#i have been listening to lingua ignota's 'caligula' again and that was one of the things that's got me thinking about

[golvio]

This video about the set design for Phantom of the Opera has me thinking about design engineering, and how it contrasts with regular engineering, and how that demonstrates the contrast in design philosophies between the Sheikah/Princess Zelda and Ganondorf himself.

The Sheikah design philosophy revolves around their spiritual idea that destiny governs everything, that everything was created with a purpose. To that end, the things they designed tended to be very pragmatic and illustrative. The Shrines themselves were designed with this ethos, each building being built for a specific purpose first and foremost. The decorations of their buildings were mostly focused on reproducing the world and cosmos in microcosm, not as something that distracts from the building’s intended purpose, but in order to explain to viewers in the know how this particular structure fits into Hylia’s Grand Design. Zelda herself is very pragmatically minded, attempting to reverse-engineer this ancient technology, or at least understand how it works well enough to reproduce it. She can be a very passionate, emotional person, but she’s not so hung up on aesthetics or trying to figure out “what it all means,” just “how does this work?” No frills, no artifice, just straightforward and to the point.

Contrast that with Ganon. After hearing a bunch of theorists describe Calamity Ganon as something akin to Puppet Ganon from Wind Waker, it clicked into place for me. Ganon is a set design engineer, rather than just a guy working in a workshop to build machines like the Royal Research Lab. His creations weren’t just built to fulfill a purpose, but to communicate something. The purpose his creations serve, while important, is secondary to that desire to communicate a concept, to produce a specific effect in his audience, even if the only thing he wanted to communicate was his contempt for Hyrule and its people.

“The Calamity” is a coup de theatre: this great big spectacle designed to produce a specific impression in the people of Hyrule. In this case, the desired impression was mass panic. Ganon purposefully obfuscated his methods in order to give the impression that “Calamity Ganon” was this vast, incomprehensible force of nature that could not be predicted or countered. Once you start seeing what he’s working with, as you start making connections between the Malice and whatever that ectoplasmic substance the Ultrahand is working with actually is, the actual mechanisms he used turn out to be relatively simple. He just relies on optical illusions and hiding his tricks in order to make things seem more vast and terrifying than they actually are, like how Bjornson used foreshortening to make the chandelier look like this perfect reproduction of the Garnier opera house’s chandelier when it was actually just a flat oval that could fit in the tiny theater and wasn’t as much of a pain for the stagehands to transport, raise, and lower as a perfect 1:1 scale reproduction would’ve been.

And then with Ganon’s takeover of the Guardian tech, he injects this design philosophy into the stuff he’s working with. A lot of what makes the Possessed Guardians so scary is the musical/sound cues associated with them, as well as their body language that suggests a cold, driven, purposeful hostility. Without that, they’re just big goofy buckets with legs. Just compare the Guardian you see in the castle flashback that’s unaccompanied by the iconic, anxiety inducing heartbeat of the “Guardian” music, being gently prodded along in a certain direction by soldiers with the Guardians you’d see patrolling Central Hyrule 100 years later. Ganon doesn’t just want an ambulatory robot that shoots lasers. He wants his war machines to intimidate, to terrify, to make their targets so scared that they freeze in fear (and coincidentally become much easier to hit). The Blights, too, were designed with this aesthetic of fear in mind. They’re also designed to suggest Ganon’s present, even if the artist himself is technically absent.

The desired effect is to establish the omnipresence and frightfulness of Ganon himself, to terrorize his targets, and to communicate his general contempt. He is concerned with the aesthetics of power, as opposed to just having impressive weapon specs. The Guardians by themselves are already potentially dangerous and destructive, as all weapons of war are, but Ganon needs to take it further, injecting his personality into each one he touches to turn them into a tool of communicating his will in addition to just weapons he tries to use to destroy Link/Zelda.

In summary, their general philosophies are like this:

The Sheikah: This is the world, this is how it works. Everything was made to serve a purpose, and this building, too, has a purpose. It was built to fit into this grand cosmic design we depict on its walls.

Ganondorf: I Want These Cretins To Pee Themselves In Terror When They Gaze Upon My Works. Let Them Hate Me, So Long As They Fear Me.

[happymetalgirl]

Album of the Year: Lingua Ignota - Sinner Get Ready

I knew this was going to be a challenging album to write about (as it’s already a challenging enough album to listen to), and thanks to the additional context of the album’s creation, environment, and inspiration recently provided by Kristen Hayter, that gargantuan challenge has only grown. But as inactive as I have been on this blog, I have known that I wanted to write about this album ever since it came out and immediately grabbed my ears and declared itself the year's best by a mile, so here goes.

I write long pieces. Even when I say I’ll try to keep it short. But I’m not deluding myself on this one; this is going to be long.

As strong as the urge is to “focus on the music”, there is no way to adequately or responsibly address this album without the context surrounding it, and much of that context is extremely harrowing. I will be discussing the things that happened that Hayter divulged in her relationship with Alexis Marshall of the band Daughters, and while I will avoid being intentionally gratuitous, the discussion comes with the same content warnings she provided: sexual assault, rape, suicide, mental and emotional abuse, and sexual abuse.

Lingua Ignota has deservedly garnered tremendous praise throughout the segments of the music world that have become attentive to Hayter's work, and the praise from the metal world is but a fraction of it. I discovered her through her collaboration with The Body on the best tracks from their LP I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer., shortly after the release of Lingua's All Bitches Die. But it was of course with 2019's Caligula that Lingua Ignota's gripping "survivor anthems" really broke through to a larger captive audience, and again, deservedly so. To call "compelling" the 66 minutes of juxtaposition between angelic, soaring classical vocals and shuddering vengeful screams of agony, gorgeous neoclassical arrangements and harsh industrial noise, evocative, liturgical poetry and utterly unrepentant devilish incantations, violent curses, and death wishes that Caligula offers would be a gross understatement. With it, Hayter expanded on an already-solid foundation of uniquely and honestly petrifying lyricism and a similarly unique sonic pallet that set her far apart from even her closest contemporaries (if there even are any). And yet, Sinner Get Ready is even better.

For as much praise as I gave Caligula (and it was honest praise), I felt like I wasn't really connecting to it at the level that I felt like I could or should or that the album deserved, possibly also based on how much I saw it clearly meant to people for whom its messages hit closer to home. As my blog's name implies, I'm a boy, and because of that I've been dealt a luckier hand in terms of being more likely to go through life without facing sexual assault or fearing it, and I have indeed fortunately never found myself in danger or sexual assault (not saying that men don't face sexual assault or that sexual assault against men isn't important, it's just not as much and often not as physically violent). I even wondered on and off how much of the critical acclaim Caligula received might have been based on some writers' feelings of obligation due to the grim honesty of the subject matter. Honestly, I think there probably is some element of obligation to it, but ultimately I don't think it's important, it's unprovable, likely negligible, and ultimately not worth worrying about for an album certainly deserving in significant part because of the harsh truths it so boldly presents. I've never got the sense that Hayter is manipulatively pimping her trauma for a cynical artistic cash grab or anything, even if I didn't connect as deeply to it on Caligula as others.

Sinner Get Ready, on the other hand, clicked immediately. Not only that, I gained a greater appreciation for Caligula through it, and this is after I had expected less of the follow-up to Caligula for some reason(s). The title being taken from a line from the title track of All Bitches Die had me wondering if it was going to be a handful of reworked demos or something, plus Hayter's stating that it would be calmer and not as industrially driven as her past works (which I interpreted as choosing to fight with one hand tied behind the back), and it seeming to come so soon after Caligula had me not expecting as much of Sinner Get Ready. I was so happy to be proven wrong though. "Happy" may not find a place for much else in this review though. Unlike Caligula, the lyrical focus of Sinner Get Ready was much more tangible and close-to-home for me; Hayter's dialogues with and challenging of belief in God and her experience with the sickness of organized religion came after a culmination of my own very long process of walking away from Christianity. While Hayter has a hard time describing her own complex position on faith and God and hasn't fully ruled out belief, her album does not shy away from harsh critique and conversations far more honest and biting than the thoughtless, rehearsed bullshit praise-Jesus prayers of most pastors.

Still astounding to me is how incredible these more “stripped back” instrumentals are. I thought Hayter restricting herself from her harrowing screaming vocals (with the exception of one song) and industrial noise would be her holding herself back; instead, Hayter and her producers take the more traditional sonic palette of Appalachian folk instrumentation and Cathedral-filling pipe organ, choirs, and piano and twist it all into a quite thematically fitting thing to behold. I suppose I should get past the preamble and start getting into the finer details of the album, which I will do song-by-song for the sake of organization. I’ll still have plenty to say afterwards, and not just about the album.

———

"The Order of Spiritual Virgins"

Sinner Get Ready opens with its longest track, and it is an epic indeed deserving of its 9-minute run-time. It’s not an epic in the same way winding 20-minute prog rock songs are, but it captures more vividly and scarily than any other religious music I’ve heard the type of unworldly religious experience it sets up. The song is inspired by a sexually repressive and isolating Christian sect/cult from the 1700’s that resided in the state in which Hayter took residence during this album's creation. The lyrics are few and they become taken over as the song progresses by these seriously eerie, mesmerized, atonal choir mantras of “eternal devotion”, but they are enough within the unnerving swells of strings and freakish explosions of clanging low-register piano and odd old-timey percussion to capture the sinister transfixion of being coaxed into extreme religious devotion. It is indeed not without its unambiguously negative connotations of futile hyper-protectivity and authoritarianism with the lines “Sickness finds a way in” (which ushers in the hypnotized swells of devotion and cinematically foreboding piano chaos) and “I am relentless, I am incessant, I am the ocean” making their way into the chants before “eternal devotion” takes over. Given the inclusion of elements of domestic abandonment and Hayter’s history of writing about her past (and at the time current) abuser, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to interpret/apply these lyrics to malignant devotion to a life-consuming abusive partner. The chaos of the song concludes with a spoken sample of a man talking about finding a more vivid connection to his lost mother's presence in his childhood in silent solitude than to a tangible person in a crowd, solidifying the song's theme of isolation through religious devotion: “that’s what you get out of the silence”. Whether it’s a deceptive religious leader, a controlling partner, or even a desperate devotion to an idea of God, the eerie, Cathedral-filling, soul-strangling monolith of instrumental cacophony of the song is brilliantly fitting. A phenomenal introductory movement to the album, and it's only the beginning.

