#where the FUCK was he in January and February when the tide could have seriously been stemmed?

[harryknowsme]

.

#anyone else completely pissed off that the Chief Oompa Loompa has FINALLY decided this is serious? #where the FUCK was he in January and February when the tide could have seriously been stemmed? #and the gp has a short memory #so they will re-elect him now based on these recent remarks #fuck #be a fucking LEADER #jfc #i am so over his bs #we could have done so much earlier if he hadn’t blown it off #or closed the pandemic study group last year

[dammitadolfnomorecake]

Once Bitten, Twice Stupid prt 142

142

Keith was still drunk. Waking his boyfriend, Keith squinted at the world with a pained groan. Lance having taken the cannula out so Keith couldn’t hurt himself with it. Seeing their big blow up had been about 1pm, Matt had brought Keith back about 3pm, and they’d had dinner at 7:30pm, his boyfriend had had about 4 and a half hours sleep when Lance woke him up at 8:30pm after watching Keith sleep and staying close in case of nightmare. Lance wanted him to fall back to sleep while he went for his walk, but then Keith latched on, arms around his waist, face pushed up against Lance’s belly, and shook his head. Lance found he didn’t really mind if it was Keith joining him. His boyfriend wouldn’t push, even if he needed those little pushes to keep working on his mental health. Keith had been so hurt to learn Miriam passed suddenly, and he’d blown up. A walk along the beach sounded like what they needed, especially when Lance liked to be gone for hours at a time.

Bundling Keith up, Keith’s walk was more a stagger. Normally Lance would nap longer and go later, but with Keith around he had think of him first. Instead of holding hands, they had their arms around each other’s waists. Keith leaning into him, both carrying their shoes

“Babe, if you want to go back, it’s okay”

“Nah... Fresh air is supposed to be good”

“Mmm, but maybe when you’re not drunk”

“I only had... I think... 9 shots...”

“You should be black out passed out then”

“But then I’d miss seeing you... I love you”

“I know you do”

“I didn’t mean to get so drunk, but... Mami’s gone and I don’t know what to do without her”

Keith had such a soft heart

“She loved you. She was so proud of you. I can say that because she told me at least a dozen times and would always ask if I’d heard from you and how you were and what you were up to”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t talk much in Rome. It was fucking bullshit! All fucking day going over the same shit again and again and sitting there listening, over and over and over. I was going insane. It was like... if they could just meet you. None of their holier than pious bullshit about all vampires being human enemies. It was like, I wanted to hit them all. You were so brave and they were like “Your opinion doesn’t count! You knocked him up! You betrayed our holier than thou ancient institution. Fuck them. You’re like the best man out of all us”

Keith was drunk enough to let these things slide off his tongue, and sobering up enough to groan at his voice getting louder

“How... did you... convince them that...”

Keith shook his head at Lance’s hesitant question

“Allura. She got so super angry that they couldn’t do anything. She like laid out all the facts about you how you’d never drunk from a living person and how you worked helping people and how I’m the reason you turned and how if they took my soulmate away, VOLTRON would no longer cooperate and how they’d lose peace with the covens and packs and basically I was terrified of her”

She’d do that for him?

“No way...”

“Yes way. We love you, you idiot crumpet. Even Matt and Rieva came back. They gathered the others when we had to go rescue stupid Loturd”

Now they were getting closer to Keith finally telling him everything that happened, instead of him telling him in pieces

“How did that happen?”

“Well because Sendak was dead all these vampires started playing up in Zarkon’s territory. Like, he must have sent word about his return then didn’t come back and Lotor went ahead and promptly got himself in trouble. Then Matt and Rieva rallied their allies like Rieva’s mum and dad are hella connected. Like way too connected and we couldn’t just fly up there so we had make our way up all sneaky sneaky, and I kept wanting to go home, but I had to be a good person. My head hurts thinking about it. It was like total shit”

And there keith went. Walking straight for the goal, only to veer off at the last moment, literally. His boyfriend nearly falling over gesturing wildly with his free arm

“Okay. Okay, calm down. It sucked”

“It did! Mum had to do Blade stuff and she came late. And like, we had a whole bunch of us. James and the wolf pack like really like Matt”

“You’re saying “like” an awful lot”

“I like you...”

Lance could have facepalmed. Still, Keith being rude and angry was proving to remind him of all the things he loved about his little anger loaf

“I like you, too. What happened next?”

