#anyway stan julien baker

[avesseloflanguage]

a curated boygenius listening experience:

Stay Down

Favor

Please Stay

Graceland Too

Anti-Curse

what's the experience ? you might ask. well. it's realizing you have something to swim back to on the shore.

[ravenboysandcrows]

welcome to my blog!

"What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren't chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway." - Inej Ghafa, Crooked Kingdom

Hello! Welcome to my goofy little blog. I’m Maya, I’m 15, and I’m a really delusional hopeless romantic and dreamer. This is just a random little thing I decided to start. I will mainly be reblogging things and occasionally I might add a headcanon or little rambling/thought I have. As my bio says, I am obsessed with fictional bird boys, so the Raven Boys from the Raven Cycle and the Crows from Six of Crows.

some basic info about me: white/caucasian, she/they, fifteen, lesbian, infp, scorpio, ravenclaw, sweet tea addict, cat lover, huge reader, introvert, english and history lover, autumn stan, apple music > spotify, folklore and evermore girlie, kinda mentally unstable (😅), perfectionist, suffers from a lot of burn out

Hobbies: reading, listening to music, writing fanfiction, watching anime, napping, baking, hiking, deep intellectual conversations and debates, playlist-making, procrastinating, overthinking everything at 3 a.m.

Artists: Phoebe Bridgers (probably my favorite), Julien Baker, Lucy Dacus, boygenius, Mitski, beabadoobee, Taylor Swift, Cavetown, Lizzy McAlpine, Searows, Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Jason Isbell, Elliott Smith, Death Cab for Cutie, Bright Eyes, the Lumineers

Books: Six of Crows duology, the Raven Cycle, King of Scars duology, Lonely Castle in the Mirror, the Secret History, Normal People, Conversations with Friends, Legends and Lattes, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, Into the Wild, Slaughterhouse Five

TV Shows + Movies: Coraline, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Spy x Family, Skip and Loafer, Fruits Basket, A Silent Voice, Gintama, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Haibane Renmei, Natsume’s Book of Friends, basically any Studio Ghibli movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wolfwalkers, the Breadwinner, Juno, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, Shadow and Bone, Lockwood and Co.

Characters: Wylan Van Eck, Inej Ghafa, Nina Zenik, Jesper Fahey, Ronan Lynch, Adam Parrish, Blue Sargent, Noah Czerny, Francis Abernathy, Connell Waldron, Coraline Jones, Alphonse Elric, Yuki Sohma, Saki Hanajima, Shoya Ishida, Kagura Yato, Natsume Takashi, Ash Fox (not a furry I promise 😭)

Thank you for visiting my blog! Feel free to ask or message me anytime!

[goddamnfight]

Just watched Julien bakers reaction not ready for it last night and anyway Julien baker confirmed rep stan.

[seventeensecs]

what if it’s all black baby, all the time?

[losersclub3000]

Stenbrough playlist??🥺(if you like the ship, if not then maybe just a Bill playlist??)

i love stenbrough!! we all good bb 🧡

1. always by panic! at the disco

okay first of all this song is just So soft. takes me apart every time. like “when the world gets too heavy/put it on my back/ill be your levy” just them supporting each other without expectation/hesitation... theyve been friends so long they Know what the other needs without words... also “im the light blinking at the end of the road/blink back to let me know” maybe not them Talking about it cause theyre young and scared and not good with words but they both Know. i need to lie down its just so soft

2. the anchor by bastille

this song makes me hhhh okay so. “you’re the anchor that i tie to my brain/’cause when it feels like im lost as sea/youre the song i sing again and again” bill feeling lost at sea in his grief and guilt for georgie and stan grounding him and bringing him back to reality... stan getting lost in his fear and trauma and thinking of bill even in his last moments...... hhhhhhh also “let the years roll on till the static comes/cause you cut through all the noise”

3. talk me down by troye sivan

just!!!!!! so sweet and soft!!!! feels very Them im tender

4. foot of your bed by shakey graves

okay this is like. both of them kind of Know that something is going to be happening when they leave derry (theyve seen it with bev and ben; neither of them write or call like they promised they would) and they just. are trying to ignore it while knowing its coming up fast anyway. “nothing’s forever/love’s light as a feather/or so it’s been said/seeing is believing/the heart is deceiving/ or so i have read” also it just has a really dreamy sort of creepy kind of feel which i think fucks

