#anyway yeah. this is not hipster talk but a lot of writers and artists that i adore are more or less invisible and i'll never get it

[psalmsofpsychosis]

This is gonna sound weird, but i'll forever be confused by the feedback artists get. I come across a work on ao3 and i'm like "hmm, the writing style is ordinary and the tone is lackluster, it's okay, there's effort put here so i appreciate it. I estimate this having like, 5 comments and maybe 20-something kodus" and then i look and it's got 95 comments, 500+ kodus, 80 bookmarks. And then there are works that have my soul trying to escape my body like "this is unbelievably intricate and complex and gorgeous and it's such unconventional and fresh and creative take, the writer's voice is so unique and delicate and enticing, i bet this is up there in stratosphere with the amount of feedback this has because it's so exceptional in execution" and then i look and it barely has 8 comments, maybe 20-something kodus, and it's just. It's incredibly confusing to me because i always assume that quality execution where the artist's heart is in it is obvious, other people see it like i do, and they most definitely appreciate it like i do. And there are the few people on the cusp of these two categories, people who write well and get a lot of recognition for it, good for them, but 9 out of 10 cases of good writers i stumble upon, they're practically invisible. This is less of a phenomenon in visual arts because people seem to be more freehanded with those, it's an easier medium to navigate i guess. But literature and fanfic? i'll never understand the way people navigate those. Leaving aside the "first 50 popular fics of any ao3 tag are hot dumpster fire" rule of thumb (which is very true, and the number goes higher the more popular something is), the rest of it just feels like lucky strikes to me and not really a matter of quality execution. It's not a lucky strike, it's the fact that people lean towards supporting their friends and people they love rather than judging the actual quality of the work

[georgecostanzaatemysoup]

The Perfect Date...

So, basically, this movie is about a kid named Brooks Rattigan:

They say his name about 50 times in this movie, so it’d be kind of hard NOT to remember it.

Anyway, he’s a poor kid who wants desperately to get into Yale. Kind of like Rory and her need to get into Harvard during the first 3 seasons of Gilmore Girls, but where Rory was quirky Brooks has to be self-centered or else the movie just won’t work... I guess.

The problem with Brooks’ dream is despite his good grades and extra curricular activities, he is unable to answer the one question I’m sure all of us have had problems answering:

Typical high school movie stuff... and high school stuff in general. If we’re being honest, I’m almost 30 and I can’t answer this question.

Anyway, Brooks has best friend named Murph:

Let’s just say, Murph is the reason I sat through this whole movie. He is computer smart (he’s also dyslexic and plans to write his college’s admission essay about this, which is probably one of the most interesting things that happened in this movie and wasn’t mentioned after he offhandedly said something early on... which, you know, seems to happen a lot) and has a crush on Tuna Melt Guy :

Yeah. Tuna Melt Guy, as he is called the entire movie (the guy doesn’t even get a name which is a problem in itself), orders the same sandwich every day (I guess) and their story is basically a b side, not really touched on, but we assume they end up together by the end type of deal.

There’s also this guy named... Brad the Stereotypical Douche (he has an actual name, but I can’t remember it):

Basically, Brad (or whatever his name was) made a deal with his uncle to take his cousin to a formal at her school, but his girlfriend Madison is supposedly home alone and he doesn’t want to do it. SO, Brooks volunteers because he a) needs the money for Yale and b) really wants to drive Brad’s Douche Mobile (I thought I took a screenshot but I didn’t, so just picture any stereotypical “douchey” cars and you’re golden) just once in his poor boy life.

Brad’s cousin, Celia Liberman:

Who I was kinda hoping WOULDN’T end up with Brooks (we’ll get to that) is that stereotypical “tough” girl who stomps around in her boots and throws a fit when asked to wear a dress (i.e me circa 2005-ish).

So, Brooks takes her to her dance at the most pretentious looking school I have ever fucking seen:

And they do some bad dancing (because the quirky, “tough” girl needs to be a bad dancer... I’m also a bad dancer, but I wouldn’t call myself quirky) and Brooks happens to see HER:

The girl of his “dreams” I guess. I can’t remember her name, but I’ll just call her Veronica because that’s who she plays in Riverdale.

So Veronica, apparently, has a very rich dad (according to Celia, he’s basically sleazy Batman). She’s so rich, in fact, she has actual valets at her house parties:

And she lives here (more on that later).

