Tag: Five Years

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 6/23/24

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

This week: I wouldn’t hold out hope for the tape deck…or the Creedence.

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 6/23/24

“Soul Love” (Demo) – David Bowie

This week on me being incredibly predictable: needless to say, I’m a wreck again. The demos. The David Bowie demos. They got me…………..

As if I wasn’t already eviscerated by what I’ve heard of Divine Symmetry (see: “Quicksand” [Demo]), we’re already back at it again with Rock n’ Roll Star!, a collection of demos, rarities, and live recordings from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. For me, an album is one of the few things that isn’t ruined by seeing all of the moving cogs inside of its stomach; seeing the nymphs of what would become rock classics makes the process even more admirable—and more human, knowing how many costumes each song had to try on before debuting. A piece of “Moonage Daydream” was once less than two minutes, much less spacey, and called “So Long 60’s”; “Lady Stardust” went through several vocal changes before coming out the other side. Most of these were changes that were necessary for the songs to shine.

And yet, the demo version of “Soul Love” feels like the proper way that the song should have been all along. On Ziggy Stardust, it serves to ground the grandiose, anguished lament of “Five Years,” calming the album in vignettes of grief and young lovers. This demo includes some of Bowie’s notes—you can hear him telling his producers that he envisions the final products with lots of saxophone, which it eventually gained. There was no way that “Soul Love” would have ever made it onto Ziggy Stardust in its sparse, acoustic form; there’s no room for that kind of true quiet on an album that’s not only so lofty in its story, but unabashedly theatrical and glam rock. “Soul Love” was always intimate, but in isolation, with only Bowie and his acoustic guitar, the intimacy feels exactly how it was intended. In such a soft, enclosed space, the secrecy of “A boy and girl are talking/New words/That only they can share” and the silent mourning of “She kneels before the grave/A brave son/Who gave his life to save the slogans.” In the landscape of the Ziggy Stardust narrative, “Soul Love” is the period after the announcement of Earth’s impending doom, where fleeting images of people are shown in private, emotional moments—lovers embracing in the darkness, and a mother grieving her fallen son, but thinking also of the future—was it for the best that he was slain before the calamitous end of the world? That privacy is what makes the acoustic version feel much more fitting to the true intent of the song; the performance itself is as secretive and soft of a moment as the very vignettes that Bowie describes; hunched over his guitar, for the first time, you understand the purpose with which he sings “all I have is my love of love,” solid against his beating heart like loose change in his breast pocket.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Madman Yearbook ’95 – Mike Allred – pure love and David Bowie references abound. Might just be my favorite comic of all time…

“Little Bird” – Lisa Hannigan

The more I listen to “Little Bird,” the more I’m tempted to just copy and paste the lyrics here in lieu of actually writing something, because how else could I do justice to this song? When you’ve got the talent to open a song like this, how do you describe it any better than her?

“Your heart sings like a kettle/And your words, they boil away like steam/And a lie burns long, while the truth bites quick/A heart is built for both, it seems/You are lonely as a church/Despite the queuing out your door/I am empty as a promise, no more.”

One verse. One verse, and I can already feel my chest caving in. Christ. You can dress your story with all the metaphors you like, but Hannigan places them so intentionally that they were never throwaways to make anything more purple or flowery; there’s a quiet tragedy to them, like the squeal of a tea kettle as its contents boil. And it’s not just tying objects like teakettles and churches—thinking to make words disappear in a flush of steam and making the pinnacle of isolation a church is what makes them dig so deeply; it’s Hannigan gives new eyes to these metaphors that turn them into such gut-wrenching poetry. It encapsulates a sensation I often felt as a child, and on occasion now that I’m older: that of being in such a large crowd of people, and everything seeming to collapse into silence and loneliness around you, even though you’re as surrounded and secure as can be. Loneliness, homesickness, lovesickness—the more company it has, the more it aches, I find. Whatever the opposite of claustrophobia is how “Little Bird” is—the feeling of being in an enclosed space, but such a large and unfurnished one that it makes your body instinctively crouch into a small shape. It’s the caldera of loneliness as you grapple with the space one filled by someone, but now occupied by the tug-of-war between whatever made you stay and what made you let them go: “When the time comes/And rights have been read/I think of you often/But for once, I meant what I said.” But the paper-thin, lead-heavy lyrics would not be the same without their messenger—nothing brings it sailing back home like Hannigan’s solemn, wavering warble, each tremble never failing to give me full-body tremors.

