#I can’t say I understand Midwest emo | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

grimelords · 4 years

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My November playlist is complete from Aretha Franklin to Blood Incatation, and I guarantee there’s at least something in here you’ll love. Thanks for listening!

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Don't Start Now - Dua Lipa: Dua Lipa said disco lives. I absolutely love this song, it’s rock solid disco without being throwback or ironic about it. The way this song starts with the first line of the chorus and then launches into the verse and only gives you the full chorus later feels like that thing movie trailers do now where they give you a little trailer before the trailer for some reason. It’s also something I’ve never heard before, and it gives the song a very fun structure in the intro where it has two different levels of elevation it can drop down to before the bass properly drops in. I think Dua Lipa understands something fundamental about being a pop singer: literally the only thing you have to do is make bangers. She has basically zero personality and was criticised massively around New Rules for having zero stage presence (which she's definitely gotten better at since) but I kind of like it like that - she's just an unknowable blank canvas that's not particularly interested in any kind of narrative, she just makes bangers.

Mirage (Don't Stop) - Jessie Ware: Jessie Ware has been putting out some extremely good singles since her last album and this song is another. It’s the kind of smooth neo-soul that Jungle is pioneering but the way this song is structured is really beautiful; it gives the ‘don’t stop moving’ part a lot of space early on before it really gets to take hold and take over the second half of the song - it gives the whole song this feeling of disco evolution and the song going on and on and changing rather than static pop.

What A Fool Believes - Aretha Franklin: I can’t believe I’ve never heard Aretha’s version of What A Fool Believes before. It’s amazing. It’s the best kind of cover where you just basically do the song exactly the same but better in every single way. Push the tempo slightly, put big brass in it, make the bass hot as hell, sing the hell out of it, add a sax solo obviously. She takes such liberty with the rhythm of the vocals and it gives this whole song this great swooping and diving energy that just uplifts in such a beautiful way.

Walking Into Sunshine (Larry Levan 12” Mix) - Central Line: Something I love about this song is the crowd noise that breaks in with a ‘woo’ near the beginning. It’s such a strange little detail that instantly injects so much life and love into the track. It positions it at a party rather than a studio from the outset and somehow that mindset carries through the whole rest of the song even though the crowd noise only lasts a couple of seconds until they reconvene right at the very end.

Freedom - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five: There was a time in the history of rap music where some kind of government mandate demanded that every song go for at least 7 minutes, so you ended up with great songs like this where they spend a good couple minutes in the middle killing time by going through everyone’s star sign and then asking the crowd their star sign too. Also they appear to have recorded their own kazoos on the track over the kazoos in the sample, which is a lesson in good production everyone take.

Freedom Funk It Up Freedom - Freedom: I was looking up where the sample on that Grandmaster Flash song Freedom was from and it turns out it’s from this band called Freedom. Easy enough. This isn’t the song Freedom samples though, this is Freedom’s other song Freedom Funk It Up Freedom. It’s fucking hot and contains maybe the livest crowd I’ve ever heard, they are just going absolutely nuts the whole time and it only helps the energy of the song which is already off the charts.

Set Guitars To Kill (Live) - And So I Watch You From Afar: For the 10th anniversary of their debut album, And So I Watch You From Afar just played the whole thing front ot back and put it out as a live album, and it’s amazing. They’re an instrumental band that’s always emphasised the rock part of post-rock, in the same space as bands like 65daysofstatic and Russian Circles but not so self-serious about it, just big honking rock and roll tunes with a surprising depth and complexity to them that never get bogged down in ambient buildups or the other space-making trappings of post-rock. Their debut album has always been my favourite of theirs because it felt the most ‘live’ and wasn’t as cleanly produced as their subsequent releases (which are still very good), and so this live version feels sort of like a definitive version for me, like this is how it was always meant to sound but they didn’t have enough fans to do the ‘woo!’ part properly yet, which is one of the most purely joyful moments in music.

Bullet The Blue Sky (Live) - U2: I saw U2 this week for the second time in my life and guess what: they’re still great. Even though they’re old as fuck and Bono is getting stranger and stranger they’ve still got it. They have a very good bit of stage design going with this current tour where for a big chunk of it they’re out on a little platform in the middle of everyone with no screens or fancy lights and it’s one of the most effective ways I’ve seen of making an arena show feel like an actual intimate experience. I was a million miles away and Bono looked like an ant more than usual but the energy still came across. Then, when they do the Joshua Tree Start To Finish part of the show they have big visuals for every song but it’s still pretty light on actual cameras on the band, which I think works really well - a sort of best of both worlds where you get the arena show but the actual band performance. This song was a highlight for me, and they’ve somehow managed to make it even more ferocious now than ever before. It got extremely noisy, far noisier than you’d ever expect from U2 at least and really amped up the swirling energy that I’ve always loved about this song. People accuse U2's politics of being too wide ranging, and it's well founded they're the prototypical 'heal the world' rock stars - even in this song and the way they've repurposed its messages to fit various political causes over the years they've tried to dilute it, but this feels to me like a song that you can't wash the meaning out of no matter how hard you try. It's one of the best and most direct criticisms of American evil put to song, and it's an arena song that doesn't particularly have an arena melody to it. Especially in the Joshua Tree/Rattle And Hum era, U2 have always been captivated by the American mythos but have never been able to completely ingratiate themselves as an American Rock Band because they're not and I think that point of difference in identity has them uniquely positioned to criticise the American mythos as well. They can have it both ways because they can't fully have it, so in this song the circle of American violence is complete in the women and children who run from the American fighter planes into the arms of America as refugees. Bono's actually mad, which is a nice change of pace from love healing the world.

Gingerly - Enemies: I love this Enemies album so much. A sweet spot between post-rock and midwest emo math guitar, and listening to it now this song really stood out in a way it hasn’t before. It turns up at a good spot in the album just as you might be getting tired of the twinkly clean guitars that characterise the rest of it and burns a hole in the speaker with that distorted bass and siren guitar sound.

You Look Certain (I’m Not So Sure) - WXAXRXP Session - Mount Kimbie: I think every band should get the chance to re-record their album a year or two after they’ve put it out, once they’ve had a chance to really sit with the songs for a while and figure out exactly how they work because this version is just so much better than the album version (which was already great!). The guitar sound is so much bigger, properly leaning into the post-punk idea they were only exploring on the album, and the vocals are so much stronger and more up front which makes it feel so much more like a full song than an experiment. This whole Warp Session EP is fantastic and I’ve been listening to it on repeat, it’s so great that they’ve morphed from this insular electronic duo into a proper band over the years and I'm excited to see where they'll take it next.

Peace To All Freaks - of Montreal: The new of Montreal single is great. Embracing an 80s dance vibe and immediately turning his back on it in the opening lines and not going out because he needs to educate himself instead. I love this song, an unironic and non-cheesy rallying against negativity which is a lot harder to do with earnesty than they make it sound here.

Taipei - Social Climbers: Thankyou to my friend and yours agrifuture for this recommendation. Social Climbers played an odd and paranoid version of art rock in the early 80s that on this song at least sounds more like modern opera trying to fit itself to a rock band than anything else. I can also say with confidence this is the only song I’ve ever heard where someone sends a quiche back in the middle of it.

Mad Eyed Screamer - The Creatures: I’ve never gotten much into Siouxie And The Bashees, they're probably somewhere on my list of bands to have a deep three week long obsession with somewhere in the future, but for now my biggest exposure to them is the time The Weeknd sampled them. I am, however, deeply interested in this drums and vocals only side project that Siouxie Sioux formed with her then-partner Budgie. I’m a big fan of any kind of restricted composition like this and I love this song. It’s so busy and the amount of reverb and extra percussion going on makes for this extremely chaotic, noisy vision of what is essentially a folk song in its lyric and melody.

Black Magic - Jarvis Cocker: I found out that the main guitar part in this song is sampled from Crimson & Clover by Tommy James and The Shondells. Which is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, a rock song like this built around a sample. Not exactly sampling in order to recontextualise across genres or approaches but sampling to recontextualise in a lateral, parallel approach. I love this song because his delivery is so feverish and impassioned it really does feel like he’s seen beyond the veil and come back without the language or capacity to explain what he saw, only the passion.

Year In Pictures - Dick Diver: Every year since this album came out it's shown up somewhere in my Spotify most listened list at the end of the year. It's surprising because I don't think of it as one of my all time favourites when it definitely is, it's such an easy listen that it just comes and goes pleasantly. This song is kind of about that feeling I guess, of things just happening and time just passing pleasantly enough year on year, everthing in its own time while the past disappears and doesn't matter anymore. "Whatever happens, I think everything will"

Heart - Bertie Blackman: I love the percussion in this song, the same propulsive clapping-centred beat that makes Single Ladies so good with the dark grinding bass underneath it that just pulses malevolently until the gearshift of the chorus where it morphs immediately into this 60s soul version of itself, with the ooh la la backing vocals and everthing, and that disonnance between the two styles drives the song for me. Where the verse lays out the evil plainly and the music matches, the chorus accentuates it in wide eyed irony "I know there's something sick with what I've been sold" sung with a smile and showgirl backing vocals.

