Band: Deafheaven Album: Ordinary Corrupt Human Love Best song:
“Canary Yellow” Worst song:“Near,” but that’s still a good song.
The pandemic is nearly an end, of sorts. The vaccine rollout is becoming more real and people are getting vaccinated, including me. The world of quarantine is slowing peeling itself back and we, in theory, will be back to a version of normal soon. Bands are booking festivals. Live music may be back soon. Refunds were issued – I was supposed to see Judas Priest indoors in October and that did not happen, for example – and we’re in a waiting pattern. I was supposed to see Deafheaven’s 10-year anniversary tour in May. It got “postponed.”
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Band: Songs:Ohia Album: Didn’t It Rain Best song:
“Blue Factory Flame” Worst song: “Cross the Road, Molina”
I am hardly the first – and I will not be the last – to note that the last year of the pandemic has felt like a wheel spinning in place. Time has both flattened out and felt extended. For kids in school doing some sort of remote work, it’s been something of a wasted year both in learning and in socialization. For so many of the rest of us, it’s just felt like a hellish twilight zone of oblivion; a purgatory of staying inside, watching death and infection totals climb.
Band/Artist: Phoebe Bridgers Album:Stranger in the Alps Best song: “Funeral” is the best song on this album, but the first four songs are all near-perfect. Worst song:I don’t love the cover of “You Missed My Heart”
In the summer, I had a nice run of keeping this site up and I really thought I was going to keep it up. I would say that I was busy or I had something better to do, but I didn’t. I last wrote here in August and it’s now December. I’ve listened to and bought a lot of records in that time, but I haven’t written about them.
Band/Artist: Lana Del Rey Album:Norman Fucking Rockwell Best song: “Cinnamon Girl” is one of the best songs of 2019. Worst song: “Doin’ Time” is not good!
This week marks the anniversary of Chloe’s passing and I would feel somewhat foolish if I didn’t note it. The coming week also marks a year of Lulu being in my life, which speaks to what I would consider a cataclysmic mistake in my dog person story.
Band/Artist: Marissa Nadler Album: For My Crimes Best song: “Blue Vapor” or the title track Worst song: “Said Goodbye to That Car,” but that’s still a good song. This is a great album
I have tried to stay on good terms with every woman I’ve dated seriously. Believe it or not, that is a decently-high number for someone who looks like me, but I worry that even my high school girlfriends think me an asshole. It bothers me.
I had a conversation with a good friend recently about a mutual friend and a religious leader in our community and said good friend asked “Why do you care what each of these people thinks of you?” My answer is related to the above: I care what everyone thinks of me.
I’m not alone in being deeply lonely right now, nor am I alone in being deeply lonely a lot of the time. This is the result of a series of decisions that I’ve made throughout my life and then the pandemic’s isolation period; my fault lies in that my life is a deep well of loneliness because I have not done enough to encourage the relationships in my life, whether romantic or otherwise. I talk to people, literally, for a living. And I’m still deeply lonely. It sucks.
But, everything is pretty much terrible right now. That’s not news to anyone reading this; you have access to the internet, so you know about the raging pandemic that seems to be under control everywhere but my homeland and Brazil. You know about my homeland’s dominance of global finance, therefore the global recession that is caused by my country’s abject failures.
I went into quarantine, just as everyone else did, in the second week of March. The one artist with whom I’ve familiarized with most is Marissa Nadler. I’d vaguely known her stuff for a while, but never dove in headfirst like I did in the awful first few weeks of the quarantine. As the return-to-normal date got further and further away, I reverted back to my moodier teen years (without the sexism, thankfully).
One of the things I started doing – and it really depends on how it is framed – is listening to the bleak singer-songwriter stuff I enjoyed in high school and early college. Elliott Smith. Bedhead. Songs:Ohia. The kinda stuff that signaled to people that I was a “sensitive teen,” which was just a euphemism for “depressed and directionless.” The genre was called “sad bastard” music, I think, by Nick Hornby in High Fidelity, or maybe in the movie based on the book. I don’t remember. I do know that the book’s protagonist was someone who I tired to emulate in my younger years and now see him as the abhorrent person he was written to be.