"I Who Bend the Tall Grasses"

Oh shit, second track in and this album is already more intense than the most try-hard shit out there with this song’s chilling dialogue between Hayter, God, and possibly one other person. I’m sure any who’ve been to church enough or who’ve had to sit through “grace” at the thanksgiving table last month with racist relatives know how the typical performative prayers go and how aggravatingly inauthentic they grow over years of repetition as a supposed communication to the most important power in life. It's hollow bullshit. By contrast, the manic, vengeful performance Hayter gives here through some of the most dynamically and diversely expressive vocals on the album is realer than any prayer I’ve ever heard. While the lines of the song alternate somewhat ambiguously between being spoken by the praying speaker and the divine, the prayer itself is hardly ambiguous. Like she has many times before, Hayter’s speaker is a calling upon the Lord whom she has dutifully served and vociferously demanding divine vengeance upon the man in the lyrics. The way the lyrics progress, it sounds like God is refusing to grant Hayter’s demands despite her many sacrifices, and instead asserts his own power in defense of the man. While the rest of the album does see Hayter focus more on classically styled singing (however layered it gets), here she pulls out the violent, enthralling delivery that made her past works so chilling. Knowing now that this album was created not in the distant aftermath, but in the throes, of an abusive relationship heightens the grimness of this song especially. Like the preceding track, dissonant choral mantras raise the tension of the atmosphere as Hayter proclaims “where does your light not shine?” over grand pipe organ chords and chapel chimes as inverted in their appropriation as the religious imagery Hayter invokes in her vein-bulging, blood-curdling calls for death. It’s the most incantational/liturgical-like song in the album and it’s a brilliantly hellish, nightmarish distortion of it that’s as petrifying as music gets.

"Many Hands"

Reprising the refrain from “All Bitches Die (All Bitches Die Here)” that titles the album, “Many Hands” switches its mode of dialogue with the divine to from distorted Catholic chamber instrumentation to mutated Appalachian folk incantations, with sharply piercing and violent plucks of acoustic guitar or something else that sound as though they’re about the break the damn thing, along with dissonant strums of banjo or dulcimer or some shit backing Hayter’s cold recitations. The repeated lyrics about the Lord both weeping of his sacrifice for the speaker while holding her by the neck shed light on the internal contradictions of the gospel of the omnipotent and supposedly sorrowful God forced to both sacrifice himself and somehow unable to save those whom he loves. There are certainly parallels one could draw between the Lord in these lines and the controlling partner Hayter had at the time as well, and of all the songs on the album that parallel a loveless God and a loveless lover, this one perhaps paints the most candidly sinister picture of the kind of false benevolence of their repeated punishments. And the wholly unsettling instrumentation on the verge of snapping in the background behind Hayter’s operatic wails of really provides the anxiety appropriate for the song and brings out the true malevolence of both subjects in one of the album's most sonically pioneering pieces.

"Pennsylvania Furnace"

This is the one that really gets me. As soon as this was released as the first song from the upcoming album, I knew this “toned down approach” was nothing to worry about except for what it would do to my tear ducts. Damn if this one isn’t a fucking heart-churner. Sticking to minimalist piano and only the subtlest of stringed backing to supplement her beautifully mournful vocals on the track, Hayter pulls out a simply breathtaking classical ballad piece whose every chord change is a perfect twisting of the knife in the soul. The song deals with the earthly hell of isolation and other people’s creating of that isolation but it also ties in this sense of hopelessness in the unconvinced religious invocations it employs. There’s just something so heartbreaking in the somber sarcasm in the earnest softness of Hayter’s delivery of “There is victory in Jesus”. There’s so much expression in it, I can hear the regret and self-chastising of turning for help to a God who never gave any. There are many ways to read into it, but the line “do you want to be in hell with me” to me reads of a defeated self-loathing that rejects what seems like the futility of help and only accepts company in misery. Knowing now how close the the brink of death Hayter’s relationship with Alexis Marshall pushed her, I could certainly see this song’s lyrics being pulled from a suicidal mindset, giving that line an even darker connotation. Goddamn there is so much concentrated heartbroken anguish in this song, and lines like “I know you want to stop, but you can’t stop”, the lines about casting off earthly bonds, the lines about watching the home with the family from a looking-in view while alone, and “I fear your name / above all others” are given so much more deeply tragic context in the wake of Hayter’s story about the relationship this song was borne from. Everything about this song, the somber piano, the swells of vocal vibrato, the tragic lyrics, to me, makes it the best on the album.

"Repent Now Confess Now"

Hayter takes us back to mass for the fifth track of the album with the return of the hall-filling strings and layered choral vocals (and bringing this time a banjo’s subtle strums), and to paint a portrait of self-loathing blame kneeling in desperation before a thankless and spiteful God. The odd references to the surgeon’s blade and the taking of her legs certainly tie into Hayter’s emergency surgery to prevent Cauda equina syndrome. The Lord’s taking of her legs and will to live (also given extra dark meaning in the context of her suicide attempt) as the apparent abundant pardon highlights the sadism mankind has written into God with religion and the lengths of self-hatred that abuse drove Hayter to. It is both angering in its themes and terrifying in how the overwhelming voices and ominous instrumentation plays into the congregational commands of repentance, another excellent fusion of disparate sounds and disfigured religious practice by Kristen Hayter and her collaborators.

"The Sacred Linament of Judgement"

Incorporating some of the most immaculate imagery on this album, Hayter contrasts forgiveness and rejection by God on the arbitrary ground they on which they stand on “The Sacred Linament of Judgement”. Hayter seems more focused on the cruelty of (man through) religion on this song than she is on the cruelty of man himself (through Alexis Marshall elsewhere on the album), but her inclusion of a sample of the confession of infidelity by evangelical pastor Jimmy Swaggart beneath the droning horns and strings and the religion-soaked verbiage she sings ties the song back to the real-world hypocrisy and abuses of power by religious figures and how even in the face of being proven liars, they fall back on and use God to defend themselves and cover themselves with a shield of new lies. And the more minimal and less dynamic droning of the instrumentation, to me, feels like it brings out the plain-facedness of these charlatans’ honey-coated treacheries. This is not to say that the music is dull or uninteresting; it is still filled with subtle percussive accents that give the song a human sort of beat. In the sampled sermon, Swaggart cites his betrayal against his wife Frances and other believers around the world before getting to the point with his proclamation of being washed by the holy blood of the Lord’s forgiveness, and (critically, key word here) forgetfulness. Hayter’s presentation of Swaggart’s being divinely forgiven alongside lyrics of her own forsaking by God shine light on the extremity of the reinforcement of misogynist societal standards by religion, making it a key thematic addition to the album that she builds upon further.

"Perpetual Flame of Centralia"

Before building on the Swaggart material, Lingua Ignota offers up another soft piano number with the album’s second single, “Perpetual Flame of Centralia”. The title referencing and inspired by an abandoned Pennsylvanian town beneath which a coal mine fire’s ceaseless burning made it uninhabitable, “Perpetual Flame of Centralia” finds Lingua Ignota returning to the meditative calmness of minimal piano and doubt-riddled religious odes. Through the album’s most deadly soft soothing vocals, Hayter both covers herself in the blood of Jesus and compares the poison of her life to that of the devil’s, all the while casting off fear for the sake of righteousness. The line “I rest my head in a holy kingdom” seems delivered similarly disingenuously to the victorious lyric in “Pennsylvanian Furnace”, and the choruses reinforce the stronger belief in a destiny in hell. It’s another one of the more open-ended songs on the album, but the quietness of the piano chords also really forces the focus on the contrast Hayter draws between the brief and futile beauty of life with the eternal fires of hell that the aforementioned ghost town so naturally evokes comparisons to and that she feels God had placed her in by putting her in Pennsylvania with no one but a new abusive partner. It’s the softest cut on the album, but the stylistic comfort and the break from dissonance it provides is a misleading comfort, and one that plays into to the themes of religion's misleading comfort and abusers' misleading affection throughout the album. It's not viscerally violent, but it should certainly not be mistaken for peace either.

"Man Is Like a Spring Flower"

After ruminating on hell and Pennsylvania, Lingua Ignota picks back up where “The Sacred Linament of Judgement” left off, opening with an audio sample, now of a mildly adversarial interview of the sex worker who pastor Swaggart visited repeatedly. The interviewer asks if she believes Swaggart’s words of repentance and his tears, and after a brief hesitation during which the interviewer tries to suggest the sincerity of Swaggart’s confession, she responds with disbelief. She says that she thinks he is just doing at the pulpit what he had always done while he continued to come to her for sex and that the real Jimmy Swaggart is the one he showed her he was while hidden from the eyes of the congregation. Hayter then breaks into a acoustic folk-instrumentation-filled lamentation on the futility of love in what is probably her most open condemnation of the romantic infidelity by Alexis Marshall that was recently revealed to have been taking place. This song’s inclusion of the believedly true, infidelitous character of Jimmy Swaggart beneath his Christ-loving exterior and the unambiguous stanza “No one is enough / One is not enough / No one is enough / The heart of man is impossible to hold” make uncanny its inspiration by the insatiable need for sex and other women beneath the countless fake excuses for betrayal of Alexis Marshall. Hayter likens man to a vessel for God’s impulses, mostly violence and punishment, as he refers to the heart of man as a furnace, a fiery pit, the seventh gate of hell, quite frankly as the hand of God itself, and in an odd lyric that makes more morbid sense in hindsight, as a crushed horse’s tail. Anatomists named the bottom part of the human spinal cord that branches out at about the level of the sacrum the “cauda equina”, which means horse’s tail, because that’s what it looks like. Knowing now that her back injury was inflicted by Alexis and led to her having surgery for damage to these nerves makes all clearer that he is most certainly the primary subject of this song, in which Hayter undoubtedly analogizes him to the hellish punishment of God itself. Alexis’ infidelity to a degree possibly far beyond Swaggart’s only cements him further into the song as kin to the disgraced pastor with the repeated stanza of love and of no one being enough. The way the staccato strings, high-register vocals, and wooden percussion swell to a crescendo at the song’s climax make it one of the most dynamic and cinematic pieces of the album, and well deserving of its eclipsing of the 7-minute mark and yet another favorite on an album so difficult to pick favorites from.