While on his “date” with Celia, she offhandedly mentions he should make an app where he pretends to date girls who need a date. She’s joking, but Brooks takes it seriously and asks his computer smart bestie Murph to help him make an app:

The app is basically GrubHub but for dates. Basically someone sends Brooks a message asking him to go on “dates” with them and they get to decide his personality, his outfits, and whether or not they need him to talk or listen (man, where was this shit when I was in high school) They set it up like ANYONE can use it, but only girls do in this movie (which it’s fine... I guess?).

So, Brooks starts getting messages and becomes who these girls need him to be. A salsa dancer, a cowboy, a douchebag... just whatever they needed he would do it. So, in a way, it’s not a terrible premise, but it starts to get to his head.

He basically starts pushing Murph out of the whole App process (you know, the creator of the App) and it gets to the point where they don’t really hang out anymore (again, typical high school movie plot), but again we’ll get to that in a bit.

I should probably mention Brooks’ dad:

Mister Rattigan (I can’t remember his first name) is a part time teacher and writer, but he hasn’t written anything in a while (not since his wife left him and started a new family with a new guy). He really wants Brooks to go to the college he works at, but Brooks is deadset on Yale. Which, in retrospect, knowing that your kid wanted to go there you’d think he would have been a bit more supportive.

He’s not a bad dad, not by a long shot, but he’s the typical movie parent who is quirky but wants something for his son that his son doesn’t want (until the end when he decides to go to the college his dad wants him to go to and that’s after his dad gives him a speech about how he’ll support his decision).

So, yeah, moving on. Celia calls Brooks out of the blue to ask him if he wants to pretend to date her to make her crush Franklin jealous. She uses his crush on Veronica to get him to agree. He readily does and tells her about his app.

She makes fun of it, because of course she does, on the way to the party and that’s when they end up at sleazy Batman’s house with the private valet company? I guess?

👆 Franklin 👆, of course is a pretentious hipster because he HAS to be otherwise how would Celia know that she belongs with Brooks and NOT this guy. He basically goes on one of those stereotypical music snob rants about how vinyl is the only way to appreciate music and Celia agrees because he’s cute. This I can relate to because in high school I too went along with stuff because someone happened to be cute.

So, Celia and Brooks start to “date” to make their crushes jealous. Celia also asks Franklin out because they need an “excuse” to break up. While this is happening, Brooks is supposed to be getting close to Veronica because they really don’t have any scenes together UNTIL his and Celia’s “break up,” but that doesn’t happen for a bit.

While “dating” Celia reveals that her dad is conveniently friends with the Dean of Yale and offers to ask him to talk to the Dean about meeting with Brooks. He agrees because OF COURSE he does and the meeting goes well because apparently Brooks researched the guy and lied about how one of his “interests” just so happened to coincide with the dean’s interest. Because that’s normal... I guess.

Afterward, they go and hangout with Murph who commented earlier that week about how he and Brooks weren’t hanging out as much anymore since they made the App. Despite making plans with Murph, and telling him he would not break them for the the App, Brooks does it anyway pissing Murph off in the process. And also dismissing Murph’s worries that he messed up with Tuna Melt guy when he pre made his sandwich (don’t worry, he didn’t, but again this isn’t even touched on much after this until the very end).

Needless to say, adding more drama to the story, Murph switches shifts (at the job they both share) with another dude and calls Brooks a “selfish prick” so yeah, and what pisses me off about this entire fight it takes until almost the very end for Brooks to do anything about it (on screen) which is really fucking annoying, but I won’t get into it.

Anyway, on her date with Franklin, Celia realizes they have very little in common and decides to stop whatever it was they were going to become because of that AND the fact that he reveals himself to be the graffiti artist she doesn’t like (her and Brooks have this entire conversation early on in the movie about how “Trashbag” is probably a white, overly privileged rich boy, and it turns out she was right):

Her bad date makes her “realize” she really likes Brooks (you know, like any typical high school movie... of course someone has to catch “feelings”), but he’s oblivious and doesn’t see that (which makes me wonder how these two end up together, but that’s... not important right now).