I worry about this backslide.
Nadler’s got a “sad bastard” vibe, for sure, and For My Crimes definitely dances on that line. “I Can’t Listen to Gene Clark Anymore” is an all-too-familiar notion that we’ve all had after a breakup with a fellow music lover. “For My Crimes” is everything I’ve ever wanted in both a song and also everything I’ve wanted in a mission statement.
Do we all want our worst acts to be the first line in our obituaries? Of course not. My pathology is that I don’t want people to remember me for my worst acts. Or even remember them at all.
The greatest lyrics, to me, are those that use simple language to convey beautiful emotions that stay with you. I get why people like the literary or the flowers, but I think of Death Cab for Cutie’s “For What Reason,” Elliott Smith’s best work and Chelsea Wolfe’s, well, whole catalog get to the heart of deep emotion better than the florid shit. “I’m not the kind of sick that you can fix” and “This won’t be the last you hear from me/it’s just the start” have the rhythm and access that the more complicated stuff doesn’t do. One of the best single lyrical couplets I can recall is “The only thing that makes me go forward/is forgetting.”
“I’ve done terrible things. Cold and careless lies. You can watch behind the glass as I Pass through serpentine.”
The pre-chorus sets up Nadler’s whisper-soft chorus, beautiful in its simplicity and universal in its appeal to anyone.
“Please don’t remember me Please don’t remember me Please don’t remember me for my crimes.”
Band/Artist: Metallica Album: …And Justice For All Best song: “One” or “Blackened” Worst
song: This is pretty much great all the way through.
Fairly recently, actor and Simpsons voice genius Hank Azaria started a conversation on Twitter (this is how we all communicate now, by the way: Someone just throws some meat into the Twitter lion cage and we all fight over it) about a very American subject and who would top a very American ranking.
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Band/Artist: Various Artists Album: What Is This
That Stands Before Me? Best song: “Changes” Worst
song:“Symptom of the Universe.”
I’ve yet to write about Zola Jesus on this site and it’s certainly pretty weird my first writing about her work comes within the context of her single song on a compilation of Black Sabbath covers. Such records are a somewhat regular occurrence, being that Sabbath is the most influential band of its genre. Sacred Bones Records, the label responsible for the comp, is probably less mainstream than the other such labels putting out these covers records, but nonetheless, its artists are definitely as Sabbath-influenced as, like, the biggest of these covers records.
Band/Artist: Purple Mountains Album: Purple Mountains Best song: “Margaritas at the Mall,” hands-down. It’s one of Berman’s best songs in his catalogue. Worst song: “Maybe I’m the Only One for Me” is a good song, but the record’s weakest.
In the Conservative American Judaism I grew up with – even the different branches of Judaism, each is hardly a monolith – there is a set of prayers that are essentially blessings that one says to start the day or start a morning service. They are called Birkhot HaShahar (ברכות השחר), or the blessings of the dawn. There are 10 of them and I was taught that they are meant to begin the day in a thankful and meditative mood. Read More »
Band/Artist: A Silver Mt. Zion Album: He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms… Best song: “For Wanda” and “13 Angels Standing Guard ’round the Side of Your Bed” Worst song: “Long March Rocket or Doomed Airliner” is not a song, necessarily.
I was having a conversation with a friend a few years ago about the dog meat trade that takes place in different cultures. There are conversations to be had about cultural differences and the reasonable question he asked was something to the effect of “well, we eat cows and pigs and chickens in the West. What’s the difference?”
Band/Artist: Chelsea Wolfe Album: Hiss Spun Best song: “16 Psyche” Worst song: “Twin Fawn” is a great song, but the least fitting on the record.
One of the things about getting older is that you lost touch with a lot of your friends. If you don’t have an activity with them – this is partially why I still play softball. It makes me see people I like without having to make an effort. – it’s easy to lose track of one another’s lives. Marriage, kids and the general ennui of getting older makes it so our social circles contract.
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