This past week, September 16-23, has been Bisexual Visibility Week, and today, September 23rd, is Bisexual Visibility Day! See me. I’m right here. Well, in your screen. Along with my Latine Heritage Month post, this is another one that I’ve neglected to do some years since it comes at a slightly dicey time in the school year, but I probably shouldn’tbe neglecting, since it, y’know, directly correlates to my identity. Oops. A little embarrassing, but once again, no time like the present.
Every year. Every year, I swear to god. I’m much less online than I used to be, but from what I see snatches of, every other year, some discourse comes back about whether or not bisexuals are actually “queer enough” or if straight-passing bisexuals are allowed at pride, or something equally meaningless. (Also, I feel like everyone debating the latter should remember that Brenda Howard, a bisexual woman, was a key figure in creating Pride events and rallies as we know them here in the States.) Just seeing flashes of whatever’s going down on TikTok makes me lose a year off my life. But it brings up a point that I’ve often thought about when it comes to the queer community: the infighting needs to stop. Please. There’s no sense in playing the oppression olympics amongst ourselves, especially when the threats against the LGBTQ+ community at large are so much more pressing. Also, please stop being weird about bisexual people. This is coming from somebody who’s had the privilege of not experiencing any direct biphobia, thankfully, but has heard it in real life directed at friends and loved ones, as well as seeing it run rampant on the internet. All of this petty fighting is a distraction from what’s really happening: not long after they removed the word transgender from the Stonewall National Monument website, they removed the word bisexual from the “history and culture” section. As of now, they’ve since reinstated it (though the absence of trans people remains glaring…love to all my trans siblings, in light of, well, everything), but it sends a clear message: they’re bent on cutting our community up until they can conveniently erase it from American history. And we will not be erased.
To all of my fellow bisexuals: you are bisexual enough. No matter your relationship status, attraction, or partner, you will always be bisexual. Nobody can dictate your identity but you. Not the internet, not the people in your life—nobody. There is no one central bisexual experience, but every individual experience under the sun is valid, so long as you want to claim it. You’re the captain of this ship, and you are bisexual enough. And you are loved. I don’t know about you, but I’ve loved being bisexual in the nearly seven years (Jesus, has it been that long?)
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by bisexual authors? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s song:
MICHELANGELO DYING IS UPON US, LET’S GOOOOO
That’s it for this recommendations post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
The other night, a friend of mine and I were discussing the merits of album intros—cinematic curtain-openers (David Bowie’s “Future Legend”), gradually creeping easers (IDLES’ “IDEA 01”), and intros so engrossing that the rest of the album almost doesn’t measure up (Cate Le Bon’s “Dirt on the Bed”). I ended up making a Top 5 list that got so overblown that it expanded to top 10, but my friend was remarkably able to whittle it down to 5. “Wallowa Lake Monster” was squarely at the top of their list, and now I understand exactly why.
I’d call “Wallowa Lake Monster” a member of the first category, though in a different sense than “Future Legend.” The album it opens is The Greatest Gift, a mixtape of remixes, demos, and tracks cut from Carrie and Lowell, making “Wallowa Lake Monster” a b-side. I’m now experiencing “Burning Bridge” levels of how the hell was this a b-side, because, in my limited experience of Sufjan Stevens, how does one cut a track this cinematic? Who knows, with what little I know of Carrie and Lowell, save for that it deals with his complicated relationship to his mother. The gliding electronics seem to ripple like lake water itself, as wispy as Stevens’ voice as he opens his tale as one might a storybook: his mother’s twin struggles of alcoholism and schizophrenia become the backdrop for the Wallowa Lake Monster, a creature from Nez Perce legend, as it slowly pulls her under the waves: “And like the cedar wax wing, she was drunk all day/We put her in the sheet, little wreath, candles on the crate/As the monster showed its face.” There’s enough references, from scientific names for flowers to Dungeons & Dragons monsters to the Odyssey, to require three different dictionaries open at once while listening—Stevens has often fallen into the “overly pretentious” side of indie rock in my purview, and although that’s still not without basis, it’s clear that he’s a very literary-minded songwriter. It wasn’t surprising to learn that Stevens originally got his MFA in creative writing! A line as literary as “The undertow refrained with the flame of a feathered snake/Charybdis in its shallow grave” couldn’t have come from anyone but an English major, and that’s pretentious game recognizing game.