“That fucktard, hear that Lotor, you’re a fuck-knuckle! Well he got on the bad side of mum and dad evil. Allura went and introduced herself and us, you know how she is, no one can’t love Allura. She’s like the bomb. You should have Zarkon’s mansion. It was like... huge... So we had to find him and the others and like Ezor was pissed. Zethrid kept making jokes... she was disappointed you weren’t there... and she kept touching my hair. I don’t like it”

Lance sighed to himself. Maybe this was a conversation for him and “sober Keith” to have. Because right now, nothing made any sense. How did they get in if they had all these people? How did they get Lotor out? Where was Honerva? Was Lotor okay? Was he now ruling Zarkon’s territory? And what happened to Allura? Was her heart broken all over again. He sincerely hoped not. Allura was like a sister to him. Her happiness well and truly deserved ten times over. Keith gesturing wildly again had Lance pulling him up tighter

“Babe, you need to calm...”

Keith cut him off with a very frustrated groan

“Then when we do get out, that Zarkon decides he’s gonna kill Lotor, and Lotor’s like “ya’ll never loved my arsehole as it was”. Fucker threw me off the balcony like I was nothing when I tried to stab him. Fucking busted my ribs up and then I was saved by James! James! He was all like “you could take a lesson from your boyfriend”. Wanker. Managed to shoot Zarkon but he didn’t care”

Maybe he should have been recording this? No. It was probably safer not to. Keith would feel utterly humiliated, instead of lovingly teased, even if Lance was the only one to ever hear the recording. Keeping calm, he tried not to let his heart hurt as much as it did that Keith gotten himself hurt again

“Sounds like a lot happened”

His boyfriend groaned at him

“You have no idea... ugh, can we sit for a bit? I feel sick”

“You’re not going to throw up on me again, are you?”

Keith shook his head, with another groan

“I can’t even remember throwing up... I’m sorry... I shouldn’t have drunk so much...”

“You’ve got a lot going on”

“But so do you... I mean, I wasn’t here for three months! Who does that to the man they love?!”

“Babe, it’s okay. Here, calm down and we’ll sit up here away from the water”

“Three months isn’t okay”

Keith cooperated with him, Lance getting him seated a little way past the high tide mark. Sitting beside his boyfriend, Keith dropped his head to rest on Lance’s shoulder

“I feel so messed up”

“Tequila will do that”

“I was all ready to come home to you and you weren’t even there”

“I know, but babe, you know it wasn’t three months”

“Yes it was. Fucking December, January and now its February. That’s three”

Oh. His poor sweet boyfriend. Keith felt guilty for missing a month he’d only missed a day or two, an entirely different thing to missing the whole month. Gently, Lance tried to break it to him

“Babe, it was December and January. It was only in January and like a day in February that I didn’t hear from you”

“It’s three months”

“It’s two, babe. You didn’t leave on the first of December and even if you did, it wouldn’t be three months until next month. I promise”

“Then why’s there three?”

“Because you’re overthinking”

“Felt like three years...”

Three years without Keith... He barely made it two. His heart really would have broken repair of his boyfriend was gone that long

“I would have punched you in the dick if you left me alone for that long”

“I would have punched me in the dick too... Lance, I think I’m talking too much”

“Maybe a little, but that’s okay. You have a lot you want to tell me”

“I didn’t think you’d talk to me... it got all weird and shit last night”

“A little weird, but that’s okay now”

“Is it? Because... like I feel like I’m talking too much”

Lance ducked his head, stifling a laugh. His ego had really settled down since Keith came. It wasn’t trying to push its ugly head to the surface, well, it kind of was, but maybe because Keith as his calm that it settled

“You’re not. Do you like the beach?”

“I want to go swimming but I don’t want to get wet”

This time Lance let himself laugh. His boyfriend had a serious dilemma with that one. Huffing, Keith elbowed him lightly

“Stop laughing!”

“I’m laughing because you’re very cute”

“Shut up. I’m not cute. I’m manly”

“Very manly. But you’re not swimming tonight. Not with alcohol in your system and sharks in the water”

“I’ll fight them”

“That’s what I’m afraid of. Tell me more about Rome?”

Keith flopped back with a deep sigh

“It was soooo long. Court all day. You would have loved it. All the legal stuff. They were all like “He eliminated a serious threat!”, and I was like “damn right, that’s my man””

Keith shouldn’t sound so proud...