Love Lockdown - Kanye West: Something I think we’re all learning as Kanye loses his mind completely on the world stage is that Kanye has always been insane. He has always had an unnervingly powerful self-belief and unwavering vision that has up until recently been what made him such a unique and era-defining artist. After the radical directions of MBDTF and Yeezus it’s sort of hard to remember just how radical 808s And Heartbreaks was at the time because unlike the self aware harshness and strangeness of the other two it was also so pop adjacent, because of its 80s synthpop influence but also because of the way it (and T-Pain) impacted all other pop music of the time. The instrumentation on this song is still so staggering, even just the pitched kick at the centre I could listen to on loop forever I think.

It Might Be Time - Tame Impala: Absolutely cannot wait for the new Tame Impala if this and Patience are any indication. The absolutely huge blown out drums on this are so good and remind me of something I’ve been trying to place for weeks and can’t. Maybe a Chemical Brothers song or some kind of big beat era thing. I think of Kevin Parker and Adam Granduciel from The War On Drugs as the same kind of guys, absolute craftsmen studio nerds that are completely obsessed with sound but unlike most other guys of that genre are actually great songwriters as well. Long haired studio hermits that emerge every few years to bless us all.

Never Again - Kelly Clarkson: I’ve been trying to decide whether this or Since U Been Gone is a better song and I’ve settled on this having the superior verses and Since U Been Gone the better chorus. The absolute venom in the lyrics is incredible. “I hope the ring you gave to her turns her finger green. I hope when you’re in bed with her you think of me” is like.. the most metal opening I’ve ever heard. She literally sings “You’ll die together, but alone” in the second verse, jesus christ.

Giant Swan - The Blood Brothers: I found out recently from reading the wiki article on screamo (which like almost all wiki articles about music genres is about 60% artists claiming that genres are fake and critics coining new genre names half in jest) that The Blood Brothers were apparently part of a screamo subgenre called Sass, which is a term I have never heard before in my life and certainly never heard in the heyday of the style. You learn something every day I suppose. “It originated as an opposing style of hardcore punk to the machismo in heavy hardcore scenes. It takes influence from genres such as post-punk, new wave, disco, electronic, dance-punk, emoviolence, grindcore, metalcore and heavy hardcore. The genre is characterized by often incorporating overtly flamboyant mannerisms, erotic lyrics featuring sexual tension, and a lisping vocal style. The genre is also noted for its "spastic edge", blast beats, chaotic guitars, danceable beats and the use of synthesizers.” My understanding is that when emo went mainstream and the split between ‘emo’ as a music and ‘scene’ as a fashion occurred, this is the music that emerged from the middle ground. Turning against the masculinity of their screamo forebears and toward the queer aesthetics of scene, the resulting style was still furious and violent but furious with a light cabaret (but like, if cabaret was good and not just a guy in a top hat emoting, a different style of emo that Panic! At The Disco famously pioneered) and violent in a psychedelic, surreal way that set it apart from the depressed and black aesthetics of the rest of emo. I love The Blood Brothers and have never found another band like them in terms of lyrical inventiveness and sheer vocal insanity, the characteristic shrill falsetto that sporadically turns to screams is an amazing choice that’s incredible it works at all. This song especially stands out as unique even amongst the chaos of their discography. The loping lounge feel in the first half, coupled with the properly surreal description of the giant swan in the lyrics establishes such an strange and dark cabaret mood that makes this song so oddly singular to me.

The Ripper - The Used: I really appreciate the production on this whole album, it is so overdone and hyperactive that it creates this irrepressible momentum because something is always happening. The songs themselves are incredibly compressed in structure and extremely hook heavy, and it feels like to counteract and complement that approach they‘ve been gone over bar by bar finding every possible spot to add interest. Dynamics shifting, drums filtering and then revealing themselves, choirs appearing from this air for two lines. Guitar squeals fly in and out in the background and the bass suddenly becomes extremely chunky in parts. The whole mix gets sucked down a black hole and then a little glockenspiel outlines the vocal melody in the background for a second leading back into a huge chorus. Everything happen in this short song. It’s an interesting approach that can be overwhelming, but it has undeniable results.

Ilana - Mdou Moctar: Mdou Moctar rocks because he takes a big power chord riff like the one at the start of this song that could just as easily start a Thin Lizzy song and then immediately discards it and twists a melting solo that crosses time and space for the rest of the song instead.

Ancestral Recall (feat. Saul Williams) - Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah: The press release for this album says: “In its inception, Ancestral Recall was built as a map to de-colonialize sound; to challenge previously held misconceptions about some cultures of music; to codify a new folkloric tradition and begin the work of creating a national set of rhythms; rhythms rooted in the synergy between West African, First Nation, African Diaspora/Caribbean rhythms and their marriage to rhythmic templates found in trap music, alt-rock, and other modern forms. It is time we created a sound that dispels singular narratives of entire peoples and looks to finally represent the wealth of narratives found throughout the American experience. One that shows that all forms of expression in sound are valid, as all people are." All that and a bit of spoken word at the start that sounds like Hannibal Buress’ Morpheus Walruses rap and I’m sold. I’m such a fan of jazz like this that purposefully opens itself up to the influence of the modern world and modern tradition, and the percussion work across this album in particular is so unique and really does what he set out to do in my opinion, bringing the rhythms of tradition into a modern context seamlessly.

Spider Hole - Billy Woods & Kenny Segal: I only found out about Billy Woods this month and I’m surprised I’ve never heard of him before because he feels like the middle of the venn diagram between Earl Sweatshirt, Aesop Rock and Death Grips. This flat out sounds like a Death Grips song played at half speed. The justified paranoia and anger that runs through this whole album is palpable and jumbled, centring around a feeling of lashing out in a moment of hopelessness because you don’t know what else you can do. "4 million USD hovering over some mud huts, it's nuts, it's not the heat it's the dust" is one of the most evocative lines of the year for me.

El Toro Combo Meal (feat. Mavi) - Earl Sweatshirt: When this new earl EP came out I listened to it 4 times in a row because it is just so compulsively brilliant. He’s refining his style more and more with every release and he’s honed it to this fine point now where every song is so super dense in its lyrical content and production that a full length release would almost be too much. There’s just so much to absorb here. Mavi’s verse is incredible too. I’ve never heard of him before but I’m a big supporter now. The beats too, through this whole EP are the kind that sound like a radio stuck between stations - looping snatches of vocals and drums drowned out in tape hiss where the beat is only a suggestion that Mavi and Earl both glide over on some sort of metric modulation and only land every now and then just to take off again.

Drug Dealer - Slowthai: Slowthai is so full of fire on this song it's scary. Facing a dead end future down and screaming that something's gotta change, and that he's the one to do it.

Lighthouse (feat. Rico Nasty, Slowthai and ICECOLDBISHOP) - Take A Daytrip: I have never heard of Take A Daytrip before this song but doing some research it turns out I have heard them, because they produced Panini by Lil Nas X. I have also never heard of ICECOLDBISHOP before but the way he brings an absolutely deranged verse on this song has made me an instant fan. I love this trio of features: three out there, huge personality voices at the outer limits of mainstream rap that in their oddness complement each other perfectly.

Rich Girl - Michie One & Louchie Lou: Something I learned this month was that Rich Girl by Gwen Stefani isn't a direct rip of If I Were A Rich Man from Fiddler On The Roof, it actually samples this song which acts as a sort of bridge between the two, and I think there's something interesting in the transfer of intention between the three songs, lyrically and musically. In the original his conception of a rich man is someone who can afford to have lots of ducks and geese, eat well and have enough time to pray because he doesn't have to work, then in the Michie One & Louchie Lou version rich is being able to feed your family and start a school (as well as play the horses and never lose), and in the Gwen Stefani version rich is having a house in Hollywood and London, clearing out designer stores, and buying four Harajuku girls and naming them Love, Angel, Music and Baby. It spirals up mercilessly from geese to, I guess, human trafficking. Musically there's a transformation as well, where the jewishness of the 'daidle daidle deedle daidle dumb' in the orginal is changed to a 'na na na na na' in this version and only a part of the original melodic lilt remains, a part that is completely ironed out in the Gwen Stefani version's 'na na na na na's. The downsides of wealth morph too, in the original it's simply not a part of God's plan, in this version it can't buy love, is the root of all evil (is a worldwide thing / rich is getting richer while the poor are getting stink) and only leads to more trouble (you reap but you never did sow / rich today you could be poor tomorrow / mind your back and watch your enemies grow) but in the Gwen Stefani version being rich is amazing on its own and the only thing that can top it is your love.

Santa Teresa - EOB: Tricked into enjoying ambient side projects once again. Ed O'Brien from Radiohead's new side project came up on my Discover Weekly without me realising it was him and I absolutely loved it. It’s expansive and cinematic and nice in a way that feels rare in ambient experimental stuff like this, to not be morose or depressing and gloomy for its own sake. It’s sharp and angular, or as sharp and angular as a song as slow moving as this can be and reminds me in part of HEALTH’s Max Payne 3 soundtrack, and Emma Ruth Rundle’s Electric Guitar One which are both masterpieces on their own.