Yet in spite of such stunning lyricism, the lyric-less parts are what floored me on the first listen of “Wallowa Lake Monster.” After the flitting, storybook storytelling, clouded in Oregon fog, there was no other way to go but a nearly three-minute, instrumental outro, from synths that cut like searchlights through the dark to a cavernous choir that only rises in its intensity. It grows to such a bellow that you feel its physicality towering over you, much like I would imagine the fraught memory of such a deeply flawed yet deeply important figure in one’s life. It nearly eclipses all else about the song until its final, electronic exhalations.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Our Crooked Hearts – Melissa Albert: brimming with magic and secrets, this novel explores a similarly fraught relationship between mother and child.
When I talked about “Dirt on the Bed” last week, I talked about how much Cate Le Bon reminded me of St. Vincent, down to their humbler, more arty beginnings. They’re both arty at present, but the art I’m thinking of is more the quaint, fresh-out-of music college sound that St. Vincent had on Marry Me, an era that she recently jokingly referred to as her “asexual Pollyanna” period. Ouch…I can’t say that it doesn’t make sense, because it…does, in a way, but it feels dismissive of all the rampant creativity swirling about in that album.
Cate Le Bon seems to have wallowed in that artsy, borderline twee period for much longer than St. Vincent did; Mug Museum is her third album, and the tracks I’ve heard all ring with that early-2010’s indie, folksy leaning. Le Bon’s Welsh lilt twists ordinary words into melted candy, and much like St. Vincent, her riffs wind around the melody like tiny flower buds bursting from vines crawling up a fading brick wall. Some songs were made for summer strolls, and “No God”‘s bright melodies brim with sunshine and the security of concrete under your feet as you take a morning walk through the city, stopping to sniff a basket of flowers in the window of a storefront. Her vocals get their well-deserved spotlight in the chorus, rich and bubbling with each drawn-out cry of “No Go-o-o-o-o-d,” swirling into the morning dew.
Yet the cheery exterior hides the grief that clouds her 2013 album Mug Museum; much of the album was written after the death of Le Bon’s beloved grandmother, and the title itself explains the memories contained in ordinary objects—an accumulation of mugs, for instance. But the grief of Mug Museum is more of a recognition of lineage; Le Bon said that “The album was inspired by the loss of my maternal grandmother but rather than it being a grief laden album it is more about what someone at the top of the female chain leaves behind.” The lilting repetition of “No God” is suddenly recontextualized as not necessarily spiritual, but the loss of the ground beneath your feet, the rug pulled out from under you now that there’s no maternal anchor. The God here is more a feeling of connection to your feminine ancestors and the security it brings—and the upending of that security once death overcomes the family.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Isles of the Gods – Amie Kaufman – “When leading lambs lose track/Hands hold me back/I saw a face again/I pulled it from my head/No looking, I know it well…”
Another merit I’ve discovered in my apparent Cocteau Twins summer is that they’re perfect for easing overstimulation. In my ongoing journey to better manage my sensory issues, I’ve compiled a playlist full of songs I use to come down from sensory overload, distinct from the playlist where I just pile on all the slow songs. Sensory overload calming demands a more specific kind of slowness, the kind that oozes relaxation and massages every fold of my overstimulated brain.
There you have it. I’ve just described most of the Cocteau Twins’ discography. The combination of their lazy, dreamlike pace and the swirl of graceful gibberish in Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals make them prime sensory calm material. (That instant muscular relaxation I felt when I first heard “Oomingmak” is a sensation I desperately need to bottle the next time I’m overstimulated.) After a recent bout of overstimulation that had me cycling through all of their music that I had on my phone, I decided to bump Blue Bell Knoll up to a higher priority on my Sisyphean Album Bucket List, but also…y’know, Cocteau Twins. I’m waiting until I’m hibernating in December or January for the wintry Victorialand, but Blue Bell Knoll, with its bedsheet white, silken melodies was a welcome embrace after a month of election anxiety (finally quelled for the most part…anyways, HARRIS 2024). I’m glad that I’d only heard “Carolyn’s Fingers” (a song that goes eerily well with “Creep”…somebody needs to make that mashup), because letting Blue Bell Knoll wash over me in nearly-new wholeness was the best way to breathe it in.