"The Solitary Brethren of Ephrata"

With the last sample Hayter provides, probably the most infuriatingly relevant outside the album, the infamous churchgoer interview during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic provides such a concise reminder of the wide reach of the real-world damage that the careless selfishness that lies at the heart of religious lunacy does. Asked about concerns of potentially spreading the sickness to others she interacts with, the interviewee replies only about the safety she herself feels she has as a believer “covered in Jesus’ blood” and that she believes others of her faith have, essentially condemning everyone else to suffer the judgement of God through the pandemic and capturing the malicious focal intent of punishment of outsiders beneath the “love the sinner” window dressing of religion. - And then Hayter launches into possibly the most heart-crushing song behind “Pennsylvania Furnace” to close out the album. The lyrics about belief in the promise of and longing for heavenly paradise read as both unbelieved hope in God’s love and as suicidal ideation with heaven as an escape from all the hells of the songs preceding this one. It’s the tragic morbid truth that suicidal people tell themselves and the solace that the loved ones they leave behind hold onto: that there’s no more pain for them anymore. “All my pains are lifted / Paradise is mine / All my wounds are mended”. The underlying cynicism and soulful brokenness in those words is so incredibly crushing given all that has preceded it, not just on this album, but also on Caligula and All Bitches Die and Hayter’s first work as Lingua Ignota. That Hayter is singing this not in raucous or fearsome dissonance, but rather in the sweetness of the major key of traditional hymns of worship behind some of the most gorgeous instrumentation on the album makes all the more somber and climactic the finality of the song and makes it stand out among the others. But Hayter is of course writing this after surviving her attempted suicide and after escaping her abusive relationship, and the paradise she consigns herself to is under the dominion of loneliness, “ugliness my home”, a heart-wrenching acceptance of isolation and the absence of love as the best it gets. That Kristen Hayter made it out of the hell of Pennsylvania and her relationship with Alexis Marshall while there is indeed a triumph, and perhaps that she has once again survived to make a powerful album is enough to call paradise.

Sinner Get Ready is tainted by not a single wasted sound or word, and for as difficult it is to fully express what this album does to me while listening to (and how difficult it is to fully understand exactly what it's doing), I do know the incredible magnitude of its power, and it is indeed power. The impact this album makes goes beyond it sounding like nothing else with its revolutionary utilization of the sonic elements it pulls from. I am not a spiritual person, but the catharsis that Sinner Get Ready provides is certainly earns its description as a spiritual experience. It is a masterpiece of authenticity and musical vision that truly transcends genre that very few other pieces of music can also be called.

———

Contextual Discussion:

As hard as this album hit on first listens, the different light that Hayter’s revelations about the abuse she lived through in her relationship with Alexis Marshall put this album in made this already-difficult album somehow a hell of a lot more crushing. She’s not singing about the same abuser she cursed on Let the Evil of His Lips Cover Him, or on All Bitches Die, or on Caligula. Tragically, Kristen Hayter is singing of a different man whose name is even alongside Lingua Ignota’s on a few non-album tracks she's released since Caligula. It’s tragic also to think that what I had thought of as such a short time between Caligula and Sinner Get Ready for Lingua Ignota was in fact such an excruciating and probably seemingly eternal hell for Kristen Hayter. For anyone unaware, a few weeks ago, Hayter released a Google document with a statement detailing her relationship with Alexis Marshall and how he abused her. I had time and didn’t take any breaks. and it took me an hour to read it all. And it was a sickening and hate-inducing read for that entire hour which included (and now is the time to really invoke the content warning) damn near every possible color of lying, manipulation, sexual assault, outright and clear-cut rape, emotional and verbal abuse, financial abuse, and disloyalty by Alexis Marshall in service of his malignant sex addiction not just to Kristen Hayter but also other women in his life and his children. This included but was not limited to (and again, major content warning for the rest of the paragraph) penetrating her while she was sleeping (despite her already telling him this was something her past abuser did and that she did not consent to it, =rape), an instance of extremely violent sex in which he refused to stop and nearly paralyzed Hayter by inducing a hernia of one of her spinal disc (for which she needed emergency surgery), abandoning her before that surgery, repeatedly cheating on her, and callously abusive disregard after driving Hayter to attempt suicide in their basement.

What I just mentioned really is just the tip of that vile iceberg, yet for as heartbreaking as every paragraph of that massive text was, I would be lying if I said Hayter did not make me chuckle just once when she detailed how before her surgery, Alexis had himself a childish little pity party in which Hayter had to hand feed him nutrition bars while he was sitting on their hotel bed (again, before her life-threatening surgery), of which she simply said afterwards, “It was fucking ridiculous.” Again, there is so much that I simply do not have the space or desire to recount fully here that I do think is important for those with the stomach to handle it to be aware of. I think it is important to understand on as empathetic or sympathetic of a level (and not just intellectually) just how horrific abusive relationships manifest, what they can look like, and how what is a painful hour of reading for us is, for survivors, years of unbelievable torment and lasting trauma. “Life is cruel, and time heals nothing.” Far more important is that it is wholly inadequate to just gasp at another’s suffering and move on.

Hayter expressed that her reasoning for coming forward with these details was not just to shed light on truth but also to prevent what happened to her from happening to another woman. Those who followed Daughters more closely and for longer than me have pointed out that Alexis had earned himself a small but sour reputation for his rampant sex addiction beforehand and that it played no small role in the band's long break-up before You Won't Get What You Want. Yet his abuse of others for his sexual satisfaction has not yet earned him a wide or strong enough reputation to hinder his behavior. Hopefully Hayter's coming forward can be enough spotlight to illuminate his behavior to any potential future victims, because the sense I got from my reading of it all was that Alexis is pretty unrepentant about it all (minimizing the hurt he did at best) and has no intention of doing anything seriously about the sex addiction that's consumed his life and others' . It's so frustrating how clear some things are in hindsight, such as is the case here, or with Marilyn Manson, or Mark Kozelek, or Chris Brown where there were so many signs, but they were maybe just harder to see through the fog of the rest of their generally edgy and controversial personas. We can't even get started here about older rock stars like Ted Nugent and Steve Tyler who out in the open sang about and performed predatory behavior in real life, which included involving minors. It's not just the obvious suspects either. Sometimes it's the people who only offer sparse or non-specific signs only visible in hindsight with the context of more knowledge or people who are very good at maintaining a quiet, if not wholesome, public image. People you wouldn't expect. Like that guy from the now-defunct band, False, whose feminism was a significant part of their presentation.

This is not a suggestion of paranoia or baseless suspicion. It's a suggestion of attentiveness, and it's certainly not one that I'm trying to make from any kind of imagined high horse or enlightened moral high ground. I was more blindsided than I maybe should have been for Manson, and maybe Alexis Marshall as well. I saw Mark Kozelek coming though, the guy pretty much can't help himself from broadcasting that he's a miserable misogynistic asshole who's desperate to keep pretend-living his rock-star youth with young, vulnerable female fans.

-

I guess here is the place to put a concise version of my thoughts on problematic artists and such, everyone's favorite topic. You know the problematic artist discourse is complicated, I get it; I don't have a golden bullet answer to it. But somehow in all the discourse I've seen about being responsible and not supporting problematic artists and not enabling shitty behavior, I haven't seen anyone acknowledge the obvious elephant in the room: fans don't want to feel punished for something they didn't do.

As listeners, watchers, readers, viewers, enjoyers of art, we all (should) go into enjoying any piece of art with the understanding that, no matter how authentic they may come off in their music or their public appearance, we never fully know the artist. We can't know with complete certainty who of them might be up to some unsavory shit behind closed doors, even the edgy ones, some of whom genuinely do keep their antics on the stage and in the studio. And often the art we enjoy does indeed stand so far away from the artist that we don't think about the artist at all (think: lo-fi hip hop beats to study/relax to). And then there are some (think: asshole Mark Kozelek and his dumb boomer podcast ramblings that he calls "songs") who really put themselves as a person into their art. A little harder to dissociate that kind of shit.

I agree with minimizing support for artists doing bad shit on the basis of it possibly discouraging such behavior from others and it consequentially pressuring them to change, but that can be surprisingly hard to go absolute zero on. Does it stop at the band? Does it stop at the label? Does it stop at side projects? Does it stop at collaborators who haven't come out and said anything? Just because there's no agreed-upon line does not mean that we should just shrug our shoulders and say "well what can you do?" Ultimately, as an individual, the answer to that is pretty much nothing, but somehow you add up enough individuals and you can start to get some good change if you all know that better things are possible and expectable. Maybe you don't all agree exactly how much more you deserve but you sure as hell know it's more than that shit boss is paying you all. Maybe we don't know exactly where we draw that "problematic artist" line, but we know the behavior Hayter described of Alexis Marshall is far beyond wherever we draw it. Being attentive as a listener, however casual or invested, is not about being a paranoid hyperreactive sentinel around artists and trying to have a power trip on people you have little individual power over, and it's certainly not about policing individual fans into not listening to their Antichrist Superstar CD or whatever. Again, I get that vile behavior makes some artists immediately more repulsive and easy to let go of at the drop of a hat, and it's easier for some to drop band they've listened to forever than others. And then I think of my favorite band, Meshuggah.

I listen to Meshuggah more than anything else probably. And to my knowledge they don't have any accusers or hold any racist beliefs or anything of the like, but they could. And as much as I imagine it would very likely taint my listening to their music if everything I hypothetically proposed was in fact true for them, I have a hard time imagining not listening to them. How I listen to music has been so irreversibly shaped by Meshuggah, I tap the iconic rhythm of "Bleed" with my fingers on every surface around me without even thinking about it, and I hear Meshuggah in the thousands of bands they've influenced. I snuck Meshuggah into my wedding playlist. It's honestly hard to think about what my music-loving life would look like without Meshuggah, and in some ways it feels impossible, and for me (and probably most Meshuggah fans) it has never been about Jens or Fredrick or Martin or Tomas or Dick. And it doesn't seem like it's ever been about them to themselves either. So I get it for fans who feel torn between their love for the music and their feeling betrayed or that it's been tainted by the very artist that made it.

