#everyone send me good vibes and manifest that the application goes through and goes through Swiftly

[aritany]

i applied for my legal name change today!🎉

[dozer-moved]

this is a dumb post you can skip it if you want.

hey i’m finally gonna do this.  i’m gonna fully gush about my favorite piece of art of all time.  something that has permanently left a mark on me in the best way.  if you actually do read this like, like it because i want to know who’s reading me ramble for this long.  the whole post is under the cut so if you don’t want to, just scroll right past and don’t in.teract please!

okay so i’ve been sitting here slowly tearing up as everything in the last chapter of my life has been swirling around me in a cacophony so i’d thought i’d put my thoughts down in a positive way by associating things with my absolute favorite body of work any musician has ever put out, gush about it, and also kinda be a little bit more personal for once.

forgive me for never shutting up about this album but it’s Dearest Everybody by Inara George.

now like for a bit of context, i’d never been a fan of folk music or it’s peer genres for quite a while.  it’s always been too slow and structureless and overall just felt like a giant sappy waste of time.  i’d gotten into Inara’s work with her band The Bird and the Bee in between the months of january and like, march or april (which is very pop) so I wasn’t expecting her solo work to be folk-y, piano pop with a bit of country influences.  that being said, this album won my heart so quickly and has slowly just become the no contest de facto winner of the “what’s my favorite album of all time” challenge that i haven’t been very quiet about how much i like this album.

as long as we’re being honest i feel stupid for liking this enough to even make this post let alone talk about it to other people.  i don’t know.  i’m not a big fan of sharing my interests with others, as they’ve been used to ridicule me or been “ruined” for me in the past, so i tend to keep to myself.

this album is special to me tho.  in so many ways.

i’ll just do a full breakdown track by track?

1. Young Adult.  so this track is the intro, and it starts off with this welcoming chord and syncopated bass.  immediately the lyrics paint a picture of a young person knowing they want to follow their gut and do what they think they should, no matter what it is.  in the context of the lyrics, it’s following Inara’s father and becoming a musician, but i like to think of it as just being general and applicable to anyone?  the chorus and second verse talk about young adult’s cynicism, depression and sarcastic nature while also showing their curiosity and natural drive, whether right or wrong, on the “what do i know?  what do i know?  i know i want to see where this thing will go” line.  i love all of this because it’s highkey relatable!  i’m turning 20 this year and i’m not going to lie, a lot of this hits so close to home.  i love the almost stubborn nature of the aforementioned “i know i want to see where this thing will go” line, it has this “i’ll show you” type of demeanor about it and i think it just works into the idea of a young adult trying to show that they’re independent and know what’s right for them.  the whole song swells as it goes on and all the layers are so simple, yet add so much.

2. Crazy.  this song is a lot more personal to Inara, and while i have official confirmation of what the song is about, i won’t be sharing it, at least unprompted, out of respect for her.  the song has this very, uneven walk about it?  i love the opening lyrics about grass coming up to your knees, and everyone stopping visiting.  i’m highkey almost a hermit myself, and these lyrics are very me.  the whole song is about loving someone and putting all your energy into them, so much so that you go crazy.  i can’t exactly relate to this feeling as it is, but i love how the chorus soars.  the background ambiance on this track is also amazing, it adds so much to the immersion of like, walking around in the tall grass.  this whole album sounds and paints images as clear as photographs, you can get every single detail out of the soundscape, and it sends chills down my spine every time.  i love Inara’s little vocal chime bits?  especially when they echo off-beat and just add to the immersion.  the whole song has this atmosphere i can’t get enough of, it’s stunning.  i love the ending eerie, almost croaking cello.  so perfect.

3. Somewhere New.  this song starts off with these beautiful vocal melodies, and immediately the vibe has perked up.  i absolutely love all the little horn touches on this track.  the amount of care that went into the production on these tracks is insane.  when Inara gets into the “live it up” part, i love how the sound becomes almost waltz-like?  it becomes soaring, and airborne, and yet still has so much movement.  i love the clapping and the reintroduction of the vocal riff after the chorus too.  it makes the whole song have this liveliness about it, i can’t get enough.  the lyrics go into this innate, unwavering, unavoidable desire to go somewhere new.  i keep making this about me but i legitimately relate so much.  there have been a lot of times i’ve almost just walked out of my house, leaving everything behind to just, explore and find something new.  it feels like an inherent desire sometimes, that you can’t avoid.  the end of the track has these squeaking metallic noises and i love them for unexplainable reasons.