In case that wasn’t enough to elicit a good cry, here’s her performance of it on her Tiny Desk Concert (skip to 2:32):

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Raven and the Reindeer – T. Kingfisher – “I was salted by your hunger/Now you’ve gone and lost your appetite/And a little bird is every bit as handy in a fight….”

“We The People…” – A Tribe Called Quest

Of course I came back to this song in an election year. I distinctly remembering “We The People…” coloring the deep-rooted anxiety and turmoil of 2016, what with the hate machine that was Trump’s election campaign and eventual presidency. I really, really want to say that “We The People…” sounds dated, but nothing about it is. First off, A Tribe Called Quest are just that talented, but more importantly…nothing about this song’s politics is dated. Here we are in 2024, and Trump is back, and spewing the exact same rhetoric, now with callbacks to Hitler that aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. In his reelection campaign, the only change to his status are the impeachments (PLURAL, remember) and the 34 felony charges. Predictably, that’s done next to nothing to sway his rabid fanbase. I really wish I could say that this song was a product of its time. Maybe in 20 years, when all of this is behind us, it will be. But no, in eight years, nothing’s really changed. A Tribe Called Quest stripped the desires of Trump and his supporters down to the bone, and eight years later, it makes me ill to think that we’re trapped in this same cycle again.

But you know what else hasn’t changed? Our anger. Back in 2016, we knew the dangers of letting such a raging, narcissistic bigot with no political experience into the White House, and now we’ve survived it, and we’re bent on making sure it won’t happen again. The anger and determination of “We The People…” rings the same, but with more tenacity. It may be disheartening to be stuck in this hell time loop, but at least we have high-quality protest music whose wit (and infectious beat) hasn’t dulled in almost a decade. Thanks, Tribe.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

No Gods, No Monsters – Caldwell Turnbull – political unrest and injustice in modern America…now with more monsters.

“Aikea-Guinea” – Cocteau Twins

For the Cocteau Twins, the song’s title is often more important than the lyrics; it’s a placeholder for the abstract feeling that Elizabeth Fraser and company string together, an anchoring point for attempting to describe their lattice-like melodies. In Fraser’s own words, “aikea-guinea” is Scottish slang for “flat shells that have been bleached and smoothed out by the sea and the sand. I’ve just ruined it for you by telling you what it’s all about, haven’t I?”

I really don’t think it has, not at all. In fact, it only sharpens the image that “Aikea-Guinea” conjures as it fizzes like waves dissipating on a rocky shore. By 1985, gated reverb was king (and likely growing overused, at least in mainstream music…and remember, kids, we have “Intruder” to thank for it), but the Cocteau Twins knew just the way to use it to their advantage. By cloaking all of their percussion in it, “Aikea-Guinea” dissolves in your ears like fizzing candy, or more accurately, like crackling sea foam birthed from a freshly-broken wave. Like “Oomingmak,” it’s swathed in mist, but this mist comes from the aftermath of a storm out at sea, the air full of nostril-tingling salt and faint coldness making goosebumps prickle on your bare arms. With each punch of percussion, such seashells that Fraser described tumble through the water, colliding with each other as time and water erode them. Fraser’s voice, which bobs and balloons like frogs after nightfall, is as transient as plankton in the water, spiraling like the trails of bubbles that carry each shell through the currents of time.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Light at the Bottom of the World – London Shah – a fitting soundtrack to an underwater England of the future.

“Lookin’ Out My Back Door” – Creedence Clearwater Revival

I’m not even that ardent of a Creedence Clearwater Revival fan—my knowledge doesn’t extend much past the hits—but I firmly believe that this is one of those songs, like David Bowie’s “Kooks,” that every kid should have in their life. The only crime about this song is that it wasn’t released in the same key as the music video, which, in my opinion, makes the lighthearted daydream of it feel all the more daydream-like. And speaking of daydreams…usually, I don’t get all up in arms when a given song gets interpreted as being about drugs, but oh my god. Please. “Oh, it’s about tripping, the spoon is an allusion to cocaine, the—” SHUT UP!! SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!! JOHN FOGERTY WROTE THIS SONG FOR HIS THREE-YEAR-OLD SON, YOU EDGELORDS!!! IT’S NOT AN ACID TRIP, THE LYRICS WERE INSPIRED BY DR. SEUSS!!! For fuck’s sake, man…of all the lyric interpretation cop-outs, this has to be one of the most offensive for me. Just because it was written in 1969 doesn’t mean that it’s about acid…

