#preacher's kid ep

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

St. Teresa's Church, Anacostia, Washington, D.C. (between 1909 and 1940) - National Photo Company Collection // Youth Group - Semler

#just a little reminder for anyone who needs it :) #don't let the religious trauma get you down! #church #youth group #youth group semler #preacher's kid #preacher's kid ep #preacher's kid semler #semler #historical photography #lyrics #lyric art #religious trauma #tw religious trauma mention

[jq37]

The Report Card – Fantasy High Junior Year Ep 14 Sleuthing and Scantrons

Welcome back to Fantasy High where we are back from winter break and hitting the ground running starting with our girl Kristen who just learned that the proselytizing patriarch of the Dawn clan–Bobby Dawn–is her new Cleric teacher. 

Kristen decides to not make waves and just vibe out the situation. Bobby isn’t doing anything obviously out of pocket like calling people heathens, but his vibe is way preacher-y than Yolanda’s more neutral academic style and Kristen can clock that he’s giving certain kids a harder time than others (likely based on their choice of deity). 

We’re still on downtime so let’s run through Kristen's tracks. 

She thinks about doing a Mystery roll to learn more about Ankarna but rolls Academics first for a 19. A+.

Next, she rolls Popularity and she specifically wants to hit up Gertie. She passes with room to spare on a 21 and, amidst some awkward flirting that at least Gertie seems super into, asks her some questions about the Devil’s Honey. Gertie says that she hasn’t made a ton–just a few bottles. The nectar you need to make it is pretty rare. Her client (the trucks and thus, presumably KP) ordered two bottles right after the new year which is twice as many as she got last time. Kristen tries to get Gertie to switch the honey with a placebo but Gertie isn’t willing to lie so she settles for Gertie reporting back on if they ask for any more (which is logged into the school records anyway). With the logs, Kristen can see that the first delivery of Devil's Nectar happened a week or two after spring break last year--this is before Lucy even died. 

After that she has a Relationship roll and wants to finally have that chat with her parents. On a 27 they have a reasonably cordial meeting at Krom’s Diner. Her whole fam is there–brothers and parents. Her parents are pretty happy that Bobby Dawn is the new cleric teacher (though the have a foot in mouth moment when they realize that Yolanda was murdered and not fired like they thought and that they were basically just celebrating a woman’s non-Helio sanctioned murder).Bucky’s happy to see his sister and a little bummed that he hasn’t been able to convert anyone in his party to Helioism. 

She asks how her parents feel about Gal and their vibe is like, “Shrug, she’s fine.” Not Helio but she’s not infernal or anything. Kristen floats the idea of her attending church one Sunday–not to come back to the church, just to observe and for her class–but her parents are practically salivating at the opportunity to bring her back into the fold. Her mom specifically points out that it seems kismet that she, as Helio’s chosen (even if she’s not currently in the church), was the one to bring back the sun. 

Bucky catches a glimpse of Kristen’s Cass shards and asks about them but, before she can tell him much, her parents cut her off and end the encounter. They tell Kristen they’ll pay for her bill so, naturally, she runs up a huge tab. 

Final roll is for her campaign and she gets a Nat 20! She is absolutely crushing it–and why wouldn’t she be? She’s a world saving, total stud who rides with the coolest kid at school, a literal rockstar, and the people’s dork. And her opponent is Kipperlilly, ultimate bad vibes generator. Kristen and KP have a tense standoff where Kristen asks her what’s she’s trying to forget with the devil’s honey and KP tells her to fuck herself. 

All of the Bad Kids square up, ready to throw hands on the spot but Oisin–wizard of the Rat Grinders–breaks it up. There is a long beat of the Bad Kids trying to recruit Mary Ann for reasons that are beyond me that you’ll just have to watch for yourself and the Bad Kids declare that all the RG’s are a lost cause except for her. Adaine, in an uncharacteristically un-aggro move for her–says that the wizard actually seems kind of cool and Brennan asks for a Perception check. 

She rolls like trash but everyone wants to know what the cute wizard thinks about her and social engineer some romance for their girl so they pile on the buffs to turn her four into a dirty 20. With them coaxing her to pay better attention, they see that Oisin is waiting to say something to her–he casts the Message cantrip and gives her a quick, “Sorry,” to apologize for her friends’ behavior. Then their whole crew heads out. Fig reveals that she’s the one behind the entire Complicated Women Podcast. Where does your web of deceit end Figueroth???

Next up to run through tracks is Gorgug. 

First track is Barb and he crushes it with a 26. Porter is so proud. A+!

Next is Artificer (Brennan only makes him roll once, not three times) and he gets a 31! He’s officially a Barbificer which means he can hold concentration on pre-cast spells while raging. Henry is super proud of him too! He gets some more cool gadgets so he’s all twins-y with Riz. Green guys with gadgets! 

His next track is Mystery and here’s where things get juicy. He wants to dig into Henry’s deal and, with Flash of Genius, gets a 20. He snoops around Henry's desk before his class one day and finds a note from Ruben asking for a ride home, nothing about the Cloud Rider engine, and some Grix parts along with his notes which seem to indicate that fixing Grix isn't his top priority and he's gonna leave it until Aguefort is back. Suddenly, Gorgug hears something from outside the door--a conversation between Henry and Jace. Jace says that he got Henry's letter about Ruben and he's just there to assure him that everything is fine. Henry doesn't sound super assured and wants to have a more in depth meeting but Jace gets pretty aggro pretty quick. He says he's too busy for that and they should meet at the school year when Aguefort is back and when Henry pushes back on that, Jace Misty Steps to be all up in his face and says he should keep his fucking nose out of other people's business. Henry walks into the class, clearly shaken, and Gorgug plays dumb effectively, slipping on his headphones like he didn’t hear anything. 

Finally, he rolls Owlbears and fails. Rather than push it (which would make him take his fifth token) he decides his heart isn’t in it and drops Owlbears. Fabian and Gorthalax are both disappointed, even though they understand. Riz gets promoted from off the bench to fill his spot, much to his glee. Fabian and Kristen both try to roll relaxation but they fail (which has no mechanical downside).

Speaking of Riz, let’s do his tracks next!

As always he does Academics first and rolls a 31. DC to find the Rogue Prof is 30 which means he’s right on her trail! We don’t resolve that this episode but Brennan says that he finds Eugenia Shadow’s (the teacher) death records which means that, as they suspected from episode 1 of this season, she’s almost certainly a ghost. 

Extracurriculars with disadvantage is a dirty 20 so he’s still on top of those. 

Third roll is a Mystery roll to try and figure out how the Rat Grinders became the Rat Grinder from the High 5 Heroes. A 23 is only enough for some basic clues which are as follows. From Gertie, he learns that part of what makes Devil’s Honey work to make you a good liar is it makes you in the moment believe what you’re saying which erases some of the tells of lying from your expression and body language. It also allows you to lie without speaking which is useful for Wizards speaking telepathically AND for its original purpose: lying in prayer. Fig thinks this could maybe be used to pray effectively through doubt. Riz also catches Jawbone (who just finished giving a muffin to a hard at work Adaine–cute!) and asks about Kipperlily and her finding the rogue teacher. Jawbone says it was all above board though she did find her crazy fast–8:01 on the first day, literally the first minute it was possible. (Adaine/Shiv remembers at this point that she has ethereal vision and can def help Riz find a ghost). Jawbone mentions that the people at the morgue are trying to do something about the runes on Lucy and Yolanda and racing the clock before rezzing them because borderline impossible--they're getting close to the one year limit with Lucy. Riz knows there’s more info he can get but it would mean stealing the file from Jawbone and listen. He’s a good guy rule follower but he’s also a Rogue baybee. Nat 20 to snatch it with Jawbone none the wiser. Brennan says that he’ll properly dig into it later but, for at a quick glance, he sees that she's been coming to the counselor since Freshman year for anger issues and that his name is in the file for some reason. Mysterious!

Fourth roll is Owlbears and, with a portent roll from Adaine, he manages to hang on and not totally flame out. I like to imagine she literally used her oracle magic to predict what was gonna happen and drilled the moves he needed to not get tackled into his head like DDR steps. 

Last up is our girl Fig!

She does her Work track first and actually works on her album properly for the first time in ages. With an insane plus 20 to Performance (????) she gets an ungodly 38 and writes the most metal song ever which is an 8 minute epic about gods and devils which requires Adaine to make a magical copy of Gorgug just so he can play the drum part. It’s called Dawn of Justice and it rocks so epically hard that she is able to inadvertently magically call dibs on Ankarna. No one can rez the goddess but her. She also casts Find Greater Steed and is able to summon the horse that Ankarna used the gifted wedding bridle on So, clearly Fig took those warnings about Ankarna finding worshippers super to heart! 

[Note: My notes say that the bridle was a gift from Ruvina to Cass actually, but hey. I guess when you're married what's mine is yours and all that.]

Next track is Paladin and she gets a 29. A+! While she’s working with Porter, she asks him about the Mountains of Chaos which she thinks is on another plane but he clarifies it’s just up north and parties go there to clear dungeons all the time–including the Rat Grinders many times. That’s news to me because this is the first we’re hearing of them doing anything besides stepping on rats. 

Next for Fig is Mystery and she wants to use her Dream spell to visit Lola. In Lola's dream, she's remembering a email between her and Ruben about the podcast (Fig realizes she never followed up on that) and also she sees that Lola was talking to Ruben with Jace CC'd. Fig appears as herself in the dream and tries to be like, “Hey, I talked to Jace, cut me in on the plan.” Lola wants to know if she wants to go back on tour because Ruben just canceled, which surprised both me and Fig. But Fig hides it well and is like, “Yeah, Ruben just canceled, that’s why I want in.” She gets a Nat 1 Insight so Lola seems pretty clueless about a plan. When Fig floats the idea of Jace being a part of a plan to summon a god, Lola says she has no idea what she's talking about and Jace isn't a planner, he just gets in her way. But what she sees as him being a nuisance looks a lot like clues. Apparently Jace doesn't want Ruben touring and he was the one who made Ruben get Frosty Folk moved to the Thislespring Tree. Fig stores away that info and then warps the dream into something normal (by dream standards) to cover her tracks as she gets out of there. 

Lastly, she wants to leave a note for Zara saying, “Hey not coming to class this week” but Brennan has her roll and apparently the note is an excellent example of attempting to get your way that Zara respects because it’s still a 34 and and A+! Our kids are doing really well!

Except, here’s the thing. They’re not actually. Or at least, Kristen isn’t. It’s mid April now, just like IRL, and grades have come out. Kristen is failing Cleric classes again. She’s expelled. 

Everyone is outraged. She’s been working so hard under insanely difficult circumstances! They march to Jawbone’s office to get answers and he sees the problem. Yolanda made allowances that let her be a cleric with a dead god but Bobby got rid of that. He said no god is an automatic failure. Riz is so stressed that he elects to take a fourth stress token. Gotta respect Murph for the move but that’s crazy. 

[Note: This doesn’t become relevant in this ep but it’s mentioned around here so I just wanna say, Riz hasn’t had a chance to dig into KP’s file yet but there’s something about her going to a cemetery in Ashgrove which he connects to the ghost Rogue teacher. Also, they all share the info they learned in downtime.]

ANYWAY, the Bad Kids are ready to throw hands once again and head for Bobby Dawn’s classroom, but Kristen has them all wait in the hall while she confronts him and she tries a novel tactic. She goes in crying. She claims that her Cass shards have been destroyed and that she’s lost and directionless. She gets a 26 on her Deception and Adaine, with all the quiet confidence of the elven Oracle, says that Bobby gets a 1 on his Insight roll. Kristen says she’s ready to come back to the fold and allows Bobby to pray with her but when she asks about the paperwork to get her reinstated at school, he’s not interested in that. He believes that she’s sincere but he’s not gonna break rules or make allowances for her. Kristen gets the sense that he actively wants her to be expelled for some reason and he got what he wanted. 

Her friends are outside, practically salivating as they get ready to kick some Foghorn Leghorn ass, but Jawbone shows up and says that they qualify for The Last Standard–aka the Last Stand Exam–and they all decide that that’s a better first option than murdering ANOTHER faculty member. As Kristen leaves, Bobby Dawn gives her a bit of advice that seems to point to her falling in line and being Helio’s chosen again and Kristen calls him a control freak and says he’ll never win–which is a satisfying way to leave a room but a waste of a great Deception roll! The other kids cast various spells on him so he smells like shit the rest of the day because they’re all loyal, petty gremlins. 

Jawbone explains what exactly the Last Stand is. It’s an endurance test that replicates the conditions of a desperate last stand. They’ll have to answer questions while waves and waves of monsters try to kill them. Adaine and Riz are the only ones excited about the questions. There will be 12 questions (two for each of them) and a proctor. They lose 30 points (Out of 100)  if the proctor (who is some rando named Gavin Pundle) dies. There will be a cleric on hand to rez them if they die but it’s more like when they die. We don’t learn this until later but this isn’t an exam where you’re not expected to TPK. But hypothetically you could stay up the whole time because there’s a limited amount of monsters. Also, it’s not like you die, you're out. Kristen can still rez her friends. It’s just a TPK that ends it all. And one more piece of info I’m gonna give you early to keep the rules together. The questions they have to answer are not rolls. They are timed questions/challenges that the actual at the table players have to answer in real life. But they do have a lifetime. Remember how Gorgug won a mysterious academic resource for getting double Nat 20s in his classes earlier in the year? Well that gets the party a stamp that they can use on two of their questions before the time runs out to skip it without penalty. OK, that’s everything! Got it? Good. The Bad Kids get a good night’s sleep and the next day, it’s time for the Last Stand! 

The Last Stand is held in some kind of extra dimensional pocket dimension full of illusory, cheering Agueforts. Buddy Dawn is the volunteer cleric on duty and the group seems wary of him even though he’s taken a divine oath that will strip him of his magic if he fails to rez them.

Because the Bad Kids are doing so well in school, they get a grace period to set up a bunch of buffs and readied actions and stuff. You already know the drill–I’m not gonna do a play by play of every single spell, buff, and attack for this fight but I’ll give highlights. Kristen casts Death Ward on the proctor (great forethought) and Adaine summons Moggy the Doggy to protect him. Fabian has the Hangman and summons some rats (Adaine is happy that Fabian is using her present). Adaine summons the Dry Guys and does Mirror Image. Fig disguises herself as the Proctor, summons Ankarna’s fiery steed as well as spirit guardians, and does Armor of Ayda on herself and her mount. Riz has his Mage Hand out. I’m sure I’m missing stuff but the point is, they’re buffed as hell and ready to go. They pump themselves up with a Hoot Growl chant and then it’s off to the races!

The first wave of monsters includes an otyugh, a gorgon, a steel bull, a hydra, skeletons, and three ochre jellies. Brennan tells them that they’re literally at adventuring school so it’s not meta gaming to know things like you have to cauterize a Hyrdra’s neck lest two more heads grow in its place or that jellies are weak to fire. 

Highlights!

Riz does CRAZY damage with all his rogue stuff. Adaine and Gorgug do a cool tag team where he cuts a Hydra head off by boomeranging its head off with an ax before she cauterizes it with a Chromatic Orb. Emily/Fig throws away her dice cause she’s rolling SO BAD.

At the top of the next round, Riz gets the first folder with a test question. There is one marked Investigation and one marked History. He grabs the Investigation and Brennan hands him an actual Scantron (everyone hated that) with the phrase “Bony Girth” written on it before turning over an hourglass. They’re allowed to work together on these and we get to see some teamwork in action. Ally and Murph both realize right away that it’s an anagram. Murph gets the word Night and Ally hits him and says, “Night Yorb!” A “Correct” stamp graphic hits the dome. They got one! 

Fabian goes for a folder as well and his choices are Athletics and Common. He goes for Athletics but the desk turns out to be a mimic and attacks him. He just tanks the damage because he doesn’t have the time to fight it. This is a multiple choice question about who the Owlbears’ rival team is. They're between the Buccaneers and the Hellions. Siobhan thinks it’s the Buccaneers since Bastion City is right nearby but realizes that Lou is correct when he says that that’s actually the professional team that Ragh is trying out for, not their high school team. Lou says Hudol Hellions and that’s another one in the bag! 

More highlights!

Fabian makes quick work of the Hydra, doing a ton of fancy Fighter moves to cleave the rest of its heads and then sending in the Hangman in dog form to fire breath all the neck stumps. Fig Fireballs the otyugh and two of the jellies! Gorgug gets TWO NAT 20s in a row plus another hit to get the bull from 100% to bloodied. 

And to close out the episode, Kristen sends a quick prayer up to Cass and then does Turn Undead, destroying all the skeletons on the field. Whatever else happens in this fight, you can’t deny that the Bad Kids are off to an amazing start. Let’s hope they can keep the momentum going as we head into the second half of the Last Stand, next week!

Detention

Bobby Dawn for Failing Kristen

I knew I wouldn’t need to wait long to put him on my shit list. He can absolutely go to hell for saying that letting Kristen remain in class was “against the rules” somehow. That’s a simple exercise of discretion! And if anything, isn’t it more impressive that Kristen is still running circles around other clerics with a dead(ish) god? That her god is still able to communicate with her in this state? ALSO, if we’re getting technical, Cass isn’t actually dead! We've established that. She’s, as Miracle Max said, only mostly dead which is still partially alive! I know this needed to happen to force the Last Stand but he can still jump into a lake. I hate that, even when she's actually earnestly and effectively applying herself, Kristen is getting smacked down by the system.

(Also, I have to assume Helio died for three days at some point and came back since he’s basically frat bro corn Jesus. Gods die and come back! It’s a thing! It’s a thing that they do!)

Honor Roll

All of the Bad Kids for Loyalty and Badassery

I really couldn’t pick this week so I decided to just give it to all of them. I tried to do a more in depth recap this week to really highlight the coolness of everyone. I think they have especially good team synergy this week from trying to help Adaine get her kisses in to being ready to throw down for Kristen. And everyone got at least one major piece of Mystery info in their downtime rolls. Not to mention how strong they came out for the first part of the Last Stand. I’m just super impressed and I love them individually and as a unit!

Random Thoughts

OK so obviously the biggest red flag right now is Jace. As I pointed out in the last recap, he was there talking to Kalina in the conversation Ragh saw and now we have two more suspicious actions from him. Now I’m questioning his other actions too. Like, making Riz a part of the interim staff. Was that in order to make sure he fell under the staff category for an ulterior motive bylaws related reason? And is he fully working with The Rat Grinders? He’s a sorc but what origin? What if he’s divine soul and wrapped into this god stuff somehow?

(This could be nothing but the other big loose end besides the above that’s been stuck in my craw in Soph year is Sandra-Lynn talking about a couple that made things hard for her and I’ve always wondered if Jace was involved there.)   

Handing a Nat 1 portent roll to your DM must feel like doing drugs. 

