#just. like. the way the ending (and the credits music specifically) feels so. cathartic.

[v-iv-rusty]

help I'm having feelings about ds1

[taylorswifthongkong]

Aaron Dessner confirms: folklore is Taylor Swift’s goth record. Or, at least, it’s her most gothic record. It’s also a few other things, depending on your mood: an unofficial Big Red MachineDessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon started Big Red Machine in 2008 as a loose musical collaboration. They released their official self-titled debut LP in 2018, and this year released “No Time For Love Like Now” with Michael Stipe. collaboration (Big RED Machine); a spiritual companion to The National’s 2019 album I Am Easy To Find, specifically its accompanying Mike Mills film, also shot in black-and-white and emphasizing a more natural setting; or just Swift’s attempt at a headphone record, one that, even if you don’t buy into the Taylor Swift mythology, rewards multiple listens as you pick up on all the intricacies of each song and realize wow, this is where the In Rainbows influence comes in. Dessner is the one to thank for all these little details.

The National multi-instrumentalist spoke to Vulture over the phone from upstate New York a few hours after the surprise release of Swift’s eighth studio album. (“A pretty wild ride,” he admits, sounding tired yet happy.) He was clear that he can’t speak on behalf of Swift’s lyrics, much like he can’t for The National frontman Matt Berninger’s either, or the thinking behind Jack Antonoff’s songs. (Here’s a cheat sheet: Jack’s songs soar, Aaron’s glide.) But Dessner was game to speak to his specific contributions, influences, and own interpretations of each song on folklore, a record you can sum up by two words that came up often during our conversation: nostalgic and wry.

“the 1″

“the 1” and “hoax,” the first song and the last song, were the last songs we did. The album was sort of finished before that. We thought it was complete, but Taylor then went back into the folder of ideasMany of Dessner’s songs started from him sending files of sketches from a folder of ideas to Swift, who then replied with updated files of her ideas and additions. Swift also would start some songs by sending voice memos to Dessner, who would then flesh them out or write music to it. Dessner would also send files to his brother, Bryce, and other collaborators to flesh out the music; he sums up the process as “sending files around.” that I had shared. I think in a way, she didn’t realize she was writing for this album or a future something. She wrote “the 1,” and then she wrote “hoax” a couple of hours later and sent them in the middle of the night. When I woke up in the morning, I wrote her before she woke up in LA and said, “These have to be on the record.” She woke up and said, “I agree” [laughs] These are the bookends, you know?

It’s clear that “the 1” is not written from her perspective. It’s written from another friend’s perspective. There’s an emotional wryness and rawness, while also to this kind of wink in her eyes. There’s a little bit of her sense of humor in there, in addition to this kind of sadness that exists both underneath and on the surface. I enjoy that about her writing.

The song [began from] the voice memo she sent me, and then I worked on the music some and we tracked her vocals, and then my brotherOn bringing in fellow The National member, Bryce Dessner: “My brother lives in France and that’s where he and his family were in lockdown. I would send songs to Bryce for him to add orchestration, and then he would send them back. He would compose to them and then I would have people record them over here remotely.” added orchestration. There are a few other little bits, but basically that was one of the very last things we did.

THE MEANING OF FOLKLORE

We didn’t talk about it at first. It was only after writing six or seven songs, basically when I thought my writing was done, when we got on the phone and said, “OK, I think we’re making an album. I have these six other ideas that I love with Jack [Antonoff] that we’ve already done, and I think what we’ve done fits really well with them.” It’s sort of these narratives, these folkloric songs, with characters that interweave and are written from different perspectives. She had a vision, and it was connecting back in some way to the folk tradition, but obviously not entirely sonically. It’s more about the narrative aspect of it.

I think it’s this sort of nostalgia and wistfulness that is in a lot of the songs. A lot of them have this kind of longing for looking back on things that have happened in your life, in your friend’s life, or another loved one’s life, and the kind of storytelling around that. That was clear to her. But then we kept going, and more and more songs happened.

It was a very organic process where [meaning] wasn’t something that we really discussed. It just kind of would happen where she would dive back into the folder and find other things that were inspiring. Or she and William BoweryDessner explains of the one unknown name who pops up in the folklore credits: “William Bowery is who she wrote ‘exile’ with, and ‘betty.’ He’s a singer-songwriter.” would write “exile,” and then that happened. There were different stages of the process.

Okay, but is it A24-core? [Laughs.] Good comparison.

“cardigan’”

That’s the first song we wrote [in early May]. After Taylor asked if I would be interested in writing with her remotelyOn folklore being recorded somewhat on-the-fly: “I prefer records when they have an element where the paint is still wet. We’re allowing some paint to be human and raw, so [collaborations were] not hired out too much. That was important to me, and that was important to her, too. That is definitely different from her past records.” and working on songs, I said, “Are you interested in a certain kind of sound?” She said, “I’m just interested in what you do and what you’re up to. Just send anything, literally anything, it could be the weirdest thing you’ve ever done,” so I sent a folder of stuff I had done that I was really excited about recently. “cardigan” was one of those sketches; it was originally called “Maple.” It was basically exactly what it is on the record, except we added orchestration later that my brother wrote.

I sent [the file] at 9 p.m., and around 2 a.m. or something, there was “cardigan,” fully written. That’s when I realized something crazy was happening. She just dialed directly into the heart of the music and wrote an incredible song and fully conceived of it and then kept going. It harkens back to lessons learned, or experiences in your youth, in a really beautiful way and this sense of longing and sadness, but ultimately, it’s cathartic. I thought it was a perfect match for the music, and how her voice feels. It was kind of a guide. It had these lower register parts, and I think we both realized that this was a bit of a lightning rod for a lot of the rest of the record.

THE NATIONAL’S INFLUENCE ON SWIFT:

She said that she’s a fan of the emotion that’s conveyed in our music. She doesn’t often get to work with music that is so raw and emotional, or melodic and emotional, at the same time. When I sent her the folder, that was one of the main feelings. She said, “What the fuck? How do you just have that?” [laughs] I was humbled and honored because she just said, “It’s a gift, and I want to write to all of this.” She didn’t write to all of it, but a lot of it, and relatively quickly.

She is a fan of the band, and she’s a fan of Big Red Machine. She’s well aware of the sentiment of it and what I do, but she didn’t ask for a certain kind of thing. I know that the film [I Am Easy To Find] has really affected her, and she’s very much in love with that film and the record. Maybe it’s subconsciously been an influence.

“the last great american dynasty”

I wrote that after we’d been working for a while. It was an attempt to write something attractive, more uptempo and kind of pushing. I also was interested in this almost In Rainbows-style latticework of electric guitars. They come in and sort of pull you along, kind of reminiscent of Big Red Machine. It was very much in this sound world that I’ve been playing around with, and she immediately clicked with that. Initially I was imagining these dreamlike distant electric guitars and electronics but with an element of folk. There’s a lot going on in that sense. I sent it before I went on a run, and when I got back from the run, that song was thereJust how fast of a songwriter is Taylor? Dessner marvels, “It’s almost like a song would come out like a lightning bolt. It’s exhilarating. The shared focus, the clarity of her ideas, and the way she structures things, it’s all there. But I think she works really hard when she’s working, and then she tweaks. She keeps going, so sometimes things would evolve or change. By the time she actually sings it, she’s really inside of it. She doesn’t do very many vocal takes before she nails it.” [laughs].

She told me the story behind it, which sort of recounts the narrative of Rebekah Harkness, whom people actually called Betty. She was married to the heir of Standard Oil fortune, married into the Harkness family, and they bought this house in Rhode Island up on a cliff. It’s kind of the story of this woman and the outrageous parties she threw. She was infamous for not fitting in, entirely, in society; that story, at the end, becomes personal. Eventually, Taylor bought that house. I think that is symptomatic of folklore, this type of narrative song. We didn’t do very much to that either.

“exile” (ft. Bon Iver)

Taylor and William Bowery, the singer-songwriter, wrote that song initially together and sent it to me as a sort of a rough demo where Taylor was singing both the male and female parts. It’s supposed to be a dialogue between two lovers. I interpreted that and built the song, played the piano, and built around that template. We recorded Taylor’s vocals with her singing her parts but also the male parts.

We talked a lot about who she thought would be perfect to sing, and we kept coming back to Justin [Vernon]. Obviously, he’s a dear friend of mine and collaboratorSo, is folklore secretly a new Big Red Machine album? Dessner coyly offers, “I mean, you might not be far off the truth there, but I think I won’t say more.”. I said, “Well, if he’s inspired by the song, he’ll do it, and if not, he won’t.” I sent it to him and said, “No pressure at all, literally no pressure, but how do you feel about this?” He said, “Wow.” He wrote some parts into it also, and we went back and forth a little bit, but it felt like an incredibly natural and safe collaboration between friends. It didn’t feel like getting a guest star or whatever. It was just like, well, we’re working on something, and obviously he’s crazy talented, but it just felt right. I think they both put so much raw emotion into it. It’s like a surface bubbling. It’s believable, you know? You believe that they’re having this intense dialogue.

With other people I had to be secretive, but with Justin, because he was going to sing, I actually did send him a version of the song with her vocals and told him what I was up to. He was like, “Whoa! Awesome!” But he’s been involved in so many big collaborative things that he wasn’t interested in it from that point of view. It’s more because he loved the song and he thought he could do something with it that would add something.

“my tears ricochet”

This is one of my absolute favorite songs on the record. I think it’s a brilliant composition, and Taylor’s words, the way her voice sounds and how this song feels, are, to me, one of the critical pieces. It’s lodged in my brain. That’s also very important to Taylor and Jack. It’s like a beacon for this record.

“mirrorball”

“mirrorball” is, to me, a hazy sort of beautiful. It almost reminds me of ‘90s-era Cardigans, or something like Mazzy Star. It has this kind of glow and haze. It feels really good before “seven,” which becomes very wistful and nostalgic. There are just such iconic images in the lyrics [“Spinning in my highest heels”], which aren’t coming to me at the moment because my brain is not working [laughs].

HOW JACK ANTONOFF’S FOLKORE SONGS DIFFER FROM DESSNER’S

I think we have different styles, and we weren’t making them together or in the same room. We both could probably come closer together in a sense that weirdly works. It’s like an archipelago, and each song is an island, but it’s all related. Taylor obviously binds it all together. And I think Jack, if he was working with orchestrations, there’s an emotional quality to his songs that’s clearly in the same world as mine.

We actually didn’t have a moodboard for the album at all. I don’t think that way. I don’t really know if she does either. I don’t think Jack … well, Jack might, but when I say the Cardigans or Mazzy Star, those aren’t Jack’s words about “mirrorball,” it’s just what calls to mind for me. Mainly she talked about emotion and to lean into it, the nostalgia and wistfulness, and the kind of raw, meditative emotion that I often kind of inhabit that I think felt very much where her heart was. We didn’t shy away from that.

“seven”

This is the second song we wrote. It’s kind of looking back at childhood and those childhood feelings, recounting memories and memorializing them. It’s this beautiful folk song. It has one of the most important lines on the record: “And just like a folk song, our love will be passed on.” That’s what this album is doing. It’s passing down. It’s memorializing love, childhood, and memories. It’s a folkloric way of processing.

“august”

This is maybe the closest thing to a pop song. It gets loud. It has this shimmering summer haze to it. It’s kind of like coming out of “seven” where you have this image of her in the swing and she’s seven years old, and then in “august” I think it feels like fast-forwarding to now. That’s an interesting contrast. I think it’s just a breezy, sort of intoxicating feeling.

“this is me trying”

“this is me trying,” to me, relates to the entire album. Maybe I’m reading into it too much from my own perspective, but [I think of] the whole album as an exercise and working through these stories, whether personal or old through someone else’s perspective. It’s connecting a lot of things. But I love the feeling in it and the production that Jack did. It has this lazy swagger.

“illicit affairs”

This feels like one of the real folk songs on the record, a sharp-witted narrative folk song. It just shows her versatility and her power as a songwriter, the sharpness of her writing. It’s a great song.

“invisible string”

That was another one where it was music that I’d been playing for a couple of months and sort of humming along to her. It felt like one of the songs that pulls you along. Just playing it on one guitar, it has this emotional locomotion in it, a meditative finger-picking pattern that I really gravitate to. It’s played on this rubber bridge that my friend put on [the guitar] and it deadens the strings so that it sounds old. The core of it sounds like a folk song.

It’s also kind of a sneaky pop song, because of the beat that comes in. She knew that there was something coming because she said, “You know, I love this and I’m hearing something already.” And then she said, “This will change the story,” this beautiful and direct kind of recounting of a relationship in its origin.

“mad woman”

That might be the most scathing song on folklore. It has a darkness that I think is cathartic, sort of witch-hunting and gaslighting and maybe bullying. Sometimes you become the person people try to pin you into a corner to be, which is not really fair. But again, don’t quote me on that [laughs], I just have my own interpretation. It’s one of the biggest releases on the album to me. It has this very sharp tone to it, but sort of in gothic folklore. It’s this record’s goth song.

“epiphany”

For “epiphany,” she did have this idea of a beautiful drone, or a very cinematic sort of widescreen song, where it’s not a lot of accents but more like a sea to bathe in. A stillness, in a sense. I first made this crazy drone which starts the song, and it’s there the whole time. It’s lots of different instruments played and then slowed down and reversed. It created this giant stack of harmony, which is so giant that it was kind of hard to manage, sonically, but it was very beautiful to get lost in. And then I played the piano to it, and it almost felt classical or something, those suspended chords.

I think she just heard it, and instantly, this song came to her, which is really an important one. It’s partially the story of her grandfather, who was a soldier, and partially then a story about a nurse in modern times. I don’t know if this is how she did it, but to me, it’s like a nurse, doctor, or medical professional, where med school doesn’t fully prepare you for seeing someone pass away or just the difficult emotional things that you’ll encounter in your job. In the past, heroes were just soldiers. Now they’re also medical professionals. To me, that’s the underlying mission of the song. There are some things that you see that are hard to talk about. You can’t talk about it. You just bear witness to them. But there’s something else incredibly soothing and comforting about this song. To me, it’s this Icelandic kind of feel, almost classical. My brother did really beautiful orchestration of it.

“betty”

This one Taylor and William wrote, and then both Jack and I worked on it. We all kind of passed it around. This is the one where Taylor wanted a reference. She wanted it to have an early Bob Dylan, sort of a Freewheelin’ Bob DylanBob Dylan’s second LP, released in 1963, features some of his most stripped-down acoustic folk songs, with plenty of harmonica. To this day, its lyrics still cause debate. The album’s famous cover, shot in New York on Jones St., is one block away from Cornelia Street. feel. We pushed it a little more towards John Wesley Harding, since it has some drums. It’s this epic narrative folk song where it tells us a long story and connects back to “cardigan.” It starts to connect dots and I think it’s a beautifully written folk song.

Is ‘betty” queer canon?

I can’t speak to what it’s about. I have my own ideas. I also know where Taylor’s heart is, and I think that’s great anytime a song takes on greater meaning for anyone.

Is William Bowery secretly Joe Alwyn?

I don’t know. We’re close, but she won’t tell me that. I think it’s actually someone else, but it’s good to have some mysteries.

“peace”

I wrote this, and Justin provided the pulse. We trade ideas all the time and he made a folder, and there was a pulse in there that I wrote these basslines to. In the other parts of the composition, I did it to Justin’s pulse. Taylor heard this sketch and she wrote the song. It reminds me of Joni Mitchell, in a way — there’s this really powerful and emotional love song, even the impressionistic, almost jazz-like bridge, and she weaves it perfectly together. This is one of my favorites, for sure. But the truth is that the music, that way of playing with harmonized basslines, is something that probably comes a little bit from me being inspired by how Justin does that sometimes. There’s probably a connection there. We didn’t talk too much about it [laughs].

“hoax”

This is a big departure. I think she said to me, “Don’t try to give it any other space other than what feels natural to you.” If you leave me in a room with a piano, I might play something like this. I take a lot of comfort in this. I think I imagined her playing this and singing it. After writing all these songs, this one felt the most emotional and, in a way, the rawest. It is one of my favorites. There’s sadness, but it’s a kind of hopeful sadness. It’s a recognition that you take on the burden of your partners, your loved ones, and their ups and downs. That’s both “peace” and “hoax” to me. That’s part of how I feel about those songs because I think that’s life. There’s a reality, the gravity or an understanding of the human condition.

DOES TAYLOR EXPLAIN HER LYRICS?

She would always talk about it. The narrative is essential, and kind of what it’s all about. We’d always talk about that upfront and saying that would guide me with the music. But again, she is operating at many levels where there are connections between all of these songs, or many of them are interrelated in the characters that reappear. There are threads. I think that sometimes she would point it out entirely, but I would start to see these patterns. It’s cool when you see someone’s mind working.

“the lakes”

That’s a Jack song. It’s a beautiful kind of garden, or like you’re lost in a beautiful garden. There’s a kind of Greek poetry to it. Tragic poetry, I guess.

source

[themoonstarwarrior]

PLAYLIST SHUFFLE TAG!

Okay, so @viterbofangirl tagged me in this and I need to start learning to post my own shit, so what the hell, why not?

Rules: you can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to! put your favorite playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 15 songs, then tag 10 people. no skipping!

(I couldn’t stop at 10 so I added 5 more, sue me)

I have very random music taste and I listen to my music on shuffle alot, so I made a playlist of the ones I like the most (that way I don’t hafta skip 150 songs to get to the one I feel like) so I’m gonna use that one.