I guess what tweaks me so much, other than how much of a mainstay of my childhood that “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” was, is that people automatically see silly, nonsensical imagery and automatically attribute it to acid. Do none of you have any imagination? What, did you forget how you got bored in your childhood and started imagining happy creatures dancing on the lawn? Is that how out of touch you are with your inner child?? Okay, I’m getting far too worked up about that, but god. It genuinely gets under my skin that a song of such purity still gets misinterpreted like this. Just goes to show you how we treat childlike wonder and imagination.

Anyway. All that said, no amount of misinterpretation will ever sully this song to me; there’s a joyous warmth to it that really can only be the product of happy creatures dancing on the lawn. I remember imagining them somewhere along the lines of Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter books, and that’s the beauty of it. This song, like Dr. Seuss, was made to be a picture book: the language is simple enough for a child to understand, but there’s so much silliness and vibrance abound that, just like a peeling, well-loved board book, they’ll be asking to hear “doo, doo, doo, lookin’ out my back door” time and time again.

On another note: I’d planned on including “Lookin’ Out My Back Door” this week anyway, but putting it on the heels of rewatching The Big Lebowski recently was only fitting:

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street – Dr. Seuss – see above—this is the specific Dr. Seuss book that inspired the lyrics.

BONUS: an update to 6/2/24…they finally “Wuthering Heights”-‘d this shit up!!!!!

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Music

All Born Screaming – album review

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Friday, bibliophiles!

2024 has proven to be momentous for my inner middle schooler. A new St. Vincent album, and the Apple TV+ adaptation of The Search for WondLa…exists. I may revert to my middle school self if everything else about the show is as terrible as the “reimagined” character designs. But that’s not what I’m reviewing today.

Those of you who have stuck around on this blog may remember me enthusiastically reviewing Daddy’s Home on the heels of surviving the hell that was junior year during COVID. Those who have stuck around longer still remember my middle-school rant about MASSEDUCTION. (I’d rather you…not remember the specifics of the latter, but I still count that album as her lowest point.) Her self-titled record was as much of a friend as an album can be when I was 12, struggling to reconcile being unapologetically myself and wanting the acceptance of my peers. Marry Me was the first album I ever bought with my own money, and Actor, Strange Mercy, and Love This Giant all saw me through high school. All that is to say that St. Vincent has been there for me in the best of times and the worst of times. So naturally, I did scream when I found out about All Born Screaming—not just a new album, but a supposed return to her harder sensibilities—was coming out this year. And while it wasn’t fully the rock album that was marketed—or as musically cohesive as she tends to be—All Born Screaming is, without a doubt, some of her best work in years.

As I’ve been excited about this album for months—and writing more about music than I have in past years—I’ve already reviewed 3/10 of the tracks from All Born Screaming, so I’ll link to each separate installment of Sunday Songs that I reviewed them in, so as not to sound like a feral, sobbing, broken record.

Let’s begin, shall we?

ALL BORN SCREAMING – ST. VINCENT

Release date: April 26, 2024 (Total Pleasure)

TRACK 1: “Hell Is Near” – 8/10

St. Vincent tying the aesthetic and merch in with images of marigolds is pure evil. Diabolical. Diabolical of them to pair one of my favorite artists of all time with my favorite flower…holding out until she announces a date near me until I buy that one marigold shirt, because it’s an inevitability. It’s only a matter of time.

“Hell Is Near” is an opener that creeps through the shadows on feet that you can barely see coming. With a thumping bass that thrums like a heartbeat witnessing horrors in the dark, it feels like the slithering transition between eras and personas, especially with the allusion to “The Nowhere Inn” (“Snubbed out smoke in a pack from the Nowhere Inn”). I can almost see Clark crawling out of some kind of giant shadow box as the song progresses, the heartbeat bass echoing off of every wall as her hands emerge from the darkness. I can’t help but think of the chord progression of “Prince Johnny”—this album is the most similar to the self-titled record since the record itself, and it’s clear that she’s cobbling this current aesthetic upon shadowier corners of that era, with guitar riffs that seem to interlock like strands of DNA. It’s a slow trickle of an opener, and as it dissolves into a flurry of high piano notes and fluttering synth, it leaves you guessing—where could she possibly be taking us to next?