Kipperlily had had rage issues since Freshman year, huh? Does that mean she’s been in league with the corrupted Ankarna since then or just a really easy target? And why would Riz’s name be in her file? I so badly want to know what else is in that file. Brennan, I know you need to control the pacing of the story to some degree but in no world does Riz see his name in that file and go, “Welp I’ll check that out later.” Absolutely not. 

Also, two more Rat Grinder points. KP ordered the honey BEFORE Lucy died? That’s suspicious. And Porter confirmed that they’ve been to the Mountains of Chaos many times which means our understanding of their activities has been off. Like, I suppose it’s obvious that they must have been doing more than literally just stepping on rats because we know they’re making moves, but this seems a bit out of left field. Though it does answer the question of what they likely did for their Sophomore Year quest because that’s been incongruent. Multiple times is also pretty suspicious. That points to going there for a specific reason. Also, that’s where the celestial gods were traveling en route to Cass’s wedding. Maybe there’s a connection there. Were they searching for Ankarna’s name?

Maybe I’m just being paranoid and I know Riz literally tattooed Night Yorb stuff onto his body of his own free will but a part of me wonders whether a part of that wasn’t a bit of Sol/Helio manipulation trying to get Kristen back as a cleric. Like, her mom is right. Her bringing back the sun could have been a dramatic prodigal daughter moment. 

Buddy mentioned Bucky being “led astray” a few eps ago and I’m really curious to know exactly what that means because he seemed to be mostly in good little paladin mode this ep besides some slight curiosity about Kristen’s shards. 

In addition to the moment with Bobby Dawn, Kristen tipped her hand AGAIN In this ep to when she revealed that she knew about the Devil’s Honey. Like, girl. I know you love a dramatic mic drop but keep some secrets, damn!

Curious about what was written on the physical note that Emily gave Brennan when she said she was skipping Zara’s class.

Where did Ally’s “girl Winnie the Pooh” bit come from? It was so confident and out of nowhere that I burst out laughing. 

Brennan has been doing such a great job with battle eps this season. We’ve had back to back bangers with really creative mechanics. I can’t wait to see what the other questions are! (This is why I always say I identify with Adaine and Riz most of the BKs)

“The Last Stand” and “Dawn of Justice” are both subtitles of superhero movies. That doesn’t mean anything. It’s just weird that it happened twice. Two nickels and all. 

Saved this for last–yessssss Oisin. Be apologetic about your friends being weird. Take the extra time to personally apologize to Adaine and only Adaine while her friends to air traffic control signals to get her to pay attention to you. Very happy that everyone at the table seems to be as invested in making this happen as I am (and that Adaine volunteered that she thought Oisin could maybe be cool even when she could have demurred or said nothing or been really harsh like she usually is with the Ratgrinders). I especially love Fig being like, “We’re trying to make this romance happen!” Like, hey girl I got me my wizard paramour, let’s get you yours. Get you a ride or die friend like that. 

One last thing! It’s my birthday on Friday and, to celebrate, I made my thesis visual novel free on itch.io for the weekend. It’s called A Tale of Two Sisters and it’s very meta and fairy tale-y and sincere. I put a lot of hard work into it and, if you enjoy my recaps, I’d appreciate you checking it out and leaving a review. Again, it’s totally free for the weekend! I have another game on there that you can check out but that one's free all the time. 

#Dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #d20 #d20 spoilers #fantasy high #fantasy high spoilers #fhjy #fhjy spoilers #spoilers #Ha! this is the earliest I've ever gotten a recap up! #I can't believe I don't get paid for this #like 4k+ words #the report card

[ticklishraspberries]

hi razz! i'm sorry to hear that you're sick, feel better soon! any music you've been listening to lately that you'd recommend? :D

hii!! thank you so much!! ohhh i love to yap so here are some less-popular artists (at least i think these ppl are kinda niche to me but maybe i'm just out of touch)

ethel cain is officially one of my all time favorite artists of all time. i saw her live, front-row, and got to hold her hand and sing sun-bleached flies with her. ethel is a stage name and her real name is hayden, she is an absolutely beautiful trans female artist. her album, preacher's daughter, is a concept album that i think everyone should listen to, all the way through, in order. it is quite a disturbing story, so exercise caution. i like all her music, not just that album. she writes about the american south, cycles of abuse, having a strained relationship with god, and dating shitty men.

sorry mom is one of the greatest upcoming punk bands around. i am fully biased because i may or may not be friends with someone in the band...shh though because i don't want anyone to be like omg sorry mom is associated with this fucking tickle fic blog oh my god i'd be so embarrassed shut up. anyway, their debut album babyface is actually one of my favorite albums ever as well. their lyrics are fucking unmatched. the main theme of babyface is the pain and struggle of growing up, feeling younger than you are, feeling behind all of your peers...a feeling that i strongly relate to and i think a lot of people do. their first ep is also great but the girl who is no longer in the band cannot fucking sing so listen to those with caution lmfao. i rlly hope they re-record those songs bc i love them, it's just...her. specific songs you should check out are: molly sells molly by the seashore / getting sick / town clown / enema / teeth / stoop kid.

peach prc is a tiktoker turned popstar who is just so fucking talented and writes incredible lyrics. she's a lesbian and her newest song, secret, is about dating a closeted girl. she writes about being gay, her struggles with mental illness and addiction, as well as fun, upbeat, songs about sex and hating her exes. i think her genre is maybe considered hyper-pop?? idk i'm not good with subgenres lol but she is sooo talented and her tiktoks are fucking hilarious and she is so funny and cool and an amazing writer and singer. my favorite songs are heavy / forever drunk / josh / favorite person / like a girl does.

those are the ones i feel the need to scream about and indoctrinate people into liking. taylor swift, olivia rodrigo, chappell roan, sabrina carpenter, and megan thee stallion are all big favs lately. i'm also getting really into metal and subgenres of metal because of my partner. slipknot, ice nine kills, spiritbox, and dance gavin dance are the main ones i've latched onto.

#ask

[oodlyenough]

last of us 1x08

I had fucked up dreams last night after watching this episode lmfao

Obviously this will talk about the content of the ep so general cw for attempted child sexual assault and uh cannibalism I guess

Overall, probably one of the best this season. Very faithfully adapted from the game, which is a neutral point, but I was impressed that for all I knew what was going to happen basically beat by beat I was still on edge.

Not sure if this is #unpopular or not but I found David MUCH creepier here (from a starting place of "very creepy already" in the game), and I also found his characterization overall to be better. I've never really been sure if in the game you're meant to ever trust him, but I never did, partly because Nolan North plays him with the slimiest voice imaginable, so him turning out to be a creep is kind of a no-shit moment.

Whereas I thought this David was much better at putting up a front, which in turn made him all the more terrifying. It was way too easy to imagine this David pre-apocalypse, teaching (UGHHH), ingratiating himself in the community, getting away with all of it because these kinds of men so often do. The slide "from teacher to preacher" god like of COURSE this mf would find a different way to gain power, control and access over people including/especially children... Ugh it was all 2 Real and that much more creepy.

I also though the way they dealt with the cannibalism was very good honestly. It would've been easy to purely justify it with "people are starving, and we're eating the dead" -- which is kind of what David says, but you can use the context clues to deduce that it's not just that they're eating their dead out of desperation, but that they are actively hunting people for food, he's keeping it a secret, it's, imo, clearly part of his sick power-tripping rather than necessity (as others pointed out, relatively inexperienced Ellie finds game very quickly and easily in one hunting trip lol).

I also thought the slight tension between David and James was interesting here -- obviously James is also a freak, lol, but their disagreement over how to handle Ellie and the general rift between them, as the episode goes on I think you do get the sense that even James is uncomfortable with this side of David and tried roundabout ways to talk him out of going after her or just about shot her in the head. (I keep wanting to joke that James is like "I can excuse cannibalism, but..." but frankly 1. one of these things IS worse than the other and also 2. in the end he still enables everything David does anyway! Bc of course he does. Isn't that how it always goes.)

This was definitely the big showcase for Ellie and for Bella Ramsey. (Watching people whine and cry about it, "two episodes of mostly Ellie wahhhhh" lmaooo shes the main character of the franchise losers, deal with it.) Ramsey was very good. Everyone's saying it but yes the primal screaming in that restaurant scene, ugh, chilling and excellent.

I did find the very first scene between Ellie, James and David had me wincing, like Ellie's tough guy voice was just so bad and felt like a kid play-acting ... but then I suppose that was probably the exact intent, that Ellie was trying to be threatening but wasn't capable of actually BEING threatening in that moment. There's a huge difference between that fake bravado and her (entirely justified) rage and violence later in the episode.

Joel was very Joel in this. I don't have much to say about him lol, it was nice to see Pedro's Joel go a bit unhinged, something we've heard tell of in various episodes but only seen scraps of before. "It's all right, I believe him" is such a memorable bit of the game and it just as chilling here.

Ok time for some criticisms:

They leaned HARD into the pedophile angle for David here. That was always in the game, but it was fairly subtextual, with more emphasis on the cannibalism. Here it was the reverse. Although disturbing, I generally didn't mind -- but I did feel the final scene, and specifically his dialogue in it, about "liking the fight" was just too Ick for me. Very HBO. I felt we didn't need it to know what he was going to do. (Then again audiences do miss the obvious all the time...)

I didn't really miss the infected fight in this episode. I saw people say that you need it to build a false sense of trust between David and Ellie but like... lmao idk I never trusted that guy for a single second. BUT I will say I *do* wish we saw more infected in the series overall. I know it's not about the zombies~ but they are still, uh, the reason all of this is going on, fundamentally. They're what makes rebuilding a functioning large-scale society near impossible, because it falters so easily with a simple misstep leading to infection and outbreak.

The ending felt a bit rushed. The Joel-Ellie reunion didn't hit me as hard as I wanted, although it seems to have resonated with the show fans. It's not an issue (for me) of him pulling her off David, or not -- I like the way it played out -- it's just... I dunno. Something about the way it ended on the two of them wandering off together, maybe? Maybe I liked the game's cut to black with her sobbing in his arms more?

I also felt that because they spent more time with David's community, there was a real glaring absence of them in the climax. These people have been under David's thumb for who knows how long, presumably with James + co as his enforcers. Now they're free but directionless. What comes next? Obviously, the show can't explore all of that, but questions like "why hasn't anyone tried to stop Joel in town" "why didn't anyone notice the fire" "where are other guards" etc... I think we could've used another scene with Hannah and her mom (who totally looks just like Mel from TLOU2, lmao).

AND the biggest one of all...

Feeling pretty :/ about the "violent heart" speech to Ellie. From David's POV, it makes total sense for him to say those things. He's trying to manipulate and groom her. I completely buy the dialogue, from him.

But I was left wondering if I the viewer was meant to agree, concluded that I am probably supposed to agree, and also that I ... don't. This has been a recurring criticism from me of the show's portrayal of Ellie. I've mostly tried to make my peace with it by acknowledging Show Ellie and Game Ellie are different characters evolving slightly differently and living slightly different lives yadda yadda... But I dunno. I guess I won't be able to say how I feel about it until I see s2 and s3 anyway lmao.

#the last of us #the last of us hbo #god this post is long af

[popculturebuffet]

The Jeffersons: The First Store MLK Day Special (Comissioned by WeirdKev27)

Happy Martin Luther King Day! IT's time for a special review courtsey of WeirdKev27 for a very special man. Activist, preacher, hero, there's really not much I can say about the man that hasn't been said and it's a deep shame I haven't done something for his day on this blog, but thanks to Kev i'm rectifying that with this review of the Jeffersons "The First Store" which despite the title.. deeply ties into the last, and most tragic, day of the man's life and it's effect on people in the moment.

This isn't my first visit that deluxe apartment in the sky, as last year I covered "Sorry, Wrong Meeting", where George and friends dealt with the Klan. When that happened the series wasn't avaliable on streaming but that has changed and i'm curious to check out more now I can, and did. And while "Lionel the Playboy" wasn't perfect, it was a solid episode that gave me a better idea of what the show is on a normal day: dealing with issues of class, race and our heroes change of fourtune. But when it went it's hardest, it did, and this episode proved it as towards the end of season 6, we go back a bit to when opinanted drycleaner magnate George opened his first store, the hurdles he jumped through.. and how said events just so happened to concide with one of the worst days in history: Martin Luther King JR's assination. JOin me under the cut for one hell of an episode.

We open in that deluxe apartment in the sky, where George and Wheezy are going through a scrapbook, and after some sex banter get into a flashback.

It's 1968 and Wheezie is home from work and trying to get the tv to work. I like that they put in the effort ot make a whole new set, or at least redress another for the Jeffersons old apartment in harlem. It shows just how far they've come and instantlly sells this is before George hit it rich or even upper middle class. George has the idea that will get him that deluxe apartment eventually though: Handy Dandy Cleaners.. eventually Jefferson Cleaners but for now he shoots down the name as not working, though he'd later sell the Handy Dandy name to an interprising young detective living with a small dog a few decades later for a line of notebooks.

What I really like is this ep shows that while George can be bigoted, an assshole and short sighted at the best of times… he does have a head for buisness. It's likely not the first time, this was near the end of 6 seasons, but it shows that for all his failings he's really good at what he does even just starting out: His idea is to get a minority buisness loan, and doing a dry cleaners is because he's had about a decade working under someone else, so he knows how to do everything and figures he can have Wheezie work with him. Granted she's not remotely happy about working without a salary and shuts down that nonsense, but Wheezie is a maid, has been around his buisness and is a smart fast learner who can also talk george out of his stupider impulses, so it shows George had this thought out soundly. Sure this is a risky proposition as Wheezie points out.. but it's better than working under some white asshole the rest of his life. If there's a shot to be his own man and make his own fortune, he's going to take it and for all the bad I can say about george, and that's baked into the series… he's a hard worker and one of the few who manages to make his american dream actually manifest. IT's one of the things Norman Leer excels at: he can make a character an asshole.. but still has the sense to give him layers.

It also shows he has to jump through hoops of the racisim of the time. The guy he has come visit for the loan.. is one of the most punchable men i've seen in a sitcom. Inetionally so of course, but the way he casually says things like how he's suprised george only has one kid or his house is suprisingly nice just oozes with casual racisim the man knows he can get away with. He also calls Dr. King, who the jeffersons have a portrait of, a communist, though it shows George's character that while he's willing to let other shit slide to get this loan, as he knows he has to play a system stacked against him till he can overcome it, he notably sidesteps shit talking dr king. There are some levels he won't sink to.

The loan is threatned though when LIonel comes in having been at a police protest, having become radicallized as things seem to be getting worse. It's also sad that a FLASHBACK to 1968 from a late 70's sitcom.. has someone protesting the police and getting brutalized, and barely anything has changed since. It was likely the point then.. and sadly is the point now: Progress can be achingly slow and often seems like it isn't moving forward at all. Thankfully Lionel ducks to the kitchen and George is able to get it, but it's clear Lionel is getting more and more disenchanted, and openly mocks his father's dream. The system isn't built to help black people, somethign I say as a white person.. and that's 100% true. It's not, it still isn't, but I also see george's point: that to stop fighting and to stop trying to make that system better to fight within it , to stop dreaming would be terrible. You have to keep struggling if you want to make change even if ti seems like none happens.

George takes Wheezie to see the shop, and while he talks her into working there and into his dream, a fixer uper in harlem but still something grand… a brick goes through the window and when the guyw ho did it is questioned he proclaims "Brother king is dead man! They killed him!". Dr. King's assasination has just happened.

Sherman Hemsley gives one hell of a performance as a response, full of dispair, anger, and pain as he throws a chair through the window and lets out one hell of a "God Damn!". It shows just how hopless it had to feel, and given HImsley's age it's doubtless he felt similar pain and grief in the moment. Just a swarm of rage anger and pain.

The next day isn't any easier: The TV Finally gives out, and tensions in the Jeffersons house are sky high. Things don't get easier as Wheezie tries to call in only for her boss to not care what just happened

And George rightly chews the woman out.. and wrongly quits for wheezie. While he's right she shoudln't work for an ass like that, he's wrong to get her out of a job, especially since while he has the place he sold their car without asking for it… which granted for George is par for the course but still.

The interview for the loan goes equally poorly: Standard Racist Asshole rejects the location, as theres' been crime ignoring .. you know… that one of the biggest figures in history just got assainated and the people are rightly angry. And when he has the fucking gall to call them animals.. george predictably throws him out on his ass, rejects the loan despite badly needing it and only dosen't pummel the guy because he can't legally do it. It shows more of George's character: that even with how hard it'll be, how many mountains he has to climb in addition to the 40 or 50 a black man in the late 60's early 70's trying to make a go in buisness would already be scalling barehanded…. he can't take money from someone who disrepsects his race, his people and what happened. He'll find his own way and as time bears out.. he does. It'll be harder but he's used to it.

Still George is close to the breaking point and when Lionel plans to go a looting, fed up with everything, George encourages him, tired of playing it "Their way". How Wheezie snaps him out of it is also brilliant as she plans to just casually throw their king portrait away, and mockingly saying Dr. King would enroucage them to "Get theirs". It makes George realize what he was doinga nd while still mad, it get shim to help her stop lionel. Lionel's response.. is heartbreaking as it is right: it feels like things haven't changed. ANd as I said… this is a world where the same kind of police response to protests is still going on, where as i've seen far too often on john oliver, the deck is stacked against people of color even after all we've done… where it can feel like nothing's changed. But things had then and have now… and that giving into your anger.. wont' solve it. It's channeling that anger, finding something worth fighting for that helps. And even then.. the future is uncertain, as the jeffersons can only watch as they hear King's climb every mountain speech and cry.

This episode is excellent. If you have amazon prime check it out. It's a must see and I hope, if I can get it into my schedule to see more jeffersons after this. Truly powerful television. Thanks for reading.

#martin luther king jr #martin luther king day #black lives matter #the jeffersons

[brilliantfantasticgeronimo]

rewatching the idiot's lantern

visuals: this episode's direction is amazing, ya'll. really underrated. the use of slanted angles gives what could be a standard period YA story stand out, and it gives it a kind of... splashy, noir-but-colorful vibe. it also fits really well with the whole "telly gone wrong" thing the story is going for. the faceless ones effect is simple but effective, the telly lady is iconic, and don't get me started on rose and ten's iconic rockabilly outfits... colonialism / hegemony: some interesting lines: "we may have lost the empire, but we can still be proud" / "only an idiot hangs the union flag upside down". there's a line from ten that's really funny about "this is the queen's england! not being men in black or stalinist russia",,, stealth anti-communist propaganda is always hilarious but specially hilarious in november 2023 when sunak is pushing the "anti-terrorism" card to jail palestine marches (and starmer would rather be die than call for a ceasefire). this ep is interesting also in that it's a good example of brittish pop culture trying to re-build a sense of identity after being "beaten" as an empire. so in the story, the coronation itself must retain its importance, the monarchy can't be questioned... but it seeks to reframe its importance in "the domestic" and entertainment sphere ("this is history right here"). make no mistake tho, it is still very patriotic. the dad gets called out not for being a Proper briton and not hanging The Flag Correctly... overall tho it's fun to see a conservative ass get his own rhetoric used against him (by the doctor, by rose, by tommy, and by the mother). And i think this episode makes the correct analysis in showing how the "patriotic veterans" ideology is fueling the neo-facists of today's uk (See: the "poppies sellers are afraid to leaver heir home" circus last week). themes: i used to think s2 didnt have much of a cohesive theme compared to s1 or s3 but now i think im starting to notice one emerging: the resistance against modernity and the passage of time. this episode is a good partner to rise of the cybermen/Army of steel with one talking about "phone updates and blootooth but they can mind control" and "what if tv melts ur brain"... in both the evil bug eyed monsters make those fears literal... but the real moral crutch is, pherhaps more than "phone bad"... that people become complicit and compliant to everything happening on the world around them. and that those who rebel against this apathy are virtuous in doing so (see The Preachers, tommy, etc). I also think this theme fits really well with School Reunion (sarah jane coming to terms with her ageing, rose coming to terms with her eventual death / the death of her relationship with the doctor, the "disco" aspect of k-9 being ridiculed but then showing to have value) and then with GiTf, with the clockwork robots being a probable (unintentional?) metaphor for monarchy and "obsolete" technologies that linger on.