“Athol-brose” starts off with a soft-spoken, percussive beat, but quickly swallows you in a murmuring whirlpool, a whispering chorus of voices bobbing and humming in unison like songbirds on the wind. The more distinct, angular synths pave an easy path to Heaven or Las Vegas, their most famous effort, gliding on nebulous wings through a star-flecked field of melody. In Elizabeth Fraser’s mouth, ordinary words are made into alien percussion; the final repetition of “very very silly ball” rolls against her tongue like the rapid flutter of bee’s wings. Like the red floatboat that the album later sings of, “Athol-brose” feels about the closest thing to riding on a motorboat through a sea of stars, then reaching your fingers out to reach for each glowing filament, watching the light trail around your fingertips.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Survivor (The Pioneer, #2) – Bridget Tyler – there’s a deeply moving scene where an alien character sees his home from space for the first time, and that initial flush of sound fits that explosive wonder.
Lana Del Rey and live-action Disney remakes are two things that have never been my cup of tea, although I’ve engaged with some of her music (“Video Games” remains a nostalgic favorite of mine) and some of the movies when I was younger. I write this fully acknowledging that the rose-colored glasses are so far up the bridge of my nose that they’re digging into my skin, but dare I say that this cover—and the film—are exceptions to the mediocrity? Maleficent was one of my favorite movies growing up, and, yeah, it’s Disney, I’m not about to rush to their defense, but I swear it’s the only one of the remakes where they didn’t outright remake it; they flipped it to Maleficent’s perspective and didn’t just rehash the story with CGI…as all the others have done. Who knows. Admittedly, I haven’t exactly been paying close attention to Disney’s army of remakes.
Either way, this is the one instance of trailerized music that clicks into place for me; James Newton Howard’s haunting, sweeping orchestration clearly set the tone for all of the Epic™️ Trailer Music that came after it, but none of his imitators captured that grandeur he establishes. Lana Del Rey’s husky but rich voice hums through a cover that brushes that silky line between darkness and fairytale innocence. I’ll say it again: nostalgia is at the wheel here, but I’d be lying if I said that remembering this cover and listening to it 10 years after Maleficent’s release didn’t give me goosebumps.
At this point, Stephen Merritt has probably had every weird, toxic ex in the book—either that, or he’s happened to have just a handful with all of those horrible qualities rolled into one. Either way, songs like “Smoke and Mirrors” paint him as exhausted by all of them, and understandably so; this track in particular recounts a lover who tried to woo him with sex and affection to distract from the implosion of their relationship (“Smoke and mirrors, special effects/A little fear, a little sex”). He does admit that it was mutual, but keeping up the façade clearly ground him to the bone. Somehow, Merritt makes sounding so exhausted so enchanting and artful. Melding with the appropriately smoky, hazy atmosphere, his voice drifts in and out of focus, just a passing cloud in the thick fog of synths, backing vocals, and bass. Merritt makes such a disaffected mindset into something purple-gray and glittering at the edges, even if all that color and shine is a sham when you fan all the fumes away.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The First Bright Thing – J.R. Dawson – “We were foolish, you and I/But there’s no reason to cry/We put on a lovely show, but that’s all/I had to go…”
Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Here in the U.S., June is Pride Month! And every month, I find myself having a downer of an introduction, just because the world only gets kinder to queer people in the smallest increments, it seems. The vocal minority in this country are still bent on erasing all evidence that queer people exist in the first place, like an offending stain on a white tablecloth. (A note to homophobes: has it ever occurred to you that you don’t have to look at pride flags or queer couples? You can just look away and not make it anybody else’s problem…life is so short, man.) But our community is one characterized by resilience: no amount of book bans, culture wars, or bigotry will wipe us off the map. We are are here, we have always been here, and we will always be here. Nothing you do will make us disappear. Don’t let the vocal minority distract you from the beauty created and progress made by our community.
So once again, here’s a list of YA and Adult books with queer characters and themes, curated by your local bisexual. I also added the specific representation of each book.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, did you enjoy them? What are some of your favorite queer books that you’ve read in the last year? Let me know in the comments!
