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ownedbybooks · 2 years

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2022 autumn wrap up

Disclaimer: I live in the Southern Hemisphere.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thankfully I did watch previously the 1999 movie adaptation of the book and then I’ve read the intro BEFORE actually reading the story, so I could understand the plot and the themes very well and I’m so thankful for that!!! I don’t think I would’ve liked it as much as I did if I haven’t read the introduction before diving into the story.

City of Fallen Angels, by Cassandra Clare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I cannot stress more that SIMON OWNS THIS SEQUEL and I look forward to see more of his development.

Endgame: The Calling, by James Frey ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It was a reread. But funnily enough I liked more about this story in this second time of reading it lmao. And i was impressed of how much I remembered about the plot.

Lore Olympus (Season 1), by Rachel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I am VERY biased towards this webtoon. VERY. I just didn’t give it 5 stars because I found the begin (that i had to reread it) very slow paced compared to the rest.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley ⭐️⭐️

The only thing I knew about this book was that is a classic sci-fi. I thought it was going to be similar to 1984, but it was so over the place… I saw and understood the critics the author was making and I can agree with him, but I found the plot so… eh :(

História do Cerco de Lisboa, by José Saramago⭐️⭐️⭐️

My first Saramago read! I was quite afraid to read his books because he’s not an easy read, specially because of his style. It took me around 50 pages to understand what was going on and get used to Saramago’s writing, but in the end I liked it very much! I can’t wait to read another of his books!

I Swear I Won't Bother You Again! #3, by Reina Soratani ⭐️⭐️

I… I couldn’t remember much of the story and characters. Giving a one or two years break to see if it more chapters were going to be released did help, but now I have to wait a couple tears more to read the next volume 🙃 guess who won’t remember stuff again???

Jocelyn's Story, by Cassandra Clare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Nothing new here, but it was nice to see Clary’s mom point of view about her past and relationships

Perdida, by Carina Rissi ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A GREAT READING DONE AT THE RIGHT TIME!!! Loooved the Romance between Ian and Sofia and I can’t wait to see more of them!!! Specially Ian, he’s such a gentleman! Also: this book made me cry a lot!

Endgame: The Complete Training Diaries, by James Frey ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oooh yeah this one was also nice! To see how the characters came to be the players of Endgame before it started! I really liked the mix of culture as well!

Os Textos que Desisti de Enviar, by Vanessa Pérola ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even tho I didn’t liked it very much, because this book made me reflect A LOT about myself, I had to give it a 5 stars because of the same reason. It made me get out of my comfort zone about relationships and what I think about them. Thanks God I talked to my psychologist the next day 😂

Ian Clarke - Conversa com Gomes na Adega, by Carina Rissi ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A super quick read, but so so lovely! Have I already told you guys I’m in love with Ian???

Arsène Lupin, gentleman-cambrioleur, by Maurice Leblanc ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Decided to reread it after knowing about the netflix adaptation. It was fun, nice and Arsène Lupin is so charismatic!! No wonder he’s the main character, he carries every plot on his back! I want to get more immersed on his persona, now lmao

The Fork, The Witch and The Worm, by Christopher Paolini ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

ARGH THE NOSTALGIA I FELT READING THIS BOOK!!! I was missing Eragon, Murtagh, Saphira and many more SO MUCH!! I even did my first live reading with it!

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charopinhozelador · 8 months

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#dylan o'brien #stiles stilinski #ian bohen #peter hale #derek hale #tyler hoechlin #superman #kal el #clark kent #supergirl #youtuber #meme

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jbaileyfansite · 2 months

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Jonathan Bailey starring as Harry Clark in 'The Traitors: The Movie', a sketch for Comic Relief, airing on BBC One on March 15, at 7pm [x]

#jonathan bailey #jonny bailey #the traitors the movie #comic relief #BBC One #suranne jones #david walliams #Asim Chaudhry #ian stirling #catherine tate #sally phillips #molly pearce #harry clark #comic relief red nose day #NEW!

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marleneoftheopera · 4 months

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Holiday Audio/Video Gifts!

For the holiday season, here are some audio gifts from various shows and one Phantom video! The link to them is here and the info is below the cut:

Happy holidays and I hope you are all having time for some rest!

