Welp, this is fucking disgusting. I even saw him on tour in 2019. My friend was working the venue and told it me it was unusual for an artist to spend literally their entire budget on instrumentalists. Now I'm realizing he was probably just broke.
I wish Alexa only the best in her healing process.
Side-note, anyone else notice the deafening silence about this on the Other Site?
About a month ago, after a lovely morning spent listening to Fuck Buttons, I decided to give Blanck Mass' Dumb Flesh a spin.
Cut to now, where I own every single one of his released albums on vinyl and have listened to "Detritus" approximately 7 million times.
Easily my favorite musical discovery this year. Granted, we're only 2 months in, but still. I've been working from home for months. I haven't been to a bar or a show since Blood Orange roughly a year ago. There's something so cathartic about Blanck Mass' music in this context, a way to channel my frustrations in a fittingly dark but joyful way. Only pissed that I am just now discovering it!
I can't say I read that one, but I DO distinctly remember reading a Marxist interpretation: does Black "kick it in the front seat" with the bourgeoisie, or does she align herself with the proletariat in the back seat? Note how in the 2nd verse, after the critical question of which seat she should take first arises, Black distracts herself thinking about "fun," something so hard to do she actually has to remind herself to do it ("think about fun"). She's ultimately so conflicted about her nascent class consciousness that she spends the rest of the verse reassuring herself and her friends of their status ("I got this, you got this") before vanishing into hedonic materialism ("Partyin', partyin'") and pure fantasy ("I never want this weekend to end!"). Which seat should she take, indeed.
I know I'm not alone in this, but I spent a lot of time with SOPHIE's discography this week. Specifically I listened to OIL OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES NONSTOP REMIX ALBUM in its entirety probably half a dozen times. That album is astonishing. She hinted at a taste for ambient on OIL's "Pretending," but the remix album indulges it extensively. There's moments on the second half that recall the Haxan Cloak or GAS.
In particular "Cold Water" from Part 2 (also my contribution to this week's Friday playlist) is a revelation. It's basically a remix of "Is It Cold in the Water?" but made even more haunting. It's a weird song to have stuck in your head, but it's been a real weird week.
Hope everyone is doing well and taking care of themselves. Phospho, if you're reading this, just wanted you to know that I just saw your previous message on here thanking me for my Bandcamp message, you're the sweetest. If you're ever around ATL you should hit me up!
I'm sorry to hear about your loss, thiscity. My grandma passed away the Thursday before SOPHIE did, and this week has been tough. Sending love your way.
I just can't believe it. I can't. It's going to sound dramatic but whatever: SOPHIE fundamentally changed how I view and approach LGBTQ+ identity. Her sound hopped across so many genres--bubblegum pop, trap, acid techno, house, ambient, ballads, and many more besides--that it rendered labels obsolete, and that was obviously the entire point. I can't name another producer who did it like her. She made me feel freer to be myself, and I will always love her for that.
The best parts of pop music are those moments where the vocal and the beat and the tempo converge into a moment of pure, unadulterated bliss, where what is being said is both beyond essential and totally irrelevant to that feeling. (Too many examples to name, but for some reference: the choruses of "Forever" by HAIM, "Never Really Over" by Katy Perry, and "I Belong in Your Arms" by Chairlift.) "Immaterial" is that moment extended into a whole song. I remember hearing it for the first time during the second (now final) SOPHIE set I experienced, right after she had come out as trans but before OILS OF EVERY PEARL'S UN-INSIDES dropped. That set was in a random hole-in-the-wall bar in my city and I remember thinking how fucking random it was that she--SOPHIE herself!--was there. That song dropping was nothing short of an epiphany. I left that set obsessed, and was over the moon when the album dropped on SoundCloud on my birthday (a day early!) and that song was included. The fact that we have "Immaterial" in its glorious official studio mix (considering her absurdly massive ocean of unreleased material) is a blessing beyond description.
SOPHIE meant a lot of things to a lot of people. I'm really understanding how much she meant to me only now that she's gone, and I fucking hate that. It's really hard to process for me and I know others are going through it worse. My only wish is that she knew how much she meant to us all. Aaaaaaaaaand now I'm crying again.
Au revoir, SOPHIE.
My main memory is that Pink accused Grimes of ripping off his entire aesthetic, and saying something to the effect of (and I paraphrase): "Madonna can't just keep gyrating to new dance beats." And then he claimed Madonna peaked with her debut. I don't know Pink's music well enough to dispute Grimes ripping him off, though I doubt it.
God the comment section was a WARZONE that day, lol
Also gonna add this one, not sure if you've already heard it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m45RDvL_YlM
But also this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsQj-FBCngw
Just wanted to add that "champagne problems" by Taylor Swift hit so hard when I first heard it, like just in terms of alcohol use/abuse and what I've dealt with this year. Also I love you WilliamSockner.
Hey everyone! 😃
Really glad to see Miss Murphy getting her dues on these aggregate commentariat lists, that album absolutely goes. There was a period of some weeks where I'd start each day by blasting the extended mixes of "Murphy's Law" and/or "Narcissus."