Character of the day highlight: The telly-lady is such a good one off villain. Every time she says "IM HUNGRY" "FEEEDMEEE" it was hilarious and great. The whole family is also all get a moment to shine. "I did what I thought was right" and "That's my mother" were really arresting. On a negative point though, I would have cut the inspector guy, his death did not hit hard enough because he just didn't have enough screentime in this one. The Timeless Child bonus: Ten's bonding with the kid serves really well as parallel to himself. Tecteum would have a lot in common with the dad this episode so it's kind of cool that in that way, The Doctor gets to stand up for themeselves.

Companion watch: Ten and rose are very clever in this one.not in a wow million years of techbobabble clever or high functioning psychopath clever way but like, good ol fashion connecting cues, knowing how to push ppl's button and who to talk to get information. I would say these are about apathy, and [falling in line]. there's also an interesting character point of her being more invested in things working out for his family which as i said in another post, honestly takes off some of the sensationalism i've seen around her telling the kid to talk to his dad.

Misc: Missed a trick by not having ten say NOTHING IN THE WOKR DCAN STOP ME NOWW in That Scene. this ep also vibes well with s1 in that tommy is Inspired to save the day (i wish he had more time to bond w/ 10/rose so this Hit more, but as it is, it's perfectly fine. it's more of a "this person was already great and they didn*t *need* the doctor and co, but it's nice that they helped anyway").

#60threwatch #dw

[nicklloydnow]

“Anhedönia has been getting more acquainted with Ethel Cain, the character whose story she’s been tracing across multiple projects since 2018, and whose background she plans to explore further on an EP planned for later this year. Listeners first got to know the full, tragic arc she had in mind on her 2022 debut album, Preacher’s Daughter — a stunning release that showed Anhedönia’s atmospheric production and her knack for Southern Gothic imagery and intense themes, like religious indoctrination, sexual violence, isolation, and family trauma.

Ethel Cain is a work of fiction, one that first came to Anhedönia on “A House in Nebraska,” a spine-tingling song she wrote at age 19. Ethel and her creator share a lot in common. Both are women who took off on their own, leaving their oppressive Christian communities: Ethel grew up in Alabama, while Anhedönia herself came from a rural town in Florida called Perry, where she was home-schooled and brought up Baptist. But Anhedönia takes Ethel into much darker terrain from there on Preacher’s Daughter, having the character grapple with abuse at the hands of her father as she treks out west, where she encounters drugs, sex work, and dangerous men — until eventually she’s kidnapped, killed, and cannibalized.

It’s a violent, fatalist plot told over dazed pianos and dramatic blasts of distortion, Anhedönia’s voice often steady and dreamlike even at cruel turns. She’d long looked up to artists like Lana Del Rey, Marina, and Florence + the Machine, and her debut album feels like a twisted collage of those references playing over a feverish Donald Ray Pollock novel — he’s one of her favorite writers, along with others in the Southern Gothic canon. The EP she’s working on now covers Ethel’s high school years. Anhedönia says she envisions it as another chapter to a longer story she’s been telling: “I feel like this is truly laying Ethel Cain to rest.”

(…)

There was one part of secular culture that Anhedönia recalls being allowed to explore: horror movies, which she watched at her grandparents’ house. “I was really anxious and scared of everything. And so my pop, in all his wisdom, decided I should come spend the night and watch every R-rated horror movie that he had.” They’d go to Walmart and buy a Betty Crocker cake with strawberry icing to eat while they watched The Blair Witch Project, The Ring, or the Final Destination series. “He was like, ‘Watch this, you won’t be scared anymore,’ ” Anhedönia says.

But slowly, real-world uncertainties began to set in. Anhedönia says she’d always understood, somewhere deep inside of her, that she felt an attraction to both sexes. “I had crushes on girls, I had crushes on boys,” she says. “And I didn’t even really know what that meant.” Her neighborhood was small and full of old ladies, as she describes it, and she’d noticed that people treated one of her neighbors, a gay man who lived in town, differently. “I started to get this inkling in my head at some point as I was approaching adolescence, like, ‘Is that not allowed?’ ” So when she was about 11 years old, she turned to her parents with an innocent query. “I thought I was just going to be like, ‘Hey … I have a question.’ ” This is often painted as Anhedönia’s coming-out story, but the truth is, she was just a kid asking about something she didn’t fully understand. “I was like, ‘I think I like boys.’ ”

In a community obsessed with upholding puritanical ideals they believed would keep the devil at bay, all hell broke loose, she says. Families from her church would tell her mom that Anhedönia couldn’t play with their kids. Her parents sent her to therapy. Her life grew even lonelier and darker, cascading into several years that she now says she hardly remembers — in between home-school lessons, she spent most of her time in bed with the curtains drawn. “Living in that environment, you just want to get out of it,” she says. “I remember just kind of locking away parts of myself and thinking, ‘You’re going to wake up, you’re going to eat, you’re going to deal with whatever happens today, you’re going to go to sleep, and then you’re going to keep doing that until this is over.’ ”

(…)

At 16, she started taking classes at a community college, then went to school to become a nail technician at 18. By then, she’d flown out the door and started living on her own in Tallahassee, indulging in her new freedom. She experimented with acid, opioids, Xanax, meth once. “When you come from such an oppressive upbringing, you tend to spiral for a moment,” she admits. It was right around then that the idea of Ethel Cain began blossoming in her mind.

She found other answers, too. “It wasn’t until I was nearing adulthood when I discovered what being trans was, through Tumblr of all places,” she recalls. “I didn’t even know you could do that. I didn’t know that was a thing.” Up until then, her church had told her she was gay. The actual identity she came to understand for herself “wasn’t even in the conversation in any way,” she continues. “Wrong letter.”

Anhedönia is careful when she talks about being trans, emphasizing that her gender identity is only one fact in a complex personality. “When you are trans, you are living a very specific experience that not many other people in the world have,” she says. “I wanted to not be known as a trans artist, I think, not because I didn’t want people to know I was trans, or because I didn’t want to be proud of that fact, but.… It has shaped the way that I am in certain ways, but it’s not everything.”

(…)

There’s a sense in which it’s hard to imagine Anhedönia being contained by any music-business paperwork, because of just how expansive her imagination is, and just how much she wants to do. Before Ethel Cain came to her, she’d been sketching out three characters: Teddy, an androgynous altar boy with a vigilante streak; Salem, a woodsy witch with long white hair; and Carter, a time-traveler with a portal in his basement. Then Ethel Cain came along. “I knew it was going to be music, but I was like, ‘Can I write a story? Can I make a film? I want to draw this,’ ” she says. “I’m so obsessed with this story. I want to tell it in a million different ways.”

Later this year, she plans to leave Pittsburgh. She’s chasing brutal winters to match the tone of her next full-length album, which she describes as dark and cold. It’ll focus on the story behind Ethel’s mother, and see her grappling with her daughter’s death. The one after that will dive into Ethel’s grandmother.

There are other characters lurking in her head, waiting to come out — but she still thinks she has a lot of time to spend with the Cain women, and a long time before she reaches the end of the story. “This is going to be 15, 20 years from now,” she says. “I work very slow. That’s how I like it.””

#ethel cain #anhedonia

[wolves-etc]

thoughts on The Last Of Us episode eight (uh-oh), largely in the order I had them:

[thoughts on: 1.1 | 1.2 | 1.3 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 1.6 | 1.7 | X | 1.9]

[for folks not familiar with the episode: content warning for vague references to grooming, CSA and rape]

— I've heard vague things about this ep - nothing specific, just Oh Boy There May Be A Lot Here - so I'm starting off wearing socks this time in case of spooky moments and with a hot chocolate to ward off angst. let's do this.

— I'm really growing to appreciate how impressively fleshy the fungus in the title credits is

— for a moment there the revelations bible reading with a girl starting to sob in the background felt like a mass suicide rapture cult thing about to happen, but THANK FUCK, it looks like they're just grieving.

— "just"

— the necessary practicality of "the ground is too cold to dig, we'll bury your father in the spring," and the extra grief that comes with the interruption of a ritual we use to acknowledge someone's death and start to move on from it.

— y'know it's nice that we get some interesting faces on here - faces a little outside the standard range of TV attractiveness. I sent my friend a few screenshots to point this out and express appreciation and I'm being treated to an update on all the actors in this who were voice actors for the games. it's very cool and i approve.

— "I sensed doubt" as an accusation from a religious leader (even if it's about his role more broadly as a community leader) makes me feel pretty stabby, not gonna lie

— I think that was pus on joel's wound and honestly kudos to the show for showing it! it's not leaning into the gore super much - netflix does that for shock value, I think, and to emphasise the, well, casual violence of the casual violence - but this kinda just feels realistic.

— ellie telling joel she's gonna be right back, I think more for herself than for him </3

— oh her nose and cheeks do not look good. I had to reassure myself she's been travelling with joel in that weather for A While now and probably knows what to look out for in the cold, but ouch.

— there's this nice thing here where we KNOW she was in military school and she can fire a gun, but joel still had to give her pointers; we know she's hardy and can fight well, but still doesn't know much about hunting, still makes noise when she walks and falls on her face and is clearly trying but will need luck if she's going to succeed.

— also I'm pretty sure that was an infected noise.

— or apparently not.

— impromptu rifle range!! you go, girl!

— oh no

— ellie's clearly not holding the rifle in a way that would LET her shoot them right between the eyes and they're so clearly humouring her a bit and it's this really odd mix of "she's genuine danger" and "this is just child-wrangling and children can be volatile"

— good enough with guns to know how to deload the others' rifles though

(still not sure what the correct term for deloading is - unloading just sounds like you're firing the damn thing everywhere. my friend suggested "decocking." which is just great. /s)

— "I actually started believing after the world ended." yeowch

— "so you went from teacher to preacher 'cos what, it fuckin' rhymes?" "yeah, exactly."

THIS IS SWEET OH NO yeah of course he was a teacher, he's got that good-at-kids vibe. (as opposed to good with kids, admittedly.)

— (my friend said that was an interesting distinction. I said: "he's good at reading and understanding her, knowing most of her threat is bravado but taking it seriously anyway, but he's not relating to her. there's a potential for manipulation - trying to get her to do what he wants or needs from her. which in this case would be handing over all or most of the meat.")

((listen. it was mostly vibes but this show is good at vibes.))

— I'm sorry is this dude a preacher advocating for revenge murder 'cos holy fuck I'm gonna knock him unconscious with his own holy book

— had to pause to be very angry at this for a moment because hi the "god put this murder opportunity in front of me, isn't that nice of him" line of thinking is. bad very bad it's very very bad

— he got an entire deer out of the bargain and he's still going to devote resources to vengeance, isn't he, the motherfucker

— ellie not knowing how to give joel the penicillin is so REAL. she really is very competent! she's also a fourteen-year-old with minimal life experience and education and her caregiver and relative expert in these things is currently incapacitated. I really hope she didn't just inject a fatal amount into his liver or something.

— lying down with a hand on his chest oh fuck

— "what is [the meat]?" "…venison." I really hope that guy looks naturally shifty.

— at least it's not like it could be random people meat or something

…oh fuck

oh fucking fuck fuck NO

"we'll bury his body in the spring" YEAH SURE I'M SURE THAT GUY JUST NATURALLY LOOKS SHIFTY AND IT'S FINE. look I can't even judge them for making this call to survive but it's fucking grim.

— excuse me he did fucking NOT just slap a teenager so hard he knocked her to the floor

okay now I'm starting to get why the mood in that community is so fucking atrocious. they're scared of him and he's using that fear to keep things working.

— "bless us with christ, the living bread" while they're sitting down for a meal of human is especially grim

— I'm glad ellie hasn't forgotten about the horse 'cos I kinda did

— I do like this show's quiet moments

— "how dare you decide that the girl dying is god's will. I decide what deaths are god's will." (paraphrased. but listen. I know evil preacher dude hasn't actually said he wants joel dead, but I can tell what he means by justice will, eventually, be death, even if he puts on a big show about coming to that decision grudgingly.)

— hang on I need to get some knife emojis in here 🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️🗡️

— ellie breaking my fucking heart here with her instructions to joel

— okay I did admittedly expect her to be more subtle but yelling "hey, motherfuckers!" and shooting at them IS very her

— I'm a wimp about some things so asked my friend for assurance that they don't take joel captive.

I didn't even think to ask whether they'd get ellie.

— (when I find myself in times of trouble helena from orphan black comes to me, speaking no words of wisdom but rather dealing with whoever needs to be dealt with then setting the place on fire.)

— at this point and for my own comfort I looked up just enough to know that joel and ellie are free and alive at the beginning of the next episode.

— "did you hear me say the others want to kill you?" "yeah." "but I stopped them." "fuck you." ellie <3 <3 <3

— yeah he's being sorta condescending here I called it. talking down to her and trying to bully her into doing what he wants. I'd actually like him better if he were taking the straightforward tess approach of "please be honest with us so we can figure out whether you're worth transporting as cargo."

— ellie's fear at the end of that first cage scene is brutal. major props to the actress and holy shit I'm glad she's still defiant (the fight response to immediate danger is kinda less painful to watch, for me) but fuck.

— JOEL IS SUCH A COMFORT TO SEE RIGHT NOW

— and now it's a torture scene and honestly still such a comfort. love a character who'll threaten to pop someone's kneecap off in defence of a child.

— the deeply inappropriate joy I felt when joel got the guy to point out the location with the knife shoved in his mouth

— "it'd better be the exact same spot your buddy points to" holy SHIT he did this earlier, with the nice hermit couple who gave him soup, this is practised and familiar

that's a heck of an insight into the kind of stuff he used to do and I'm not even sure what to feel about it

— …what's ellie seen

— THAT'S WHAT ELLIE'S SEEN

— can this guy not talk about cordyceps like I talk about cordyceps please. like yes it ISN'T evil yes it IS just multiplying and protecting itself and its progeny but shut up I don't want to agree with you

I guess I'd argue for its inherent amorality more than its goodness anyway. what the fuck, dude.

— "I'm a shepherd surrounded by sheep" you absolute motherfucker, a shepherd can't keep their sheep in fear or they can't do their fucking job. yes I'm pretending to know a lot more about sheep than I do for the sake of a grudge. WHAT OF IT.

— "if he leaves us in peace, they will just let him go." bastard knows exactly what he's doing.

— this dude appealing to ellie "as an equal" is deeply fucking creepy. I know I said I'd prefer the tess approach but THIS IS NOT THE TESS APPROACH. this is the creepy groomer approach. this is the "I want to manipulate you into being my attack dog" approach.

— okay I said creepy groomer as a fucking metaphor. look, this show did such a good job NOT leaning into the standard post-apoc rape and creepiness tropes that I straight up forgot creeps like that could exist here.

that in the context of him having "violence in his heart" that he struggled to come to terms with, and having been a school teacher, I-

— "tell them that ellie is the little girl who broke your fucking finger." holy shit I love her I love her I lo

— I know it's bravado I know she's scared but I love her and joel's coming to get her

— WHEN I ASKED MY FRIEND EARLY ON WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF ELLIE BIT SOMEONE I DIDN'T EXPECT IT TO ACTUALLY HAPPEN. YOU GO GIRL

— YES, GIRL

— …I think the fact that this show didn't lean into the turbo-boosted-rape-culture tropes that are so typical for the genre makes it so much fucking creepier when it. actually happens.

— the triumph of ellie managing to kill him is a lot, the tragedy of ellie having to kill him is a lot, her terror and violation as she just, can't stop stabbing is. so much.

— JOEL

— JOEL AND ELLIE JOEL AND ELLIE

— "it's okay, baby girl. I got you."

— I love them both so much I love them both so much I lov

#not tagging the TWs but mind the warning at the top #long one this time! and I'm sparing y'all most of the angst in the screenshots. #the last of us hbo #the last of us spoilers #tlou spoilers #angst tag #orig #this ep was a lot it was so much actually. possibly too much. #leaving the one positive comment in near the beginning is causing me pain #but I tacitly promised the liveblogging-but-better experience so here you go

[period-dramallama]

episode 7 of becoming elizabeth review: live laugh lie

This episode felt so long. Easily my least favourite. Everyone was stupid or an asshole or a stupid asshole.

+ mention of archbishop... don’t even say his name?? How are we going to have Cranmer in season 2?? it’s going to be very Remember the New Guy

+ the Ambiguous Religion Preacher man is going to be burned in his clothes, that’s quite unusual. Usually it was in the shift. Y’know, cloth being expensive, it would a terrible waste to burn a whole doublet

+ My pyrophobia breathed a sigh of relief when it cut away from the burning... until they CUT RIGHT BACK TO IT. at least the fire looks fake.

+ they just call him ‘a dissenter’?? I assume they mean Anabaptist? Why not just say Anabaptist? 

+ Ed flipping through a book... gifted kid burnout

+ good to acknowledge Mary wasn’t the only monarch burning people. Anabaptists were burned during Edward’s reign, and 4 were burned in London in 1570 something. 

+ “I always liked your father” did you??

+ Stephen Gardiner worrying about ‘balance’ on the council and burning dissenters... Stephen Gardiner would not give a flying fuck if Protestants burn more radical Protestants. He’d be there with popcorn.

+ “we are going to make England great” I said “again” sarcastically and then Dudley said “...again” and I burst out laughing. Real subtle Anya. Love the nuanced commentary. Not since The Spanish Princess has a show been so subtle.

+ “a girl not yet 16 made fools out of all of us” did she though?? In history, yes. This show, not so much.

+ Another extra with no hood! Just stick a hood on her! This isn’t a crowd scene where everyone needs a hood so you crack out the crappy ones for the extras at the back.  

+ “he is the fucking king” love that that’s an in-universe meme.

+ This Elizabeth is not very good at reading between the lines. Why does she need everything spelled out for her?

+ Oliver’s facial expressions are the best. He can bring comedy to the most mundane lines. 