Audios

POTO

Jon Robyns, Paige Blankson, Joe Griffiths-Brown, Kelly Glyptis, Matt Harrop, Adam Linstead, Francesca Ellis, David Kristopher Brown, Maiya Hikasa August 22, 2023; London

Tim Howar, Harriet Jones, Nadim Naaman, Lara Martins, Nicholas Garrett, Arvid Larsen, John Ellis, Valerie Cutko, Kelsi Boyden March 19, 2023; Greece

Josh Piterman, Corinne Cowling (u/s), Danny Whitehead, Katy Hanna (u/s), Ross Dawes, Kris Manuel (u/s), Sophie Caton (u/s), Paul Ettore Tabone, Georgia Ware October 17, 2019; London Matinee.

Jeremy Stolle (u/s), Samantha Hill, Greg Mills (u/s), Michele McConnell, Richard Poole (u/s), Tim Jerome, Ellen Harvey, Christian Sebek, Kara Klein, Scott Mikita (u/s) March 9, 2013; Broadway Matinee performance.

John Owen-Jones, Deborah Dutcher, Matthew Cammelle, Bruce Montague, Charles Shirvell, Margaret Mary Kane (u/s), Janet Murphy, Jeremy Secomb, Lucy Middleton January 5, 2002; London

Love Never Dies

Tam Mutu, Celia Graham, David Thaxton, Daniel Dowling August 25, 2011; London Tam Mutu's last performance.

Les Miserables

Christopher Jacobsen (u/s Jean Valjean), Stewart Clarke (Javert), Katie Hall (Fantine), Will Callan (Marius), Lulu-Mae Pears (Cosette), Amena El-Kindy (Eponine), Luke Kempner (Thenardier), Claire Machin (Madame Thenardier), Dejan Van der Flyert (Enjolras), Alex Shaw (Gavroche), Clohe Sullivan (Little Cosette), Tom Hext (Grantaire/Majordomo), Adam Pearce (Bishop/Claquesous), Ellie Ann Lowe (Factory Girl), Jordan Simon Pollard (u/s Foreman/Bujon), Matt Dempsey (Bamatabopis/Lesgles), Annabelle Aquino, Hazel Baldwin, Emily Olive Boyd, Ben Culleton, Matt Hayden, Sam Kipling, Anouk Van Lake, Harry Lake, Ben Oatley, Jonathan Stevens, Phoebe Williams, Ollie Wray September 28, 2023; London 15,000th show in London and the 5th show for the new company.

Sunset Boulevard

Nicole Scherzinger (Norma), Tom Francis (Joe Gillis), David Thaxton (Max von Mayerling), Grace Hodgett Young (Betty Shaefer), Ahmed Hamaad (Artie), Tyler Davis (Sheldrake), Charlotte Jaconelli (Johanna), Jon Tsouras (Cecil B. de Mille) September 28, 2023; London

Rebecca

Laureen Jones (I), Richard Carson (Maxim de Winter), Kara Lane (Mrs Danvers), Sara Harlington (Beatrice), Neil Moor (Giles), Piers Bate (Frank Crewley), David Breeds (Ben), Alex James Ward (Jack Favell), Shrley Jameson (Mrs Van Hopper), Nicholas Lumley (Colonel Julian) September 27, 2023; Off-West End

POTO Video

Ian Jon Bourg, Olivia Safe (u/s), Kyle Gonyea 2001; Hamburg, Germany VOB files. One of the most legendary Phantom's opposite one of the youngest Christine's!

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supermanandloisverse · 4 months

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Ian Bohen wished everyone a happy new year with some new photos with Tyler Hoechlin from this weekend.

#superman and lois #superman #tyler hoechlin #clark kent #kal el #smallville #ian bohen #mitch anderson #derek hale #teen wolf #teen wolf movie #peter hale

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agentsofmarvel · 1 year

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some of my favorite agents of shield fun facts (season 2 edition)

part two!!! [part one is on my page!]

- to show the difference of coulson as the director of shield instead of an agent, they specially tailored each suit, used expensive slim ties, and even tailored his collar to make it higher. they also only made five suits for clark to wear the entire season.

- the cast and crew loved simon kassianides as bakshi so much that they kept his character in the story much longer than planned. he ended up dying five episodes after he was originally supposed to.

- in the episode “Face to Face” where coulson and may are undercover at the party, they made may’s undercover personality based on ming-na wen’s actual personality. a lot of the scenes of may at the party hanging out were unscripted.

- the writers modeled coulson in season two after nick fury, as the new director of shield. the writers made his previous role as a high ranking agent protective of the younger agents more akin to may’s character.