1) History of Violence - Theory of a Deadman

Hoo boy starting off light huh?.... Yeah so, I was in the drive thru at Sonic when I first heard this on the radio and was immediately like “holy shit”. Instead of like metaphors and poetic subtlety, it’s just straight up like “here’s a poor abused woman who resorted to murdering her shitty boyfriend/husband cuz she couldn’t take it dum dum dum”. Even though the actual situation is not the same, this song is perfect for getting across the internal issues and turmoil of my character Mikey. Its so perfect I’m even planning to animate something for it...... if I ever get around to learning animation that is.....     

2) The Vengeful One - Disturbed

Two songs in and I look kinda emo.... But hey this song is soooooo cathartic! I love me a good heavy rock song, and the drums and electric guitar are perfect for my ears to absorb. This song gives off a feeling of overwhelming power mixed with a coldness and disdain for the bad in the world. Obviously, thats not my usual temperment, but its an interesting one to explore! Especially when I’m trying to get into the head of characters that exude that like my OCs Spark or Ryu. Plus its fun to sing in the car X)

3) Enter Sandman - Metallica

Okay this one is just a classic! Same thing with the drums and guitar they both slap SOOOOO GOOD. I don’t really associate this song with any of my characters or fandom favorites, but it DOES give me a super strong urge to learn the drums. EXXXXXXXXIT LIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT! OFF TO NEVER NEVERLAND!!

4) We Are Giants - Lindsey Stirling ft. Dia Frampton

I don’t really to listen to music by band or artist, but I LOVE Lindsey Stirling!!! She’s probably my favorite musician! This is such a good song, especially for someone like me. Its a positive song that talks about feeling alone in a crowd and unimportant to the world, but how you really do matter and shouldn’t be afraid to dream big and shoot for the stars. It really speaks to me and the vocalization is so good (especially for singing), not to mention the official music video is animated and AMAZING!

5) Cetus - Lensko NCS

I dunno if anyone knows this song, but damn its good. Its one of those Royalty-Free songs that people look up for their channels, which is how I found it in the first place, but I loved it immediately. Its a peppy 8-bit electronic bop that turns a little Irish jig at the end and honestly I think if I ever start an animation channel I’m totally gonna use it! (Also go support Lensko he make good beats!)

6) Sanctuary - Utada Hikaru

I did not grow up with Kingdom Hearts, and only played KH2 within the past year n’ a half. But good God, the moment that Cinematic Opening came on and this song started playing I swear I astral projected into a daze of feelings without names. I know that “Simple and Clean” is the quintessential Kingdom Heart song that gives everyone feelings, but IMHO Sanctuary blows it out of the water. As beautiful as the animation was, or how curious the occasional backwards lyrics are, or how weird it is having high-res Goofy and Donald in what is essentially an anime opening, I really can’t be distracted from this song when I play.

7) Chemical Plant Zone (Rock Remix) - Zerobadniks

Chemical Plant Song is like, one of the TOP Sonic songs by popular vote (and we know how awesome the Sonic series is musically so thats saying something!), but I could never quite vibe with the normal 8-bit version. I think I first heard this as someone’s ringtone and was immediately like “THATS PERFECT THATS EXACTLY HOW I NEED IT!”. The rock makes the song soooo much better and honestly gives the song the perfect vibe. Unfortunately, it took FOREVER to find cuz none of the Rock Covers of this song were the right one. In fact, tbh, I’m not even sure whether Zerobadniks is the correct artist..... that’s just who everybody was crediting when I found it. 

(imma include the link i found since its a little hard to find: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqJiZEM6aPI )

8) The Wolf - SIAMES

YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEOS???? THIS IS A GOD-TIER ANIMATED MUSIC VIDEO. I found the video first, and seriously, if you haven’t seen it YOU NEED TO!!! The beat works perfectly with the images on screen and the story being portrayed is really intriguing, with the lyrics adding to atmosphere without necessarily describing the visuals shown. Even without the animation, the song itself is a banger. It bring to mind the feeling of intense motion forward, but unable to decide whether its movement TOWARD something or AWAY from something. I love listening to this on a nighttime drive.

9) Burn the House Down - AJR

If you ask me, the best way to make a pop song better is to add either violins or trumpets. For this song, it was definitely the trumpets that first caught my attention, and the rest of the song kept me listening. I don’t really know how to describe the vibe of this song, and I don’t have a specific character or story in mind when I listen to it, so its a little hard for me to talk about it. I think the best way I can describe this song and what draws me to it is a feeling of nonchalant go-with-the-flow attitude to shenaniganry. Almost an undertone of “We’re hooligans in a situation that we probably should get out of, but hey we’ve got life and each other so why worry?” At least that’s the closest I can get to a verbal description heh...

10) Slim Pickens Does the Right Thing and Rides the Bomb to Hell - The Offspring 

DANCE, FUCKER, DANCE, LET THE MOTHERFUCKER BURN!!!

So this also has a KICKASS animated music video, but its technically combined with the song “Dividing by Zero”. Now the video works SO well with both, and the shifting artstyles reflect the differing tones of the songs PERFECTLY. However, I have a preference for both the animation and the song on the Slim Pickens half. Its fun to listen to and sing at the top of your lungs and its SO CATHARTIC. Again I cant really describe what my head does when I hear it, but I think you can probably feel a similar vibe if you watch the music video. 

11) No Heaven - DJ Champion

The first time I finished the original Borderlands, I had been playing for days on end, had just finished a long battle with the Destroyer, and sitting back relieved to have beaten it and reflecting on how much I had enjoyed the adventure. Then this song started playing. For what I believe was forty minutes this song looped on my TV while the credits rolled. By the time the credits finished I was pulling up the song to listen to again! What an absolutely PERFECT cherry to add to this experience. This song perfectly encapsulated the chaotic, trigger-happy, morally ambiguous craziness that I had enjoyed and absorbed in this game. Every time I hear it now, I imagine myself in the wastelands of Pandora, driving haphazardly across the sandy dunes as my companions and I shoot and blow up everything in sight. You know, living the dream.......     

12) Hit & Run (Wolfgang Lohr Remix) -  The Electric Swing Circus

I fucking LOVE electro-swing! The electronic beats and rhythm blend so well with the wild and energetic freedom of swing. A lot of electro-swing gives me a vibe of wild movement, reckless abandon, and freedom from constraint. I think this song melds all of these feelings the best! As the last song might have indicated, despite my general nice and sweet temperament, there is a part of me deep down that is an absolute gremlin secretly enamored with chaos, insanity, and a general disdain for law and authority X). But whereas anything Borderlands related has a more “morality is an illusion blowing shit up is real” air about it, this song is far more peppy. More of a “good-hearted but insane” type of chaos, like an 100mph car chase where you end up sailing over the train tracks JUST as the train passes.

.... I may have gotten a bit off track lol 

13) Kickstart my Heart - Motley Crue

I love this song, but I have to be VERY careful when and where I listen to this. I love songs that make me feel like I’m going a million miles per hour, like I’m gotdam Sonic the Hedgehog. Unfortunately, I may or may not have had multiple instances of listening to this song in the car and abruptly realizing that I’m going like 15mph above the speed limit...... So yeah, regardless of absolutely perfect it feels to play this song while speeding down a nearly empty highway, please be careful and drive responsibly!!!

14) I’m Born to Run - American Authors

Imma just up and say it. This song is a Sonic song; like not like actually from the series but a song for the character. This song encapsulates Sonic as a character better than some of his ACTUAL THEMES (and remember Sonic music are bangers!). Its a song about freedom, living life as it comes, and not letting anything slow you down. Frankly I’m surprised they didn’t make this song FOR the Sonic series, or even the movie! Speaking of which, ironically I heard this song right after watching the Sonic movie in theaters, so yeah there’s no way I can associate it with anything else. 

15) Opa Opa - Antique

Oh, what a PERFECT way to end this list! This may be one of my absolute favorite songs of all time! I don’t remember exactly how I found this song... I think I had just relistened to Dalar Mehndi’s “Tunak Tunak Tun” and was looking for other catchy non-english songs and BOY HOWDY I found one! I know nothing about the band or what the song’s about (its in greek and i dont speak it), but this song is just a masterpiece of retro, pop, and dance sounds. This song feels like the musical and lyrical manifestation of dance and movement. I really REALLY wish I could dance JUST so I can express how happy and free this song makes me feel! This is the BEST song for me to end this list with!

***********************************************************************************

JESUS, this got long..... Sorry about that XD. It was fun though, and hopefully somebody was vaguely interested in my ramblings.

Guess I need to tag people now? How about @tharkflark1, @rockmilkshake, @neonbuck, @drawingsdrawingseverywhere, @birthgiverofbirds, @puccafangirl, @kalcat, @biblestudybussybopsbabey, @monstrous-milktea, and @memecage! I think there are a couple of people here I haven’t talked to though soooooo..... hi, I hope you don’t mind the tag X)

 Anyway hope you enjoyed and/or want to do this too! This took for-fucking-EVER to type, so imma go fuck off and watch youtube or something now...

[thesinglesjukebox]

DIXIE CHICKS - GASLIGHTER

[7.67]

Well, we're ready to make nice...

Jessica Doyle: I made the mistake of reading some of the hell-hath-no-fury-like-Natalie-Maines-on-vocals early publicity, and ended up expecting something a lot less jaunty. If you played "Gaslighter" for a non-English speaker, I'm not sure they'd hear the angry breakup from the music and vocals alone. That stray "Look out you little--" heading into the chorus at 2:05 sounds downright affectionate. This makes for a less emotionally clean song, and the video feels like overcompensation (was the "Daisy" ad really necessary?). But it makes a certain sense. This isn't a fictional story à la "Before He Cheats"; the Chicks chose to eschew the luxury of marinating in two-dimensional righteousness. Adrian Pasdar, as much as he will now forever be known as That Guy Who Did Something on Natalie Maines's Boat, is also presumably tied up irrevocably with Maines's two sons and a couple decades' worth of her memories; she's allowed to refrain from hating him straightforwardly. "Gaslighter" is less cathartic than it could have been -- it might get bellowed into karaoke mics less often than it could have been -- but truer. [6]

Katie Gill: Someone please just tell me what Adrian Pasdar did! I suspect that part of my love of this song is sheer nostalgia. I adore the Dixie Chicks and I'm so happy to see them make a comeback now, even if I worry that, with the current state of country music, it won't go anywhere. And I am here for the big divorce energy this single has. It's wonderful to see that the Dixie Chicks can summon up the beautiful cathartic anger that made their last album, Taking the Long Way, so good even over ten years later. And that anger is matched with gorgeous harmonies (that, granted, are a little bit too hidden by the arrangement), a cathartic chorus, and a brief moment of wonderful vulnerability from Maines near the end. Top that off with one of the best lyrics in 2020 in "you're sorry but where's my apology" and, look, I just can't wait for this dang album to come out already. [8]

Alex Clifton: "Gaslighter, you broke me/You're sorry, but where's my apology?" has rung in my ears for nearly two weeks. I wrote a boatload of bad poetry for years around that sentiment, and the Dixie Chicks sing ten words what I couldn't do in a thousand, and I love them for it. [10]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: "You're sorry, but where's my apology?" So many lines in "Gaslighter" speak truth to my experience of being emotionally and psychologically manipulated, but every time I hear this one in particular, several things happen. First, my blood starts to boil and race and I feel my hands get clammy. Then, I instinctively clench my teeth and get the urge to pump my fists in the air. Finally, I remind myself that if the Dixie Chicks can get through the past decades, I can too -- and my anger dissipates like air from a balloon. That's the argument the Dixie Chicks are making here: winning the argument means not letting anyone else's actions consume your emotional state. [7]

Tobi Tella: "Repeating all of the mistakes of your father" cuts like a knife, the harmonies are tight, and the lightness of the production makes it clear that they can still do fun. If there's any justice in this world, this would be a hit on country radio. [7]

Michael Hong: "Gaslighter" is the Dixie Chicks' first single in fourteen years, and by virtue of being that, is interwoven with each thread its own narrative: 1) the story of the Dixie Chicks -- the rise, the fall, the good, the bad, all of it always culminating in the idea that the women had something to prove. 2) Jack Antonoff on writing and production, straying into bold country territory, furthering his influence in modern music. 3) The rampant use, and in some cases, overuse, of the term "gaslighting," and how it's already led to thinkpieces on whether or not Natalie Maines was actually gaslit. And finally, 4) the politicization of the Dixie Chicks, broadcasting the political as a mirror of the personal. All of these narratives matter, and yet, none are necessary to understand "Gaslighter." The track is compact in all the right ways, with tight harmonies on top of fiddle and banjo arrangements and verses that pick up right where the chorus lets off. The Dixie Chicks package the gleeful realization of the truth into a chorus so jovial you can't help but sing along. All that's to say, even divorced from every narrative that you can throw at "Gaslighter," "Gaslighter" still demands you turn the volume up when you hear it through your car stereo. [7]

Alfred Soto: The inevitable emphasis on the dropped hook is purest Jack Antonoff, not Dixie Chicks, but the best of their tunes relied on outside help anyway. "Gaslighter" squeaks by on chutzpah, skill, and nostalgia from the silent minority of lib country listeners. But Antonoff's infatuation with percussion gives the Chicks the gaslighting urgency necessary to sell the songs in Labelle, Lynchburg, and Mena. They're still not ready to make nice -- except with Taylor Swift's producer's platinum cred. [7]

Joshua Lu: Jack Antonoff is perhaps the last producer I'd expect or want to produce a Dixie Chicks comeback song, largely because his limited palette of plinky pianos and muted synths isn't something I'd think I'd like to hear in country music. To Jack's credit, though, "Gaslighter" is a veritable romp, even in spite of how unfulfilled some of the instruments are and how the chorus sounds like it's coming from a couple of rooms over. The real charm, though, is in the lyrics, so full of the charm and wit that really signify that this is a Dixie Chicks song -- "you know exactly what you did on my boat" alone makes the song a perfect addition to the sizable "My Partner Cheated on Me and Now I Must Destroy the World" section of the country music canon. Fourteen years might've been a long wait, but at least it was worth it. [8]

Jackie Powell: So while 2020 has absolutely been an abysmal year, here's it's one redeeming quality: it set up an absolute glorious return for the Dixie Chicks. Their new single "Gaslighter" comes in at the right place at the right time. So do we have Taylor Swift to thank for this? Is it fair to assume that their vocals on "Soon You'll Get Better" (which might be the most beautiful song on Lover) were an introduction to Jack Antonoff? His signature drums on the second chorus and beyond provide the track with the train that will entice stans of Spacey Kacey Musgraves. A divorce anthem that is also reflexive to frustration with the world in 2020 is so on brand I want to cry. But tears of joy this time. The Dixie Chicks were some of the original victims of cancel culture. But really they were gaslit by their entire genre. Tomato-gate didn't happen until 2015, but the sexism the Dixie Chicks faced preceded the incident. What's fascinating about their return is they won't be in this fight with their genre and the country music establishment alone. Since the Dixie Chicks' hiatus, Musgraves, Maren Morris, The Highwomen and others have taken a spot on the no bullshit mantel next to the trio. It's refreshing. In classic Natalie Maines fashion, she regrets nothing, calling the repercussions of "Not Ready to Make Nice" a "blessing." But really, in 2020, we are the ones who are really truly blessed. [8]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: "Gaslighter" is triumphant both in its specificity ("you know exactly what you did on my boat"!!!) and its broadness (the harmonies, Jack Antonoff's shiny-as-hell production.) Despite that glory, though, "Gaslighter" feels a little empty at its core. It's the rush of the breakup without the consideration of the fallout, the thrill without any crash. [8]

Edward Okulicz: On first listen, this sounded too small, too restrained, too modest for its concept. These aren't things that you would expect from the big ambitions and big voices of the Dixie Chicks. But when the chorus comes in a second time with the drumbeat, it works as a mantra for a protagonist no more ready to forgive than she is to forget. And, as if you needed to be told, their voices still sound gorgeous together. [8]

Oliver Maier: A tumbling boulder of rage for a chorus and Jack Antonoff graciously refraining from turning "Gaslighter" into a big echoey 80s-inflected synth pop confection. "We moved to California and we followed your dreams" is such a great opening line for the verse, charging the events of the song with a mythological, Dust Bowl-era resonance and signalling the relationship's disintegration before it even occurs, like something out of a Steinbeck novel. Maines rattles off each charge against her ex just vividly enough to get the raw emotional beats across, without fixating long enough to stall the song's momentum. A relationship is cremated and catharsis is achieved; no need for an autopsy when there's no ambiguity left. [8]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[sophieakatz]

Thursday Thoughts: Moving On With Toy Story 4

My intention was to polish this out but I’ve been in a funk all day, so have some raw and rambling Thursday Thoughts.

Let’s start with a brief spoiler-free review. I’ll get into spoilers below the cut.

Every step of the way, Toy Story 4 did not do what I expected it to do. It repeatedly chose new directions over old trends, and I came away feeling both grateful and impressed.

At the same time, this story kept continuity with the previous films very well. The characters and world felt comfortable and consistent.

While I like the direction the movie ultimately took, I don’t think I’m ever going to be completely behind “character continually tries to throw self in garbage as comedy” as a concept. Especially given how the Toy Story franchise previously established extremely negative connotations for “trash” and being “thrown away.” This movie raises some uncomfortable philosophical questions about the Toy Story world which I would expect to be played with in the realms of fanfiction and Reddit threads, but which don’t seem appropriate to me to be grappled with in the actual canon content.