Today’s song:
That’s it for this year’s pride recommendations! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Quick announcement before we begin: I’ll be going radio silent as far as posts go for the next week because I’ll be on vacation. See you next week!
This week: diversity win! The person who yelled “I WANNA HAVE YOUR BABIES!” at Joe Talbot during the IDLES show a few weeks back was a man! Happy pride, bibliophiles.
I think I know what my process is with liking Chappell Roan songs now: inevitably, I hear a snippet on social media and think, “oh, that’s okay,” I hear it a few more times, and then I actually like it. Somehow, I wasn’t wowed by “Red Wine Supernova” until I’d listened to snippets of it three times over the course of several months, and then, boom. It’s my 10th most listened-to song of this year. Oops. “Good Luck, Babe!” hasn’t taken that title, but nonetheless, I’ve found another song to dramatically drape myself out of windows to, and to make matters better, it’s so gay. IT’S SO GAY! CAMPY QUEER POP STARS ARE SO BACK! I’m all for leaving the ’80s (mostly) in the dust, but we need some glittery, romantic ridiculousness to shake things up now and then, right? And if the last chorus of “Red Wine Supernova” wasn’t enough to convince you, then this one will convince you that Roan has, in my limited scope, some of the best pipes in pop music right now. And, whatever, the whole “graphic design is my passion” aesthetic was kind of tired for me even before this lyric video, but for a song as red-gowned and dramatic as “Good Luck, Babe!”…we need more. We need some more visualdrama, something like The Kick Inside-era Kate Bush, minus the one-time fedora incident. The chances of Roan or any member of her team actually seeing this post are slim to none, but if they are: somebody needs to “Wuthering Heights” this shit up.
I’m choosing to believe that the combination of the glorious Grammys afterparty pig makeup for the single and the title had to be a reference to Babe, right? Some way or another? Maybe I’m reading too much into it. It’s fine. It’s cool, even…that’ll do, pig.
Something I learned a few Saturdays ago: I may be somewhat punk in spirit, but I am…not built for punk shows. Once IDLES actually came onstage, the music took me out of the grossness of the crowd, but we accidentally wandered too far into the Bro Zone™️, which was anxiety-inducing, to say the least. Love is the fing, but I’m not really feeling the love when I’m pressed up against excessively sweaty and inebriated people on almost all sides and getting conked on the shoulder with unknown objects. Ladies, gentlemen, and others: sensory issues. Also, alcohol.
But if you take anything away from that, it’s that the music took me out of the grossness. IDLES absolutely tore down the house with joyous screamers old and new alike. Even if Joe Talbot summoning the mosh vortex in the middle of the crowd made me want to go in the opposite direction (now I know how anchovies feel inside of those bait balls), he had such a command of the crowd, and not only that, but nothing but positivity to say: chants for Palestine, odes to love and connection between our fellow man, and just calls to get up on our feet and dance. And dance we did. Even just Talbot and Mark Bowen belting “All I Want For Christmas Is You” in mid-May got the crowd (myself included) going crazy. An IDLES show is, without a doubt, an experience of a lifetime. Not all of it was a good experience, per se, but none of the bad had anything to do with how loving and talented the band were all the way through.