- bobbi wears blue, black, and grey constantly to represent her comic book mockingbird suit. she wears red two twice: while undercover at hydra & when she’s in japan (where she’s pretending to still work for hydra) to show the contrast in her undercover persona and real self.

- the crew and writers modeled the ward family somewhat after the Kennedy’s…what.

- the episode where ward confronts his past is called “The Things We Bury” which is a play on words for a book called “The Things They Carried”, which is a book written about the Vietnam War from the point of view of a soldier (i’ve read the book for a class, it’s a true story).

- the cast (other than adrienne and henry) had no idea mack and bobbi were working for another shield until the episode for the script was sent.

- the day chloe found out that skye would be an inhuman was on the day in season one that an earthquake hit the set. SHE FOUND OUT SHE WOULD PLAY AN INHUMAN WITH QUAKE POWERS THE DAY AN EARTHQUAKE HIT!!

- chloe knew her character existed as a superhero in the comics since she got the role, but she didn’t know which one. at first she thought she could be she-hulk or even mantis but after researching comics she realized she was playing quake a few days before the writers told her she was quake.

- a camera typically films at 24 frames per second. in the scene where skye breaks out of the cocoon in the underground city in puerto rico, the scene was filmed at 1,500 frames per second.

- after trip’s death a lot of the cast thought he would come back again because they said it’s marvel and people come back from dying all the time.

- in the scene filmed on the football field in “One Of Us” it was actually 45° F, which was the record coldest day (at the time of filming) in Los Angeles since 1885.

- lincoln’s character was literally created to give skye a break. they literally realized she’s been through so much in one season that they wrote in a possible boyfriend to make her happy for once.

- one of the writer’s favorite scenes to write was the dinner scene between cal, jaiying, and skye.

- coulson was almost an inhuman. yep. the idea was brought up in the writers room but they decided against it because they liked the idea of coulson being the average man within the craziness that is shield.

this wraps up season two fun facts! i’ll probably post season three when i can!! i don’t really have any plans for the rest of the seasons though :)

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clementinecalls · 7 months

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im starting to see a pattern here💀

#doomed gay ppl *sobs*#teen wolf #theo raeken #liam dunbar #thiam #ftwd #ftwd trick #troy otto #nick clark #shameless #ian gallagher #mickey milkovich

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theforswornelite · 4 months

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HAPPY 6 YEARS OF DERRY GIRLS!!!

#Derry Girls #Orla McCool #Erin Quinn #Clare Devlin #Michelle Mallon #James Maguire #lisa mcgee #Jerry Quinn #Sister Michael #Sarah Quinn #Joe McCool #Sarah McCool #Saoirse-Monica Jackson #Louisa Harland #Kathy Kiera Clarke #Tommy Tiernan #Ian McElhinney #Nicola Coghlan

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just-a-pole-sir · 5 months

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Ian Nelson, Tyler Hoechlin, Dylan Sprayberry, and Henry Cavill walk into a bar...

I have the distinct feeling a fanfiction with at least part of that quartet exists.

Derek Hale and Clark Kent walk into a bar and meet their younger selves because of some sort of space-time anomaly.

The most unexpected foursome ever occurs...

#please someone make this a fic and send me the link :p #derek hale #clark kent #tyler hoechlin #ian nelson #henry cavill #dylan sprayberry #asks #anon

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rock-and-roll-hell · 9 months

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🎩 Happy 58th Birthday, Slash 🎩

#slash #birthday #happy birthday #ace frehley #paul stanley #gene simmons #tommy thayer #guns n roses #kiss #kiss band #kiss army #gnr #saul hudson #scott ian #tommy lee #gilby clarke #rob zombie

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dustedmagazine · 2 months

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Listening Post: Kim Gordon

Kim Gordon has long been one of rock’s female icons, one of a tiny handful of women to get much play in Michael Azzerad’s underground-defining Our Band Could Be Your Life and a mainstay in the noise-rock monolith Sonic Youth. It’s hard to imagine that quintessential dude rock band without Gordon in front, dwarfed by her bass or spitting tranced out, pissed off verses over the storm of feedback.

Yet Gordon’s trajectory has been, if anything, even more fascinating since Sonic Youth’s demise in 2011. A visual artist first — she studied art at the Otis College of Art and Design before joining the band — she continues to paint and sculpt and create. She’s had solo art shows at established galleries in London and New York, most recently at the 303 Gallery in New York City. A veteran of indie films including Gus van Zant’s Last Days and Todd Haynes I’m Not There, she has also continued to act sporadically, appearing in the HBO series Girls and on an episode of Portlandia. Her memoir, Girl in a Band, came out in 2015.