4. Take Me to Paris.  this song is so, so intimate and minimalist.  the simple 6th harmonies, the minor cadence before the next section.  i love Inara’s vocal runs before the final parts of the verses.  and the “run naked through the streets” part.  the whole song is so small, so spacey, and yet so warm and tender.  each part of this track just compliments the others so much and it climaxes in the most calm way with the “and make you love me even more than you do” parts.  the whole song just is this incredibly effective, simple composition and structure, and yet it works so well.  the chord progressions are so amazing here too.  i absolutely love the way it almost feels like the song pans up to the sky with each section ending.  you get this immense feeling of vastness but it’s so close and personal that it feels yours.  this track originally flew over my head but each time i relisten to it, it just reinforces how special it is.

5. A Bridge.  an entirely acapella track!  this track is, in my opinion, the least accessible.  the structure and lack of production can be a bit off-putting, but i still love it.  i feel like this is the moment where the “paris” mentioned previously falls away, where it’s just Inara and the person she’s speaking to in these tracks, the pure intimacy of it all shines through so well.  i really love the backing vocals texture in this track.  like honestly i didn’t even notice it was all acapella during my first time listening to it.  i was too busy listening to Inara and the vocals covered the bases they had to.  i love the vocalization in the “you open up to anything... will you tell me?”, it feels so fitting and i can’t put into words how it sounds to me.

6. Slow Dance.  the album picks up again!  this track was one of my first favorites from this, and for good reason!  i love the themes across this album of identity, change and looking back on yourself.  the sound of this song honestly makes me feel like you’re flying down a dirt road, or on a cargo train or something.  i love how the chorus suspends around the opening and then swirls around Inara’s vocals and create this immense motion around it all.  i haven’t been talking about the lyrics much, have i?  sorry omg i’m really bad at this.  i love the little chord changes at the end of the chorus too.  like honestly this whole album is so good compositionally, production-wise AND lyrically, it’s really hard for me to put my thoughts together about everything.  i really love the “the end is the beginning” lyrics, it feels like it’s a new start, and that’s because it is.  OH YEAH i love the “though they say youth is wasted on the young, we never could have lasted through those nights, through streets and stars, knowing what we know now” part.  it can be so shocking to look back on what you used to say and do and act and EXIST in, and believe you did and had no problem with it.  they say hindsight is 20/20, but i think this song is about acknowledging the fact you can’t change the past, and doing what you can while you still have the time to.

7. All for All.  this track is really hard for me to put into words.  i love it just the same as the rest, but my feelings on it are really hard to put together.  i always interpolate the lyrics of standing with the sun on my face, and your words in my mind into the next track, and the sound feels like a lighter, more bouncy version of slow dance.  it’s a really good transition between the two but in all honesty it can be hard to parse this one from either of them, but that’s more on me for how i remember the tracks, rather than for how they were designed.  Inara’s explanation of what this track meant was also very eye opening, i won’t reveal it again out of privacy respect but i definitely did not get the intended meaning from it, and it made a lot more of the lyrics that i thought were random mean something more.  i honestly realize as i’m typing this that this song is the old soul manifested in slow dance, looking back on its life.  the song is about death, and i realize that now all for all is perhaps acknowledging how it’s time won’t last forever, and that’s why it goes into the next track.

8. Release Me.  okay full disclosure, i really didn’t like this track at first.  the verses were fine but the choruses always felt really cheesy and like, basic and they didn’t mesh with me at all.  BUT, then i had a personal experience with this song.  i’ve been writing to the tracks playing on loop this whole time, but i haven’t even started this song yet because i know i’m gonna tear up if i tell this story while it’s playing.  the lyrics in the middle of the song (verse 2 onward) speak about wanting to be free of a ghost of someone, free of the past, free of what’s holding you back from living your life and being in a world that’s calling you out into the wide open experience.  this, as people close to me know, hits super close to home.  i’ve spent the last several years quite literally fighting to get haunting memories and lingering fragments of other people out of my psyche, and 2018 is the year i finally started doing it.  i was standing on the beach last month, and while i was standing there, i couldn’t help but mouth the lines “now i wanna be the writer of this song, and a love, not just a longing, in a world that is just calling me to be free.”  perhaps this doesn’t mean much to anyone else, but as someone who’s spent the last 2 or so years basically fighting for my sanity, my safety and my ability to trust people again, being able to finally look up, without the weights holding you down, it can be a pretty moving experience.  there’s a whole story as to who and why and what went down to cause me to be like this, but all you need to know is that... perhaps even though these last few years have been a hell for me, that i’ve started looking upwards, i made it through the darkest part of the storm, and i can tough out the rest.  that’s why this song means so much to me.  i almost started crying earlier because i tried to explain it to a friend and i couldn’t put it into words right.  it’s the entire reason i started doing this analysis.  i wanted to put down why i love this work so much, how it changed me personally, and what it means to me.  so here the fuck i am.  as for the song itself?  the production is simple yet efficient, the lyrics are great.  i love the lines about being forever loving of someone, but not being able to forgive them for leaving you for so long.  i also really love the lines about “some people don’t believe us, the things that have been spoken, would leave anyone heartbroken.”  i’m not going to explain why but it’s a bit personal, all you need to know.  i really like the vocal melody and the part “i’ve been the best, at doing the best that i can” because, i’ve been fighting and almost giving up for so long, and only just now am i getting a footing.  the organ embellishments here are also super fucking good.  the bridge is also heavenly.  ok i’ll shut up now.