That said, I was pleasantly surprised by the way that this movie, in a brief line of dialogue, redefines the concept of trash, taking one of those new directions that I alluded to before. It felt like too little too late for me to entirely like the concept, but it is a positive note. Similarly, Bo Peep is beyond awesome in this film, and the sheer number of incidental female non-villainous characters in this film blows ordinary standards for male-to-female film ratios out of the water, but it all feels like too little too late to call the franchise as a whole “feminist.”

Another pleasant surprise was the ending of the film. Toy Story 4 delivers a concluding note to the overarching Toy Story franchise that is just as cathartic and satisfying as the ending of Toy Story 3, albeit with a much different message. So now we have a franchise with two endings. This irks my inner writer – I’m a firm believer that stories should have a solid beginning and end, and then we should move on to other stories. A story that ends twice is awkward. But I also really like both endings, viewed separately from each other, for different reasons.

There will be a picture here (of the Toy Story 4 movie poster), and a “read more” cut, and then spoilers!

I said earlier that the Toy Story franchise is not as a whole feminist. That said, Toy Story 4 on its own is a feminist film.

Toy Story 4 is the story of a man realizing that the world does not revolve around him anymore, and that it might never really have revolved around him, and that that is absolutely a good thing. Where Toy Story 3 defined Woody’s emotional journey as growing to let go of Andy, Toy Story 4 transforms his journey into letting go of his purpose (as a toy who supports and is loved by a specific kid) and finding a new one. And that new purpose he finds is making sure that other people – primarily women – get what they want and find their own purposes.

At the end of the flashback that opens the film, which explains how Bo Peep was given away, I turned to my boyfriend and said, “Wow.” Not because of the stunning animation, or the fantastic music, or the nostalgia inherent to seeing the gang in Andy’s room once again – but because Bo asks Woody to come with her. Up to this point, Bo Peep did not have a personality outside of Woody. She was exactly what Andy imagined her to be – his damsel in distress. Every single line of dialogue she had in the first two films were either to Woody or about Woody. She had no desires, no independence.

The opening of Toy Story 4 makes it crystal clear that Bo is her own person. She’s quickly established as the leader of Molly’s room, just like Woody is the leader in Andy’s, and she’s an equal participant to Woody in the rescue of RC. Plenty of films would leave it at that, making Bo a female equivalent to Woody. But Toy Story 4 has Bo take things one step further. When Woody tells her to hide and stay with him, she tells him no. Molly and Andy don’t need her anymore, so she’s going to move on to the next kid who does need her. And then she asks Woody to come with her. He doesn’t go – he’s still too attached to Andy, and to Andy’s need for him. But the fact that Bo asks at all, rather than putting Woody’s wishes first, is a big deal.

Fast forward to the end of the film, and once again Bo doesn’t want to stay with Woody and his kid, and once again Bo asks Woody to come with her. This time, she gets what she wants. She remains a “lost toy,” she gets to see the world, and she gets to have Woody there with her.

Bo isn’t the only female character whose desires drive the plot of the film. Woody’s motivation for most of the film is to keep Bonnie happy. This means sitting in the closet when she doesn’t want to play with him (side note – I smiled when Bonnie took the sheriff badge off of Woody and put it on Jessie instead. I used to do the same sort of thing with my toys, taking the hair off of the Playmobil princess and using it to turn the knight into a girl. Where we don’t have representation, we make our own). This also means keeping Forky around.

Forky. Oh, Forky. I don’t really have much else to say about him besides what I said in the spoiler-free part of this review. I did really like his and Woody’s conversation while walking along the highway. In Toy Story 2, “trash” was a zombie-hand hellscape. In Toy Story 3, the garbage dump was a Holocaust-style death camp. Toy Story 4 puts “trash” in a more positive light – “you’ve fulfilled your purpose.” It’s said once, and passed over very quickly – from that point onward, Forky seems 100% on board with being a toy, and the word “trash” is hardly used again. I wish they’d established this concept earlier in the series somehow, but I’m not sure where I would have put it.

The point is, Forky doesn’t get what he wants, either (unless we assume that he wants a female companion, which… really, post-credits-scene? Really?). Woody wins him over to the cause of making sure Bonnie gets what she wants.

And then there’s Gabby Gabby. She was another pleasant surprise. At first she seemed cut from the same cloth as other animated villains – Lotso Huggin’ Bear from Toy Story 3 is a good example. She wants what the hero has, and is apparently willing to kill in order to get what she wants (that scene where the dummies are ripping Woody apart – dark stuff!). I actually laughed a lot during her scenes, because of how the movie overly plays into villainous tropes in her early characterization, and horror tropes for the dummies. I sighed and rolled my eyes when it became clear that Bo and Gabby already hated each other – girls just aren’t supposed to get along in movies, are they. Gabby uses Forky to learn enough about Woody to convince him to give her his voicebox, but she gets rejected by the child she’s been idolizing regardless.

And I waited for Gabby to snap, to turn monstrous, to try to destroy Forky and Woody, and for the film to summarily punish this woman for daring to take something away from the male hero by trapping her in a shelf or sticking her with a kid who likes to torture toys or something.

But none of that happened. Gabby isn’t evil. She genuinely does want what Woody’s been so fortunate to have – a loving relationship with a kid – and Woody recognizes this, and decides to help her. Gabby Gabby gets a happy ending, with a new child, a new voice, and a new life.

This film could have ended with Woody getting everything he wanted. He could have kept his voicebox. Bo and the other “lost toys” could have come home to stay with Bonnie. For a while, it looked like these things might happen. But they didn’t.

Instead, Woody changed what he wanted. He rededicated his life to making sure that other toys and kids would get what they wanted. He goes on to help the other carnival toys find kids of their own, if they want them, and lives happily with the “lost toys” who don’t want them.

If there’s a villain in this film, it’s Woody’s single-mindedness – that’s what keeps getting other people and himself hurt as he pursues his goals in the first two-thirds of the film. Things start to go right when Woody starts to give up pieces of himself and his identity. Him giving his voicebox to Gabby, and later giving the sheriff’s badge to Jessie, are symbols of someone who has had success recognizing that it’s time to pass the torch to someone else, recognizing that what was once “his” world no longer needs him, and accepting that that is alright.

Where Toy Story 3 closed the circle, Toy Story 4 steps forward into a new world. Both are satisfying to my writer brain, albeit for different reasons. My inner social justice warrior is a bigger fan of the latter.

[nyrator]

and so ends another birthday week with Kresnaaa

by week I mean ten days, but it was a good ten days

full of DDR, EDF 4.1, Ghost Stories, red square pizza, guitar serenading, and plenty of good times

godddd so much to remember

Well for starters Kresna’s amazing of course and continues to prove it

This trip had several ongoing stories it feels like, but let’s see...

had to work my normal schedule most of the week unfortunately for us, but we still did a lot with the time we were given- he even came to visit during lunches and made me lunches and nyaaaaaa

HE ALSO MADE ME THOSE LOVELY MY MELO PANCAKES... unfortunately they tasted like rubber because the ingredients in my apartment are garbage BUT STILL MY MELO PANCAKESSS (I made the one on the left with the mouth rip)

in terms of food I’ve eaten, let’s see... risotto was the big one (rice again AND mushrooms, mannn), also these soft baked protein bars or something, they be neat. Also more eggs, asparagus, kiwi, wing bites (aka my first exposure to chicken, though technically the second time we’ve had wing bites), and french toast for the first time~

ALSO FUJI APPLE BUNNIES... apple bunniess... also fuji apples are probably my favorite apples I’ve discovered so I should probably use them to try eating more apples

We also went for pizza a lot at our usual place (good ol’ Nina’s red square pizza), we were stuffed every time but it’s the only good pizza there is. Also one last ice cream trip for the season before they closeddd

But yes, enough about food for now~

One of the main events was our classic DDR routine- andddd the machine has just broken on our first visit there, ripppppppp-

BUT WAIT. The owner of the place walks out and tells us it’s out of order, and Kresna’s like, man, I can probably hook you up with ways to fix this, I know people who own these machines, and we got into talking a lot- this dude takes really good care of his machines, it was a really nice experience. Just for wanting to help, he gave us both a few free passes for laser tag (the main attraction of the place) and Kresna and him kept in touch.

And of course, Kresna, being the genius that he is, manages to find out the problem. And we go in the next day, talk with him, inspect the innards of the machine, talk more about solutions and stuff, Kresna sends him some other CDs for the machine to see if it’d work, and sure enough, on Friday, my birthday, it’s fixed- and even better, since Kresna told him how to unlock the secret songs and everything in the cabinet.

So dance a lot we did this weekend~ First night we didn’t see the owner, but the next (after he unlocked the songs), he gave us basically 20 free plays (each two rounds), plus one of his employees who loves DDR gave us a free play as well (and he also invited me to and destroyed me in a round, dude goes hard without a bar), really really nice people. On our last visit the owner tries to give us more quarters for more free plays and we’re like “stop, stop, we’re still trying to spend the ones you gave us!”

And now I feel obligated to go to this DDR place more because man, would like to support this place more (and y’know get good at DDR beyond a level 4-5 intensity song). And it’s great, since right before we first visited, we were just talking about making connections with people and getting our own DDR cabinet (which we shall, someday, once we have a stable place togetherrr)

In terms of DDR, we also set up my dancepad and played some Max~ My first song pick was Sandstorm once Kresna pointed it out and I regretted it instantly, I think I might have jeopardized our relationship because of it

We also went to another Round One- this time in Middletown NY, good times. I think I preferred the one in Exton a bit more, but man, gooodd times. It had Music Gungun 2 and that’s all I need (ALSO IT HAS TWISTER FROM TWEWY...) Got a high score with it and I feel proud of us

(would also totally be down with owning a Music Gungun someday)

Kresna meanwhile is still impressive at IIDX, also speaking of games that had TWEWY music

not the greatest game but hey FF music (of which Kresna is great at playing on guitar by the way, his FF2 Town theme is so gooddd). Also played more of that one Gunslinger Stratos game, this time a functional one- went through the tutorial and it seems neat, all the crazy gun combinations and stuff, but it feels a bit like Dissidia NT which is just painful for me to think about that game.

also as you can see above, Kresna won us Kirbyssss

so we both decided to have one try at the machine, and I failed, and then Kresna tried and won the laying Kirby first try for meee- Then before we left, we decided to use our last credits to win him one, and together (mostly him) we won the standing Kirbyyy- both are staying with me at the moment but they are our Kirbys (and I need to play more Kirby games- only played the first two Dream Lands and Adventure, and a bit of Dream Course)

good kirby (with a beautiful orange sunset my phone can never capture properly)

as for my birthday itself it was nicee

I had to work of course but Kresna brought me that cake and it was lovely and goodddd

a random customer came though and took the piece we were giving to my coworker and that was very... odd, but okay, enjoy it, random lady.

he also decorated my room as seen a bit above (also admire aforementioned guitar that plays aforementioned Town theme very well)

I also got him a little something~

He also got me a nice shelf which I need to fill up so I can take nice pictures with it, as well as coat hangers and other nice things, but nya~

We also as mentioned played a lot of EDF 4.1 again (this time, more Inferno missions/DLCs) and boy, who hurt you, DLC 2 pack maker. We grind, but not a super lot, and mannn those glowy flying red drones are death. We got to the last DLC 2 mission before calling it quits, but I might do solo grindinggg

Also, in honor of this spooky month, we decided to watch a classic, one he’s seen before ages ago- Ghost Stories dubbed. Mannnnnnn. It’s definitely not something that’d fly in today’s environment, but man is it so good. Both of us were completely out of character with our language from quoting it and general jokes inspired by it (I myself have been letting my language slip lately and as someone who dislikes specifically myself swearing and making crude humor it’s nyehhhh), but man, what a show. The f-bombs, the insulting every possible thing with extreme prejudice- it’s almost refreshing, y’know? Being able to appreciate the humor in that kind of stuff from time to time while knowing it’s just doing it for comedy and not maliciousness, it’s very cathartic. 

overall a great birthday and good times and he will be misseddd, until next timeee

oh yeah did I mention he stole my phone for a bit and changed my wallpaper early this visit

I don’t know much about Detroit but the man loves his boys and so I left it on all week for him

tried changing his in retaliation and failed and he finally gave me the chance and immediately regretted it when I gave him an image of the Worst Girl (TM) as his wallpaper

I am still amazed he’s still with me to be honest, but he is a good

[chelseawolfemusic]

Chelsea Wolfe Interview / Cover Story // Revolver

Full feature via REVOLVER

Chelsea Wolfe has escaped into the woods and she's not about to come back. You'll find the singer-guitarist in the mountains of Northern California, hours from her Sacramento hometown, where the closest she gets to city life is in some tiny, ancient hamlets left behind from the Gold Rush days.

It's quiet up there, which might help explain the acoustic direction of her next album, a mostly solo project she's been writing and recording in her living room, her garage, wherever there's space to dig into Wolfe's new songs that are both intimate and biting, delicate and fierce. As an artist, she was already hard to pin down, with elements of folk, goth, post-punk, industrial, metal and more woven deep into her grooves. "I move in extremes, hot or cold," she says. "I tend to combine those two things at all times."

The still-untitled album is a left turn from the explosive rock guitars that dominated 2017's acclaimed Hiss Spun, with its churning songs of white noise and epic melodies. This year, she returns to her core inspirations, and the playlist Wolfe is spinning on infinite loop are recordings by Townes Van Zandt and Neurosis, Johnny Cash and David Bowie, disparate songwriters who cut deep. That makes the new album a kind of follow-up to her smoldering 2012 release Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs, which gathered leftover folk tunes of a certain understated volume that hadn't fit on her other albums.

This one is different in that Wolfe is building this collection from the ground up, intentionally working within her own version of folk on songs written over the last year. She has longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm co-producing and engineering, and occasional guest players to add subtle layers of sound, including drummer Jess Gowrie. But she is determined to make this a solo project as raw and as cooked as the early country music and folk she heard growing up, with a modern message suited to the moment.

With Hiss Spun, her following only grew wider, and she's seeing fans with her lyrics tattooed to their skin. Wolfe is responding with new songs that both embrace and challenge, exploring the trials and triumphs of feminism, present and past, within an ever-changing world order that she's encouraged to see has a new wave of women rising to power in the U.S. Congress.

"I just follow my instincts and I follow all the strange and different voices that live inside me and I don't hold them back," says Wolfe, "especially not anymore."

photograph by John Crawford

YOUR LAST ALBUM, HISS SPUN, HAD A LOT OF EXPLOSIVE GUITAR MOMENTS. IS THIS ACOUSTIC RECORD A REACTION AWAY FROM THAT? CHELSEA WOLFE Honestly, I didn't know exactly what I was going to do next. I was so completely enveloped and focused on doing that record. And it was cathartic for me. That record felt very internal, but very explosive, as well, letting a lot of things out I hadn't thought about or talked about before. Maybe the natural reaction to that is to retreat into the wilderness and just write a really quiet album. It's introspective, but it's also about the history of women and what we've gone through over these years and how a lot has changed, a lot hasn't changed.

IS THAT INSPIRED BY RECENT EVENTS IN THE WORLD? I'm sure it is. Part of it has to do with just being a woman and getting older and understanding things more and just feeling that really visceral reaction to the way women are treated and seeing it on the daily in our society and on the news.

THIS ISN'T YOUR FIRST ACOUSTIC PROJECT. DO YOU GET A DIFFERENT FEELING ONSTAGE WHEN YOU'RE ALONE VERSUS BEING WITH A BAND AND HAVING AN ELECTRIC GUITAR IN YOUR HANDS? I haven't done shows by myself onstage in a really long time and it's not so easy for me. It's definitely more comfortable to have your band with you and to be able to lose yourself in all these sounds and things that you're creating together. But I also feel really ready and excited to do that, even though it's scary. I like to push myself into new territories musically and physically. Heavy music can be really intimate, and solo can be very intimate. So in a way it's the same thing, being up there and baring your soul for people.

HOW IS THE NEW RECORD BEING MADE? I'm recording it at home. Originally, I really wanted to do everything myself. Sometimes as a female artist, if one man is involved with one little thing on your record, they end up getting a lot more credit for it. I was being a little defensive at first. But as I started approaching it, I felt like that was actually a very lonely way of doing things and it didn't sound like much fun. So I decided to involve Ben, and he's helping engineer it so that I can just focus on recording the parts and not having to run back and forth to the board or computer.

I really wanted to play every song just with me and an acoustic guitar. That was important for me. So they all started in that way. We might add some electric guitar, or some kind of electronic beats to it.

I sat down with Ben and that really helped me finish everything — we would talk about a song and then I would run upstairs to my writing room and suddenly have all these lyrics that finished a song.

HOW ARE THE NEW SONGS RELATED TO SOME OF THE QUIETER MOMENTS ON HISS SPUN? I think it's different. I did Unknown Rooms, which was a compilation of a lot of acoustic songs I'd written over the years. They were just written with the idea of playing them as a solo artist in mind. I think every record definitely is going to have some heavy moments and some soft moments. Abyss had "Crazy Love" and Hiss Spun had "Two Spirit." It's just part of me to oscillate between the two.

CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT ONE OF THE SONGS? One is called "Be All Things." It's very introspective and it's very triumphant. Conceptually, it's about a Victorian-era woman who is a maiden but very much wants to be a warrior — and just thinking about nature and environmentalism and how long that has been a problem and how we're trying to make changes but still we're just destroying the earth. Just when it seems like something's changing, it just gets worse. I think my music in general represents the soft and the strong, embracing the feminine and masculine of myself. This album is very much along the theme of that dichotomy. And I think a lot of people can relate to that, as well, whether it's a man or woman, a non-gender-specific person. I think a lot of people are starting to embrace that about themselves, the soft and strong, and then really finding that empowering.