5. shadowboxing by julien baker

this one isn’t quite a ship song but i think it applies rly well to either bill or stan... “singin’ too loud in church/screamin’ my fear into speakers/i collapse or burst/whichever comes first/i know you were tryin to help/but youre only makin it worse” just,,, after it and Not Coping Well and isolating themselves bc they feel alone and no one knows how to help.. i am upset

send me a ship or a character for a playlist + analysis! ♡

[youcantfiremebecauseiquit]

thanks for the articles you linked, though the ny times one is behind a paywall. personally, i don't care what others have to say about her on some gossip forum. i used to read gossip forums tho and imo they make you obsessively dislike or hate people even when what they did isn't that egregious, and personally made me more miserable. anyway, yeah, i think saying she didn't come from money or wasn't raised with money when her parents were and are well off obviously doesn't add up. i don't think that necessarily means that she was always helped by her parents, especially if they didn't/don't have a good relationship. i don't think the adhd thing is that bad. it's not bad for her to say she suspects she has adhd and to give a basic example and tie it into her music career for an article answer. i don't see her saying she self diagnosed or making a mockery. she said one thing, and for all any of us know, she did seek a diagnosis after this suspicion. i don't particularly mind the guitar thing, either. thanks for substantiating the money thing, but the rest seems to be opinion backed by that gossip forum, which isn't a source. it's not really enough to make me dislike or hate her, as it's one lie, but that's just me. it's fine if you dislike her.

Gossip forum shit doesn’t make me hate people, as I said I don’t hate Phoebe Bridgers, I have to reason to. I like reading gossip on rock musicians someitmes when i’m bored, I’m not even that much engaged into it. I don’t think she lives on parent’s money now, probably tried to make her own money at some point, but she said she grew with no money which growing relates to her young years. Idk if i get it rigth but from these clips of interviews it looks like she’s on good terms with mother but on bad (or used to) with her father. I think boasting that you were so lowkey/without money but somehow you made it even though it’s a lie is stupid. And it’s so common, tons of LA-native rock musicians/artists make up “poverty” bullshit stories like that, to seem better or more interesting, even though a lot of them had rich parents, connections and lots of opportunites. I think it’s unfair, dressing up as some working class person who had it hard while it’s an obvious lie. 

Idk if she had diagnosis later, she just justified her suspicion in a weird/stupid way IMO - this could be anything, or nothing. But who knows. Like I said money thing is unconfirmed, so we can ignore it anyway. I think her fans are more willing to forgive her more things as look at her differently than strangers unrelated to fandom. I’m just not into it, her music is very unoriginal, it sounds like all those others indie girls like Snail Mail, Julien Baker, etc and I find her overall online and press behaviour childish and cringy and full of herself. That being said I kind of just commented randomly on that other post, I don’t mean to “cancel” her or make her fans hate her or whatever. Kinda regret posting that at all cause it seems like Phoebe Bridgers has rabid stans throwing themselves at others just cause someone dislikes her (not talking about you here though!) (But guess Phoebe has problem with disliking others too, she said people disliking 1975 band is “sexist” cause it’s a band for teenage girls so it’s sexist against those girls. WTF lol) I think the lying about money thing repelled me the most more than anything. Either way I don’t mind if someone likes her nonetheless. so peace 

[cancatervation]

favourite music 2017

The affording of enormous weight to barely concealed fragility and vulnerability; when I pore over the contents of my iTunes from the last twelve or so months it’s plainly apparent that this is the hill I’ve elected to die on. Almost all the albums I found myself infatuated with at some point or another in 2017 meditated upon desire, the transience of romance, and the anguish that often accompanies its pursuit.

I’m acutely aware of how oddly this contrasts with my own life, which for the past almost-two-years has been romantically fulfilling in the way that my previous 25 absolutely weren’t. On this, I would say two things. First, that stability is elusive even (maybe especially?) for the most outwardly rose-coloured of us, and that maintaining relationship hygge takes compromise and is not easy, and for those reasons feelings of vulnerability are never far from the front of my mind; and, second, that it’s testament to the skill of certain songwriters and performers that their work was able to make this gay-ass conventionalist really feel something every now and again last year.