TRACK 2: “Reckless” – 8.5/10

“Reckless” almost feels more like an opener than “Hell Is Near” does, even though the latter does a fantastic job of being an opener. After “Hell Is Near” dissolves, we return to sparse wasteland that the first track set up, but with a significantly darker tone—both speak of leaving the past behind, but “Reckless” turns “Hell Is Near”‘s willingness to move on to dwelling on it.

If there’s one thing about new music that I always live for, it’s those moments where you hear a lyric for the first time and physically have to stop in your tracks just to process how beautiful it is. Last year, I had that moment with Wilco’s stunning “Sunlight Ends”—”you dance/like the dust in the light” made all time stop around me. Jeff Tweedy just does that. And so does Annie Clark—it’s hard to think of a line on All Born Screaming more hard-hitting than this: “I’ve been mourning you since the day I met you.” Even if it precedes “Flea” and its tale of a love so predatory that it becomes parasitic, this feels like the fallout; it feels like a reconciliation, or just a realization of a feeling of destroying everything you touch, knowing that your actions will eventually drive away everyone that you will ever love. Whatever the narrator did has become so thoughtless and violent that it’s left them with nothing but “the smell of your hair on the curtains, babe,” and all that is left of them is a memory that they cling to with all that they can, knowing that what they did was enough to send them running for good. The sparkling synths that burst like faulty wiring at 2:38, around 2/3 of the way through, feel like the memory of the outburst that left them isolated, longing for something more, as Clark stares out the window like a widow remembering how her lover was slain in the war. This, unlike “Hell Is Near,” felt like a more certain sign of things to come—the wires have been cut, the dishes are shattered on the floor, and your heels are burnt and bleeding from stepping on them both.

TRACK 3: “Broken Man” – 10/10

Reviewed on 3/10—I haven’t stopped foaming at the mouth, thank you very much

TRACK 4: “Flea” – 10/10

Reviewed on 4/7—no, I still haven’t recovered from “I look at you and all I see is meat,” why do you ask?

TRACK 5: “Big Time Nothing” – 8.5/10

This is what MASSEDUCTION should have been.

All Born Screaming was what Clark called “post-plague pop,” and nothing exemplifies the “pop” aspect more than this song. Like the spandex she wore on the MASSEDUCTION tour, the skittering synths clamp the beat down enough so that it hardly even has room to squirm. There’s threads of Björk’s electronic catwalk-strutters and the obvious (to me, at least) nod to Peter Gabriel with the last utterance of “big time nothing” being cut off to a chorus of “big time”; a very fitting nod, since these two Big Times deal with the same Big Time in question: the allure—and detriment—of being under the magnifying glass of fame. Gabriel’s “Big Time” was his view on what fame turned people into—and what he feared that, as his own fame grew, he might become. (Of course he wasn’t going to, though. He’s too humble of a guy.) And even though Daddy’s Home was the first album post-MASSEDUCTION to deal with the litany of events Clark experienced, this one seems to address the scrutiny she felt under the microscope of paparazzi while she dated Cara Delevigne; she was already renowned in indie circles, but she’d never been exposed to that kind of relentless tabloid predation before, and, understandably, it’s done a number on her mental health.

Each lyric is a rapid-fire command, as though being dictated to a model while she’s spinning around for the camera: “Don’t blink, don’t wait/Don’t walk, you’re late/Don’t fall from grace, behave/Don’t trip, sashay.” Every misstep is tabloid fodder, and every move she makes is under heavy surveillance. The dead-eyed delivery of each spit lyric cements the soullessness of it all, other than an occasional vocal dip (“Don’t feel so sick”) where it turns from dead to sinister, a pseudo-coo that seems to come with a promise through red lips and an emotionless pat on the shoulder. It’s pop, but the kind of pop that’s delivered with Clark’s keen (and weary) observations on being in the celebrity spotlight—this is the natural evolution of “Los Ageless,” especially my favorite lyric from it: “girls in cages playing their guitars.” You can entertain, but you can’t move.