DID THAT COME AS A REACTION TO SOMETHING? It's a bit of a reaction, but it's also just something that's really been a part of me for a long time. I'm not just one thing. You can't really put me or my music into a box. Sometimes that's frustrating for me because I think maybe it holds me back in a way, but then sometimes I think that is why I've been able to do what I do and why I have any kind of success as an artist and a musician. I'm saying in the song: "I want to be all things." I don't want to be held back anymore and I don't want to feel like I need to quiet my voice. I just want to be who I am and be free.

IT SEEMS LIKE A LOT OF PEOPLE FEEL THAT WAY. JUST LOOK AT HOW MANY WOMEN WERE RECENTLY ELECTED TO CONGRESS. Exactly. It's amazing. And I think it's very indicative of this time and more and more women and non-gender-specific people are really starting to speak up for themselves and let go of the fear of that. So that's definitely a strong theme with this new album.

HOW HAVE YOU EVOLVED AS A LYRICIST SINCE YOUR FIRST RECORDS? I'm a much better writer and I'm taking the time to really make sure I'm saying the right thing. As a younger artist, I would just write a song and then that was it. I never really went back and fixed up the lyrics or changed a word if I didn't like it. I love words and I love reading and I love thinking about language and how to make something sound the best way but also infuse a lot of meaning into even just a short phrase. On this new album, I'm using some archaic language to talk about new things.

HOW ARE YOU USING ARCHAIC LANGUAGE? I was spending some time with my great-grandmother before she died and I would often write down a word here and there that you don't hear anymore. Jess is very much like that, too. She was raised by her grandparents, so she has a lot of cute old phrases that she says that you don't hear very often. There's a moment [on the record] with the word "daylight plumed my skin." That's something I've probably read in some old poetry books. It's something sensual, and I'm always trying to bring sensuality into language and keeping that alive because I feel like sometimes that is a dying art.

ASIDE FROM YOUR OWN TOURS OVER THE LAST YEAR, YOU DID TOURS WITH MINISTRY AND A PERFECT CIRCLE. HOW DID THAT GO? I'm such a big fan of Ministry and they're really great — but I don't think their audience was as open as I thought they might be. So it was a little bit tough if I'm honest. I got really aggro on the Ministry tours because sometimes it felt like their audience was just looking at us with disgust. Not all of them. Of course, there were some really nice people that wanted to be open to it. It ended up being fun and it brings you and your band closer together, too. I just took it as another learning experience.

Al [Jourgensen] was so great and he would invite us onto his bus after the show and just talk about music and stuff for a long time. We would overhear him describing us to other people, talking about me and Jess: "They're women and they're angry and they're making good music!" It was really cute.

A Perfect Circle was very different. Their audience was a lot more accepting of us for some reason. Definitely bigger venues than I've ever played. I have a long way to go in knowing how to work a room of 8,000 people because that's totally different than what I'm used to be playing. Maynard actually invited us out to his winery. We got to experience his wine and homegrown vegetables and stuff. It was really cool.

YOUR FANS SEEM WILLING TO FOLLOW YOU THROUGH YOUR SHIFTS IN TONE. AND NOBODY REALLY KNOWS WHAT THEY LIKE UNTIL THEY SEE OR HEAR IT. That's true. And I think it makes you a better artist when you do things that people aren't expecting. It's like when I heard Black Sabbath doing the song "Changes" the first time — after hearing all their other heavy music. Them doing something so touching and intimate helped me understand the freedom to just sing whatever song is calling to you.

[iheartseo]

ghosting out || luke hemmings

requested: no

word count: 3.4k+

synopsis: too young & too dumb to know things like love, but when you get into an ‘we almost dated’ relationship, you can’t help but learn a few things about the other person. all of the little things that luke just hopes the next guy will love and cherish like how he should’ve.

a/n: this is my first piece of writing after not being active for like over a year! so i am so sorry if things are a little bit rusty and i am so sorry if i took way too long to get into the angsty bit. this was inspired by ‘ghost of you’, this poem? text post? and this movie scene.

credits to the photo owner. i just cropped it down.

masterlist // writing prompt list

Music was playing to fill in all of the little empty gaps of silence in between all of the chatter that was happening around the room. People crowded almost every single inch of space yet there was still enough room to move about freely. Laughter and smiles were on majority of people’s faces whilst drinks ranging from a champagne flute to a light cocktail in their hands. It was a weird ‘listening’/album release party for the new 5 Seconds of Summer album considering no one was listening to the album itself, more like mingling, though that didn’t mean no one was paying attention. 

As the boys were walking around, saying hi to potential business partners and future songwriters for even the next album, it couldn’t help but be weirdly overwhelming for one of the boys. Luke finished off one of his drinks that was designed and inspired specifically by the album; the Valentine cocktail. He respectfully nodded his head as he finished off one conversation with a stranger that he feels like he should remember their name, but by the end of the night, he wasn’t even going to bother. 

 The blonde man walked over to one of the couches provided by the venue, running his fingers through his hair and rubbing his face to try and keep himself awake. He groaned softly, wanting nothing more than to just go home and sleep as evident from his tired eyes. 

 “You alright?” 

 Luke turned his head and found Ashton sitting on the arm of the couch, patting his shoulder as a sign of comfort but also slight worry. Luke gave the drummer a small smile, nodding his head and waving him off. “Yeah yeah, don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m just a little tired that’s all.” 

Ashton nodded his head as well before gently squeezing the guitarist’s shoulder. “Well don’t worry, the party is going to end soon. Let me know if you need anything okay?” The younger one smiled once more as he nodded his head again. “Yeah don’t worry, Ash. I will.” 

With the drummer walking off, Luke let out another sigh and just decided to lean back in his spot and scroll through his phone to pass the time. As he quickly liked random photos that were appearing on his instagram feed, he hears his name being called. He looked up and his eyes widen at the sight of her standing just a few feet away from him. 

She somehow managed to look the same and yet even more amazing from when they last saw each other. A wide smile appeared on his face as he quickly got up and walked over to her, embracing her in his arms. “Holy shit, hey.” He greeted, chuckling softly. 

The girl wrapped her arms back around him and giggled softly, happy to see the man after a period of not seeing his face. She pulled away from their embrace, smiling up at him. “It’s so good seeing you again! Congrats on the album, I listened to it earlier and it sounded absolutely amazing.” 

Luke couldn’t help but blush at her compliments. He could never really take compliments well, especially when they came from her. It might just be his own humble nature or just him not always 100% believing in his own creative abilities, but it was nice to hear his work being appreciated and actually valued.

“Thanks (Y/N). I honestly didn’t even know that you were coming.” 

“Oh, Michael invited me.” 

“… Did he now?” 

Luke looked up from her and conveniently saw Michael not to far away from him, but too far to actually have a conversation with him. Michael looked up and saw Luke and (Y/N) standing together to which he proceeded to give the taller blonde a sympathetic smile. Luke pulled a face of annoyance and mouthed ‘why?!’ towards the other, only to be replied with Michael shrugging his shoulders and signalling that Luke shouldn’t be focusing on (Y/N) and not on him. 

Luke clenching his fists before quickly looking back down at the woman in front of him and gave her an awkward laugh, before she noticed anything. “It’s great to see you again. It’s been a while.” He said with a small genuine smile. ‘I am going to kill, Michael after this.’ He thought to himself.

“Yeah, it has been a while. Like a year or two?” 

“Wow, how time flies.” 

“It sure does.”

It was weird having small talk with her when before, they would use to have conversations that would span over countless hours and covering almost countless topics that either held meaning or were just pure conversation fillers that lead to funny moments and sayings. To be standing in front of her and having a normal conversation with her was incredibly cathartic; emotional, overwhelming and yet so comforting at the same time. In a strange way, Luke missed that about her, or at least just even being around her. 

“You still writing?” he asked with curiosity. “Actually, I am. Kind of interning for a music label and like working out my own song writing style.” Luke’s smile grew bigger, feeling somewhat proud of her for taking the chance to further pursue her dream. “Hey that’s amazing, congratulations.” 

Just before (Y/N) could say anything, Luke’s smile flatten as a random guy appeared by (Y/N)’s side and kissed the temple of her head, just how he use to back in the days. She turned her head and smiled at the guy, giving him a quick peck ‘hello’. 

“Oh, Luke. This is Jason, a guy that I am seeing. Jase, this is Luke.” 

“Oh... Hey man.” He leaned over and respectfully shook the other male’s hand, though he couldn’t help but feel a little bit upset at the fact that she moved on. 

“Oh, Luke! Hey! I heard so much about you! (Y/N) is so lucky to have such a good friend like you in her life.” Luke bit his lower lip, hearing that term ‘friend’ as a term to describe (Y/N) and Luke’s relationship. Though Jason wasn’t completely wrong, he wasn’t completely right too. They were friends… are friends, but they did have a moment where they weren’t completely just friends.

He remembered almost every second of their time together as they both danced around the line that spilt between friendship and relationship and to say that they were together would be false, though saying that there was nothing there at all would also be false. That weird position of ‘we almost dated’ was complicated and left both of them, or at least Luke, so many questions that were left unanswered and so many ‘what if’ scenarios that will forever torment him till the day he dies. 

“Yeah well, I am the lucky one to even have her in my life.” Now it was (Y/N)’s time to blush, especially with Luke’s eyes looking at her with such intensity that only she knew the underlying meaning to his words. Clearing her throat awkwardly, she turned her head and looked at the man that was standing by his side.

“Hey I’m gonna go to the bathroom for a little bit, you two boys chat.” 

Both of the men watched her make her way to the ladies bathroom until they were both left alone. Both letting out an awkward laugh, Luke showed Jason to the couches where both of them could sit and ‘chat’, as she had previously put it. 

“So… how did you meet (Y/N)?” Luke asked, slightly dreading the details of their new blossoming relationship. 

After a while, (Y/N) appeared out of the loo and started to look for both Luke and Jason, hoping that she could continue catching up with the blonde rockstar. Returning to the spot that she left them both at, she was disappointed to only find Jason sitting down at the couches. Furrowing her eyebrows, she sat down next to Jason. 

“Hey where did Luke go?” 

“Oh, he decided to go home. Said something about being really tired and all. But we did talk about you though.” 

A look of confusion fell upon her face, hearing about their boy’s topic of conversation. 

“Me? What did you guys say? Good things I hope?” 

“Of course, love. Only ever good things about you.” Jason chuckled, placing his hand on her thigh as a sign of endearment. “Though I can tell that Luke really does care about you. Weirdly enough, I guess he is a little bit protective of you, cause he kinda gave me a list of rules to follow if I were to stay with you and wanted to get serious with you.” 

(Y/N) jerked her head back in surprise as her confusion continued to grow. “Rules? What rules? I’m a person not a toy.” She said, getting defensive over why Luke would say such a thing, especially to a guy that she was currently seeing and interested in. To a certain degree, she was offended. Was Luke holding a grudge against her? Was he trying to ruin her future happiness?

“Babe, I know you’re not. I don’t know why he told me. I guess, maybe to help me not screw up as much?” She let out a sigh, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. “Okay fine, what did he say about me?” 

“Well, Rule 1) Don’t ask her to be feminine. She will defy almost every single stereotype that you grew up with and learnt about women and if you try and get to fulfil it, it’s not going to be pretty. …” 

Luke’s POV 

“Rule 2) Don’t let her drink over three glasses of anything. (Y/N) is honestly the biggest lightweight I have ever met, and as small as she is, she will get aggressive and possibly beat someone when drunk.” Luke advised, chuckling softly at the memories back when Luke and her would go out partying and the amount of times Luke had to carry an intoxicated (Y/N) over his shoulder or give her a piggyback ride back to his apartment. 

“Rule 3) When you go to any café, don’t order a coke or any juices. Drink coffee instead. She has this weird thing where the only thing you should drink at a café is coffee, and if you wanted to drink a coke, you should’ve gone to McDonalds.” Luke remembered one of the first few times that Luke and her had gone out together and even though Luke wasn’t much of a coffee drinker, (Y/N) forced him to be a coffee drinker. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why he has gotten to dependant on the caffeine, because of her influence. 

“Rule 4) If she hits you, act like it hurts and when it does actually hurt, act like it doesn’t.” The amount of times (Y/N) has hit Luke’s chest or pushed him away in any sort of fight whether it was playful, sober or intoxicated, she always managed to find a way to hit him. At first, he found it incredibly annoying that she always had to hit him, especially since in his eyes, it made her seem like a child throwing a tantrum, but he just learnt that (Y/N) wasn’t that vocal about her feelings. “She’s weird in the sense that, she doesn’t know how to voice her emotions, that’s why she will hit you. But don’t be offended by it. It’s just her.” Luke added, giving Jason a weak smile. 

“Yeah, I kinda noticed that. (Y/N) doesn’t really like to talk, does she?” “No, trust me, she does. She will talk your ear off; you just have to be patient with her. “ Luke sighed, looking down at his hands as he continued. 

“Rule 5) Her favourite song is Robot by The Sam Willows, which by the way, listen to The Sam Willows. They are her favourite band and even if you don’t like them, if you don’t try, you’re done for. When she is having a break down, hold her in your arms, kiss her forehead and tell her to breathe whilst you hum Robot under your breath. Show her that you are there, no matter what.” 

“Rule 6) Make sure you learn fencing and squash, especially squash. I have no idea who plays that game other than middle aged men, but don’t be fooled. (Y/N) will seriously kick your ass at it and it won’t be fun.” Luke said, letting out an airy laugh as he shook his head. “My god, dude, the amount of times I got my ass handed to me by her whenever we played.” He chuckled, looking at Jason. 

“Okay this might be weird but don’t be alarmed but, Rule 7) be prepared to go to jail sometimes. She will put you through so many journeys and adventures that somehow; you will be the one who ends up in a holding cell and not her.” Luke saw the horrified look on Jason’s face, making Luke chuckle again. 

“Hey, man, don’t worry. She will bail you out, no matter what. I think she gets a weird kick out of. Letting you out, though that does come with a warning that she is not afraid to let you sleep in a holding cell for a night or two.” Instantly, Luke remembered when somehow on a night out when he was trying to look after (Y/N) at a nearby motel, Luke got arrested because other visitors grew suspicious of a ‘too sober’ man making a sudden booking with a passed out girl on his shoulder. After spending a night in a jail cell, Luke remembered from that moment on to book a hotel room before hand, just in case. 

“Rule 8) If she says she’ll kill you, don’t take it lightly. (Y/N) is the strongest and most stubborn person I have ever met. She is definitely a character who can certainly hold her own. Don’t try and assert your dominance over her because trust me, it will be the worst decision of your life. And besides, it will make you feel better.” 

“Rule 9) If her feet hurt, exchange shoes with her. It does not matter if she is wearing heels or flats, change shoes with her, even if that means you will have to go bare foot.” Luke remembered the countless nights out where if (Y/N) wasn’t drunk and passed out that she would complain so much about how her feet would hurt in her heels but she would refuse to walk barefoot around town as she didn’t want to see tragic, so the next best thing would be for Luke to go barefoot whilst she wore his shoes. The first few times, Luke felt completely embarrassed, but as time went on, he grew to learn that he would do anything for her, even walk in heels for her. 

“And finally, you should already know this but she is a writer. Not because she is good at it, but I mean, she is, but she doesn’t think she is. (Y/N) only really writes cause she thinks it’s just a time filling hobby. Encourage her to write, whether it will be a random song, a random story paragraph or a poem. No matter what, always encourage her to write. Even though she doesn’t know how to vocalise her feelings, she definitely knows how to put her feelings from pen to paper. She will draw you into her world or art and poetry and immortalise you among the stars that she creates in her own mind. You will never die, which also means that if you can’t ever figure her out, read her writing. She’s good. Really fucken good.” 

Luke gulped, swallowing down the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat after talking and mentally reminiscing so much about (Y/N) in his brain. He looked at Jason who seemed to be taking Luke’s advice genuinely all in. “You seem like a really nice guy, Jason. Treat (Y/N) well because she deserves the universe.” 

Feeling himself get emotionally drained, Luke cleared his throat and gave Jason a small smile. “It’s getting late and I should probably go. Tell (Y/N) that it was nice seeing her again. I’ll see you around.” 

The blonde singer got up from his spot and immediately b-lined it to the exit, avoiding his band members in his path. It’s been a while since Luke has felt this emotional, especially over (Y/N) and it was suddenly overwhelming him. Now he definitely wanted to go home and sleep. 

Quickly calling an Uber back to his place, Luke sighed, sitting in the back seat as he just watched all of the neon lights of Hollywood fly by. Giving his Uber drive a quick smile and a nod thank you, Luke got out of the car and quickly made his way inside his home. The faster he could just get out of his party clothes, have a nice shower, the faster that he could go to bed and sleep the night away and also sleep away even running into (Y/N) and her new boyfriend. Luke made a mental note to kill Michael in the morning. 

The blonde turned on his shower, feeling that he deserved a nice hot shower to wash away the awkwardness and the tension that seemed to grow inside of him after tonight’s events. As the water cascaded over his hair and his body, Luke didn’t realise how much (Y/N) still had effected him even after a year or two of not seeing each other. It was like her ghost was still there following him, but he grew so immune to it that he didn’t realise that she would still be there with him until she actually was standing right there in front of him. 

When they were ‘together’ Luke wasn’t that much younger than her and yet after being with her and going through all of the twist and turns of a ‘maybe’ relationship, it somehow hurt him the most whilst teaching him the most. He somehow managed to know every aspect about her, every little detail and yet he could never crack the one where she would let him actually be with her, or maybe that was Luke’s own fault, believing that being at the height of his career, he shouldn’t be in anything serious. Or maybe they were both just too dumb to realise that letting each other go would be one of the hardest things either one of them would have to go through. 