+ “I can’t do the crazy thing... Ok for you i will do the crazy thing” is an A+ dynamic.

+ “England’s not done with you yet” and now that’s some neat foreshadowing

+ “They burned a man in Whitehall” why does Gardiner care?? There’s nothing to imply he was Catholic. If he’s not Catholic, Gardiner wouldn’t give two shits. This is the guy who tried to bring down Katherine Parr for crying out loud!

+ “thought you’d seen enough of the Tower by now Stephen” hehehehehehe

+ then Girlboss Dudley throws Gardiner down the stairs!!

+ “do you need carrying” i wish the whole ep was just Dudley being mean to Gardiner. 

+ Henry Grey LITERALLY tells Jane to watch what she says around powerful people and then she just... doesn’t. babe.

+ the whole scene with Elizabeth and Jane....i hate it with a fiery fiery passion. It’s just a nasty scene of two people being horrible to each other for no fuckign reason.

+ Elizabeth plays a few notes that sound like the show’s theme... the show hasn’t earned that.

+ “spurred to treason to acquiesce to your desires” “oh I’m schooled on men by my sister, i wonder how she got so wise”. Can Mary let ANYTHING go? I understand her resentments regarding her past but why she can’t she just drop the subject of Tommy S? WHO SHE DIDN’T EVEN LIKE? Why must she KEEP being like ‘i told you so’? That ain’t how you get friends.

+ Mary did not earn that hug. She didn’t even apologise!

+ Aaaand then Mary is horrible again in like 2 seconds.

+ Illiterate doesn’t necessarily mean uncultured. Early medieval kings like Alfred and Charlemagne were illiterate because it wasn’t a skill they needed. They had scribes to dictate to, and servants to read aloud to them.

+ “don’t hide in places I’ve shown you are good for hiding in” made me laff. I’ll miss Girlboss when he is executed.

+ STOP PUNCHING ROBERT YOU BASTARDS

+ the iconic red dress... they haven’t earned it.

+ Elizabeth defending herself... should have been last episode. 

+ Bloody handkerchief of doom!

#becoming elizabeth

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

A Gathering of the Gods in the Clouds - Cornelius van Poelenburgh // The Combat of Mars and Minerva - Jacques-Louis David (detail) // Bethlehem - Semler

#greek mythology #greek gods #greek pantheon #twelve olympians #athena #minerva #jacques louis david #bethlehem #bethlehem semler #preacher's kid #preacher's kid ep #preacher's kid semler #semler #art #art history #lyrics #lyric art

[linernotesandseasons]

My 22 Favorite Albums of 2022

       Wow. Here I am in 2023. Moving on to a new year and a fresh start, but pausing momentarily to recognize my 22 favorite albums (plus three bonus EPs) of 2022! A year of extreme change for me personally, and a rollercoaster of highs & lows. The highs: I am now working in music, chasing my lifelong passion, and happier in a career than I ever thought I could be! I work in marketing & operations for three small venues in Denver (Larimer Lounge, Globe Hall & Lost Lake Lounge) and it has honestly, deeply been a dream come true! I saw 87 shows this year (not counting the about 50 different sets I saw across three music festivals!) and I also worked at roughly 100 more. I saw 15 of the 25 artists on this list live this year! Music has been everywhere around me all of the time! When I started this music blog in late 2011, I looked at this annual end of the year favorites list as just a part of what I wanted to do in writing about music. Then there were years, where it felt like it was the only thing I wrote. These last couple years, it feels like just a small part of explaining my love for music. I write excessively on my social media after my favorite shows, spilling my heart out. I have been able to lean into what makes my favorite music actually my favorite, and appreciating the magic of songwriting. The lows of my year led me to fall for songs that can make me cry. Like sob cry while they play on loop for hours & days at a time. Songs that teach me more about myself. Songs that feel like they were written for me. Songs that feel like growing old & growing up. Songs that (as I found myself saying often this year) felt like friends. Songs that I turned to when I needed them most. Songs that helped me survive and helped me get out of bed in the morning. Songs that I will keep with me forever. I’ll talk about them all in more detail below of course, but here it is! In no particular order (unless you know & love our english alphabet) My 22 Favorite Albums of 2022! Long Live Music!

*

ADEEM THE ARTIST   /   White Trash Revelry

      2022 was a year of extreme change for me personally; full of unsettled-ness & uncertainty, so it feels good to start this year’s list in a familiar spot… In the exact same place we started last year! With an artist, Adeem the Artist! whose songs have become so familiar & comforting to me. Like we grew up together. Like we were friends in a past life, or back in high school. I guess with that being the case, I can start by giving you a brief history of this music writer’s background, in hopes it’ll make you better understand this list and better understand why I love Adeem’s heart wrenching, life questioning, classic country songs so much. Well… here we go. The first time I remember being excited about music was KLOVE & KMTS. Local christian & country radio stations. I was raised a baptist preachers’ kid, in private christian grade school, high school & college. I fell in love with some of the “good” christian bands (Switchfoot, Relient K, The Newsboys, Delirious?, MXPX, Bleach, Sanctus Real, Pillar, Michael W. Smith, ok we’re getting off track), but in my later high school days I met my public school, baseball playing, redneck friends and with them, it was all classic country. Now I’m not talking Willie, Waylon, & Johnny Cash, this is early 2000’s classic country. That means Brooks & Dunn, Travis Tritt, Garth, Toby Keith, Aldean, Luke Bryan, Lonestar, Billy Currington, the list goes on. Maybe not a foundation of essential artists, but if you’ve ever sung “It’s A Great Day To Be Alive” at the top of your lungs in the bed of a pickup truck to a mountain sunset, I think you might understand.

      The familiarity I found on Adeem the Artist’s second proper album goes deeper than simply the country songwriting. Opening track “Carolina'' has been a favorite of mine since it was faster & finger-picked and called “A Light in Carolina'' back on Adeem’s self released Forgotten Songs & American Dreams back in 2019. I spent a couple of glorious spring drives around rural North Carolina backroads belting “You’ve got a lot of skins to wear as you try to figure out who you are.” Now slowed with glowing acoustic strums and holy pedal steel, “Carolina” stands as a marker. Adeem is still Adeem. They’re still trying to figure out who they are. And it still doesn’t matter what people say. The fact that this song has grown with Adeem (and with me!) shedding skins & names & other outward, physical, insignificant things, just proves its power. I quoted Adeem in my review last year, saying that they hoped their songs helped you “drift with the water’s pace toward wholeness” and well… Here we are, still drifting. From there White Trash Revelry simply lifts off. “For Judas” is a gorgeous piano ballad, a songwriter’s masterclass, that imagines Jesus & Judas, young lovers kissing in the rain, falling for each other… in the Northeast Minneapolis arts district. When this song first hit me, Saturday evening, December 3rd at 5pm, I slow danced myself around my old kitchen, cracked another beer, and texted my old friend Stephen (the one who most appreciates good songwriting!) and said  “LOVE SONG OF THE FUCKING YEAR.” The classic country sound of “Heritage of Arrogance,” “Run This Town” and “Going To Hell” recall all those country songs I grew up listening to on country radio, but the lyrics couldn’t be further from the racism, sexism & homophobia that have defined country music for me in the last 15 years. In fact, Adeem has made a point to stand up against those things. To make music that sounds so much like classic country, but is made for everyone. Songs that address that very racism, sexism & homophobia head on. In this way, by being explicitly accepting, Adeem is creating a safe space for everyone to enjoy these songs, to tap your boots, to belt along when they sing “Do you wanna go to hell children, with Adeem the Artist? They play Country songs in heaven, but in hell we play them loud!” Heart of the album gut punch “Middle of a Heart” tackles what is unfortunately a familiar American songwriters’ tale of late. Over hushed finger-picked guitar Adeem tells a tale of a boy with a gun, a freezer full of fresh deer meat, and of course, the ensuing American tale of recruitment & money, love & war. And then the aftermath of mental health and the  suicide rates of veterans here in the good ol, gun lovin’ US of A. Through the entirety of White Trash Revelry, Adeem is cementing themselves as an essential voice in the folk/country singer-songwriter scene. A queer, non-binary Country Musician, singing about the world as they see it. Telling me stories, asking the questions I want to see asked. And as they build a career, I can follow along. Like a friend. A friend who deep, deep down, just really loves Country Music.

      “I gave my body & blood for the power of love / and hoped that I would conquer sin / but I never even rose again… / He had short, neat curls that were shadowed black / and I was fumbling around with the weather app / wondering if he could ever love me back / sometimes these things are hit or miss / with the perfume trails lingering behind / I caught an urge and the nerve to take his hand in mine / and if didn’t rain at the perfect time / it’s probable we wouldn’t have kissed / in the Northeast Minneapolis arts district… Oh I write this down for Judas… Oh all of this was for Judas…”

*

BARTEES STRANGE   /   Farm to Table

       When I wrote about Bartees Strange’s debut album Live Forever for my favorite albums list back in 2020, I referred to it as nostalgic. I referenced The National, Bon Iver, Fall Out Boy, mid 2000′s emo, pop-rock, & hip-hop as touchstones for his blossoming sound. I wrote how those influences made his songs feel familiar, like old friends. Well, when I press play on his sophomore record Farm to Table, and the sweet, melancholic riff of “Heavy Heart” drifts in, I get that exact same feeling! A song about allowing yourself to recognize the heartbreak of the past year, tenderly specific lyrics setting it in time & place “You look so nice in a cherry scarf, we should go to Toronto more often” and then a rolling build to an epic, exploding, unexpectedly monster riff! Bartees is back! With Farm to Table, Bartees has cemented himself as a superstar, an artist I will see every time he comes to Denver, and someone at the forefront of his sound. From the midwest emo of “Mulholland Dr.” to the pulsing, droning, hip hop influenced, name dropping “Cosigns,” to the gorgeous, swelling sadness of “Black Gold,” Strange is staking out his own place in indie-rock. One of my favorite musical moments of the year can be found about three minutes into the menacing, driving “Wretched.” A song that has basically already taken off (the first chorus literally lifts the song off the ground) before dropping into a dark, acoustic guitar-led second verse. As it builds again, you can feel what’s coming, the band syncs in together, smiling at each other from across the room, ready to cut loose. Right before the second big drop, Bartees lets out a pure, unadulterated “Wooooo!” and the song just GOES! Bartees talked a lot about the family aspect of his band behind Farm to Table saying “I had so much pressure to work with fancy people after Live Forever - I’m so glad Chris (producer Chris Connors) & I decided to do it ourselves in our spaces, with our world of friends. It’s so easy & beautiful to grow with friends, to become a family, and to create something new.” The family nature of Farm to Table can be felt through the radio waves and it is a joy to listen to. This is complex & heartfelt indie-rock, with mathematical midwest movements and a hip-hop ethos. Bartees Strange brings a larger-than-life, DC meets Oklahoma, lighthearted, heartbreak, colorful vibe to his writing. Like he says on the mid-tempo (but stick around for the outro!)  “Escape This Circus “There’s a fault in our stars, there’s a rock in my shoe!” It’s not too late to jump on the bandwagon and find your new favorite indie-rock star. Bartees is blowing up!

       “I took the keys to the lake / I said to God what I said / I know the folk on the road / I know they don’t wanna move today / I wish I could die in the morn / Sometimes it’s hard but you know I’m thankful…”

*

BLUEBOOK   /   Optimistic Voices

      Sometimes songs & albums find you right when you need them. I had heard about Bluebook for years, knew they were Denver legends, knew about their seriously broody-Angel Olsen meets Sharon Van Etten apocalyptic lounge music. I also knew that Bluebook has grown into a supergroup behind primary songwriter & bassist Julie Davis, featuring Hayley Helmericks (Monofog & Snake Rattle Rattle Snake) on drums, Jess Parsons (old linernotes&seasons fav Glowing House) on keys and Anna Morsett (The Still Tide) on guitar. But it wasn’t until this year, in anticipation of their headlining Globe Hall show in December, when I sat down and gave Optimistic Voices my full attention. It started when I read Julie Davis’ writing on social media to promote their Globe show.  “I’ve got seeds on my mind” Davis’ Solstice-tinged post began. She talked about Winter themes. About

       “the growing darkness as the days get shorter, and a gradual withdrawal & burrowing inside, both into my home & into myself-”

       then she paused, in this moment, you can feel her thumping bassline pick up, willing her song to life, pulsing through “--but the seeds!” she remembered!

       “They keep coming to mind, like coded messages to the future, they contain a plan for new growth, and they are here with us, all around, right now, waiting. They will wait through the wind & the snow until the ground receives their communication, and, at some future date yet unknown, they will grow.”

       In the immortal words of midwest author Michael Perry at my all time favorite music festival Eaux Claires in Wisconsin “The metaphors almost write themselves!” There is a magic in the way Davis writes, but the coded message I needed to hear is one that holds a more practical, everyday kind of magic. It is contained in the words Plan & Communication. Magic is great and all, but it doesn’t just happen. These seeds have a plan. They work towards that plan. They have goals, schedules, mile markers on their move towards magic. They communicate. With the ground, with the elements, with each other. They communicate their plan. They work their plan. Then, and only then, does magic happen.        

       Bluebook turns their plans & communication to magic on this deeply moving, darkly impressive album. Full of driving basslines, swelling & stabbing synths & guitars, and stately lyrics about religion, ketamine therapy, ear infections, flowers & mental health. Optimistic Voices pulses with energy and moves slowly but with intention. When Bluebook finally closed their Globe Hall set long after midnight with a cover, it was one Davis referred to as a “true Solstice song.” At that point we were mere days before the shortest day of the year, and less than a week from Denver’s coldest day in 30 years. The closing song and title track of Optimistic Voices is from Wizard of Oz. If you’re familiar, you may know it as a bouncing, ecstatic number full of joy & expectation. Although they keep the original lyrics, in typical Bluebook fashion, their version broods with sadness, mystery (is that a Brad Cook synth I hear?!) and a deep, deep winter magic. “You’re out of the woods, you’re out of the dark, you’re out of the night” Davis encourages us in her best somber Florence Welch tones “Step into the sun, step into the light. Keep straight ahead for the most glorious place on the face of the earth or the sky. Hold onto your breath, hold onto your heart, hold onto your hope…” With those words on that night I felt the light returning. Felt the days getting longer. The solstice has passed. The nights are dark & long, but not forever. There is a light in the eastern sky. I repeat the refrain again with Davis and the night is over. Like the rest of my most favorite albums from this year, Optimistic Voices was there for me when I needed it. It helped me get through some of the shortest days and hardest weeks of my year. Like always, I turned to songs for comfort & survival. “March up to the gate and bid it open.”

       “Shifting in the dark / lifting toward the spark / there’s a rope that pulls you up from the dark / in the box you found / a reason for reaching up around…”

*

CLEMENTINE WAS RIGHT   /   Can’t Get Right With the Darkness

       Clementine Was Right makes the kind of songs that remind me why I love music so much. Songs that reference places & seasons & people. Songs that want to jump back in the river. Songs that want to ride shotgun with you all Summer, drinking Dr. Pepper and singing out the open window with the hot wind in your hair and between your fingers. These are far bigger than just songs. These songs have families & friends & other lives to live somewhere down the road. To hear songwriter, poet, & frontperson Mike Young tell it, Clementine Was Right is a family affair. Not so much a band as an idea. A community building & changing, morphing & rolling along with songs to sing and places to go. The lyrics are his work; he is a poet, fiction writer & songwriter originally from Northern California and then all over. Currently based out of Denver, so we get to claim Clementine as a local band. He talks about moving & relocation saying “I hate change and I keep doing it! Movement, upheaval, crumbling, transit-trying forever to go home, calling each new stop another home.” In the songs on Clementine’s magnificent second record Can’t Get RIght With the Darkness, I too have found some kind of new home. 

       Can’t Get Right With the Darkness was recorded in Memphis, TN, straight to a 1969 Ampex tape machine. There are a whole host of musicians on it (people that Mike calls “talented & rowdy & tender & golden hearted”). The songs explode out of the radio with life & love, regret & loss, a postcard of American rock & roll, with silly drawings on the back in gel pen from all your queer friends. Musically, Clementine Was Right sounds like everything & everyone I grew up listening to. This is cosmic scoot bootgaze sweeping western emo tonk classic American rock&roll country music. Springsteen, Petty, etc… Lyrically Clementine’s songs are the kind that stick with me. Mike writes with his heart on his sleeve about all the things I love about life. These songs make me want to do better, dance bigger, swing harder & run faster. I spent most of fall & winter 2022 in a pretty dark place. I was facing my own fears. Admitting that maybe I've spent most of my adult life running away. That I was afraid to make decisions, afraid to take charge of my life. I don’t feel like I’ve escaped that period of my life, that time in my thoughts yet, and maybe I never will. But I’m working on things and trying to get better. When I fell for Clementine, I immediately clung to the writing & poetry and the overarching idea that everything is gonna be ok. That even if you make the wrong choice, take the wrong road. You will come out alive. When I listen to Clementine, I have an unexplainable, rock solid feeling that I haven’t lived my best days yet. For all the nostalgia and saudade present in Young’s writing, at their core, these songs fill me with hope. Like when I wake up in the morning I will have new friends to make, new songs to sing, new places to see, new careers to chase, new windows to open or roll down, new lyrics to sing or scream or mumble out into the bright, wide open air, a new life starting over every day. I want to close with some of the ramble lyrics/poetry that Clementine uses for their social media videos. Young’s partner is the incredible poet Gion Davis (go find his poetry book “TOO MUCH”) and I absolutely love the way the poems & the songs & the music weave together in a nonsense jumble of joy & sorrow & happiness & heartbreak & curiosity & adventure! Long Live Clementine Was Right!