“I bet you didn’t say that out loud”

“Shiro told me I had to behave. Seriously. Like the first three weeks was all legal stuff and I didn’t understand half of it. Then they wanted to put you on probation again, but Coran sent you into hiding so they were like, he’s disappeared now. Then they were like “should we summon him?”. Curtis had to give the most evidence because he always tells the truth and I nearly hit him”

Why would Keith be hitting Curtis?

“Why?”

“He was telling them all the best bits about you and I missed you even more”

“Oh, babe. I’m sure not everything he said was good”

“No. He admitted he confirmed the pregnancy. He told them how Lotor tried to say it was his kid, then the beat him up until he told them it was me and that we were having twins. I could have hit him but, he couldn’t help it. He told them you worked your hardest to save him. And that you only flipped out because Sendak tried to kill me. There’s this whole complication when it’s a hunter involved, then there’s this other complication when witches are involved. They didn’t seem fussed that Sendak had Lotor. I think they’d have preferred he killed him. Just to make it all pretty against Zarkon. Zarkon sent two vampires down to give evidence that Sendak was a warrior, but honestly they didn’t seem to give two shits and I’m pretty sure they didn’t make it back to Zarkon. And I’m pretty sure Zarkon only sent them because he thought they’d die. Vampire culture is whack. No offence, babe, it really is”

Zarkon probably sent pets to feed his vampires... Lance didn’t want to know, but he did

“Did Honerva have pets?”

“Some. Some happy to be freed, some came back to Rome. Some... didn’t”

Meaning they’d prefer to die with her. A vampire fae was no joke. She’d probably been in their heads. Turning things in her favour. Coran and Allura could definitely change a mood with just a touch, if they wanted. They really were on another level. How they’d face Zarkon alone and survived scared him thinking of the fallout from taking down the guy who was probably the most powerful vampire alive. There’d be so much uproar. So many cover ups. But the Blades would probably be too busy pinning medals on each other’s chests to care about the long term death. It was like an ecosystem. Sometimes predators were the only thing that kept normal numbers from exploding and consuming too many resources. Zarkon would have the “loyalty” of the many, even if that loyalty came from fear. The domino of Sendak’s death had set off the chain reaction that now left gaping power vacuums. Had there been some kind of chance for him and Honerva to change their ways? Or had ego driven them both to insanity with only monsters inside human skin left

Okay. He wasn’t going to focus on what had been found in Honerva’s lab. His overactive imagination provided enough mental images of boxes of human remains left

“You said Curtis got hurt?”

“He and Shiro lead a team to Honerva’s lab, with Rieva and Mum... Honerva turned her magic against on Curtis, the demon in him stronger now. He’s still him, he just... has issues”

“Like my issues or Matt’s issues?”

“He’s thirsty for Shiro, but I guess yours because you care about people and don’t like your ego... He gets these moments where... he’s not seeing anything in our world. It’s kind of creepy”

“I’m sure Coran will know what to do”

“Yeah. Shiro thinks maybe now the demon is stronger that Coran might be able to rip it out”

That’d be awesome if he could. Lance wanted Shiro and Curtis to have the same kind of disgusting love as him and Keith

“I hope so... Curtis deserves more than having his mind under attack”

Keith reached up, pulling Lance down beside him in the sand. There was going to be sand everywhere now, and he didn’t want a third shower for the day... whelp, it sucked fo be hurt

“He’ll be fine. Hey, can we have Christmas when we get home? I got you a present”

Lance was caught of guard. He assumed they’d moved past Christmas and none of their friends would care for it

“It’s February”

“So? I want to see everyone again and eat lots of food then vege out with you”

“You do that anyway”

“Mmm, but we didn’t get to have Christmas... and you were sick”

“Morning sickness”

“You haven’t thrown up a lot today”

Cuddling into Keith, Lance kept himself propped up with his right arm. He’d thrown up, Keith had missed most of it. He’d thrown up after dinner, and while Rieva was closely pouring over his will

“I did, but it’s okay”

“It’s not. I wish you didn’t keep throwing up. It’s not fair”

“Making babies does that”

“But, you’re like, my boyfriend. And you’re so strong. You don’t complain about it. You don’t get mad at me and it’s weird”

Lance smiled, dropping a kiss on Keith’s pouting lips. Keith would take all the bad bits of pregnancy if he could, but Lance would never ask him too

“I’ll admit that the idea of baby scared me. Twins shook me completely. I wanted years with you first. You and me, working out our relationship and future, then kids maybe. I still feel like I don’t deserve happiness, being a vampire and all”

“I want to make you happy”

Happy was a hard word. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled, let alone laughed, before Keith came for him

“You do. I know a lot changed while you were gone, but what can I do to support and make things easier for you?”