9. Stars.  this track i still don’t quite completely understand.  i love the vocal melody and simple production, the strings work so effectively.  i love the line “be brave now, who will i be in the end?”  it’ so effectively gets across a concept that not many people ever will have to face.  “you know there’s no walking away now” you can’t walk away from a changing self.  i honestly think the song is a bit of a reflection on not only the person listening’s self, but how people become and change as a whole.  the unifying experience of changing and growing and becoming someone new, without ever realizing it.  nihilism, sonder, all existential concepts about how not only we experience ourselves, but how everyone else experiences themselves too.  the waltz rhythms all over this track, while simple, really work to this tracks advantage.  the whole thing has this motion to it, i don’t think it would’ve in 4/4.  it’s a track that manages to stay still and spin so much at the same time.  mesmerizing.

10. Tusker 4.  this and the next track are the first 2 songs i really got into on this record, and they’re both fantastic.  i love the opening riff. the weird chord structure.  the vocal background textures.  i love the lyrics about all the things the subject has, from so much love, to car keys, to piles of dirt, to feelings hurt.  it has this immense motion about it again, much like slow dance.  this album doesn’t really let you sit still.  even on tracks like stars, you can feel the world spinning still.  the high background noises on this track add so much to the track while being barely audible, it’s so nice.  the vocal backgrounding on “little hands / big demands / things i don’t need” is so nice.  the chorus here soars again, this time like you’re holding hands with someone.  spinning them around, so much love to give, so you do.   i love the melodic minor esque chord structure with the majors on the upswings, minors on the downswings.  it gives this all a very otherworldly vibe, and yet it still feels like it takes place in your backyard.

11. House on Valentine.  favorite track.  hands down.  the brass here makes this song so much.  i love the way how it’s organize and sounds.  the lyrics are so nice.  this song is everything i ever wanted.  i won’t lie, even without the intended meaning, this song still works so well.  you can get vibes of personal growth, change, being afraid of the unknown, and yet still brave to jump into it.  moving on from someone, saying goodbye, goodnight for infinity.  i love how this song sounds so, sub/urban and train-like almost?  the production has this forward motion that you could almost hear a train over, and it feels so well for what it is.  also the part where Inara’s vocals soar and the song is sprung into this perfectly still air, it’s fucking blissful as all hell.  the goodbye choruses at the bridge?  fucking incredible.  everytime i hear that bridge, i get chills and goosebumps, it makes me so incredibly emotional.  goodbye!  goodbye!  goodbye!  it’s so cheery, you can feel the humanity bleeding out of every seam of it.  you know the goodbyes are cheerful, but you know the person behind them is teary eyed and scared, just a bit.  but not enough to stop them.  say goodbye to the house on valentine, say goodnight for infinity.

12. Everybody.  i love this track just the same.  the ending of a perfect album and a flawless trilogy.  the empty sound of it all, it’s after everybody has gone home.  you are left alone with yourself and what we started with.  it almost feels like a sonic parallel to crazy in a way.  i absolutely love the “the space that i have made, the parts that i have played, it doesn’t go away, it doesn’t go away, i’ll never go away.”  it feels like you’re driving out of the town this all took place in, looking back on the places you watched flourish and shine so bright, be so lively, and have so much memory attached to them.  it doesn’t go away.  it leaves you with a name, try to say it once a day.  god i fucking love this song.  it haunts you of everything this album stands for, and everything it represents.  but not in a bad way, it makes sure you remember that you were there for it.  you experienced everybody’s experiences, and even though the curtains of the play have been drawn, everyone said goodbye, it remains.  it sticks with you.  i’ll never go away.

in short, is it clear i love this fucking album now?  i’m not going to review meditation, as it’s a vinyl only track and while, not filler, it’s all instrumental.  i love the fact it’s so ethereal and spacey, it feels like you’re looking out into space the night after you went through all the photographs of everybody.  their experiences will stay with you.  or at least i hope so.