#like stick season growing sideways no complaints are all his songs

[a1asta1r]

Rip Neil Perry you would have loved Stick Season (We’ll All Be here Forever) by Noah Kahan

#it’s such a him coded album #like stick season growing sideways no complaints are all his songs #Neil Perry #dead poets society #dps

[lenalvthor]

tethered playlist breakdown - ch 2: all too well

this chapter’s music centres mainly around Imogen and Ashton! because i didn’t say anything about Ashton’s musical backstory in the ch 1 breakdown, let’s start with them 🎸🤘🏼: 

Ashton

like Laudna, Ashton had a musical career as a teenager with his band The Nobodies (vibe: 2000s/2010s pop punk/punk rock, see - Five Minutes to Midnight by BOYS LIKE GIRLS or Check Yes Juliet (Run Baby Run) by We The Kings). also similar to Laudna, Ashton found themselves chewed up and spat back out by the industry they’d found a home in and were burned badly when the hamster wheel of international tours and year-after-year back-to-back albums slowed down for the first time (aka 1D vibes of burn out, band break-up + hiatuses). 

their first foray into making music again was through a single, Floating in the Night (by Judah & the Lion) which they had originally written as a more pop punk song, but Bertrand directed them towards The Crown Keepers who Ashton collaborated with to rewrite it into more of a indie/folk rock song, and who ended up featuring when the single was released. Ashton signed with Eshteross Records soon afterwards and started rebranding as a solo artist making more folk rock style music as the years passed (again, taking suggestions for what songs could be the right vibe for an album during this period). 

post 2-year-Bell’s Hells-separation-period, Ashton’s music has mellowed from the thing that’s remained so distinctive about him - the angry rock elements - which is why he is so nervous about his new music. that tone lingers a little in the lyrics and sometimes the instrumentation, but it’s not as consistent, so in the fic’s present-day, Ashton’s vibe most closely resembles Noah Kahan. 

the album Ashton’s been working on over these 2 years, and that he shows Bell’s Hells in this chapter, is:

how it is / how it was / how it has to be 

the view between villages

homesick 

growing sideways

no complaints

stick season

paul revere

call your mom

halloween 

dial drunk

new perspective

orange juice

you’re gonna go far

all my love

now listen to these songs through a different lens for me, will ya? — 

in this au, Ashton’s first real home was music; it was the industry, it was the fans, it was The Nobodies, it was discovering a queer world beyond the place they grew up. but at the same time, just like what happened with Laudna, that same home started to dig its claws in and try to tear Ashton apart without them realising. the industry, the expectations, the lifestyle, the spotlight … it became something so dangerously toxic, threatening to swallow him whole. it was the reason Ashton developed chronic pain, the industry pressure was the reason The Nobodies didn't stay together, it was the reason Ashton became angry and cynical and bitter jaded. so there was an unexpected, devastating relief when The Nobodies broke up and Ashton had an excuse to step away. even though it was his home, it was where he found himself, where he first found the thing in the world he loved to do most, where he found his first real people. 

so one of the reasons Ashton stayed away from music for as long as they did afterwards - older than many of the other Hells, just a little, having started in the industry before they did and waiting longer than Laudna between the teenage career ending and the adult career starting - was because they couldn’t figure out what to do with the conflict of the ‘place’ (the world / the lifestyle / the people / the culture) that made him also being the thing that caused him so much pain. 

how it is / how it was / how it has to be is, in some ways, Ashton’s life and career mapped in its trajectory. from meeting FCG first and toeing the line of being tied to that world, taking the long drive back (the view between villages, homesick) and being reluctantly pulled back into making music (growing sideways, no complaints), eventually signing to Eshteross Records and telling stories again (stick season, paul revere) and everything that’s happened with the Hells plot-wise (some things you know, some things you don’t, i.e. rest of the tracklist) until now (all my love).  

now, the song Laudna and Imogen mention that Laudna collaborated with Ashton on is, probably predictably: Call Your Mom ft Lizzy McAlpine. (Ashton writes it after Laudna gets back from her world tour to all the other Hells gone - Imogen especially - and Laudna and Dusk break up, and Laudna is just not doing well. Ashton first releases the original, and later that same month, a version with Laudna on it too.) also, as already mentioned in ch 2, the song Ashton wrote for + shows Imogen is you’re gonna go far because of course it is. 