Rough Sleeper - Burial: Reading Mark Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life I was pleasantly surprised to see his Burial interview in there that I remember reading years and years ago before I knew who Mark Fisher was. I’ve thought of parts of that article here and there ever since and finally placing it in the wider context of Mark’s work was very satisfying, it’s funny how people come back to you in different forms over your lifetime. I don’t listen to Burial much now, or at least not as much as I used to at the height of my depression a few years ago where he was on near constant repeat and as a result his music became completely waterlogged with the feeling of that time and I couldn’t listen to him at all for a while without the memories completely marring any appreciation. But time passes as it does and it’s a nice feeling to finally be able to listen to Untrue again and not have it be so permanently soaked with memories of the worst time of my life, and now with a different mindset and viewpoint I can really see different sides of his music. Where before all I could hear was the bleak and empty future haunted by the ghosts of the past, now new colours appear - a warmth of hazy, pleasant memory and imagination. Reds and oranges creep into the black and grey and this song can feel like staying under covers while it storms outside instead of standing in the rain.

Night MXCMPV1 P74 - Venetian Snares & Daniel Lanois: I really don’t think I’ll ever hear another album like this in my life. The push and pull of the humanity of Lanois’ pedal steel and the digital nightmare of Venetian Snares percussion is just so engaging, and the moments where they overlap and move together in harmony contrast so beautifully with the times they feel like they’re playing two different songs altogether. Then they overlap, the effects overpower the steel guitar and it moves into a leaping angular digital realm and the percussion coalesces into an altogether human rush, or as human as Venetian Snares can be.

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord - Marisa Anderson: I can't find the quote but somewhere when she was doing interviews about this album Traditional And Public Domain songs, Marisa Anderson said part of the reason she likes traditional songs so much is because when she was coming up and playing in cafes around town she mistakenly thought she'd have to pay royalties if she did covers of popular songs, so she only did public domain songs instead.

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord - Johnny Cash: Another side of Were You There When They Crucified My Lord, one that expands magically into an amazing many-layered harmony led by June’s high and lonesome howl.

See That My Grave's Kept Clean - Blind Lemon Jefferson: Jefferson was buried at Wortham Negro Cemetery in 1929. His grave was unmarked until 1967, when a Texas historical marker was erected in the general area of his plot; however, the precise location of the grave is still unknown. By 1996, the cemetery and marker were in poor condition, and a new granite headstone was erected in 1997. The inscription reads: "Lord, it's one kind favour I'll ask of you, see that my grave is kept clean." In 2007, the cemetery's name was changed to Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery, and his gravesite is kept clean by a cemetery committee in Wortham.

The Giza Power Plant - Blood Incantation: What I find so appealing about Blood Incantation is how dedicated they are. Zealots to the cult of being long haired death metal guys who wholeheartedly and sincerely believe in interdimensional aliens and the pyramids being the remnants of an ancient advanced technology. The dedication extends to them being maybe some of the best players in the genre I’ve ever heard, and them recording this whole album analog live in studio is such a feat of performance that adds another layer of intensity to this already extremely intense music.

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panoptiphobia · 4 years

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Midwest Emo’s obsession with “the backyard” and other lyrical themes.

Given the state of things I want to write something trivial. Something I’ve been thinking a lot about. The lyrical content of a lot of bands making up the resurgence of the Midwest emo (with and/or without twinkly math riffs) sound have some recurring themes that seem to pinpoint a certain experience of suburban upbringing in the 90s-2010s. And that upbringing would not have been complete without a backyard. Sometimes a pool. Definitely not an in-ground pool.

There is something to be resuscitated in the working class identity of math rock, the spirit of that second story window from American Football’s LP. The lyrical themes and the melancholy sound itself revolve around a Midwestern working class identity most of us fled when we went to university. It lives on in the dreary sound of those descending sketches of notes and solemn-- but somehow sunny-- key changes.

If we could construct a sketch of the math rock kid, I imagine he/she works in the gig economy, or tends bar, or serves coffee, working in spaces deemed “hipster” while not quite having the money to enjoy all the frills of the social life that label entails. They wear double denim, carhart, and boots, but mostly because that’s what working people they grew up with wore around them. You can swap in certain items as makes sense with the weather. They drink craft beers but are just as comfortable with the $3 PBRs at the math shows in question. The Math Kid is apolitical but is stoked to vote for Bernie. Come to think of it they were actually quite politically minded while attending a Big Ten state school, but gig economy wore them down into reading political blogs. Maybe they listen to Democracy Now!, but NPR will do. Their book shelves are full of radical literature, but their politics are of the Punknews.org/OrgCore variety: drink brews and go to shows with your buds, cause damn the man. I love Math Kid, in case you were wondering. Math Kid is me, if I hadn’t moved to such an expensive city. Math kid lives in old houses with wood floors, house plants and bicycles. Math Kid will learn around 25 that he should drink sparkling water, run, and do yoga. Wait, that’s Surfgaze Kid. Math kid is my ideal version of my 20s if I had stayed in the Midwest. But he’s so so sad and hates the snow, doesn’t he? I digress.

I want to say that understanding the political messaging buried in the Math/Midwest Emo resurgence means finding the messages of alienation hidden in sappy lyrical content. It means finding the political in the cries of liberation that come with youthful yawps at the changing of the leaves. Most people will eye-roll their way out. But this is for Math Kid:

What I want to say is that math rock and midwest emo/twinkly math riff indie rock, punk etc. Elides a working class sensibility. Of course the lyrical content circles around the basic punk/emo-inspired themes of failed romances, house parties with friends, and the like--but the frequency of mentions of house parties and backyards reveals a kind of working class sentiment about leisure and the work lives of math rock kids.

Think about this example from American Beauty’s “The Gang Gets Emo” off their self-titled January, 2020 EP:

I fell asleep in your backyard all alone. I can’t help falling in love with you.

Now look at this example from Charmer, a band from Michigan who put out this banger of a preview to their upcoming album, “Ivy” (Expected April, 2020). The dudes in Charmer are really fixated on the backyard. The track, “Slumber” contains several of the lyrical themes comprising what I’d put forth as the working-to-middle class ethos of the math-aligned punk sub-genres:

I've been thinking about grad school Maybe I should talk to you Drowning in your heated pool Somewhere between death and missing you.

Slumber in the summer

Enjoy your Ivy League hell Wonder when I was younger Where I thought I'd be now Will you last the cold? Cherish the raindrops on your window I'll learn to let this go Until I fall.

In this I read our Math Kid hero’s disdain for the one that got away--got away to go off to an Ivy league school. No longer are the days of summer in her comparatively wealthy parents’ heated pool. Math Kid can’t go to Harvard, he’s barely passing his creative writing class in community college.

From Charmer’s self-titled 2018 album, the track “Roy’s Our Boy” has some of the same themes regarding

1) the front/backyard:

You know where I hide my keys on my front porch to my front door I'm passed out on my trampoline Just wishing things were like they were before.

2) attending or dropping out of higher education:

Just look at the dead leaves Crumbling beneath our feet And that first semester wasn't good for me I get nervous so I bite the sides of my cheeks I won't notice 'til my mouth begins to bleed

The academic calendar of the North American university system is a frequent topic of emo revival lyrics. Maybe it has something to do with the immense emotional weight of the privilege of going to college: one should go discover exactly what type of interesting person they should become. At least 80% of Charmer songs reference university in some fashion. College is the place to fall in and out of love with other big fish from small ponds. There’s at least one requisite college breakup buoying all middle class sensitive people’s entire personality. “The best four years of your life.” College was great, and twinkly passages definitely send my mind back to walking home from class on Fall days, and walking home (alone) from parties. But sometimes you weren’t alone, and that’s the gist of this midwest emo spirit.

From American Beauty’s first album, the track “Fake Weddings”:

“In the backseat of your car was the best night of my life I fell in love in a small bed in a New Brunswick dorm.”

It’s also something to be disdained and endured, apparently. An entire track off the self-titled album is titled “Pretty Over College.” My guess is it’s not the curriculum, housing, or the dining facilities that are bumming him out.

There also seems to be a problem for Math Kids coping with the loss of love interests coming and going from their respective campuses. There’s a lot of “Turkey Dump” type anxiety and the time spent over Spring Breaks is a time of reflection over that first year and the feasibility of LDR’s.

From Charmer’s “Nurse Joy”:

Are you having fun? Spending your spring break at home for a month? You never told anyone

The college life is a big emotional hurdle, and people in their early 30s are still writing and twinkling over lyrics about it. This is not to trivialize, but more to celebrate the shared (albeit, privileged) experiences of growing into adults through college life.

Now let’s talk about transportation:

American Beauty has a whole host of lines about traveling from one part of the East Coast to another:

Carolina, are you here for good? Have you given up passing out in subway cars? I've endured your words every night since then. I’m just hoping you’re still in love with me.

There is something so satisfying about hearing Math Kid scream the name of an interstate in anthemic wail. Again from “The Gang Gets Emo,”:

Long drives down I-95. 200 miles of your favorite songs. Train rides up to Boston, but the ride back is always so long.

From Charmer’s “Nurse Joy” again:

So I slept the whole ride home To a playlist of high school songs I know you'll leave so what's the use

I’ve driven some people to and from college. Some to airports. Some to international fights. LDR’s, I’ve had one that turned into my happy marriage. But man, some long drives with partners in a shaky situation are brutal. Definitely something to wail a chorus over.

These are my crazy quarantine ramblings over Midwest emo (with twinkling math riffs) lyrical themes.