I wouldn’t want to suggest that I only just worked out that the theatrical presentation of desire is something I’m drawn to, but certainly there were some things in the past year that I really did begin to understand. Theatricality is often used in a critical sense as pejorative; something that is too extra, that goes too far, that is all tell and no show. Despite its predisposition towards excess, musical theatre has, for instance, always played out as sterile and spurious to me. (Sorry. And look at it this way, you don’t ever need to worry about getting me tickets to Hamilton). It’s so dramatic that it becomes too dramatic; your self-awareness isn’t allowed the chance to be suspended, even for a moment. An album like Lorde’s Melodrama makes its intentions apparent before you’ve even heard a note of it, but its theatrics (and there are many - think of the wailed chorus of “Writer In The Dark”, the gory car crash of “Homemade Dynamite”, the bridge in “Supercut” that accelerates like you’re on a bike rushing down a hill) are as easily consumed by sitting silently in tears as they are dancing, or walking, or lifting heavy weights, or running up a hill (to make or not to make a deal with God), or lying in blissful supta baddha konasana. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that hyperemotional vulnerability is for all seasons and for all hours of the day and I am now happy to welcome it into every aspect of my life.

I wrote over fifty blurbs for various songs on the Singles Jukebox last year. Some I loved, some I hated, what’s new. I wrote a blurb for “Praying”, Kesha’s first solo single in nearly five years, which turned out to be both the highest scoring song on the site for 2017 and the champion of my personal “list”. I sort of said all this already on the Jukebox, but my love for “Praying” lies nearly entirely in the way Kesha leans so heavily into her aphorisms, finding new ways to bring profundity to ostensibly simple lines like “I’m proud of who I am”. (Contrast this with most of Taylor Swift’s 2017 work, which forewent specific detail in favour of portentously loaded maxim, but forgot about nuance and came up mostly dry). When Kesha punctuates her sermon with a thunderous kick drum, it’s basically game over. As the stories of survivors of sexual assault, abuse and harassment began to dominate news media in the second half of the year, the song only gathered further resonance.  

Lorde’s album held court as my favourite for most of the year. A promo image released by Kelela at the beginning of August threatened a coup. The odds shortened a few days later upon the release of its lead single and the arrival of the full album at the beginning of October marked the tangible takeover. Take Me Apart is all juxtaposition, which when applied to albums is often code for jumbled quagmire, but here there’s too much attention to detail, steadfastness of narrative, and, er, feeling, to get mixed up in anything like that. It see-saws between playful flirting, introspection, self-acceptance, control, loss of control, falling slowly through the sky, and falling fast through the abyss. I love it so much. It’s also very queer and very Black. Support Black queer art! Especially when it’s this well crafted.

Aside from all THAT, my favourite things in music last year were Moses Sumney’s Tiny Desk Concert, attending the Lorde show in the Botanic Gardens,  the line “every single day I fight another war; every single night I feel more powerful!” in Rina Sawayama’s “Take Me As I Am”, and Rihanna telling Diplo his music sounded like a “a reggae song at an airport”.

My ten favourite songs of 2017 were:

1. Kesha “Praying” - as above and here;

2. Lorde “Green Light” - see here. The score given, however, is wrong. Add another point.

3. Sigrid “Strangers” - see here. I can’t wait until she’s everywhere and everyone knows her; her potential to me scans as “unlimited / infinite / fucking enormous, if it must be quantifiable”.

4. MUNA “I Know a Place”. The album version is acceptable but I’m also partial to this live one, which involves some changes to the lyrics.

5. Tove Lo “Disco Tits”. Like a wonky, filthy Kylie B-side played underwater.

6. Kelela “Turn To Dust”. Refer also to the first set of songs below. She didn’t play this at her concert this week, which is lucky, because otherwise its title may have proved prophetic.

7. Nilüfer Yanya “Baby Luv” - see here. See also dirgey diatribe above re: vulnerability.

8. Rae Morris “Do It” - I’ve become more and more besotted with this as time has passed and am not sure whether I’m most impressed by a) the wordplay b) the ping-ponging percussion in the second verse c) the subtle yet giant switch-up halfway through d) the soaring vocals or e) managing all of the above in less than 3 and a half minutes.

9. Rina Sawayama “Alterlife” - it did not take me long to request for lamination of a stan card for a popstar who loves key changes and here deftly incorporates influences as diverse as the Need For Speed soundtrack, Samantha Mumba and Madonna at her glassiest.