Imogen

here it is, here it is, the heart of the fic, its namesake (almost all Taylor Swift songs (different albums tho!) and if you aren’t heels dug in the dirt with only listening to rerecordings, OG versions sound the most like Imogen to me) — 

tethered

breathe 

come back…be here

the story of us 

haunted 

all too well

wouldn’t come back [by Trousdale]

enchanted 

long live 

now buckle up buttercups, we’re looking at these songs through a whole new light. forget romance (mostly),  we’re doing family trauma: 

(okay, admittedly, there is romance woven into all of this because it can’t not be. but that’s not at the heart of this album, is what’s important to note.)

breathe is about Laudna, of course - about their rela—friendship falling apart after their fight two years ago, and as Laudna started dating Dusk before Imogen left. But it’s also about how Imogen saw the crumbling of Liliana and Relvin’s relationship from a young, co-dependent, whirlwind marriage to something neither of them were sure how to hold onto. 

come back…be here again, of course, is a little bit about Laudna (love how I said forget romance and here we are) — about her leaving to go on tour and follow the success of a career that’s finally controlled by her and not Delilah, about Imogen’s feelings of being left behind. but it’s also about Relvin and Imogen, being left behind by Liliana, about the faint memory Imogen has of watching her father pine for her mother as Liliana was off touring and making something of herself, Imogen and Relvin each longing for her to come back to them in Gelvaan one day but not knowing how to articulate that to each other and connect over it. 

the story of us is Relvin and Liliana once their relationship had ended and Liliana still came to see Imogen, and things were tense and uncomfortable and Imogen could tell that a chapter in her life had come to a close in front of her eyes (both for her parents and for her relationship with her mother, knowing it’ll never be the same because Liliana won’t want to come back in the same way.) 

haunted. look. I had many ‘oh my fucking god’ moments about this song. It’s my favourite Taylor song and I’ve used it for many an au, and l i s t e n. I know that for its symbolism and its imagery, could and should be about Laudna. but it’s not — this is about Liliana and Imogen. because the electric guitar and the tension and the building, growing crescendos of the whole song, the sharpness of the violins and the fury of the electric guitars all just fucking sounds to me like a storm. It’s about Imogen’s betrayal over Liliana leaving. so, you’re welcome. 

now here’s the one that fucked me the most and I am begging y’all to appreciate it with me okay — all too well. OG and not the 10-minute version. it’s the song Imogen is the most proud of and the most afraid of putting into the world because she doesn’t know if it makes sense to anybody except her. the perspective changes nearly with every line; it’s the song that blurs together the experience of Relvin, Liliana and Imogen all loving and hating and missing and losing each other. the lines between where one person’s experience ends and another’s starts is impossible to see, and the resounding message of i was there, i remember it, all too well is Imogen determined to make sure that despite Liliana’s death years and years ago, despite Relvin as good as pretending she never existed, despite Imogen having moved away and left it all behind her, none of it is forgotten; a memory of the fact that it all happened has to continue to exist. 

(and of course, that’s also the theme of this chapter.) 

It’s a mixture of Liliana’s perspective of the whirlwind, small town, young love between her and Relvin that was always doomed to end, and Imogen watching the tail end of this relationship, Relvin seeming to lock it away the second Liliana was too far for him to hold onto. it’s Imogen trying to remember, to make sense of her parents’ relationship, their family. 

and because this song is my roman empire for this au, please prepare for the fact that i’m giving you the line by line perspectives of this entire song, you’re welcome (i’m sorry): 

the first verse is about Liliana, the second verse is Relvin, the prechorus - “and I know it’s long gone…” - is both of them and Imogen. 

first chorus is Liliana and so is the verse that follows, but the second prechorus, that “there was nothing else I could do, and I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to” is Relvin. 

the first lines of the next chorus - “there we are again in the middle of the night, we’re dancing in the kitchen in the refrigerator light” - are Relvin and Liliana, but then the “down the stairs, I was there, I remember it all too well” is Imogen, as a little girl perched on the second to last step of the staircase, watching her parents dancing to the songs they used to love when they were teenagers, bathed in the light of the refrigerator with the door hanging open to cut through the sweltering, thick, night heat of Gelvaan’s summers (and in those moments, Imogen had been so sure that the three of them would be okay).

but of course, that’s not how it unfolded, which becomes clear in that build up to the bridge. so when it climbs and climbs to the “maybe we got lost in translation, maybe I asked for too much, maybe this thing was a masterpiece til you tore it all up” is Relvin and Imogen, being left by Liliana, feeling hurt and betrayed and not good enough in such different but also achingly similar ways. 