His obliviousness aside, they decide to go along with their epic “break up.” But Brooks, idiot as he is, decides to bring in some real truths that Celia had trusted him with and because of that she slapped the shit out of him:

He, being the oblivious idiot that he is, doesn’t catch on and thought seh was acting. Sending her a text that basically said “👍” and goes after the girl he “wants.”

Veronica:

The “perfect” girl... according to Brooks. Who, not surprising” was willing to makeout with him mere SECONDS after his “break up” with Celia... okay.

But, like all of these movies, the “perfect” girl dumps his ass when she realizes he’s been letting girls buy his time to go on dates with them. She’s also (rightly so) upset that he lied to her earlier about where he’s from (Celia told Veronica he was from... some uppity town when he really wasn’t and I guess he never bothered to tell her the truth).

So, yeah, Veronica wants nothing to do with him as does Celia, but Brooks tries to dance with Celia anyway (finally realizing, I guess, that he actually DOES like her at the dance AFTER Veronica walks away.

But Celia turns him down by telling him “I am not your back up” which made me go “oh, maybe these two WON’T end up together” (I was wrong).

So, Brooks has no one and he’s really sad, and he does that typical high school movie thing where he lies in bed, moping, trying to get Celia or Murph to answer his texts (they don’t.)

The next day at school, Murph and he do talk and he apologizes for pushing Murph away, and they make up. WHICH SHOULD HAVE BEEN SHOWN ON SCREEN SINCE THE SUB SHOP SCENE!!! OH MY GOD!!

Anyway, here’s them making up:

Also, “tough” girl Celia has a moment with her parents where she basically goes all John Mox on her mother and basically says, “I don’t WANT your life.” You, know as you do, but unlike Mox hers ends with a Liberman family hug:

I do not take good screenshots...

Anyway, after all of this, Brooks is seen finally writing his college admissions essay, but instead of writing to Yale (like the movie makes us believe) he decides to go to UConn like his dad wanted (plus he had a full ride so, I mean, Yale or not that’s what every kid wants when entering college) he writes a “admissions” letter to Celia basically asking her if they can date.

Yeah.

So, yeah, they start dating (as do Murph and Tuna Melt guy? I think?) or it’s implied they start dating. They kiss at least, so I’m going to assume they start dating (but they’ll probably break up six or seven times because Brooks and Celia seem like THAT couple).

It was an alright movie, I’ll admit, but it was also a typical high school flick. So, take it or leave it I guess.

Oh, one more thing, I still don’t know if he was able to answer the question regarding who he is, I stopped paying attention... mostly. Yeah.

[mint-sm]

LOS CAMPESINOS! REVIEW/ANALYSIS: Romance is Boring

Let’s talk about a word for a minute: Tryhard.

In an (at the time of writing at least) mildly recent interview with Noisey on the subject of this album, lead guitarist Tom Campesinos! (Tom Bromley) described “Romance is Boring” as “probably the most self-conscious record, and it's probably the most try-hard record as well,” describing it as a reaction to that whole “twee” and “pop” label they were most popularly recognized with from “Hold on Now, Youngster…”, and even after the release of “We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed.”

Like I said on my reviews of both albums, I feel that “Youngster” was an excellent release if only for the sound it ended up with, and not necessarily the band’s initial visions, which would then be addressed and accentuated in “Doomed,” which more clearly defined the groundwork that the band wanted to pursue underneath the indie pop exterior roof formed with “Youngster.” With this album, “Romance is Boring,” they definitely wanted to challenge that idea even further; become more experimental, create much more blaring, aggressive songs in unusual time signatures and beats, with more complex and detailed production alongside Gareth’s self-deprecatingly bitter, but intricate and atmospheric lyricism. In other words, “Romance is Boring” was a self-imposed challenge, and if they wanted to be “try-hard,” they succeeded.

At the same time though, Tom seemed to be somewhat disappointed about what the band would make in the future in comparison to this album, saying “I would never make songs like that again, at the moment I'm not in that frame of mind where I would, so when I listen to them I'm like 'shit I can't believe we made this'.” The sad truth about trying really hard to be as fucking wild and complex-sounding is that it might be something you never wanna try again because you might never, ever reach that adrenaline-fueled mindset you were in to originally craft it again in the future, and as we’ll discuss with “Hello Sadness” next time, reality just might hit you hard enough to stray away from that.