#midwest emo #twinklymathriffs #twinklingmathriffs #math rock #mathrock #Americanbeauty #charmer #americanfootball #emo #midwest

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thanksariel · 6 years

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We Liked You Better Fat: Confessions Of a Pariah

February 28th, 2012 at 9:54 PM

(I couldn’t find it anywhere. Patrick deleted it and it was posted to AP but they also deleted it. Luckily I had it somewhere. Ariel: 1 internet: 0)

There’s this really nice piece at underthegunreview.net by Jacob Tender that a friend forwarded me today. It’s about how important Fall Out Boy’s album “From Under the Cork Tree,” was to him. After reading it though, nostalgic and well-written as it was, I really found myself more depressed than anything. It’s a complicated feeling, one that I’ve been incapable of explaining to anyone and have them fully understand. In spite of this though, I suppose I will give it the old-I-didn’t-go-to-college-try:

Tender had one line that really hit home for me. I related to it in terms of my feelings towards other artists, but I also winced at the profound implications it touched on in my own professional life:

“I didn’t like those pretentious assholes who didn’t like anything after Take This To Your Grave. I now recognize that I’m one of those assholes, but I still fume when some of my favorite records are so easily discredited by ignorant semi-listeners.”

The reality is that for a certain number of people, all I’ve ever done, all I ever will do, and all I ever had the capacity to do worth a damn was a record I began recording when I was 18 years old. That I can live with. That’s fine and fair; I have those records in my collection that seem to stand out far above the rest of my favorite artists catalogues (and especially for artists in whom I only have a passing interest). I suppose there’s nothing wrong in thinking I’m at a point in my life where it seems I’ll never catch up: If anyone’s going to appreciate the work I’m making, it won’t be until long after I’m done doing it. Again, this is fine: I’m insanely lucky to even imagine anyone ever appreciating anything I ever do, let alone in real time. Countless artists far better than I have only achieved posthumous acclaim. If I am to be obscure and financially unsuccessful, there’s nothing disheartening in that. The thing that’s more disheartening is the constant stream of insults I’m enduring in my financially unsuccessful obscurity.

Fall Out Boy’s last album Folie A Deux was our most critically panned and audiences openly hated it (it was also our poorest selling major label album even if one adjusts for the changing music economy). Now, that’s not to say it didn’t have its fans, but at no other point in my professional career was I nearly booed off stages for playing new songs. Touring on Folie was like being the last act at the Vaudville show: We were rotten vegetable targets in Clandestine hoodies.

That experience really took the wind out of the band’s sails; It stopped being fun. I suppose I’m just not that thick skinned. So perhaps it was even more ill-advised when I went out and did something I’d always wanted to do; make my album and have it released by Island Records [my solo record Soul Punk]. I coincidentally happened to achieve another goal which was to lose the weight I’d been carrying around since a month-long drinking binge after a bad breakup. Those accomplishments were happy things. Living in the moments of achieving them were perhaps among the happiest in my life.

So when I went out into the world to show off the self I felt like I was happiest and most comfortable being, I suppose I knew there would be the “Haters” [I loathe the clumsy/insufficient word but it seems the most universal]; The elitists that would always prove impossible to please. I had always been prepared for “Haters,” because there’s never been a moment since I graduated high school where I haven’t been the guy in “That Emo band.” First said emo band was dismissed as third rate pop-punk played by hardcore kids…a pale imitation of Saves the Day. Then we were swept up in the emo backlash [I really didn’t know we were an emo band…that’s not what the word meant a decade ago]. To this day my favorite writer at cracked.com will occasionally take swipes at my band as one of the worst things to come out of the 2000’s. We were a (albeit funny) running joke on an episode of Children’s Hospital.

Those examples of “Haters,” were people who never liked me (or at least never liked my music) and, by all rights, never really should. Such is the way of things. Different strokes for different folks as it were. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fervor of the hate from people who were ostensibly my own supporters (or at least supporters of something I had been part of). The barrage of “We liked you better fat,” the threatening letters to my home, the kids that paid for tickets to my solo shows to tell me how much I sucked without Fall Out Boy, that wasn’t psomething I suppose I was or ever will be ready for. That’s dedication. That’s real palpable anger. Add into that the economic risk I had taken [In short: I blew my nest egg on that record and touring in support of it] the hate really crushed me. The standard response to any complaints I could possibly have about my position in life seems to be “You poor sad multi-millionaire. I feel so sorry for you.”

Quite right, I still have access to enough money to live on in order to avoid bankruptcy for at least a few years as long as I stick to my budget, but money really isn’t everything and it never was. Perhaps those are the words of a privileged man who doesn’t really know what poverty really feels like. Again, that would be a fair rebuttal; I wasn’t raised rich, but lower middle class upbringing in early 90’s Midwest US of A is still a far way from the bread line. Still, there’s no amount of money in the world that makes one feel content with having no self respect. There’s no amount of money that makes you feel better when people think of you as a joke or a hack or a failure or ugly or stupid or morally empty.

This of course isn’t Tender’s fault. He never said anything negative and indeed only said great/supportive things. I guess I’m just angry because he illuminates why I’m a 27 has-been. I’m a touring artist and I feel I’ve become incapable of touring anymore with any act…whether I were to go out as a solo artist or do some Fall Out Boy “Reunion” [nope: Still never broke up] or start a new band…there will still be 10-20 percent of the audience there to tell me how shitty whatever it is I’m doing is and how much better the thing I used to do was. Not only that, but that 10-20 percent combined with whatever notoriety Fall Out Boy used to have prevents me from having the ability to start over from the bottom again. I can’t even go back to playing basement shows. As the saying goes: I couldn’t get booked at the opening of a letter.

It’s as though I’ve received some big cosmic sign that says I should disappear. So I’ve kind of disappeared. I know a lot of you have wondered where I’ve been. I’m sure others of you are disappointed to hear I’m still kicking around somewhere (kidding…sort of). But the truth is wherever and whoever I am, whoever I am whenever I release whatever release is my next, whoever said recording is recorded with: I will never be the kid from Take This To Your Grave again. And I’m deeply sorry that I can’t be, I truly am (no irony, no sarcasm). I hate waking up every morning knowing I’m disappointing so many people. I hate feeling like the awkward adult husk of a discarded once-cute child actor. I’m debating going back to school and learning a proper trade. It’s tempting to say I won’t ever play/tour/record again, but I think that’s probably just pent up poor-me emotional pessimism talking (I suppose can be excused of that though right? I am the guy from That Emo Band after all).

I’ve managed to cobble together some work…I’ve been moonlighting as a professional songwriter/producer for hire and I’ve even been doing a bit of acting here and there. I have no interest (and evidently that sentiment is reciprocated) in performing music publicly any time soon but as I’ve said I’m sure that will happen when it happens. I have been debating releasing the unfinished follow-up to Soul Punk. We’ll see what happens there. Still no word on Fall Out Boy…I know Joe’s working on his new record and Pete’s mixtape just came out so I don’t expect anything on that front in the near future. I, as always, would be super psyched to do the band again though. I’ve been watching a lot of Downton Abbey and I’ve finally caught up on the Office. Friends have been turning me on to all the records I’ve been too busy to listen to over the past couple years.

I do suggest reading Tender’s column if it sounds interesting to you; He’s a great writer and it’s a fun/relatable little story regardless of who the band is within it (film adaptations of Nick Hornby novels should be proof of that).

#we liked you better fat #confessions of a pariah #patrick stump #fall out boy #fob #soul punk #truant wave #hiatus

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dailyokes4u · 4 years

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People Are Posting Their Most Embarrassing Childhood Photos, And It’s Impossible Not To Laugh

All of us have one or two embarrassing childhood photos that we would go to great lengths to hide away from the world. But these people decided to brave the cruel waters of the Internet and share some of the most cringe-worthy shots from their childhoods and youth days.

Bored Panda has compiled a list of best throwback photographs for the ultimate cringe effect. From odd hairstyles and accessories to questionable fashion choices, the list contains each person’s bump (or perhaps even a trainwreck) on the road of searching for identity. So check them out and don’t forget to vote and comment on your favorites!

#1 My Parents Weren’t Surprised When I Came Out

Image credits: BoxBopChallenge

#2 My Legs And Feet Hit Puberty Before The Rest Of Me

Image credits: iamthedevilfrank

#3 Just A Girl On A Spring Communist Demonstration In Lviv, Ukraine, 1968

Image credits: xerurg

#4 For My 2nd Grade Photo I Vouched For The Satan’s-Child-Lawyer Look

Image credits: 17UglyBoobies

#5 Glamour Shot Blunder (7 Years Old)

Image credits: denovosibi

#6 That Time In The Early 90s When I Was 12 Going On 54

Image credits: sparkleplentylikegma

#7 In 5th Grade I Was Worried I Would Blink And Mess Up My Year Book Photo

Image credits: wholebunchofbees

#8 I Swear It’s Not Square Anymore…

Image credits: drshavako

#9 When You Look Over 40 But You’re Actually 12

Image credits: ThatSquareChick

#10 My Mum Advised Me Not To Leave The House Like This, Didn’t Listen. That Hair!