“running scared, I was there, I remember it, all too well” is Imogen and Liliana, a decade apart, running from Gelvaan, from Relvin, from a town that wasn’t enough and desperate to find more but equally terrified for that murky unknown at the same time. 

and then — “you call me up again just to break me like a promise, so casually cruel in the name of being honest” is Imogen. the experience of Liliana slowly but surely drifting away from being Imogen’s mother in a way that felt like such a betrayal. 

everything after this is all of them, everything from “time won’t fly” to the “it was rare, i was there” is all of them, losing each other at the same time and not being a ble to do anything as it happens. 

then those last three lines: “wind in my hair, you were there, you remember it all” is Liliana to Relvin; “down the stairs, you were there, you remember it all” is Relvin to Imogen; and “it was rare, I was there, I remember it all too well” is Imogen (to both of them, but to herself more than anyone else). 

anyway. moving on. 

wouldn’t come back is about the uncomfortable ease with which Imogen understands Liliana’s choices and decisions, when it comes down to it. because she left too, just like Liliana, and then she did it again years later, from people she really did truly love and a life she cherished, and this song is Imogen writing about those choices and those parallels and understanding both the hurt on the side of being left behind and the desperation of needing to leave. 

enchanted is about Laudna. every note, every line, every second, every piece of the story, is all all all Laudna, because I was lying to you about forgetting romance because c’mon. about first meeting Laudna years ago and thinking that she should, by all accounts, be intimidated seeing someone who’s music she’d listened to for years, who’s a household name in a way Imogen has only ever dreamed of being, in a way Liliana was, but Laudna was so shy and flighty back then, so soft and holy shit, she was - is - beautiful, her voice even more … musical than Imogen had heard in the interviews and clips. so that’s enchanted. 

and long live is, of course, about Bell’s Hells. about how they made each other better,  about how they saved each other at points when they were so afraid of what the world had in store for them, about how they made each other the most authentic versions of themselves, and how, as Imogen wrote this album, she was so isolated from all of them by her own making, how all she had was the memories of how that used to be, but that’ll still be worth everything to her. 

so that’s tethered. 

(oh as a little treat: the song Laudna is working on that afternoon while she and Imogen hang out in the apartment is Apple Pie by Lizzy McAlpine xo) 

I’ll wrap it up there so that this doesn’t become as long as the chapter itself, but: hope this gives you some music to listen to and a world to think about in the two week wait before next CR ep! 

give me music recs for this au if you think of any, tell me what you think of the songs I’ve already told you about, and for the sake of ease: here’s a playlist for y’all (will update it every week with new songs as I add them to the plot in the fic). 

love, chim ⚡️

#critical role #critical role fic #imodna #tethered au; music breakdown #tethered au #c3 #cileme writes

[creampuffqueen]

Ranking Songs from Noah Kahan's Album 'Stick Season (We'll All Be Here Forever)'

i fucking love this guy. this album gives me feelings no other. i am going insane. anyway here's how i rank the songs

Dial Drunk- god. this fucking song. ibegyousirjustletmecallillgiveyoumybloodalcohol. i'm never gonna be the same. i scream this one like a crazy person even though i've never been drunk much less driven drunk or called someone drunk. all the same though it's so fucking good

2. You're gonna Go Far- so pack up your car. put your hand on your heart. say whatever you feel. be wherever you are. i can't even with this song. obsessed

3. Orange Juice- god i just. the way it goes from soft and welcoming to just grief filled, like telling a story with flashbacks, just everything about it. a masterpiece

4. All My Love- genuinely considering learning acoustic guitar just to play this. i want to scream this song around a campfire. you've got all my love

5. New Perspective- i just adore the tune with this one. i can jam so hard

6. The View Between Villages (Extended)- usually not a huge fan of songs with talking in the middle but it does it so well. the extension just adds a lil something more and i fucking eat it up