As Luke relaxed during his hot shower, he could hear someone constantly ringing his doorbell and knocking on his front door. The more the knocks echoed, the more Luke thought that whoever was behind that door was ready to kick it down. Furrowing his eyebrows, he quickly got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist, annoyed that someone was acting as if it was an emergency to see him at this hour. 

Luke opened the door, ready to yell at his night visitor before he realised that it was (Y/N) standing on the other side. 

“(Y/N)… ummm… what are you doing here?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Did you really tell Jason all of that about me?” 

“… yes.” 

“Why?” 

“… because he deserves to know what kind of girl he is up against. A person who is so smart and so wonderful that whoever meets you will never be the same because you’re not like the rest. Because, he is a nice guy who shouldn’t feel the pain of losing you like I did.” 

Tears slowly filled her eyes as she looked at the man standing in front of her. As if it was a natural reflex, she hit his chest, shaking her head. “You’re so annoying when you read me like that.” 

Flinching slightly at the hit, Luke chuckled softly, looking at her, feeling awfully nostalgic at that little hit from her. “It’s cause you let me read you. You let me in.” 

 She let out a shaky breath, shaking her head once more. (Y/N) quickly stepped forward and held Luke’s face in her hands as she brought him down to kiss her in the middle of his doorway. The kiss was short but sweet and everything amazing in between. It was the spark that lit up Luke’s stomach feeling something as soft as her lips against his. 

“My god, you’re annoying.” 

“I know…” 

“Don’t you ghost out on me ever again.” 

“Okay.”

tag list: @lukesuwu @ashtonsunshine @5sos3stan @babylon-cal @thiccassluke @lukes-sunglasses @valentine-luke @dankpunks @tothemoonmikey @ghostoflu @calumincolor @cashtontrash

[thotyssey]

On Point With: Magdalena Femanon

Sporting club looks that are equal parts darkly dramatic and campy, this Lady of the Haus of Femanon strikes a towering, memorable figure as she vamps across the dancefloor on stilts. An actress of stage and screen and a performance artist across all media, there are few people in the city’s nightlife more compelling than Magdalena Borlando, better known on the scene as the incomparable Magdalena Femanon.

Thotyssey: Thanks for talking to us today, Magdalena! So, crap, it's already the second week of August... how's your summer been so far?

Magdalena Femanon: Hello! Yes, summer’s definitely ending; however, the next and last few weeks will definitely be the most exciting for me out of the season. But so far, it's been pretty solid. Got to film a couple projects, see one of them premiere at a distinguished film festival, and Pride was wild this year. Working hard, playing harder.

Exciting! You're an actor, a visual and performance artist, a makeup artist, a nightlife personality.... I'm sure there's even more to add here, but when somebody asks that terrible question "So, what do you do?" how do you usually respond?

I typically respond with "actor and performance artist." I think those two really encompass all I do and include the other tools I use such as makeup.

Did you have any idea, growing up, that your life and career would be so diverse, and encompass so many different elements of expression?

Oh, I was always a performer, and knew I wanted to pursue performing professionally. But I definitely jumped around among the art forms before I chose to be an actor. However, in college I started to feel a bit stifled. As an actor, I feel that at this point I have to keep a certain physical "brand," and I am getting called in for roles that suit this physical "brand." Discovering and entering nightlife was so special and fulfilling because it gave me limitless self-expression visually, and gave me a space to create these characters! My constant goal is always to be able to merge the two--that is, see these characters on stage and film, which I have thankfully been able to do a bit over the past year.

Where are you from, and how long have you been in New York?

I've been in NYC for six years now. I was born in Argentina, and moved to the states when I was around three years old with my parents to outside Philadelphia.

Oh wow! 

Always my surprise fun fact.

Do you feel an attachment to that Argentinian heritage, still?

Definitely. My whole extended family still lives there, so I'll visit every few years. And I continue to speak Spanish at home. When I was in college I helped form a bilingual theatre company, and was focused on devising and / or producing Latin theatre. I'm always down to incorporate Spanish language into a piece if it works, like I recently did in a piece I helped create, actually... with a couple other members of my drag family, the Haus of Femanon. I would like to be doing more of that.

That sounds fascinating! You certainly have tons of credits on your acting resume, both stage and screen. But of course I have to be Basic and focus on your two episodes of Law & Order: SVU! What was it like working on that show? I bet production is a pretty well-oiled machine.

Haha, that was pretty sweet, yes! Well-oiled machine is right. I mean, 20 seasons! They know what they are doing, and how to do it quickly. The couple episodes I shot aired two / three weeks after I shot them.

That must've been extraordinary to watch them from home, I bet the whole family was watching!

Oh definitely... all while trying not to cringe at the subject matter, haha!

Speaking of family.... the Haus of Femanon! First of all, how were you introduced to the world of NYC nightlife, and then how was Magdalena Femanon born?

The Haus! Well, four out of five of us--Peroxide, Détroit, Mr. He, and myself--attended Pace University, studying within the performing arts department. We were not close at all as a group yet, but we each knew that each other wanted to create looks / try drag / express herself in another, different way than we were getting from school. So we found a flyer for Ladyfag's Holy Mountain (RIP), and we went out in these terrible looks. We were so ugly, but we discovered something special that night--as well as meeting a very special person, Lick, our last member. We started going out all the time, to every party, and immerse ourselves in this world. After a while, we started collaborating on stage and in film as well.

I think Magdalena Femanon was born out of frustration. I was trying to discover who I was / wanted to be, struggling to feel comfortable with myself. And then on top of that, no one could see me! Literally. I am a very petite gurl, to put it graciously. Even in the tallest of heels, I couldn't talk to anyone as they towered over me. No one wants to bend down for more than five seconds to talk to anyone, especially with music blasting. Within a few months of starting to go out with the Haus, I was at a theatre / performance festival and saw a street company perform wearing stilts. I got home that night, and ordered a pair of my own. I also did it to be Extra; I live in a world of extremes. So now I have metal legs for dayz, and the constrictions of them actually really influence and allow for more creativity in what I do. Stilts definitely changed the game for me and were probably the official birth.

[photo by Peroxide]

Stilt-walking in these crowded spaces must be a challenge!

At first I was definitely a bit wobbly...and CRAZY, when I look back on some of the things I did. But you find balance quickly, and it's mostly mental--telling yourself you won't fall.

So, did you sort of build your looks and fashions around being this tall creature on stilts?

It's usually the first thing I think about when I have an idea for a look. It was challenging at first, especially since I'm not a damn seamstress in any way... but definitely fun. I make it work.

By the way, how did you come up with “Femanon” as a family name?

Mr. He actually coined it officially. It takes from the words “femme,”  “phenomenon" and “anonymous.” We wanted to be a Haus as a way to collaborate and perform as a unit, even though we each do our own individual projects as well. I see it as paying homage to the houses of the NYC Ballroom scene. I still gag a bit when I think about how I get to host Battle Hymn with, like, Grandfather Hector Extravaganza or Javier Ninja.

That is quite a legacy! The first time I saw your name, I believe you were doing Kayvon Zand’s party at Webster Hall. Do you miss that space?

Oh yes...Webster Hall. That was a really fun time. Really a shame it needed to close... I read it will be more of an arena now, and less dance nights? Lame.  A part of New York and gay / queer history. Yes, Kayvon's party was great...the kids were HUGE in size at that time... getting up those stairs was not a joke, haha!

It’s hard to explain the appeal of those types of parties (Holy Mountain, Battle Hymn, etc) with club kids in these extravagant looks to people who have never been. How would you explain what makes them great?

It IS very difficult to explain, and people ask all the time. I do not think there are too many places that could full-on celebrate us for being freaks. It's like the watering hole--the place where you go and meet up with a community of people like yourself. The parties are freeing, even if you are not dressed up. Everyone is welcome... unless you're a Nazi. It's a place to meet other artists and collaborators. All of these things add to the appeal.

I was just talking to the Haus of Sterling, and they were marveling about Femanon’s edgy, dark looks. Is that a good description?

I would say that's pretty accurate. With the exception of Détroit (who herself is so over the top campy) none of us go for very human-like personas. I mean, we are glamorous the way a blood-sucking alien is glamorous. We love horror, we like looking other-worldly, we like black and white, we would rather scare you than make you swoon over how elegant we look. 

Tell us a little more about the kind of performing art that the Haus does.

For short nightlife gigs and for events such as Bushwig, we usually do campy numbers involving interpretive dance, usually something relevant in pop culture at the time, and there's always a slight element of gross.

Mr. He was part of a theatre ensemble last year and invited Lick and me to join for the last few productions, where we played characters also very similar to campy nightlife personas. Very much about the look. Very queer. Very camp.

Recently, Peroxide and I starred in a short film which was set within the frame of nightlife called Like Glass. The project was very close to Peroxide and me because although the characters were fictional, the themes were very much those of our lives and something we were eager to share through this medium. It's gotten into a couple of festivals at this point, and I hope it goes farther.

As far as this weekend goes, it appears that the Haus will be up in Sugar Loaf, NY for an August 11th festival called Dusklit, What is that exactly, and what will the Femanons be doing there?

Dusklit is an annual one-night interactive art festival. The art ranges from immersive performances, to pieces in site specific environments, music, puppetry, poetry, sound installations, etc. We performed last year and had a blast, glad to be back this year. 

This year, we are doing a piece called  "INTERWEB:secrets" about the comfort of anonymity on the internet. Participants can share their secrets in the web we create for them, as well as take a secret back with them from an unknown person. We hope to create a massive web of secrets by the end, and have it be an amusing--if not cathartic--experience for people. 

The Haus will also be camping in upstate New York together. CAMPING. Five clowns in a tent. It will be quite a show for all involved.

That would be something to behold! 

Back in the city, August 18th is KUNST, Goddess of Club Fashion Susanne Bartsch’s seasonal raver at Elsewhere. You’re gonna be hosting!

Yes! I like Kunst because it's in an immersive Brooklyn venue, there’s good DJs, and Ithere will be several performances. My babe Baby Yors is performing this time, so can't wait to see him.

Yeah he’s great! Looking ahead, on September 8th at the Paramount Hotel, Susanne is presenting Belladonna, a party and lewk contest. This is a great idea! And it should be epic. Are you hosting, or actually competing?

Belladonna will be epic... I'll be there as a host for sure, but everyone better bring their best lewks. I hope to see those few nightlife gems that only come out once in a while for special occasion look parties, that always slay us. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Anything else on the agenda?

Well, my nearest project after Dusklit is my trip to Black Rock City in a couple weeks for Burning Man. I'll definitely be bringing the stilts and a few looks I have as I stomp through the desert. Focused on preparing for that now.

That’s gonna be so Fury Road! Okay, last question... if the Haus of Femanon ever decided to take in a new member... what would her required credentials be?

“Adheres to Slender Man, willing to submit to cult rituals, and NOT vegan (as our vegan quota of two members max has been filled).”

Very reasonable! Thank you, Magdalena!

Check Thotyssey’s calendar for Magdalena’s upcoming appearances. Follow her on Facebook and Instagram, and visit her website.

On Point Archives

[lifeonashelf]

COBAIN, KURT

Dying was definitely the worst thing that ever happened to Kurt Cobain.

That may not read like a particularly brilliant statement. You’re saying: “Taylor, I’m sure if you solicited any random sampling of people to compile a list of the worst things they could imagine happening to them, dying would end up at the top of most of those lists” (although, it would land below “being married to Courtney Love” on mine). However, the reasons I’m positing this in regards to Cobain are only tangentially related to the most common side effect of death being an immediate cessation of one’s mortal presence on this earth. Explanation: Cobain’s too-short life was characterized by profound and abiding existential pain, so in his specific instance I presume ending that life at least came with the not-unwelcome corollary of providing a respite from his suffering. Besides, the manner of his death left ample evidence that he sincerely did not want to be alive anymore, so it’s unlikely he was overly concerned with side effects. In case there’s any misconception that I’m somehow endorsing Kurt Cobain’s suicide, please feel free to text me and I’ll gladly forward you a selfie so you can see the tears that are filling my eyes right now as I revisit the devastating final chapter of a man whose music means the world to me. Yet, somehow, the strip-mining of his memory that began the very day his body was found strikes me as a tragedy which nearly equals what was done to that body.

Tucked away on one of my shelves, you will find a bootleg box set entitled Into the Black (I mean that figuratively; you will not find it—if you really want to see it, I will get it down for you; seriously, don’t start touching my shit). I procured this anthology upon its release in 1994, and back then it had the distinction of being the richest available source of previously-unreleased Nirvana live performances and songs that were never included on any of their albums. Such a find would be largely meaningless today, when a quick internet search can immediately unearth all of those tracks within seconds. But for a distraught fan to whom the prospect of facing a world where there would never be any new Nirvana music again seemed unbearable, Into the Black was an immensely cathartic salve for me at a time when I desperately needed it. The scope of the compendium remains impressive—I think it’s a way better collection than the official With the Lights Out box set that came out 10 years later—and by presenting the included material in chronological order, all the way from Nirvana’s first demo cassette to a complete recording of their final North American concert, the seven hours of tunes on Into the Black provide about the most fitting and comprehensive Kurt Cobain encomium ever delivered.

Which is part of what makes the final track on the anthology arrive like a dagger to the soul and the ears. There really isn’t a name for this closing selection—after all, it isn’t even a song. But the creators of Into the Black had to call it something in the track listing. So they called it exactly what it is: “Courtney Love’s Complete Eulogy For Kurt Cobain.”

This recording was played for a crowd of several thousand despondent fans who gathered in Seattle for a public memorial on April 10, 1994, two days after Cobain’s body was found. Its manifestation occupies a limbo unique to itself, half significant historical document, half ghoulish tabloid spectacle. Though the song “Miss World” was released on March 28, in a very real sense, it was this Courtney Love recital that served as the first proper single from Hole’s Live Through This, which would be released forty-eight hours later and subsequently propel her music career to previously unthinkable heights—a result that arguably stemmed as much from Love’s deft public navigation of her grief process as it did from the fact that Live Through This is a fucking incredible record.

Reactions to “Eulogy” (for lack of a better title) will inevitably vary by listener. If you view Courtney Love as an unfortunate casualty of Kurt Cobain’s war against himself, you will probably hear a shell-shocked widow valiantly facing her worst nightmare. If you view Courtney Love as one of the likely reasons Cobain loaded his shotgun on April 5, 1994, you will probably hear an unhinged harpy using the most intimate words her late husband ever wrote against him in a monstrously demeaning fashion. Over time, I’ve come to rest somewhere in the middle of those two poles, so I don’t quite know what to make of the recording now. What I do know is that I never want to listen to it again, and don’t really need to since it’s still vividly burned into my brain from past spins—I couldn’t bring myself to revisit it while authoring this segment about it. Because even in 1994 when I was playing Into the Black endlessly, even when I was struggling to make sense of something that seemed utterly senseless, and even when the message Love was delivering was allegedly intended for anguished fans just like me, my reaction to that audio was exactly the same as I assume it would be today: I shouldn’t be hearing this.

“Eulogy” essentially features Courtney Love narrating Cobain’s suicide note in its entirety. Since photographs of the document have subsequently surfaced in numerous places, a cursory review plainly reveals that despite Love’s proclamation on the tape that she elected to omit parts of the letter about herself and their daughter Frances “because they’re none of your fucking business”, she does in fact share nearly everything that appears on the page. Irrespective of that, her rationalization is a bizarre one—after all, it can be sensibly argued that nothing in that epistle was really the “fucking business” of anyone outside Cobain’s immediate circle. The mere reading itself denotes a sort of indecent invasion, but it is the peculiar spin the author’s self-appointed spokeswoman put on the broadcast that truly makes it astonishing. Love didn’t simply orate Cobain’s note, she annotated it, interjecting frequently to pose her own biting counterpoints to his words, sometimes leveling these ripostes directly at him, sometimes addressing her running commentary to the royal listening we. Her delivery veers between naked tear-choked agony that will move you no matter how you feel about her, and primal hissing vitriol—at one point on the recording she instructs the entire crowd to call the man they came to mourn “asshole.” It is the sound of a woman purging an entire spectrum of very private emotions in a very public way, it is an unseemly peek under the mortuary drape of a man who had just shot a gaping hole in the hearts of millions, and it is extremely uncomfortable to listen to.

I do not know Courtney Love. I have no desire to know Courtney Love. Only she could tell you how actively she calculated the channeling of her deceased husband’s musical legacy into the birth of her own. I cannot definitively state that Courtney Love exploited Kurt Cobain’s death to make herself famous; it’s not nearly that simple. I can state this again, because it’s true: Live Through This is a fucking amazing record, and it probably would have been a next-level hit even without the supernatural timing of its arrival and the uncanny way several of its key tracks seemed to capture what all of us who were shattered by Cobain’s suicide were feeling at that moment in time. But regardless of her intentions, the transmission she delivered at the Seattle Center on April 10, 1994 was undeniably indecorous. The very circumstance of it feels wrong, and witnessing it via that recording feels even worse. I didn’t want to know what that note said. I wish I didn’t know what that note said. And I wish I could listen to Live Through This—which is, to reiterate, SUCH A FUCKING GREAT RECORD—without inescapably pinpointing it as the moment Courtney Love became the first person to strike gold at Kurt Cobain’s gravesite.

Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of the excavation.