“Let me in. You’ve stopped doing that stupid smile, where smile through your pain, but now you clam up and I feel like one day you’ll shut me out for good. I want you to want to tell me”

“I do want to tell you. I’ve been told I can be very stubborn”

“Tell me about it! You wouldn’t believe someone out stubborned me, then you came along”

“Technically I was living my life the best I could, and then you came along”

“I blame Luis. He’s a dick. If he ever wants to talk to you again, he has to go through me first”

Keith might want the best for him, but never seeing his brother again filled him with sadness. All his siblings had been at the funeral service for their Mami. Rachel and Marco both stared up at him as he wasn’t seated down with the rest of the congregation. He felt like he deserved to be, yet for Mami’s sake he wanted to keep the peace one last time... that and he felt ill for the whole service. Death lingered in the church. His Mami was gone. He’d bled. Fighting was the last thing he’d wanted to do.

“I don’t think he’ll cause any trouble”

Luis wouldn’t want to come near him now, lest Lance sneeze and magic him into a vampire. Veronica might. Marco... would if he was being nosy... Rachel... nope, he didn’t know what Rachel would do. Mami was the glue that held them together and now that glue was gone they were like a broken book with pages going everywhere

“Still. I’ll smack him one”

Luis wouldn’t take a hit from Keith. His brother was hold. He’d probably end up with something broken and suing Keith

“It’s okay. It’s enough you want to protect me”

Keith’s tone turned unexpectedly serious, galaxy eyes locking with his, flicking away for a second, then back again as Keith nodded to himself before replying

“I might not be Mami, but I’m going to protect you. I will. I promise I will”

“You don’t have to be Mami. I like my Keith the way he is. A little angry. A little rude. A little pouty. You showing your emotions makes me happy...”

“I’m so lame. You sound all grown up and I’m lame!”

And there was intoxicated Keith again

“You’re not lame. Seriously, I want to support you. If you need anything, I want you to tell me”

Keith scrunched his face up as if he was thinking really hard. Lance gave him a few moments before nudging Keith, Keith opened his eyes, looking disappointed

“I think I need to pee”

Lance let his head drop. Defeated by intoxicated Keith, he had no words. No more attempts at serious conversation until they back in Platt. It’d be easier. Keith would be in a safe place where he knew he could talk freely, and there’d be no tequila in sight.

#once bitten twice stupid #oncebittentwicestupid #ashratherose

[grimelords]

I have been unbelievably busy for all of 2020 so far. Starting a new job and crunching to finish an old one, it's been very good but it has also meant that I haven't had the downtime I'd have liked in order to write long screeds about when drums sound good in songs so my December and January playlists unfortunately never got finished. They will exist as 'lost' playlists in the grimelords canon where you will simply have to listen to them and have your own thoughts about the songs instead of having your judgement clouded by me saying things like 'this sounds nice' and 'I love when the guitar goes woo-eee'.

You can listen to them here:

December https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4crPEVSPwftPpWl14xUrXF

January https://open.spotify.com/playlist/25MP7onYLCwWRYBIi0u3yc

As far as this, my February playlist goes: It's great! It's two and a half hours. The songs sounds nice and the guitars go woo-eee. I was worried I wouldn't be able to listen to as much music with my new job but it turns out I'm listening to more than ever which is extremely nice. Please enjoy, and if you'd like to subscribe to this playlist please do so here: https://tinyletter.com/grimelords

Listen to this playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ZraEZOeS6qvVxfnz3AJS9

Ballad Of The Skeletons - Allen Ginsberg, Paul McCartney, Phillip Glass and Lenny Kaye: I had a dim childhood memory of this 1996 Hottest 100 funny skeleton song that my sister randomly brought up this month and was was shocked to find out that somewhere deep in my brain the part where the electric chair skeleton says “hey what’s cooking???” was still stored. I was also shocked to find out that the funny skeleton song I remembered from when I was a kid was actually a collaboration between Allen Ginsberg, Paul McCartney and Phillip Glass and was an unexpected hit on MTV and Triple J in 1996 for an as yet unknown reason.