7. The View Between Villages- still love it, just love the extended version more

8. Call Your Mom- i love it. it's like such a good friendship song honestly. the way you'll do anything for your friends. you want them to be okay, you'll do anything

9. Stick Season- so good. so good. i don't have a huge comment i just really like it

10. Homesick- i'm mean because i grew up in new england- the way i scream this verse as someone who grew up in the south lmao. but i like the way this turns 'homesick' on its head. he's not missing his home, he's sick of it. he's sick of his home. but he also can't leave because it's his home. musical masterpiece

11. Everywhere, Everything- i do really like this one. the most adventurecore of the album. but it got overplayed on tiktok so it's a bit lower

12. Northern Attitude- a good opener for the album, just a solid song. not much to say otherwise

13. She Calls Me Back- good to jam to. love the beat on this one

14. Growing Sideways- i like how he's talking about how he feels like he's not on the same level as everyone else, like maturity or life stage wise. i enjoy it

15. No Complaints- the feeling where you feel awful but you're trying to convice yourself that you don't have it that bad but it's not working

16. Your Needs, My Needs- the guitar in this does it for me. again, a total jam

17. Come Over- kinda chatty, if that makes sense? it's fine, i like it enough

18. Paul Revere- no comment. it's decent

19. Strawberry Wine- i like this, but the end is just like humming and going oooooh for a solid minute so that brings it down

20. Halloween- meh

21. Still- the only skip on the album. idk why, i just don't like this one

OKAY I DID IT

anyway everyone go listen to this album it's a fucking masterpiece. i'm feeling shrimp emotions listening to it it's so good

#mal rates music #music #noah kahan

[allylikethecat]

hi ally pie!

in honor of me seeing noah kahan in a little less than two months (very much needed)

what are your fav noah songs?

💖

Yesss this ask is bringing me one step closer to my ultimate goal / dream of becoming a Noah Kahan blog 😂 If anyone EVER wants to just like... chat or panic about how brilliant Noah Kahan is let me know / hit me up because I cannot get over how incredibly talented he is. Also, Penny is perfection and the fact that she decided to go on stage in LA is incredible.

Asking me to pick favorite Noah songs is like asking to pick a favorite child but I will try! (Also please note that as originally a New England Girlie before moving out west after college he absolutely breaks me into pieces by putting it into words and it makes me so extremely nostalgic and homesick) Sorry that we’re a little Stick Season heavy, I obviously enjoy his earlier work but also just LOVE that he really went all in on the folk sound with that album since in my opinion (and it seems everyone else's lol) that’s where he shines 

False Confidence - SO GOOD

Mess - I’ll take 89 to Bostonnnn

Maine - I also wanna go to Maine Noah I live in a constant state of wanting to go to Maine- also side fun trivia fact that people not from the area might not know- they DO NOT have speed cameras in the traffic lights in Maine (at least they didn't when that was my stomping ground lol) which makes that lyric even more clever in my opinion

Stick Season - just perfection, no notes I'll drink alcohol until my friends come home for Christmas

Homesick - this is my SONG my friend took a video of me cream crying “I’m mean because I grew up in New England” at the show we went to and it fully embodies me as a person because I am “mean” in the way that New Englander’s are and I am also from New England lol

Growing Sideways - I cried the first time I heard it because he put the feeling into WORDS

Orange Juice - the build up, the bridge, the CRASH BACK IN '02 EVERYTHING UGH

No Complaints - makes me have too many feelings 

Call Your Mom - I cried so much and then he had the audacity to play it at my show and it was actual perfection 

Dial Drunk - so cool to see it go from a social media snippet to his biggest song yet AND get a version with Post Malone - plus the bridge is just *chefs kiss* 

View Between Villages - the extended version hits so hard omfg

Anyway, I could go on but tried to reel it in. Noah Kahan guys, just Noah Kahan. Enjoy your show SO MUCH you are in for a treat! 🥰

❤️Ally

#allylikethecat #ask ally #anon ask #fun fact stick season and being funny came out on the same day #and as a bad fan girl #i listened to stick season first #noah kahan #folk malone #💖 #💖 anon #sparkle heart anon #sparkly heart anon #sparkle heart #sparkly heart #stick season #one step closer to being a noah kahan blog #keep it kind #seeing him last month was a religious experience #idk if any concert will measure up