It’s a shame, but as an artist who often gets fatigued of just trying to work on a passion project for years that burns out for a while after releasing a thing, I can sympathize a bit. Creating and experimenting is very tough, and it takes a lot of time, and you will be often be surprised as hell by what you make in the end, but at the same time it can be really straining, only made bearable by sheer passion and emotion (mostly frustration, it sounds like) that, sad to say, can dissipate just like that, and getting it back isn’t something you can just “do.” And “Romance is Boring” is passionate and emotional, and the experimentation clearly did pay off, but was their process something they should be willing to go through again? Well, I don’t know Gareth and the band well-enough to decide for certain, but I’m gonna say… probably not?

CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?

But anyways, let’s talk about “Romance is Boring” itself. Simply put, as you probably might have inferred from other reviews, “Romance is Boring” is my favorite Los Camp record. They put a lot of fucking effort into this album, likely more than with any other record they’ve ever made, and it shows. It contains basically everything I think the band excels at, and even the parts it doesn’t normally do the absolute best in, they do exceptionally well here. Witty, poetic and dense lyrics, blaring, catchy, and diverse instrumentals, wild and conflicting yet consistent moods, and hauntingly vague but vivid imagery following and exploring complex and dissonant themes and narrative, such as the idea of falling in love, disappointing mental anguish, depression, creepiness, selfishness, bitter sarcasm, and regret, among others. It sounds a lot better than the emo shit it just came off as, honest.

The album is much more narratively flowing than “Youngster” or “Doomed,” and as you might expect from the title, it’s about romance, but not necessarily in a completely despondent way as it also might imply. While an overall theme it provides is one of dissatisfaction and heartbreak, once again, Los Camp’s ability to simultaneously yet fluidly meld together multiple diametrically opposed emotions shines through here.

The second track, “There Are Listed Buildings,” is a very good example of this, because the instrumentation is by far the poppiest and free-flowing track on this album, almost “Youngster”-ey in quality, with these cheery “BAH BAH, BAH BAH, BAH BAH BAH, BADDADA” choruses with what I think is a tuba or trombone, and just a wonderfully-sounding electric guitar riff pre-chorus, it all feels so bright and carnival-ly, and honestly, so are the lyrics, which are playful and strangely optimistic for the band. I think it’s about a like a couple deciding to actually pursue a relationship, with lyrics like “I think I'd do it for love, if it were not for the money / I'll take any scraps that you can give,” which is made honestly kinda cute and sweet-sounding in a sepia-tone, sarcastically hipster kinda way.

I REMEMBER BEING NAKED TO MY WAIST, THOUGH NOT IN WHICH DIRECTION 

[YOU ARE A GLUTTON FOR LOVE, CAN YOU GIVE ME SOME ROMANCE? I'M A GLUTTON FOR SIN]

However, the opposing feeling from this song comes from the exact details and the context in which this song ends up in, because other lyrics seem to reflect more of this idea that the girl is actually really a little too desperate because “You dangle fishing line for crabs, but they're not interested /  I'm your only bite,” which kinda reminds me of that XKCD comic discussing that “nice guy” that at first seems sweet and caring for a lonely girl but is actually disturbingly manipulative and creepy as shit (which some people unfortunately seem to unironically agree with). Plus, as was shown by Los Camp songs before and after, Gareth has simply never believed that “true love” exists, and this budding relationship is uh… yeah, it’s kind of doomed to not end well.

It’s made so much clearer with the song right after it, the title track, and I just love it for how utterly SPITEFUL it is. Whether these characters played by Gareth and Aleks are supposed to be the same throughout the entire album, I don’t know, but this relationship has gotten incredibly bitter and sarcastic, the instrumentation is so fucking blaring and distorted and crashy and violent at times, and the chorus features the band absolutely screaming “YOU'RE POUTING IN YOUR SLEEP, I'M WAKING STILL YAWNING, WE'RE PROVING TO EACH OTHER THAT ROMANCE IS BORING,” it’s so gleefully hateful. I don’t think I’ve heard many tracks of a mutually mentally abusive relationship that sounded this damn cathartic.