I Can Go With You - Sam Burton: This song came up in my Discover Weekly, and I was so excited to listen to more of this 70s singer songwriter I've never heard of before who has no doubt had a long and illustrious career and was shocked to find out that not only is this song from 2020, it is also the first and so far only release by Sam Burton and his debut album is coming out sometime this year. I love how plain it is, and the first time I heard it it made no impression on me until a couple of hours later when I realised I was humming the melody to myself. It has this decepitive simplicity to it, and it sounds like a song you've always known which is really about as good a compliment as you can give a song. I also love this statement from him: “I was writing a song a day for 30 days as a personal challenge to myself. I Can Go With You came near of that practice and I considered it a throwaway at the time. After recording most of the album I still needed a couple more songs and decided to throw it on and we recorded it live followed by two others. When I listened back it ended up being one of the tracks I was happiest with on the record.” I love when artists are asked about songs and they have no divine inspiration to relate, just a process of daily work where they're like "well, I wrote it, like I always do. Did the chords and the words and everthing just like normal. I write hundreds of these things and this one came out pretty good. I don't know what else to tell you."

Wild Dogs - Colter Wall: This is a song by Billy Don Burns who you can probably expect to see on this playlist next month, and who as I understand it is one of these 'real' country guys that have been around for a million years and only ever had success when other people sang their songs. So it's very nice of Colter Wall to continue that tradition for him. I love the way this song takes the metaphor to a place of almost uncomfortable literalism, a tryst metamophising into something private, bloody and feral. The subtle way the lap steel whines slowly along in the background before stepping out and taking centre stage once the song picks up steam near the end is a marvel too.

Tom's Diner - Suzanne Vega: I had a live version of this randomly recommended to me by youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkYPge6ZKSQ and it made me see this song that I'd always been sort of aware of in a new light and really properly appreciate it for the first time. Somehow I'd never noticed the last verse where it moves from literalism to memories, and of course that's sort of the moment that ties the whole song together. What I really appreciate about the acapella arrangement is that it feels like this is a song that's existed a million times before but she's the first person to actually write it down and record it. Everyone's made up a little dishwashing song or a little walking song, reciting some to-do list in your head. It's an entire genre that exists under people's breath for a few minutes and gets immediately forgotten.

If You Don't Know Now, You Never Will - Drugdealer: I could have sworn this was a Tobias Jesso Jr song. I really just assumed it was until I looked at the credits. It's such a nice song though and I'm glad this sort of 70s californian vibe is making a quiet comeback because it is just uniformly pleasant and it's nice to hear these sorts of arrangements, with the accenting violin runs and things like that. All the extra decorations and ornamentations that have sort of disappeared.

Crimson Tide - Destroyer: I absolutely love this new Destroyer album because it just feels like such pure uncut Destroyer. I’ve always thought of him as a sort of 400 year old vampire lounge singer who is just amusing himself at this point and so the cover art has really confirmed my suspicions on that front. The lyrics through this whole album are so good, the sort of stream of consciousness strangeness like ‘when lightning strikes twice the funeral goes completely insane’ that takes a on such gravity because he sings it with complete deadpan seriousness.

Truth (feat Alicia Keys and The Last Artful, Dodger) - Mark Ronson: I didn't really give this album a chance when it came out but ever since I found out Alicia Keys is good now (Time Machine) I've been looking for more good Alica Keys work and found one here. The Last Artful, Dodger is one of the worst artist names I think I've ever heard but she absolutely kills it on the way she says biiiiitch so I'll forgive it.

Surf & Turf - Boldy James + The Alchemist: Alchemist's production on this whole album is so incredible. He really just lets Boldy go and doesn't get in his way like good production should. Especially on the opening verse where Boldy James sticks with that loping flow for so long in 3s over 4 that matches that arpeggios in the beat, it's just a perfect harmony of rapper and producer.

Fat Mac - Duke Deuce: Misogyny in rap is a real issue that nobody seems really allowed to talk about because it's obviously very complicated, and this song some real classic 'stay in the kitchen' type woman hating in it and is basically incredibly callous and cruel throughout. However this beat is hot and there is also a part about a third of the way through where he says "fuck her till that pussy fart" and then makes a big fart noise, so.

