without society; power and wealth with nobility; stability without stasis; places and spaces..."

Kodokushi by Aesop Rock -> this one doesn't SOUND spooky (though that desert sun-filtered guitar riff to open the song is killer), the lyrics very much put it in the spooky category for me. I've listened to this one enough that Aes' famously esoteric lyrics actually make sense to me on this one! "One hundred hands, one million eyes, two bleeding gums, I will survive: that last line's rose-colored only for a limited time—it all shifts when you militarize."

A Cat's Demise by Lausse the Cat -> I love Lausse the Cat (like at one point I could badly rap this entire 22 min project) and I wish he would come back from that farm in France or wherever he went :( Anyway, I highly recommend that you listen to the entire LP: The Girl, the Cat, and the Tree. Beautiful spooky lofi hip-hop audal picture book. This one is the "scariest" sounding out of all the tracks though. P.S. this project is British af. "I had the heart to mend; it felt dark, and I can't pretend to be full of some youthful charm and vigor when I can't feel a thing."

[eventiderpg]

BASICS

Faceclaim: Lana Condor

Name: Delly Cartwright

Age: 22

Gender: Cis-female

Home: District Twelve

Role: Lottery Winner

Personality: Kind, Naive, Loyal, Protective, Judgemental

Song: Lean on Me

BIOGRAPHY

Growing up in the Merchant Section of District Twelve, Delly is acutely aware of the privilege that she was afforded that kids from the Seam were not. Her parents shoe shop did well, after all everybody in the District needed shoes, so Delly and her brother were afforded the luxury of never having to worry about where their next meal came from. Her mother shopped at the other Merchant shops to get their meats and cheeses, their bread and butter. Her parents were in love, and they were happy, which was more than other families could say. 

For a long time, she was an only child craving companionship and siblings. It had been hard for her mother to conceive, so she was a miracle child with incredibly overprotective parents. They rarely let her out of her sight, and being the close-knit people that they were, Delly didn’t get to spend much time with the other children. She would watch the other Merchant children playing from the window and longed to go and play but her mother never wanted her out of her sight. The highlight of her weeks was when mom’s brought their kids in to get shoes, and she would get to be around other kids for a while.

That all changed the day that Peeta Mellark and his brothers came into the store. Delly was five at the time, and the moment that she saw Peeta she knew that they were destined to be best friends. She would tell him that later, when they were a little bit older and she was certain that he wouldn’t think that she was weird or crazy like some of the other kids thought. She had no idea why her mother finally said yes when she asked if she could go and play with Peeta, but she finally relented and off Delly went with the Mellark boys. 

Going to school was the greatest thing that ever happened to Delly. The other kids thought that she was a little strange at first, because she needed to learn how to be a kid after being stuck with her parents for so long, People said that she was like a little adult, and they were right about that. She was like a little adult, but with some time and effort she became more like the other kids of the Merchant Section, and she flourished into a bit of a social butterfly.

Nobody ever had a bad word to say about Delly and she never had a bad word to say about anyone. She often lamented her boring life to Peeta, which in hindsight, was very privileged of her. But when you have a roof over your head, three meals a day, and a best friend, sometimes a girl wishes for some more excitement.

Excitement came in the form of a little brother when she was ten that turned her family of three into a family of four. It was a hard adjustment for her, but Peeta helped her see that she could be a great big sister, and he was right. She thought that she was a damned good big sister. Excitement came again after her first kiss with a Merchant boy that only lead to heartbreak a little bit later. Excitement came with sneaking into the Hob after her parents forbade her from going there.

It was the little things that kept her happy. 

Until she wasn’t.

The Seventy-Fourth Hunger Games stopped her in her tracks. When Peeta Mellark’s name was announced, Delly nearly blacked out. Never in a million years did she think that Peeta would be reaped. The tributes were usually kids from the Seam, kids that took out tesserae to survive. Sure, kids from the Merchant Section got reaped sometimes, but never did she think that it would be Peeta. Good, kind, Peeta. He didn’t deserve it. 

Saying goodbye afterwards nearly broke her. She tried to stay strong for him, and she told him that he would win, but they both knew. Kids from District Twelve didn’t come back. How was she supposed to live without her best friend? The following days were excruciating, waiting for the inevitable to happen. She cried a lot, and stayed locked in her room, not wanting to think about what was going to happen.

But then…Peeta and Katniss won. District Twelve had not one but two Victors, and Dellys best friend was coming home. Delly, in her sheltered and naive way, didn’t think about the ramifications of the Arena, what it would be like for Peeta to come home. But she knew she would help him get through this. Because that was what best friends were for. 

Written by Courtney

[sterlingwhitvale]

BASICS

Faceclaim: Brandon Sklenar

Name: Sterling Whitvale

Age: 34

Gender: Cis Man

Home: District 8

Role: Civilian/Rebel

Personality: Bullheaded, protective, self punishing, adaptive, analytical, cynical, and direct

Song: Black Hole Sun by Sound Garden

BIOGRAPHY

The name Sterling conjures images of shining silver, splendor, wealth.  But Sterling’s life has only ever been covered in grime.  In soot.  In dirt, sweat, blood, tears.  Although he had been trained to stop shedding the latter years ago.  Like most in District 8, his family was not wealthy, and they worked in the mills that supplied the great folks of the Capitol and favored districts with their expensive frocks, and the rest of Panem with their rags.  His mother and sister worked on the handmaid items, working their deft fingers to the bone with intricate stitching and complicated beading, while his father worked on the line for the more mass produced items.  Sterling, with an innate skill and interest in the workings of machines, became the intern for the machinist at the mill that produced the peace keeper’s uniforms, putting in his four hours of work after school every day.  

It wasn’t a pleasant existence, too poor to make any upward strides and too tired from work to find another way to do so, but his family got by.  That is until the 53rd hunger games.  On the day of the reaping, his sister was exactly one week, only 168 hours from being 22, no longer eligible for the hunger games.  And their parents, despite not having much, thought of themselves as having enough, so never let their children put their names in for tesserae.  But in a--and this phrase is so lacking to describe the devastation--bout of bad luck, Stella’s name was plucked from that god damn stupid bowl, and she was plucked from their lives, just like that.  

They were supposed to have three years of calm, with Stella finally being over 21 and Sterling having 3 years before he was 15 and eligible to be reaped.  But fate was a cruel bitch, and snatched those three years from their hands right as they reached for it.  Sterling loved his sister dearly, but she was not meant for the harsh realities of the hunger games (although, who is, really?).  Her hands were meant for making beautiful things, not to hold a weapon.  Her eyes were used to narrowing in on fine details, not scanning for threats.  And even at the young age of 12, as he hugged his big sister, begging for her to stay, as if she had a choice, Sterling knew that she wouldn’t survive the games.  

She survived for awhile simply by hiding.  But between lack of sponsors and supplies, she grew weak and tired and ill, and after being spotted by a career, young Sterling watched with wide eyes and a gnawing in his stomach as his sister was slaughtered on the screen in front of him.  That gnawing feeling has never left him, a constant reminder of the injustice, of the macabre and demented way of their society. 

The week before his very first reaping, Sterling was determined to never have to stand in the plaza in front of the justice building, waiting to see if his own life would be sold to the capitol in exchange for a small period of entertainment. So he took advantage of his position at work, manufacturing a complication with a machine at the mill, so he and his mentor would have to stay late to fix it.  Leaving the factory that produced the peace keeper suits empty of workers and practically empty of guards.  He stuffed a suit into his rucksack, and made for the door.  His plan?  Wear it to the border, to where district 8 bordered 12 and then bordered free land.  He had heard all the rumors to keep people from trying to make it out there, but he didn’t believe a word of it.  And even if they did turn out to be true, it’d be better than having to face a reaping year after year, always wondering if it was his turn to have his golden string of life cut short by those damn three hags known as the fates. 

But his mentor Aloysius, caught his wrist, and without saying a word, took his rucksack and returned the stolen suit.  He knew something Sterling didn’t, and that was the fact that the quarterly inventory would be taken just the next day, which would have left Sterling with nowhere near enough time to get far enough away before they found out a suit was stolen.  So his plan was thwarted, but the rebellion that had started in his gnawing gut had not been extinguished, and in fact started to make it’s way under his skin, into his beating heart, and would lie dormant within him until it was needed. 

Every year, during the games, he could feel it, burning in him, but it really only started to roar some 9 years after that fateful night, when at 24, after a grueling 16 hours trying to fix the turbine for the biggest mill in the district, he almost quite literally ran into Cecilia.  He wouldn’t tell her this until some time in to their relationship, but he recognized her instantly.  Not from the games themselves, as he refused to watch, but the reaping.  It was his second to last year of eligibility, and he remembered having to wipe the one rogue tear that ran down his cheek as he watched the coverage of her young brothers holding on to her, remembering when he had done the same to his own sister.  

Loving her was finally what awoke that smoldering rebellion inside of him, and fanned it until it became a flame.  Seeing the disgusting hold the capitol had on the woman he loved and being unable to do anything about it made him want to burn it all down.  That fervor only increased as their family grew from the two of them, to three, to four, and finally five.  He knew no amount of submission to Snow and the capitol could keep their children safe.  The thought of them, standing in front of the justice building, waiting to hear if their names would be called, made him sick to his stomach.  And he refused to let that happen.  While his heart screamed rebellion, he knew in his gut that he would do whatever it took, even if that meant reverting to his plan of some 17 years ago, stealing peacekeeper suits and sneaking them all past the district border. 

He stupidly said as much in a drunken state to someone at a tavern, and for once luck was on Sterling and his family’s side.  Not only was the person not someone to turn a person in for that blasphemy against the capitol, but they were someone who felt the same, and were connected to the startings of a group of rebels inside District 8.  Between Sterling’s fervor for the cause and his access to the capitol through his wife and the ridiculousness of the capitol’s obsession with their family, Sterling has proven himself to be a helpful member of the cause.

Now, he just needs to get his wife and kids out of the capitol and it’s crosshairs before it’s too late. 

[linernotesandseasons]

My 22 Favorite Albums of 2022

       Wow. Here I am in 2023. Moving on to a new year and a fresh start, but pausing momentarily to recognize my 22 favorite albums (plus three bonus EPs) of 2022! A year of extreme change for me personally, and a rollercoaster of highs & lows. The highs: I am now working in music, chasing my lifelong passion, and happier in a career than I ever thought I could be! I work in marketing & operations for three small venues in Denver (Larimer Lounge, Globe Hall & Lost Lake Lounge) and it has honestly, deeply been a dream come true! I saw 87 shows this year (not counting the about 50 different sets I saw across three music festivals!) and I also worked at roughly 100 more. I saw 15 of the 25 artists on this list live this year! Music has been everywhere around me all of the time! When I started this music blog in late 2011, I looked at this annual end of the year favorites list as just a part of what I wanted to do in writing about music. Then there were years, where it felt like it was the only thing I wrote. These last couple years, it feels like just a small part of explaining my love for music. I write excessively on my social media after my favorite shows, spilling my heart out. I have been able to lean into what makes my favorite music actually my favorite, and appreciating the magic of songwriting. The lows of my year led me to fall for songs that can make me cry. Like sob cry while they play on loop for hours & days at a time. Songs that teach me more about myself. Songs that feel like they were written for me. Songs that feel like growing old & growing up. Songs that (as I found myself saying often this year) felt like friends. Songs that I turned to when I needed them most. Songs that helped me survive and helped me get out of bed in the morning. Songs that I will keep with me forever. I’ll talk about them all in more detail below of course, but here it is! In no particular order (unless you know & love our english alphabet) My 22 Favorite Albums of 2022! Long Live Music!