"But one thing I've learned is everything burns."

Hayter herself said that her coming forward was not about cancelling Daughters or telling people that they couldn't listen to Daughters. She came forward to help survivors and to protect other women from having to either also be survivors or not be so fortunate. I'm sure this still does ruin Daughters for a lot of people, possibly myself included. There is no "neutral" position in any of this, however much we might sometimes wish our love for music could be a little oasis to escape to from the shit of this world, that music is not detached from this world and everything we do with that music has some kind of impact on the world and that is power. Wow, we have power. [insert Spiderman uncle Ben quote]. Even if it's just a little bit, there's no such thing as just being a listener, we are all participants in music culture, whatever sub-culture feeds into it, and the broader cultures at large that music culture feeds into. None of it is on an island or in a vacuum, and that is well worth being mindful about.

-

At the end of the day, being attentive and being a responsible participant in music as a fan or maybe even as a worker or artist means applying what power you have to produce the most positive impact you can (original and not cliché at all, I know). But really, where we have the most impact is with the people we know and can directly affect: friends, family, relatives, even asshole coworkers or people in our lives we kinda don't like. It certainly doesn't have to be just one or the other (artists or people we know), but if there's one thing everything around Sinner Get Ready has emphasized to me, it is to support survivors and to stop abusers, by being educated on and alert to the ways they manipulate people and knowing when and how to use the power at your disposal to protect people. This isn't scan the room constantly to make sure no jocks are dropping roofies in drinks at the party ocular pat-down vigilante bullshit (although, yes, do be smart in vulnerable situations and such). This means saying something that's confrontational or that's not easy to say to a best friend who's constantly belittling his girlfriend, or to a close family member who might be in denial about the abuse they're facing from another family member, or even just making it awkward for some rando dude at a party who's making the girl whose boundaries he's pushing clearly uneasy and making it easier for her to get away from it. Maybe you look like a dweeb for a minute, maybe that was enough to prevent a rape from happening even if no one ever thanks you for it. Maybe it's straight-up calling police. Sometimes (perhaps often) it seems like it's in vain, but your individual actions can be a seed or a catalyst for better outcomes. And sometimes better outcomes just don't happen despite you doing everything right. Pop music fans in adjacent circles and far-away circles have been rightfully standing up to Chris Brown for over a decade and he has responded repeatedly by saying, "fuck you, I'm gonna keep being a piece of shit to women." And he somehow manages to find fans and collaborators willing to support his career and look the other way on his behavior. Some games you're the better team and you still lose, shit's weird like that sometimes. By all means, continue to put pressure on artists directly, producers, collaborators, labels, and, yes, even fan bases that continue to enable shit like Chris Brown. Yours may just be a drop in the bucket that just has to keep getting fuller and heavier before it snaps.

The common (and probably also intentional) misconception about rape culture is that it's people saying "yes, that's rape, and that's okay." or "rapists know they're raping and they do it anyway; they're just terrible people.” In reality, what rape culture says is: "I know him, he wouldn't do that", or "that doesn't constitute abuse", or "she's just trying to ruin his career or get attention", or "why isn't there any evidence for this accusation from this highly private moment from which it would be incredibly hard to procure adequate evidence for legal action in an unpredicted and adrenaline-filled situation during which the objective in the moment for any survivor would clearly be to survive it?" (maybe that one was a bit tongue-in-cheek), or all the victim-blaming classics we've all heard like Christmas songs once black Friday starts every time a survivor brings their story public. With Alexis Marshall, the excuse was always, "how dare you compare me to your past abuser, I have never hit you." Up close it rarely looks the the same way it does when it becomes visible from a distance, and it's rarely cookie-cutter bad-guy shit or quote-straight-from-the-textbook shit, but it's worth being aware of as much of what points in that direction as possible.

Hell, if all you got from this was to point the finger outward, fucking think again. We've all internalized a lot of this shit as natural to our world or even just normal as parts of relationships, as so many of these stories point out, the people doing the abuse usually don't think what they're doing is wrong or what they've been doing is abusive. And goddamnit, as a stereotypical guy from a rom-com I've always got that simplistic knee-jerk urge to try to fix shit, but the hell if some blog post is gonna make a dent in rape culture. Maybe one person sees this and takes it to heart, worth the hours it took writing this. But it's not just about fixing and preventing abuse, survivors need support too, and sometimes time really does heal nothing. Some traumas do leave scars that never fully heal, and sometimes things don't get better. And that might be the hardest part of it all. But survivors need support regardless because no one deserves to have to be one and carry on alone.

"Me and the dog we die together"

[girlsbtrs]

Sinner Get Ready Album Review

Written by Peyton Lawrence. Graphic by Moira Ashley.  

Horror, love, and God all coexist in the decaying kingdoms of rolling fields and remote settlements of Appalachia. 

It’s been two years since Kristin Hayter released her album, CALIGULA, under the name Lingua Ignota. The rage-filled tracks used religious imagery and musical motifs such as ambient organ and choral tracks paired with piercing screams to examine the long term pain and trauma of abuse, betrayal, promise, mercy, and vengeance. God is “almost always interchangeable with the abuser or the lover.” The record feels claustrophobic and complex. The brutal anger in her music refuses to let itself be dampened or silenced by the expectation of an “appropriate” or “polite” response, and the end result is tremendous. We’re viewing divine rage sans the lens of propriety. 

Hayter’s music is characterized by haunting, echoing vocals and up until now, influences from noise and extreme metal. (It is important to note, however, that these are just influences, and Lingua Ignota really does transcend genre.) Many fans expected a continuation of the sound heard in CALIGULA, but with the release of the new album, the music has taken a more raw, intimate tone. It relies heavily on her powerful voice, piano tracks, traditional folk instruments, and carefully placed moments of disquieting silence. An audio clip professes in the first song, “Everything has a rhythm and a beat and the silence is one of the most soothing one.”

Despite the new album’s departure in sound, it still ties back into Lingua’s previous works. In fact, the album title, SINNER GET READY, comes directly from the lyrics of her 2018 song “All Bitches Die.” The artist stated “I wanted the listener to pay attention to the way the lyrics from these two worlds were interacting with each other, and what that meant.” She has also said that her three albums can be viewed as part of a trilogy, they are “all building on the same world, approaching different emotions using different means but still all in the same language.”

The album is filled with nuance, at first seeming like a tale of rural religious fanaticism and submission to an all-powerful, vengeful God. Upon closer listening, it reveals itself to be much less black and white and much more personal. Hayter was “was living the record as it happened,” and each song reflects the emotional state that she was experiencing as she wrote it. The album starts with declarations of power and calls for violence before winding through a fruitless search for God and culminating in a quiet acceptance of loneliness, all set against the backdrop of rural Pennsylvania. 

The album begins with “THE ORDER OF SPIRITUAL VIRGINS,” a track that sets the tone for the rest of the album, both thematically and musically. We hear the first choir-like layered vocals, dissonance, and most importantly, we hear the first references to eternal devotion, relentlessness, and the seed is planted for the fear associated with silence and solitude. The song is a tie to CALIGULA, bridging the gap between the electronic synths and the subverted traditional instruments, preparing the audience for what’s to follow.

Listening to “I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES” feels like listening to an enraged preacher leading a congregation as they plead with God for retribution. It is despairingly brutal and feels like a call home to the rage of “All Bitches Die” and CALIGULA, albeit in a different way. This rage feels like it’s bubbling beneath the surface, masked behind attempts of pacifying the higher power being addressed. The rage bares itself in both the words and the way they are sung in the lines, “I don't give a fuck, Just kill him, You have to, I'm not asking.” (Side note: the first time I heard the aforementioned lines, the impact was so physical that I actually had to go lay down for a while.) We also first encounter the symbol of fire in the lyric, “fiery arrows studded with stars,” a symbol that reappears time and again throughout the album. 

“PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE” references the Pennsylvania Dutch folktale of an ironworker who threw his dogs into a furnace in a fit of rage, only for them to return and drag him to hell. The artist released a statement on her instagram saying the song, “is about loneliness, absence, and the inevitability of God’s judgment.” The legend embodies the rural Pennsylvania landscape that inspired the album’s creation. Hayter moved to the area due to a relationship, and became transfixed with the isolation and rejection of modernity that many religious sects there prescribed to. Fire is juxtaposed as a cleansing, formative, and destructive force, and in the entirely self-produced music video, Hayter uses red smoke to represent both this “alchemizing force,” and the blood of Jesus, explored as an all-powerful agent of absolution in the track “PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA.” 

“MAN IS LIKE A SPRING FLOWER” is desolate and hopeless. It compares the heart of man to an open gulch, a gate of hell, a fiery pit, and a burning barn upended. The music is hauntingly complex, with layers of banjo, mourning vocals, and building rhythms. It is the culmination of all of the previous tracks, a realization being made that can only mean one thing.

The final track of the record is a fitting conclusion to the journey taken. The song, “THE SOLITARY BRETHREN OF EPHRATA,” has the cadence of a hymn. It is the quiet contrast to the beginning songs, despairingly asking for forgiveness for the brash anger shown before. It accepts the inevitable home that must be found in loneliness and solitude, and the despair that accompanies that acceptance.

This record is devastating. The entire Lingua Ignota discography feels like being stepped on squarely in the chest. It manages to be both transcendent and have a physical presence, and it cannot be listened to passively. Every single choice was made intentionally, and every single choice carries such an impact that cannot accurately be described. There’s nothing that exists quite like this, and I sincerely doubt there ever will be again.