[disorientedblog-archive]

On my last night in Beijing: 五味俱全 - The Five Flavors of Life

by Esther Yoojin Song / photo: the author

It’s my last night in Beijing and I’m walking down Jiubajie, or bar street, with my friend behind me. Around us, the whole street is nothing but a streak of blaring lights and sounds, interjecting hands and bodies trying to steer us towards open doors regurgitating the all too familiar beats of hackneyed tunes. Here, the simple task of two people walking side-by-side for more than a few seconds is no longer so simple; one needs to mark positions, strategize, exchange signals, swerve, slow down, and speed up at the right timing—It’s a tiring process, really, which is why I feel particularly happy when we come across a little secluded bar at the quieter end of the street. Finding a table in the corner furthest from the door, we settle down, the walls around us dulling the chaos of before into a muted buzz.

A few half-hearted flicks into the menu, we settle for fries and some kind of carbonated drink. One familiar character, qi, meaning steam, is more than enough to make us eagerly point the item out to our waiter. At this point, the excitement for something ‘new, authentic, Chinese’ that we once had has long fizzed out into an arbitrary eagerness that emerges only occasionally. Tonight, our standards aren’t too high— we came in seeking refuge more than food— and we’ve both agreed that we’d rather not spend any more time trying to decipher the awkwardly literal english translations of drink names that our translation app shamelessly churns out: 贤妻良母- Good wife and good mother and 燃情百加得 - Hot burglary are the last two that we see before putting our phones away.

要两个这个。

Please give me two of this.

I say to our waiter. He nods after checking where my finger is pointing at. He’s been eyeing our table for some time now, the rhythmical sound of his clicking pen a constant reminder of his presence as well as his growing impatience.

再加个薯条。

And fries too, I add hastily.

The words come out rushed, different from how they’d sounded being rehearsed in my head. After eight weeks of living in Beijing while taking daily Chinese classes in a rigorous summer program, ordering food still remains a stressful ordeal. When the waiter leaves, we laugh at our own incompetence. It’s funny how we can talk about things like China’s skewed sex ratio or Deng Xiaoping’s “One country, Two systems” policy with comparable fluency, but fumble around when a waiter asks us if we’d like straws with our drinks.

In an individual session I had with my laoshi a few weeks back, we’d talked briefly about this very real issue of ordering food. Listening to my complaints on how difficult it is to decode food names, and how thick the menus can be (some of them literally like books), she nodded sympathetically and began to tell me how some Chinese restaurants would go a tad bit too far with their creativity.

Guess what this dish is, ‘A white dragon stranded in the sea’.”

I blink, confounded by the sudden literary allusion that’s been dropped in the middle of a conversation about food.

Um… Some kind of soup with something white in it?

I respond after some hesitation; I’m bad at guesswork, and hope my perfunctory answer will be good enough to lead us to the part where she discloses the actual answer.

That’s actually really close! It’s a soup with a single white radish in it. 

A single white radish?

I don’t understand the word radish in Chinese, so she has to show me a picture of it on her phone.

Yeah, haha- You see, names like these, even I wouldn’t be able to tell what dish they were referring to.

I crack into a smile at the thought of someone ordering something as lofty-sounding as ‘A white dragon stranded in the sea’ only to find out that it’s nothing more than a bowl of soup served with a single radish sunken at its bottom. ‘That’s so Chinese,’ I remember thinking to myself, not really knowing what I meant by it.

When our drinks come out, we’re pleasantly surprised by how good it is—it’s a sweet fruity flavor with a zing of fizziness to it. And the fries are just as divine as always, except better, because there’s a poached egg sitting on top that makes the whole thing look and taste ten times more expensive than it actually is. I’m starting to feel a lot better about the way this evening’s turned out.

Turning a fry around in egg yolk to make sure it’s evenly soaked on all sides, I point out how fitting it is that we spend our last night in Beijing having fries in a tapas bar in the most westernized part of the city, a slab of sarcasm tinged with laughter. My friend nods enthusiastically to reciprocate my feigned sincerity, and then reminds me how the McDonalds outside our campus would be brimming every weekend with people from our program on their way back from a night out. “Dididaodaode Maidanglao”, we’d say jokingly, calling McDonalds the ‘true authentic Chinese food’ while unashamedly munching on our McSpicies as we strolled back to our dorms. Any self-deprecating humor that made fun of our own detachment from Chinese culture, our obvious ‘otherness’ in what seemed like an impenetrably homogeneous community, was the unspoken buzzword of our makeshift community. If the program had brought us together through our shared interest in Chinese language and culture, what kept us together afterwards was oftentimes the very opposite—our ignorance of and indifference towards the very same subject— a sense of comradeship budding with every passing joke, a low giggle followed by discrete exchanges of glances when we encountered something so blatantly ‘Chinese’.