*

ADEEM THE ARTIST   /   White Trash Revelry

      2022 was a year of extreme change for me personally; full of unsettled-ness & uncertainty, so it feels good to start this year’s list in a familiar spot… In the exact same place we started last year! With an artist, Adeem the Artist! whose songs have become so familiar & comforting to me. Like we grew up together. Like we were friends in a past life, or back in high school. I guess with that being the case, I can start by giving you a brief history of this music writer’s background, in hopes it’ll make you better understand this list and better understand why I love Adeem’s heart wrenching, life questioning, classic country songs so much. Well… here we go. The first time I remember being excited about music was KLOVE & KMTS. Local christian & country radio stations. I was raised a baptist preachers’ kid, in private christian grade school, high school & college. I fell in love with some of the “good” christian bands (Switchfoot, Relient K, The Newsboys, Delirious?, MXPX, Bleach, Sanctus Real, Pillar, Michael W. Smith, ok we’re getting off track), but in my later high school days I met my public school, baseball playing, redneck friends and with them, it was all classic country. Now I’m not talking Willie, Waylon, & Johnny Cash, this is early 2000’s classic country. That means Brooks & Dunn, Travis Tritt, Garth, Toby Keith, Aldean, Luke Bryan, Lonestar, Billy Currington, the list goes on. Maybe not a foundation of essential artists, but if you’ve ever sung “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive” at the top of your lungs in the bed of a pickup truck to a mountain sunset, I think you might understand.

      The familiarity I found on Adeem the Artist’s second proper album goes deeper than simply the country songwriting. Opening track “Carolina'' has been a favorite of mine since it was faster & finger-picked and called “A Light in Carolina'' back on Adeem’s self released Forgotten Songs & American Dreams back in 2019. I spent a couple of glorious spring drives around rural North Carolina backroads belting “You’ve got a lot of skins to wear as you try to figure out who you are.” Now slowed with glowing acoustic strums and holy pedal steel, “Carolina” stands as a marker. Adeem is still Adeem. They’re still trying to figure out who they are. And it still doesn’t matter what people say. The fact that this song has grown with Adeem (and with me!) shedding skins & names & other outward, physical, insignificant things, just proves its power. I quoted Adeem in my review last year, saying that they hoped their songs helped you “drift with the water’s pace toward wholeness” and well… Here we are, still drifting. From there White Trash Revelry simply lifts off. “For Judas” is a gorgeous piano ballad, a songwriter’s masterclass, that imagines Jesus & Judas, young lovers kissing in the rain, falling for each other… in the Northeast Minneapolis arts district. When this song first hit me, Saturday evening, December 3rd at 5pm, I slow danced myself around my old kitchen, cracked another beer, and texted my old friend Stephen (the one who most appreciates good songwriting!) and said  “LOVE SONG OF THE FUCKING YEAR.” The classic country sound of “Heritage of Arrogance,” “Run This Town” and “Going To Hell” recall all those country songs I grew up listening to on country radio, but the lyrics couldn’t be further from the racism, sexism & homophobia that have defined country music for me in the last 15 years. In fact, Adeem has made a point to stand up against those things. To make music that sounds so much like classic country, but is made for everyone. Songs that address that very racism, sexism & homophobia head on. In this way, by being explicitly accepting, Adeem is creating a safe space for everyone to enjoy these songs, to tap your boots, to belt along when they sing “Do you wanna go to hell children, with Adeem the Artist? They play Country songs in heaven, but in hell we play them loud!” Heart of the album gut punch “Middle of a Heart” tackles what is unfortunately a familiar American songwriters’ tale of late. Over hushed finger-picked guitar Adeem tells a tale of a boy with a gun, a freezer full of fresh deer meat, and of course, the ensuing American tale of recruitment & money, love & war. And then the aftermath of mental health and the  suicide rates of veterans here in the good ol, gun lovin’ US of A. Through the entirety of White Trash Revelry, Adeem is cementing themselves as an essential voice in the folk/country singer-songwriter scene. A queer, non-binary Country Musician, singing about the world as they see it. Telling me stories, asking the questions I want to see asked. And as they build a career, I can follow along. Like a friend. A friend who deep, deep down, just really loves Country Music.

      “I gave my body & blood for the power of love / and hoped that I would conquer sin / but I never even rose again… / He had short, neat curls that were shadowed black / and I was fumbling around with the weather app / wondering if he could ever love me back / sometimes these things are hit or miss / with the perfume trails lingering behind / I caught an urge and the nerve to take his hand in mine / and if didn’t rain at the perfect time / it’s probable we wouldn’t have kissed / in the Northeast Minneapolis arts district… Oh I write this down for Judas… Oh all of this was for Judas…”

*

BARTEES STRANGE   /   Farm to Table

       When I wrote about Bartees Strange’s debut album Live Forever for my favorite albums list back in 2020, I referred to it as nostalgic. I referenced The National, Bon Iver, Fall Out Boy, mid 2000′s emo, pop-rock, & hip-hop as touchstones for his blossoming sound. I wrote how those influences made his songs feel familiar, like old friends. Well, when I press play on his sophomore record Farm to Table, and the sweet, melancholic riff of “Heavy Heart” drifts in, I get that exact same feeling! A song about allowing yourself to recognize the heartbreak of the past year, tenderly specific lyrics setting it in time & place “You look so nice in a cherry scarf, we should go to Toronto more often” and then a rolling build to an epic, exploding, unexpectedly monster riff! Bartees is back! With Farm to Table, Bartees has cemented himself as a superstar, an artist I will see every time he comes to Denver, and someone at the forefront of his sound. From the midwest emo of “Mulholland Dr.” to the pulsing, droning, hip hop influenced, name dropping “Cosigns,” to the gorgeous, swelling sadness of “Black Gold,” Strange is staking out his own place in indie-rock. One of my favorite musical moments of the year can be found about three minutes into the menacing, driving “Wretched.” A song that has basically already taken off (the first chorus literally lifts the song off the ground) before dropping into a dark, acoustic guitar-led second verse. As it builds again, you can feel what’s coming, the band syncs in together, smiling at each other from across the room, ready to cut loose. Right before the second big drop, Bartees lets out a pure, unadulterated “Wooooo!” and the song just GOES! Bartees talked a lot about the family aspect of his band behind Farm to Table saying “I had so much pressure to work with fancy people after Live Forever - I’m so glad Chris (producer Chris Connors) & I decided to do it ourselves in our spaces, with our world of friends. It’s so easy & beautiful to grow with friends, to become a family, and to create something new.” The family nature of Farm to Table can be felt through the radio waves and it is a joy to listen to. This is complex & heartfelt indie-rock, with mathematical midwest movements and a hip-hop ethos. Bartees Strange brings a larger-than-life, DC meets Oklahoma, lighthearted, heartbreak, colorful vibe to his writing. Like he says on the mid-tempo (but stick around for the outro!)  “Escape This Circus “There’s a fault in our stars, there’s a rock in my shoe!” It’s not too late to jump on the bandwagon and find your new favorite indie-rock star. Bartees is blowing up!

       “I took the keys to the lake / I said to God what I said / I know the folk on the road / I know they don’t wanna move today / I wish I could die in the morn / Sometimes it’s hard but you know I’m thankful…”

*

BLUEBOOK   /   Optimistic Voices

      Sometimes songs & albums find you right when you need them. I had heard about Bluebook for years, knew they were Denver legends, knew about their seriously broody-Angel Olsen meets Sharon Van Etten apocalyptic lounge music. I also knew that Bluebook has grown into a supergroup behind primary songwriter & bassist Julie Davis, featuring Hayley Helmericks (Monofog & Snake Rattle Rattle Snake) on drums, Jess Parsons (old linernotes&seasons fav Glowing House) on keys and Anna Morsett (The Still Tide) on guitar. But it wasn’t until this year, in anticipation of their headlining Globe Hall show in December, when I sat down and gave Optimistic Voices my full attention. It started when I read Julie Davis’ writing on social media to promote their Globe show.  “I’ve got seeds on my mind” Davis’ Solstice-tinged post began. She talked about Winter themes. About

       “the growing darkness as the days get shorter, and a gradual withdrawal & burrowing inside, both into my home & into myself-”

       then she paused, in this moment, you can feel her thumping bassline pick up, willing her song to life, pulsing through “--but the seeds!” she remembered!

       “They keep coming to mind, like coded messages to the future, they contain a plan for new growth, and they are here with us, all around, right now, waiting. They will wait through the wind & the snow until the ground receives their communication, and, at some future date yet unknown, they will grow.”

       In the immortal words of midwest author Michael Perry at my all time favorite music festival Eaux Claires in Wisconsin “The metaphors almost write themselves!” There is a magic in the way Davis writes, but the coded message I needed to hear is one that holds a more practical, everyday kind of magic. It is contained in the words Plan & Communication. Magic is great and all, but it doesn’t just happen. These seeds have a plan. They work towards that plan. They have goals, schedules, mile markers on their move towards magic. They communicate. With the ground, with the elements, with each other. They communicate their plan. They work their plan. Then, and only then, does magic happen.        

       Bluebook turns their plans & communication to magic on this deeply moving, darkly impressive album. Full of driving basslines, swelling & stabbing synths & guitars, and stately lyrics about religion, ketamine therapy, ear infections, flowers & mental health. Optimistic Voices pulses with energy and moves slowly but with intention. When Bluebook finally closed their Globe Hall set long after midnight with a cover, it was one Davis referred to as a “true Solstice song.” At that point we were mere days before the shortest day of the year, and less than a week from Denver’s coldest day in 30 years. The closing song and title track of Optimistic Voices is from Wizard of Oz. If you’re familiar, you may know it as a bouncing, ecstatic number full of joy & expectation. Although they keep the original lyrics, in typical Bluebook fashion, their version broods with sadness, mystery (is that a Brad Cook synth I hear?!) and a deep, deep winter magic. “You’re out of the woods, you’re out of the dark, you’re out of the night” Davis encourages us in her best somber Florence Welch tones “Step into the sun, step into the light. Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place on the face of the earth or the sky. Hold onto your breath, hold onto your heart, hold onto your hope…” With those words on that night I felt the light returning. Felt the days getting longer. The solstice has passed. The nights are dark & long, but not forever. There is a light in the eastern sky. I repeat the refrain again with Davis and the night is over. Like the rest of my most favorite albums from this year, Optimistic Voices was there for me when I needed it. It helped me get through some of the shortest days and hardest weeks of my year. Like always, I turned to songs for comfort & survival. “March up to the gate and bid it open.”