WE ARE TWO SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT 

YOU AND I, WE ARE NOTHING ALIKE 

I AM A PLEASURE CRUISE, YOU ARE GONE OUT TO TRAWL 

RETURN NETS EMPTY, NOTHING AT ALL

Really, I could go on with these tracks all day and pick apart the little intricacies of each song to dissect how great each one is, because this is probably the absolute densest Los Camp has ever gotten instrumentally and lyrically. There’s so many little moments as to what makes every track work so much, and rarely is it just as straightforward as the title track, but even when it is, the production and poetry just feel so incredibly potent, it’s essentially like instead of listening to a song and being gradually surrounded by atmosphere, “Romance is Boring” fucking clocks you with it.

Just getting out of the way, I think maybe the least experimental track on this album is “Straight in at 101,” because instrumentally, structurally, it really does feel the most straightforward, even with little moments with like a sudden blast of distortion at one point or how it immediately goes from feeling bright and upbeat to somber, then complete silence as Gareth sings about how “the talking heads count down the most heart wrenching breakups of all time / imagine the great sense of waste, the indignity the embarrassment when not a single one of that whole century was mine.”  It, and maybe “A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte” are probably the most “standard-sounding,” or like baseline to Los Camp, which doesn’t mean they’re bad, but yknow.

I’d still consider it a very strong track because it’s still very consistent, it’s got a very continuous but evolving groove to it, and the lyrics are still jam-packed with wordplay and description that paint just this really fucking selfish, but also really kinda(?) sympathetic narrator, who makes his utter disappointment with what I’m assuming was a one night stand very clear. Los Camp is a very self-aware band and Gareth’s a very self-deprecating writer, but the way he manages to be both really ugly but astoundingly relatable, and also so mean-spirited to a point where you can’t help but really laugh at how much of a shit he is is kind of admirable.

I THINK WE NEED MORE POST-COITAL AND LESS POST-ROCK

FEELS LIKE THE BUILD-UP TAKES FOREVER, BUT YOU NEVER TOUCH MY COCK 

AND WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU MEAN NOW BY, "WHAT CAN YOU EVEN EAT?" 

AND HOW DOES THAT AFFECT HOW I'LL GET OFF THIS EVENING?

Two of the most unusual tracks that I both love from this album are “Plan A” and “I Warned You: Do Not Make an Enemy of Me” (goddamn that title just makes me so giddy for some reason), with “Plan A” being probably the harshest, off-sounding and most punk-like track Los Camp has ever recorded, with its atonal, distorted mashing chords and screaming call/response vocals (it’s so fn weird hearing Aleks sound panicked and frantic, but goddamn I miss her) before suddenly segueing into like this sing-songy, but still distorted and oddly free-flowing, almost twee-like chorus, and “I Warned You” sounding so stilted and awkwardly tense yet cheery with its weird tempo and beat shifts, almost feeling kinda outsider-music-y at times.

BROKE DOWN LAUGHING AND SCREAMING FOR MORE 

BUT IF THIS CHANGED YOUR LIFE, DID YOU HAVE ONE BEFORE?

Another personal favorite track is the intro, “In Medias Res,” which starts off the album just perfectly, starting with like these gentle, but already kinda already compressed and messy acoustic guitar chords before slowly building up into this like surprisingly reverbed, ethereal and charming instrumental, with a backing that almost sounds like it came from like a shoegaze or dark dream pop track, but with like this really, dreamy and cute duet vocals and glockenspiel. It sounds so oddly saddening yet so weirdly uplifting, especially with that little breakdown near the end with all the distortion effects placed against the glockenspiel, keyboards and brass; I’m pretty sure you can hear at some points Gareth screaming some lines, but it’s so blended-in with the instrumental, but it sounds kinda… beautiful.

And the lyrics, oh god, the lyrics. For some reason, the first and last lines just have so much damn atmosphere loaded into something that just feels so… simple. I can’t explain it without the context, but the very first line, “But let’s talk about you for a minute,” just really gets to me for some reason, probably because within this album itself, it just says so damn much about its themes, that while incredibly toxic and awesomely angry at times, can also get really intimate, melancholy, and depressing, especially with the song’s outro lines:

“IF YOU WERE GIVEN THE OPTION OF DYING PAINLESSLY IN PEACE AT FORTY-FIVE, BUT WITH A LOVER AT YOUR SIDE, AFTER A FULL AND HAPPY LIFE, IS THIS SOMETHING THAT WOULD INTEREST YOU? WOULD THIS INTEREST YOU AT ALL?”