Image credits: chunky_rolls

#11 Give Me The Sassy Grandma Look

Image credits: dumbolddoor

#12 My 10th Grade Year Book Picture

Image credits: makemypenisworkagain

#13 This Surpasses Even The Fivehead

Image credits: proffllama

#14 2006 Senior Picture

Image credits: Super_Rosie

#15 A Friend Of Mine Gave Me Permission To Post This Gem. Circa Early-90s

Image credits: Sgt_Pepsi

#16 1996, Olan Mills Calls My Roommate Offering A Free Family Sitting. His Family Lived Two States Away, So We Went In To Mess With Them. I’m The Guy On The Right

Image credits: b34n0fd00m

#17 Me And All My Hair In 1988

Image credits: sheNANAgens

#18 Playing Starcraft On 56k, Strategizing With My Buddy Pre-Bluetooth/Skype

Image credits: RedBombX

#19 My (Conservative Christian) College Yearbook Photoshopped My Punk Rock Spikes Into A White Afro

Image credits: collarpoppppppin

#20 I See Your Uncle From The 80s And Raise You My Father’s Hair From The 80s

Image credits: GimmeThePizza

#21 The Blunder Brothers, Circa 1994. I’m In Purple

Image credits: dame_condor

#22 Look At Me! I’m A Real Fancy Boy!

Image credits: respectthet

#23 Why Yes!! My Vest Was Homemade! Pm Me For Orders!!!

Image credits: Hockeylove

#24 It Was 1996. I Was Obsessed With Vampires And Phantom Of The Opera…behold My Embarrassing Senior Picture

Image credits: TomPalmer1979

#25 Homecoming 2012. Yes That’s My Real Hair. Yes I Spent An Hour On It Every Day

Image credits: shortnblu

#26 1996 HS Yearbook Picture

Image credits: Moose336

#27 Recently, My Mother Found This Senior Photo Of Me From 1994. I Looked Like Nathan From South Park

Image credits: iheartbaconsalt

#28 I Was A 40 Year Old Woman At 13

Image credits: lacylove314

#29 My Uncle In The Early 80s

Image credits: lNoahl

#30 My Attire For Homecoming (Male)

Image credits: supercasey

#31 Everyone Knew Me

Image credits: Treklow

#32 Try To Contain Yourselves Ladies!!!

Image credits: boognish1776

#33 Two Questions: Have You Accepted Jesus Christ As Your Lord And Savior, And Are You Interested In The Deal Of A Lifetime On A 1987 Plymouth Mercury?

Image credits: OctopusSanta

#34 First Day Of High School, I Was Apparently Going For The 70 Year Old Man Look

Image credits: shrewlad_

#35 The Coolest Senior Picture Ever?

Image credits: woodler

#36 They Wouldn’t Take The Photo Unless I Smiled

Image credits: Patsatron

#37 The Triangle Hair And Fake Mole Completes My Senior High School Photo

Image credits: creepypeaches

#38 I Still Don’t Understand Why Girls Just Wanted To Be Friends In High School (2002)

Image credits: PatrickKelly2012

#39 I Had A Warhol-Esque, Pop-Art Phase In High School. Yes, I’m A Guy

Image credits: vaporsynthretrochill

#40 ‘Ginger Hair? Freckles? Pale Skin? This Kids Going To Be Too Popular At School. Can You Level The Playing Field A Bit?’ – Parents To Hairdresser

Image credits: LancingLad

#41 On My Way To Steal Ya Man

Image credits: getriebenheit

#42 A Little Known Fact That Prior To Keaton, I Was The Batman

Image credits: gingerbenji

#43 My Kindergarten Picture Is Definitely The Most Epic Of All My School Pictures

Image credits: manda326

#44 My 18th Birthday. I’m The Goth. Still Great Friends With The Beautiful Girl Next To Me

Image credits: GTBlues

#45 When My High School Marching Band Was Performing At The Liberty Bowl And I Ran Into Two Guys Who Looked Vaguely Like Me (I’m In The Middle)

Image credits: johnny3gud

#46 12 Year Old Me Thought This Was A Great Everyday Look

Image credits: sitonmytits

#47 When Your “Hardcore Tough Guy Gangster” Picture With Your Homie Turns Out To Look Like The Start Of A Gay Porn Film, But You Post It To Facebook Anyway… Millennial Blunder Years

Image credits: Souper_Troll

#48 I Wore This Everyday In Winter In 2013 The Worse Part Is Was 27

Image credits: Pigeonca

#49 I Was Surfing The Web Back In 2001

Image credits: Polensky

#50 I Grew Up In A Small Midwest Town, My Mom Convinced Me To Take “Urban Hip-Hop” Dance Classes

Image credits: poornose

#51 6th Grade Going On 60

Image credits: RICHB0YWINST0N

#52 Guitar Guy At Party: Check. Tortured Angst: Check. Wolf T-Shirt: Check. Ignored By Girls: Check. Hole In My Crotch That I Only Noticed Now: Check. Real Life, 1995

Image credits: mattjh

#53 Was Told You Guys Might Appreciate My Boy Greg’s 1992 Year Book Photos

Image credits: MaxwellSinclair

#54 I Went To School Like This More Than Once

Image credits: Redragon143

#55 Thought It Would Be Cool To Make Knex Body Armor

Image credits: mistermajik2000

#56 My All-Time Favorite Christmas Blunder (I’m Top Left)

Image credits: Chrismercy

#57 Just Found My Glamour Shot From 1995. I Was A Sassy 45 Year Old In 7th Grade, Apparently

Image credits: Boots525

#58 Nothing Says Cool Like Matching Sweat Suits And A Stuffed Whale On Your Knee

Image credits: Nemesis2772

#59 In 4th Good Grade, I Was Too Badass For Just One Wristwatch

Image credits: dcgrove

#60 My Very First Job. Spiderman For Kids Parties

Image credits: agentsblue

#61 Senior Prom 2006, Went Stag

Image credits: grassdick

#62 “Promo Shot” For My First Band’s Myspace Page. I Was 16 And Wore Women’s Clothing

Image credits: howliehowls

#63 Parents Thought I Was Gay. Can’t Say I Blame Them…

Image credits: mrjomanbing

#64 I Logged Into Myspace After 10 Years…

Image credits: SheTastesLikeTexas

#65 50% Khaki, 25% Weird Crinkly Tube Top, 25% Platform Sneakers: 100% Confidence

Image credits: tallnerfthis

#66 Visiting My Family After Several Years And Going Through Albums. Me At About 12. I’m A Girl

Image credits: Kaldea

#67 Titanic, Western, Newscaster Glamour Shots: 1998 In A Nutshell

Image credits: MunchZbae

#68 My Chemical Panic At The Disco

Image credits: aalexAtlanta

#69 I Was 11 Years Old. Too Old To Be Doing Stuff Like This? The School Project Was To Make A Mask, We Weren’t Required To Wear It, Or Make The… Rest…

Image credits: Lillianhom

#70 15-Year-Old Me Was Terrified Of Touching These Car Show Models. I Cringe Every Time I See This

Image credits: Rps99sho

#71 The Shirt Says, “Team Edward: Because Jacob Doesn’t Sparkle”

Image credits: halfarab

#72 Curly Mullet, Thrift Store Boy’s Anime Shirt, Inability To Look Normal For A Picture: 2003 Was A Cruel Year For This 11yo Girl

Image credits: mollieemerald

#73 They Called Me Professor Snape

Image credits: YYZeded

#74 This Is What Happens When Dorks With Cartoon Obsessions Are Allowed To Bring Props To Their Senior Photo Session. Loved Marvin So Much I Used To Joke He Was My Real Dad, The Cringe Factor Is Astronomical

Image credits: kellirose1313

#75 1990 And 11 Years Old. I Just Showed This To My 10 Year Old Daughter And Thought She’d Laugh. Nope. Only Fear

Image credits: swear_words_and_smut

#76 They’re Almost Texas Beauty Queen Bangs

Image credits: 3edgy5me

#77 I Thought Listening To Metal Made Me Cool In Middle School

Image credits: ryker002

#78 I Was About 18 Years Old, And Heading Out For A Night On The Town. Please Note The Nose Ring- It Was Stuck On With Superglue

Image credits: Frankie_Said

#79 I Thought The Other Kindergarteners Were Calling Me “Becky.” It Was “Bucky.” Thank God For Braces

Image credits: SunglowSky

#80 My Senior Pic Makes Me Cringe So Good

Image credits: kingmidusthetightest

#81 I Had To Bribe The School Photographer To Let Me Do This My Senior Year

Image credits: jaybeaster

#82 The Look Of Disappointment On My Mom’s Face As I “Egyptian Dance” With My New Haircut (Because Of Lice)

Image credits: vas-deferens

#83 Just One Of My Yearbook Photos

Image credits: 5in1K

#84 My Senior Yearbook Photo.. It Was 2002, Frosted Tips And N*sync Were Actually Cool…

Image credits: CatMaster3000

#85 America Was Always Great

Image credits: StumpyWombat13

#86 Nothing Smoother Than Singing The Quadratic Formula

Image credits: PutmickJ

#87 Why Why Why? Am I Boy Or Girl? Why The Balloons? I Made That Shirt. Holy Hell ??