       “Shifting in the dark / lifting toward the spark / there’s a rope that pulls you up from the dark / in the box you found / a reason for reaching up around…”

*

CLEMENTINE WAS RIGHT   /   Can’t Get Right With the Darkness

       Clementine Was Right makes the kind of songs that remind me why I love music so much. Songs that reference places & seasons & people. Songs that want to jump back in the river. Songs that want to ride shotgun with you all Summer, drinking Dr. Pepper and singing out the open window with the hot wind in your hair and between your fingers. These are far bigger than just songs. These songs have families & friends & other lives to live somewhere down the road. To hear songwriter, poet, & frontperson Mike Young tell it, Clementine Was Right is a family affair. Not so much a band as an idea. A community building & changing, morphing & rolling along with songs to sing and places to go. The lyrics are his work; he is a poet, fiction writer & songwriter originally from Northern California and then all over. Currently based out of Denver, so we get to claim Clementine as a local band. He talks about moving & relocation saying “I hate change and I keep doing it! Movement, upheaval, crumbling, transit-trying forever to go home, calling each new stop another home.” In the songs on Clementine’s magnificent second record Can’t Get RIght With the Darkness, I too have found some kind of new home. 

       Can’t Get Right With the Darkness was recorded in Memphis, TN, straight to a 1969 Ampex tape machine. There are a whole host of musicians on it (people that Mike calls “talented & rowdy & tender & golden hearted”). The songs explode out of the radio with life & love, regret & loss, a postcard of American rock & roll, with silly drawings on the back in gel pen from all your queer friends. Musically, Clementine Was Right sounds like everything & everyone I grew up listening to. This is cosmic scoot bootgaze sweeping western emo tonk classic American rock&roll country music. Springsteen, Petty, etc… Lyrically Clementine’s songs are the kind that stick with me. Mike writes with his heart on his sleeve about all the things I love about life. These songs make me want to do better, dance bigger, swing harder & run faster. I spent most of fall & winter 2022 in a pretty dark place. I was facing my own fears. Admitting that maybe I've spent most of my adult life running away. That I was afraid to make decisions, afraid to take charge of my life. I don’t feel like I’ve escaped that period of my life, that time in my thoughts yet, and maybe I never will. But I’m working on things and trying to get better. When I fell for Clementine, I immediately clung to the writing & poetry and the overarching idea that everything is gonna be ok. That even if you make the wrong choice, take the wrong road. You will come out alive. When I listen to Clementine, I have an unexplainable, rock solid feeling that I haven’t lived my best days yet. For all the nostalgia and saudade present in Young’s writing, at their core, these songs fill me with hope. Like when I wake up in the morning I will have new friends to make, new songs to sing, new places to see, new careers to chase, new windows to open or roll down, new lyrics to sing or scream or mumble out into the bright, wide open air, a new life starting over every day. I want to close with some of the ramble lyrics/poetry that Clementine uses for their social media videos. Young’s partner is the incredible poet Gion Davis (go find his poetry book “TOO MUCH”) and I absolutely love the way the poems & the songs & the music weave together in a nonsense jumble of joy & sorrow & happiness & heartbreak & curiosity & adventure! Long Live Clementine Was Right!

       “I am not going to live for a thousand years. I am not a redwood tree or a deep sea sponge. You are running away from your own death that has brushed past you like many tall ferns in the dark. Your life has no witness but you and occasionally your friends who love you. It is devastating. It is the best day you’ve ever had… You can take a year, you can try a year, you can try a lot, you can try two oceans. You can try to say your friend’s name until it’s a face. Was it loud enough?... It doesn’t matter who sang the first line. I need to see people-sized people in the sun. I would like to make something that when you open it, makes a quiet shift. It doesn’t matter if we’re not friends yet. I am calling from the exact center of my fear. Here we are as the sighs get less & less fake. 1% is whispering something about fireflies and the last 1% is wondering if silence is the best wondering you’ll ever reach. I used to live in the desert, but now I live anywhere. So the band gets bigger, confusing, bigger, to include everyone I’ll miss. The desire for rescue is the wrong map to intimacy. I used to live anywhere, but now I just keep visiting. How do you know if the songs work? You ask strangers what they do with their ghosts. You don’t want faces to be numbered, you want them to answer your stories with theirs. You don’t need to harmonize with anything but all the secret windows you’ve been waiting to open in your chest. Singing along is a light under the door of longing. Your new friends sing along with your old friends' daughter and the picture she drew of the band as guests of the lava. Love don’t know I’m coming, love won’t let me stay. It moves you, which is to say you keep going. You sing along…”

*

ETHEL CAIN   /   Preacher’s Daughter

       There is an undeniable darkness emanating from Ethel Cain’s official debut album Preacher’s Daughter. Many of the songs sound lifted from some 99 cent red box horror movie; palpable fear & self-hate crashing suddenly into jump scares and waves of wailing noise. Six plus minute songs of burning, brooding evil; reeking with violence, sex, motorcycles, drugs, guns, booze, incest, abusive relationships, and American red, white, & blue religious bullshit. To listen to these songs is like watching one of those horror movies, squinting between fingers covering your eyes; scared to see what comes next, but unable to peel your eyes & ears away. By far the darkest evil Cain uncovers in her writing, is the sin of the Christian church. The black heart at the center of her America’s evil. Ethel Cain grew up like me, but a million miles from me. Born in Florida, a preacher’s kid, indoctrinated in the church, questioning her upbringing, but filled with a deep nostalgia for her youth. When Ethel came out to her family (and consequently the community, cuz if you grew up in a small town you know that’s how it is) as a trans woman, it marked a turning point. In her words “It was war. We were a house divided. It was me versus my whole town.” She distanced herself from the church and started making music on garageband and trying to find collaborators and chosen family. In the midst of that searching, Ethel has created a musical world all her own. A sonic enveloping, a fashion career & a style where she can be herself. An album that runs an hour and 15 minutes and never lets up. She is telling stories, she is relating to old friends from small towns & similar upbrings, and most of all, she is 100% herself. An artist with a singular vision. Preacher’s Daughter is a challenging listen, but it makes me feel as viscerally real as any album on this list. 

       There are songs on Preacher’s Daughter that I can’t listen to without thinking about my own high school years. Amidst all the darkness, there is an 80’s love story in the twinkling pop of “American Teenager” an anti-war anthem that prays to Jesus & daddy & Dale. An empowerment anthem at the end when Cain belts “I’m doing what I want and damn I’m doing it well” This is the only roll-down-the-windows song (and maybe a glimpse at the magic Cain could make if she sold out of her darkness for a lighter side?!) and it immediately takes me back to small town back roads in western Colorado. I remember my lifelong best friend Stephen would play a piano melody for me at his house. Something he wrote that sounded like growing up. Like the end of everything and the beginning of everything. We would be at his house in Silt at midnight. Still time to walk to the train tracks and the Gofer foods or Kum & Go and get chips or corn nuts or a gas station hot dog and a 64oz Dr. Pepper and maybe some cigarettes or later a 6-pack of beer. We would take whatever we bought out under the overpass, where the train tracks ran through, and we would talk about whatever shit. About what we wanted to do with our lives. About the same shit I’m still talking about now. We would rent one of Ethel’s crappy horror movies from the redbox and go back to his house to waste the rest of the night. We’d talk about how we missed our girlfriends, about how we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives. About how I still don’t know now. I write all this because this is what I like to remember and this is what Ethel’s songs remind me of. I want her to know that I understand. When the guitar crashes into “A House In Nebraska” and sweeps the whole song away into the madness of growing up & letting go, I feel what it means to her. I feel the pain she feels. When I feel so alone, these are the kinds of songs and albums I look for. When the second half of “Televangelism” finds a light and the piano strikes a match and begins to sing, I hear my friend Stephen’s piano. I’m back home in my childhood bedroom. Somehow, Ethel Cain has conjured up a world that I can live in. In the darkest corners of her world, there is light and there is friendship. These songs are masterpieces and they tell stories of darkness & evil. But maybe, when we turn the lights off and sit in the dark after midnight, telling these stories; we can hold hands and feel a little less alone. Because there is someone out there who feels just like me. 

       “You & me against the world / you were my man and I your girl / we had nothing except each other / you were my whole world / then the day came and you were up & gone / and I still call home that house in Nebraska / where we found each other / on a dirty mattress on the second floor / where the world was empty save you & I / where you came and I laughed  / and you left and I cried / where you told me even if we die tonight / that I’d die yours / these dirt roads are empty / the ones we paved ourselves / your mama calls me sometimes / to see if I’m doing well / and I lie to her and say that I’m doing fine / when really I’d kill myself to hold you one more time… / you know I still wait at the edge of town / praying straight to God that maybe you’ll come back around / I cry every day and the bottles make it worse / cuz you were the only one I was never scared to tell I hurt / and I found photographs of our school on the day we met / I thought you were so beautiful / it was love I guess / and you might never come back home / and I may never sleep at night / but God I just hope you’re doing fine out there / I just pray that you’re alright / and I feel so alone, and I feel so alone out here / I’m so alone out here without you baby…”

*

FKA TWIGS   /   CAPRISONGS

      “Hey, I made you a mixtape” begins FKA twigs phenomenal third album CAPRISONGS. If you know me, you know how happy it makes me for FKA twigs to make me a mixtape! Tahliah Debrett Barnett is an English singer, songwriter & dancer who goes by FKA twigs. She lets that mixtape start slow (honestly the way most good mixtapes do!) and opener “ride the dragon” (all of CAPRISONGS song titles are styled in all lowercase) sets the stage for personal fav “honda.” From here, the album dives in. “So yeah one morning… I don’t know, Monday or somethin’' begins track two. A man’s voice recounts “Summertime, you know, all tired and shit, sleep under my eyes, lookin’ at myself in the mirror… who’s that? Anyways, I’m one of a kind. Well… people like me are one of a kind. When life gives us lemons, we just take in the essence… Anyway, don’t look back, don’t look back, keep drivin’, know what I’m saying? Leave the sourness behind… Leave it to the streets. That’s it. O-T-S-S. Only the strongest survive. Honda, baby!” From there, it’s easy to get lost in the entrancing beats that make up the rest of CAPRISONGS. Rumbling waves of late night afro rhythms, hip-hop, r&b & soul, chanted choral backgrounds, auto tuned wails dancing intertwined with frail falsetto, Twigs shapeshifts her way through beats & breaks, interlacing bangers with spoken word interludes, cassette tape clicks & hisses, transporting you to HER world, a capricorn sun, an artist in charge.

       I fell in love with this album way back in snowy January, the kind of tropical transportation I needed to escape my winter unemployment reality. My littlest sister had texted me a long, sweet text about life & growing up and then she followed it up with “and maybe more importantly, FKA twigs new album is mindblowing.” These are the kind of connections I look for in music, sharing songs & albums with friends & family & loved ones, bonding over “THIS SONG” or “I can’t wait for the new album” or “Let’s definitely go see her next time she comes to Denver!” CAPRISONGS is a slithery masterpiece, rewarding on multiple listens, equally strong as wintry background heaters or summer party bangers. FKA twigs is building a monster discography (I hear “Cellophane” is killing it on tik tok right now?!) and CAPRISONGS is as much fun as you’ll have dancing in the kitchen late at night this year. If you missed it when it came out a year ago, go get it now!