Set It Up (feat. Trina) - Kamaiyah: I only found out about Kamaiyah's fantastic 2016 album A Good Night In The Ghetto about two weeks before her new one came out so I've been on a real Kamaiyah hype for a little while now. She's just fantastic. I love this song because I love the part where Trina seemingly out of the blue threatens to piss in my mouth. The first time I heard it I said 'wow!' out loud.

Come As You Are - Greg Phillinganes: There's something going on with the pop math in this song that I just can't put my finger on. It feels for all intents and purposes like this should be a hit. The melody is great. The big synth voice is great, it's got extremely fatty bass. It's great! But something about the structure of it is just off, it's got too many sections or something. Which kind of makes me love it more really.  

Devotion - Pure Bathing Culture: What surprised me the most about this song is the secret shredding happening throughout. It feels like a sort of clean and cool guitar that hasn’t existed in the wild since the Lethal Weapon soundtrack and it adds such an energy to this already completely wonderful song.

Paper Cup - Real Estate + Sylvan Esso: The production on this song is just so beautiful. The violin melody and the pillow soft synths really add such an extra dimension to it. The tone on everything really. The guitar in the solo. Every time I listen to this song I just want to listen to it again because it goes down so smooth.

Mark Zuckerberg - Nap Eyes: I’m a very big fan of the way this song transitions from a sort of TMBG novelty song halfway through into a lonely and beautiful thing instead. It’s like he got distracted and wandered off in the middle of his set but the camera followed him. I also haven’t heard a lyric in a long time that made me bark laugh so instantly as “And what does he do with all that sand? He collects sand right? I think I read that somewhere. Seems innocent enough.”

Viking Hair - Dry Cleaning: I fell in love with this band immediately on hearing this song. The way the spoken lyrics sit in a place of almost coherence, dipping between mysterious phrases and earnest admissions feels like Life Without Buildings for a new generation. I love the feeling of a huge crush at the centre of this song that comes through achingy in every single word, even when she's talking about abandoned refrigerators.

LeBron James - Do Nothing: This is my number one song this month I think. I've listened to it every single day and I cannot wait to see what this band does once they've got more than a couple of songs out. It's my absolute favourite kind of lyrics: the kind that sounds like you just wrote down every one-sided phone conversation you overheard on the bus and then the music is some halfway point between Black Midi and Franz Ferdinand. What else do you need!

Can I Receive The Contact? - The Spirit Of The Beehive: The Spirit Of The Beehive's album is one of the best I heard this month. The way the production incorporates sound collage and samples without diluting the immediacy of the songwriting is really something special that feels hard to pull off in a rock context but sounds effortless through this whole album. The way this shifts at the end into the odd time section is so great and really the way the whole album flows like one long track is just amazing. Please listen, I'm obsessed.

An Air Conditioned Man - Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever: There is so much space in Rolling Blackouts songs. They just go and go, sitting in this great jam space without feeling shaggy. The tempo across the album stays pretty consistently at this breezy, upbeat, driving speed that makes it feel like as soon as one song ends the next one just picks up exactly where it left off. It almost feels like a studio confines them and they'd be better off just recording their album live at a show where every song can go for 8 minutes like it wants to.

Leak -Truth, yesnoyesnoyes- - Boris: I got to see Boris and Merzbow this month, which was a great treat for me but it was also at a seated theatre venue which was a very strange choice. Sitting down and clapping politely as Merzbow pressed the screaming button feels odd, like being at an 1800s World's Fair show about the wonders of electricity or quite literally like being the guy in the chair getting blown away by the speakers in the Maxell ads. I bought earplugs for the show but ended up pulling them out for the last three songs or so to properly experience it, and it was fucking great. Something I was thinking about after the show is that it's interesting how Boris mostly have clean vocals, and really approach metal as an idea from and angle that's more shoegaze than Slayer. Aside from the immense volume, there isn't a lot about their music that I would describe as agressive, even most of what Merzbow added to the set was just extra feedback frequency noise, not atonal agression. I don't mean this in a trve kvlt way, more like it's interesting how they've taken the aesthetics of metal and refined them into pure amplifer worship, in their words, by either playing straight drone, or just playing normal hard rock at inhuman volumes. Boris are very good is what I'm saying, and I can't wait to listen to more of their extremely large discography.