But Gordon has remained surprisingly entrenched in indie music over the last decade. Many critics, including a few at Dusted, consider her Body Head, collaboration with Bill Nace the best of the post-Sonic Youth musical projects. The ensemble has now produced two EPs and three full-lengths. Gordon has also released two solo albums, which push her iconic voice into noisier, more hip hop influenced directions. We’re centering this listening post around The Collective, Gordon’s second and more recent solo effort, which comes out on Matador on March 8th, but we’ll likely also be talking about her other projects as well.

Intro by Jennifer Kelly

Jennifer Kelly: I missed No Home in 2019, so I was somewhat surprised by The Collective’s abrasive, beat-driven sound though I guess you could make connections to Sonic Youth’s Cypress Hill collaboration?

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The more I listen to it, though, the more it makes sense to me. I’ve always liked the way Gordon plays with gender stereotypes, and “I’m a Man” certainly follows that trajectory. What are you guys hearing in The Collective?

Jonathan Shaw: I have only listened through the entire record once, but I am also struck by its intensities. Sort of silly to be surprised by that, given so many of the places she has taken us in the past: noisy, dangerous, dark. But there's an undercurrent of violence to these sounds that couples onto the more confrontational invocations and dramatizations of sex. It's a strong set of gestures. I like the record quite a bit.

Bill Meyer: I'm one of those who hold Body/Head to be the best effort of the post-Sonic Youth projects, but I'll also say that it's very much a band that creates a context for Gordon to do something great, not a solo effort. I was not so taken with No Home, which I played halfway through once upon its release and did not return to until we agreed to have this discussion. I've played both albums through once now, and my first impression is that No Home feels scattered in a classic post-band-breakup project fashion — “let's do a bit of this and that and see what sticks.” The Collective feels much more cohesive sonically, in a purposeful, “I'm going to do THIS” kind of way.

Jonathan Shaw: RE Jennifer's comment about “I'm a Man”: Agreed. The sonics are very noise-adjacent, reminding me of what the Body has been up to lately, or deeper underground acts like 8 Hour Animal or Kontravoid's less dancy stuff. Those acts skew masculine (though the Body has taken pains recently to problematize the semiotics of those photos of them with lots of guns and big dogs...). Gordon's voice and lyrics make things so much more explicit without ever tipping over into the didactic. And somehow her energy is in tune with the abrasive textures of the music, but still activates an ironic distance from it. In the next song, “Trophies,” I love it when she asks, “Will you go bowling with me?” The sexed-up antics that follow are simultaneously compelling and sort of funny. Rarely has bowling felt so eroticized.

Jennifer Kelly: I got interested in the beats and did a YouTube dive on some of the other music that Justin Raisen has been involved with. He's in an interesting place, working for hip hop artists (Lil Yachty, Drake), pop stars (Charli XCX) and punk or at least punk adjacent artists (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Viagra Boys), but nothing I've found is as raw and walloping as these cuts.

“The Candy House” is apparently inspired by Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, which is about a technology that enables people to share memories... Gordon is pretty interested in phones and communications tech and how that's changing art and human interaction.

Andrew Forell: My immediate reaction to the beats was oh, The Bug and JK Flesh, in particular the MachineEPs by the former and Sewer Bait by the latter. Unsurprisingly, as Jonathan says, she sounds right at home within that kind of dirty noise but is never subsumed by it

Jennifer Kelly: I don't have a deep reference pool in electronics, but it reminded me of Shackleton and some of the first wave dub steppers. Also, a certain kind of late 1990s/early aughts underground hip hop like Cannibal Ox and Dalek.

Bryon Hayes: Yeah, I hear some Dalek in there, too. Also, the first Death Grips mixtape, Ex-Military.

It's funny, I saw the track title “I'm a Man,” and my mind immediately went to Bo Diddley for some reason, I should have known that Kim would flip the script, and do it in such a humorous way. I love how she sends up both the macho country-lovin’ bros and the sensitive metrosexual guys. It's brilliant!

This has me thinking about “Kool Thing”, and how Chuck D acts as the ‘hype man’ to Kim Gordon in that song. I'm pretty sure that was unusual for hip hop at the time. Kim's got a long history of messing with gender stereotypes.