Elsewhere in my apartment, on the bookcase directly to the right of the desk at which I’m sitting, you will also find no fewer than six biographies about Nirvana. In relation to the sum of available material, my library isn’t even close to complete; after a while, I stopped buying every associated text as they were published (once you read a half-dozen volumes about a band that only existed for a half-dozen years, redundancy becomes an issue—also, reading about Nirvana is always a dispiriting experience because no matter how good the book is, you’re inevitably going to reach THAT chapter eventually). Filed next to those is Cobain, a coffee table book which assembles almost every Nirvana-related article that appeared in Rolling Stone during their career. And directly beside that rests an even larger coffee table book entitled Journals. Kurt Cobain is the credited author, which I suppose makes sense, since nearly every word therein is in his handwriting. Nevertheless, that attribution becomes difficult to digest when you consider that the tome was released in 2002—given that Cobain had been dead for 8 years when Journals came out, I’m naturally skeptical about the scope of his involvement in the project.

I have a hard time accepting that this book exists. On one hand, the drawings, correspondence, and scribbled musings which comprise its pages offer a rare and informal glimpse into the mind of one of my favorite songwriters of all time. Yet a much larger part of me can’t discount my impression that by glimpsing these things I have in essence sneaked into Kurt Cobain’s room and picked the lock on his diary. It seems highly improbable he would have ever published this material in this form of his own volition; actually, I suspect he would have been mortified if these logs were leaked while he was alive. The justification, one would suppose, is that Cobain is a singularly iconic figure and remains an object of fascination, therefore any piece of himself he took the time to immortalize in writing has intrinsic value (even a dip recipe he got from his mom, evidently). Except the absence of his agency over this particular venture indicates that the significance of the content showcased in Journals was determined solely by outside agents. Cobain was actually fairly prolific given the brevity of his career—it would take a book roughly the same size as Journals to assemble all of the lyrics he wrote for Nirvana’s catalog. Yet, like any artist, he put most of his work through rigorous internal scrutiny and editorial refinement before he unveiled it to an audience; he was the only person who decided if and when it had value. A lot of the poetry featured in Journals was eventually funneled into Nirvana compositions; those are the pieces we can presume he was ready to share with the world—because he, you know, did share them. But when it comes to the numerous drafts of personal letters that appear throughout the tome, it seems innately obvious he did not want those to be read; if he did, he would have fucking sent them to the people they were addressed to and they wouldn’t still be present in his notebooks to be pilfered.

When the release of this relic was announced, the rabid fan in me was of course curious, and I knew this was an item I wanted in my library. But the altruistic side of me always grappled with that desire; I could never quite concur that Cobain’s inability to object constituted a license for me to read work that he chose to keep to himself. Obviously, Journals was a guaranteed best-seller, which is precisely why it was published (oh, I was never snowed by that “a way for his fans to better understand him” bullshit; I have no doubt “a way for his fans to spend money” was the primary purpose this tome was meant to serve). It certainly has intriguing bits, particularly the sections that show sketches Cobain made for early Nirvana t-shirt designs that were never produced and the numerous mixtape track-listings he itemized (sadly, due to his fondness for bands so deeply obscure they are outside the scope of even a collection as large as mine, I don’t have all the listed tunes to faithfully reproduce any of them for my own listening pleasure).

Other articles such as a grossly-gushy sweethearts note to Courtney Love and a childish screed addressed to MTV are far less interesting to me, since the only parts of Cobain they help me “better understand” are parts I already know far more about than I care to. Good and bad are basically negligible designations here anyway, since the revelatory bits and the patently trivial snippets are all culled from the same invasive pedigree. It certainly didn’t assuage my conflicted feelings about reading Journals when I opened the book and saw that the very first sentence printed in it is, “Don’t read my diary when I’m gone”… a request that becomes somewhat clouded by what Cobain wrote two lines later: “please read my diary… look through my things, and figure me out.” I did look—I looked cover to cover—but since I listened to all of Nirvana’s records long before that, I already had Kurt Cobain figured out about as much as I imagine he wanted myself or any of his fans to. A photocopy that confirms he did ordinary things like pay his phone bill doesn’t do much to augment my appreciation of all the extraordinary things he did.

By exhibiting monumental developments like Cobain’s first stab at the lyrics to “Smells Like Teen Spirit” alongside snippets of humdrum humanity like his jotting down of the 1-800 number for NordikTrack, a chronicle like Journals is ostensibly meant to show that even a man who was exalted as a demigod used to put on his Daniel Johnston shirts one sleeve at a time just like the rest of us. If so, the very existence of Journals negates its own premise, since none of its content would be considered even remotely noteworthy if said content wasn’t scribed by Kurt Cobain—which only advances the misguided hero-worship that plagued his quintessence and encumbered a future suicide victim with spiritual baggage he never welcomed nor desired. Even with my limited understanding of what Kurt Cobain’s art meant to him, I am certain he would never have wanted a book like Journals to happen. Just as I am equally certain that the inflation of his esteem to such excessive heights that his admirers would be itching to read the undisclosed documents he kept in his underwear drawer played a large part in the events of April 5, 1994.

I guess this is as good a time as any to explain why a songwriter who was never a solo artist is the subject of his own entry here—especially since I just chastised the publishers of Journals for giving him special treatment. It’s true that nearly every piece of music Cobain had his hand in was issued under the Nirvana masthead (except for that collaboration with William Burroughs I wrote about a long time ago… but I’m trying to forget that ever came out since it’s not much more enjoyable to listen to than “Eulogy”). Yet, thanks to the same vulturous machinations I’ve been recapping throughout this piece, the Kurt Cobain discography does indeed include one solo album to date. There is an itty-bitty asterisk next to that item, though:

* Kurt Cobain’s solo album came out twenty-one years after Kurt Cobain died.

Oh, and * Kurt Cobain did not participate in the making of Kurt Cobain’s solo album.

Oh, and * Kurt Cobain’s solo album is not technically an album.

Oh, also * Most of the songs on Kurt Cobain’s solo album are not actually songs.

Oh, and lastly * When Kurt Cobain recorded this solo not-album of mostly not-songs, he had no idea that anyone was ever going to hear it.

The sort-of record I’m referring to was assigned the title Montage of Heck, which is needlessly confusing for anyone familiar with Nirvana’s history, since Montage of Heck was originally the title Cobain bestowed upon one of his earliest demo cassettes. The Montage I’m examining in this essay bears no relation to that one; rather, Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings is an ill-considered compilation that was released in conjunction with a congruently-monikered and congruently ill-considered 2015 documentary. Licentiously-hyped as one of the most profound musical portraits ever unveiled, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck was directed by filmmaker Brett Morgen, who was granted unprecedented access to Cobain’s personal archives and shaped that material into an allegedly insightful study of the artist’s epigrammatic life and shocking death. Since she had already exhausted the potential for monetizing her late husband’s sketchpads, Courtney Love upped the ante for this project by allowing Morgen to use the family’s personal home videos as the film’s major selling point—evidently, neither party gave a shit that two decades earlier Cobain expressed how violated he felt when strangers invaded his private life in a song bluntly entitled “Rape Me”.

I’ll keep my review of the biopic Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck brief—mostly because I didn’t enjoy it at all and the overriding emotion I was left with after watching it was anger. But it is worth mentioning here, since it was similarly levied with the purported intention of making its viewers “better understand” its subject. Strange, then, that the two most memorable moments in the movie are unabashedly salacious, and both are focused on candid glimpses of Courtney Love’s behind-the-scenes comportment rather than her husband’s. If you’re wondering what Love’s breasts looked like in the early-‘90s, or if you relish the notion of watching her toddle around the couple’s apartment in a state of opiated incoherence in the presence of their baby daughter… then, brothers and sisters, this film is the Casablanca of that specific genre. But anyone seeking a meaningful exploration of what kind of person Cobain was outside the limelight is bound for disappointment since Montage mostly underscores his least appealing traits, the unpleasant facets of his humanity that we as fans have trained ourselves to banish from our thoughts as we continue applauding his inimitable artistic contributions. Aspects which, of course, Courtney Love is central to. Her odious presence throughout the documentary, and indeed in Cobain’s orbit, serves as a manifest reminder that a man we lionize for writing some of the most exquisite songs of all time was also deeply in love with a vulgar, revolting succubus. And perhaps this is a key reason why revisiting him via panegyrics like Montage of Heck and Journals always leaves a sour aftertaste—as long as Courtney Love has stewardship over his legacy, the worst thing Kurt Cobain ever did will be always be a principal figure in each new celebration of the best things he did.

In addition to her boobie videos, Love also turned over a box of cassette tapes to Brett Morgen (if memory serves, this batch of recordings was dutifully referred to as a “treasure trove” in every press release about the project I read). Morgen cherry-picked a few bits of music from this lot for usage in his movie, which were naturally cobbled into a soundtrack that was touted to fans as a cache of “previously-unheard music by Kurt Cobain.” Since the filmmaker was ostensibly the one who decided what portions of the tapes to appropriate, he is recognized in Montage of Heck’s liner notes as its “Executive Producer”—a dubious acknowledgement that gives Brett Morgen the distinction of being the only person in the history of audio engineering credited with producing an album whose recording he wasn’t actually present for, by an artist he never even met.    

Morgen’s pastiche job doesn’t merely form the basis of Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings, it is the disc’s entirety. Stripped of any historical provenance generous listeners may feel obligated to apply, what the proffered material basically amounts to is a half-hour of Kurt Cobain getting stoned in his living room and fucking around on a series of out-of-tune guitars. I wasn’t present for Morgen’s listening party, so I can only speculate on how much music was available for him to sift through, or what the stuff he rejected as inadequate sounded like. But this much is clear: the pieces he chose to disseminate on Montage of Heck range from drearily frivolous to blatantly insulting. The disc offers no real insights (unless you didn’t already know Kurt Cobain got high or played guitar, I suppose), and fans searching the conclave for Nirvana songs that might-have-been will merely discover that Cobain was sensible enough not to pursue an inane number called “Burn My Britches” any further than the two-minute segment he toyed with on his couch here.

Perhaps fittingly, the disc opens with the unmistakable bubbling of a bong, which effectively sets the tone for what follows: Cobain yodeling to warm his pipes up before launching into a rudimentary power chord sequence and yodeling over that for a little while for no apparent purpose (at least Morgen gave the cut a suitable title—it’s called “The Yodel Song”). Elsewhere, attempts are made to tie this cycle of doodles into the songwriter’s established canon, such as the inclusion of the promisingly-dubbed “Scoff (Early Demo)”. Yet, while the prospect of hearing a preliminary version of the 7th-best number on Bleach may seem like cause for celebration, the actual track lands like a slap to the face once you hear that this extract which Morgen judged as precious enough for commercial immortality merely consists of Cobain scat-growling gibberish lyrics over the tune’s main riff until the tape unceremoniously cuts off 38-seconds later; identifying this nothing-morsel as a rough draft of the song “Scoff” is akin to calling a piece of paper with the word “It” typed on it a rough draft of A Tale of Two Cities. Such is the caliber of material spotlighted on Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings, a “treasure trove” that would have been better left buried.    

One of the few genuine items of interest among the detritus is “Reverb Experiment”, which consists of three minutes of droning throwaway instrumental noodling, but still sounds kind of cool since a lot of it sounds like the refrain of Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask”. There’s also a fairly well-formed idea called “Desire” that might have been turned into something striking if its author had chosen to develop it, and the closing number “She Only Lies” is noteworthy since it features Cobain working out an idea on bass guitar instead. Regardless, nothing on Montage of Heck justifies the ballyhoo that accompanied its release, and even the marginally decent pieces are unworthy of mention on their composer’s resume—although, Brett Morgen certainly got a great resume item out of the deal; now he can call himself a “filmmaker / record producer.”

However, this was Kurt Cobain who documented these scraps on the battery-operated boombox in his apartment. And he’s an icon, remember? So—said Brett Morgen and Courtney Love and everyone at Universal Music who had their dollar-bill-mounted fishhooks in the water of this endeavor—Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings shouldn’t be treated like some gratuitous cash-grab collation of idle time-killers which Cobain thought so little of he didn’t bother revisiting most of them again. No, no, no. This is an Event. Try this: Montage captures a peerlessly illustrious artist as his fans have never heard him before, in his rawest, most intimate form, no studio, no audience, just a man and his guitar seizing inspiration out of the ether and channeling it into his instrument as he explores new incarnations of the sound that made Nirvana the band that launched a revolution. Well, hey, that sounds pretty good; we can really shift some units with an idea like that. The only problem is, if we’re going to treat this thing like a legitimate album, it has to have a legitimate hit single we can sell it with. And how do you dig a unicorn out of a pile of lo-fi cassette tapes that live in a shoebox?

Luckily, Brett Morgen found just the solution for this quandary inside that shoebox.

“And I Love Her” was issued with all the buzz of an actual lost Nirvana song—it was even pressed on 7” vinyl like a proper single. It didn’t really matter that the sound quality was wispy, nor that the performance wasn’t particularly polished. This was a recording of Kurt Cobain playing a fucking Beatles tune, dude, and not only was it previously-unavailable, no one even knew it fucking existed. And the internet went apeshit. The cosmic synchronicity of this find couldn’t have been scripted any better: the architect of the band who electrified the zeitgeist in the 1990’s covering the band who electrified the zeitgeist 30 years earlier, arguably the only other rock group in history whose rapid ascension to immortality Nirvana’s was comparable to. The concept alone was glorious, and it wasn’t merely some music nerd’s wetdream—this Moment in musical mythology Actually Happened.

Here’s the thing, though: Kurt Cobain’s rendition of “And I Love Her” only has significance because people desperately wanted it to, NEEDED it to. It was still just a lark the dude recorded in his living room one lazy night, and it still sounds just as slapdash as every other fragmentary living room lark featured on Montage of Heck: The Home Recordings. There isn’t anything especially revelatory about Cobain esteeming The Beatles so highly that he learned to play one of their songs—both his backstory and his discography are liberally sprinkled with evidence he appreciated the Fab Four’s work, and in case you missed the homages there, nearly every piece of literature ever written about Kurt Cobain has helpfully cited the “Beatle-esque hooks” in songs like “About A Girl” and “In Bloom” to underline his unambiguous approbation. Even casual Nirvana fans were surely already well aware that Cobain enjoyed playing songs by musicians he admired—the dozen-or-so covers in the band’s repertoire and the fact that nearly half the tunes which comprised their legendary MTV Unplugged performance weren’t written by Nirvana provided some telling clues on that front.

The level of hype which heralded the arrival of “And I Love Her” (and Montage of Heck as a whole) intimated that a vital missing piece of the Kurt Cobain puzzle had finally been unearthed. Yet the disc supplies nothing more than a disenchanting anticlimax once you actually listen to it and ascertain that the venerated songwriter’s busy-work wasn’t all that impressive. Perhaps this is more a result of a faulty selection process—I’m willing to imagine there is some truly fantastic material on those tapes which Brett Morgen overlooked for whatever reason—but whether or not Cobain’s archives are ripe with undiscovered gems, the resounding impact of The Home Recordings is much the same as that of Journals: nearly everything in that time capsule would be appraised as inconsequential nonsense if it wasn’t Kurt Cobain’s nonsense. Which takes us right back to the pitfalls of deifying any musician to such a degree that every note they ever played is assigned an implied indispensability, even the botched ones that actually make them sound like a less gifted musician than they were.

Besides, we Nirvana fans already got our missing piece. That happened in 2002, with the release of the band’s self-titled greatest hits package. The one I bought despite owning every record which sourced that compilation, solely because there were three minutes and thirty-eight seconds of music on there I had never heard—the one and only known completed and previously-unreleased Nirvana song: “You Know You’re Right”. (Although, Courtney Love had the audacity to debut that tune way back in 1995 when she performed it as part of Hole’s MTV Unplugged set—seriously, sometimes I wonder if every single thing she’s done in the past 25 years has been predicated on a willful and concerted effort to make everyone who loves Nirvana hate her; although, her campaign of terror has made it nearly impossible to even mention Nirvana without also mentioning her, so maybe she’s a fucking genius).

In stark contrast with the nebulous scribbles on Montage of Heck or the interesting but inessential rehearsal tracks which dominated With the Lights Out, “You Know You’re Right” is indeed a revelation of almost religious proportions, a roaring burst of dynamism that is as powerful as anything else in Nirvana’s catalog—the lone tantalizing taste of a fourth record the band would never get to make, a frozen moment of fragile optimism captured just before the world as we knew it ended. “You Know You’re Right” is fucking AWESOME, and its explosive potency is all the more impressive considering that the lone recording of it which exists was essentially the group’s first stab at it. It is one of my absolute favorite songs in a catalog bursting with favorites. And I cried the first time I heard it. And I cried the second time I heard it. And the third… And, 17 years onward, I cried when I listened to it moments ago.

Plenty of Cobain’s tunes have this effect on me. Still, “You Know You’re Right” is a singular case. And I know exactly why that song, above all others, devastates me the most. It’s not because the lyrics are especially poignant, even though they are. It’s not because the track’s intoxicating promise reminds me of precisely how much all of us lost on April 5, 1994, even though it does. The reason “You Know You’re Right” tears my fucking guts out every time I hear it… is because that was it. That was the final song Nirvana recorded. And after it came out, there would never be any more. “You Know You’re Right” was the moment I had to say goodbye to Kurt Cobain forever.

I did that. And I think it’s time for the rest of the world to let him sleep, too.