That show made me come back to “I’m Scum,” a performance that had me jumping for joy the entire time. I’ve loved it since I discovered their 2019 Tiny Desk Concert, which is a sight to behold: here we are at said Tiny Desk, surrounded by small toys and trinkets and walled in by office decor, and Joe Talbot’s over here turning beet red and drenched with sweat while Mark Bowen, shirtless and wearing American flag leggings, is climbing onto the desk. It’s glorious. Barely contained chaos. “I’m Scum” is taken from Joy as an Act of Resistance., an album title which, before “Grace” and “love is the fing,” was the preeminent positivity slogan to sum up their aggressively kind ethos. As Talbot explained before the band launched into this song, “I’m Scum” was borne of the words of their critics—taking words like “scum” and “loser” and making them into badges of pride. More broadly, said words came from music critics who derided them, as Talbot recounted in Glastonbury in 2019, as “too fat, too old, too stupid, too ugly. Now we’ve been told we’re too good, too nice. Well this is for the critics: eat shit. This song is a celebration of just how ugly, stupid, old and ugly we are.” Never have I sung along to the lyrics “for a long, long while I’ve known I’m/dirty, rotten, filthy scum!” so loudly. Just like any given song of theirs, it’s undeniably joyous, a parade flag-waver as you skip through the streets, save for the fact that you’re yelling “SCUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM” so loud that your throat goes raw. “This snowflake’s an avalanche” is one of the most hilarious but unifying rallying cries I can think of. The more I reflect on it, the more I can say that this is one of the IDLES songs that I’ve resonated with the most. I’ve grappled with being weird in a broader sense for most of my life, but late high school and college were when I most owned it—I wasn’t concerned with how people thought of me. Now that the former stage is over, I’ve turned that confidence into getting weirder still, especially with my makeup; a friend told me that I wasn’t afraid to camouflage, and there’s nothing that I could say that sums it up better. God, I LOVE being unpalatable. I love being weird. I love being the kind of person that gets stares from the suited-up business majors across the street. I love looking like I don’t belong on this planet. And that’s when I feel most myself, when I outwardly enhance how weird I am and how weird I’ve felt. I’m lefty, I’m soft. And I LOVE being dirty, rotten, filthy SCUM if I do say so myself. Embrace the scum!
My introduction to the Cocteau Twins came right before I started making these Sunday Songs graphics, so I suppose that’s the only reason that I’ve never covered them here before. In my mind, there’s no band quite like them in the sense that the moods that they glean from me are rare in any other band. When an anonymous person put the iconic “Cherry-Coloured Funk” on the class playlist in art in my senior year of high school, I felt energized in a way that I hadn’t before—energized, but caught in the spacelike fabric of something beyond the world, like wading through cloth and stars. “Energized” isn’t the word I’d use to describe everything else I’ve heard of their catalogue—I’d lean more towards dreamlike and peaceful. The label “dream pop” is more fitting of them than any other band, save for maybe Beach House, who were no doubt influenced a great deal by them; they didn’t just pioneer the sound: they fully embody it. Every song sounds like a dream—Elizabeth Fraser’s method of lilting, nonsensical lyrics contribute to that feeling in no small part. But it’s more the atmosphere of it; somehow, they manage to replicate the feeling of waking up in the early hours of morning after waking from an unusually vivid dream, but not being able to remember it, save for how vivid it felt in the moment.
“Oomingmak” is a mist of peace that falls over your shoulders like a veil—or snow, more fittingly, a shawl woven from the crystalline fragments of snowflakes that melt the moment they make contact with your skin. There’s a simultaneous warmth and coldness to it, a watery swirl that coalesces around a glowing, amorphous radiance; this contact of warmth and chill creates the dewdrop-laden feel of the song. The effects on Robin Guthrie’s delicate lattice of guitar playing are so thin and misty that I thought they were synths—I’ve heard hardly anyone else that can make the guitar quite this delicate. You can play it delicate, sure, but this is the closest I think a guitar has ever gotten to being transparent, shiny as beads and thinner than a strand of hair. Hearing “Oomingmak” for the first time was like having a draught poured over my head, some kind of ambrosia that trickled into my eyes and mouth and induced a trancelike peace, a sense of calm that no other band I know has been able to replicate. Like dewdrops, you feel all of your earthly tethers dissolve.
And it seems the snowy, misty feel was intentional in every sense; much of Victorialand, named after the region in Antarctica, and its imagery owes to the Arctic and Antarctic regions, in no small part thanks to The Living Planet: A Portrait of the Earth, David Attenborough’s companion novel to the ’80s nature documentary of the same name. DAVID ATTENBOROUGH!! MY GUY!! Having watched The Living Planet as a kid, I love seeing that connection—and man, imagine if the ridiculous ’80s soundtrack made its way into Victorialand in any way…again, “Oomingmak” is the only track I’ve heard from this album, but I’m fully preparing myself for some Living Planet flute action. Many of the titles in particular were handpicked from passages of A Portrait of the Earth relating to the Arctic and Antarctic—I assume “Oomingmak” was one of such titles, as it’s the Inuit word for musk ox, literally translated as “the bearded one.”