Keep in mind, Gareth believes that true love doesn’t exist.

And in a really cruel reality, despite how playful, giddy and sarcastic or self-deprecating it can be dancing around the topic, Los Camp STILL can’t prove to us that heartbreak, however, isn’t anything but incredibly real. The final 3 tracks on this album (not counting the bonus track, “Too Many Flesh Suppers”) perfectly reflect this mindset.

The fan favorite “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future” is simply put Los Camp’s most beautiful, poignant track they’ve ever made (and also one of the most devastating and emo), and it serves as one hell of an emotional climax for the album. While Los Camp hasn’t really been one for imagery and instead prefers mood most of the time, this track is the perfect marriage of the two; everything about it just seems to paint this incredibly vivid mindset about a depressed, suicidal and utterly broken lover (if it’s the same one from “There Are Listed Buildings,” it’s even more so), who I can just imagine is like sitting on the far end of a dock on a very gloomy beach with gray overcast and an sea, maybe like rocking her legs back and forth sitting on the edge with her feet just touching the salt water as she just stares hopelessly out onto the endless horizon. Y’know, happy stuff.

The lyrics on this track are just some of the most utterly concise and madly specific descriptions Gareth’s ever written, with simultaneously pointless yet (ugh I normally hate this word in this context but) deep and precise lyrics, and Gareth’s vocal delivery just slowly escalates to this heartfelt, like pouring-out-his-soul-in-desperation, perfect climax. Everything about this track just works, and it plunges you into this visceral, atmospheric world of gray skies, salty seas and contemplation, where it really does feel like that the sea is a great place to think of the future… or maybe a lack of one.

SHE SAID ONE DAY TO LEAVE HER, SAND UP TO HER SHOULDERS, WAITING FOR THE TIDE

TO DRAG HER TO THE OCEAN, TO ANOTHER SEA'S SHORE, THIS THING HURTS LIKE HELL... 

BUT WHAT DID YOU EXPECT!?

But like I said, Los Camp likes to dance around these sort of maudlin themes, and immediately after one of the bleakest tracks they’ve made, we suddenly get more cheery, upbeat, and snide in “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” whose first lyrics are literally the band shouting “CAN WE ALL PLEASE JUST CALM THE FUCK DOWN!?”, singing another almost-kinda-sorta indie-twee track about a couple stupidly in love, but we all know that it’s all unhealthy and it’s going to end poorly, right? Like, any song about love that has the chorus “The story of the winter I forgot how to speak, my mind was like a nation's flag but my breeze was too weak / How they dragged me to the hospital saying I had gone deaf / But I heard everything they said, it's just I had no interest,” no matter how crowd-pleasing and roucous and glockenspiel-accompanied it sounds, can’t have a story that ends well, right?

Well, considering how the album ends with “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,” a much slower, a lot more ethereal-sounding ballad with the lines “Run the water 'til it scalds, you know that I'm listening / Pitter-patter runs the shower, hits the bare porcelain” and “I fall to my knees, my piss-soaked jeans / The first time, the last time, all the times in between”... it’s probably safe to assume yes, it didn’t. Actually, considering “The Sea is a Good Place” and the chillingly repeated outro of “I CAN’T BELIEVE I CHOSE THE MOUNTAINS EVERY TIME YOU CHOSE THE SEA,”  it probably ended VERY horribly. And… that just fucking sucks, you know?

Goddamn, there’s still so many tracks I didn’t cover, but damnit, if I make this any longer, this is gonna just turn into a track-by-track thesis paper, since there’s just so much to talk about. These are basically the major elements I love the most and find the most worth-addressing, but the thing is that this entire album feels worth addressing, because once again, it’s just so damn packed with just about everything I feel makes an album work in my eyes. There’s not a single track that’s not worth analyzing and appreciating, but christ, there are only so many hours in the day! D:

BY NOW IT'S JUST THE THREE OF US

ME, YOUR SHADOW, YOUR ECHO

“Romance is Boring” is just a fantastic album. It manages to contain all of the things I feel an album needs to be heavily engaging, and the fact that most of them came from a band who normally doesn’t do that great in some of those aspects such as actual concrete description or instantly recognizable context makes this feel all the more surprising and welcoming.