       “This is for the hard dreamers / been sad for a while / All the indigo & lightbeamers / been sad for a while…" 

*

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE   /   Dance Fever

       Of all the inevitably titled “covid albums” written or made during lockdown during the global pandemic, Florence Welch’s Dance Fever has my favorite origin story and most direct & literal writing about what it was like for those of us who lost live music. I relate 100% to the opening of “Choreomania'' where Welch deadpans “I am freaking out in the middle of the street, with the complete conviction of someone who’s never had anything actually really bad happen to them.” Before covid, live music was my outlet, my drug, the one place where I felt like myself. During covid, I felt so lucky in my situation (an introvert who actually enjoyed lockdown haha, I kept my job, didn’t lose anyone, lived my life completely unscathed by the pandemic) but I would bemoan to close friends my “loss” of live music. I felt a hole in my life, an essential part of my life, my joy, was ripped away. Florence addresses this idea directly on Dance Fever as she struggles with herself, questioning her career, her “addiction” to performing, and the kind of deep, deep questions I dealt with this last year. The kind of questions that have potential to rip your life apart and destroy everything you love, but open up your future to unfathomable, life fulfilling possibilities. If that sounds a tad over dramatic… well, it’s Florence + The Machine! She’s built her career, cult fanbase & self-mythology on the melodramatic overdramatic… So let's dive in!

       Dance Fever is a loose concept record about the dancing plague (or Choreomania, derived from Greek “Choros” meaning dance and “Mania” meaning madness) that struck Europe in the 1300-1500’s where hundreds or thousands of people, would take to the streets and dance erratically, sometimes to exhaustion and even death. It is one of the fascinating, horrifying google history rabbit-hole kinda things that keeps you up at night, but Florence is no stranger to cult-like dance events. Her brooding opener “King” starts exactly where any important pandemic record should start “We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children, about the world ending and the scale of my ambition, and how much is art really worth?” Welch states bluntly. Dance Fever gives us a sometimes unsettling glimpse into Florence’s private turmoil through the most personal, autobiographical writing of her nearly 15 year career. Florence feels vulnerable here “I was never as good as I always thought I was” and “what strange claws are these scratching at my skin, I never knew my killer would be coming from within” but she needs to work these feelings out in songs, she “needs to go to war to find material to sing” and by the end of the first five minutes “King” explodes with defiant self confidence. Make no mistake, with all her inner struggles, Florence is still a force; a woman finding herself, a changeling, a shapeshifter, a superstar artist belting “I am no mother, I am no bride, I am KING.” Sooo… I guess she’s not having kids then. I shiver every time I hear her sing that line so matter-of-factly, like your friend telling you she’s figured out the secret to herself.  In case there was any doubt about the inner turmoil and where it would leave her, Welch whispers out the ending over soft harp strums “I was never satisfied, it never let me go… Just dragged me by my hair and back on with the show…” Was this her cold hearted decision, or some demon or angel inside her, something that great artists have that forces them to create? From there, her choice to sing & dance & perform gets easier. “Free” is the most Antonoff-y of the bunch, with a huge, bubbling chorus and the simple refrain of “I hear the music, I feel the beat, and for a moment when I’m dancing, I am free!” The quiet centerpiece of the record “Girls Against God” is a masterclass in writing that makes me cry & laugh in equal amounts. The funny (“I listen to music from 2006 and feel kinda sick” and “in my darkest fantasies, I am the picture of passivity. Waiting for you side of stage, suppressing all my private rage, but as my sister said… I’D PROBABLY LAST SIX DAYS”) are seriously laugh out loud funny, but the depth of “I know I may not look like much, just another screaming speck of dust” and “I met the devil, you know he gave me a choice… A golden heart or a golden voice” gives the listener a completely explicit glimpse into Florence’s brain & heart. Deadly. Florence sacrifices herself for these songs (perhaps overdramatically, but like I said, It’s Florence + The Machine!) many times over, like in “Heaven is Here” (which made an absolutely fantastic concert/cult ritual opener) where she confides “every song I wrote became an escape rope, tied around my neck to pull me up to heaven” and gorgeous closer “Morning Elvis'' (which she sang with Ethel Cain in Denver, a true favorite live music moment of 2022!) where she bemoans “after every tour I swear I’ll quit, it’s over boys now this is it, but the songs like children beggin’ to be born…” So let’s close by talking about the cult-ritu-errr, live show!

       On October 1, I walked the Platte River bike path in a gorgeously warm, t-shirt autumn sunset, to Ball Arena, to the choreomania dance party, ren faire magnificence that is a Florence + The Machine show. The setlist was perfect, Florence is the one of the most physically impressive live performers I’ve ever seen (she ran the length of the arena floor, sprinting barefoot, whipping the crowd into a frenzy of sweat & love. Six songs in they played “Dog Days” and half way through the song Florence took time to talk saying 

       “Hello to anyone who is joining us for the first time! It’s quite an intense experience. And then, to anyone out there who may have been brought along. Or who is chaperoning someone, and you’re wondering… ‘what the fuck is this?!’ Is it a cult?! Is it some kind of massive, haunted house experience?! Is it some kind of British, pagan dance ritual?! Am I safe?! Well all I can say to anyone who has been brought along is… It’s really so much better if you just give in to it! Like really give in. And I promise that if you just do every single thing that I say… You’ll be absolutely fine! So the first thing I’m going to do Denver, is I’m going to need every single person in this arena to put their phones AWAY! And if you all can help me out, take a look to your left and right and if you see anyone with their phone out I want you to very politely -and you can use a british accent I won’t be offended- say, excuse me please would you mind putting your phone away so that we can have a collective experience! Now that they’re all gone.. IS EVERYBODY FREE?! We all spend so much time on screens and separated from each other, so now I want you to tell each other that YOU LOVE EACH OTHER! TELL EACH OTHER THAT YOU MISS EACH OTHER! You do not need to share or post this moment, BE HERE NOW WITH THE PEOPLE THAT YOU CAME WITH, WITH THE PEOPLE THAT YOU LOVE!” 

       I cried, I laughed, I hugged new friends, I told strangers I loved them, and then we all danced together. Choreomania? Dance Fever? It may be slightly overdramatic, but that’s pretty much all I want.

       “What a thing to admit / that when someone looks at me with real love / I don’t like it very much / kinda makes me feel like I’m being crushed / is this something that you would like to discuss? / and it’s good to be alive / crying into cereal at midnight / if they ever let me out / I’m gonna really let it out…”

*

JEAN DAWSON   /   CHAOS NOW*

       I honestly don’t remember where, when or who I heard about Jean Dawson from (or why the hell I hadn’t heard of him until this year?!), but once I heard his lilting, lonesome single “PIRATE RADIO*” (all the songs on CHAOS NOW* are stylized “CAPS LOCKasterisk”) in late September, I was 100% hooked. Especially when contrasted with the ballistic, ferocious, singalong rage of “SICK OF IT*” which was released two weeks later, Jean Dawson’s third album CHAOS NOW* is the sound of an artist about to take over the world. If you read all the reviews, interviews and think pieces about Jean Dawson, they all talk about the way he smashes and melds genres, sometimes in the same song, in the same verse. He pulls from punk, hardcore, hip hop, rap, grunge, emo, goth, pop, etc… But instead of talking about who or what he sounds like, I want to talk about what makes Jean Dawson so special. A true student of music, Dawson grew up on thrift store CDs, limewire and youtube ripped mp3s on his ipod, listening to everything on long bus rides between Sinaloa, MX (where his mother is from and where he grew up) and San Diego, CA (where his father is from and where he went to school). He practiced piano at Guitar Center as a teen because he didn’t own one. Now he makes the most gigantic, out-sized bedroom rock & roll you’ve ever heard. You can feel his youthful energy exploding out the speakers on nearly every song on CHAOS NOW*. Whether he’s channeling early 2000’s acoustic pop-punk on the bouncy “GLORY*” teaming with Earl Sweatshirt on the sweet, string symphony, stomp folk of “BAD FRUIT*” (which could honestly pass for Viva La Vida era Coldplay, remember Jay-Z had a verse on “Lost+”?!) or channeling the glory days of rap-rock on the thrashing “0-HEROES*.”

       When I tell people about the music that I love (like really, truly, deeply, lifetime love) it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about it that makes me love it so much. Most often, it has to do with lyrics. When a writer is able to put into words exactly what I’m feeling. The feeling of being understood, like the writer is seeing the world exactly like me. Like we both “get it.” But there is also an energy to the music. The final piece of the puzzle fits when we get the chance to celebrate the songs and the feelings together. In the same space (a sacred space) with like minded people who “get it” too. A release, a drug. For me, it’s the most important thing worth chasing. It’s why I quit my job a year and a half ago and tried to find my way in music. Well, I got that chance with Jean at Cervantes in October, and it was absolute magic. Lost in a crowd that pulsed & lifted, sweated & shifted; moving as one, screaming as one, echoing Jean… Being together… This album, like so many of the albums on this list, needs to be experienced live. When Jean released CHAOS NOW* he wrote this about his masterpiece: “I’ve been trying to put this album into simple terms and sentences but the more I try the harder it becomes because it’s simply not simple. It is a love letter to all the children that will grow up to change fractions of the world for the result of a greater whole. I hold no lofty ideals on music making rather I wish to serve as a proverbial sludge hammer to doors that have been left locked for kids that not only look like me but feel like me. Music making has been the greatest gift I’ve been given so far that I give you all of me / every emotion every splinter in my step / feel free to use me as a mirror to see you if you wish. I hope to share moments with you / to be a minor theme for your laughs / yells / cries and everything in between. I’m growing up in your eyes, ears and arms. With this little time we have on this big blue green rock I hope that it is well spent with those you love and no fear under your chest !GO FOR IT! CHAOS NOW*”

       “I’m sick of it / on the cliff / nosedive / I’m the new black oblivion / off the shit / over it / live & die with my motherfucking happines…”

*

MUNA   /   MUNA

       I can still picture the exact date, time & place that I really fell in love with Muna’s absolute banger-filled, self-titled, third album. It was a gloriously golden midwest morning, August 4, 2022. I was driving an hour into St. Charles, Iowa to volunteer on set-up crew at the Hinterland Music Festival. Driving past endless corn fields and sweating out a hangover from the night before. I picked an album from one of the artists I had kinda forgotten was playing HInterland. Muna’s huge singalong, dance-along pop songs hit me like a jump into a ice cold Summer lake and I was hooked. 