Image credits: teatsfortots

#88 Since We’re Digging Through Myspace

Image credits: NIsaid

#89 I Was 12, Misunderstood, And Forced To Go To A Nascar Race With My Family. I Wore This In The Sweltering Heat

Image credits: enohes

#90 Caught Somewhere Between The “Emo” Phase And The Boy Band Phase- Here’s Me On My Way To A Jonas Brothers Concert (2008)

Image credits: theblushingwanderer

#91 Zing! (Made It Myself And Put It As My Fb Profile Pic)

Image credits: RandySNewman

#92 This Gem Is Hanging In My Mom’s Hallway, Reminding Me Every Time I Visit Just How Cringeworthy I Was In 2005

Image credits: HellBitch77

#93 Reel Me In, Boyz

Image credits: als_pals

#94 My Huge Pants Helped Me Sail Into Y2k, I Was 16 And I Should Have Known Better

Image credits: kittyshapes

#95 Painful To Share But I Thought I Was A Badass In Middle School

Image credits: aryafenrir

#96 My First Driver’s License Photo

Image credits: __rosebud__

#97 Senior Photo With Model Cars That Was Supposed To Be ‘Just For Mom’ – Ended Up In Widespread Circulation

Image credits: mozilathelaptopkilla

#98 My Nickname In School Was Spock ?

Image credits: Eraser-Head

#99 I Was 16 Years Old In 1987

Image credits: spinxter

#100 The Time In Sixth Grade When I Thought It Was Cool To Wear My Naruto Headband Everywhere – Even To School

Image credits: coreyk_21

#101 She’s A Maneater

Image credits: 0ldBloody0range

#102 Get In Line, Fellas

Image credits: sassuhhfras

#103 In Highschool, I Liked To Climb And Wear XXL Shirts Even Though I Weighed 120lbs

Image credits: thedailycheeze

#104 So, I Graduated In And On 92

Image credits: StriKamau

#105 Bowl Cut✔️ Gameboy✔️ Inflatable Furniture ✔️ 90’s Were Awesome

Image credits: ghornthewind

#106 This Is What Happened When Ten Years Old Me Started Watching America’s Next Top Model

Image credits: tuckermapocker

#107 This Picture Of My Mom And I. This Was 2000

Image credits: ginga_gingaa

#108 Summer 02 Was Hot Hot Hot!

Image credits: SnaxwellP

#109 Right Before A Brutal Transfer From Homeschool To Public School Circa 2007

Image credits: theflyingskunk

#110 That Time I Wore Moon Shoes Into Meijer

Image credits: fartybuttdart

#111 Last Time I Ever Went To Supercuts

Image credits: Tusklord

#112 For My 30th Birthday, Figured I’d Share My Senior Photo. Class Of 05 Represent!

Image credits: inablimp

#113 I Used To Wonder Why I Was Bullied So Much

Image credits: iTriggz

#114 Being A Rad Dude Is Serious Business

Image credits: dirk558

#115 Its A Pillow, Its A Pet, Its 8 Years Later & Im Full Of Regret

Image credits: UncomplimentaryBias

#116 My Friend When He Was Younger. Unfortunately He’s Lost His Sense Of Style Since Then

Image credits: Twoshae

#117 In Fourth Grade All I Wanted Was To Marry Jtt

Image credits: snarkyshan

#118 Had My Grandma Take This Pic Of Me In 99/00 For My “GF” I Met In An AOL Chat Room

Image credits: BushwickSpill

#119 Me (In Red) And My Much More Photogenic Older Brother. Probably Around 3rd Grade

Image credits: nathanfromtexas

#120 Age 13 And My Life Goal Was To Lead A Myspace Follow Train

Image credits: SoupPlox

#121 My Christmas Gift To This Group, My Pleather Jacket At Homecoming In 2002

Image credits: rfallon1

#122 My Mom Wasn’t Thrilled That She Had To Pay Lifetouch For This Documentation Of Her 8th Grader’s Pokémon Love

Image credits: chickenstripa

#123 I Thought I Was At The Peak Of Style. Tipping Fedora, ✔️. Orange Hair, ✔️. Plaid Trench Coat With Suit Jacket And T Shirt Underneath,✔️ . I Was A Female Neckbeard In 2007

Image credits: lizlemonkush

#124 Back In 2011 When I Thought Wearing The 3d Glasses Without The Lenses Was The Cool Thing To Do

Image credits: Raasiboi

#125 7th Grade With My Mom Glasses

Image credits: Poopsmash78

#126 Not Only Did I Take A Mop To Prom, I Wore Icp Face Paint On School Picture Day In 2002

Image credits: thelemonx

#127 I Took A “Photo Shoot” With All Photos Like This And Thought I Was So Cool, This Was Also My Profile Picture For Far Too Long

Image credits: maybrad

#128 Sup Ladies… Circa 1997

Image credits: gethuge

#129 1986 In Texas, Complete With Pinch- Rolled Jeans And Hi-Top Reeboks

Image credits: mcknazzy

#130 I Was Bernard The Elf In 9th Grade…

Image credits: schants

#131 As An Eighth Grader, I Was 2edgy4u

Image credits: assbuttsarecool

#132 My Fiancé Got This Leather Jacket When He Was 14. So Naturally He Got His Mom To Do A Photoshoot In His Room

Image credits: justinemelissa

#133 Double Trouble

Image credits: docellisdee

#134 Gloomy Goth In 2007

Image credits: ControlTheStorm

#135 12 In 1

Image credits: AdamLavigueur

#136 My Hillbilly Years

Image credits: criminy_crimini

#137 Myspace Was One Hell Of A Drug. 2007. Age 14

Image credits: kittenlomein

#138 I Captioned This “My Fricken Sweet Blue Hair” On Facebook. I Was 14

Image credits: thegeekman

#139 Me 16 Years Ago

Image credits: silence_the_reaper

#140 I Was Pretty Much The Typical Neckbeard In Middle School. Fedora, Bad Fashion Sense, Unironic Use Of “M’lady”, The “Inquisitive Mind” Pose, And Glasses With Flaming Skulls On The Frames. Yeesh

Image credits: TwinMonkeys

#141 2011. I Have So Many Of These… All On My Facebook

Image credits: EICzerofour

#142 My Wife Loved Aaron Carter [2002]

Image credits: empw

#143 Thought It Would Look Good To Have Cornrows But It Got Too Painful About Halfway Through

Image credits: jesser722

#144 Live Long And Prosper. I Was 14

Image credits: Seuix

#145 I Had To Dress Up To Do A Speech

Image credits: ZnKayy

#146 The Time I Went To Egypt With A Cleopatra Style Haircut

Image credits: hkfortyrevan

from https://dailyjokes4u.com/people-are-posting-their-most-embarrassing-childhood-photos-and-its-impossible-not-to-laugh/

#700-page #awkward pictures #childhood #childhood photos #childhood pictures #embarrassing photos #Fu

0 notes

lonely-neighbor · 4 years

Text

Yreverting back to an emo 15 yr old

1. Be honest, who texted you last?

A boy

2. Do you sleep with the door open or closed? closed

3. Did anyone see your last kiss?

wanna hear somethin fucking crazy i cant remember who I last kissed its been that long lmao.

4. Do you drink tea? I do

5. Do you have plans for tomorrow? werkwerkwerkwerk

6. What’s worse: dry skin or chapped lips? Chapped lips. Ouchy.

7. Are you wearing jeans, shorts, sweatpants or pyjama pants? jeans which like why haven’t i put pjs on lol

8. So, what if you married the last person you texted? that’d be interesting

9. What are you listening to at the moment? Queen Lana

10. Where was the last place you fell asleep other than your bed? probably a chair or something

11. When was the last time you saw your father? an hour or so ago

12. How fast does your mood change? it truly depends on the day/week/month

13. Do you need to say anything to someone? who knows honestly

14. Remember the first time you kissed the last person you kissed?

we went over this lol

15. How are you feeling?

Tired, mostly, which is probably why i feel emotional lol

16. Do you want someone to call you right now?

i don’t love talking on the phone

17. Is your bed comfortable? yes

18. Would you say you’re an understanding person? I certainly try to be

19. Are you generally a happy person?

again, I certainly try to be

20. Who’s your icon?

im pretty sure its been the same since I was like 19 lol it me

21. What is the last movie you watched?thats a good question. It may have been Knives Out?

22. How long does it take you to fall asleep at night?

minutes. Sometimes I think it’s only seconds.

23. Next vacation you’re going on? whoooo knoooows

24. What are the initials of the last person you kissed?

I think RDLRF he had lots of last names

25. So, what if the last person you kissed ditched you at the altar?

we don’t talk anymore so i don’t think it would get that far

26. What was the last thing you hid? presents

27. Have you ever had a really big fight with a best friend?

i guess it depends on what you consider a big fight. I’m at the age now where i dont have “fights” with my friends but the fights i had as a kid/teenager probably felt big at the time

28. Who was the last guy you had a conversation with?

aforementioned texted boy

29. What was the last thing to make you mad? I don’t know.

30. Did you ever date the last person you kissed?nope

31. What colour shirt are you wearing?

pinkish

32. What are you doing tonight? sleeping

33. What do you want? clarity

34. Do you like Batman? I don’t have a strong opinion on him either way

35. Do you have any plans for the weekend? a few

36. Do you currently have a hickey? Nope

37. Do you hate the last guy you had a conversation with? Nope!

38. What are you tired of? being tired

39. How late did you stay up last night? i think like 10:30ish lol

40. Is there something right now that has you worried? sorta kinda ugh

41. How old were you when you got your first piercing? 10 or 11?

42. Where is the person you wish you were with right now? c o m p l i c a t e d question

43. What did you have for breakfast? a breakfast sandwich and a latte :D

44. What was the last alcoholic drink you had? does a sip of wine on christmas eve count

45. What are you wearing currently?jeans and a shirt

46. Have you slept over at a member of the opposite sex’s house in their bed?

yeah

47. What time did you wake up today? like 8

48. How long until your next birthday? 6 months

49. What colour is your car? (Or the one you drive most often) blue

50. If your girlfriend/boyfriend broke up with you tonight, what would you do? be like hey i didnt even know i had a boyfriend