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Alone Out Here – Riley Redgate – slower Cocteau Twins songs feel like the ideal soundtrack for being anxious and wandering aimlessly inside of a spaceship.
Apologies to everybody who I told that this band’s name was Gaster. Who knows how I got that into my head in the space between the IDLES opener being announced and the show itself. I guess I was only one letter off?
Either way, Ganser was a fantastic opener for IDLES—they had just the right amount of energy to pump up the crowd (although I suspect that none of the crowd needed any convincing to get pumped up) and retained the punk attitude that IDLES later blew through the roof. I later ended up searching through their catalogue for the songs in their setlist, and just ended up listening to their 2020 album Just Look At That Sky in its entirety. And I’m a fan! Not my newest obsession, or anything, but I’m so glad that IDLES exposed me to them. Although “People Watching” isn’t off of Just Look At That Sky, to me, it’s the best—or most fun, at least—representation of their sound today. Although both bassist Alicia Gaines and keyboardist Nadia Garofalo trade off on vocal duties (it’s usually a 50-50 split for lead, from what I’ve listened to), both of them have their place in the sun on “People Watching,” and both of them deliver disaffected vocals that conjure the title of their previous album, an exasperated, exhausted glance at the clouds as they inch through the blue. Gaines takes the backseat, save for a chant-like bridge, but Garofalo tends more towards a theatrical, gothic drawl as the chorus drones into a monotone lament: “Oh yeah, the world is big/And you could do better/You shake when you’re nervous/But it doesn’t matter.” It feels like what would happen if Raven from Teen Titans sat down to record a song in her bedroom, vocals and all. And yeah, nihilism is boring and silly, but at least Ganser shake that snowglobe around enough to make it gargle and glitter for three and a half minutes.
As Sophie Allison has been teasing new music (!!!!!!!!!!!) and doing a select number of intimate U.S. dates to potentially demo some of it (!!!!!!!!!!!! but nowhere near me ), I’ve been looking back at her old catalogue. “Death By Chocolate” appears on Collection, a re-recorded…collection of songs, many of which were originally self-released on Bandcamp; it originally appeared on the EP songs from my bedroom back in 2015. Like with the early Phoebe Bridgers track “Waiting Room” (which I reviewed last June), it’s a portrait of nascent talent, but still not quite out of the teenage woods just yet. Two years after initially recording “Death By Chocolate” at 18, the squirming larva of the original has been reformed into something with wings that can carry it, ready with star-shine guitar work and synths. Allison’s voice, which, at 20 and breaking free of the apparent shyness of recording demos in dorms, still has a few more hurdles to jump—this recording, even post-bedroom, feels like she’s either been mixed into submission or is just vocally holding back. But when her voice does break through, it’s as sweet and trickling as fudgy ice cream, the remnants dribbling down the corner of your lips as you dig through your sundae to find the stem of a maraschino cherry. But man…the lyrics? Thematically, it feels like the first iteration of “lucy,” with its bad boy love interest (that turns from human to, presumably, some manifestation of Lucifer or what he represents), but where “lucy” has more refinement, this has…[checks notes] “I wanna kill myself/I’m gonna go to hell/And he’s the way I’m gonna do it.” Hooooowhee… subtlety has left the building. Slow down, Juliet, just put the knife down…he can’t be all that. Lordy. Even so, it’s so teenage that it can’t not earn its place—all that angst is a part of growing up, and who am I to rag on a queen for letting it out? Gotta get it out of the system.
Happy first Sunday of 2024, bibliophiles! I hope the first week of the year has treated you well.
We’re starting off the year with: songs I’ve rediscovered from scattered parts of my childhood, songs that feel like childhood, and more song titles referencing Norway in a single album than anybody bargained for. Certainly not me. Only thought that Kevin Barnes only sprinkled them in three at a time.
I don’t know how it took me this long to listen to Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? given how much of Montreal dominated my taste in my freshman year of high school. Chances are it’s because Radiohead came along shortly after and I never recovered, but it’s still taken me an embarrassingly long time to come back to this album in its entirety. And yes, it’s pretentious as all get out—the album (as well as anything from of Montreal’s catalogue) is full of songs with titles like “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse,”“A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger” and “We Were Born Mutants Again with Leafling.” (There is a song that’s over 10 minutes long in the mix, how’d you guess?) But aside from the in-built pro that you don’t need to put “of Montreal” after the song titles when you google them (I’d be hard-pressed to find another, completely original song called “Labyrinthian Pomp”), it’s pretentiousness that I can indulge in; there’s no denying that Kevin Barnes is showing off their literary/historical/etc. chops, but it’s both so clever and so catchy that there’s no denying the goodness in it.