       Of course I’d been blasting the Phoebe Bridgers-assisted, late 90’s/early 2000’s feel good gay rom-com first single “Silk Chiffon” since late 2021, but the rest of the album matches the opener’s energy. These are mega-huge pop-songs, club ready, sung confidently, and played with a hella good full band. Fast forward three days and I’m dancing, singing & sweating it out in the pit to my first Muna set at Hinterlands. It was everything. Phoebe came bouncing out to sing her “Silk Chiffon” verse of course, they covered “Mr. Brightside,” they were perfect. Fast forward two weeks and I made this Muna playlist and basically learned all the lyrics.

       Fast forward-forward two months and I’m back in the pit with Muna at the Gothic Theatre here in Denver, screaming & dancing & sweating & crying & laughing with the teenagers & the queer kids. So, what’s so special about this album you ask? Maybe part of it has to do with me needing a “break up” album for the first time in a long time. From the positive, work-hard-make-myself-better pulse of leaving/running anthem “Runner’s High,” to the regret vs. growth ache and deep thinking of “Home By Now” (bonus, it’s really, really fun to scream “why is it so hot in LA in late October?!”) It seemed like this album is full of lyrics that hit home, sung to melodies that really stick. When I looked at my spotify wrapped in December, it wasn’t really a surprise that the song I played and sang the most in 2022 is the emotional, power ballad “Kind Of Girl.” The Sheryl Crow-meets-Oasis, acoustic steamroller “Kind Of Girl.” is essentially a self-care manifesto. A morning wake up challenge and maybe my favorite vocal performance of any song this year. I talk about lyrics a lot in these reviews, and “Kind Of Girl” (and really this whole album) felt like the lyrics I needed, right when I needed them. Writing about being yourself, owning your choices and life direction, being proud of who you are, and working to change what you wanna change. It’s powerful, powerful stuff. For girls (and anybody!) who’s been told they’re “too much” or “scary” or ‘you’re taking things too far and pressing too hard” join me in rolling my window down on Downing St., in the late Summer morning air and sing with Katie “I could get up tomorrow, talk to myself real gentle, work in the garden.” then the ending that matters most, “Yeah I like telling stories, but I don’t have to write them in ink… I could still change the end…” An ellipsis that leads to a future life. Go make your own decisions. Take charge of your life. Don’t be afraid to change the end. 

       “Have you ever heard about how when a person’s in a maze? / they will tend to walk in circles thinking they are going straight / they can’t see the bigger picture, so they get stuck in a loop / in the end, I was afraid that that’s what you & I would do / but I still have my moments / where every reason feels a lot like an excuse / I wanna ask you / would we have turned a corner if I had waited? / do I need to lower my expectations / if we’d kept heading the same direction / would we be home by now?...”

*

OPEN MIKE EAGLE   /   Component System with the Auto Reverse

       Back in October, when Larimer Lounge booked Los Angeles by way of Chicago rapper Open Mike Eagle for January 8, 2023, my closest co-worker and #1 music recommender told me I really needed to listen to Michael W. Eagle II. Conveniently, he had a new album dropping the same day we announced the show titled Component System with the Auto Reverse. Two songs in and I knew this album would end up on my end of the year favorites list. This is thoughtful, “elegant-rap” a masterclass from an emcee at the top of his game. Open MIke coined the genre-term (you know I love genre-terms!) “art-rap” at the start of his career in 2010 and it fits, although he bemoans it on the career questioning “I Retired Then I changed My Mind” laughing “I conjured up a gremlin, how do I get rid of you? / ‘what the fuck is art-rap?’ in every damn interview.” To me, it is the humor Open Mike infuses with the deep, life questioning queries, that makes Component System special. He makes me laugh out loud, like in the intro to the woozy “Circuit City” when he drawls “I’m a brand new man doing the same dance / it only seems confusing because I changed pants.” or the banging closer when he raps “I play the wall like a special titan, I ain’t a wizard but I wrestle like him / The only wand I know detects metal items.” The pop culture references (both popular & obscure) are everywhere on these songs. Bill Cartwright, The Pharcyde, Quelle Chris, The Bushwhackers, Big Bird, Golden Girls, Among Us, Scott Rogowsky, Biz Markie, the list goes on. Most notable is Open Mike’s tribute to the late great MF DOOM simply titled “For DOOM.” An inspired, two minute glimpse into how heroes can mold you into who you are. 

       Like Open MIke, I grew up making my own mixtapes. Not the fancy kind, I didn’t have the tape system with the auto reverse, but I made myself mixtapes of my favorite christian rock songs for the tape player in my 1993 Subaru Outback. When I got a laptop in college I graduated to mix cds (I kept calling them mixtapes though!) and would make them meticulously for friends and family (and myself!), for special occasions, seasons, & secrets. I would rip youtube mp3s of clips from our favorite TV shows, funny vines, or quotes that were important. Finding any of those mixtapes now is like a window into who I was, who I was growing up to be. In the same way, this mixtape from Open Mike feels like a portal into his world. Who he is, what he worries about, what makes him laugh, who he is growing up to be. A brand new man doing the same dance. 

       “I still got the same worldview / a brain full of old school rules / and memories like flesh wounds / the cure isn’t in a test tube / it’s the sound of my son belly laughing in the next room…”

*

ORVILLE PECK   /   Bronco

       To be honest, I did not expect to love Orville Peck’s sophomore album Bronco as much as I do. I had his debut album Pony (get it?) on my 2019 favorite albums list and I said I loved it for its “shoegaze, tumbleweed rumble and sweeping western imagery.” I saw Orville a few times over the last couple years at Mission Ballroom and then Red Rocks, as his legend grew and I had been absolutely blown away by his stage presence. Orville’s origin story is the stuff of legends by now. Gay drummer for Canadian punk band dreams up an even gayer cowboy alter ego and conceals his identity with a fancy fringed mask! Suits get fancier, friends get famous-er, stages get bigger, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Miami, Orville Peck is now a superstar. The thing about all the fringe & feathers & glitter & rhinestones is, none of it would work if the songs weren’t good. On Bronco, Orville has doubled down on his classic songwriting, attention demanding voice, and storyteller’s heart. He ditches a few of the tumbleweeds and some of the lonely cowboy vibes on Bronco in favor of more polished, big stage, big lights, big city performances. But the melodies, the lyrics, the way the songs pick up and just go, is pure country songwriting. I fell in love with Bronco thanks to my ex-partner Lila’s love of his songs & his persona. When I hear these songs, all I hear is her; working from home, headphones in, belting lyrics in an exaggerated Orville delivery, happy & oblivious to anyone who may be listening. We fell in love with Bronco together and wore it out during a couple days of long drives in the midwest in the Summer of 2022. No matter what, I hold those moments close and think of them and her everytime I listen to these songs. That’s what music does and I couldn’t fight it even if I wanted to. Music marks time & space. 

       Bronco starts as far from where Pony started as possible. It’s been three years and a lot of stages, and where Pony started as slow and dark as Orville gets (“the sun goes down, another dreamless night”) Bronco kicks in with rhythmic guitar, fast rolling drums, and hot, blond surfer boys on the beach in Daytona. By the time the swoon-worthy croon of  “The Curse of the Blackened Eye” hits its stride, it’s clear that Orville is crafting songs his way. His choruses are bigger & catchier, his instrumentation is simple & direct, these melodies & lyrics are strong enough to stand on their own. They ride on Orville’s commanding voice and storytelling theatrics. He sneaks in a Tanya Tucker reference in the uptempo “Lafayette'' and his geographical mile markers journey this album from the West (Malibu, Mendocino, The PCH, The Hexie Mountains, Mulholland, Denver, Reno, the Badlands) to the South (Mississippi, the bayou, Daytona) to the northeast sun and all the way across the sea (Bez Valley, Sofiatown, the Kalahari, Johannesburg, The Thames & Waterloo). As with many country artists, the thing that has always set Orville Peck apart, is his golden voice. Instantly recognizable, his melodies sung in a way only he can sing them. The real magic in the story of Orville Peck, is his ability to simply be himself. Our country & culture is currently waging an all-out war on queer kids (from attempting to ban all things trans-affirming to don’t-say-gay laws etc…) and as always happens in dark times, we turn to artists to rebel and to speak truth. Orville shines a light, a larger than life queer cowboy. Queer country has been a theme on this list (from Adeem to Clementine to Orville to keep reading cuz you’re gonna love Willi Carlisle!) and I think about how much that would’ve meant to some of the kids I grew up with in rural western Colorado. Now more than ever we need our Orvilles. I think about the people I love to sing songs with. I think about the people who make you feel like yourself and how valuable that is. Find those people, hold onto those people, be yourself around them and never change. Finally, I think about singing these songs with Lila. I imagine years from now, walking into some dark, dusty dive bar on the outskirts of Denver. It’s karaoke night, or a drag show, or a wednesday. The singer is tall & strong; commanding your attention. The jukebox is blaring Orville, pedal steel whining, drums rolling. The singer is dressed like Orville (well, maybe the South Broadway Goodwill version of Orville) but they look good. They step to the mic and look around and then the music pauses before kicking in “Hurry over and cry Lafayette!” They command the bar, they demand your attention. Maybe it is Orville. He played last night in Salt Lake after all. You try to look at the eyes behind the mask, but it doesn’t really matter cuz the songs sound so good. You order a Tecate and a shot of Jamo. You move across the floor and start to sing along. The music fills you up and you feel like yourself. The sun goes down. The show goes on. The songs will always be there. 

       “I don’t want you to be afraid / let me see you cry / oh I, I got an hour or so / take my hand and let it go / call me up anytime / c’mon baby cry / I can tell you’re a sad boy just like me…”

*

OTOBOKE BEAVER   /   Super Champon

       Another 2022 live music highlight for me, was the opportunity to work side-stage security for Otoboke Beaver at their sold out show at Globe Hall back in October. I knew they were a big deal, but I hadn’t really been able to give their album a full listen, mostly due to it being… a little fast-paced and abrasive vs. my normal listening habits haha. When I finally dug in a couple of days before the show, I knew I was in for a treat. This is blisteringly, breakneck fast, Japanese punk; with a fun, tongue in cheek approach. Otoboke Beaver formed in Kyoto way back in 2009, and Super Champon is their third album. “Champon” is a Japanese noun that translates to a hodgepodge or a jumble. Indeed, these 18 songs (lasting just over 21 minutes!) bounce around and change direction so fast, that it’s almost easier to listen to the album as one whole “super jumble” song! The women of Otoboke Beaver (Accorinrin, Yoyoyoshie, Hirochan & Kahokiss) challenge gender norms in classic Punk fashion with “I am not maternal,” “I won’t dish out salads” & “You’re no hero shut up f*ck you man-whore.” The former is the opening track and finds Accorinrin challenging her maternal instincts, a rough translation of the lyrics is “I love dogs! I’ll deliver a puppy but not a baby!” Second track “Yakitori” (perhaps the catchiest, bounciest riff & melody on the album) abruptly cascades into a wall of sound & fury with Accorinrin screaming “Destroy!” Otoboke maximizes the entirety of Super Champon (only two songs run over two minutes) with super tight, technical riffs, punishing drums, and a relentless energy that pinballs between anger & humor. There are no contradictions in the world of Super Champon (even when the song is called “Leave me alone! No, stay with me!”) Instead, Otoboke thrive in the chaos & calamity, letting contradicting feelings co-exist, laughing at pain, and good naturedly calling out those who need calling out. But it is very clear from both the album and their live show, that they take no shit. Finally, from the steps side-stage at Globe Hall (the place where I’ve grown with other linernotes&seasons favs Charley Crockett, Liza Anne, Lucy Dacus, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Arlo Parks, the list goes on and on!) I got to see one of my favorite live shows I’ve ever seen. Otoboke are as deliriously fun on stage as they are on album, instigating the crowd, stirring up the pit, crowd surfing with guitars, posing with each other, and clearly having the time of their lives. Otoboke Beaver is already on their way to bigger stages here in the US (see y'all at the Bluebird!) but if you can’t make it to their live show, take 21 minutes and blast Super Champon for your next rage room session or dance party! 