TRACK 6: “Violent Times” – 8.5/10

When the starts the All Born Screaming tour, she just has to transition this with “Marrow.” Or any track from Actor, come to think of it. “Violent Times” feels like a version of Actor that leans more into the boldness than the flighty, hiding-under-the-bed sensibilities. With a brass section powerful enough to flatten a forest, the dial is turned from observational pop back to the in-your-face force of “Broken Man,” but instead of the latter’s formal urges, it’s a leather jacket-clad beckoning back to a lover, sunglasses tilted down the nose and not a smear of lipstick out of place. As the brass blasts and the papery drumbeat thrums, Clark sultrily sings of the never-ending glow of kindness in the darkest hour—”I forgot people be so kind in these violent times.” Even though it’s made for Clark’s signature, birdlike dance moves, slick and smoky, it touches at some of the album’s tenderest moments. In the chaos of the modern world, it becomes more difficult day by day to remember that there’s still good left in it. But as Clark reminds us, what’s preserved from history’s great tragedies is always the innate, human quality of love: “When in the ashes of Pompeii/Lovers discovered in an embrace/For all eternity.” The subject matter and the musical atmosphere seem eons away, but in Clark’s hands, they’re all but twins, molded from the same warm clay into one of the most iconic tracks of the year.

TRACK 7: “The Power’s Out” – 9/10

Speaking of nods to other artists…

This one is the most obvious out of the many tributes to her musical inspirations, but for me, it’s the most emotional and poignant. “The Power’s Out” is, in essence, a four and a half minute long tribute to the iconic opener from David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, “Five Years”—in my opinion, one of the greatest album openers of all time, given the artistry, fly-on-the-wall observations, and the overwhelm of emotion. The nods are practically everywhere. My brother pointed out how the drumbeat is almost identical, albeit with one beat more and significantly digitized. The parallels are everywhere:

“Came the message on the station/’The power’s out across the nation/And, Ladies and gentleman, it seems we got a problem’/The man on my screen said, just as somebody shot him.” (Clark)

“News guy wept and told us/Earth was really dying/Cried so much his face was wet/Then I knew he was not lying.” (Bowie)

–

“It was pouring like a movie/Every stranger looked like they knew me.” (Clark)

“And it was cold and it rained, so I felt like an actor.” (Bowie)

–

“And ‘Ladies and gentleman, do remember me smiling’/The queer on the train said as she jumped off the platform/And some blind folks held the police, crying/I swear to you I would not lie.” (Clark)

“A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest/And a queer threw up at the sight of that.” (Bowie)

I’ve got a whole Charlie Kelly conspiracy cork board laid out in my head. It’s all blatantly intentional, and it’s beautiful to me, coming from someone who has said that “there’s nobody who I would put above Bowie.” But what separates “Five Years” and “The Power’s Out” for me is the grounding. “Five Years” was the grand sweep of the beginning of his famous concept album, where Ziggy Stardust comes to Earth in its final five years to teach humanity the power of love and music before their time is expired. It’s more emotional than “The Power’s Out” for me (because, like Clark, there’s nobody I would put above Bowie…but she’s very close), but even with the barrage of anguish that Bowie pours out at the song’s climactic, chaotic flurry of an ending, you still know it’s part of something fictional. With “The Power’s Out,” there’s no pretense of total annihilation or alien saviors—it’s the horror of reality, the horror of contending with modern life. The world isn’t ending, but the disarray of the city and the fear being grown and harvested in barrels makes every day seem like a catastrophe. We’re assaulted with hate and fear from all corners of the world, now more than ever, and no one is exempt. With all of the horrific events flooding us, all we can do is try to move through it as best we can, yet still be expected to return to it and live through it all over again; all of the chaos, fear, and violence Clark describes is wrapped up in a whispery confession in the final line, as though to a partner: “That’s why I never came home.” It’s a beautiful conversation with Bowie, one that grounds its inspiration in the maelstrom of dystopian chaos that is 21st century living.

TRACK 8: “Sweetest Fruit” – 9/10

Reviewed on 4/28—good LORD, this is phenomenal

TRACK 9: “So Many Planets” – 6/10

Why does the thumbnail for this video look like I’m at a parent-teacher conference and St. Vincent’s about to pull up my math grade and tell me that my test scores have been slipping 😭