And that’s where it all comes down to: it is just really, really engaging. It’s powerful without being overbearing, it’s noisy while being incredibly and consistently precise, it’s descriptive while being pretty accessible, and it’s varied but also manages to maintain a consistent sound Los Camp have finally pinpointed down as that which can be identified as uniquely their own. It plays up the band’s unique strengths just enough that you never feel alienated or feel forced or anything like that, and not only is it as adventurous as the band might ever get, it’s one hell of a fucking adventure. Hail try-hardiness. (5/5)

...So what happens now?

FAVES: “In Medias Res,” “There Are Listed Buildings,” “Romance is Boring,” “We’ve Got Your Back,” “Plan A,” “Straight in at 101,” “Heart Swells/100-1,” “I Just Sighed. I Just Sighed, Just So You Know,” “The Sea is a Good Place to Think About the Future,” “This is a Flag. There is No Wind,” “Coda: A Burn Scar in the Shape of the Sooner State,”

[andrewbiscontini]

Animal Tracks

It’s been a stack of years since I last saw my friend Dave, not since before he relocated to California. We shared an independent streak, coupled with moderately obsessive work habits. It’s not unusual for me to go years without seeing people I care about very much, and I think it was the same for Dave.

Sometimes people die in the interregnum.

Dave died yesterday, in Oakland, California, at age 40, in a tragic accident. I’ll address that later. First, I want to tell you about my friend Dave.

I first heard about him from Brian Geltner, who I met while he was playing drums in Nervous Cabaret, and who’d recently scored a movie I’d made. Brian is both an immensely talented multi-instrumentalist and a singularly great guy. Somehow, everyone I’ve met through him is similarly stand-up and also, improbably, immensely talented.

“You gotta hear this guy Dave Deporis,” Brian said, “He’s pretty special.”

So Edna and I went with him to see Dave play at 169 Bar on East Broadway. Maybe it was ’04? I’m bad with years. And yeah, holy shit. The guy was special. His voice was spectacular: resonant, soaring, ghostly and full, an elemental human voice through which you could also hear that other thing, that coherent trans-dimensional energy which animates a human. Call it a soul.

I liked the songs, too. “Swan King” and “Catholic Smoke Ring” are still favorites. I’ve seen a bit of live music, and not all of it sticks with me like those songs that night. “The Adult Song” maybe toed right up to the twee line for my tastes, but it was a Millennial anthem a decade before anyone cared what a  Millennial was.

The title of this post comes from a song of his I heard later, at Nervous Cab’s first record release in the basement of 68 Jay, and only heard him sing that once. It encapsulated what those performances felt like: a singular moment in this world, imagined or seen only by one human’s eyes, encoded into words and sound and brought to life in the mind of the listener, becoming a shared emotional experience.

For Dave, the practice of music was fundamentally and profoundly spiritual. He taught himself to sing and to play guitar in service to the embodiment and expression of that spirit. And he was good at it.

But he rarely admitted to being satisfied with a performance, and he was never satisfied with a recording.

It was enough to drive you crazy. Peter Himmelman touches on the phenomenon in the excellent tribute to Dave he posted at Forbes.

It wasn’t that Dave never finished things, it was that he would never declare anything finished. Nothing, no matter how good, ever got his stamp of approval. Everything came with a caveat: it was a demo, it was a scratch mix, it was okay for now but don’t play it for anyone. Great recordings went unheard because there was no correct order in which to present them.

His talent wasn’t unrecognized. People wanted to work with him, to record him. But jeezis the guy was uncompromising. That’s not to say he was a diva: he wasn’t. Nor was he exactly a perfectionist: he appreciated a beautiful aberration. Nor, for all of his eccentricities, was he some precious naïf (I never quite got his David Who Loves the Sky persona, but whatever it was it definitely wasn’t a shtick).

He understood the realities of the music industry and he understood the economic necessities of life, and life as an artist. The guy worked his ass off. He could be pushy, sometimes to a fault. And he was tough enough to withstand the brutal shitkicking that Bloomberg era New York delivered to artists.

Money for survival was always a problem. He was expert at acquiring recording equipment on Ebay, getting a couple demos out of it and flipping it at enough of a profit to keep him going.