       “I am not going to live for a thousand years. I am not a redwood tree or a deep sea sponge. You are running away from your own death that has brushed past you like many tall ferns in the dark. Your life has no witness but you and occasionally your friends who love you. It is devastating. It is the best day you’ve ever had… You can take a year, you can try a year, you can try a lot, you can try two oceans. You can try to say your friend’s name until it’s a face. Was it loud enough?... It doesn’t matter who sang the first line. I need to see people-sized people in the sun. I would like to make something that when you open it, makes a quiet shift. It doesn’t matter if we’re not friends yet. I am calling from the exact center of my fear. Here we are as the sighs get less & less fake. 1% is whispering something about fireflies and the last 1% is wondering if silence is the best wondering you’ll ever reach. I used to live in the desert, but now I live anywhere. So the band gets bigger, confusing, bigger, to include everyone I’ll miss. The desire for rescue is the wrong map to intimacy. I used to live anywhere, but now I just keep visiting. How do you know if the songs work? You ask strangers what they do with their ghosts. You don’t want faces to be numbered, you want them to answer your stories with theirs. You don’t need to harmonize with anything but all the secret windows you’ve been waiting to open in your chest. Singing along is a light under the door of longing. Your new friends sing along with your old friends' daughter and the picture she drew of the band as guests of the lava. Love don’t know I’m coming, love won’t let me stay. It moves you, which is to say you keep going. You sing along…”

*

ETHEL CAIN   /   Preacher’s Daughter

       There is an undeniable darkness emanating from Ethel Cain’s official debut album Preacher’s Daughter. Many of the songs sound lifted from some 99 cent red box horror movie; palpable fear & self-hate crashing suddenly into jump scares and waves of wailing noise. Six plus minute songs of burning, brooding evil; reeking with violence, sex, motorcycles, drugs, guns, booze, incest, abusive relationships, and American red, white, & blue religious bullshit. To listen to these songs is like watching one of those horror movies, squinting between fingers covering your eyes; scared to see what comes next, but unable to peel your eyes & ears away. By far the darkest evil Cain uncovers in her writing, is the sin of the Christian church. The black heart at the center of her America’s evil. Ethel Cain grew up like me, but a million miles from me. Born in Florida, a preacher’s kid, indoctrinated in the church, questioning her upbringing, but filled with a deep nostalgia for her youth. When Ethel came out to her family (and consequently the community, cuz if you grew up in a small town you know that’s how it is) as a trans woman, it marked a turning point. In her words “It was war. We were a house divided. It was me versus my whole town.” She distanced herself from the church and started making music on garageband and trying to find collaborators and chosen family. In the midst of that searching, Ethel has created a musical world all her own. A sonic enveloping, a fashion career & a style where she can be herself. An album that runs an hour and 15 minutes and never lets up. She is telling stories, she is relating to old friends from small towns & similar upbrings, and most of all, she is 100% herself. An artist with a singular vision. Preacher’s Daughter is a challenging listen, but it makes me feel as viscerally real as any album on this list. 

       There are songs on Preacher’s Daughter that I can’t listen to without thinking about my own high school years. Amidst all the darkness, there is an 80’s love story in the twinkling pop of “American Teenager” an anti-war anthem that prays to Jesus & daddy & Dale. An empowerment anthem at the end when Cain belts “I’m doing what I want and damn I’m doing it well” This is the only roll-down-the-windows song (and maybe a glimpse at the magic Cain could make if she sold out of her darkness for a lighter side?!) and it immediately takes me back to small town back roads in western Colorado. I remember my lifelong best friend Stephen would play a piano melody for me at his house. Something he wrote that sounded like growing up. Like the end of everything and the beginning of everything. We would be at his house in Silt at midnight. Still time to walk to the train tracks and the Gofer foods or Kum & Go and get chips or corn nuts or a gas station hot dog and a 64oz Dr. Pepper and maybe some cigarettes or later a 6-pack of beer. We would take whatever we bought out under the overpass, where the train tracks ran through, and we would talk about whatever shit. About what we wanted to do with our lives. About the same shit I’m still talking about now. We would rent one of Ethel’s crappy horror movies from the redbox and go back to his house to waste the rest of the night. We’d talk about how we missed our girlfriends, about how we didn’t know what we wanted to do with our lives. About how I still don’t know now. I write all this because this is what I like to remember and this is what Ethel’s songs remind me of. I want her to know that I understand. When the guitar crashes into “A House In Nebraska” and sweeps the whole song away into the madness of growing up & letting go, I feel what it means to her. I feel the pain she feels. When I feel so alone, these are the kinds of songs and albums I look for. When the second half of “Televangelism” finds a light and the piano strikes a match and begins to sing, I hear my friend Stephen’s piano. I’m back home in my childhood bedroom. Somehow, Ethel Cain has conjured up a world that I can live in. In the darkest corners of her world, there is light and there is friendship. These songs are masterpieces and they tell stories of darkness & evil. But maybe, when we turn the lights off and sit in the dark after midnight, telling these stories; we can hold hands and feel a little less alone. Because there is someone out there who feels just like me. 

       “You & me against the world / you were my man and I your girl / we had nothing except each other / you were my whole world / then the day came and you were up & gone / and I still call home that house in Nebraska / where we found each other / on a dirty mattress on the second floor / where the world was empty save you & I / where you came and I laughed  / and you left and I cried / where you told me even if we die tonight / that I’d die yours / these dirt roads are empty / the ones we paved ourselves / your mama calls me sometimes / to see if I’m doing well / and I lie to her and say that I’m doing fine / when really I’d kill myself to hold you one more time… / you know I still wait at the edge of town / praying straight to God that maybe you’ll come back around / I cry every day and the bottles make it worse / cuz you were the only one I was never scared to tell I hurt / and I found photographs of our school on the day we met / I thought you were so beautiful / it was love I guess / and you might never come back home / and I may never sleep at night / but God I just hope you’re doing fine out there / I just pray that you’re alright / and I feel so alone, and I feel so alone out here / I’m so alone out here without you baby…”

*

FKA TWIGS   /   CAPRISONGS

      “Hey, I made you a mixtape” begins FKA twigs phenomenal third album CAPRISONGS. If you know me, you know how happy it makes me for FKA twigs to make me a mixtape! Tahliah Debrett Barnett is an English singer, songwriter & dancer who goes by FKA twigs. She lets that mixtape start slow (honestly the way most good mixtapes do!) and opener “ride the dragon” (all of CAPRISONGS song titles are styled in all lowercase) sets the stage for personal fav “honda.” From here, the album dives in. “So yeah one morning… I don’t know, Monday or somethin’' begins track two. A man’s voice recounts “Summertime, you know, all tired and shit, sleep under my eyes, lookin’ at myself in the mirror… who’s that? Anyways, I’m one of a kind. Well… people like me are one of a kind. When life gives us lemons, we just take in the essence… Anyway, don’t look back, don’t look back, keep drivin’, know what I’m saying? Leave the sourness behind… Leave it to the streets. That’s it. O-T-S-S. Only the strongest survive. Honda, baby!” From there, it’s easy to get lost in the entrancing beats that make up the rest of CAPRISONGS. Rumbling waves of late night afro rhythms, hip-hop, r&b & soul, chanted choral backgrounds, auto tuned wails dancing intertwined with frail falsetto, Twigs shapeshifts her way through beats & breaks, interlacing bangers with spoken word interludes, cassette tape clicks & hisses, transporting you to HER world, a capricorn sun, an artist in charge.

       I fell in love with this album way back in snowy January, the kind of tropical transportation I needed to escape my winter unemployment reality. My littlest sister had texted me a long, sweet text about life & growing up and then she followed it up with “and maybe more importantly, FKA twigs new album is mindblowing.” These are the kind of connections I look for in music, sharing songs & albums with friends & family & loved ones, bonding over “THIS SONG” or “I can’t wait for the new album” or “Let’s definitely go see her next time she comes to Denver!” CAPRISONGS is a slithery masterpiece, rewarding on multiple listens, equally strong as wintry background heaters or summer party bangers. FKA twigs is building a monster discography (I hear “Cellophane” is killing it on tik tok right now?!) and CAPRISONGS is as much fun as you’ll have dancing in the kitchen late at night this year. If you missed it when it came out a year ago, go get it now!

       “This is for the hard dreamers / been sad for a while / All the indigo & lightbeamers / been sad for a while…" 

*

FLORENCE + THE MACHINE   /   Dance Fever

       Of all the inevitably titled “covid albums” written or made during lockdown during the global pandemic, Florence Welch’s Dance Fever has my favorite origin story and most direct & literal writing about what it was like for those of us who lost live music. I relate 100% to the opening of “Choreomania'' where Welch deadpans “I am freaking out in the middle of the street, with the complete conviction of someone who’s never had anything actually really bad happen to them.” Before covid, live music was my outlet, my drug, the one place where I felt like myself. During covid, I felt so lucky in my situation (an introvert who actually enjoyed lockdown haha, I kept my job, didn’t lose anyone, lived my life completely unscathed by the pandemic) but I would bemoan to close friends my “loss” of live music. I felt a hole in my life, an essential part of my life, my joy, was ripped away. Florence addresses this idea directly on Dance Fever as she struggles with herself, questioning her career, her “addiction” to performing, and the kind of deep, deep questions I dealt with this last year. The kind of questions that have potential to rip your life apart and destroy everything you love, but open up your future to unfathomable, life fulfilling possibilities. If that sounds a tad over dramatic… well, it’s Florence + The Machine! She’s built her career, cult fanbase & self-mythology on the melodramatic overdramatic… So let's dive in!

       Dance Fever is a loose concept record about the dancing plague (or Choreomania, derived from Greek “Choros” meaning dance and “Mania” meaning madness) that struck Europe in the 1300-1500’s where hundreds or thousands of people, would take to the streets and dance erratically, sometimes to exhaustion and even death. It is one of the fascinating, horrifying google history rabbit-hole kinda things that keeps you up at night, but Florence is no stranger to cult-like dance events. Her brooding opener “King” starts exactly where any important pandemic record should start “We argue in the kitchen about whether to have children, about the world ending and the scale of my ambition, and how much is art really worth?” Welch states bluntly. Dance Fever gives us a sometimes unsettling glimpse into Florence’s private turmoil through the most personal, autobiographical writing of her nearly 15 year career. Florence feels vulnerable here “I was never as good as I always thought I was” and “what strange claws are these scratching at my skin, I never knew my killer would be coming from within” but she needs to work these feelings out in songs, she “needs to go to war to find material to sing” and by the end of the first five minutes “King” explodes with defiant self confidence. Make no mistake, with all her inner struggles, Florence is still a force; a woman finding herself, a changeling, a shapeshifter, a superstar artist belting “I am no mother, I am no bride, I am KING.” Sooo… I guess she’s not having kids then. I shiver every time I hear her sing that line so matter-of-factly, like your friend telling you she’s figured out the secret to herself.  In case there was any doubt about the inner turmoil and where it would leave her, Welch whispers out the ending over soft harp strums “I was never satisfied, it never let me go… Just dragged me by my hair and back on with the show…” Was this her cold hearted decision, or some demon or angel inside her, something that great artists have that forces them to create? From there, her choice to sing & dance & perform gets easier. “Free” is the most Antonoff-y of the bunch, with a huge, bubbling chorus and the simple refrain of “I hear the music, I feel the beat, and for a moment when I’m dancing, I am free!” The quiet centerpiece of the record “Girls Against God” is a masterclass in writing that makes me cry & laugh in equal amounts. The funny (“I listen to music from 2006 and feel kinda sick” and “in my darkest fantasies, I am the picture of passivity. Waiting for you side of stage, suppressing all my private rage, but as my sister said… I’D PROBABLY LAST SIX DAYS”) are seriously laugh out loud funny, but the depth of “I know I may not look like much, just another screaming speck of dust” and “I met the devil, you know he gave me a choice… A golden heart or a golden voice” gives the listener a completely explicit glimpse into Florence’s brain & heart. Deadly. Florence sacrifices herself for these songs (perhaps overdramatically, but like I said, It’s Florence + The Machine!) many times over, like in “Heaven is Here” (which made an absolutely fantastic concert/cult ritual opener) where she confides “every song I wrote became an escape rope, tied around my neck to pull me up to heaven” and gorgeous closer “Morning Elvis'' (which she sang with Ethel Cain in Denver, a true favorite live music moment of 2022!) where she bemoans “after every tour I swear I’ll quit, it’s over boys now this is it, but the songs like children beggin’ to be born…” So let’s close by talking about the cult-ritu-errr, live show!

       On October 1, I walked the Platte River bike path in a gorgeously warm, t-shirt autumn sunset, to Ball Arena, to the choreomania dance party, ren faire magnificence that is a Florence + The Machine show. The setlist was perfect, Florence is the one of the most physically impressive live performers I’ve ever seen (she ran the length of the arena floor, sprinting barefoot, whipping the crowd into a frenzy of sweat & love. Six songs in they played “Dog Days” and half way through the song Florence took time to talk saying 

       “Hello to anyone who is joining us for the first time! It’s quite an intense experience. And then, to anyone out there who may have been brought along. Or who is chaperoning someone, and you’re wondering… ‘what the fuck is this?!’ Is it a cult?! Is it some kind of massive, haunted house experience?! Is it some kind of British, pagan dance ritual?! Am I safe?! Well all I can say to anyone who has been brought along is… It’s really so much better if you just give in to it! Like really give in. And I promise that if you just do every single thing that I say… You’ll be absolutely fine! So the first thing I’m going to do Denver, is I’m going to need every single person in this arena to put their phones AWAY! And if you all can help me out, take a look to your left and right and if you see anyone with their phone out I want you to very politely -and you can use a british accent I won’t be offended- say, excuse me please would you mind putting your phone away so that we can have a collective experience! Now that they’re all gone.. IS EVERYBODY FREE?! We all spend so much time on screens and separated from each other, so now I want you to tell each other that YOU LOVE EACH OTHER! TELL EACH OTHER THAT YOU MISS EACH OTHER! You do not need to share or post this moment, BE HERE NOW WITH THE PEOPLE THAT YOU CAME WITH, WITH THE PEOPLE THAT YOU LOVE!” 

       I cried, I laughed, I hugged new friends, I told strangers I loved them, and then we all danced together. Choreomania? Dance Fever? It may be slightly overdramatic, but that’s pretty much all I want.

       “What a thing to admit / that when someone looks at me with real love / I don’t like it very much / kinda makes me feel like I’m being crushed / is this something that you would like to discuss? / and it’s good to be alive / crying into cereal at midnight / if they ever let me out / I’m gonna really let it out…”

*

JEAN DAWSON   /   CHAOS NOW*

       I honestly don’t remember where, when or who I heard about Jean Dawson from (or why the hell I hadn’t heard of him until this year?!), but once I heard his lilting, lonesome single “PIRATE RADIO*” (all the songs on CHAOS NOW* are stylized “CAPS LOCKasterisk”) in late September, I was 100% hooked. Especially when contrasted with the ballistic, ferocious, singalong rage of “SICK OF IT*” which was released two weeks later, Jean Dawson’s third album CHAOS NOW* is the sound of an artist about to take over the world. If you read all the reviews, interviews and think pieces about Jean Dawson, they all talk about the way he smashes and melds genres, sometimes in the same song, in the same verse. He pulls from punk, hardcore, hip hop, rap, grunge, emo, goth, pop, etc… But instead of talking about who or what he sounds like, I want to talk about what makes Jean Dawson so special. A true student of music, Dawson grew up on thrift store CDs, limewire and youtube ripped mp3s on his ipod, listening to everything on long bus rides between Sinaloa, MX (where his mother is from and where he grew up) and San Diego, CA (where his father is from and where he went to school). He practiced piano at Guitar Center as a teen because he didn’t own one. Now he makes the most gigantic, out-sized bedroom rock & roll you’ve ever heard. You can feel his youthful energy exploding out the speakers on nearly every song on CHAOS NOW*. Whether he’s channeling early 2000’s acoustic pop-punk on the bouncy “GLORY*” teaming with Earl Sweatshirt on the sweet, string symphony, stomp folk of “BAD FRUIT*” (which could honestly pass for Viva La Vida era Coldplay, remember Jay-Z had a verse on “Lost+”?!) or channeling the glory days of rap-rock on the thrashing “0-HEROES*.”

       When I tell people about the music that I love (like really, truly, deeply, lifetime love) it’s sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly what it is about it that makes me love it so much. Most often, it has to do with lyrics. When a writer is able to put into words exactly what I’m feeling. The feeling of being understood, like the writer is seeing the world exactly like me. Like we both “get it.” But there is also an energy to the music. The final piece of the puzzle fits when we get the chance to celebrate the songs and the feelings together. In the same space (a sacred space) with like minded people who “get it” too. A release, a drug. For me, it’s the most important thing worth chasing. It’s why I quit my job a year and a half ago and tried to find my way in music. Well, I got that chance with Jean at Cervantes in October, and it was absolute magic. Lost in a crowd that pulsed & lifted, sweated & shifted; moving as one, screaming as one, echoing Jean… Being together… This album, like so many of the albums on this list, needs to be experienced live. When Jean released CHAOS NOW* he wrote this about his masterpiece: “I’ve been trying to put this album into simple terms and sentences but the more I try the harder it becomes because it’s simply not simple. It is a love letter to all the children that will grow up to change fractions of the world for the result of a greater whole. I hold no lofty ideals on music making rather I wish to serve as a proverbial sludge hammer to doors that have been left locked for kids that not only look like me but feel like me. Music making has been the greatest gift I’ve been given so far that I give you all of me / every emotion every splinter in my step / feel free to use me as a mirror to see you if you wish. I hope to share moments with you / to be a minor theme for your laughs / yells / cries and everything in between. I’m growing up in your eyes, ears and arms. With this little time we have on this big blue green rock I hope that it is well spent with those you love and no fear under your chest !GO FOR IT! CHAOS NOW*”

       “I’m sick of it / on the cliff / nosedive / I’m the new black oblivion / off the shit / over it / live & die with my motherfucking happines…”

*

MUNA   /   MUNA

       I can still picture the exact date, time & place that I really fell in love with Muna’s absolute banger-filled, self-titled, third album. It was a gloriously golden midwest morning, August 4, 2022. I was driving an hour into St. Charles, Iowa to volunteer on set-up crew at the Hinterland Music Festival. Driving past endless corn fields and sweating out a hangover from the night before. I picked an album from one of the artists I had kinda forgotten was playing HInterland. Muna’s huge singalong, dance-along pop songs hit me like a jump into a ice cold Summer lake and I was hooked. 

       Of course I’d been blasting the Phoebe Bridgers-assisted, late 90’s/early 2000’s feel good gay rom-com first single “Silk Chiffon” since late 2021, but the rest of the album matches the opener’s energy. These are mega-huge pop-songs, club ready, sung confidently, and played with a hella good full band. Fast forward three days and I’m dancing, singing & sweating it out in the pit to my first Muna set at Hinterlands. It was everything. Phoebe came bouncing out to sing her “Silk Chiffon” verse of course, they covered “Mr. Brightside,” they were perfect. Fast forward two weeks and I made this Muna playlist and basically learned all the lyrics.

       Fast forward-forward two months and I’m back in the pit with Muna at the Gothic Theatre here in Denver, screaming & dancing & sweating & crying & laughing with the teenagers & the queer kids. So, what’s so special about this album you ask? Maybe part of it has to do with me needing a “break up” album for the first time in a long time. From the positive, work-hard-make-myself-better pulse of leaving/running anthem “Runner’s High,” to the regret vs. growth ache and deep thinking of “Home By Now” (bonus, it’s really, really fun to scream “why is it so hot in LA in late October?!”) It seemed like this album is full of lyrics that hit home, sung to melodies that really stick. When I looked at my spotify wrapped in December, it wasn’t really a surprise that the song I played and sang the most in 2022 is the emotional, power ballad “Kind Of Girl.” The Sheryl Crow-meets-Oasis, acoustic steamroller “Kind Of Girl.” is essentially a self-care manifesto. A morning wake up challenge and maybe my favorite vocal performance of any song this year. I talk about lyrics a lot in these reviews, and “Kind Of Girl” (and really this whole album) felt like the lyrics I needed, right when I needed them. Writing about being yourself, owning your choices and life direction, being proud of who you are, and working to change what you wanna change. It’s powerful, powerful stuff. For girls (and anybody!) who’s been told they’re “too much” or “scary” or ‘you’re taking things too far and pressing too hard” join me in rolling my window down on Downing St., in the late Summer morning air and sing with Katie “I could get up tomorrow, talk to myself real gentle, work in the garden.” then the ending that matters most, “Yeah I like telling stories, but I don’t have to write them in ink… I could still change the end…” An ellipsis that leads to a future life. Go make your own decisions. Take charge of your life. Don’t be afraid to change the end. 