[cristalconnors]

BEST ALBUMS OF 2019: TOP TEN

SPECIAL CITATIONS:

HOMECOMING: THE LIVE ALBUM, Beyoncé

The live album feels like a lost art form. Of late, many feel thrown together without much thought- an offering to the most ardent of fans about as meaningful as a gift card you’d give your coworker. Homecoming is the antithesis of that: a flawless documentation of Beyoncé’s benchmark live performance at the 2018 edition of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival that is a staggering recontextualisation of her entire life’s work, dazzlingly criss-crossing her discography, offering rollicking, thoughtful new arrangements of classics and deep-cuts alike, filtered through the lens of HBCU marching band, playing like a half time show that goes on and on and on, offering the final, definitive evidence that Beyoncé is the greatest showman in modern history by leaps and bounds. 

LEAK 04-13 (BAIT ONES), Jai Paul

Discovering Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) sometime in the summer of 2013 was like being let in on a secret. I felt like the member of an exclusive club of people in-the-know, the possessor of a forbidden document that could only be discussed in hushed tones and accessed illegally. The circumstances of its arrival were uncertain. Had he leaked it purposefully? Were all of the songs really his? It didn’t even have a proper name (it would be christened Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones) many years later). The enthralling mystery of it was eclipsed only by the music itself. It sounded like you shouldn’t have been listening to it, a top secret transmission intercepted and compromised in the process. Its stunningly lush, busy textures were threadbare, pieces of the songs suddenly falling away only to reappear, as if you were streaming it and your internet connection was struggling to keep up. But that only contributed to the mystical grandeur of this earth shattering R&B that felt so purposeful, so impeccably sequenced (not by Jai), so bizarre and at times even funny, so much so that it was difficult to imagine how it could possibly be unfinished- it was perfect.

I don’t think I’d ever really understood how thoroughly devastating the leak was to Jai Paul himself until I read the lengthy note that accompanied his abrupt return on June 1st of this year, when he not only graced us with two stunning new tracks but properly released this album for the first time, a remarkable gesture of goodwill to his fans who gleefully partook in the stolen material, many without much regard to how it’d become available to them. Reading the letter, I felt guilty. The extent to which the leak derailed his career, demolished his trust in the institutions the industry is built on, compelled him to cast himself away from music entirely- his lifeline- and, in his own words, “withdraw from life in general” was genuinely heartbreaking. But the official release of the album that caused so much strife is the culmination of a years long journey of recovery, reconciliation, and growth. It’s a hard-earned reclamation of ownership that signals that Jai Paul, one of the most vital, distinct voices to emerge from the decade, is ready to get back on the horse. Look out.

THE TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2019:

10. CALIGULA, Lingua Ignota

Caligula is maybe the most stunning document of feminine rage I’ve ever heard- an improbable synthesis of metal and opera imbued with biblical imagery and defined by language that’s as flowery as it is vicious (“may your own shame hang you / may dishonor drown you / may there be no kindness / no kindness / no kindness”). Kristin Hayter’s classically trained voice bends almost to the point of snapping, sometimes bringing her tongue to her soft palate to make a sound somewhere between a hum and a gurgle before launching into blood curdling shrieks as the music around her morphs as well, twinkling piano and organ giving way to billowing, thunderous guitar. It’s music that belongs in a symphony hall, if only they’d allow moshing.

09. SINNER, Moodymann

The songs on Sinner, Kenny Dixon, Jr.’s twelfth album as Moodymann, unspool on their own terms, continually mutating as they go on, shifting gears just when you think you’ve got a handle on them. His house isn’t very dense, but there’s always a remarkable amount of intrigue in his deceptively simple sound, evoking early 70′s R&B until strange idiosyncrasies pop out organically from the fabric of the song, pulling focus, reframing it as you’re listening to it. It’s strange, compelling stuff that beckons you to dive beneath its surface, promising you’ll find something new each time.

08. NO HOME RECORD, Kim Gordon

My favorite Sonic Youth songs were always the ones Kim Gordon did lead vocals on. Her hulking monotone was strangely captivating, even when it wasn’t clear what she was even talking about (which was most of the time.) No Home Record is a sublime capitalization and expansion of her power as a vocalist and writer, embracing those same abstract sensibilities that have defined her work for nearly 40 years but pushing them boldly into the future, crafting entrancing, often menacing sonic dreamscapes that are littered with oblique, powerfully resonant hints at the fruits of her near decade of self-discovery after divorcing Thurston Moore. It’s a debut decades in the making that shockingly reveals new, untapped powers from an indelible titan of rock we thought we’d had pegged.

07. HOUSE OF SUGAR, (Sandy) Alex G

Alex Giannascoli’s folk rock warps itself, intentionally obscuring textures and images in a convoluted effort to clarify the feeling behind them. It shouldn’t work but always does, and on House of Sugar, his eighth full-length effort in just nine years, he finds thrilling new power in simplicity and repetition, exemplified by the woozy abstract tapestry of songs like “Walk Away,” “Taking,” or “Near,” wringing a simple phrase, or even just a word, for everything it’s worth, repeating them over and over and over again to craft crystal clear images of longing and pain. But the more traditional songs are just as gripping, striking his strange balance between downtown and backwoods, crafting folk that emanates from deep in the soul and soars out into outer space. 

06. BANDANA, Freddie Gibbs & Madlib

Freddie Gibbs and Madlib reunite on the most virtuosic rap album of the year, taking their unlikely marriage of gangster rap and delicately constructed, meditative beats that sound almost like memories to astonishing new heights. Gibbs grapples with personal demons- the lowest lows of his career, his ongoing relationship with drug abuse- but also flexes, showcasing his effortless flow as he flawlessly keeps pace with Madlib’s twisty production, navigating signature changes and tricky rhythms with ease, perfectly in concert with Madlib’s searching, soulful looping beats that envelop you, contorting right when you’ve settled into them. The collaboration keeps you on your toes, demanding your full attention as they whisk you through their kaleidoscopic vision of masterful, immersive rap.

05. ALL MIRRORS, Angel Olsen

The breakup album has never sounded so lush. Plenty can wax poetic about ridding themselves of toxic partners and of newfound freedom, but Angel Olsen tries to get to the heart of what it all meant, how she’d allowed herself to get lost in the relationship, forgetting herself. She makes the process sound luxurious, utilizing a 12-piece orchestra to inject a bolt of energy and welcome drama into her abstracted songwriting, embracing the darkness and working through it to find herself anew on the other side.

04. WHEN I GET HOME, Solange

When I Get Home sounds like you should be listening to it in a museum- and knowing Solange you’ll probably be able to at some point. Its heady sophistication is constantly announcing itself to you, but that’s not to say that it’s impenetrable. It’s her most personal effort, a surreal tour through the Houston of her memory and the Houston of her imagination, exploring the sounds she was reared on, but refracting them, embracing repetition to create a dreamlike, prismatic journey through her influences that, as Solange puts it, can’t be a singular expression of herself “there’s too many parts, too many spaces, too many manifestations, too many lines, too many curves, too many troubles, too many journeys, too many mountains, too many rivers, so many...”

03. NORMAN FUCKING ROCKWELL!, Lana Del Rey

Norman Fucking Rockwell! is Lana Del Rey’s victory lap, an amalgamation of everything she’s always done well packed into a sprawling 68 minute apocalyptic opus, invoking Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and most memorably, Sublime while utilizing her trademark playful, disaffected word play to craft a soaring requiem for the world as we know it. “L.A.’s in flames” and who cares when there’s a good time to be had? It’s a stunning “fuck you” to an industry and populace that dismissed her viciously when she arrived on the scene, forging her masterpiece on her own terms.

02. U.F.O.F., Big Thief

U.F.O.F. evokes the sensation of reaching out and attempting to make a connection- a connection with another realm, with the dead, with alien life, with a distant lover. The music is open and searching, and to hear the band talk about the process of writing and recording it, this spirit of experimentation was present in the studio. They’d tinker with instruments none of them knew how to play, hoping whatever they could coax out of it might speak to the ethereal textures and opaque poetry of the music they were working on. The result is a ghostly folk masterclass that launches Big Thief into the stratosphere as they work seamlessly in tandem to craft music that touches God.

01. TITANIC RISING, Weyes Blood

Struggling to cope with a world on the precipice of collapse, Natalie Mering looks backward, invoking the baroque pop of the 1970′s to search for solace in the stars or the arms of another, like Karen Carpenter scrolling through Tinder or Co-Star. But trying to stave herself away in the past only finds herself submerged in her childhood bedroom. So she bolts forward, utilizing familiar frameworks to craft stunningly lush, contemporary and urgent pop that grapples with crises both personal and apocalyptic with an optimism that feels not naive but like a vital lifeline, like a hand reaching out in the darkness to pull you to safety. It may be a futile gesture, but at the end of a decade that’s abruptly descended into a hellscape, it’s a call to keep the faith and forge on.

[hey-have-you-heard]

Hey have you heard these 50 songs from 2019

I really enjoyed this last year so going to give it another go for ‘19. I put quite a lot of thought into what actually a ‘song of the year’ for me when I was first constructing and then heavily editing the playlist that came to be my Top 50 of 2019. I think the most important thing is that above all it’s a track that I’m glad exists, sometimes this is because of the songwriting or composition, sometimes the performance, sometimes the lyrical importance and sometimes just because it sparks joy.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6bFJOjL8b8Zc2s5r1oJbsk?si=UJdqSXOTR3SQ8D3IwcmV2g

Explanations for each tracks inclusion below the fold…

100 gecs - 800db cloud 100 gecs channel a mix of Crystal Castles and Sleigh Bells with a Death Grips level appreciation for noise. It’s an absolute rush and that outro is just absurd.

Natalie Evans - Always Be Natalie Evans soft melody and sing song vocals are sublimely sweet on this heartfelt track of lost love, longing and nostalgia.

Petrol Girls - Big Mouth “If you fight back or disagree you’re the one with the fucking problem” this hits home, hard. Big Mouth is a rallying cry to speak out against oppression and discrimination, to raise you’re voice and be heard, not to be controlled.

Charli XCX ft. Lizzo - Blame it on your Love Charli has a midas touch when it comes to pop, combine that with Lizzo who has just about been the most fun thing in music this year and you’ve got a 10/10 banger.

Poppy - BLOODMONEY Poppy’s music just keeps going further down the rabbit hole. Originally playing with blending elements of nu-metal with bubblegum pop, she now seems to have transcended genre altogether to create whatever BLOODMONEY is, it’s absolutely ridiculous and I love it.