There have been various moments on this album that have made me go “huh?”—unexpected musical turns left and right. It’s an album that, if nothing else, has kept me on my toes. But this was the first on the album that was not a good “huh.” Most of the early reviews of the album called it the emotional centerpiece, so I was expecting something in line with “I Prefer Your Love,” “Live In The Dream,” or even “Slow Disco”—St. Vincent knows how to bring things down to Earth from the grandeur that she paints. But “So Many Planets” is just a jumble of confusing decisions. Here’s the thing: the lyrics are vulnerably beautiful, but the tonal dissonance between said lyrics and the music makes the aftertaste one that I don’t like all the way. It’s got this odd, synthy, bounce, and her delivery is oddly stiff and angular. Usually, Clark is one to mesh two oddly contrasting elements and make them work (see: “Violent Times”), but here, it just feels so tonally distant that it falls flat. Separately, these aspects are commendable, but they weren’t meant to be together. This is the low point of the album, without a doubt, but in the grand scheme of things, if this is the worst song, then it’s a fantastic album.

TRACK 10: “All Born Screaming” (fear. Cate Le Bon) – 7/10

All Born Screaming, as wonderful as it is, doesn’t stick the landing so well…until it does. Combined with “So Many Planets,” “All Born Screaming” is another tonally dissonant, pseudo-reggae ball of confusion that sits strangely in my mouth. It seems like the kind of thing to be paired with the kind of perky dance that Clark often did with her backup dancers on the Daddy’s Home tour, and for a song that’s meant to be the album’s closing thesis and its title track, it…doesn’t work. Most of my thoughts on this song parallel my thoughts on “So Many Planets.”

But.

About halfway through, the freakout starts. Distorted voices bubble through the wire, guitars whine and screech, and an accelerated, anxious heartbeat propels “All Born Screaming” into its final form. Joined by the cavernous voice of Cate Le Bon, Clark turns the album’s title into a clarion call, howling out to the masses: an affirmation that despite it all, we are still here. We were all born screaming, and we will continue to scream until our last breath. We are here, and we won’t go away. We went into the woods that Clark spoke of, scarred by brambles and wild animals, but in one piece, stronger for having pushed through the journey. In the background, the electronics accelerate like sleek cars down a racetrack, setting off sparks. This takes up half of “All Born Screaming”‘s nearly 7-minute length, but even if the first part had been cut away, it would still be one of the most poignant moments on the entire album. I almost get choked up at the sudden drop-off of the electronics and the shift to just the chorus of Clark and Le Bon. It gets to you. Gets you right through the ribs…I just wish the whole song got the memo.

It’s an ode to growth in all of its ugliness, knowing that whatever you have survived, you can and will survive it again.

going insane trying to choose just one photo from this photoshoot to use bc THEY’RE ALL SO GOOOOOOOOOOD

I averaged out the ratings for each track, and it came out at an 8.5! All Born Screaming, even if it does lean in a musically scatterbrained direction, is some of St. Vincent’s most vulnerable work to date. Self-produced and deeply personal, it seems to map her heart in ways that haven’t been done in her previous albums. All of that shows—it’s a bold, furious, and boundlessly creative ode to surviving—of crawling free of the darkness and finding your way home to the guiding light of love. The journey may turn you feral, but once you’re free of all of the vile parts, you’re free—to scream. And there is no one’s primal scream I’d rather hear more than that of Annie Clark.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this album review! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Uncategorized

Sunday Songs: 9/24/23

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

Guess who’s back! Here I am again, and I think I’m almost ready to get back on my somewhat-normal blogging schedule. While I was away, I still made the Sunday Songs graphics, but I just posted them on my personal Instagram; even though I never wrote about them, I think they’re all cool and that you should listen to them, so here are the songs for most of September:

9/3/23:

9/10/23

9/17/23

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 9/24/23

“On the Floor” – Perfume Genius

No, sorry, this isn’t the J-Lo “On the Floor.” I doubt that one’ll end up on one of these posts. Listen, I had a group project in my freshman year of high school where my friends and I had to make a version of it about reflexive verbs for Spanish II. You can understand why I’m not too keen on revisiting it.