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Bill Meyer: Gordon did a couple videos for this record, and she starred her daughter Coco in both of them. The one for “I'm A Man” teases out elements of gender fluidity, how that might be expressed through clothing, and different kinds of watching. I found the video for “Bye Bye” more interesting. All the merchandise that's listed in the video turns out to be a survival kit, one that I imagine that Gordon would know that she has to have to get by. The protagonist of the video doesn't know that, and their unspoken moment in a car before Coco runs again was poignant in a way that I don't associate with her work. And of messing with hip hop!

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Tim Clarke: “Bye Bye” feels like a companion to The Fall’s “Dr Buck’s Letter.”

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Bill Meyer: From The Unutterable? I'll have to a-b them.

Tim Clarke: That’s the one.

Jonathan Shaw: All of these comments make me think of the record’s title, and the repeated line in “The Candy House”: “I want to join the collective.” Which one? The phone on the record’s cover nods toward our various digital collectives — spaces for communication and expression, and spaces for commerce, all of which seem to be harder and harder to tell apart. A candy house, indeed. Why is it pink? Does she have a feminine collective in mind? A feminine collective unconscious? The various voices and lyric modes on the record suggest that's a possibility. For certain women, and for certain men working hard to understand women, Gordon has been a key member of that collective for decades.

Jennifer Kelly: The title is also the title of a painting from her last show in New York.

The holes are cell phone sized.

You can read about the show here, but here's a representative quote: “The iPhone promises freedom, and control over communication,” she says. “It’s an outlet of self-expression, and an escape and a distraction from the bigger picture of what’s going on in the world. It’s also useful for making paintings.”

Gordon is a woman, and a woman over 70 at that — by any measure an underrepresented perspective in popular culture. However, I’d caution against reading The Collective solely as a feminist statement. “I'm a Man,” for instance, is told from the perspective of an incel male, an act of storytelling and empathy not propaganda. My sense is that Gordon is pretty sick of being asked, “What's it like to be a girl in a band?” (per “Sacred Trickster”) and would like, maybe, to be considered as an artist.

It's partly a generational thing. I'm a little younger than she is, but we both grew up in the patriarchy and mostly encountered gender as an external restriction.

As an aside, one of my proudest moments was when Lucas Jensen interviewed me about what it was like to be a freelance music writer, anonymously, and Robert Christgau wrote an elaborate critique of the piece that absolutely assumed I was a guy. If you're not on a date or getting married or booking reproductive care, whose business is it what gender you are?

There, that's a can of worms, isn't it?

Jonathan Shaw: Feminine isn't feminist. I haven't listened nearly closely enough to the record to hazard an opinion about that. More important, it seems to me the masculine must be in the feminine unconsciousness, and the other way around, too. Precisely because femininity has been used as a political weapon, it needs imagining in artistic spaces. Guess I also think those terms more discursively than otherwise: there are male authors who have demonstrated enormous facility with representing femininity. James, Joyce, Kleist, and so on. Gordon has always spoken and sung in ways that transcend a second-wave sort of feminine essence. “Shaking Hell,” “PCH,” the way she sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

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Jennifer Kelly: Sure, she has always been shape-shifter artistically.

The lyrics are super interesting, but almost obliterated by noise. I’m seeing a connection to our hyperconnected digital society where everything is said but it’s hard to listen and focus.

Bill Meyer: Concrete guy that I am, I’ve found myself wishing I had a lyric sheet even though her voice is typically the loudest instrument in the mix.

Andrew Forell: Yes, that sense of being subsumed in the white noise of (dis)information and opinion feels like the utopian ideal of democratizing access has become a cause and conduit of alienation in which the notion of authentic voices has been rendered moot. It feels integral to the album as a metaphor

Christian Carey: How much of the blurring of vocals (good lyrics — mind you) might involve Kim’s personal biography, I wonder? From her memoirs, we know how much she wished for a deflection of a number of things, most having to do with Thurston and the disbandment of SY.

Thurston was interviewed recently and said that he felt SY would regroup and be able to be professional about things. He remarked that it better be soon: SY at eighty wouldn’t be a good look!

Andrew Forell: And therein lies something essential about why that could never happen

Ian Mathers: I know I’m far in the minority here (and elsewhere) because I’ve just never found Sonic Youth that compelling, despite several attempts over the years to give them another chance. And for specifically finding Thurston Moore to be an annoying vocal presence (long before I knew anything about his personal life, for what it's worth). So, I’m in no hurry to see them reunite, although I do think it would be both funny and good if everyone except Moore got back together.