       “Have you ever heard about how when a person’s in a maze? / they will tend to walk in circles thinking they are going straight / they can’t see the bigger picture, so they get stuck in a loop / in the end, I was afraid that that’s what you & I would do / but I still have my moments / where every reason feels a lot like an excuse / I wanna ask you / would we have turned a corner if I had waited? / do I need to lower my expectations / if we’d kept heading the same direction / would we be home by now?...”

*

OPEN MIKE EAGLE   /   Component System with the Auto Reverse

       Back in October, when Larimer Lounge booked Los Angeles by way of Chicago rapper Open Mike Eagle for January 8, 2023, my closest co-worker and #1 music recommender told me I really needed to listen to Michael W. Eagle II. Conveniently, he had a new album dropping the same day we announced the show titled Component System with the Auto Reverse. Two songs in and I knew this album would end up on my end of the year favorites list. This is thoughtful, “elegant-rap” a masterclass from an emcee at the top of his game. Open MIke coined the genre-term (you know I love genre-terms!) “art-rap” at the start of his career in 2010 and it fits, although he bemoans it on the career questioning “I Retired Then I changed My Mind” laughing “I conjured up a gremlin, how do I get rid of you? / ‘what the fuck is art-rap?’ in every damn interview.” To me, it is the humor Open Mike infuses with the deep, life questioning queries, that makes Component System special. He makes me laugh out loud, like in the intro to the woozy “Circuit City” when he drawls “I’m a brand new man doing the same dance / it only seems confusing because I changed pants.” or the banging closer when he raps “I play the wall like a special titan, I ain’t a wizard but I wrestle like him / The only wand I know detects metal items.” The pop culture references (both popular & obscure) are everywhere on these songs. Bill Cartwright, The Pharcyde, Quelle Chris, The Bushwhackers, Big Bird, Golden Girls, Among Us, Scott Rogowsky, Biz Markie, the list goes on. Most notable is Open Mike’s tribute to the late great MF DOOM simply titled “For DOOM.” An inspired, two minute glimpse into how heroes can mold you into who you are. 

       Like Open MIke, I grew up making my own mixtapes. Not the fancy kind, I didn’t have the tape system with the auto reverse, but I made myself mixtapes of my favorite christian rock songs for the tape player in my 1993 Subaru Outback. When I got a laptop in college I graduated to mix cds (I kept calling them mixtapes though!) and would make them meticulously for friends and family (and myself!), for special occasions, seasons, & secrets. I would rip youtube mp3s of clips from our favorite TV shows, funny vines, or quotes that were important. Finding any of those mixtapes now is like a window into who I was, who I was growing up to be. In the same way, this mixtape from Open Mike feels like a portal into his world. Who he is, what he worries about, what makes him laugh, who he is growing up to be. A brand new man doing the same dance. 

       “I still got the same worldview / a brain full of old school rules / and memories like flesh wounds / the cure isn’t in a test tube / it’s the sound of my son belly laughing in the next room…”

*

ORVILLE PECK   /   Bronco

       To be honest, I did not expect to love Orville Peck’s sophomore album Bronco as much as I do. I had his debut album Pony (get it?) on my 2019 favorite albums list and I said I loved it for its “shoegaze, tumbleweed rumble and sweeping western imagery.” I saw Orville a few times over the last couple years at Mission Ballroom and then Red Rocks, as his legend grew and I had been absolutely blown away by his stage presence. Orville’s origin story is the stuff of legends by now. Gay drummer for Canadian punk band dreams up an even gayer cowboy alter ego and conceals his identity with a fancy fringed mask! Suits get fancier, friends get famous-er, stages get bigger, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Miami, Orville Peck is now a superstar. The thing about all the fringe & feathers & glitter & rhinestones is, none of it would work if the songs weren’t good. On Bronco, Orville has doubled down on his classic songwriting, attention demanding voice, and storyteller’s heart. He ditches a few of the tumbleweeds and some of the lonely cowboy vibes on Bronco in favor of more polished, big stage, big lights, big city performances. But the melodies, the lyrics, the way the songs pick up and just go, is pure country songwriting. I fell in love with Bronco thanks to my ex-partner Lila’s love of his songs & his persona. When I hear these songs, all I hear is her; working from home, headphones in, belting lyrics in an exaggerated Orville delivery, happy & oblivious to anyone who may be listening. We fell in love with Bronco together and wore it out during a couple days of long drives in the midwest in the Summer of 2022. No matter what, I hold those moments close and think of them and her everytime I listen to these songs. That’s what music does and I couldn’t fight it even if I wanted to. Music marks time & space. 

       Bronco starts as far from where Pony started as possible. It’s been three years and a lot of stages, and where Pony started as slow and dark as Orville gets (“the sun goes down, another dreamless night”) Bronco kicks in with rhythmic guitar, fast rolling drums, and hot, blond surfer boys on the beach in Daytona. By the time the swoon-worthy croon of  “The Curse of the Blackened Eye” hits its stride, it’s clear that Orville is crafting songs his way. His choruses are bigger & catchier, his instrumentation is simple & direct, these melodies & lyrics are strong enough to stand on their own. They ride on Orville’s commanding voice and storytelling theatrics. He sneaks in a Tanya Tucker reference in the uptempo “Lafayette'' and his geographical mile markers journey this album from the West (Malibu, Mendocino, The PCH, The Hexie Mountains, Mulholland, Denver, Reno, the Badlands) to the South (Mississippi, the bayou, Daytona) to the northeast sun and all the way across the sea (Bez Valley, Sofiatown, the Kalahari, Johannesburg, The Thames & Waterloo). As with many country artists, the thing that has always set Orville Peck apart, is his golden voice. Instantly recognizable, his melodies sung in a way only he can sing them. The real magic in the story of Orville Peck, is his ability to simply be himself. Our country & culture is currently waging an all-out war on queer kids (from attempting to ban all things trans-affirming to don’t-say-gay laws etc…) and as always happens in dark times, we turn to artists to rebel and to speak truth. Orville shines a light, a larger than life queer cowboy. Queer country has been a theme on this list (from Adeem to Clementine to Orville to keep reading cuz you’re gonna love Willi Carlisle!) and I think about how much that would’ve meant to some of the kids I grew up with in rural western Colorado. Now more than ever we need our Orvilles. I think about the people I love to sing songs with. I think about the people who make you feel like yourself and how valuable that is. Find those people, hold onto those people, be yourself around them and never change. Finally, I think about singing these songs with Lila. I imagine years from now, walking into some dark, dusty dive bar on the outskirts of Denver. It’s karaoke night, or a drag show, or a wednesday. The singer is tall & strong; commanding your attention. The jukebox is blaring Orville, pedal steel whining, drums rolling. The singer is dressed like Orville (well, maybe the South Broadway Goodwill version of Orville) but they look good. They step to the mic and look around and then the music pauses before kicking in “Hurry over and cry Lafayette!” They command the bar, they demand your attention. Maybe it is Orville. He played last night in Salt Lake after all. You try to look at the eyes behind the mask, but it doesn’t really matter cuz the songs sound so good. You order a Tecate and a shot of Jamo. You move across the floor and start to sing along. The music fills you up and you feel like yourself. The sun goes down. The show goes on. The songs will always be there. 

       “I don’t want you to be afraid / let me see you cry / oh I, I got an hour or so / take my hand and let it go / call me up anytime / c’mon baby cry / I can tell you’re a sad boy just like me…”

*

OTOBOKE BEAVER   /   Super Champon

       Another 2022 live music highlight for me, was the opportunity to work side-stage security for Otoboke Beaver at their sold out show at Globe Hall back in October. I knew they were a big deal, but I hadn’t really been able to give their album a full listen, mostly due to it being… a little fast-paced and abrasive vs. my normal listening habits haha. When I finally dug in a couple of days before the show, I knew I was in for a treat. This is blisteringly, breakneck fast, Japanese punk; with a fun, tongue in cheek approach. Otoboke Beaver formed in Kyoto way back in 2009, and Super Champon is their third album. “Champon” is a Japanese noun that translates to a hodgepodge or a jumble. Indeed, these 18 songs (lasting just over 21 minutes!) bounce around and change direction so fast, that it’s almost easier to listen to the album as one whole “super jumble” song! The women of Otoboke Beaver (Accorinrin, Yoyoyoshie, Hirochan & Kahokiss) challenge gender norms in classic Punk fashion with “I am not maternal,” “I won’t dish out salads” & “You’re no hero shut up f*ck you man-whore.” The former is the opening track and finds Accorinrin challenging her maternal instincts, a rough translation of the lyrics is “I love dogs! I’ll deliver a puppy but not a baby!” Second track “Yakitori” (perhaps the catchiest, bounciest riff & melody on the album) abruptly cascades into a wall of sound & fury with Accorinrin screaming “Destroy!” Otoboke maximizes the entirety of Super Champon (only two songs run over two minutes) with super tight, technical riffs, punishing drums, and a relentless energy that pinballs between anger & humor. There are no contradictions in the world of Super Champon (even when the song is called “Leave me alone! No, stay with me!”) Instead, Otoboke thrive in the chaos & calamity, letting contradicting feelings co-exist, laughing at pain, and good naturedly calling out those who need calling out. But it is very clear from both the album and their live show, that they take no shit. Finally, from the steps side-stage at Globe Hall (the place where I’ve grown with other linernotes&seasons favs Charley Crockett, Liza Anne, Lucy Dacus, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Arlo Parks, the list goes on and on!) I got to see one of my favorite live shows I’ve ever seen. Otoboke are as deliriously fun on stage as they are on album, instigating the crowd, stirring up the pit, crowd surfing with guitars, posing with each other, and clearly having the time of their lives. Otoboke Beaver is already on their way to bigger stages here in the US (see y'all at the Bluebird!) but if you can’t make it to their live show, take 21 minutes and blast Super Champon for your next rage room session or dance party! 

       “A tenacious, sulky, troublesome ass / fallen in love with falling in love / i have no time to waste on you / looking for a one night stand / abso-fucking-lutely out of the question / you dirty old fart!”

*

PINKSHIFT   /   Love Me Forever

       Baltimore’s PInkshift has a charmingly unlikely origin story for a punk rock band. Three east coast kids with immigrant parents, meeting at Johns Hopkins University, bonding over a love of NIrvana, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Foo FIghters & No Doubt. Singer Ashrita Kumar & guitarist Paul Vallejo recruited drummer Myron Houngbedji when they heard him practicing “Helena” by My Chemical Romance in the Johns Hopkins music practice rooms. They consequently dropped their STEM majors in favor of dismantling the patriarchy with punk rock. Their debut album Love Me Forever reminds me of everything I loved about punk growing up. The drums are fast & hard, the riffs are huge, spiraling & diving, exploding into chugging rhythms and firework solos. Then there are Kumar’s vocals; attention demanding screams & shrieks, powerful yells, and throaty melodies delivered with the kind of sneer that drives home the anger, angst & uncertainty found in the lyrics. This isn’t your sugary Simple Plan, Good Charlotte pop-punk, this is modern punk, with heavy hints of grunge & alt-rock. Most of the reviews I read about Love Me Forever used words like “muscular” and “burly.” I had the privilege of working lead on PInkshft’s show here in Denver at Lost Lake in October, and it was, to put it emo-ly, a highlight of my year. I watched Kumar sit quietly, almost unnoticed at the corner of the bar, writing in their journal (maybe the beginnings of Pinkshift LP #2?!...) heard the rest of the touring party, polite and hardworking; load in, sound check, and as most touring bands who play Lost Lake do, run out for food. When PInkshift finally took the stage, it was like something unleashed. Vallejo & Houngbedji come out of their shells on stage, laughing & wild, clearly having the time of their lives. Kumar on the other hand is almost unrecognizable; a frenzy of energy, screaming & whirling, commanding the room. Punctuated by moments of meditation & calm. This is a band destined for bigger stages and wilder crowds. It’s also impossible to ignore the diversity on stage, a band led by kids of color, in genres that have, in my lifetime, been unfairly dominated by white males. At their show at Lost Lake, it was evident by the kids I saw in the crowd; diversity that can be hard to find at shows in Denver. A safe space, and one that Kumar referenced when they spoke from stage. They talked about a crowd that looked like them, about the band’s desire to create spaces like the sacred one at Lost Lake. I want to close with the last paragraph I wrote on instagram. It’s where I directed most of my creative writing this year, and it encapsulates the feelings I felt after one of my favorite shows of the year. Walking out onto Colfax after hanging with Pinkshift. “This is it. This is the future. The world is ending. We’re all dying. Soon. Scream about it. Feel it rise from your gut to your lungs, in your chest, in your mouth. Scream it out. Together. Throw yourself into the pit. Smile & laugh & bruise your body. Wake up sore. Sing along if you know the words. Thank you PInkshift. This one was special.”

       “Sometimes I dream a perfect dream / where I return back to a place / where I was born in the garden of a soul / in the garden I was born…”

*

QUINN CHRISTOPHERSON   /   Write Your Name In PInk

       It was nearly four years ago when Alaskan songwriter Quinn Christopherson took my music world by storm with his tear-jerking masterpiece “Erase Me.” Against an austere Anchorage Museum backdrop, Quinn screamed his heart out (at times delightfully irreverent) in a queer anthem. For the next few years, I wore out “Erase Me” and secret fav “Raedeen” (the sweetly dark family story full of details both cheerful & nauseating). After that, Quinn hunkered down in Alaska and disappeared for a few years. When “lead” single “Bubblegum” finally dropped in Fall 2021, I knew this collection of songs was gonna be special. Truthfully, I knew before that; when I started following little snippets of Quinn’s life via social media and felt the way I always feel finding a new artist to love. I love the way he writes about life, I love the way he includes all the mundane, seemingly meaningless details and I love the way Alaska permeates his writing. When I listen, I feel like I’m there. Most of all, I love the way he writes about family. Parents, siblings, spouses, cousins, nephews, they are all central characters in his songs. When he finally released Write Your Name In Pink (his official debut album) he wrote 

       “I’m insanely proud of this record. I put in pride for my family, empathy for our past, recognition of growth, and most of all Native & Queer joy & hope. God I hope you like it.”

   ��   Since then, it has been a delight to sink into Quinn’s writing. His voice matches his lyrics so well, soft & purposeful, cheery at the edges, you can almost hear his smile sometimes. Musically, Write Your Name In Pink glows with synth washes, gentle drum pads and moody vocal swells that build the songs from whisper beginnings to sing along outros (see powerful opener “Thanks” that closes with Quinn wailing “I don’t know what I was looking for, but I knew when I found you!” over & over over stately strings and swirling vocals). Although most of the songs sit easily in an indie-pop groove, Quinn’s lyrics scream out with all the details of a life lived, an open door into the world of an artist who really, truly cares. Of course, there are all my favorite small details. Crushing spiders, fixing up a home, nephews in school, Jackets & bikes, carving your names into trees, rollerblades, tiramisu, puka shells, puffer vests, the list goes on. Some are Alaska specific, most are things that all of us recognize. Deeper than that, Write Your Name finds Christopherson digging into his own mind, trying to be better, trying to grow. In “Bubblegum” he grows up along with us (from 6 to 17 to 21 to 23 to 25 to 26…) facing his vices, his changes, all the while repeating “I don’t know who I am.” Later, in the pulsing pop of “Uptown” he indulges in drugs & alcohol, all the while repeating “I don’t like who I am.” Quinn writes in a way that matters to me. He tells his stories, deeply & lightly, in a way that makes me feel like I’m his friend. To listen to this album, to pay attention to his songs, is to share in that friendship. To understand someone and to feel understood. That if we were to meet and talk, Quinn would understand me. We’d already be friends after all. We would jump on the trampoline and eat oats and talk about Celine Dion. These are the kind of albums that I’ll hold onto. Friends in music forever. 

“I hope the kids we raise are ambitious, don’t play it safe / have a lot to say, live a long life and get paid / I hope they don’t grow up too fast / travel the world & come back / realize it’s who you’re with, not where you’re at / I hope they dye their hair & get tattoos / are a good sport with a good attitude / I hope they remind me of you…”

*

R.A.P. FERREIRA   /  5 to the Eye with Stars

       R.A.P. Ferreira was another co-worker recommendation, a Wisconsin rapper I was unfamiliar with till this year. Then we had the opportunity to see him live at my favorite small venue that I don’t work at (love you Hi-Dive!) and these songs cemented themselves as friends for life. Rory Alan Philip Ferreira has released a ton of music under multiple different names & projects (including milo & Scallops Hotel) over the last 13 years. Featuring on songs with Open Mike Eagle, Armand Hammer, Busdriver & Anderson Paak and creating his own record label, Ruby Yacht. Stylistically similar to Open MIke, Ferreira’s laid back, lackadaisical delivery is delightfully nimble, dancing between silly & melancholy, chuckling at himself, and dancing all over varied adjectives. His beats are more minimal than Open Mike, soft jazzy brushes & piano, lo-fi-diy noise, static synths squeaking to life, laying a babbling brook of calming sounds for Ferreira to rap over. Lyrically, Ferreira is an elegant wordsmith. He shows off his midwest magic (having lived in Wisconsin, Maine, Tennessee & LA) and blends seemingly random household objects (a meyer lemon, a tiny lamp, a tin of altoids, a Hydro flask, a spark plug) with cosmic ideas both thought provoking, challenging & comforting. LIttered with lines to hold onto, Ferreira is childlike in his innocence (“first fear was vanquished / first fortress was made of blankets”) and scholarly in his thought (“I wrote this rap to make the sunrise”). The emotional center of the record, the brooding “mythsysizer instinct” features Hemlock Ernst (the rap alter-ego of Future Islands frontman Samuel T. Herring who released a rap album on Ferreira’s Ruby Yacht label) crooning over warbly synths and Ferreira’s most direct mental health advice as he says “My sadness a hound dog and he creeps beside me.” This thread of songwriting is deep within me and I’ve touched on it a few times over the years. In Arlo Parks’ “Black Dog” (off of last years’ fav Collapsed in Sunbeams) or Josh Ritter’s The Beast in Its Tracks from way back in 2013, I’ve clung to the medicinal magic of these songs that acknowledge the hound dog of sadness creeping beside you, always there, an ache under the surface; how to befriend it, how to live with it, how to move on. This is powerful stuff from R.A.P. Ferreira and his poetry across 5 to the Eye with Stars is not to be missed. LIke he says on the horn assisted, late night AM radio jazz of opener “fighting back” “I know it’s epic poetry that keeps the cosmos orbiting…” Epic poetry indeed Rory. 