Instead, have a wonderfully bubbly song that has no connotations about group projects for Spanish class! Huzzah! Back in June, I saw Perfume Genius open for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and while nothing can come close to the performance of the latter, I still came away with a few excellent Perfume Genius songs in my back pocket. The grinding indie chug of “Describe” overshadowed the few that I downloaded, but the other day, “On the Floor” came on shuffle right before I was about to pack things up for bed, and I couldn’t help but have an impromptu, one-woman dance party in my dorm room. Under the glow of my rainbow lights (I feel like Mike Hadreas would approve), I felt a rush of fizzy joy, like the pop of a freshly-opened can of soda, bubbling up in me as the notes filtered through my headphones. Ever since, it’s never failed to put a smile on my face. It has the same effect as a lot of Japanese Breakfast songs have on me; from the glistening guitars to the ethereal harmonies in the chorus, every part of “On the Floor” seems to glitter. It’s a song coated in colorful lights, twinkling like the panels of a disco ball as Hadreas sings of what he drescibed as “that maddening, solitary part of desire.” It’s a song laden with no shortage of obsession and longing, but coated in the most joyous façade of pop, impeccably polished. In stark contrast, the video feels…very Perfume Genius, from my limited scope of his work, but doesn’t mesh as much with how I perceived the song? “On the Floor” seems more suited to scenes of a club bathed in pink and purple lights, as opposed to a sweaty Mike Hadreas rolling around in the dirt with a lover that fades away like the breeze (like the crush he describes projecting onto). You do you, I guess.

“Kind Ghosts” – Sparklehorse

Ouchie.

I don’t have much experience with listening to posthumous albums, save for David Bowie’s Toy, and even in that case, it was more that Toy was fully recorded and then shelved while he was still alive, while Sparklehorse’s Bird Machine was never finished in his too-short lifetime. And even though my reputation for sad bastard music precedes me (be grateful that these posts never originated when I started listening to Radiohead), Bird Machine hurt to listen to. I can’t rightly say if my tolerance for sad music has faded since then, but if I had to sum it up, sometimes it helps to have the feeling of being consumed by sound. For a lot of artists in that vein, the spectrum of all that kind of all-consuming sound is somewhere that you can lose yourself in; on the one end, Radiohead felt like being transported into a haunting, alien landscape, a whole dimension where I could detach myself from the earthly world. (High school does that to a gal.) Right on the other end, Julien Baker’s first album, Sprained Ankle, was just the right amount of raw and vulnerable to feel as though the music was watching over me as I grieved. Even though I will always champion narratives of hope and the value of love, I’m not about to discount the times in which sad music is exactly what I needed. Healing should always be the goal, and I am better for having healed from what Baker was there for me with, but there’s something to be said for, in her words, “giving the sorrow some company.” And even though I only break out the specific “sad bastard music” playlist for that reason, sometimes it’s just simply feeling the sweeping swell of emotion surround you. I feel it with non-sad music as well (ever heard of Hunky Dory? Talk about sweeping), but the thread here is that I can’t not feel everything—good and bad—like a tidal wave some days. Thus, I gravitate to songs that make me feel that way. Big feels need company.

But here, it’s hard to lose myself. It’s not that it isn’t “sweeping” by my wobbly definition, but a song like this is almost impossible to separate from Mark Linkous’ circumstances. “Kind Ghosts” is a truly gorgeous song, with buzzing-insect effects on Linkous’ voice and a distorted, ethereal hum that permeates every note like moss growing over stones. And like an insect, it has the delicacy, the fragility of a dragonfly’s wing, a transparent wavering that catches the light. Like most of his other works, the lyrics balance woodsy, quaint nonsense with plain ol’ gut-wrenching devastation. “I came to drink more whiskey than water” and “I’ve swallowed a phantom/And I forget how to breathe” leave no room for misinterpretation, but even such sense-defying oddities as “I hung my wolves up high in the pine trees/Like cannonball sails they wouldn’t stay hung” sound just as plainly tragic. I doubt any listener could ever fully separate this lyricism from the absence that Mark Linkous left too soon in this world; some of Sparklehorse’s similarly atmospheric works of art are the aforementioned kind I can lose myself in, but Bird Machine will always be a hard record to swallow. Painfully beautiful, but necessary nonetheless.

Here. Come sit next to me. Grab a tissue. Send your thank yous to Mark.

“Déshominisation (I)” (from Fantastic Planet) – Alain Goraguer

Alright, who ordered the weirdest possible palate-cleanser?