Over the years, I have accumulated bootlegs of more than 200 Nirvana concerts. Roughly 150 of those shows are phenomenal, and plenty of them are of strong enough audio quality to warrant an official disclosure. That is the true “treasure trove,” a nearly limitless stockpile of unreleased Kurt Cobain recordings that could fuel a supplementary Nirvana release every single year for the rest of human history. And we already know he wanted an audience to hear that music, because he stepped onto the stage and played it for them. Since the continued fracking of his legacy is inevitable, by all means, the Cobain estate should absolutely tap into that wellspring whenever the marketplace is clamoring for fresh product or Courtney Love is clamoring for further cosmetic augmentation. I’ll buy every goddamn disc they put out, and I’ll probably buy them all on vinyl, too. And if you, personally, feel the need to explore the more obscure corners of Cobain’s discography, there are already plenty of places you can look—start with the single for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, where you’ll find the tremendous B-side “Even In His Youth” and a killer alternate recording of “Aneurysm” that blows the version on Incesticide out of the water.

Hey, I’m a fan first and a snarky asshole second; I get it. I can surely identify with the sustained hysteria enveloping his heritage. Cobain’s suicide was the single most traumatic event of my teen-hood, and all these years later I can still tell you where I was, what I was wearing, and even what I was eating when I first heard the horrifying news of his departure (my family’s comic book store in Anaheim Hills, a Groo the Wanderer t-shirt, and a foot-long tuna on white from Subway). Still, even then, I had a firm pragmatic grasp on my grief. Kurt Cobain wasn’t my mentor, my hero, someone who embodied the man I hoped to eventually be when I reached his epoch of then-unimaginable elder statesmanship (hey, when you’re fifteen, 27 seems like an eternity away—at the time I assumed when I was Cobain’s age I’d probably be doing all sorts of old-people shit like buying a house and raising babies… or at least finally having sex). He wasn’t deity to me, he was simply someone responsible for some of the most imperative music in my life; unfortunately, since music has always been a lot more imperative in my life than deities, his abrupt absence was crushing nonetheless.

But the nature of Cobain’s subsequent beatification seems to suggest that many of his fans choose to remember him as something more, a shooting star that painted a tapestry of light across the heavens before inexorably crashing down to earth, “the grunge-poet voice of a generation” and all that. Hell, to many people, he was. But despite his canonization by the masses, Kurt Cobain was not a messiah and never strived to be. He was flawed and beautiful and complex, and a mystery even to himself—in other words: he was just as fucked-up and human as any of us. Kurt Cobain is not some riddle to be solved; we will never decode him because he didn’t stay the course of his journey long enough to find out who “him” really was or would become. And his awful conclusion will never make sense, because there’s ultimately nothing sensible about putting a shotgun in your mouth and ending a life that meant so much to so many when it had barely just begun.

As we near the 25th anniversary of Cobain’s death, let’s resolve to (finally) allow him his humanity again, and to allow the still-buried pieces of his spirit he chose to keep solely for himself to remain interred with him. Because we’re only paying disservice to the topsoil of his legacy by continuing to dig. And besides, we have Bleach, we have Nevermind, we have In Utero, we have Unplugged, we have a few-dozen additional non-album tracks, and we have “You Know You’re Right”—Kurt Cobain already gave far more of himself to the world than any of us were entitled to ask for.

So if you want to “better understand” him, you won’t achieve that by reading his diary, or seeing his widow’s areolae, or hearing him offhandedly strum some ditty from his childhood to amuse himself. The best avenue available for those of us who never met Cobain to look through his things and figure him out is lighting a candle, putting on a set of headphones, and letting the breathtaking majesty of “All Apologies” surge out of those speakers and into our souls. There is no more intimate way to honor him than that. Nor should there be. Understanding Kurt Cobain isn’t necessary. As long as we understand his music, and we understand what it means to us.

We don’t need his secrets. We have his songs. And for anyone who truly holds the memory of Kurt Cobain in their heart, that’s enough.

 March 25, 2019

[rorywritesstuff]

Thoughts on ‘Lion’

It’s been a while since I wrote at length about a film, but Lion really got me thinking and not many people I know have seen it, so this seems like the best solution. I’ll write for as long as I can without spoiling anything but at some point I’ll have to give away plot details, so I’ll mark that.

I didn’t like this film. I didn’t hate it: it’s not offensive, but it is boring. There’s a lot of skill on display, especially from the actors and the cinematographer but ultimately that can’t counteract the film’s flaws.

My main problem is one of balance and of structure. The film opens with a long section (nearly fifty minutes) of how Saroo, the main character, gets separated from his family in India and eventually gets adopted by a couple in Australia. I missed almost all of the dialogue in this part of the film because it’s spoken in various languages native to India and the version of the film I was watching had only Japanese subtitles. Still, I found it very powerful. This section is the best in the film, telling its story with intense emotionality and absolutely beautiful mise-en-scene. Although I didn’t catch all the specifics of this part of the film, I understood almost everything that was happening. It was some really brilliant film-making.

Then the film switches its focus to adult Saroo and things take a turn for the worse. The director stated he didn’t want to use flashbacks to tell the story, preferring a linear approach. I think this was the wrong decision: we are told that the two Saroos are the same character and while we might understand that intellectually, emotionally the two dots don’t really connect. The character is presented as almost entirely different in appearance, accent and attitude. We are meant to take his Australian identity for granted but it’s never properly established- he is just suddenly okay with his new milieu. Because we spend so long with him in India, it makes it very hard to accept this change.

Since it’s his conflicting identities that provide much of the drama for the film, this makes a lot of the ensuing scenes fall flat. It doesn’t help that the script indulges in a lot of clichés and, worse, feels the need to tell us a lot of what happens instead of showing. When Saroo suddenly becomes once more concerned for his Indian family, after a chance encounter with some native cuisine, he begins to turn his back on everything he has worked to establish in Australia. This would be fine except that it’s never established if Saroo had been repressing memories that have only now resurfaced or if he just spontaneously started caring because of a sweet treat. On top of this, we don’t see much of what Saroo is supposedly losing: for example, we’re told he quits his job but we didn’t know he had a job until then. This moment can’t have impact if it hinges on him losing something we didn’t know he valued.

The timeline and locations also become confusing at this point- he’s shown living in Melbourne in 2012 (AKA the best location and date combination ever) but his parents live in Tasmania. And then suddenly he lives down the street from his parents, to the point where they can come around whenever they feel like. Also, his girlfriend, who’s from America and whom he meets when she’s studying in Melbourne, also suddenly lives on Tasmania but not with him. I accept they might have moved, but they need to actually establish that in the script.

Speaking of his girlfriend, Rooney Mara is criminally wasted. She gets one good line calling Saroo out on his behaviour and is then relegated to the odd supportive comment. Much like her living arrangements (see above), her motivation is all over the place. It felt like she was rather unnecessary to the entire enterprise apart from to participate in some truly bizarre bedroom scenes. Interestingly, these scenes were apparently so integral to this story of lost family and native identity that they take up two thirds of the poster.

I found the dialogue lacking in most of the film- it’s full of clichés like ‘I’m lost’ and ‘I will always love you’ and there’s very little wit or invention. At first, Saroo is established to be a playful joker but after two scenes that’s thrown away and never mentioned again, which is a pity because a few more laughs could have helped with some of the scenes that lagged. I think of Philomena, another film about literally searching for family, which ultimately held together much better because it’s script was genuinely funny.

I feel the screenplay also hews too close to what happened in real life, something I don’t like about films based on true stories. I understand that people want to know what actually happened but real life often doesn’t translate well to screen. There’s a lot of stuff that goes nowhere (the most obvious example being the exploits of Saroo’s adopted brother, Mantosh) and although I’m sure it felt important to the real Saroo (upon whose book this film is based), it isn’t necessary on screen. Life is messy and unfocussed and that doesn’t look good when you’re trying to tell a narrative. Once more, I turn to Philomena, which resurrected a woman who’d been long dead by the time the story takes place so that they could have a wonderfully cathartic scene of forgiveness.

One more minor complaint but the score to the film is one of the most intrusive and basely manipulative I have heard in a long time. It repeats itself a lot and is just obnoxious at certain points. At times, they use music from Bollywood movies and this provides a much more sonorous soundtrack, but those moments are too few and far between.

And now I have to get to the part of the review featuring spoilers; if you haven’t seen the film and don’t want to know what happens, stop reading here.

The film has been pitched as the story of a man who uses Google Earth to find his family. I take issue with that wording. He does, indeed, find his family on Google Earth but not really by ‘using’ it. He does, for a while, try and implement Google Earth in his search but then he gives up on that. Afterwards, he is randomly scrolling on GE and happens to spot something he recognises- a rock formation. How he would have any idea what this rock formation would look from a satellite is anyone’s guess. But the point stands that this is not him ‘using’ Google Earth to find his family. He explicitly gives up. He did not intend, when he started haphazardly scrolling across the vast vistas of India, to come across this location. It just happens. In another screenplay, this would be called lazy, but since it’s a true story, I guess we can let it slide (although, personally, I would then have liked an acknowledgement of the incredible, mind-boggling improbability of this turn of events.)

I was also disappointed with the visuals of the Google sections of the film, as well. I was hoping for something vast and abstract, maybe showing Dev Patel planted within the images he was viewing, trying to match up what he remembered with what he was seeing. I also thought it would also have been nice to see adult Saroo interacting with his memories more, and the ending flirts with this but ultimately decides to stick with an extremely literal presentation of events. While that does have the effect of further grounding the story, it steals away some potentially heart-breaking and beautifully visual reunion scenes. There is one neat visual, of Saroo slowly scrolling out of the map, so that the earth grows smaller and smaller and the neat row of pins he has placed stay the same, until they seem to dwarf the planet, representing the utterly colossal nature of his task. However, this visual comes far too late in the search to really help us lock onto its meaning and also he then almost immediately gets the answer through dumb luck (see above). The screenwriter apparently said he was worried about showing ‘screens on screens’ but thought that they’d found an inherently cinematic way around this. He is wrong. It’s mostly just Dev Patel clicking.

The ‘tell don’t show’ rule is in force in some of the most important scenes in the film: a big deal is made of Saroo not telling his adopted mother about his search for his lost family, it takes up a lot of screen time and dominates a good portion of the film, and then we never see the moment when he actually tells her. We see a scene a few minutes later, but not the reveal itself. The same is true for the ending; the most established relationship in the India portion of the film is between Saroo and his brother, Guddu. When Saroo returns to India, it transpires that his brother is dead, and was in fact killed by a train the night Saroo got separated from his family. The last piece of information is only revealed in the end credits, when I think a scene actually showing what happened would have been a lot more powerful.

Speaking of the ending, I think this is why this film got so much attention. It’s an extremely powerful moment: Saroo returns to his village and finds his mother, who never gave up hope that he would return. However, I think most of the power comes from imagining this scene in real life, which does inspire a feeling of near-elegiac euphoria, but not because of anything the film itself has done. On the other hand, I have to praise Priyanka Bose, the actress who plays Kamla, Saroo’s mother. Nicole Kidman and Dev Patel got Oscar nominations for this film, but I really feel she’s the one who shines at the end, conveying a depth of emotion that radiates off the screen and onto the audience. She is wonderful.

Finally, the title of the film is stupid. It’s explained at the very end but it has nothing to do with anything- they could have stuck with the name of the real Saroo’s memoir (‘A Long Way Home’) and it would have made more sense and been more memorable in regards to the content of the film.

Ultimately, Lion is a story that could have been very, very engaging but its script lets it down. The direction is strong, especially in the early scenes and the actors are good and tell, at least in theory, a story that is strong. I wish that a less faithful-to-life, more streamlined screenplay could have been used and some more arresting visuals were deployed during the Google and memory sequences. As it is, I think the film often falls flat and feels manipulative.

[happymetalgirl]

Thoughts on Gojira’s Magma

Magma is, without a doubt, my favorite album that came out last year. I know that it came out in June and that a lot had already been said about it around the time of its release, but its impact on metal last year was huge and it sustained discussion about itself and its creators all through the year. It became my favorite album from a band who I already had immense respect and adoration for, and I was fortunate enough to see them tour in support of it and play six of its songs live. (“Pray” was so insane live.) Considering the album conjured up their first two surprising Grammy nominations (as the Grammys are usually pretty ridiculous) and considering the fact that this is my blog and I can write about whatever I want, I think it’s still perfectly relevant to write about an album from last year that I ABSOLUTELY LOVED. I fear this might get pretty long.

I’ll keep from going through every little detail from the album that made me love it (and also from the few moments that weren’t perfect) because I know that each song would take a LONG time. But while I’m here I can’t help from fawning over the excellence of the tone set by the catchy groove of the opening track, the cathartic solo in the Grammy-nominated track that gracefully follows the opener, the combined power of the drums and vocals on “The Cell”, the straightforward and memorable mid-paced groove and vocal prowess on “Stranded”, the meditative state the title track generates, the infectious “Bleed”-like rhythm that “Pray” uses more convincingly than any other band that has tried to rip off the now-classic Meshuggah drum pattern, the anthem-like quality of the death metal riffing in “Only Pain”, and the touching lyrics and perfectly designed cadential aura of the brothers’ tribute to their late mother on “Low Lands”. Wow, that was a long sentence!

When Magma came out last June, and when “Stranded”, “Silvera”, and “The Shooting Star” helped prepare the metal world for it, the obligatory debate over Gojira’s masterfully intense and technical death metal taking the back seat to this new, proggy, groove-centered, and diverse style they debuted. It seemed unusual to me at first too, but it didn’t take long for me to see that this was still Gojira playing to their strengths, only this time it was strengths they hadn’t revealed before. One of my favorite things about the album, which was discussed significantly as part of their change in style, is Joe’s vocals. I already worshipped the special, melodic, burning growls that enriched every one of their previous albums, but his clean singing especially on this album helped especially well to set the bar unimaginably high for them now. The songs on the album fit snuggly with his unique register and his varied, nonformulaic use of his clean and gruff vocal styles throughout the album compliments the music exquisitely, setting atmospheric moods with clean singing and breaking those atmospheres down resonantly with reintroduced howling, and swirling that majestic chaos back into meditative mood after meditative mood of blast-beat-y hammering. Indeed, many of the brutal moments on the album are just as ambient and meditative as they are blood-pumping and head-banging, an art that resembles the hard-to-capture duality of the violent jazzy metal tranquility of Meshuggah. The naturalist vibe and message Gojira has already cultivated is enriched in the lyricism and the successful experimentation with their sound on Magma. The expansion and molding of the ambient component of their sound, which people complained about having replaced the nonstop torrent of overwhelming technical death metal, both provides more of Gojira to love, and highlights what most of the band’s fans already loved about them. The heavier moments stand out more with the mix of relative calmness into the tracks and resurge with the real force that keeps the punch from becoming numbing the way a lot of music by the likes of Nile or Decapitated often does, and in that regard, the heavy is really heavy, due credit also being due to the mixing and mastering work done on the album. It does not flash all its magic at once and fizzle out after one listen either. The songwriting throughout the album is interesting and beckons many repeated spins to become connected, and rewardingly so, with its every enthralling nuance; I’m listening to it right now, with all my appendages pulsing with more of Magma’s moments and spirit than the last time I listened to it. I often yearned for the album to be longer when I was giving it early listens, because it’s just so damn compelling, but it really is crafted to impart a specific experience in exactly the time of what it already presents. I could go on and on and relay more poetic praise for what Gojira has done for me personally with this album, but this is already pretty lengthy.

This album has meant a lot for me, and also a lot to the band themselves (Mario and Joe especially evidently) and to the metal community and our music as a whole. It was a triumphant delivery after the four-year wait between L'Enfant Sauvage and their new album’s release after many were underwhelmed or indifferent to Metallica’s comeback and even disappointed with Meshuggah’s studio return. Indeed, despite many other huge figures in metal (Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold, Meshuggah, Deftones, Opeth, Rob Zombie, Korn, Megadeth, Dream Theater, Anthrax, In Flames) dropping many highly-anticipated albums, Magma and everything that went along with it really made 2016 Gojira’s year. The enigmatic nature of the album that made it hard for the metal sphere to finish its first rounds of talking about it, the massive tour the band set out on to celebrate it, and their tasteful, refreshingly artful social media presence (their tour diaries being outstandingly gorgeous and worthwhile, and Evil Mario being an awesome window into their goofiness behind the scenes) certainly also helped them end up in many metal publications and topping their year-end lists by December’s closing.

It’s also worth talking about how all of this culminated in Grammy nominations at the end of the year for Gojira. The Grammys have ever been a somewhat redundant ceremony to parade what everyone already knows has made the most money that year based on its hard-to-avoid splatter across radio and social media, and ever since their infamous snub of …And Justice for All, they have never really been taken too seriously or even passionately in the context of metal, which is minimally represented anyway. Even their metal picks seem to be pretty consistently basic and out-of-touch most of the time; although I do find it funny how much silverware they give Metallica now that they’re huge and they know they goofed back in 1988. But this year, they seem to have run their finger luckily across the giant pulse Gojira made in metal, and they seem to have picked up on just how significant Magma was this past year because they nominated the entire work for an award and not just the most accessible single. They also noticed, to my amazement, the fabulous work Baroness did at the end of the previous year. Even though most of us don’t really get our hopes up for the Grammys recognizing meaningful work in this genre, it’s somewhat reminiscent of Metallica’s first nomination almost 30 years ago; a somewhat underground band’s (pretty underground for the Grammys) death metal-marinated album in the hard rock category, one that really made waves and earned its reputation. It’s sort of a significant moment for death metal, even if Magma doesn’t win. But if it does, it would be a sight to behold, and what would that mean for metal in the world to come? Would it boost interest in the styles of metal Magma is rooted in? Would that interest develop invested participants in metal culture or just shallow visitations to these trends of desperate fame-seekers the way a lot of dime-a-dozen djent music has emerged since Meshuggah’s breakthrough and how blackgaze has become battling grounds ever since Deafheaven’s explosion onto the scene? Would nothing happen because we ignore the Grammys for the most part now and don’t consider their voice accurately representative of metal? I don’t know, and it’s too early in the morning to speculate now, so I’ll stay on the topic of Magma.