My Spotify Wrapped has put into stark relief how much of my year was dominated by full-album-no-skips listening. The first 50 songs on my Top Played Songs list is honestly kind of boring because it's primarily Jessie, Gaga, Charli, Annie, Rina, and Dua, with some random older songs thrown in for good measure (Grimes' "Oblivion," Robyn's "Dancing on My Own," SHYGIRL's "BB," and Enya's "Even in the Shadows").
The one random older song that ended up wayyyyy high on that list was John Maus' "Hey Moon," which I realized I'd listened to a lot years ago but really fell in love with this year. What sparked my rediscovery was Big Time Adolescence, which features it prominently in an introductory montage. Not sure how I feel about the movie overall--parts of it I really liked--but the song was what stuck with me. In the movie it's used to soundtrack a heterosexual male friendship, but that association led me to link it to my own experience with an older gay guy who I viewed as a friend and possible mentor when I first came out. But then the relationship ultimately unraveled, either because I was too much or because he was a total piece of shit (jury's still out on that one). Marvelous how a song ostensibly not about that scenario winds up being that scenario in your memory.
Anyways, if nothing else but for my own sake, here's my top 10 albums list:
1. Jessie Ware - What's Your Pleasure?
2. Charli XCX - how i'm feeling now
3. Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA
4. Róisín Murphy - Róisín Machine
5. Annie - Dark Hearts
6. Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters
7. Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately
8. Christine and the Queens - La vita nuova
9. Lady Gaga - Chromatica
10. The Weeknd - After Hours
It was honestly a great year for music. I crunched the numbers and I spent roughly the equivalent of 62.5 whole days this year listening to music on Spotify. Nuts to think this year is almost over.
Anyways, hope you all have been well and safe. Been kinda scarce on here lately, it's 2020 so I believe that goes without necessary explanation.
LOL I totally feel that. I watch his reviews and I appreciate that he's thoughtful and articulate but I'm astounded by what he picks as the worst/best of each album.
"Your Best American Girl" was the song that got me into Mitski, and it's a masterpiece, but since everyone has already gone to bat for it (doing God's work) I'm chiming in to plug "Geyser." Back when my work commute was a thing, I had a playlist I'd almost always listen to on the drive, and "Geyser" was first on the list. Most of those songs concerned mundane, commute-related topics--waking up, getting ready, actual work, etc.--but "Geyser" is anything but mundane. I hear that song and feel like I could conquer the whole world.
Glad to see this album get a write-up. I've always held that Rihanna is primarily a singles artists, and a number of albums in her catalog come off more as contractual obligations than purposeful statements. This album is not one of them. "Only Girl (In the World)" still slaps just as hard 10 years later. And leave it to Rih to take what could've been the corniest sample ever (Avril Lavigne) into something fresh and transcendent. Gonna give this album a spin this afternoon.
Oof, this is super hard. I couldn't decide on my own so I made a shortlist of my favorite Charli songs and threw it into a bias sorter and this is what it spat out:
1. Track 10
2. Gone
3. Vroom Vroom
4. Backseat
5. Nuclear Seasons
6. anthems
7. foreverf
8. No Angel
9. Lipgloss
10. Grins
It's hard to go wrong with Charli, though. Her discography is varied enough that anyone can find something to enjoy. Currently I'm trying to decide if I like how i'm feeling now more than Pop2 and if I like Charli more than Number 1 Angel. Shit's tough!
Anyways I hope this article inspires Charli to release "Taxi" 💖
Really excited about these changes! Especially looking forward to the changes for commenting, the inability to edit posts is a real game-changer. It would be nice if you made it so that we can change voting too, I know I'm not alone when I say that "accidentall downvotes" are really annoying.
Just wanted to add that Lorely absolutely knocked it out of the park this year with I'm Your Empress Of. I love Amber Mark too so I'm excited to hear this!
The self-reference has to be intentional. When she sings "The games we play are feeling so passé" in the title track, it's a clear echo of the same play/passé rhyme in "I Don't Like Your Band." And at the end of the first verse in "The Streets Where I Belong" she mentions, "I can still hear our songs on the radio," alluding to the chorus of "Songs Remind Me of You."
This kind of pop self-reference can come off as cheap (see: any lyrical allusion Madonna has made to "Lucky Star" in the past 10 years) but I think it works for Annie. This write-up does a great job of illuminating her role in 00s music culture, and for her to nod to her own significance feels earned.
I'll be honest, earlier this morning I was refreshing the home page hoping/waiting for this write-up. I think that's the only time I've done that.
I love Annie, and have loved Annie for years. Hearing that she was coming out with a new album--produced by one of the Sound of Arrows, no less--was the surprise I didn't know I needed in 2020. Between her, Jessie, Róisín, Dua, Kylie, Gaga, Rina, Charli, Carly, and Empress Of, the gays have stayed absolutely fed this year with dance-pop. Annie's album has been the most unexpected though and I am thrilled to hear it in its entirety. "The Streets Where I Belong" is an easy top 10 contender in my favorite tracks this year.
Comments