       “A tenacious, sulky, troublesome ass / fallen in love with falling in love / i have no time to waste on you / looking for a one night stand / abso-fucking-lutely out of the question / you dirty old fart!”

*

PINKSHIFT   /   Love Me Forever

       Baltimore’s PInkshift has a charmingly unlikely origin story for a punk rock band. Three east coast kids with immigrant parents, meeting at Johns Hopkins University, bonding over a love of NIrvana, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo FIghters & No Doubt. Singer Ashrita Kumar & guitarist Paul Vallejo recruited drummer Myron Houngbedji when they heard him practicing “Helena” by My Chemical Romance in the Johns Hopkins music practice rooms. They consequently dropped their STEM majors in favor of dismantling the patriarchy with punk rock. Their debut album Love Me Forever reminds me of everything I loved about punk growing up. The drums are fast & hard, the riffs are huge, spiraling & diving, exploding into chugging rhythms and firework solos. Then there are Kumar’s vocals; attention demanding screams & shrieks, powerful yells, and throaty melodies delivered with the kind of sneer that drives home the anger, angst & uncertainty found in the lyrics. This isn’t your sugary Simple Plan, Good Charlotte pop-punk, this is modern punk, with heavy hints of grunge & alt-rock. Most of the reviews I read about Love Me Forever used words like “muscular” and “burly.” I had the privilege of working lead on PInkshft’s show here in Denver at Lost Lake in October, and it was, to put it emo-ly, a highlight of my year. I watched Kumar sit quietly, almost unnoticed at the corner of the bar, writing in their journal (maybe the beginnings of Pinkshift LP #2?!...) heard the rest of the touring party, polite and hardworking; load in, sound check, and as most touring bands who play Lost Lake do, run out for food. When PInkshift finally took the stage, it was like something unleashed. Vallejo & Houngbedji come out of their shells on stage, laughing & wild, clearly having the time of their lives. Kumar on the other hand is almost unrecognizable; a frenzy of energy, screaming & whirling, commanding the room. Punctuated by moments of meditation & calm. This is a band destined for bigger stages and wilder crowds. It’s also impossible to ignore the diversity on stage, a band led by kids of color, in genres that have, in my lifetime, been unfairly dominated by white males. At their show at Lost Lake, it was evident by the kids I saw in the crowd; diversity that can be hard to find at shows in Denver. A safe space, and one that Kumar referenced when they spoke from stage. They talked about a crowd that looked like them, about the band’s desire to create spaces like the sacred one at Lost Lake. I want to close with the last paragraph I wrote on instagram. It’s where I directed most of my creative writing this year, and it encapsulates the feelings I felt after one of my favorite shows of the year. Walking out onto Colfax after hanging with Pinkshift. “This is it. This is the future. The world is ending. We’re all dying. Soon. Scream about it. Feel it rise from your gut to your lungs, in your chest, in your mouth. Scream it out. Together. Throw yourself into the pit. Smile & laugh & bruise your body. Wake up sore. Sing along if you know the words. Thank you PInkshift. This one was special.”

       “Sometimes I dream a perfect dream / where I return back to a place / where I was born in the garden of a soul / in the garden I was born…”

*

QUINN CHRISTOPHERSON   /   Write Your Name In PInk

       It was nearly four years ago when Alaskan songwriter Quinn Christopherson took my music world by storm with his tear-jerking masterpiece “Erase Me.” Against an austere Anchorage Museum backdrop, Quinn screamed his heart out (at times delightfully irreverent) in a queer anthem. For the next few years, I wore out “Erase Me” and secret fav “Raedeen” (the sweetly dark family story full of details both cheerful & nauseating). After that, Quinn hunkered down in Alaska and disappeared for a few years. When “lead” single “Bubblegum” finally dropped in Fall 2021, I knew this collection of songs was gonna be special. Truthfully, I knew before that; when I started following little snippets of Quinn’s life via social media and felt the way I always feel finding a new artist to love. I love the way he writes about life, I love the way he includes all the mundane, seemingly meaningless details and I love the way Alaska permeates his writing. When I listen, I feel like I’m there. Most of all, I love the way he writes about family. Parents, siblings, spouses, cousins, nephews, they are all central characters in his songs. When he finally released Write Your Name In Pink (his official debut album) he wrote 

       “I’m insanely proud of this record. I put in pride for my family, empathy for our past, recognition of growth, and most of all Native & Queer joy & hope. God I hope you like it.”

       Since then, it has been a delight to sink into Quinn’s writing. His voice matches his lyrics so well, soft & purposeful, cheery at the edges, you can almost hear his smile sometimes. Musically, Write Your Name In Pink glows with synth washes, gentle drum pads and moody vocal swells that build the songs from whisper beginnings to sing along outros (see powerful opener “Thanks” that closes with Quinn wailing “I don’t know what I was looking for, but I knew when I found you!” over & over over stately strings and swirling vocals). Although most of the songs sit easily in an indie-pop groove, Quinn’s lyrics scream out with all the details of a life lived, an open door into the world of an artist who really, truly cares. Of course, there are all my favorite small details. Crushing spiders, fixing up a home, nephews in school, Jackets & bikes, carving your names into trees, rollerblades, tiramisu, puka shells, puffer vests, the list goes on. Some are Alaska specific, most are things that all of us recognize. Deeper than that, Write Your Name finds Christopherson digging into his own mind, trying to be better, trying to grow. In “Bubblegum” he grows up along with us (from 6 to 17 to 21 to 23 to 25 to 26…) facing his vices, his changes, all the while repeating “I don’t know who I am.” Later, in the pulsing pop of “Uptown” he indulges in drugs & alcohol, all the while repeating “I don’t like who I am.” Quinn writes in a way that matters to me. He tells his stories, deeply & lightly, in a way that makes me feel like I’m his friend. To listen to this album, to pay attention to his songs, is to share in that friendship. To understand someone and to feel understood. That if we were to meet and talk, Quinn would understand me. We’d already be friends after all. We would jump on the trampoline and eat oats and talk about Celine Dion. These are the kind of albums that I’ll hold onto. Friends in music forever. 

“I hope the kids we raise are ambitious, don’t play it safe / have a lot to say, live a long life and get paid / I hope they don’t grow up too fast / travel the world & come back / realize it’s who you’re with, not where you’re at / I hope they dye their hair & get tattoos / are a good sport with a good attitude / I hope they remind me of you…”

*

R.A.P. FERREIRA   /  5 to the Eye with Stars

       R.A.P. Ferreira was another co-worker recommendation, a Wisconsin rapper I was unfamiliar with till this year. Then we had the opportunity to see him live at my favorite small venue that I don’t work at (love you Hi-Dive!) and these songs cemented themselves as friends for life. Rory Alan Philip Ferreira has released a ton of music under multiple different names & projects (including milo & Scallops Hotel) over the last 13 years. Featuring on songs with Open Mike Eagle, Armand Hammer, Busdriver & Anderson Paak and creating his own record label, Ruby Yacht. Stylistically similar to Open MIke, Ferreira’s laid back, lackadaisical delivery is delightfully nimble, dancing between silly & melancholy, chuckling at himself, and dancing all over varied adjectives. His beats are more minimal than Open Mike, soft jazzy brushes & piano, lo-fi-diy noise, static synths squeaking to life, laying a babbling brook of calming sounds for Ferreira to rap over. Lyrically, Ferreira is an elegant wordsmith. He shows off his midwest magic (having lived in Wisconsin, Maine, Tennessee & LA) and blends seemingly random household objects (a meyer lemon, a tiny lamp, a tin of altoids, a Hydro flask, a spark plug) with cosmic ideas both thought provoking, challenging & comforting. LIttered with lines to hold onto, Ferreira is childlike in his innocence (“first fear was vanquished / first fortress was made of blankets”) and scholarly in his thought (“I wrote this rap to make the sunrise”). The emotional center of the record, the brooding “mythsysizer instinct” features Hemlock Ernst (the rap alter-ego of Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring who released a rap album on Ferreira’s Ruby Yacht label) crooning over warbly synths and Ferreira’s most direct mental health advice as he says “My sadness a hound dog and he creeps beside me.” This thread of songwriting is deep within me and I’ve touched on it a few times over the years. In Arlo Parks’ “Black Dog” (off of last years’ fav Collapsed in Sunbeams) or Josh Ritter’s The Beast in Its Tracks from way back in 2013, I’ve clung to the medicinal magic of these songs that acknowledge the hound dog of sadness creeping beside you, always there, an ache under the surface; how to befriend it, how to live with it, how to move on. This is powerful stuff from R.A.P. Ferreira and his poetry across 5 to the Eye with Stars is not to be missed. LIke he says on the horn assisted, late night AM radio jazz of opener “fighting back” “I know it’s epic poetry that keeps the cosmos orbiting…” Epic poetry indeed Rory. 

“I find myself a leaky faucet and get to wrenchin’ / the word’s henchman / bench pressin’ sunrises / sometimes it’s overwhelming to be helming the creation of everything / or so I imagine / true magic at my fingertips / down to the wingtips / down to the creases / down to the meat & potatoes / down to the beaten cables / down to the streets & fables / and deeper still, you gotta be for real…”

*

RAVEENA   /   Asha’s Awakening

       Picture if you will, the seeds of an epic idea. A late 20’s mega-talented pop musician has a wild idea for a concept album. She plans to blend her Punjab Indian heritage with her Queens, NY upbringing. She will recruit some of her all time favorite musicians (both Indian and otherwise!), she will use authentic Indian instruments, mixed with modern pop production, r&b, disco and early 2000’s hip hop. She will dive into her favorite influences like Bollywood soundtracks from the 70’s, Timbaland, Alice Coltrane, & M.I.A. Oh yeah, she also loves kitschy sci-fi so the lyrics will recount a story straight from her sci-fi novel about a Punjab space princess named Asha (translates to “desire”) exploring space & time, love & loss, discovering her sexuality, new ideas & new planets! It’s a lot of space to cover, but Raveena’s songwriting is intoxicating, sexual, and expressive, and Asha’s Awakening blooms with her singular style & vision. Raveena’s parents immigrated to the US in the 80’s from Punjab, India to escape anti-sikh riots, and her heritage is not only present but celebrated in the story of Asha. She blends all her influences so cohesively, that her album comes out sounding exactly like the mix that would be blasting on whatever futuristic music player Asha might be bumping in her spaceship!