I feel like there were so many points I wanted to make about this album and its contextual presences and that even though this is long and winded, I’m forgetting something. I’ll quickly mention that I love the artwork associated with the album; I’m a sucker for volcano-related stuff and I love the front cover artwork and I’ve been meaning to get the visual companion. Call me a fanboy, but the primal, cave-painting-esque art style really fits the nature-centric theme of their music and I dig it. I’ll mention that I have this album on record as well and I love displaying and looking at that large square piece with the sunshine volcano eruption while I play this thing. The vinyl itself is quite crackly, but strangely, I don’t mind for this one.

I’ll finish this off by just saying thank you if you read this. I know this was long and I understand if you just skimmed it. I did this in one sitting and I’m sure there are some typos and convoluted sentences. The long sentences thing tends to be the way I write, and I can’t help but write extensively because I just adore this music so much. So, thank you again; see, I can’t even finish this tacked-on paragraph briefly without trying to discuss something.

Thank you whoever reads this. Thank you, teriyaki turkey jerky, for getting me through this. And thank you Gojira for Magma and everything else!

[alexrflores-blog]

Photo credits: lena_v29 on Instagram

INTERVIEW WITH HOMEBOUND - "THESE ARE THE MOST PERSONAL SONGS I’VE WRITTEN, LYRIC-WISE"

Homebound are making huge milestones in their career. Following the release of their EP "More To Me Than Misery", the pop-punk band from Farnham have (finally) gone on their first headline tour. In contrast to all the support tours they've done recently, they definitely had a slightly longer set list this time which gave them time to be more creative with their performance. It was their time to show their talents more than before as this is their first step in becoming their own band rather than just a support act. This was THEIR show. Everyone who spent the night at Thousand Island was there to see them, rather than another headline band and only stood through their set because they arrived at the venue early. A longer set not only meant that they had enough time to play every song from their last two EPs, but it also meant the audience had more time to open up pits the size of a third of the venue, be dripping in sweat, and lose their voices singing along to all the new songs. The only downside to the gig was the fact that there was not a single crowd surfer or stage diver. At a venue without a barrier and after having numerous people on top of me at all their support sets, it was quite a surprise. However, that didn't stop it from being a gig that will remain engraved on the audience's mind for a while. Most people had high expectations on how Homebound will be as a headline act and they certainly didn't disappoint. Before their I had the chance to speak to Charlie, lead singer, about their tour, EP title, and their change in sound.

This is your first headliner, how is it feeling so far? It’s been good! Every night we’ve been surprised in a good way. We had no expectations of what to expect and we’ve always felt quite nervous about doing it. We’ve done a lot of support tours and it’s good to know they haven’t gone to waste because a lot of people come to these shows and have said “I saw you when you supported trash boat” “I saw you on this and on that”.

Even myself, I’ve seen you support so many times, it’s cool seeing you finally headline. That’s the biggest request. They can only see so many songs when we support so it’s been nice on this headline tour to do a bit more than we usually do. We’re kind of improving now so it feels good; It feels like we’re starting to mould into more of a headline band.

You recently played this venue with Broadside, what are you expecting to be different tonight? That show was really good, we’re hoping it will be much the same. When we played that show we knew we would be headlining it later so for us it was a bit of a warm up I suppose. We know there’s going to be a lot of familiar faces from that show coming to this one. We were excited by this; we like the venue, it’s a cool room, and we’ve always had good experiences when we’ve played here but yeah it should be a good one.

Are there any other venues you’ve supported that you want to headline in the future? Oooh, I don’t know. We’ve played some cool venues so far. The key club is really cool, quite a well known venue and we’ve played loads of shows there so it’s cool to headline that one. I’m not too worried about the headline aspect, it’s just cool to have played certain venues. People have been anticipating and wanting it so it feels good to finally be able to do one.

How come you didn’t do a home town show in Kingston for this tour? Even Kingston isn’t really our hometown. We’re from Farnham which is near Gildford. We’ve always considered London to be our hometown show because there isn’t really a scene there for us to actually play a show. I’d be surprised if anyone turned up really. How has the reaction been from the audience when you perform the new songs? Really good, we were slightly apprehensive at first; we weren’t sure what to expect. With the slightly different direction with the sound, we weren’t sure how people would necessarily take it because we’ve always been plastered into that pop punk mould. Which is fine, that’s what we’ve always been but this time we wanted to try and do something different, try and find our own sound, which led to the darker and heavier side on the record. It’s quite raw, and I think that does come across. I think it shocked some people when we put out our first single, but I think for the most part, most people like the slight change in sound. So far so good, on the three shows we’ve already played there’s been loads of people singing along to the new stuff. How were you feeling before the release? Were you just scared about the reaction to the different sound? I wasn’t scared, I don’t think. At the end of the day we wrote the music first and foremost for us and it’s what we wanted to do and that doesn’t change whether or not people liked it or not. So many bands feel like they have to tick certain boxes, or do certain things in order to fit in a demographic but I suppose we wrote everything for ourselves and we like that and we just sort of did that for ourselves. I mean you’re always nervous when you release a record, no matter what it is. It’s a mixture of feelings; it’s more of a nervous excitement if anything. But it’s really nice for the songs to finally be out there. Especially for me, these are the most personal songs I’ve written, lyric-wise.

Are there any specific songs that are the most personal? All of them. This EP dwells into some of the darkest feelings I’ve had and they all sort of surround themselves in issues that people have. Whether it’s relationships, life ambitions, or how you find yourself in a bit of a dark space. It feels good to have it finally out there because I use these songs as a way to get it out on paper, as a way of releasing that so it’s a cathartic experience. It’s a way of expression and that’s what it is for most people and that’s why a lot of us do it so it’s understandable that’s what most people get out of it.

"More To Me Than Misery" is quite a long EP title, and so was the title of your last EP. Was this deliberate or just a coincidence? Not really, some people find it difficult to name titles and they overthink naming titles. It was just one we were talking about and I think it just fits. It wasn't really a debate whether it was too long or too short, it was just a good summary of what I wanted the EP to express. It comes from one of the lyrics but I twisted the name in order to make it sound like a positive thing because the lyric is "nothing more to me than misery".

Getting rid of that single word changes a lot. I did it on purpose really because I wanted the EP as a whole to represent the fact that the experience has sort of helped in the sense that having experienced these things there is more to me than misery and it just rolled off the tongue quite nicely.

Maybe it's a bit too early to ask this but three EPs now, do you think next will be another EP or is there a chance of there being an album? At the time when we were thinking about what we'll do for new music, we felt we needed to do another EP again. For a lot of people, the last EP was the first they've heard from our band and we didn't feel like people were necessarily ready to get a full length record from us so we felt like we needed another EP then hopefully to push on to a full length.

So you'll see where this one takes you and then you'll figure it out. Exactly and also, it was a nice way to introduce the change in sound and what people might expect from us in the future.

Do you think you'll stick to that sound rather than a more typical pop-punk sound? I think so. Nobody ever wants to write the same record twice either. We always want to progress but we will see what happens.

[themusicenthusiast]

Single Review: “Sham Pain” by Five Finger Death Punch

Songwriting is supposed to be a cathartic process. Bearing that in mind, “Sham Pain” should be extremely cathartic for Five Finger Death Punch, especially vocalist Ivan Moody. In the aftermath of what was easily their most turbulent year as a group (surely specifics don’t need to be gotten into, as fans should be familiar with the events), the most recent single from And Justice For None (out on May 18th via Prospect Park) finds Moody venting his frustrations over what led to the tailspin of 2017. “Sham Pain” delves into the familiar, such as the fame and fortune that is so tempting to some being viewed as more of an afterthought by the frontman, having had little impact on who he is or how he continues to live his life. There are a few blatant attacks on their label and some notable media outlets regarding lawsuits and other claims made, Moody shutting them down with the powerful line, “…Everybody seems like they're waiting for me to die. Talk shit behind my back, can't look me in the eye. They say I'm overrated, that I should've already faded…”.

However, the track then transitions to addressing the rigorous life of being in a touring band, and the way it plays out, it’s kind of hard for fans not to take it a bit personal. Battling his inner demons, his feelings aren’t portrayed as something in the past that were reflective of the turmoil at that point but instead ever-present trials that still abound. No one is saying that being in a band that practically lives on the road is easy, though it is the job, meet and greets and other such activities being part of what said job entails. Such things are made to feel more like distractions, though; the constant life on the road proving to be overbearing to Moody who has to “sedate” himself just to get through. As the second verse ends, “…I have no life, forgot the hope. The whole thing's turned into one big joke,” it makes one wonder, just how much longer will Moody be committed to the band and the life that comes with it? It’s a sharp contrast between the two verses, the first airing grievances on the higher powers that run and demand things from bands, the second lumping the life that goes along with it and the fans all in the same category. The chorus tries to push the idea that everything is peachy in the grand scheme of it all, though it’s not too convincing given how the rest of the story plays out. Following the same path as much of 5FDP’s music, the verses – from the vocal aspect -- are harsher, and in this case, spoken in a rhythmic manner. The choruses enter more melodic territory, ultimately crafting a nice ebb and flow. Musically it’s an excellent piece, the rhythm section being potent, while the riffs and solos from the guitars are incredible. That’s particularly true of the solo that proceeds the second chorus, which is quite intricate and highly emotive. In the end, “Sham Pain” is an interesting creature. The music bed is slick and sleek, catchy and powerful, though it can’t save the song from the lyrics. Lyrics that by all accounts depict a person who is fatigued by the life of being a rock star. Fatigue not just from the politics and BS that can come with dealing with labels and management and what’s expected of you as a group, but also from the day to day events, right down to the interactions with the fans that were paramount in making all of it possible in the first place. Pre-order And Justice for None on: iTunes | Amazon MP3 Visit Five Finger Death Punch’s websites: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube Current Shows: 2018 May 5--Rock City Campgrounds @ Charlotte Motor Speedway--Concord, NC 6--Bridgestone Arena--Nashville, TN 8--Rupp Arena--Lexington, KY 10--BOK Center--Tulsa, OK 11--Westfair Amphitheatre--Council Bluffs, IA 12--The Rave / Eagles Club--Milwaukee, WI 14--Salem Civic Center--Salem, VA 16--Legacy Arena--Birmingham, AL 17--Ford Center--Evansville, IN 18--TaxSlayer Center--Moline, IL 20--Alerus Center--Grand Forks, ND 29--Red Rocks Amphitheatre--Morrison, CO 30--Casper Events Center--Casper, WY June 1--Deadwood Mountain Grand--Deadwood, SD July 16--White River Amphitheatre--Auburn, WA 18--Spokane Arena--Spokane, WA 20--Taco Bell Arena--Boise, ID 21--USANA Amphitheatre--West Valley City, UT 24--Shoreline Amphitheatre--Mountain View, CA 25--Mattress Firm Amphitheatre--Chula Vista, CA 27--FivePoint Amphitheater--Irvine, CA 29--Isleta Amphitheater--Albuquerque, NM August 1--Austin360 Amphitheater--Austin, TX 3--The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion--The Woodlands, TX 4--Starplex Pavilion--Dallas, TX 6--BankPlus Amphitheater at Snowden Grove--Southaven, MS 7--Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre--Maryland Heights, MO 9--Heritage Park Amphitheatre--Simpsonville, SC 11--MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre at the FL State Fairgrounds--Tampa, FL 12--Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre at Encore Park--Alpharetta, GA 14--KeyBank Pavilion--Monaca, PA 15--Susquehanna Bank Center--Camden, NJ 17--Toyota Pavilion At Montage Mountain--Moosic, PA 18--Xfinity Center--Mansfield, MA 20--Budweiser Stage--Toronto, Canada 22--Lakeview Amphitheater--Syracuse, NY 24--Jiffy Lube Live--Bristow, VA 25--PNC Bank Arts Center--Holmdel, NJ 28--Riverbend Music Center--Cincinnati, OH 29--Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre--Tinley Park, IL 31--Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center--Noblesville, IN September 1--DTE Energy Music Theatre--Clarkston, MI 3--Darien Lake Amphitheater--Darien Center, NY 6--Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater--Wantagh, NY 7--Xfinity Theatre--Hartford, CT 9--Blossom Music Center--Cuyahoga Falls, OH

[wavenetinfo]

There’s much to love about The Leftovers. The acting. The direction. The catharsis it provides. However, one of the big things that stands out on the HBO drama, which ends Sunday, is its amazing soundtrack.

In one episode, the show could use three different versions of A-Ha’s “Take On Me” and in another, you could hear excerpts from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Nabucco. There’s an air of unpredictability to the music, which feels very apropos for Damon Lindelof’s unpredictable drama.

One of the main people responsible for the show’s fantastic use of music is music supervisor Liza Richardson. In her role, Richardson pitches potential songs for episodes, navigates the world of music licensing (which, given the song, can be rather complex), and, to borrow her words, “makes sure that Damon gets what he wants.”

RELATED: The 20 Best TV Series Finales of All Time

Ahead of The Leftovers series finale, EW had the opportunity to chat with Richardson about what goes into crafting the show’s music.

James Blake’s “Retrograde” set the tone for the rest of the series

Before joining The Leftovers, Richardson had tried to use Blake’s moody 2013 ballad a few times, including on Fox’s The Following. Unfortunately, nothing ever panned out until The Leftovers, where it fit rather perfectly in the scene where the Guilty Remnant leaves their home to interrupt the town’s Heroes Day parade.

“It’s such a dark, intense, beautiful, and, to me, cathartic song,” she says, explaining what led to her pitch it for the scene. “[Pilot editor Colby Parker Jr.] wanted really weird stuff.”

The fact that the song made it into the final cut let Richardson know what was to be expected on the show. “So, I started to quickly see that we were going to be using very bold, creative things, and I was just thrilled because you just don’t get that opportunity all the time,” she says.

 Licensing the Hebrew Slaves chorus from Verdi’s Nabucco was complicated

The Leftovers has used the nationalistic “Va pensiero, sull’ali dorate” from Verdi’s romantic opera (performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic Choir, and The London Chorus) in two episodes: first, in season 2’s iconic “International Assassin,” and then in its sequel “The Most Powerful Man in the World (and His Identical Twin Brother),” which aired last Sunday. While the show had no problem using it in season 3, the first time they tried clearing it was a complicated process.

“I was afraid we weren’t going to be able to clear it and it came to the very last minute,” says Richardson. “It took months to clear that and I was giving [Lindelof] these other versions of it just to have as back-up and he didn’t want any of them. They just didn’t have the same power of this performance.”

It was so difficult to clear because they had to license not only that specific recording but also the publishing. Here’s how Richardson explained this process: “Take a hip-hop song that has a sample and a side artist, like Jay Z featuring Kanye West. You have the side artist and you have to license his part of the master and Jay Z’s part of the master. Then they have a sample, so [you have to license] that master [too]. Then on the publishing side, you have 10 writers that contributed to that song. So, already right there you have 14 parties that you’re licensing that one song from,” she says.

In addition to “Va Pensiero,” The Leftovers has also used the brassy Overture from Nabucco and excerpts from Verdi’s La Traviata. “We’re just big fans of opera,” says Richardson nonchalantly about the show’s love of the Italian composer.

How they decide when to license a song and when to use score

It’s a matter of experimentation and practicality. Richardson says using series composer Max Richter’s score instead of licensing a new song is often more preferable because the score is much more malleable than an existing song.

“Songs behave a certain way. Classical music behaves a little bit more like score, but songs usually have a verse, a chorus, a bridge…They’re structured,” she says. “Unless you have a very unusual song, which we try to find, you can’t make a song do things that songs don’t do. Songs are songs. If they work, great. A lot of time when you have a lot of layers and emotional beats that you need to hit or changes that happen quickly — an emotional change or right turn — a song is never going to work. It’s not going to give you the underscore that you need and that’s why you need a composer to underscore those moments, those beats.”

Richardson literally “went to the ends of the earth” for a season 3 song

Richardson encountered a few obstacles clearing “Rocking,” a 100-year-old Czech carol sung by Australian Children’s Choir, for season 3’s “Crazy Whitefella Thinking.” The version of the song that was used in the episode — which can be heard as Kevin Garvey Sr. (Scott Glenn) wanders the Australian Outback near death due to a snake bite — was released in 1982, but Richardson had trouble figuring out whether or not it was in the public domain or if it had to be licensed. Unfortunately, the record label didn’t know either.

“After many long distance calls to Australia in the middle of the night and several rabbit holes we went down, we finally found the church where this choir had practiced,” she explains. “The current church director remembered the name of the choir director from 1982 and was able to find his contact. We finally reached Richard Gerner who confirmed he had written the arrangement.”

She adds, “When we say we go to the ends of the earth to clear a song, we mean it.”

One of season 3’s opening credits songs makes Richardson cry

Due to budgetary restrictions, every episode of the series’ finale season featured a different piece of music in the opening credits. Even though she finished working on the show almost a year ago now, Richardson says a few still stand out in her mind.

“‘1-800 Suicide’ by Gravediggaz is one of my favorites. I also love the Ray LaMontagne [song ‘This Love Is Over’ from episode 4]. It makes me cry. And I also love “Personal Jesus” [from episode 3] because it makes me laugh my ass off,” she says.

The Leftovers series finale airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on HBO.

2 June 2017 | 7:28 pm

Chancellor Agard

Source : EW.com

>>>Click Here To View Original Press Release>>>

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); June 03, 2017 at 01:58AM