Even within an album where almost every title warrants English class-level analysis (and then turns out to be not that deep half the time), there’s always time to dance. (Go back to “Heimdalsgate” and “Sentence.”) If there’s anything that Barnes has mastered in their prolific career, it’s how to make any kind of crisis catchy, be it religious, romantic, existential, or otherwise. I’ve lumped “Sink the Seine” and “Cato as a Pun” together because they’re essentially the same song, but I don’t mean that in a derogatory way at all—although the album is made so that each song smoothly transitions into the other, the brevity of “Sink the Seine” and the underlying themes that bleed into “Cato as a Pun” make it a very singular narrative within the plentiful dirty laundry aired in Hissing Fauna. “Sink the Seine” starts out with an almost fawn-voiced Barnes searching for the person they once knew after distance has grown between them—I’m assuming the Seine they’re referring to is the river, but there’s a desperate drowning that they’re at first willing to do—the impossible task of sinking a river in their quest to find the past in a present form. But by the time “Cato as a Pun” rolls around—and, contrary to the people arguing on lyric websites here and there, is apparently just referring to someone’s cat named Cato—it’s much more bitter and up-front; now, the desperation has grown into wanting this person to “play with [their] head” just to obscure the fact that so much of a gulf has grown between them. Barnes has frequent, literary bangers when it comes to their usually purple prose-y lyrics, but there’s no denying that their talent is no less evident in their undressed lyrics—”What has happened to you and I?/And don’t say that I have changed/’Cause man, of course I have.” Efficacy in getting your message across isn’t a one-way street—just ask Kevin.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The First Bright Thing – J.R. Dawson – both of these songs combined bring the complicated relationship between the Ringmaster and the Circus King in this novel—especially the distance and plentiful mind games.
Nothing like a neutered cat to inspire a song, huh? Or at least the video, at any rate…either way, it’s funny. Pour one out for poor old Fluffy.
I may not be a fan of pop-punk (why does it even exist? It’s like they just said “let’s make punk commercial, even though that’s exactly what punk isn’t supposed to be”), but I’m still a sucker for a loud, screamy song about recklessness and breaking away from the mold. It’s the kind of music that makes for good additions to character playlists. This one’s gonna wind up on one of mine someday, mark my words. Up until this point, my introduction to Wolf Alice was through what seems to be the more disparate ends of their musical spectrum; way back in middle school, I got attached to their indie friendship anthem “Bros” through the radio (and what a joy it was to hear it again in season 2 of Heartstopper), and a few years back, I heard the much more refined, but heavier “Smile,” from their most recent album, Blue Weekend. “Fluffy” is on the heavier side, for the most part, and it feels like one of the better takes on the age-old “I wanna get out of this town” song (see again: pop-punk). It’s got none of the whine that usually comes along with the subject matter, and the jagged, bitter bite that it was missing all along. You really do feel like this song was born in a dilapidated junkyard, or even the rusty back alley that parts of the music video were filmed in. If anyone else did the sarcastic shout of “Sixteen/so sweet!” in the chorus, I’d roll my eyes without a doubt, but Ellie Rowsell gives it the raspy, pent-up rage that many a musician has been going for. And there’s nothing like pounding, crunchy guitars to accompany that. This is angst done right, for sure.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
The Salvation Gambit – Emily Skrutskie – the thrill-seeking lyrics, combined with all those crunching guitars, are the perfect fit for Murdock, this novel’s fiery protagonist, in both the past and the present.
Here’s another one I have to thank my dad for—somehow, I find myself missing this song, even though it’s finally in my ears after going so long without hearing it.