51. Last dream you had:

i don’t memebr

52. Has someone you like/liked ever written you a poem?

Yes

53. Was last night enjoyable for you? eh

54. What is the first letter of the last name of the person you like? tbd lol

55. Do you change your phone background a lot?

somewhat

56. How’s your heart lately? weird

57. Do you want to tell the person you like how you feel? meh

58. Ever gave a really long apology?

Oh yes

59. Where do you think your best friend is right now? which one

60. Is your best friend pissing you off at this exact moment? nope!

61. What was the last thing you ate? m&ms

62. Think of your last ten kisses. Were they with the same person?

no but i couldn’t tell ya who all

63. Who was the last person you were under a blanket with?

thats a good question lol

64. How does your hair look? lil cray

65. Would you ever try being a vegetarian? I would love to be one but I really just can’t

66. This time last year, can you remember who you liked? big fat no one probably. at least not actively lol

67. What are you wearing on your feet? nothing

68. How old are your siblings, if you have any? I do not have any

69. Do you live closer to the desert or a body of water? Water

70. Do you live closer to the desert or a body of water? I’m getting a distinct feeling of deja vu here

71. Which book are you currently reading at the moment? jellicoe road. its not super good but i wanna finish it

72. Do you often think about the past, present, or future? all three seem to have battles in my head

73. Do you think the person you like would take care of you if you were drunk? uh

74. Are you currently on a diet? yes it’s called being fat

75. Which song are you currently listening to? still lana. Yayo.

76. What time is it? 9:55

77. Do you think someone is eventually going to break your heart? i just feel like im due.

78. Do you live in the North, South, East, West, South West, Midwest, or? midwest

79. How did you come up with your url? It’s an Oh Honey song, again, like same since I was 18 or 19

80. Favourite thing to do on Tumblr? bitch lol

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grimelords · 5 years

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I’ve finished my September playlist, only almost a month later. It’s got everything, The Weeknd, desert psychedelica from Niger, and Australian yodelling from 1941. What more could you want!

listen here

and if you’re interested, sign up for my tinyletter to get these playlists delivered to your inbox here

XO / The Host / Initiation - The Weeknd: First of all Trilogy is a masterpiece. The Weeknd is a legend forever for this alone. Back when he was an anonymous character and before he tried to pivot to being a proper pop star and started beliving his own bullshit. This trio of songs for me is one of the highlights of the whole thing because this is where things really take a turn and it serves as a nice flipside to earlier songs like Glass Table Girls (even quoting some of the lyrics from it in a very cool reprise). Where most of the songs from House Of Balloons are about his own descent into this hedonistic life, by the time you get to Echoes Of Silence he lives there comfortably, and he's turned from cool, dark and tormented to coldly evil and calculating. He's the master of the dark palace and he's drawing this woman in. The chorus of XO is straight up cult language 'all we ever do is love, open up your mind you can find the love'. She's broke and addicted trying to escape her life and he offers her this community. Which is where Initation comes in and things get really dark. This song feels like the real truth of those stories you hear of Drake flying instagram models around and it's a masterpiece of the dark underside of the drugs money and models bragging you're used to.

Sociopath (feat. Kash Doll) - Pusha T: Get a load of this new Pusha song where he's got Rodney Dangerfield ghostwriting for him. I got a bitch that'll master your card.. my wife ova hea!! Also the funny gritted teeth way he says it cracks me up. He also says boop bop be boop bop. There's so many good moments in this very silly song from a man that is normally terrifyingly serious.

Ice Cream - Muscles: I suddenly remembered this song the other day and I'm so glad I did. A good example of how you can get so much feeling out of music that has no relation at all to the lyrics. In the right mood this song makes me so emotional and I can't even pin down why. The way he sings 'ice cream is going to save the day' somehow just makes the urban alienation of the verse even more pointed. It's such a silly little dance song and that's what's so strong about it. It's dancing at night and unsuccessfully trying to forget what happened today.

Running - Gil Scott Heron & Jamie xx: It’s extremely strange that this remix album ever happened, thinking back on it. Stranger still that a Gil Scott Heron song got remixed by Jamie xx and then remixed again by 40 and turned into a Drake song in I’ll Take Care Of U and all three versions rock. Anyway, this song and this whole album remain fantastic - it still sounds futuristic in a way where nobody else really followed Jamie’s sound, everything else went a different direction so this an In Colour feel more and more unique to me as time goes on.

Boyfriend (Repeat) - Confidence Man: I’m in love with this album. It’s the closest I’ve found so far to the level of absolute fun in dance music since Duck Sauce’s album. I love the the attitude of her lyrics, which carries through the whole album. I love when her Australian accent peeks out for a second on a few words. I love his rebuttals that almost but not quite put it over the edge into a comedy song. I love the big fading out leadup to the drop near the end where a huge throat singing drone just swallows the whole song for a second.

Ever Again (Soulwax Remix) - Robyn: Extremely hot remix alert!! Thankyou to Zan Rowe's Monthly Mixtape playlist for putting my onto this.Sometimes all you need is one ferociously hot bassline to make a life complete.

$50 Million - !!!: !!!’s new album has one of the best covers I’ve seen recently, I advise you to check it out. It’s interesting to be so far into your career (this is their 8th album since 2001) and still be writing songs about selling out, a concept which has largely disappeared from music discourse since musicians started making no money post napster. I vaguely remember the turning point being when Kimya Dawson, after blowing up via the Juno soundtrack, turned down a coke ad for a ludicrous amount and the blogosphere at the time turned on her and said she should have taken the money because she was living in a van at the time. Nobody gives a fuck about selling out anymore because bands make more from tshirts than streams so you’ve got to act like a brand just to make a living. Anyway I’ve gotten off track. This song rocks, especially for the breakdown near the end.

Tipped Hat - The Paper Scissors: A song I haven’t heard in over ten years that suddenly popped into my head the other day. I love the way this guy’s voice sounds, just completely committing to sounding like a hand puppet. I’ve been playing bass a lot more recently and so have developed the worst man habit of becoming more sensitive to and pointing out extremely hot basslines to people, so I’d be derelict in my duty to not share this one.

Heimsdalgate Like A Promethian Curse - of Montreal: I love this song about literally pleading with your brain to come good. Here’s a good quote about this album “I went through this chemical depression, and that's when I was writing a lot of the songs for Hissing Fauna. They're all songs about that experience. And I was experiencing it in the moment that I was writing the songs, and sort of asking myself: What the hell is going on? Why are you all of a sudden totally paranoid and plagued by these anxieties? And why is everything so distorted and confusing and fucked up? My lifestyle hadn't changed that much. And then I realized, well, there's something going on inside of me that I don't have control over, and then you realize how vulnerable you are to these things, these elements that you can't understand, or unless you go on medication and get it under control. It's like you're being betrayed by your body.” Something I really admire about this album is that the lyrics reflect black metal levels of mental anguish, he was absolutely going through it the worst anyone can go through it “I'd gotten to that point where nothing was working. I was borderline suicidal, and my relationship with my girlfriend had totally eroded and she'd gone back to Norway with our daughter and everything was totally fucked, and I was just like, What can I do? "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal" is about that.” But the music is one hundred percent committedly twee and I really admire the effect that that split mood gives. “The lyrics tell the story of what was really going on and the music sort of represents this other emotion that I wish existed. The music was really happy because I wanted to make something that would lift my spirits.”

Jesus Rabbit - Guerilla Toss: I love the wobbly weird bass sound in this weirdo UFO cult song. I love the bleepy bloop melody that runs through it and I love how fundamentally unstable the whole song sounds, like it’s made out of paperclips and foil and papier mache.

Suburbia - Press Club: I can’t believe I didn’t know about Press Club for so long. I only found out about them this performance https://youtu.be/bCmtc-T5Unk which I’m shocked to learn has less than 5k views considering it’s one of the very best TV performances I’ve ever seen.

Come For Me - Sunflower Bean: I’m pretty sure I’ve talked about this song before and I’m probably going to say the exact same thing but who cares! This song fuckin rocks. I love how assured it is, like “if you’re gonna fuck me then stop fucking around and fuck me already.” It also feels so musically similar to I Can Hardly Make You Mine by Cults to me, which is a great excuse for me to listen to that song every single time I listen to this song.

Thousands - Club Night: This Club Night album is really really good. It's like a really nice middleground between midwest emo and Cymbals Eat Guitars. The way this song blows up halfway through with 'what if we want it!!' is so good. This whole band feels like they're from 2009 but in a good way, the tail end of indie and twee with these prog or postrock structures where the songs just go and go, and you can just get completely lost in it.

Cemetary - Brutus: The first thing you've got to know about Brutus is the drummer is also the singer. Normally who plays what is not really important but in this case I think it's very important because it makes the drums a lead instrument more than they normally would be. When she's not singing my focus is still on the drums because they're linked and I absolutely love it. This song is great and every song I've heard of theirs is just as good, I love Brutus and they're one of the best new bands I've found recently. Someone in the youtube comments said 'there's something really special about hearing a song for the first time and just knowing you're going to listen to it hundreds of times in your life.'