Nameless Streets - Defeater: I've never really listened to much hardcore and I'm not really sure why. I've listened to Defeater's first two albums to death though so maybe it's time to branch out. What I love about this song, and this band in general is the vocal delivery. In a lot of agressive music from metal to screamo, because the agression and emotion is always sitting at a 10 the nuance can get lost and it becomes a sort of white noise, but Defeater have a nice way of backing off musically and vocally here and there to let the hard hits really hit hard. The outro to this song is also some absolutely world class snare work, building a tension bed in the simplest way thats relieved when the rest of the band comes crashing back in.

Boys In Town - Divinyls: I love the true desperation in this song. The trapped in a small town, surrounded by fuckers stress that gives way in the second half to just screaming "get me out of here!!". I am also interested in the evolution of the phrase 'too much, too young' and would like to know whether this song is referencing the song by The Specials, and if the Defeater song on this playlist is referencing this song or The Specials song, or if all three came up with it independently. It's a simply enough phrase, I suppose they could have. Who cares, really.

Body By Crystal - Spike Fuck: Come on a journey with me and imagine a world where Alex Cameron makes good music. That's Spike Fuck! The sort of burned out, past their prime singer desperate for a hit in any sense type of character - except actually put together with some heart and emotion and not an 80s comic book writer's understanding of human lows. I cannot wait to hear more from Spike Fuck.

Rogue Wave - Aesop Rock: It is something of a marvel how consistently high quality Aesop Rock's work is. For all his verbosity and expansive vocabulary he seems to never veer into white guy rap god flexing for the sake of it. Even a song like this that's 3 minutes of dense verses with nothing resembling a hook doesnt feel exhausting, it just feels like a series of extremely pleasing words and images like "take it where the warlocks lock horns, soda pop, popcorn / top notch gore set to Bach over fog horns" that makes my brain go "nice".

Momentary Bliss (feat. Slowthai and Slaves) - Gorillaz: I love the strange rollout Gorillaz are doing for this album, building the tracklist one song at a time. It's a nice way to force close listening, especially in songs with odd structures like this. I love hearing how different prouction changes Slowthai's approach; on this and Deal Wiv It that he did with Mura Masa it feels a lot brighter than anything on Nothing Great About Britain and there's a playfulness in his flow that comes through accordingly. Gorillaz are always moving around musically but I love how much of a live band feel this has compared to the more studioy sound that killed their last album for me.

We Will Always Love You (feat. Blood Orange) - The Avalanches: I am so excited at the possibility of a new Avalanches album already, and this is the perfect song to have as a lead single because it functions more like a teaser. Like 'would you like an hour more of this kind of beautiful, loving dream?'

Tar Sequence - Lalo Schifrin: I found out a little while ago that the local news theme when I was growing up was actually this song from the score to Cool Hand Luke, and according to a bunch of other guys in the youtube comments it was the local news theme for a lot of stations across America as well. The scene is of a prison road gang working under the blazing sun, and I'm sure someone could write a thinkpiece about the soundtrack to the nightly news, and really the platonic ideal of news themes in general stemming from the score to a scene about prison labour. But not me! I'm just going to write this little post and say we all owe Lalo Schifrin our lives for inventing the sonic pallette of kung fu AND the news, which is an incredible achievement whichever way you slice it.

When You - Tha Pope: It's a little bit of a shame that footwork is 'over' now but I suppose that's the way of things. The intro to this song is an absolute all timer for me. The delay soaked tag, the extended organ lick and then a total gear shift into this shrieking vocal sample that sounds like something has gone wrong but is revealed in actuality to be the centre of the whole track. I absolutely love Pope's little adlib at the start, and halfway through when he brings it back - it injects some real humanity into this cacophonous, volatile song and lets you know someone's done this on purpose, they've not just turned every dial to 10 and pressed play.  

Jonny/Jonny (Reprise) - Faye Webster: I am absolutely in love with the tone of Faye Webster's voice and especially the way she slowly slides up to the note at the end of every line in the verse. This is a song that belongs to the great genre of songs that sound like they were entirely written and performed while laying on the floor and staring at the ceiling. The reprise here comes back at the end of the album and I love it so much. It feels like a Sex And The City monologue set to music, an underexplored genre I'd definitely like to hear more of.