But Dave was not, and was never going to be, a “professional” musician in the industrial sense. He put in the work, alright. But for Dave it was impossible for the practice of music to be anything other than a spiritual act, and certainly not an obligatory, commercial one. His resourcefulness, resilience, and commitment to making music were astounding.

The danger with that approach, of course, is that in New York City, where the stress level and the demands of the dollar are relentless, the psychic conduits of spiritual energy can quickly fray and short-circuit spectacularly.

Which is to say that not every performance was transcendent. Even with a decent sound system and a friendly audience, things could go haywire. I remember one night in particular. Fred Wright and Matt Morandi put together a show at Charlotte Glynn’s loft. I think Fred and Matt played as Pntgrl, Andrea Hansen did a great solo Painting Soldiers set, and Dave played.

He was frazzled when he showed up, visibly agitated, and the performance kinda went sideways. Dave never phoned it in in those situations. Rather, he’d just open all the valves and let loose, which could have the effect of exacerbating the short.

Anyway, after he played, some angry dude showed up demanding to know where Dave was. Dave managed to dodge the guy for a minute, but it wasn’t a huge loft and the dude confronted him. Apparently this asshole had been harassing Dave on the phone all day, claiming that he was owed money because he’d voluntarily sent out an email blast about one of Dave’s previous shows, and felt like that entitled him to a cut of the door as a promoter. He was clearly desperate and nuts, and threatening. I remember Freddy expertly defusing the situation and sending the guy packing.

And I know Dave got frustrated seeing people who weren’t any more talented than him get a lot of attention and press and notoriety and shit. It’s the kind of scene bullshit that you can’t let mess with you, but it can be overwhelming in this city, and I remember it feeling particularly noxious in those days.

The thing is, there’s no one scene in New York City, whether you’re a painter or a writer or a musician or an artisanal cheesemaker. It’s a city of 9 million badasses. There are hundreds of scenes. And all of them think they’re the scene. But the one with the most money around it tends to crow about itself the loudest and, certainly back then, usually draws all the press. There was a sense that going to shows was more of a fashion statement for most people than it was a musical experience. It turned me off from a lot of stuff, for sure.

And I think it got to Dave. He told me once he was more comfortable walking into a roofers’ bar in rural Florida where he didn’t know anybody and playing a set than he was a Brooklyn hipster spot.

The analogy I make about living in New York is that it’s like the relationship between the alternator and the battery in a car. When the relationship is healthy, it draws from you and charges you in equal measure. When it’s not, it can fry you.

And all the crappy stuff about New York just kept getting crappier, and pretty soon the only “creatives” anybody seemed to give a shit about were the cheesemakers.

I found out Dave had split town on social media. He was in Northern California. It looked like he was happy making music there, and that he’d found a community that gave a shit about it, and him.

Brian told me he hung out with him the last time he was in town. Dave had played a bunch of his new stuff for him, and was actually excited about the recordings he’d been working on.

Then, sitting at an outdoor café in Oakland, somebody snatched Dave’s laptop. According to reports, Dave chased after them to get it back. They got into a car. Dave grabbed them and wouldn’t let go. They peeled out. He died of his injuries.

I don’t think for a minute that Dave cared about the machine, costly as it may have been.

But his music was in it.

It is one of the ultimate evil banalities of American life that no matter how hard you work for what little you have, there is always someone ready to steal it from you.

I’m sure that banal human didn’t intend to end my friend’s life when they yanked his laptop.

I’m also sure that Dave didn’t deliberately risk his life to get it back. He put his whole life into his music every moment he breathed. I doubt it was other than instinct.

It was a horrible accident, a wrenching tragedy, the loss of a special human, and a real friend. My heart breaks for his family, for the life-long friends of his I got to know, Daniel Greenspan and Jared Whitham, and for the many other friends like me Dave collected over his many travels and his too few years, whose love and support I know he felt, appreciated, and returned.

So, Dave. 

Thanks for that Radiohead ticket at the Tower. It was a great show, but the fonder memory is wandering around rainy Upper Darby with you beforehand, swapping stories, talking music and hearing song snippets.

Thanks for helping me move my mom from Pennsylvania to Virginia. It was a brutal job, and you held your own against my grandmother with grace and wit.

Thanks for the friendship.

I cannot imagine you coming to rest in whatever quantum state exists beyond this one.

I can only imagine you soaring.