“I find myself a leaky faucet and get to wrenchin’ / the word’s henchman / bench pressin’ sunrises / sometimes it’s overwhelming to be helming the creation of everything / or so I imagine / true magic at my fingertips / down to the wingtips / down to the creases / down to the meat & potatoes / down to the beaten cables / down to the streets & fables / and deeper still, you gotta be for real…”

*

RAVEENA   /   Asha’s Awakening

       Picture if you will, the seeds of an epic idea. A late 20’s mega-talented pop musician has a wild idea for a concept album. She plans to blend her Punjab Indian heritage with her Queens, NY upbringing. She will recruit some of her all time favorite musicians (both Indian and otherwise!), she will use authentic Indian instruments, mixed with modern pop production, r&b, disco and early 2000’s hip hop. She will dive into her favorite influences like Bollywood soundtracks from the 70’s, Timbaland, Alice Coltrane, & M.I.A. Oh yeah, she also loves kitschy sci-fi so the lyrics will recount a story straight from her sci-fi novel about a Punjab space princess named Asha (translates to “desire”) exploring space & time, love & loss, discovering her sexuality, new ideas & new planets! It’s a lot of space to cover, but Raveena’s songwriting is intoxicating, sexual, and expressive, and Asha’s Awakening blooms with her singular style & vision. Raveena’s parents immigrated to the US in the 80’s from Punjab, India to escape anti-sikh riots, and her heritage is not only present but celebrated in the story of Asha. She blends all her influences so cohesively, that her album comes out sounding exactly like the mix that would be blasting on whatever futuristic music player Asha might be bumping in her spaceship!

       My favorite thing about Asha’s Awakening is how creatively it world builds, how openly Raveena invites you into her spaces and how gorgeously meditative & invigorating these songs are when you really give them your full attention. Raveena uses authentic Indian instruments like the tabla, bulbul turang, bansuri flute, swarmandal and sitar. She features some incredible Indian musicians like Rostam & Asha Puthli (oh and also Vince Staples and TWEAKS!) giving the album a modern/futuristic feel. Finally, she layers ambient sounds; bells, chimes & bird chirps that really make you feel like, as she describes “stepping into an Indian garden at 6am on a Summer day.” Some of my personal musical touch points for the first half of the album are the upbeat dance pop of Caroline Rose, or the less guitar-y, more glitch poppy side of Hippo Campus. I can’t hear “Time Flies” without thinking of the laid back pop, complex & intricate instrumentation, and aching vocals of Texas band Sun June (a real linernotes&seasons deep fav). After the spoken word interlude “The Internet Is Like Eating Plastic” the second half of the album is far more meditative and laid back. Yes, there are spoken word pieces, breathing exercises, and a meditative 13+ minute closer! Of all the albums on this list, Asha’s Awakening is the one I would most recommend getting lost in. Play it start-to-finish with good headphones. Let your mind wander space & time. Let it create visions of pink flowers as big as planets and spaceships with headlights like disco balls. Let your body sink into the sensual & relaxing rhythms. Let both your body & brain be expanded and give in to Asha’s world. When you get to the end of the album, Raveena will leave you with a reminder, “Remember that this space of unconditional love and this protective field of light is always here for you to return to…”

       “She wants to follow me to valleys in Kathmandu / She wants to fuck & trip & eat them flowers ‘til she ain’t blue…”

*

SADURN   /   Radiator

       The story behind the creation of Radiator; Philly bedroom-folk outfit Sadurn’s debut full length, is as sweet & magical as the songs on the album itself. With a batch of bandleader and primary songwriter Genevieve DeGroot’s songs to record, and covid making normal studio adventures challenging; the four friends that form Sadurn holed up in a cabin in the Poconos for the ultimate quarantine adventure! “It was kind of just a house” DeGroot admits  “We call it ‘the cabin’ but it was just an airbnb that had some wood paneling” With a backstory like Bon Iver’s For Emma (but with friends!), it’s like you can feel the warm camaraderie of the band spilling out all over the songs that make up Radiator. They tell stories of blanket forts in the loft, the control room set up in a bedroom (so they could listen to takes together, all four snuggled in bed) and drummer Amelia Swain says “When I listen to the album, I get this wash of memories of how it felt to be finally back together again with my friends. It makes me remember how good it felt to be together. To have a sense of belonging - I really can hear that in the music.” Stories like this, friendship like this, really can be heard in the music. From Typhoons’ magical recording-session-camp-out-fort-fest way back in 2013 (that produced one of my favorite albums of all time White Lighter) to Big Thief’s lightning-storm-creek-dip-forehead-to-forehead playing on their records, friendship & camaraderie can be felt through the radio waves. Radiator is not just an album made by friends, it’s inviting YOU to be a friend too!

       The songs on Radiator are soft & secret, unhurried & present. The kind of songs that can be passed over, like street art that someone in a rush doesn’t notice. Degroot spoke of their desire to keep the “lo-fi” aspect that the members of Sadurn had worked hard to create, and the recordings on Radiator are perfect. LIke you’re in a room with just the band, listening to them tell you their stories. Opener “snake” builds from Degroot’s whispered intro “Honey, I was wrong…” (could that be the greatest intro lyric to a break up album ever?!) to a measured garage-y rock. An inward-looking break-up song, with hope at the end (gulp, maybe what I needed this year?). Degroot masterfully tells us about what they’re working on in the aftermath, but closes with 

       “I want you to know that I’ll be holding that line and I believe in all your mercy / and in the weight of the tide as it is pulling you back towards me / you know that I am always yours if you’ll still have me / though you’re tired from that long walk over the chasm / but my idea of love is that it’s lasting…” 

       In fact, most of the songs on Radiator seem to take place in the months (or years) after a break up, as Degroot also plays with time a bit (“I watched a whole forest grow from seeds, before you got up…” on the magnetic & measured “golden arm”). Echoing my own inner turmoil, there are the everpresent, contradictory ideas of going back & moving forward, explained perfectly as “going our separate ways but just in the same direction” on the upbeat indie-rock of “special power.” Through it all, Degroot handles their heartbreak with a gentle, thoughtful ease. There are moments of crying in the shower, “carefully built boundaries,” and hard goodbyes (like on the gentle, fingerpicked “moses kill” that instantly recalls Adrianne Lenker of Big Thief’s solo work). Degroot is clearly doing the mental work to grow, and their friends are right alongside, imbuing what could be a cloudy gray collection of songs with sunlight & flowers, hugs & tears & kisses. These songs have been playing in my headphones a lot as I walked around Cap Hill & Cheesman Park in Denver since October, working through my own relationship ending; and the light they create has been building a little home for me. A home where swirling, opposing ideas can talk it out in my brain. As Degroot would put it “It’s ok what I’m feeling, it’s alright if I’m crying / and maybe there’s some good coming, although I cannot find it / and I know that light humming on the back of my eyelids…”

       “Your mind is like a like a fishnet and mine is like an icepick / sometimes it’s not enough and sometimes I think it’s perfect / and I get so messed up cause I don’t know if it’s working / I’m standing by the window, I can’t wait to let the light in / I can’t wait to let the light in…”

*

SAMPA THE GREAT   /   As Above, So Below

       The common thread running through the heart of Sampa the Great’s sophomore album As Above, So Below, is her native country of Zambia. She spoke of how important it was for her to record the album in Zambia and have it produced by a team of Zambian producers. Sampa Tembo is a 29 year old singer & rapper born in Zambia; based more recently out of Botswana, then California & Australia. If you play through the album at full volume, you’ll see pretty quickly why she goes by Sampa the Great. In the midst of heavy beats, swirling psychedelia, ethereal choirs & live drums, Sampa grounds & threads every song with her singular voice. A compelling mix of live musicianship, A-list features, and entrancing & invigorating songwriting, Sampa is staking her claim as a modern voice to be reckoned with. Sampa takes control for most of these songs, both singing sweetly and rapping fiercely over rhythms & vocal washes both ancient & modern. She skips & bounces brightly over a gentle melody in “Tilibobo” then practically growls her verses out on the monstrous “Can I Live?” A raging highlight of the album, “Can I Live?” is a collaboration with legendary Zamrock band W.I.T.C.H. (who I was lucky enough to see live last year at Treefor Music Fest!) and it climbs from driving, jungle beats, led spiraling upward by Sampa’s dazzling verse, then proceeds to leap off the edge into fiery guitar psychedelic pyrotechnics. Zamrock is a genre born in Zambia, a blending of traditional African music with psychedelic rock & roll, blues & funk, and hearing it blending in seamlessly on a modern hip-hop album is delightful. The choice to record this album in her homeland was one that means a lot to Sampa, who came to prominence while based in Australia; and the choice to work with Zambian musicians & producers imbues her songs with an authenticity & vibrancy that explodes through speakers and sounds like, as Sampa would say, “my freest record yet.” She raps & sings in both English and the Zambian language Bemba, she blends modern hip hop production with authentic African instrumentation and she blends features from African legends W.I.T.C.H. & Angelique Kidjo with hip-hop powerhouses like Joey Bada$$ & Denzel Curry. Through it all, this is Sampa the Great’s album. A singular vision, a portal into an artist’s world & home. A journey to Zambia with Sampa the Great. 

       “All of this lineage, the journey / this spirit is funny / can’t replicate a shooting star / I can be hard / I can be soft / I can be everything uder the stars…”

*

TOMBERLIN   /   i don’t know who needs to hear this…

       I had a long and meaningful journey with the new Tomberlin record this year, and she ended up with 3 of my top 5 most played songs on the infamous spotify wrapped. I want to start by pointing out that this is the most perfectly sequenced record I can remember in the last few years. From the gorgeous soft brushes, juno synth, & jazzy touches of brooding opener “Easy,” to the peaceful rhythms of “Born Again Runner” & “Tap.” By the time we get to the heart of the record, the roaring guitar solo from Cass McCombs in the epic “Stoned” and the pulsing growl of “Happy Accident” it matches any album on this list for emotional heft. By the time the winter-morning-radiator-creak of “idkwntht” mumbles it’s way out gorgeously, this is a top five album of the year for me . Besides the sequencing and the gorgeous, understated musicality, Tomberlin’s writing here is stellar and she tackles all my favorite topics. She is 27, a Baptist preacher’s kid, so it’s no surprise that challenging religion is a theme (“Born Again Runner” is a masterpiece) but her move to New York has her writing about finding beauty in nature in the city (“I’m not a tree, I’m in a forest of buildings”) and magic & brain gardening (!) (just listen to all of “Sunstruck” and read the lyrics, it is an all-time classic for me). “Sunstruck” rides a quietly bubbly riff (like a small, indoor water feature) barely rising above a whisper, the kind of song I love, but one you could miss if you’re not paying attention. If you do listen closer you’ll be laid flat by the emotional weight, the deep truths about life decisions, and the simple metaphors about growing up, choosing to be alone, dealing with a breakup, and the work needed to discover who you really are. These have always been questions and struggles for me, but in 2023, it felt like there was nothing else. The entire record  has a calming simplicity to me (both musically & lyrically) and I really felt like growing with this record was like growing closer and getting to know a new friend. Who they are, what they like, what they’re afraid of, what deep questions they’re struggling with, what makes them truly happy, what makes them cry, what dumb things make them laugh, what little things they notice when they’re out walking, what they want out of life, what they want people to remember about them when they die...

       I was lucky enough to get to see my new “friend” in person twice this year, and both were wonderful & special. First, at Larimer Lounge back in June, while I was working, I was able to duck in and catch most of her set, when I hadn’t really listened to the record fully yet, and from that stage, I realized it was special. I wrote after that night 

       Tomberlin is hard at work building something magical. She’s “not tired / just wired for late nights staying up / reminding me I’m still alive.” She’s “looking for hope in a song or a run or a deep breath…” She “left behind some pain to get to the magic thing…” and this album & this live show is a magic thing. Special in ways that you have to listen & pay attention to. Like that warmth in the breeze. Like the smell of the rain. Like the change of the seasons…

       The second time I marked some time & space with this record was in Raleigh, North Carolina at Hopscotch Music Festival. A late night set at a packed Pour House. A sacred place I’ve wanted to visit for years. Sacred songs in sacred places. Safe against a sidewall, Tecate in hand, listening to Sarah Beth Tomberlin sing me stories of growing up. In moments like that, I’m lost & found and I honestly don’t think I’ll ever need anything more. Thank you for this record Tomberlin, I’ll keep this one close forever.

       "I went looking for myself by myself / and it wasn't close to easy, but it sure did help... / a year passes and some seeds take root / your garden is growing and mine's growing too / and the work's not always fun / but it's better than staring at the weeds & the mud / we left behind some pain / to get to the magic thing..."       

*

WALTER MARTIN   /   The Bear

       Perhaps no other album on this list spoke to me as deeply on the topic of growing older, as Walter Martin’s The Bear. In a year where I felt my age harder & realer than any year before, I think I was searching for writing just like this. The Bear was recommended to me by Will Sheff of long time fav Okkervil River, and after listening through (and probably crying and probably pouring myself a dark beer) I was blown away by Martin’s writing & musicianship. Musically, this is a true songwriter’s album, Martin recorded all the demos with just him and a guitar. He enlists some of my all-time favorite musicians Josh Kaufman (The National, Josh Ritter, The War on Drugs, Hiss Golden Messenger, a ton of other stuff!) Eric D, Johnson (Fruit Bats) and Sam Kassirer (Josh RItter) as well as Oscar-nominated composer Emile Mosseri. All this results in rich, jazzy flourishes enveloping Martin’s songs in fireplace wine & whiskey warmth. A lifer of a musician, Martin played in New York bands Jonathan Fire*Eater in the 90’s and The Walkmen in the 2000’s. He references that life a few times on the album (most notably on “The Bear” “I had a dream that I was in a mid-level rock&roll band, played every shithole night club across this entire land”) but it’s clear he lives a different, more rural life now. Wilderness abounds here; there are bears, crows, buffalo, foxes, evergreens, and ice & snow. But it is the wilderness in the recess of his aging mind that Martin chases so beautifully. There is the acknowledgement of growing older, of thinking about death (he talks about “trying to build a body of work that I’d be ok to be buried with”) and giving the listener a feeling of comfort & connection, 

       When Martin explains his writing on The Bear, he is direct, saying “These songs explain who I am and why I make this stuff.” I think most of us want to leave behind some sort of work or memory like this. To have people know you. Know who you really are and why you think like you do and why you make the stuff you do. Never is this more evident than on the achingly beautiful closer “The Song is Never Done” where Martin speaks deeply and honestly about his dreams & his family, about the morning sunlight and his life’s work. He talks of painters, his cousin, his children, eternity, the raging sea, the fallen tree, how he wants to be remembered, how he exists in circular time. He lets us in on a secret, he has been working for years on writing the perfect song (“No it’s not this one, it’s another one” he chuckles, making me chuckle and actually laugh out loud through my tears) and he encapsulates this feeling as “Cause then I will be fully known. And lonely won’t be so damn alone.” This is, to me, what I too am spending my own life working towards. It is what I spend my time & life in music for. There is a truth, there is a great happiness, there is a knowing of oneself. Underneath everything, there is recognition of a great sadness, a grand canyon of ache. But the right song, the morning light through the window, the way those drums and lap steel match up in a timeless rattle, can help us to celebrate that ache. To pull our pants on, brush our teeth, and face the day. To smile through our tears and not only face the world; but do good and pursue our life’s work. To get to know ourselves deeply and share that with others. To live another day. Because, like Martin points out, The song is never done…

       “Well there’s a big blind bear who roams this road late at night they say / you’ll see her in the shadows as she walks her lonely way… / so I sit here at my window where I dream someday she’ll pass / I see the rhododendrons I planted and I think how time moves so fast / like the moonlight & the electric light / projecting paisley patterns on the grass… / and I don’t know where my memories should go / good & bad I cherish them so… / I don’t know Lord, I don’t know / I don’t know how the story should end / and as I look up at that night sky, music begins / and stars are everywhere / come on, come on, come on, just take a look up there / they fill the darkest corners of the darkest air / and they go where satellites would never ever dare / and then suddenly over there I see the bear…”

*

WILLI CARLISLE   /   Peculiar, Missouri

       I want to open this review by quoting Willi Carlisle’s writing from the centerfold of the digipak cd version of Peculiar, Missouri. It serves as a mission statement, a scene setting, a mystical late night tale told around a campfire by a wild man named Willi, and it goes like this…

       “Amidst the great resignation & impending climate disaster, I hear the hundred-year-old echo of migrations recorded & forgotten, the old spiritus mundi in the Arkansas pines. I hear the words of forebears who lit the way for us, the great-great-grand-so-&-so’s who forged our misery & our delight in genetic code & microfilm. The yowling bastards who got us into this mess never shut up. And we’re different than them, yeah? Thank Dog! But we did come from them. They gave us songs & slogans to repeat and revise, and I wanna hear them… It’s like a miracle, this inchoate rushing, this river of history. It washes us towards the end, the big mystery. Are we bathed in its bloody backwaters? Todo pasa en este mundo? It rolls over us like a manic-episode & a makeout session, like the broad-shouldered lad at the square-dance. It crushes us like a covered wagon thrown from a skyscraper. But things ain’t hopeless, no, not yet! Not while we’re livin’...”

       And so it is that we meet Willi Carlisle. A sweet, mythical giant from the MIdwest & Arkansas. A historian & a folksinger; a poet & a storyteller. Traditional Folk music like the kind Carlisle is professing his love to on his sophomore album Peculiar, Missouri, always has its roots deep, deep in the past. Willi holds the music of that past holy; paying his respects with fiddle, accordion, banjo, mando, dobro & tambo, and some songs that sound like they could’ve soundtracked square dances on midwest summer nights 70+ years ago. Lyrically, Carlisle pushes past the past, staying true to himself with songs about queer love & acceptance, mental health, and fighting against homelessness, racism, & corporate America. In the genres Carlisle traffics in, those lyrical themes can be regrettably uncommon (although not as uncommon as you’d think, as alternative country & folk is full of young, progressive songwriters making waves and selling out shows, railing against corporate country’s racism, sexism &  homophobia). But these are also genres that revere talented players so Carlisle must pay his dues with some classic sounding songs. The upbeat numbers, like the countrified-zydeco-graceland-romp of all inclusive, singalong opening jam “Your Heart’s a Big Tent” or the breakneck, Bakersfield country slide of the Johnny Cash recalling, outwardly humorous, inwardly socially-conscious and politically challenging “Vanlife” practically burst with joy; spilling over with Carlisle’s welcoming smile & tongue-in-cheek lyrics. “The Down and Back” could be played at the square dances Carlisle loves to call (he talks about his and others’ roles in creating safe spaces in square dancing and how “queer futurism insists that these deeply rooted behaviors can create a future out of what feels like a near apocalyptic present.”) Then, there are the songs that really prove Carlisle’s worth as a songwriter. The crooner tremble of ‘I Won’t Be Afraid” belies Carlisle’s sneaky wit & irreverence when he sings “I’ve done some dumb shit and I’m gonna do some more” &  “I’ll wake up early and haul ass!” “LIfe on the Fence” is the most obviously queer song of the bunch, an aching country twanger about Memphis & Texas, crying in public, & bisexuality. 