Holes - Matt Berninger: Matt Berninger of The National covered Mercury Rev's Holes for a series of charity 7"s that Planned Parenthood are doingand I really love his take on it. It's a difficult song to cover because it is so beloved, and I think he does really well to not smooth out the arrangement into any sort of easy listening version. The rumbling piano and the extra vocals that mirror the original saw sound near the end are just wonderful. The part that always breaks my heart in this song is the "bands" line at the end and he really does it perfectly without being overdramatic.

Ta Aro - Nadia Reid: I love the way this song is just soaked in tension and potential energy. She has a beautiful way of holding a note just past the edge of her breath, like when she sings 'glory hallelujah' or 'I am stronger' and in the wordless refrain that just draws me in. Then the way it all closes in on itself and shadows close in at the end while it swells to this beautiful thunderstorm of sound. Just great.

Purify - Neurosis: Someone had a tweet a while ago that was like 'listen to a new album every day in February and write about it' and I thought 'fuck it why not' and started doing that. I kept a little note in my phone of every album I listened to that I'd never heard before, and I ranked them out of 5 so I could remember which ones I liked. I ended up listening to 49 new albums which surprised me, and it was surprisingly easy to do as well so I've decided to keep doing it in March as well. Highly recommended. A nice side effect of constantly searching for new things to listen to is it's given me a chance to hear bands that I've always heard about and know the name of but never actually listened to for one reason or another, which is how I got to Neurosis. It's nice to hear this kind of industrial 90s metal that I'd only ever previously heard in Tool from another angle, and it is especially nice to hear bagpipes in a drone metal context - a thought I'd had independently about a week before hearing this album and was glad to have willed into existence before me.

Shallow Sun - Real Estate: Time! I love a song about aging that mentions specific years and ages so you can count along on your fingers. '25 in 2010... so he was 24 when they put out in their first album.. 39 in 24.. so he's... 35 now.. and i'm 28... which means I'm... 3 albums behind..'

Quand Vas Tu Retrer - Melody's Echo Chamber: I'll listen to any song in 5/4. It is simply groovy. This song is so beautifully textured it feels like you can just get completely lost in the sound while the groove moves it along.

Living Through Another Cuba - XTC: I think I've posted this song on one of these playlists before but fuck it, the more time passes the more I think this might be one of the best songs ever written and a complete and total encapsulation of the cold war mood. The absolute maniac resigned powerlessnes on full display, screaming and shouting about pullings fins from an atom bomb and the absolute certainty that even if the world isn't destroyed this time it'll all come around again soon enough anyway.

Time - U.S. Girls: I am a huge proponent of the long song at the end of the record as a concept, and really I believe every song should be the long song at the end of the record if at all possible. This amount of colour in this jam is just incedible, it never gets weighed down or waylaid it just keeps moving though an ever shifting kaleidoscope and I absolutely love it. It also reminds me of Los Bitchos who were on one of my secret lost playlists from December so it's nice to have their vibe represented here at least. This song also interestingly ties into a thought I was having this week about the limits of music wherein time is the only immutable constant. In all of life music is an inescapable constant of course, but in music especially compared to visual art or written art, time is an inexorable force. You simply cannot bend time in music, a song or performance will always have a duration that will define it, short or long, which cannot be muted or played with in the same way that rhythm or tonality can. 4'33" is a good example of that, being devoid of everything except time. When there is nothing, there is still time. Canyons of time.

Bad Magic - Weyes Blood: I got to see Weyes Blood a couple of weeks ago and I feel extremely blessed that I did. She's just amazing. She played this song solo as her last encore, and she's in a sort of interesting position of blowing up majorly on her fourth album so people (myself included) weren't overly familiar with her older stuff. So when she said 'this is a song called Bad Magic' everyone clapped politely and one woman right up the back screamed "oh my GOD??" which is the kind of personal, just for her, singular experience I'm always here for. Hearing this song for the first time in that setting has really made me fall in love with it. The thing that's always alienated me a little abot Weyes Blood's earlier work, and the thing she changed so dramatically on Titanic Rising is the structuring of her songs. Titanic Rising embraces pop songwriting so wonderfully where her earlier work was so much shaggier and harder to access as a result - but in this song I love it. This song is meandering and long and wanders around in circles and I'm here for every second of it.

Listen to this playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ZraEZOeS6qvVxfnz3AJS9

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