I’ve had the honor of being the learning assistant for a science fiction class this semester, and that’s meant that I’m getting to read and watch a whole lot of wonderfully bizarre (and nostalgic—we love my man Ray Bradbury 😔✊) stuff. Early on, we watched this for homework; I had a vague feeling beforehand about remembering seeing something about giant, blue, French aliens with soulless red eyes somewhere (probably on one of my Pinterest deep dives), but nothing could have prepared me for this movie. The animation is nothing short of gorgeous—all hand-drawn, incredibly detailed, and full of vibrant color at every turn. But it’s…yeah, it’s more than a little bit of a trip. There’s random interludes with alien creatures eating each other (I’m certain that they all would have given me nightmares as a kid), an uncomfortable amount of alien boobs, and far too many lingering shots on said soulless red eyes with nothing behind them for comfort. It’s beautiful, but in the way that makes your head hurt—I’m still not entirely sure what I watched, but…I liked it? Yeah, I liked it.

Nothing added more to the surreal nature of Fantastic Planet more than Alain Goraguer’s score; most of it is a recurring motif of experimental jazz, which really does put you in the mind of “what did I just watch?” It all screamed Pink Floyd to me, which, since Dark Side of the Moon came out in the same year as this movie, makes sense. I can’t help but think of “Time” whenever I hear anything from this score. This movie seems like it would be on that kind of prog-rock wavelength. That’s what made it the perfect atmosphere for this film—the proggy, spacey theme that runs through the whole score marries perfectly with the oddball, alien landscapes that we traverse through. It’s a bizarre movie. I certainly don’t regret watching it.

“Limbo” – Shakey Graves

Looks like somebody was enjoying himself in quarantine, huh? Enough to crank out at least thousands of possible combinations for this album? Seriously, go play around with the Movie of the Week section of the Shakey Graves website. My first go at it generated a cover of David Bowie’s “Five Years” as a part of the soundtrack… :,)

But even without all that insanity, Movie of the Week is nothing short of excellent. Even though the second half lags slightly, I wouldn’t call a single track off this album bad. But, sadly, it’s really the first half that carries it—aided by the album’s singles, the fantastic “Lowlife,” and this absolute stunner of a song. Clocking in at nearly 7 minutes long, none of that length ever feels real—if I had to make an estimate, it sounds more on the 4-minute side. But I’ll always be grateful that we get all 6:40 of “Limbo” in all of its utterly cinematic weirdness. The beginning is deceptively unassuming, clunking in with distorted piano chords and Alejandro Rose-Garcia singing each word with gentle restraint. But right around the 1:10 minute mark, “Limbo” erupts into a shock wave of humming synth that could only find a place elsewhere if elsewhere was the outer space exhibit in a museum. It’s a song that looms, casting its shadow over your in waves of colorful static, blinking in and out of focus. And even if this song didn’t explicitly reference limbo, it would still be fitting for the soundscape that Rose-Garcia has created; between the discordant marriage of every instrument and effect and the gremlin-ish, artificial harmony alongside his voice, it really does feel like slipping in and out of some wild hallucination, toeing the line between reality and delusion. Shakey Graves knows the unsteady cradle of limbo, and they play it well.

“Veronica” – Daddy Issues

I heard this song in the background of a video, and after I found out that the band was called Daddy Issues, I was prepared for the rest of the song to not be up to pat. We get it, you edgelords. And although I’m still rolling my eyes at the band name, the timeless catchiness of this song makes it slightly better. Guess that’s just the kind of thing you have to name your punk band. It was bound to happen eventually.

“Veronica” feels like a song lost in time. It has that bright, pop-rock flavor that could have made it a cult hit if it was included in an 80’s teen movie. But it lacks just enough polish to make it land somewhere between 90’s riot-grrrl, grunge, and alt-rock. It wouldn’t have even been out of place sometime in the 2000’s, spoken in the same breath as Giant Drag. And here we are in 2015, where Daddy Issues married all of those elements and came out the other side with this. In theory, it shouldn’t stand out from any other song of its breed. You know the drill: She’s Veronica. She’s gorgeous. She’s fierce. She’s a little crazy. She’s off to steal some hearts. She’s gonna take over the world. You wanna make her your girlfriend. You wanna make out with her. But there’s just something about Daddy Issues that makes you believe every word of it, even though you’ve heard it a thousand times. Maybe it’s the mercurial lilt of Jenny Moynihan, effortlessly shifting from delicate high notes to delivering the grungy punch this song needs. Or maybe it’s the way that it all feels so precise, like it was floating in the ether all along, waiting to be discovered. Either way, it’s an undeniable earworm. All of you directors trying to put together a soundtrack for a teen movie: get over here, what are you doing?

And there’s no way that this whole song isn’t a Heathers reference. “She’s teenage suicide”? Come on.

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!