#also me when people use sarah by alex g in a shitty tiktok

[ewyband]

MEDIA EWY CONSOOMED IN 2022

alright queers sit down or scroll past because i’m gonna word vomit out my thought on my favourite things i’ve listened to/watched/played this year that i very much liked.

MOOSIC

ants from up there by black country new road: beautiful BEAUTIFUL album, literally 10/10 best album i’ve listened to this year (as like nearly everyone on any music reviewing site has probably also said). if you haven’t listened to it, its about a straining relationship thats painted using the failed aeroplane project ‘concorde’ as a metaphor to represent the sunk loss fallacy. fav song: good will hunting

THE UNRAVELING OF PUP THE BAND by PUP: this was my first introduction to PUP and listening to this album cumulated in me seeing them in Leeds a few months ago! its an amazing, no-skip, punk album. every single song just PUMPS ME UP !!! makes me wanna smash shit, i love it. FAV LYRIC: ‘200 BUCKS A WEEK JUST TO TALK ABOUT MY LACK OF DIRECTION? I GOT A BIT OF A COMPLEX, IN CASE THAT WASN’T CLEAR FROM THE LAST FEW SESSIONS’

The Dream Is Over - PUP: because i loved the latest PUP album so much i literally just had to listen to this. i only listened to this for the first time a few weeks ago and i’d even go as far to say that its better than tuoptp for sure. again, every single song just fucking goes so hard its insane. i just put this shit on when im walking or gaming and i feel like a mad man, i feel like im dancing in a stadium full of people and we’re all feeling a strong sense of melancholy and violence. i love it. fav song: sleep in the heat (editors note: i didnt know what this song was about until i went to learn it on guitar and looked at the lyrics for the first time and it was so fucking sad it nearly made me cry. RIP norman. im sure you were a great friend)

trick - alex g: this album isn’t my introduction to alex g (lincoln’s sandy cover was) but it was my introduction to their wider discography. i first heard sarah on tiktok and just that intro midi flute and guitar strums flung me back into my childhood. i was playing tig in the playground again, i was making up games in the church car park again, i was scraping my knee trying to climb trees way too tall for me again. this album leaves me with a lot of nostalgia from my angsty-nirvana-listening teen years to my young-dumb childhood years. i love it. fav song: sarah (i also have a major love-hate relationship with the song ‘whale’)

God Save The Animals - alex g: the natural step from ‘trick’ was to look at their new album released this year!!! this is SUCH an interesting album. it goes from classic alex g to some crazy hyper pop type stuff and i LOVE it. i super super love the percussion and the way that the vocals are changed and mangled and distorted in so many different ways. it doesn’t necessarily have any earworms per-say but it does have some pretty incredible new sounds that have really inspired me to develop my own style and try some of the effects mr.g has used in this record. fav song: runner

Be The Cowboy - mitski: my first exposure to mitski was from my partner playing their songs on the car and i never really properly understood it until i saw her live. theres just a pure controlled rage about mitski thats hard to describe in words. its a snarl between words. its letting someone know that they fucked you up in an eloquent hand written letter. i love the pumping synths on this album. i love how mitski can push emotion through her voice to tell a story. sometimes she belts, sometimes she sings softly but you can tell when theres rage behind her voice and i love it. fav song: washing machine heart

Hold on Now, Youngster... - Los Campesinos!: theres something about 2000′s indie music that was particularly made in the UK thats so special because growing up there is such an individual experience that it can’t be translated to anywhere else in the world (much like growing up anywhere else!). lc! manages to capture this and put it into song. its about all the boring shitty themes like love and breakup but telling it through the way we interact with each other. through letters, through mixtapes, through inside jokes and superstitions you made yourself. i love love LOVE the horns in this album and how they work with the violin -- its almost poetic at times. every song on this album slaps, i love the outro. fav song: You! Me! Dancing! 

Blues and Roots - Charles Mingus: i got really into jazz due to my uni course having a section on it and i found myself particularly fond of a sub-genre of jazz called ‘hardbop’ and this charles mingus fella is INSANE at it. listening to this whilst walking feels amazing, its like i can see different shapes and colours flashing in my brain, with every bop and sax solo it just hits so hard. fav song: moanin’

GAMES

Hollow Knight: the art in this game is stunning first a foremost, you start in an unknown world and you are given NOTHING in terms of lore. even the community to this day does not fully understand the lore and honestly?? i love it. it gives me a sense of child-like wonder wandering caverns looking for secrets and tiny tinges of lore and it actually gets surprisingly emotional?? it deals with themes of loss, grief and parenthood. its very goth, very melancholic and very fucking difficult. i highly recommend this! i sunk around 60 hours into it

Omori: this game will be super difficult to really talk about because I don’t wanna spoil anything at all but: its a really beautiful portrayal of dissociation and trauma. like a lot of people, i really resonated with sunny and his struggles with fears, basic ones like drowning or heights of course, but also more innate fears like the fear of growing up and losing friends or the grief that comes with losing your childhood. If you’re in your late teens or early 20′s it’ll probably of remind you of a time you forgot and a time that you’ll never have back. very emotional game.

Fortnite: okay mikey deafpony introduced me and the friendgroup to this and it fucks so hard. i never really thought i was into battle royale’s but this game just makes it fun and interesting all the time. yeah, okay, the updates are annoying but it keeps the game constantly fresh and new. i highly recommend playing with friends! was pleasantly surprised with it.

WATCHING THINGS

I didn’t really watch that many tv shows/movies this year so i just put them into one thing okay??

Isle of Dogs: its wes anderson. i love the humour. its not laugh out loud funny but its quick and fast paced and i loved how dark this movie gets sometimes ?? its just a lotta fun and sometimes emotional. i love the stop motion and all the artwork is super pretty. im also a weeb so like, japan yay but it does also suffer from orientalism which sucks.

Moomin (2019): Previously, I could never really get behind this version of Moomin because I didn’t like the voice actors and I didn’t like the animation. However, its really grown on me. It does take a few episodes to find its feet and some episodes do fall flat but it really does stay true to the original source material. After watching the first 2 and a bit seasons, I’d probably say that it stays closer to ‘true’ moomin than any other tv adaptation to date. I also now prefer the voice actors in this version. chris morris is hilarious as moominpappa and i liked the featuring of richard ayoade, making us one step closer to an IT crowd x moomin cross over episode. some of the episodes are actually really emotional ?? i couldn’t get over that this adaptation nearly made me cry a couple times.

Heartstopper: i love how UK schools are shown in this show because it FEELS very accurate. some of the script feels kinda GCSE drama but like, its the representation that really stood out for me. i really appreciated how they didn't just focus on the cis experiences but also trans ones too. its very cute, i liked it.

The Batman: i liked robert pattinson’s makeup (and i STOLE it) and this movie made me hold onto whatever masculinity i had left cuz lets be honest everyone wanted to be batman if u watched this movie.

OKAY THATS IT !!! THANKS IF U READ ALL OF THIS LOL

[lambkid]

when i see white people lip synching badly to strawberry blonde