       My favorite thing about Asha’s Awakening is how creatively it world builds, how openly Raveena invites you into her spaces and how gorgeously meditative & invigorating these songs are when you really give them your full attention. Raveena uses authentic Indian instruments like the tabla, bulbul turang, bansuri flute, swarmandal and sitar. She features some incredible Indian musicians like Rostam & Asha Puthli (oh and also Vince Staples and TWEAKS!) giving the album a modern/futuristic feel. Finally, she layers ambient sounds; bells, chimes & bird chirps that really make you feel like, as she describes “stepping into an Indian garden at 6am on a Summer day.” Some of my personal musical touch points for the first half of the album are the upbeat dance pop of Caroline Rose, or the less guitar-y, more glitch poppy side of Hippo Campus. I can’t hear “Time Flies” without thinking of the laid back pop, complex & intricate instrumentation, and aching vocals of Texas band Sun June (a real linernotes&seasons deep fav). After the spoken word interlude “The Internet Is Like Eating Plastic” the second half of the album is far more meditative and laid back. Yes, there are spoken word pieces, breathing exercises, and a meditative 13+ minute closer! Of all the albums on this list, Asha’s Awakening is the one I would most recommend getting lost in. Play it start-to-finish with good headphones. Let your mind wander space & time. Let it create visions of pink flowers as big as planets and spaceships with headlights like disco balls. Let your body sink into the sensual & relaxing rhythms. Let both your body & brain be expanded and give in to Asha’s world. When you get to the end of the album, Raveena will leave you with a reminder, “Remember that this space of unconditional love and this protective field of light is always here for you to return to…”

       “She wants to follow me to valleys in Kathmandu / She wants to fuck & trip & eat them flowers ‘til she ain’t blue…”

*

SADURN   /   Radiator

       The story behind the creation of Radiator; Philly bedroom-folk outfit Sadurn’s debut full length, is as sweet & magical as the songs on the album itself. With a batch of bandleader and primary songwriter Genevieve DeGroot’s songs to record, and covid making normal studio adventures challenging; the four friends that form Sadurn holed up in a cabin in the Poconos for the ultimate quarantine adventure! “It was kind of just a house” DeGroot admits  “We call it ‘the cabin’ but it was just an airbnb that had some wood paneling” With a backstory like Bon Iver’s For Emma (but with friends!), it’s like you can feel the warm camaraderie of the band spilling out all over the songs that make up Radiator. They tell stories of blanket forts in the loft, the control room set up in a bedroom (so they could listen to takes together, all four snuggled in bed) and drummer Amelia Swain says “When I listen to the album, I get this wash of memories of how it felt to be finally back together again with my friends. It makes me remember how good it felt to be together. To have a sense of belonging - I really can hear that in the music.” Stories like this, friendship like this, really can be heard in the music. From Typhoons’ magical recording-session-camp-out-fort-fest way back in 2013 (that produced one of my favorite albums of all time White Lighter) to Big Thief’s lightning-storm-creek-dip-forehead-to-forehead playing on their records, friendship & camaraderie can be felt through the radio waves. Radiator is not just an album made by friends, it’s inviting YOU to be a friend too!

       The songs on Radiator are soft & secret, unhurried & present. The kind of songs that can be passed over, like street art that someone in a rush doesn’t notice. Degroot spoke of their desire to keep the “lo-fi” aspect that the members of Sadurn had worked hard to create, and the recordings on Radiator are perfect. LIke you’re in a room with just the band, listening to them tell you their stories. Opener “snake” builds from Degroot’s whispered intro “Honey, I was wrong…” (could that be the greatest intro lyric to a break up album ever?!) to a measured garage-y rock. An inward-looking break-up song, with hope at the end (gulp, maybe what I needed this year?). Degroot masterfully tells us about what they’re working on in the aftermath, but closes with 

       “I want you to know that I’ll be holding that line and I believe in all your mercy / and in the weight of the tide as it is pulling you back towards me / you know that I am always yours if you’ll still have me / though you’re tired from that long walk over the chasm / but my idea of love is that it’s lasting…” 

       In fact, most of the songs on Radiator seem to take place in the months (or years) after a break up, as Degroot also plays with time a bit (“I watched a whole forest grow from seeds, before you got up…” on the magnetic & measured “golden arm”). Echoing my own inner turmoil, there are the everpresent, contradictory ideas of going back & moving forward, explained perfectly as “going our separate ways but just in the same direction” on the upbeat indie-rock of “special power.” Through it all, Degroot handles their heartbreak with a gentle, thoughtful ease. There are moments of crying in the shower, “carefully built boundaries,” and hard goodbyes (like on the gentle, fingerpicked “moses kill” that instantly recalls Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief’s solo work). Degroot is clearly doing the mental work to grow, and their friends are right alongside, imbuing what could be a cloudy gray collection of songs with sunlight & flowers, hugs & tears & kisses. These songs have been playing in my headphones a lot as I walked around Cap Hill & Cheesman Park in Denver since October, working through my own relationship ending; and the light they create has been building a little home for me. A home where swirling, opposing ideas can talk it out in my brain. As Degroot would put it “It’s ok what I’m feeling, it’s alright if I’m crying / and maybe there’s some good coming, although I cannot find it / and I know that light humming on the back of my eyelids…”

       “Your mind is like a like a fishnet and mine is like an icepick / sometimes it’s not enough and sometimes I think it’s perfect / and I get so messed up cause I don’t know if it’s working / I’m standing by the window, I can’t wait to let the light in / I can’t wait to let the light in…”

*

SAMPA THE GREAT   /   As Above, So Below

       The common thread running through the heart of Sampa the Great’s sophomore album As Above, So Below, is her native country of Zambia. She spoke of how important it was for her to record the album in Zambia and have it produced by a team of Zambian producers. Sampa Tembo is a 29 year old singer & rapper born in Zambia; based more recently out of Botswana, then California & Australia. If you play through the album at full volume, you’ll see pretty quickly why she goes by Sampa the Great. In the midst of heavy beats, swirling psychedelia, ethereal choirs & live drums, Sampa grounds & threads every song with her singular voice. A compelling mix of live musicianship, A-list features, and entrancing & invigorating songwriting, Sampa is staking her claim as a modern voice to be reckoned with. Sampa takes control for most of these songs, both singing sweetly and rapping fiercely over rhythms & vocal washes both ancient & modern. She skips & bounces brightly over a gentle melody in “Tilibobo” then practically growls her verses out on the monstrous “Can I Live?” A raging highlight of the album, “Can I Live?” is a collaboration with legendary Zamrock band W.I.T.C.H. (who I was lucky enough to see live last year at Treefor Music Fest!) and it climbs from driving, jungle beats, led spiraling upward by Sampa’s dazzling verse, then proceeds to leap off the edge into fiery guitar psychedelic pyrotechnics. Zamrock is a genre born in Zambia, a blending of traditional African music with psychedelic rock & roll, blues & funk, and hearing it blending in seamlessly on a modern hip-hop album is delightful. The choice to record this album in her homeland was one that means a lot to Sampa, who came to prominence while based in Australia; and the choice to work with Zambian musicians & producers imbues her songs with an authenticity & vibrancy that explodes through speakers and sounds like, as Sampa would say, “my freest record yet.” She raps & sings in both English and the Zambian language Bemba, she blends modern hip hop production with authentic African instrumentation and she blends features from African legends W.I.T.C.H. & Angelique Kidjo with hip-hop powerhouses like Joey Bada$$ & Denzel Curry. Through it all, this is Sampa the Great’s album. A singular vision, a portal into an artist’s world & home. A journey to Zambia with Sampa the Great. 

       “All of this lineage, the journey / this spirit is funny / can’t replicate a shooting star / I can be hard / I can be soft / I can be everything uder the stars…”

*

TOMBERLIN   /   i don’t know who needs to hear this…

       I had a long and meaningful journey with the new Tomberlin record this year, and she ended up with 3 of my top 5 most played songs on the infamous spotify wrapped. I want to start by pointing out that this is the most perfectly sequenced record I can remember in the last few years. From the gorgeous soft brushes, juno synth, & jazzy touches of brooding opener “Easy,” to the peaceful rhythms of “Born Again Runner” & “Tap.” By the time we get to the heart of the record, the roaring guitar solo from Cass McCombs in the epic “Stoned” and the pulsing growl of “Happy Accident” it matches any album on this list for emotional heft. By the time the winter-morning-radiator-creak of “idkwntht” mumbles it’s way out gorgeously, this is a top five album of the year for me . Besides the sequencing and the gorgeous, understated musicality, Tomberlin’s writing here is stellar and she tackles all my favorite topics. She is 27, a Baptist preacher’s kid, so it’s no surprise that challenging religion is a theme (“Born Again Runner” is a masterpiece) but her move to New York has her writing about finding beauty in nature in the city (“I’m not a tree, I’m in a forest of buildings”) and magic & brain gardening (!) (just listen to all of “Sunstruck” and read the lyrics, it is an all-time classic for me). “Sunstruck” rides a quietly bubbly riff (like a small, indoor water feature) barely rising above a whisper, the kind of song I love, but one you could miss if you’re not paying attention. If you do listen closer you’ll be laid flat by the emotional weight, the deep truths about life decisions, and the simple metaphors about growing up, choosing to be alone, dealing with a breakup, and the work needed to discover who you really are. These have always been questions and struggles for me, but in 2023, it felt like there was nothing else. The entire record  has a calming simplicity to me (both musically & lyrically) and I really felt like growing with this record was like growing closer and getting to know a new friend. Who they are, what they like, what they’re afraid of, what deep questions they’re struggling with, what makes them truly happy, what makes them cry, what dumb things make them laugh, what little things they notice when they’re out walking, what they want out of life, what they want people to remember about them when they die...

       I was lucky enough to get to see my new “friend” in person twice this year, and both were wonderful & special. First, at Larimer Lounge back in June, while I was working, I was able to duck in and catch most of her set, when I hadn’t really listened to the record fully yet, and from that stage, I realized it was special. I wrote after that night 

       Tomberlin is hard at work building something magical. She’s “not tired / just wired for late nights staying up / reminding me I’m still alive.” She’s “looking for hope in a song or a run or a deep breath…” She “left behind some pain to get to the magic thing…” and this album & this live show is a magic thing. Special in ways that you have to listen & pay attention to. Like that warmth in the breeze. Like the smell of the rain. Like the change of the seasons…

       The second time I marked some time & space with this record was in Raleigh, North Carolina at Hopscotch Music Festival. A late night set at a packed Pour House. A sacred place I’ve wanted to visit for years. Sacred songs in sacred places. Safe against a sidewall, Tecate in hand, listening to Sarah Beth Tomberlin sing me stories of growing up. In moments like that, I’m lost & found and I honestly don’t think I’ll ever need anything more. Thank you for this record Tomberlin, I’ll keep this one close forever.