Body Hound - Bloom Get on that GROOVE! So proggy it hurts, this track from Body Hound is a technical wonderland of metamorphosing rhythms, gargantuan riffs, and just the tastiest of chord progressions.

Can the Sub_Bass speak - Algiers Word of warning, this is not an easy listen. A freefall tumble through genre and tone accompanies a stream of consciousness monologue full of racism, prejudice and political and artistic critique.

Elohim - Buckets Buckets is an onslaught of trap influences, emotional outbursts and aggressive distortion. I’m a big fan of this sound.

VUKOVI - C.L.A.U.D.I.A I know very little about VUKOVI as a band, but that riff is absolutely massive and this track has been a constant throughout my year on that basis alone.

Show Me The Body - Camp Orchestra Apparently more hardcore bands should use Banjos, because this is a damn good sound. Slowly building from a single bass line this track builds into a powerful demolishing force.

clipping. - Club Down Having thoroughly proven themselves able to do afro-futurist scifi on the Hugo nominated Splendor and Misery, clipping. now turn their considerable talents to horror core and unsurprisingly nail it. Daveed’s flows are tight as ever as he brings to life a decaying city backed by tortured screams.

Dream Nails - Corporate Realness YOU ARE NOT YOUR JOB. WORK IS NOT YOUR LIFE. YOU ARE NOT WHAT YOU MUST DO IN ORDER TO SURVIVE. Dream Nails are great and exactly what we need right now.

ControlTop - Covert Contracts This track positively bristles with an anxious energy. A fitting sound for the subject of the information overload we find ourselves locked into everyday.

Cherry Glazerr - Daddi There’s an icy coolness to ‘Daddi’, a disconnected sarcasm that falls away to reveal the anger and torment in the chorus, it’s a masterful bit of emotional storytelling through musical tone.

The Physics House Band - Death Sequence I Listening to Physics House latest release, the Death Sequence EP feels like a physical journey. This opener is a perfect example of this, as you’re plunged straight into a heady and disorienting mix of rhythms and counter-melody’s, the Sax guiding you through the turbulence until you land in a placid midsection, before that bass riff drags you forward through rhythmic breakdowns into an absolutely absurd brain melting saxophony and then it just keeps on going from there…

Witching Waves - Disintegration I saw WW back in the early summer, they were a bassist down so it was just a guitar and drums duo. They started with this track and it was one of the most pure punk things I’ve experienced, drummer/vocalist Emma Wigham bashing the absolute shit out of her kit . A great no-nonsense lo-fi banger.

Lingua Ignota - DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR Another, not particularly easy listen here. DO YOU DOUBT ME TRAITOR is a dark and angry brooding track, building in intensity to release the primal rage, fear and horror of the abused. Its deeply chilling and instantly arresting. This track and the entire CALIGULA album stands as an absolute must listen.

Carly Rae Jepsen ft. Electric Guest - Feels Right I love the instrumentation on this one, those chunky piano chords and screaming guitar lift the track out and make it the highlight of an already great album to me.

Orla Gartland - Figure it out Dialing back the intensity slightly, Orla chronicles the frustrations of having to deal with someone in your life who you’re done with. The choruses burst forth in beautifully fuzzy explosions of noise. That vocal flair at the start of the final chorus is chef kiss.

Battles - Fort Greene Park Battles are at their best when they keep things simple. This is evident on 2019′s Juicy B Crypts which features some incredibly cluttered moments, but this just makes Fort Greene Park stand out all the more. A delightfully spacious piece of math rock, from some of the best in the business.

Dogleg - Fox Boy howdy, do I love me some midwest emo. Catharsis in musical form, it just makes me want to mosh my troubles away like I’m 16 again.

Tørsö - Grab A Shovel Tørsö go hard, I can appreciate that. An absolutely brutal track about the destructive power of depression and self-loathing.

“Pijn & Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands” - High Spirits “We were like, are we Pijn and Conjurer, or are we Curse These Metal Hands? I think we’ve settled with ‘we are Pijn and Conjurer playing Curse These Metal Hands’ …whatever that means!“ what it means is one of the most joyously triumphant pieces of metal music I’ve ever heard. Some of the guitar lines in this absolutely soar.

Lizzo - Juice Lizzo has won 2019, her message of self love, acceptance and body positivity has won her both critical and cultural acclaim and permeates her music in a way that makes it impossible to not love.

COLOSSAL SQUID, AK Patterson - Kick Punch Colossal Squid is the name given to Three Trapped Tigers drummer, Adam Betts’ experimental project. After a solo album of percussive wizardry Betts has now teamed with vocalist AK Patterson to give us something else entirely.

Evan Greer - Liberty Is A Statue Evan Greer uses the a folk punk sound to deliver an essay on the damaging influences of cis-normativity and social inequality. Of course I like this one.

Taylor Swift - Lover I wasn’t on board with this song for a fair while, but then I kept listening to it and kept coming back to it because of a roughly 50 second section which ties the track and the whole album together. Yeah, this is on here purely for the bridge, which is just beautiful.

Dodie - Monster Monster is an incredibly well written and delivered study on how perception changes with resentment and it makes me cry.

The Y Axes - Moon Moon is a delightfully dreamy piece of pop that glitters with infectious melodies, it’s lyrics a blissful embracing of cosmic nihilism, need I say more?

Ezra Furman - My Teeth Hurt My teeth hurt is a song about tooth ache, about that pain you carry with you everywhere and can’t get rid of, that ruins your days and and is one hell of a mood. Yeah it’s about gender dysphoria.

Nervus - No Nations Speaking of things being a mood, this track hits the nail squarely on the head.

Cultdreams - Not My Generation "Everyone ignores me Unless I’m on a stage talking Because they put me on a pedestal And pretend I’m just performing“ Lucinda Livingstone calls out the misogyny in our culture with a singular ferocity.

Lil Nas X - Old Town Road If there’s one song that’s dominated 2019 this is it right here. Who ever had the idea of putting that NIN Ghosts sample to a trap beat and cowboying over the top of it is an absolute genius.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Planet B It’s impossible to predict where King Gizzard’s sonic influences are going to take them next I doubt even they know half the time. Whatever they turn their hand to though they do it as if they mastered the sound decades ago Planet B is an all out thrash track with a strong environmental message.

Kesha - Rich, White, Straight Men Okay, I’m about to compare Kesha to John Lennon here but HEAR ME OUT… As ‘Imagine’ asked us to consider a world without conflict or capitalism, Kesha now posits that we should tear up our conceptions of our society based on its formation by a privileged group and imagine what kind of utopia could be built if we gave the underprivileged and minority groups a say.

Allie X - Rings A Bell The chorus here sounds like it could have been off Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, and I’m all about that sound. Combined with Allie X’s dreamlike vocals make this a certified bop.

Poly-Math - Sensors in Everything Sensors in Everything is a beast of a track spanning over 14 minutes of absurdly dense prog. Having recently enlisted keyboardist Josh Gesner. Polymath make use of the new sounds and textures available to them, at times imitating a sort of Hammond sound not unlike John Lord to the chaotic maelstrom of noise.

Calva Louise - Sleeper Big hooks on this one. Sleeper has a confident swagger to it’s sound which stands apart for the bands previous work. It’s an absolutely huge track.

Slipknot - Solway Firth Slipknot didn’t disappoint after the tease of 2018′s “All Out Life”, following up with an album which blended old and new aspects of their sound to create one of their best to date. Solway Firth is a perfect example of this matching the punishing heaviness of Iowa with the melody driven sound of All Hope Is Gone.

Clt Drp - Speak To My Seeing Clt Drp perform live was one of my highlights of the year. The filthy guitar tones, powerhouse vocals tight as heck drumming and the _grooves. _Absolutely like nothing else I’ve seen. Just an incredible band that deserve so much more recognition.

Black Country, New Road - Sunglasses Black Country, New Road released two tracks this year and now I just want more. Dense wordy lyricism plays off against ever evolving instrumentation to present a raw cut of emotional storytelling.

Her Name Is Calla - Swan Her Name Is Calla are a band that have always been on the edge of my radar, my Dad is very fond of them and saw them live a couple of years ago, but never went back to relisten to any of their stuff, then they started an album with this. I was sold instantly.

black midi - Talking Heads Talking Heads (the band) are an obvious inspiration on this track. Both David Byrne’s vocal style and the Talking Heads penchant for sharp angular melodies are on show here. But given an extra ounce of chaos through Black Midi’s delivery.

Amanda Palmer - The Ride The ride is ten minutes of bundling up all your fears and anxieties of where we are and where we’re going and just, accepting them as part of the ride. Written off the back of a prompt from Amanda asking her fans what they were afraid of right now.

Kim Petras - There Will Be Blood Okay, let’s have some out of season spookiness. Love the squelchy synths on this, there’s a huge amount of energy on this track and with it’s commitment to the horror conceit it makes for a super fun bop.

Kate Nash - Trash Kate Nash’s sound is like bathing pure nostalgia,here she spins the toxic-relationship narrative central to her work to deliver a bigger story about humanity’s, quite literally toxic relationship to our planet.

American Football & Hayley Williams - Uncomfortably Numb The other side of the “midwest emo” coin. A melancholic song built on a soft bed of arpeggiated chords and clean harmonics, Uncomfortably Numb is a heartbreaking track of losing everything and of cycles persisting thorugh generations. Employing the clever metatextual trick of referencing Pink Floyd’s comfortably Numb to mirror the generational similarities.

Glenn Branca - Velvet and Pearls Disclaimer, Glenn Branca was a musical hero of mine, his approach to music and composition being solely responsible for influence a vast number of my favourite bands. Released posthumously, Velvet and Pearls is taken from a live performance by Branca’s ensemble and perfectly captures the sense of sonic disorientation, conjuring aural illusions through an assault of intricately crafted noise. It’s an exhilarating piece that should be played as loud as humanly possible.

Brutus - War The raw emotional strength of Stefanie Manneart’s vocals instantly made me pay attention when I first heard this track. Then the song exploded into a barrage of riffs and breakneck drumming.

Valiant Vermin - Warm Coke Another slice of throwback pop, Valiant Vermin proved with “Online Lover” how much of an ear she has for pop and has proven it once again with Warm Coke. Is a real good bop.