I slurp the last few drops of my drink until I hear the loud crackling noise of straw sucking on air. In the opposite corner of the bar, a giant fan sits rotating, sending periodic whooshes of cool air in our direction. The whirring sound that slightly amplifies whenever the fan’s head turns our way is only just audible over the sea of chatter that floods my resting ears. I sit back and try to listen in on the conversation that’s taking place in the table next to ours. A handful of familiar phrases and words stick out amidst a stream of incomprehensible sounds, exaggerated intonations and constant interjections distorting their speech into incomprehensible forms. I let my ears grapple with the sounds for a few more seconds, and then stop trying. If there’s one thing that I’ve learned over the past eight weeks, it’s how to sit comfortably in my own ignorance and not grow too self-conscious of it.

Last nights are always a little bittersweet. The idea of something coming to an end softens your senses with sentimentality, making everything appear a little bit more romantic in retrospect. I look over at my friend who is finishing the last few sips of her drink and realize that we’ll probably never see each other again after tonight. This idea saddens me, a premature wave of nostalgia taking over.

“Bittersweet,” I tell her, “that’s the word I wanted to say in that farewell video Lu laoshi filmed. But I couldn’t remember it in Chinese so I just said something about how unforgettable these eight weeks will be instead.”

“Ooh, I know Bittersweet in Chinese. Ummmm……...Wuwei something. Wuwei.. Wuwei.. Wuwei…..juquan? Yeah, that’s it. Wuweijuquan.”

Of course, it’s a Chengyu that we’d learned in class, a four-character idiomatic phrase that translates directly into ‘Having all five flavors,’the flavors of life—sweet, bitter, sour, spicy… what was the last one? Neither of us can remember.

The image I have in mind when I think of this phrase is that of a faceless Chinese cook skillfully shaking a giant stir-fry pan above a blazing stove fire as he throws in one Chinese seasoning after the other, his finished dish nothing other than a delectable stir fry of life, Chinese style. It’s impressive how four characters gleaned and sewn together from banal everyday speech manage to convey so much with so little. It gives the language a certain poetic quality that I revel in. Instead of settling for the binary ‘bittersweet’, why not pack in three more flavors with one extra syllable? From our cozy nook in the bar with less than 24 hours left in this country, I suddenly feel a new surge of appreciation for the very language that has beset my past eight weeks.

Wueweijuquan. As I continue to turn the word over in my head as we step out of the bar, a loud jeering noise comes from the corner. Turning our heads in the direction of the noise, we see a throng of people emerge from a narrow alleyway we hadn’t noticed before, women dressed in skin-tight dresses and high heels, men in expensive-looking shirts and loafers. They’re headed in the direction of the busier part of Jiubajie where we’d been previously.

I look down at my phone; it’s slightly past midnight. Our flights tomorrow aren’t until late afternoon, and I don’t feel like going back to my dorm to pack just yet.

“Plus, there’s that club street we’ve been meaning to check out for the longest time but never got around to doing.”

My friend adds. I nod, smiling—we both know where this is going.

So when the crowd gets close enough for us to smell the wafts of alcohol coming from their happy drunken singing, we turn in the direction that we came from. In front of us, Jiubajie moves in the same stream of clashing lights and sounds that we left it in, only this time, with a conviviality that I hadn’t quite noticed before. A few steps in, we are greeted by the familiar hodgepodge of lights and sounds, the numbing sensation of countless bodies knocking against your own, moving forward but also sideways and backwards at the same time… and just like that, we are once more back where we started. On my last night in this city of unruly sounds and tangled bodies, I decide to let myself be engulfed by its sweet chaos for one last time.

Esther Yoojin Song studies English and Statistics at Amherst College, and spent the summer of 2018 participating in a Chinese language program in Beijing.

#China