       "I went looking for myself by myself / and it wasn't close to easy, but it sure did help... / a year passes and some seeds take root / your garden is growing and mine's growing too / and the work's not always fun / but it's better than staring at the weeds & the mud / we left behind some pain / to get to the magic thing..."       

*

WALTER MARTIN   /   The Bear

       Perhaps no other album on this list spoke to me as deeply on the topic of growing older, as Walter Martin’s The Bear. In a year where I felt my age harder & realer than any year before, I think I was searching for writing just like this. The Bear was recommended to me by Will Sheff of long time fav Okkervil River, and after listening through (and probably crying and probably pouring myself a dark beer) I was blown away by Martin’s writing & musicianship. Musically, this is a true songwriter’s album, Martin recorded all the demos with just him and a guitar. He enlists some of my all-time favorite musicians Josh Kaufman (The National, Josh Ritter, The War on Drugs, Hiss Golden Messenger, a ton of other stuff!) Eric D, Johnson (Fruit Bats) and Sam Kassirer (Josh RItter) as well as Oscar-nominated composer Emile Mosseri. All this results in rich, jazzy flourishes enveloping Martin’s songs in fireplace wine & whiskey warmth. A lifer of a musician, Martin played in New York bands Jonathan Fire*Eater in the 90’s and The Walkmen in the 2000’s. He references that life a few times on the album (most notably on “The Bear” “I had a dream that I was in a mid-level rock&roll band, played every shithole night club across this entire land”) but it’s clear he lives a different, more rural life now. Wilderness abounds here; there are bears, crows, buffalo, foxes, evergreens, and ice & snow. But it is the wilderness in the recess of his aging mind that Martin chases so beautifully. There is the acknowledgement of growing older, of thinking about death (he talks about “trying to build a body of work that I’d be ok to be buried with”) and giving the listener a feeling of comfort & connection, 

       When Martin explains his writing on The Bear, he is direct, saying “These songs explain who I am and why I make this stuff.” I think most of us want to leave behind some sort of work or memory like this. To have people know you. Know who you really are and why you think like you do and why you make the stuff you do. Never is this more evident than on the achingly beautiful closer “The Song is Never Done” where Martin speaks deeply and honestly about his dreams & his family, about the morning sunlight and his life’s work. He talks of painters, his cousin, his children, eternity, the raging sea, the fallen tree, how he wants to be remembered, how he exists in circular time. He lets us in on a secret, he has been working for years on writing the perfect song (“No it’s not this one, it’s another one” he chuckles, making me chuckle and actually laugh out loud through my tears) and he encapsulates this feeling as “Cause then I will be fully known. And lonely won’t be so damn alone.” This is, to me, what I too am spending my own life working towards. It is what I spend my time & life in music for. There is a truth, there is a great happiness, there is a knowing of oneself. Underneath everything, there is recognition of a great sadness, a grand canyon of ache. But the right song, the morning light through the window, the way those drums and lap steel match up in a timeless rattle, can help us to celebrate that ache. To pull our pants on, brush our teeth, and face the day. To smile through our tears and not only face the world; but do good and pursue our life’s work. To get to know ourselves deeply and share that with others. To live another day. Because, like Martin points out, The song is never done…

       “Well there’s a big blind bear who roams this road late at night they say / you’ll see her in the shadows as she walks her lonely way… / so I sit here at my window where I dream someday she’ll pass / I see the rhododendrons I planted and I think how time moves so fast / like the moonlight & the electric light / projecting paisley patterns on the grass… / and I don’t know where my memories should go / good & bad I cherish them so… / I don’t know Lord, I don’t know / I don’t know how the story should end / and as I look up at that night sky, music begins / and stars are everywhere / come on, come on, come on, just take a look up there / they fill the darkest corners of the darkest air / and they go where satellites would never ever dare / and then suddenly over there I see the bear…”

*

WILLI CARLISLE   /   Peculiar, Missouri

       I want to open this review by quoting Willi Carlisle’s writing from the centerfold of the digipak cd version of Peculiar, Missouri. It serves as a mission statement, a scene setting, a mystical late night tale told around a campfire by a wild man named Willi, and it goes like this…

       “Amidst the great resignation & impending climate disaster, I hear the hundred-year-old echo of migrations recorded & forgotten, the old spiritus mundi in the Arkansas pines. I hear the words of forebears who lit the way for us, the great-great-grand-so-&-so’s who forged our misery & our delight in genetic code & microfilm. The yowling bastards who got us into this mess never shut up. And we’re different than them, yeah? Thank Dog! But we did come from them. They gave us songs & slogans to repeat and revise, and I wanna hear them… It’s like a miracle, this inchoate rushing, this river of history. It washes us towards the end, the big mystery. Are we bathed in its bloody backwaters? Todo pasa en este mundo? It rolls over us like a manic-episode & a makeout session, like the broad-shouldered lad at the square-dance. It crushes us like a covered wagon thrown from a skyscraper. But things ain’t hopeless, no, not yet! Not while we’re livin’...”

       And so it is that we meet Willi Carlisle. A sweet, mythical giant from the MIdwest & Arkansas. A historian & a folksinger; a poet & a storyteller. Traditional Folk music like the kind Carlisle is professing his love to on his sophomore album Peculiar, Missouri, always has its roots deep, deep in the past. Willi holds the music of that past holy; paying his respects with fiddle, accordion, banjo, mando, dobro & tambo, and some songs that sound like they could’ve soundtracked square dances on midwest summer nights 70+ years ago. Lyrically, Carlisle pushes past the past, staying true to himself with songs about queer love & acceptance, mental health, and fighting against homelessness, racism, & corporate America. In the genres Carlisle traffics in, those lyrical themes can be regrettably uncommon (although not as uncommon as you’d think, as alternative country & folk is full of young, progressive songwriters making waves and selling out shows, railing against corporate country’s racism, sexism &  homophobia). But these are also genres that revere talented players so Carlisle must pay his dues with some classic sounding songs. The upbeat numbers, like the countrified-zydeco-graceland-romp of all inclusive, singalong opening jam “Your Heart’s a Big Tent” or the breakneck, Bakersfield country slide of the Johnny Cash recalling, outwardly humorous, inwardly socially-conscious and politically challenging “Vanlife” practically burst with joy; spilling over with Carlisle’s welcoming smile & tongue-in-cheek lyrics. “The Down and Back” could be played at the square dances Carlisle loves to call (he talks about his and others’ roles in creating safe spaces in square dancing and how “queer futurism insists that these deeply rooted behaviors can create a future out of what feels like a near apocalyptic present.”) Then, there are the songs that really prove Carlisle’s worth as a songwriter. The crooner tremble of ‘I Won’t Be Afraid” belies Carlisle’s sneaky wit & irreverence when he sings “I’ve done some dumb shit and I’m gonna do some more” &  “I’ll wake up early and haul ass!” “LIfe on the Fence” is the most obviously queer song of the bunch, an aching country twanger about Memphis & Texas, crying in public, & bisexuality. 

       Truthfully, there are two songs on Peculiar that, to me, are lifers. Songs that only Willi Carlisle could write. Songs that to this day, I can’t listen to without crying. The title track “Peculiar, Missouri” is an outwardly humorous, spoken word tune about a panic attack in a midwest Wal-Mart (a “come-apart in the cosmetics aisle”) that references Carl Sandburg and takes a few magical twists & turns to contemplate life & death, love & the meaning of it all on the long drive home; looking out the window at the shooting stars. “I sure wish I knew what we were supposed to do with ourselves. If you get any good ideas, won’t you let me know?...” Maybe one of those good ideas can be found in “Tulsa’s Last Magician,” a seemingly simple folk tune about a seemingly simple life. As Carlisle says “There’s no good tricks but old ones” and his writing here magically weaves magician metaphors into memorable moments in a life that just might save us all. For those of us who think that no one quite gets quite what we are, this is our song. Space & time & stories & magic. 

"This record is in praise of those dead folkies whose honest seeking brought us this unsettling, awkward, fumbling epoch. I’m asking you, them, us: what is it that we can’t find? Who is there but us? Who else will make the world fair & just? We orphan ourselves, we drive sixteen hours, we break our bodies, we uproot whole continents in search of love, in search of our deepest human right. What foolishness! What violence! I foam & dance & sing, and look upwards for the shooting star. Stay weird, stay wild…”

*

ZETA   /   Todo Bailarlo

       So we have made it all the way to Z! One of my favorite music experiences in 2022 was my first trip to Boise, Idaho for Treefort Music Fest. One of my favorite new finds at Treefort was Zeta. Originally started as a punk band in Lecheria, Venezuela in 2003, Zeta is currently based out of Florida & North Carolina after moving to the US to chase their dreams of being touring musicians. They have toured relentlessly in the US since then, building little communities wherever they go, sharing food & music & progressive ideas from their hometown. I actually saw Zeta first at Lion’s Lair in Denver, the night before I left for Treefort and I then proceeded to see them multiple times over the course of my five days in Idaho and was repeatedly blown away by their energy, their positivity, their righteous anger, their rhythms and their NOISE! This is punk music at heart; loud & raucous, guitars wailing, drums cascading, music by the people, for the people. With their hearts planted firmly in their native Venezuela, Zeta imbues their brand of punk with afro-caribbean rhythms, cumbia, calypso, salsa, samba, bossa nova, latin jazz, a ragtag orchestra collective, swelling with electricity, a fire to be LOUD. “Todo Bailario” translates to “To Dance It All” and these are definitely songs made for dancing. Whether the sensual, swirling kind, engulfed in the rhythms from off the coast of the Caribbean Sea, or the sweat-soaked, mosh-pit, screaming kind, skin to skin with new punk friends, raging over injustices together. So many of the albums on this list were favorites of mine for their lyric writing. I’ve always loved songwriters who speak to me. The kind of lyrics that make me feel understood. Songwriters who write so openly, with such honesty, that to get to know their songs, makes me feel like their friend; Zeta’s songs do exactly that, but through the music alone. I may hardly understand any of the words they are singing, but in the way that they play and  the joy that they exude both on stage and on the album, I feel understood. The way that they let the energy of their music create a community, from Venezuela to Florida to Colorado to Idaho; I feel like an integral part of that community. Like I play a role in this lifeline of music.  I feel like their friend. I can’t wait to see my friends in Zeta again in Idaho at Treefort 2023!

       “Heal! Heal! Heal the earth with your hands…”

*

EP BONUS

IMMIGRANT’S CHILD   /   Papalotl

NIA ARCHIVES   /   Forbidden Feelingz

RITMO CASCABEL   /   Ritmo Cascabel

       Two local Denver bands with heavy Latin influences and one UK jungle/drum & bass DJ, producer & songwriter. The Papalotl EP from Immigrant’s Child is full of brooding indie rock that follows shredding guitar into heavier psych rock. RItmo Cascabel mixes similarly psychedelic rock and explosive rhythms with traditional Latin Cumbia. Finally, Nia Archives makes “future classic” music full of breakbeats & reggae samples, equal parts chill & danceable.

       “The song is never done…”

       “Music marks time & space…”