———

Welp there it is, 50(+1) songs, I had to limit myself to one track per artist in the main 50 because according to Spotify I listened to [checks notes] 1082 new artists this year. There are a small handful of tracks I wanted to highlight from the same artists though as they offer something quite different to the tracks in the playlists, so here they are quickly with 3 word descriptions.

Petrol Girls - Skye (dead dog, sad) Amanda Palmer - Voicemail for Jill (Talk about abortion) Ezra Furman - I Wanna be Your Girlfriend (Trans Torch Song) Battles ft Jon Anderson & Prairie WWWW - Sugar Foot (Batshit Prog Insanity) Poppy - Choke (Dark Minimalist Pop) Show Me The Body - Forks and Knives (Anxious nightmare punk) Lingua Ignota - CALIGULA (the whole album.)

———

Closing Statement

Cultdreams - Statement

There has been a shadow over the entertainment industry the latter half of this decade. Whether film, music, TV or video games, the late 2010′s are filled with stories of people coming forward to bravely tell their stories about being abused and manipulated by men in positions of power. The #metoo movement as it’s come to be known has been a powerful force in giving marginalised people a voice and the ability to call out oppressors and in starting the groundwork to root out the misogyny in the seats of power, but this is a battle far from won.

While there are thousands of stories out there I want to focus on one in particular.

In 2016 a number of women spoke out about various forms of abuse by a well-known musician in the punk scene. It’s now over three years later and this group of women are in the midst of a long fought claim of defamation from this musician. If this case goes through it sets a precedent for silencing marginalised voices in the industry. They have been fighting for so long and with no legal aid available for the case they have had to finance their defense from their own pockets.

This is where Solidarity Not Silence comes in. Solidarity not silence is a crowdfunding effort to help take the case to trial without the women bankrupting themselves entirely so that they don’t have to give in to this mans demands.  You can read more about Solidarity not Silence and make a donation (if you feel so inclined) here: https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/solidaritynotsilence/

You can also follow them on twitter here https://twitter.com/solnotsilence

[bottomshelfreviews]

My Top 20 Albums of the 2010s

There was a lot of great music released this decade, so narrowing my list down to twenty was incredibly difficult. The albums listed here are ranked according to my enjoyment of them and the sentimental value I attach to them.

20. Batushka - Litourgiya (2015) | Label: Witching Hour Productions

Many have hailed Batushka as being one of the most interesting black metal acts to emerge in recent memory, and I’m inclined to agree. The Polish group reminds me of everything that drew me to black metal in the first place. Their 2015 debut, Litourgiya, is atmospheric, sinister, and overall sounds larger than life. The inclusion of Eastern Orthodox chants in their sound only further contributes to the sense of doom and gloom this record evokes.

19. Knuckle Puck - Copacetic (2015) | Label: Rise Records

If any of you were into or even vaguely aware of the pop punk scene in the early to mid-2010s, then I am sure you’ll recall what YouTuber Finn McKenty and others have affectionately dubbed the “sad boy era” of pop punk. This new crop of bands, who dominated the Vans Warped Tour lineups of the first half of the decade, had more in common with emo than they did the “goofier” pop punk bands of years past. Copacetic, in my opinion, was the perfect marker for the decisive end of this era. Although the time in my life during which I mainly listened to this genre of music is over, I still find myself revisiting this record over and over again. 

18. Lingua Ignota - All Bitches Die (2017) | Label: Profound Lore Records

Lingua Ignota (the stage moniker of multi-instrumentalist Kristin Hayter) is truly a force to be reckoned with. Hayter’s music is punishing and heavy, and her stage performances are no different. Beyond the brutality, however, there is beauty, and an important message to behold. A survivor of domestic abuse herself, Hayter pens what she calls “survivor anthems,” using her music as a method through which to process her experiences. 2017’s All Bitches Die is a hurricane of rage, delivered through both beautifully-sung vocals and harsh growls from Hayter. Lingua Ignota is an artist to keep an eye on, and although she just released another full-length, 2019’s Caligula, I cannot wait to see what she does next.

17. Vein - Errorzone (2018) | Label: Closed Casket Activities

This spot very nearly went to the 2017 release, Forever, by hardcore heavyweights Code Orange. Although it is difficult to tack a genre onto Massachusetts band Vein, they have been welcomed into the hardcore scene with open arms, taking it by storm following the release of this breakout album. After attending the record release show for Errorzone at the Billerica Masonic Hall during the summer of 2018, I immediately became entirely and utterly obsessed with this album. If you are a fan of hardcore, metalcore, or nu metal, then this album has something for you, and all of these genres are mixed in a way that doesn’t come off as tacky. After seeing Vein for the second time this past summer as one of the opening acts for straight edge hardcore legends Have Heart at one of their Worcester reunion shows, I only became further convinced that Vein are hardcore’s next big thing. 

16. BROCKHAMPTON - SATURATION trilogy (2017) | Label: Empire

Okay, so I’m technically cheating with this one, but it makes sense to me to consider all three SATURATION albums as one cohesive unit. Formed in Texas but now based in Los Angeles, hip-hop collective BROCKHAMPTON took everyone by surprise when they released three albums back-to-back spanning summer to winter 2017. Since then, BROCKHAMPTON have gone on to attain considerable success and popularity, but for me, nothing they do will truly match the “magic” of SATURATION. Doing nearly everything themselves, these young men are among the hardest-working musicians in the industry today. While I may be partial to certain albums in the trilogy over others (cough, cough, SATURATION III), each album is full of bangers and appears to be a hip-hop classic in the making.

15. Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun (2017) | Label: Sargent House

A seasoned musician by the time Hiss Spun dropped, the 2017 record was Chelsea Wolfe’s fifth full-length. While I love a majority of Wolfe’s discography, in my eyes, Hiss Spun is her crown jewel. This album is sludgy, gloomy, and heavy, but as always, Wolfe’s songwriting reflects her childhood roots of being raised listening to folk and country music. Wolfe has explained that the lyrical themes present on this album have to do with various health issues she has faced, and her writing’s focus on the body as a vessel can be downright unsettling at times, but in the best way possible. Hiss Spun is cathartic but uncomfortable, a space that Wolfe is more than content to dwell in.

14. Against Me! - Transgender Dysphoria Blues (2014) | Label: Total Treble Music

Punk band Against Me! were already a seasoned and established group by the time Transgender Dysphoria Blues was released, but, it was their first full-length outing since vocalist and guitarist Laura Jane Grace came out as a trans woman. The album’s lyrical focus on the struggles of gender dysphoria and not feeling like you belong in your own body is not only refreshing, but needed. Not only that, but it’s just a damn good record. Lead single “True Trans Soul Rebel” is anthemic while lyrically dealing with a challenging topic. Other tracks, like “Black Me Out” and “Unconditional Love,” are bonafide punk bangers that are all too tempting to jump around to. Transgender Dysphoria Blues is not only Against Me!’s most important record, but it also just may well be their best record.

13. Lorde - Pure Heroine (2013) | Label: Universal

In my opinion, Lorde is THE pop musician of the 2010s. Still a teenager when her debut album dropped and when lead single “Royals” was dominating the airwaves, Pure Heroine introduced Lorde as one of the most interesting new voices in popular music. Not only that, but its lyrical critiques of wealth and consumerism were a challenge to the pop status quo of the time. While I wasn’t too fond of “Royals” upon my first few listens to it on the radio, I became far more appreciative of Lorde when I listened to Pure Heroine in full for the first time. It has catchy hooks and a lot of the other usual hallmarks of pop music, but the memorability of the album established Lorde as a new kind of star and separated her from the rest of the pack. “Tennis Court” and “Glory and Gore” are still favorites of mine, and although I adore her sophomore release Melodrama, I’m still convinced Pure Heroine is Lorde at her best.

12. FKA Twigs - MAGDALENE (2019) | Label: Young Turks

British singer FKA Twigs had been quiet for a long time leading up to the release of 2019 full-length MAGDALENE. Prior to its release, her last project had been the 2015 EP M3LL155X. And oh boy, was the wait worth it. MAGDALENE is perhaps her most breathtaking work yet, everything sounding lush and ethereal. Taking inspiration for the title from the Biblical Mary Magdalene (there’s even a track on the album named for her), MAGDALENE explores emotion, womanhood, and the ways in which the two are intertwined. The lyrics to single “home with you” reflect the nurturing nature and caregiver status that women are typically expected to uphold: “I didn’t know that you were lonely / If you’d have just told me, I’d be home with you / I didn’t know that you were lonely / If you’d have just told me I’d be running down the hills to you.” Even the lyrics to radio-ready “holy terrain,” which features American rapper Future, reflect a desire to be wanted by a partner once “I’m yours to obtain.” MAGDALENE is a record that demands the listener’s attention from start to finish.

11. We Came Out Like Tigers - Agelessness and Lack (2012) | Label: Dogknights Productions

Out of the same UK town that produced The Beatles came “blackened skramz” outfit We Came Out Like Tigers. I discovered this group via Bandcamp, and they were my entryway into learning that there was an entire subgenre of bands that combined two of my favorite genres: black metal and screamo/skramz. Even with all of the wonderful music I subsequently dove into, We Came Out Like Tigers’ 2012 release Agelessness and Lack still stands out as a favorite of mine. The first track, “An Introduction,” includes folky guitar and spoken word lines before you’re thrust into the sonically complex “Sous Les Pavés La Plage.” The complexity is exactly what continues to make me revisit this album. The band is constantly switching between quiet and loud, and for a young band at the time, they had completely mastered when to make a song big and when to tone things down. Agelessness and Lack is both punishing and delicate. Sadly, We Came Out Like Tigers are no longer together, but this record will long outlive them.

