A lot of female musicians know that if they cite a woman who came before them as an influence, they'll be unfavorably compared to that woman for the rest of their career. Tori's spoken on how she was compared to Kate Bush before she even started listening to Kate Bush, and how that kept her from exploring Bush's catalogue for years out of fear that she would become known as just a poor man's Kate Bush.
Jane Siberry's "Love is Everything" was the song that got me to break off my dead-end engagement in 2010!
I found some untitled eight year-old piano compositions on my hard drive the other week, was like "hey, who's this Tori Amos wannabe, why do I have so many of her songs". Turns out it was me from 2013, which my roommate had to inform me. I can absolutely see making this mistake.
Ellis just has something special about her, among all the 90's throwback singer-songwriters. I think she's got a lot of sensitivity to her voice and a lot of clever economy to her lyrics. She really leans into the "dream" part of "dream pop"; all her songs make me feel like I'm laying on my bed on a warm summer day, just sort of levitating. Born Again was underrated and I can't wait to see what she does next.
This week I've been in Hawaii visiting family (fully vaxxed!) while also attending a national lawyering conference over Zoom, which the organizers sadistically scheduled on east coast time for 9am, which is a six-hour time difference for me. Anyway that's why I read this as "Trey Songz" and spent a good forty seconds extremely confused about what year I was in.
Remember how at the beginning of the pandemic some of us self-soothed by spending idiotic amounts of money on a bunch of random retail therapy crap in a desperate attempt to feel better? Yeah, I bought three of those stupid Big Mouth Billy Bass fish. They terrify my cats. I also bought a ouija board and a giant cardboard cut-out of Skimbleshanks from the Cats musical.
Yeah, teenage girls who like solo pop stars haven’t historically turned up their noses at “bands” either, be they boy bands like BTS and One Direction or getting into more alt stuff but still hot with the kids stuff like the Hey Violet which are really popular with them now. What weird and baseless snobbery.
I go to bat for Eclipse. The hooks are there! Every song is catchy! Just fling yourself into the cheesy abyss of "Turn Me Up" and "I'm Ready" and let your worries fade away!
As one of the resident Ruston Kelly stans, I admit I don't want to hear an album about divorcing him. I still spin Shape and Destroy and Dying Star at least once a week.
I can't express how glad I am that she's going back to her lower register after the asthmatic meandering whistle-tones of the last two albums, but man, I miss the grandeur of her "Ride", "Cruel World", "Born to Die", "Shades of Cool", etc. I feel like the last Lana song that really hit me in the heart is "Love".
No one makes music that's as warm and lush as Lambchop. I don't know what it is about them, but there are so many songs of theirs that make me feel like I'm walking right into a memory. Can't wait for Friday.
Pacific Daydream has strong enough hooks that I sometimes go back to it despite the fact that it's the musical version of cotton candy. Completely without substance, cheap and quickly-made, not particularly great for brain development, but hey, it's fluffy and pleasant.
One person's "slightly cringe" is another person's "uncomfortably racist and objectifying." My problem with Pinkerton tends to be that Rivers Cuomo reveals the contents of his thoughts to be just more entitled white guy yellow fever vaguely-homophobic dribble that women like me get to field constantly, and that people then rallied around that sort of sewage as raw, confessional, profound art and not just another creepy dude's creepy thoughts about "exotic" teenage girls and lesbians who should just "be a little straight" because a dude wants them.
Agreed, I'm not a fan at all of the new front page. The "all articles" page soothes my desire for everything to be listed chronologically so I can quickly see if I've missed anything new.
Just take my money. Take all of it. Midwife (and her Mercury Tracer releases) has been one of the only sources of light in a dark year and I could not be more excited that a new album is on the horizon.
Slothrust is so consistently excellent. I'm so grateful that the 'Gum continues to give them coverage because they deserve all the attention they get. I love how this track has that same woozy feeling as "Walk Away" and "The Haunting" from the last album
That is pretty messed up and disappointing from Phoebe. I know there’s no perfect consumption (or making a living as an artist) under capitalism but this isn’t “oh I just happen to get my entertainment through Disney+ and do Amazon music exclusives”.
For the record, by "invasive, unproven science" I don't mean the vaccines, which are quite well-vetted given the timeframe. I mean stuff like expensive anti-homeless sanitation theater in the subway systems despite surface transmission being nearly non-existent, but that we don't criticize because "better safe than sorry".
It's probably the libertarian in me but I'm really alarmed by how quickly and desperately we've been embracing surveillance and invasive, unproven science wholeheartedly in an attempt to get back to "normal". Like the TSA, these things won't go away once the pandemic's over. Unless there is a concerted effort to shove things back into Pandora's box, we've welcomed tracking apps, exposure of private health information, outsourcing harvesting said information to third parties, restrictions on immigration and travel, to an extent that they've become completely normalized, and while that makes sense in an immediate crisis it worries me a lot that these things are here to stay.
Thanks for the link. P.O.S. was always one of my favorite contributors to Doomtree, and this is really disappointing. Glad that the other folks in the collective seem to be taking it seriously.
Honestly, good for him. I believe everyone in America should see what an American prison looks like before they form an opinion on who belongs there and for how long.
It does often feel like that. The shitty thing about misogyny isn that it's so embedded and pervasive in our culture that sometimes legitimate criticisms and misogynistic attacks look the same, and sometimes legitimate criticisms get piggybacked on by misogynistic attacks or vice versa, and those of us sensitive to them end up jumping at shadows, and it's hard to put your finger on any one thing without people coming in to say that they totally dunk on The 1975 and Justin Bieber as hard as they do Grimes and LDR, but I've definitely mostly left the LDR threads on Stereogum because I end up feeling like I'm jumping at way too many shadows.
Harm reduction methods didn't work for me (totally sober 2 months now after struggling on a harm reduction approach for almost a year) but it did for my roommate. There really is no one story for addiction and honestly, the idea that the only form of treatment was "you can never have drugs or alcohol again" drove me away from seeking any help for years.
Absolutely agreed. I've tried all day to get into this album and besides "Hardline", which grew on me, it all just sounds the same and monotone to me. There aren't any of the perfect moments that rip my heart out like "all my prayers are just apologies" "I think there's a God and he hears either way" "I wanted to stay" "the harder I swim, the faster I sink", etc. Comparing "Ziptie" to "Go Home" or "Claws in Your Back" as a closing track is an especially damning comparison, imo. And for whatever reason (mixing, maybe?) I'm having a ton of trouble deciphering her lyrics without looking them up on this record. This is definitely my first big letdown of the year. I'm hoping it grows on me, but I don't really have high hopes. It feels like so many female signer-songwriters who come into the scene as masters of their craft in a smaller acoustic or underproduced setting are transitioning lately to a full-band sound that just irons all their best features out (looking at you, Sharon Van Etten, Japanese Breakfast, Mitski, Phoebe Bridgers...).
Anyway, thank you form sharing your opinion, makes me feel less lonely about it over here!
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