       Truthfully, there are two songs on Peculiar that, to me, are lifers. Songs that only Willi Carlisle could write. Songs that to this day, I can’t listen to without crying. The title track “Peculiar, Missouri” is an outwardly humorous, spoken word tune about a panic attack in a midwest Wal-Mart (a “come-apart in the cosmetics aisle”) that references Carl Sandburg and takes a few magical twists & turns to contemplate life & death, love & the meaning of it all on the long drive home; looking out the window at the shooting stars. “I sure wish I knew what we were supposed to do with ourselves. If you get any good ideas, won’t you let me know?...” Maybe one of those good ideas can be found in “Tulsa’s Last Magician,” a seemingly simple folk tune about a seemingly simple life. As Carlisle says “There’s no good tricks but old ones” and his writing here magically weaves magician metaphors into memorable moments in a life that just might save us all. For those of us who think that no one quite gets quite what we are, this is our song. Space & time & stories & magic. 

"This record is in praise of those dead folkies whose honest seeking brought us this unsettling, awkward, fumbling epoch. I’m asking you, them, us: what is it that we can’t find? Who is there but us? Who else will make the world fair & just? We orphan ourselves, we drive sixteen hours, we break our bodies, we uproot whole continents in search of love, in search of our deepest human right. What foolishness! What violence! I foam & dance & sing, and look upwards for the shooting star. Stay weird, stay wild…”

*

ZETA   /   Todo Bailarlo

       So we have made it all the way to Z! One of my favorite music experiences in 2022 was my first trip to Boise, Idaho for Treefort Music Fest. One of my favorite new finds at Treefort was Zeta. Originally started as a punk band in Lecheria, Venezuela in 2003, Zeta is currently based out of Florida & North Carolina after moving to the US to chase their dreams of being touring musicians. They have toured relentlessly in the US since then, building little communities wherever they go, sharing food & music & progressive ideas from their hometown. I actually saw Zeta first at Lion’s Lair in Denver, the night before I left for Treefort and I then proceeded to see them multiple times over the course of my five days in Idaho and was repeatedly blown away by their energy, their positivity, their righteous anger, their rhythms and their NOISE! This is punk music at heart; loud & raucous, guitars wailing, drums cascading, music by the people, for the people. With their hearts planted firmly in their native Venezuela, Zeta imbues their brand of punk with afro-caribbean rhythms, cumbia, calypso, salsa, samba, bossa nova, latin jazz, a ragtag orchestra collective, swelling with electricity, a fire to be LOUD. “Todo Bailario” translates to “To Dance It All” and these are definitely songs made for dancing. Whether the sensual, swirling kind, engulfed in the rhythms from off the coast of the Caribbean Sea, or the sweat-soaked, mosh-pit, screaming kind, skin to skin with new punk friends, raging over injustices together. So many of the albums on this list were favorites of mine for their lyric writing. I’ve always loved songwriters who speak to me. The kind of lyrics that make me feel understood. Songwriters who write so openly, with such honesty, that to get to know their songs, makes me feel like their friend; Zeta’s songs do exactly that, but through the music alone. I may hardly understand any of the words they are singing, but in the way that they play and  the joy that they exude both on stage and on the album, I feel understood. The way that they let the energy of their music create a community, from Venezuela to Florida to Colorado to Idaho; I feel like an integral part of that community. Like I play a role in this lifeline of music.  I feel like their friend. I can’t wait to see my friends in Zeta again in Idaho at Treefort 2023!

       “Heal! Heal! Heal the earth with your hands…”

*

EP BONUS

IMMIGRANT’S CHILD   /   Papalotl

NIA ARCHIVES   /   Forbidden Feelingz

RITMO CASCABEL   /   Ritmo Cascabel

       Two local Denver bands with heavy Latin influences and one UK jungle/drum & bass DJ, producer & songwriter. The Papalotl EP from Immigrant’s Child is full of brooding indie rock that follows shredding guitar into heavier psych rock. RItmo Cascabel mixes similarly psychedelic rock and explosive rhythms with traditional Latin Cumbia. Finally, Nia Archives makes “future classic” music full of breakbeats & reggae samples, equal parts chill & danceable.

       “The song is never done…”

       “Music marks time & space…”

[always-andromeda]

Hi! Sorry to just pop in and ramble about Religious Trauma™️ but I saw your previous couple of posts and wanted to say that I've had such similar experiences!! I was raised Catholic (I am no longer Catholic tho) and at Youth Ministry (so like, middle school mostly), they did a thing where they passed a chocolate bar around to all the boys and had them break off a piece so that when it came back to the leader it was all gone. And of course that was meant to represent a woman when she has premarital sex with too many men: "there's nothing left for her husband." I've also had friends who were raised religious say that they've seen similar things (I think they have a name actually, like "purity exercises" or something???) with the boys chewing gum, spitting in a glass of water, or plucking the petals off a rose. And now that I'm older I am just so completely horrified. Like WHAT??? That is so beyond not okay.

Anyway, sorry to jump in with negative stuff, but I think it's so important that we have these conversations since many of these types of religions try to shame people into silence or intentionally isolate them from the community if they choose to leave.

But to end on a slightly nicer note, Maddie Zahm has an incredible song called "If It's Not God" which is all about her coming to terms with her own beliefs and fighting through her religious trauma. Would highly recommend to anyone who hasn't heard it who's struggling with similar issues!

Okay um yeah anyway, sorry! I hope you have a fantastic day/night that is as free of religious trauma as possible! 💙

Hey, here on spicedchaiandromeda welcome rambling with open arms because ya girl is a massive rambler herself, so don’t you worry!! And don't apologize for the "negative" subject matter because I really value these conversations as well!! Putting a read more tab under this so I don't clog up my mutuals dashboards lmao <3

That being said, it truly is kind of horrifying the amount of times I've heard afab friends of mine recount these kinds of experiences? I've seen these kinds of ideas come from Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, etc. I just tend to say "Christians" and "Christianity" because that's what I and nearly everyone around me was raised with. These ideas aren't just confined to the teachings of different religions, but I will say that the echo chambers that many religious groups put themselves in allow these ideas to thrive.

Thank you so much for the music recommendation! I absolutely love the song and I feel like I'd love to listen to more by her!! On the note of music, I'd also love to recommend the EP Preacher's Kid by Semler. They're a queer Christian artist and they're everything that I ever wanted from a Christian artist when I was a little queer teenagers.

While I myself am kind of loose on what I believe, I'd like to think that there's a higher power out there that doesn't stand for this level of shame and guilt that organized religions can oftentimes breed. And I want anyone who reads this to know that if you have religious trauma, this will always be a safe place to express your feelings and frustrations. Those safe and warm communities that religious groups love to preach about can also exist for us. No matter where you are on your religious/spiritual journey, please know that you are loved and valid and I send you all of the well wishes and support that I possibly can. Take care of yourselves, friends. 💞✨

#askmeda✨ #tw religious trauma

[blurredcolour]

Elvis and Austin!Elvis Ask game:

Thank you for the tag, @thatonemoviefan

•When and what was your first exposure to Elvis Presley? Elvis is one of those core pieces of popular culture and I do not remember a time when I didn’t know of him? Nor do I remember when I first was exposed to him. That being said, I didn’t really get into Elvis as a fan myself until I saw the Baz Lurhman film on July 23, 2022.

•And what was your first impression? I have missed out on so much…

•Lace shirts or jumpsuits? This is so hard! I love them both but I am slightly more into 50s Elvis so I guess lace shirts is the answer.

•You can steal one of Elvis/Austin’s outfits, what’s it going to be? The football outfit! Looks legit comfortable and useful hahaha.

•C’mon, we know you’ve been watching/reading old interviews and random footage of the man, so what’s your favorite random Elvis quote? Preacher Elvis from @elvisabutler ’s asks!!! “It ain’t in the bible, but it’s true.”

•Did you find Austin Butler’s lips distracting despite them being in a movie about the King of plush upper lips? (Be honest now) Absolutely but like…in a good way?!

•What’s an aspect of Elvis’ character you wish more people appreciated? How giving he was to those he cared about. Like he’s famous for his excess and gaudy decorating style, but no one talks about all those he helped and supported…

•You meet Col. Tom Parker for the first time, forewarned with the knowledge of what a scumbag he is, what do you do?:

A. nothing, you’re a coward who doesn’t care about abused golden-hearted men

B. you give the Colonel a stern telling off

C. you encourage Elvis to leave him and break the contract

D. you slap a legal document against that fat suit and declare “Mrs. Claus is bringing you a lawsuit”

E. you waste no time with formalities, it’s a letter opener to the jugular for that piece of trash

This is really tough…but I don’t condone murder, so definitely D, the lawsuit

•What was your favorite aspect/scene from the Elvis 2022 movie? Torn between the Hayride scene – the move does such a good job of translating his radical sex appeal to a modern audience; and the Trouble scene – the movie does such a good job of turning me on HA!. Special mention of the creative transitions between scenes, those really made me happy too.

•You can choose only one song or piece of media to convince someone to become an Elvis fan, what is it going to be? I’m totally stealing @thatonemoviefan’s answer here – Elvis (2022)

•How many children would you give Elvis Presley from your own -or theoretical- womb? (listen to the beast in ya) Kids are not in the cards for me, biologically speaking, but I would delight in trying endlessly

•Where are you hanging out with EP, his bedroom with the teddy bears, Club Handy, his private jet or Graceland?  Graceland! It looks so beautiful, I love the countryside

•What is the peak Elvis era? warning, this says an awful lot about you… 50s, ground-breaking, controversial

•How long have you been an Austin Butler fan (be honest now, God is watching) So I was definitely attracted to his character in Switched at Birth but never got into him as an actor until I first saw the Elvis trailer at some point in June. Then spent a month canvassing friends and family until someone agreed to see it with me.

•What kind of Elvis chick are you? -a 1950’s prospective wife material that he’s already sampled, a 1960’s filmset fling or a Vegas torrid backstage affair? Definitely 50s for this one, I’m pretty happy to be at home and cook

•Is Austin Butler an honorary southerner now? Answer options:

A. hell no, California can keep his sweet cheeks.

B. hell yes, he’s practically been possessed by the soul of the King of the South

IF I were to speak for the South I think it’s B? That accent just…suits him so well [But I think being a Canadian disqualifies me from answering this question]

•Pick your poison in the fan-fiction realm: angst, fluff, smut, fluffy smut, angsty fluff, angsty smut?…or is reading about Elvis Presley an acknowledged health hazard? Considering I can’t write anything without it ending in smut, definitely smut

•Spit or swallow for this man? (And if you don’t understand this question move right along) swallow *blushes like a slut*

•Would Gladys approve of you? Take your above answer into consideration One look at me and she would sense my unholy thoughts…I also blaspheme A LOT….so no, she would not

•Which of Elvis’ cars is your favorite? Triumph Bonneville motorcycle

•What are your odds for besting this man at karate? I’d be happy to have him pin me so let’s say zero

•If you could meet Elvis and have enough composure to tell him something, what would it be? Your impact on the world has been huge and everlasting

•What’s a hobby or pastime of yours you wish you could share with Elvis/Austin!Elvis? Listening to music. Could you imagine his perspective on it?!

•What’s the Elvis 2022 quote you’ve been mumbling to yourself ever since you heard it?

“Whatchu lookin’ at back there (back there, back there, back there)?”

•What are your top 3 go-to Elvis songs?

Polk Salad Annie

That’s Alright Mama

Trouble

•If you could spare him one tragedy what would it be? Doctor Nic’s poison

•Is there a modern artist that sorta scratches for you the itch that Elvis’ absence leaves?  Not really modern, but I started listening to Paul Simon’s Essential album in rotation with Elvis music/the Elvis Soundtrack. It wall goes together so well.

•How did you react at the end of the movie when In the Ghetto started to play A. I got up and fixed a snack because I have no soul, B. I left feeling alarmingly horny, C. I was impressed but didn’t realize how affected I was until days later when it was still with me D. I cried buckets they had to bring in a mop E. I may have appeared emotionless but in fact my soul was leaving my body and I don’t think it’s returned quite yet

B! B! B!!! I went to my birthday party right after and had to pretend I was SO normal about the movie when I most certainly WAS NOT.

•If you’ve got a favorite gif or photo insert it here and bless us all

@karamelcoveredolicity's masterpiece here...I wrote a whole sex scene about it hahaha

I Tag: @eliseinmemphis, @dre6ming

#Elvis Ask Game #austin!elvis ask game #austin butler #elvis prese #blurredcolour

[doomedandstoned]

Gnash Tear Open New EP, ‘Shared Nightmare’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Growing up a preacher's kid, I found myself trancing out to the repetitive mannerisms that often accompanied the sermon's delivery. I would disassociate and go to strange, weird, and wonderful places in my mind's eye. If there was anything that could snap me right back into place, it was those diatribes on hellfire and damnation. One oft repeated saying of Jesus lingers with me still: "There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth."

Here's a band that has got the gnashing bit down to a veritable art form. They are, in fact, GNASH from Columbus, Ohio, and this is their debut EP, 'Shared Nightmare' (2022). I think we can all identify with its title, as we enter the final quarter of year three on pandemic planet. Whether you view it economically, politically, culturally, or personally, it has been both an interminable nightmare and a wake-up call from our collective delusions of unfettered technological, scientific, and social progress. Put simply, we are at the end of it all still human. We came cosmic dust and to dust we shall return.

Gnash's debut four-track record exposes those wonderful stories we tell ourselves about how things should be, but rarely manifest as envisioned. It is an awakening to pain, loss, and frustration

Am I losing you? Or are you losing me? To a future that we did not plan

First song "The Darker Half" opens to the eerie hypnotic sound of cicadas and a bass riff tuned so low (and captured so remarkably) that you can feel it right down in the pit of your stomach. The dual guitar attack is less for show than atmosphere, conjuring a misty swell of acid rain that buttresses Gnash's nasty vocal stylings.

The cross I bare This pain we share Is more proof that life is just not fair

"Broken Mirror Image" greets us with a crusty, raspy roar and Gnash's attack here is beyond heavy. There is sadness in the air, with the bittersweet chords of rhythm guitar complimented by the melancholic lines of lead guitar.

It's a broken mirror image This broken face that I see It's a broken mirror image Of a severed bond between you and me

"The Amniotic Lake" has a pulsing, headbanging rhythm to it. It swirls and thrashes about. Soon your entire body will be caught in the grinding undertow. The lyrical subtext here is grim, to be sure.

"Sacrificial Bastard" strikes a Nirvanaesque heartbeat, but delivers something else: a hideous, irradiated, sludged-up remnant of what mankind has become in these early stages of the late, great planet Earth. The words here seem to draw a kind of parallel with one's own suffering and the suffering of Christ.

Says singer Josh Richter:

I have always taken pride in being able to pull from whatever emotion I’m feeling inside when writing new music, but this record in particular came from a much darker place than I had expected. Due to some personal things that have transpired over this past year I was able to take the sadness and hatred I was feeling and funnel it into this entire record. I feel as if this band, these songs, and this idea came at the perfect time for me personally. I’m very proud of what we created as a team and I hope everyone can feel a little bit of my pain when they sit down to take a listen.

Nicky Richter (guitar), Keenan McNeal (drums), Josh Richter (vox), and Ethan Martin (bass)

Shared Nightmare by Gnash sees the light of day on Thursday, September 22nd (get it here). Stick it on a playlist with Thou, Usnea, Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean, GoodEye, and Shepherd's Crook. This is the Doomed & Stoned world premiere.

Give ear...

LISTEN: Gnash - 'Shared Nightmare'

SOME BUZZ

Sludge metal newcomers Gnash are preparing to unleash their debut EP, Shared Nightmare. Frontman Josh Richter comments:

“I’ve never done a concept record before so I wanted to try to tell a story in great detail over an entire record rather than just one song. As dark and gruesome as the concept is, the underlying theme is the feeling of carrying around emotional baggage and trauma your whole life and the effects it takes on someone. Life is a heavy burden sometimes.”

Formed this year in Columbus, Ohio, Gnash has already established a powerful and unique sound, drawing influence from the depth of death metal, the raw emotion of black metal, and heaviness of sludge metal, the band’s debut EP, 'Shared Nightmare' (2022), is a profound and thought-provoking insight into the darkest reaches of mental health issues.

'Shared Nightmare' tells a tale of conjoined twins, where one half of the pair dies. The remaining twin must continue on in life, carrying with him a corpse he can’t be rid of. The EP is an exploration of what it means to bear trauma and the toll it takes after a lifetime of being weighed down by such inescapable feelings.

Not for the faint of heart, prepare to be transported into a dark and chilling tale in Gnash’s debut EP 'Shared Nightmare,' coming September 22nd.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

#D&S Debuts #Gnash #Columbus #Ohio #sludge #doom metal #death doom #D&S Reviews #Doomed and Stoned

[cruelsummer-ficfest]

swiftie asks for andieeee:

come back be here

sparks fly

superstar

Come Back Be Here: what city would you like to travel to the most?

I constantly miss London, guys. I just...am always missing London. But if I had to choose someplace I hadn't been, I'd either say my family's hometown in Italy OR Dublin.

Sparks Fly:  if you had to create an ep with ten of taylor’s songs, which would you chose?

According to my ranking (quiz here if you want to take it), it should look something like this (although I feel like I should reserve the right to adjust this because it's like...all fucking ballads and False God only didn't make it by ONE vote):

ivy

marjorie

evermore (feat. Bon Iver)

King Of My Heart

Dancing With Our Hands Tied

Dress

All Too Well (10 minute version)

The Archer

Cornelia Street

Death By a Thousand Cuts

Superstar: which artists do you stan besides taylor?

The ones that I feel like aren't surprising at all? Maisie Peters, Phoebe Bridgers, dodie, Orla Gartland, Lizzy McAlpine.

Ones that are a little less obvious? Regina Spektor, love of my life and the reason I made my foray into becoming the Piano Girl™ that I am. I had a few thoughts on who else would be on this list, but the best one is SEMLER because they just...get it. They're an incredible queer preacher's kid who sings what was classified as "worship" music when they released their first album (and they fucking topped the contemporary christian charts when their EP came out last year???), but it's raw and beautiful and so wonderfully representative of the overlap in the venn diagram of queerness and religiosity and I love it.

Less taylor swift obvious, but more HP/marauders era obvious? Genesis, David Bowie, Kansas, Queen, etc etc etc

send us taylor swift asks from this game!

#asks! #andie answers! #taylor swift ask game

[incidentalblr]

*shakes u guys* PLS LISTEN TO “PREACHER’S KID” EP BY GRACE SEMLER BALDRIDGE IM GOING INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!