10. Animal Flag - Void Ripper (2018) | Label: Triple Crown Records

I almost gave this spot to Animal Flag’s beloved 2016 record LP, however, Void Ripper was a record that I could not get out of my mind. On this record, the Massachusetts band covers genres varying from pop punk (“Candace”) to post-rock (“Fair”), and this variance pays off. Void Ripper may come off as a thematically dark record to many, but the hope present in it is palpable. The track “Stray” utilizes the metaphor of a stray dog to convey the message of feeling lost in life. Interestingly, religion and the doubting of one’s faith is a constant theme throughout the album. The track “Why” states, “No god above / There’s evil all around,” and “Fair” asks, “Do you feel close to God yet?” Questioning of faith is a common experience for those who were raised religious, only adding to the relatability of Animal Flag’s work. Sonically stunning and lyrically heart-wrenching, Void Ripper, to me, is Animal Flag’s magnum opus. 

9. My Chemical Romance - Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (2010) | Label: Reprise Records

Anyone who knows me personally knows that My Chemical Romance are, and have been, my favorite band. Their 2010 release Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys was their last full-length prior to their infamous breakup in 2013. Danger Days is not my favorite My Chem album by any means, and it was polarizing for many long-time fans when it dropped. It marked a huge musical shift for the group and sounds more like a straight-up rock and roll album than anything else they’ve ever released. The concept for the album was based around a comic book series frontman Gerard Way was working on at the time, a series that would eventually begin to be released during the summer of 2013. Like anything My Chem had ever done, everything about Danger Days was meticulously thought through and on brand. Lead single “Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)” is a slick rock and roll anthem, and tracks like “Bulletproof Heart” and “S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W” are personal favorites of mine. On this album, lead guitarist Ray Toro truly shines with some of the best musicianship he’s ever displayed during his time in the band. Danger Days is both glam and futuristic, a party at the end of the world.

8. SZA - Ctrl (2017) | Label: Top Dawg Entertainment

SZA’s Ctrl is one of those records that possesses the power to instantly transport me back to where I was when I first discovered it. It was the fall of my freshman year of college, I had just gone through a breakup, and I was unsure of what I was really doing in life. The R&B singer’s reflections on life, love, and feeling undesirable (the song “Supermodel” is a good example) had struck a chord with me, as they did with countless other listeners. The themes present on SZA’s debut album are melancholic, but it’s through this melancholy that SZA is able to convey relatability and hope to her fans. This relatability, to me, is especially present in the song “Prom,” in which SZA laments, “Am I doin’ enough? / Feel like I’m wastin’ time.” Ctrl is great, soulful stuff, just how all good R&B should be, and above all, it’s filled with earnest honesty. Undoubtedly, Ctrl is a record that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

7. Ghost - Opus Eponymous (2010) | Label: Rise Above

Many have pegged Swedish band Ghost as the breakout metal group of the decade, and I couldn’t agree more. Hard rock and metal publication Loudwire even named frontman Tobias Forge as their metal artist of the decade. Although their debut effort Opus Eponymous is not the record that propelled them into stardom, it effectively set the groundwork for the hallmarks of their sound present on subsequent albums. Part of Ghost’s appeal is, of course, their theatrics. Forge masquerades as a demonic anti-Pope in Papa Emeritus I, and the rest of the band is filled with masked “Nameless Ghouls.” Beyond their creative “devil church” concept, Ghost just makes damn good music. Forge is an astounding vocalist and has a real knack for crafting sticky melodies. I’ll never forget the first time I heard “Ritual,” with its catchy introductory riff (great opening riffs seem to be Ghost’s “thing” now: think “Square Hammer” or “Mummy Dust”). Although themes of Satan and the demonic are common in a lot of heavy music, this was the very first time fourteen year-old Kayla had heard anything remotely of the sort. The same goes for the equally-catchy “Stand By Him,” and their ode to blood countess Elizabeth Bathory, “Elizabeth.” Anyone who is aware of my current love for black metal will likely laugh at this, but upon first listen, I was horrified yet enthralled. Even after years of being a fan of this band, I can still say with confidence that Opus is full of the catchiest metal songs I’ve ever heard. 

6. Lana Del Rey - Born to Die (2012) | Label: Interscope Records

Lana Del Rey, up until her critically acclaimed 2019 record Norman Fucking Rockwell!, has historically been met with mixed reactions. However, it’s her major-label debut Born to Die that made me fall in love with her. Del Rey set herself apart from the upper echelons of the pop world with her deep, sultry vocal register and love of old Hollywood glamour. Her music has a grand, lush, cinematic quality to it—think of the track “Ride,” taken from the extended Paradise edition of this record. It’s hard to say anything about Born to Die that hasn’t already been said, but like countless other records on this list, Del Rey’s debut possesses major sentimental value to me—I’ll never forget hearing “Video Games” for the first time. Some have critiqued Del Rey for her melodrama, but I believe this melancholy attitude is what makes Lana Del Rey, well, Lana Del Rey. Born to Die was a new kind of pop record, one that was dreary and marked by a self-aware sadness.

5. Turnover - Peripheral Vision (2015) | Label: Run for Cover Records

Turnover was, and still is, a band well-loved by kids who listened to pop punk and emo. When Turnover decided to reinvent themselves in favor of a more shoegaze, dream pop-infused sound for their second record, it paid off extremely well. Peripheral Vision effectively made Turnover the torchbearers of this sonic shift within the pop punk/emo scene, but in my opinion, no band or release since has come close to touching them. Not even Turnover themselves with their later releases. Peripheral Vision is dreamy and atmospheric, and at times, feels like a warm hug. Its melodies are infectious and stay with you, like in tracks such as “Humming” and “Take My Head.” This record reminds me of a warm spring day. Peripheral Vision opened a lot of minds, including my own, and was one of the catalysts that pushed my music taste beyond the pop punk I was so comfortable with. From here on out, Peripheral Vision is the record I’ll choose to play on a sunny day.

4. The Wonder Years - The Greatest Generation (2013) | Label: Hopeless Records

The Greatest Generation marked a shift in maturity for The Wonder Years. It is undoubtedly their masterpiece, dealing with issues varying from vocalist Dan “Soupy” Campbell’s mental health struggles to coming of age in the suburbs. In my eyes, The Greatest Generation is the defining record for this era of pop punk, and I believe its appeal and relatability allow for it to expand its reach far beyond the pop punk scene. “The Devil in My Bloodstream” is a heartbreaking take on dealing with depression, and “We Could Die Like This” provides a snapshot of monotonous suburban life, even including the brand of cigarettes Campbell’s grandmother smokes and the lyrics, “If I die, I wanna die in the suburbs.” The album ends triumphantly with the seven minute-long “I Just Want to Sell Out My Funeral.” With The Greatest Generation, The Wonder Years have achieved what I think is the defining coming-of-age record of the decade. 

3. Balance and Composure - The Things We Think We’re Missing (2013) | Label: No Sleep Records

Do you remember that part of the decade when it seemed that every pop punk/emo band had taken some sort of influence from 90s grunge? With their second record, Balance and Composure put out the best album to come from that era of the scene. The Things We Think We’re Missing was a huge leap away from the band’s first effort, Separation. From the immediate nuclear blast of an opening track in “Parachutes” to the slower (but still raucous) closing track “Enemy,” Balance and Composure compiled a collection of tracks that was instantly memorable and iconic. Even more toned-down moments, like the acoustic track “Dirty Head,” are still laced with the same desperation and aggression. The guitar work on this thing is incredible, and frontman Jon Simmons’ vocal performance soars. I listen to this album probably about once a week, and I foresee it continuing to be in my rotation for a long time. Make no doubt about it, this record is filled with angst, but as I get older, I feel like The Things We Think We’re Missing grows alongside me. 

2. Movements - Feel Something (2017) | Label: Fearless Records

I haven’t felt this way about a new band in a very, very long time. California’s Movements are such an incredibly special band and convey emotion in a way very much unlike most of their contemporaries. After an impressive first EP with Outgrown Things, I was hoping for Movements to continue to deliver with their debut full-length project. And, oh boy, did they deliver. Feel Something mixes elements of post-hardcore, emo, and spoken word in a refreshing manner, despite the fact that this type of genre-blending was certainly not invented by Movements. Frontman Patrick Miranda’s lyrics are pensive and thoughtful, and delivered in a manner that grounds the notion that he knows what he’s talking about. The lyrics to opening track “Full Circle” are delivered with an earnestness that only a person who’s experienced the lows of depression themselves could possibly be capable of. Miranda perfectly captures the monotony of going through the cycle of depression: “It comes in waves and I’m pulled below / It’s not subjective, it’s clinical / Drown myself in the undertow of all my imbalanced chemicals / And the cycle comes full circle.” Even the song “Deadly Dull,” which is centered around living with Alzheimer’s and having all of your memories be erased “every time you fall asleep,” gives the impression that Miranda has had first-hand experience with what he’s singing about. For such a young band, Movements have perfected the craft of emotive music in a manner that few others have. 

1. The Hotelier - Home, Like NoPlace is There (2014) | Label: Tiny Engines 

Not only is The Hotelier’s sophomore effort my favorite record of the decade, but it might also be one of my favorite records of all time. Massachusetts’ The Hotelier marked their place in the 2010s “emo revival,” but, to me, Home, Like NoPlace is There is more than just an emo record. It’s intensely personal and conveys grief like no other. It’s personal because of the simple fact that many people likely have a topic covered on this album that they can relate to, from losing a loved one, to struggling with your identity, to being in a toxic relationship. The most popular song on the record, “Your Deep Rest,” features vocalist and bassist Christian Holden lamenting over their friend’s suicide and wondering if they could have done more. Holden sings, “I called in sick from your funeral / The sight of your body made me feel uncomfortable.” “Housebroken” utilizes the metaphor of a dog relying on its owner to convey the message of feeling stuck in a toxic relationship. The album ends on a triumphant note with “Dendron,” and with it, you get a sense of closure, as if the emotional journey the album took you on is wrapped up neatly with a nice little bow. Despite this closure, this album stays with you for a long time, and listening to it requires your full attention. The Hotelier are a special band, and Home, Like NoPlace is There is one of those records that only comes around once in a lifetime.

Honorable Mentions:

- Citizen - Youth (2013)

- Daughters - You Won’t Get What You Want (2018)

- Pianos Become the Teeth - The Lack Long After (2011)

- Behemoth - The Satanist (2014)

- Title Fight - Hyperview (2015)

- Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)

- Grimes - Art Angels (2015)

- Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked at Me (2017)