10. Tove Styrke “Mistakes” - see here. I’m ready for her to run away with 2018, in or out of a wedding dress.

Aside from those, here are some other songs I enjoyed in 2017, variously categorised and (with the “top 10″) collected in a Spotify playlist, located here:

Songs that can make you feel like you’re floating slowly heavenward

Björk “Arisen My Senses”

Charli XCX “Track 10”

Julie Byrne “Natural Blue”

Julien Baker “Appointments”

Moses Sumney “Quarrel”

Rae Morris “Do It (Nico Muhly Dance Remix)”

Sampha “(No One Knows Me) Like The Piano”

Sevdaliza “Loves Way”

Slowdive “Slomo”

St. Vincent “Slow Disco”

Susanne Sundfør “Undercover”

Dance music that I barely pay any attention to throughout the calendar year and then become unusually enthusiastic about come end-of-year-list season

Bicep “Vale”

Gerd Janson x Shan "Surrender”

Honey Dijon “Catch The Beat”

Jad & The “Strings That Never Win”

Kink “Perth”

Minor Science “Volumes”

Octo Octa “Adrift (Avalon Emerson’s Furiously Awake Version)”

Shanti Celeste “Make Time”

SW. “Untitled B2”

The xx “On Hold (Jamie xx Remix)”

Yaeji “Raingurl”

Songs for the summer gloaming

Charlotte Day Wilson “Doubt”

Daniel Caesar “Blessed”

Frank Ocean “Chanel”

Jessie Ware “Stay Awake, Wait For Me”

Ladi6 “Guru”

Rachel Foxx “Happen To Me”

Sampa The Great “Bye River”

Sevyn Streeter “Before I Do”

Syd “Body”

Tyler, The Creator “Garden Shed feat. Estelle”

Plaintive songs for grey afternoon walks

Alvvays “Dreams Tonite”

Amandla Stenberg “Let My Baby Stay”

HAIM “You Never Knew”

Kehlani “Advice”

Khalid “Winter”

Lana Del Rey “Love”

Laura Marling “Next Time”

Paramore “Forgiveness”

Perfume Genius “Die 4 You”

St. Vincent “Happy Birthday, Johnny”

SZA “Prom”

Taylor Swift “New Year’s Day”

Best bangers

Amber Mark “Heatwave”

Charli XCX “Lipgloss feat. Cupcakke”

Charli XCX “Porsche feat. MØ”

Charlotte Gainsbourg “Deadly Valentine”

Charly Bliss “Glitter”

Drake “Get It Together feat. Jorja Smith & Black Coffee”

Dua Lipa “New Rules”

Haiku Hands “Not About You”

Ibibio Sound Machine “Give Me A Reason”

ionnalee “Samaritan”

J. Balvin x Willy William “Mi Gente feat. Beyoncé”

J. Hus “Did You See”

Jessie Ware “Your Domino”

Jorja Smith x Preditah “On My Mind”

Kah-Lo “Fasta”

Kelela “Truth Or Dare”

Kendrick Lamar “LOYALTY. feat. Rihanna”

Kllo “Last Yearn”

Leikeli47 “Miss Me”

Lorde “Sober”

Maliibu Miitch “4AM”

Miguel “Banana Clip”

Nite Jewel “2 Good 2 Be True”

Paramore “Hard Times”

Phoenix “J-Boy”

Rina Sawayama “Take Me As I Am”

Ronika “Better Than Ever”

Rose Elinor Dougall “All At Once”

Sigrid “Don’t Kill My Vibe”

Stormzy “Big For Your Boots”

The Horrors “Something To Remember Me By”

Tove Lo “Shedontknowbutsheknows”

Whethan “love gang feat. Charli XCX”

Wolf Alice “Don’t Delete The Kisses”

Finally, here are thirty albums I loved last year. Onwards and upwards!

1. Kelela Take Me Apart

2. Lorde Melodrama

3. SZA Ctrl

4. Fever Ray Plunge

5. Charly Bliss Guppy

6. Wolf Alice Visions Of A Life

7. Rina Sawayama RINA

8. Jessie Ware Glasshouse

9. Tove Lo Blue Lips

10. Charli XCX Pop 2

11. MUNA about u

12. Moses Sumney Aromanticism

13. Sevdaliza ISON

14. St Vincent MASSEDUCTION

15. Susanne Sundfør Music For People In Trouble

16. Ibeyi Ash

17. Sampa The Great Birds & The Bee9

18. Kink Playground

19. Daniel Caesar Freudian

20. Bicep Bicep

21. Sophia Kennedy - Sophia Kennedy

22. Miguel War & Leisure

23. Laura Marling Semper Femina

24. Ibibio Sound Machine Uyai

25. Jen Cloher Jen Cloher

26. Dua Lipa Dua Lipa

27. The xx I See You

28. Honey Dijon The Best Of Both Worlds

29. Kesha Rainbow

30. Leikeli47 Wash & Set