Having not kept up with Gordon much post-SY beyond reading and enjoying her book, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this record. After a couple of listens, I’m almost surprised how much I like it. Even though I’m lukewarm on SY’s music, she’s always been a commanding vocal presence and lyricist and that hasn’t changed here (I can echo all the praise for “I’m a Man,” and also “I was supposed to save you/but you got a job” is so bathetically funny) and I like the noisier, thornier backing she has here. I also think the parts where the record gets a bit more sparse (“Shelf Warmer”) or diffuse (“Psychic Orgasm”) still work. I've enjoyed seeing all the comparisons here, none of which I thought of myself and all of which makes sense to me. But the record that popped into my head as I listened was Dead Rider’s Chills on Glass. Similar beat focus, “thick”/distorted/noisy/smeared production, declamatory vocals. I like that record a lot, so it's not too surprising I'm digging this one.

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Jennifer Kelly: I loved Sonic Youth but have zero appetite for the kind of nostalgia trip, just the hits reunion tour that getting back together would entail.

Jonathan Shaw: Yeah, no thanks to that.

RE Christian's comment: Not sure I see deflection so much as the impossibility of integration. We are all many, many selves, always have been. Digital communications interfaces and social media have just lifted it to another level of experience. Gordon sez, “I don't miss my mind.” Not so much a question of missing it in the emotional/longing sense, more so acknowledging that phrases like “my mind” have always been meaningless. Now we partition experience and identity into all of these different places, and we sign those pieces of ourselves over, to Zuck and the algorithms. We know it. We do it anyways, because it's the candy house, full of sweets and pleasures that aren't so good for us, but are really hard to resist. “Come on, sweets, take my hand...”

Bill Meyer: I would not mind hearing all of those SY songs I like again, can’t lie, although I don’t think that I’d spend Love Earth Tour prices to hear them. But given the water that has passed under the bridge personally, and the length of time since anyone in the band has collaborated creatively (as opposed to managing the ongoing business of Sonic Youth, which seems to be going pretty well), a SY reunion could only be a professionally presented piece of entertainment made by people who have agreed to put aside their personal differences and pause their artistic advancement in order to make some coin. There may be good reasons to prioritize finances. Maybe Thurston and/or Kim wants to make sure that they don’t show up on Coco’s front door, demanding to move their record or art collection into her basement, in their dotage. And Lee’s a man in his late 60s with progeny who are of an age to likely have substantial student loan debt. But The Community is just the kind of thing they’d have to pause. It feels like the work of someone who is still curious, questioning, commenting. It's not just trying to do the right commercial thing.

Justin Cober-Lake: I’m finding this one to be a sort of statement album. I’d stop short of calling it a concept album, but there seems to be a thematic center. I think a key element of the album is the way that it looks for... if not signal and noise, at least a sense of order and comprehensibility in a chaotic world. Gordon isn’t even passing judgment on the world — phones are bad, phones are good, phones make art, etc. But there’s a sense that our world is increasingly brutal, and we hear that not just in the guitars, but in the beats, and the production. “BYE BYE” really introduces the concept. Gordon’s leaving (and we can imagine this is autobiographical), but she’s organizing everything she needs for a new life. “Cigarettes for Keller” is a heartbreaking line, but she moves on, everything that makes up a life neatly ordered next to each other, iBook and medications in the same line. It reminds me of a Hemingway character locking into the moment to find some semblance of control in the chaos.

Getting back to gender, there’s a funny line at the end: one of the last things she packs is a vibrator. I'm not sure if we're to read this as a joke, a comment on the necessity of sexuality in a life full of transitory moments, as a foreshadowing of the concepts we’ve discussed, or something else. The next item (if it’s something different) is a teaser, which could be a hair care product or something sexual (playing off — or with — the vibrator). Everything's called into question: the seriousness of the track, the gender/sexuality ideas, what really matters in life. Modern gadgets, life-sustaining medicines, and sex toys all get equal rank. That tension really adds force to the song.

Coming out of “BYE BYE,” it's easy to see a disordered world that sounds extremely noisy, but still has elements we can comprehend within the noise. I don’t want to read the album reductively and I don't think it's all about this idea, but it's something that, early on in my listening, I find to be a compelling aspect of it.

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#dusted magazine #listeningpost #kim gordon #the collective #jennifer kelly #jonathan shaw #bill meyer #andrew forell #bryon hayes #tim clarke #christian carey #ian mathers #justin cober-lake

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