Enter By The Narrow Gates / Spirit Narrative - Circle Takes The Square: I think that I think of Circle Takes The Square as a household name just because they have such an outsized importance in my own life when they're definitely not at all. They're legendary for making The screamo (good kind) album in As The Roots Undo and then taking 8 years to make a followup, which is this album Decompositions, but I don't really know if they're well known outside of like, people who have opinions about what were the hottest music blogspots in 2010. I chose both of these because you can't really have one without the other, the whole album basically runs as one long piece of music and so this just kind of jarringly ends at the end of Spirit Narrative, sorry about that please listen to the entire album. Because of the status As The Roots Undo enjoys I feel like this album was kind of ignored, or overshadowed by the reputation it was trying to live up to, almost exactly like The Avalanches with Since I Left You and Wildflower, when just like Wildflower it's a more expansive, developed take on the original sound that trades some of the rawness for a more polished and considered approach and comes out arguably better than the orginal. I feel like I have so much to say about this album but I don't really know where to begin, just listen to it.

Vitrification Of Blood (Pt. 1) - Blood Incantation: I am by no means a metal scholar, but I know that when the word 'blood' is in both the song title AND the band name that means it's good metal. I love this song, and this whole album is great. It's very 'classic' death metal but there's touches (beyond the extreme length) of psychedelica as well that puts it on another level you can just get lost in. The way the guitar goes to space at 3:40, and again properly into orbit at 6:50 is just magical. The more I listen to this band the more I understand those guys who only listen to metal, there's a whole ecosystem in here and it's really got everything you need.

Out Of Line - Gesaffelstein: This whole song is basically intended as an intro for Pursuit on the album but it’s so powerful just on its own. I love imbuing weirdo lyrics like ‘a bitter sunken love in a bleach blonde submarine’ with such ominous power through the commanding delivery. I love the way the big grunting vocals on the offbeat build to sound like a summoning ritual. I love making a big processed bell the centrepiece of your extremely evil sounding song. It’s sort of a shame that Gessaffelstein has never really gone back to the vision of his first album and has spent his time since diluting it down for guest production on Weeknd songs and the like because it feels like there’s still so much more to get out of this sound. That he hasn’t gone back and dug deeper makes Aleph stand out more and more as a singular masterpiece as time goes on.

Kamane Tarhanin - Mdou Moctar: Turning to Mdou Moctar after the new Tinariwen album kind of disappointed me, with all it’s big name guests nothing really hit me. I love this song though and I think a big part of it is the sort of loping, 6/4 rhythm that combined with the drone gives it this feeling of endlessly tumbling over itself in place, especially as the guitar heats up.

Achabiba - Fatou Seidi Ghali: I know very little about Fatou Seidi Ghali except that I saw she was supporting Sarah Louise at a show. From some googling it turns out that she’s the leader of a Nigerois band called Les Filles de Illeghadad who you can probably look forward to seeing on next month’s playlist. I also learned that the demonym for someone from Niger is Nigerien or to minimise confusion with Nigeria, Nigerois (said in a french way). They play a sort of desert psych in the realm of Mdou Mocter or Tinariwen, but this song (also the only solo song she has on spotify) shows her acoustic side. I love the swirling melody over the drone as the hand percussion keeps it in place and I love the very delicate vocals, but a probably unintentional thing I love a lot about this recording is the unmistakable iphone locking sound near the very start that instantly removes so much of the mystic exoticism that these sorts of artists are often written about with and places it firmly in the same sprawling modern world we all live in.

Floating Rhododendron - Sarah Louise: I love Sarah Louise. She’s a phenomenal guitarist and has such a big love for traditional folk music with her side project House And Land, but unlike everyone else in the genre is also very interested in pushing guitar forward to new and strange places. Her latest album was super experimental layered electric guitars and voice that still managed to maintain the deep connection to nature that runs through all her work. I would also highly recommend following her on instagram because her passion runs over. She’s regularly just out in the woods somewhere explaining how wonderful a particular mushroom is. This song one of the first ones I ever heard from her, and it’s back when she was just doing very beautiful 12 string acoustic work, but she recently added it to spotify and it’s a very nice reminder of where she came from and how far she’s gone in such a short time.

Lark - Angel Olsen: The new Angel Olsen is absolutely great. I love how much she is just completely going for it on this album, absolutely unleashing. Taken against earlier songs of hers I’ve loved like White Fire, where the majesty was in her quiet power and the ability to absolutely command silence with a whisper quiet song, this song feels like the direct inverse, an about-turn into all the gigantic majesty of swirling strings and top of your lungs vocals - going all out and leaving nothing on the table. The way this song blows up about three different times until by the end you’re caught in this gigantic swirling maelstrom of screaming sound is just out of this world.

Door - Caroline Polachek: Caroline Polachek’s brain is huge. When I first heard the chorus of this song I couldn't believe it. Are you allowed to have a chant that runs in a spiral like this be the chorus of your pop song? Is that allowed?

North, South, East And West - The Church: The Church feel like they don't get enough respect. They don't seem to be in the same league as Cold Chisel and The Angels and all the other dad rock Australian bands from that era for some reason. They're very good though and I've been really getting into this whole album and this song specifically lately. Maybe what's working against them is just how much his voice sounds like Bono's in this song but surely that was a boon at the time!

Western Questions - Timber Timbre: This has become one of my new favourite songs to sing. The way the words fit together is my favourite kind of poetics where they just sound incredible, phonetically, and can mean anything you like for large chunks. Like “the gelatinous walls of the seeds that seldom remain / while the bulls are browsing needles through computer casinos / honour the name”. Especially “bulls are browsing needles through computer casinos” is just extremely nice to say. I love the character of this song and am yet to completely understand what it’s saying other than personifying some worldwide blackpilled spirit of nihilist evil. What I love is the experience of all encompassing evil in this song, like a worldwide conspiracy connecting everything together that makes it all make sense. It doesn’t make you happier but it makes it make sense. I also love the finality of the big fill near the end that ushers in the outro riff that ties everything up.

Cold Cold World - Blaze Foley: I got heavily into a country music thing this month and spent a bit of time trying to find ‘real’ country, which of course turns out not to exist at all. The entirety of country music is built on a false nostalgia for an imagined time long past when things were real, some unspecified time in the collective consciousness between cowboy times and coal mine times. I don’t say this to say ‘country music is a fraud’ but that it’s built on a foundation of myth and that’s what’s so good about it. It’s constantly reframing the past as it relates to the present and is energised by the friction between them. Blaze Foley is a good example of this in the modern era because he seems to exist more as a myth than a man. He had three studio albums, the master tapes of which all disappeared through various means (lost, stolen, seized by the DEA) and so the majority of his surviving material is live recordings or long-lost studio recordings that resurfaced decades after his death when his fame and mythology already preceded him. He also thankfully lives up to the myth, he was truly a great artist and it’s a shame more of him hasn’t survived.

Where The Golden Wattle Blooms / Why Did The Blue Skies Turn Grey - Shirley Thoms: Further to what I was saying about country music before, Australian country is a whole other thing. Transferring the myth and the mythmaking to a new location adds another layer of abstraction. Shirley Thoms was the first female solo act to record country music in Australia in 1941 and was most notable for her yodelling of which she is damn fine. This is a great song and a good a starting point as any in trying to trace the origin of country music in Australia. That it's so english in its identity, so evidently imitating an american style (which is in turn imitating a german yodel) is just more good evidence that nothing is 'real' and traditions of the past and future are malleable at all times.

Talkin’ Karate Blues - Townes Van Zandt: Townes Van Zandt is widely regarded as a songwriter’s songwriter and one of the best country songwriters to ever live, but like a lot of great country songwriters also has one or two songs like this - strange comedy songs about learning karate and getting your arm ripped off.

Strange Tourist - Gareth Liddiard: This album is a masterpiece on the level of Ys and it feels criminally underlistened in my opinion. Luckily in the last week or so some renegade has done up the wiki article on it to a couple of thousand words so that's a start. Because this is a song I've listened to one million times and love a lot, it's hard for me to write about it in a general way so instead I'm going to talk about something very specific and new that I've only begun to appreciate recently. The way he uses the vowels of the japanese words to create these assonant runs in lines like "Koda Kumi sang a coda pink as sarin gas / I took a trip to Nagasaki in a rented Mitsubishi / Then went camping in the Jukai under Mount Fuji" and "They found him frozen in a hollow in Aokigahara forest where them harakiri weirdos go" is really something, and a nice illustration of the two sides of Liddiard's songwriting: densely technical poetics in a song about living with a housemate who was a real freak.

I Dream A Highway - GIllian Welch: I’m not even going to go into the lyrics of this because it’s such an out of this world perfect song but I’m going to say this: it’s really something that this song goes for nearly 15 minutes, sits on the same three chords the whole time and never ever feels long. This song is longer than Emily by Joanna Newsom but doesn’t feel like an epic of the same scale at all. It’s just a mournful slow ode to change and decay that goes on forever and could keeping going on for twice as long if it wanted to.

Deep Water - The Middle East: The way the vocals in the verses are delivered, trailing off and mumbling bits and pieces is somehow magical, like it’s more interested in communicating the gist and the feeling than the actual words. You can just pick whatever part of it you like. Petrol stations and a copper mine, the kind of place I think I could die. This song also has two minutes of silence at the end for album reasons so enjoy that.

listen here

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