“Where Have All The Good People Gone?” was a distant drifter in my childhood—I swear that I have a memory gathering cobwebs in the back of my mind of hearing this song playing from the speaker on our old TV, back when we played our music from my parents’ chunky iPod. And I feel like even if I had known Sam Roberts’ name (and the name of this song) beforehand, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Poor dude’s cursed with one of the ultimate “just some guy” names aside from…I dunno, John Smith? When you google his name, this particular Sam Roberts, as far as his solo career is concerned, doesn’t show up until the 5th link. (At least his Sam Roberts Band shows up first. There’s that. Then it’s mostly a radio personality named Sam Roberts??) But it seems like he has plenty of acclaim in his native Canada, so I guess we Americans are most of the ones scratching our heads to try and come up with his name. Even this song didn’t pop out to me as familiar until I heard him sing the chorus—”where have all the good people gone?” And then it clicked. Random childhood memory that I didn’t even know that I’d stored: accessed. Elvis Costello was the comparison that immediately came to mind—it certainly has a much more distinctly 2000’s indie/folk-rock flavor, but lyrics like “Oh, the Milky Way/Has gone a little sour/The leaves dried and the flower fell away” or “The modern world is a cold, cold world/And all I meet are cold, cold girls” (maybe you’re the problem? Kidding, but…) just reek of that practiced tightness that Costello represents for me. But as opposed to the smart suits and sunglasses of Costello (or…the green shirts, even),”Where Have All The Good People Gone?” is all stomping boots, jean jackets, and patches of dust, and not in the country pastiche kind of way. It has no trouble feeling exactly how it wants to feel.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
Anthem – Noah Hawley – this book is decidedly leagues more bleak and fatalistic than Sam Roberts seems to be, but at its core, it asks the same question: where have all the good people gone?
Somehow, this didn’t surface in the weeklong period in early 2020 where I ferreted through a few Alex G songs on a whim and then forgot about him. He’d always been a specter on my Apple Music—every time I went back to Car Seat Headrest, he was always lurking there in the “similar artists” bar. What I’ve listened to of his sort of gleans that comparison, but from the looks of it, his earlier stuff seems more reminiscent of Car Seat Headrest. Thus why I’m almost a little scared to get in too deep with his music, after the irreparable change in my brain chemistry that happened when I first heard “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales” on the radio when I was 13. I’m an adult now, I doubt I can have that kind of pure, concentrated angst keeling me over without major consequences…
Yet in spite of all that, this song is one of the most calmingly innocent things I’ve encountered in the past few months. I don’t know how much of it is because Alex G himself isn’t fully at the wheel—all of the vocals are sung by Emily Yacina, and from my limited scope of Alex G, I feel like his flat, indie drawl doesn’t quite fit with the playful, childlike quality of this song, but I guess he recognized that enough to put this song in Yacina’s hands. Somehow, the bedroom construction of this song—nothing but synths and drums machines—distorts Yacina’s voice in such a way that she sounds like she has braces, which makes the song feel even more like a vignette of childhood—”What do you think of my treehouse?/It’s where I sit and talk really loud/Usually, I’m all by myself.” It makes me feel like there should be a slightly off-putting Tim Burton character (probably voiced by Winona Ryder) inviting you into her treehouse and playing games with you; it’s easy to get the feeling that the character in the song is eager to have any kind of friendship. It’s pure, but never in a saccharine way—it’s like someone put some footage from a home video into song, just kids running off into the woods and playing with sticks.
…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:
I love this part – Tillie Walden – like Jay Som, Tillie Walden’s style of beauty in simplicity lends itself to this kind of doe-eyed bedroom pop.
I’m not about to rescind my statement about how of Montreal’s quirky song titles make them much easier to search on YouTube, but they’re not the only ones. Again, I ask: who else has made a completely original song called “Birds in Perspex”?
Over the past few months, I’ve been picking up Robyn Hitchcock songs here and there in an attempt to school myself before I see him at the end of the month (!!). Most of what I end up skimming around, save for his more recent material (he’s been consistently cranking out music with various bands and as a solo artist since the ’70s…absolutely prolific king), ends up turning up as some nostalgic tidbit from my childhood that I’d entirely forgotten about. Riffling about his catalogue almost feels like I did when I was a kid looking for bugs in the yard—there’s something odd and wonderful hidden under every rock. Take “Birds in Perspex.” I clicked on it on iTunes just because of the oddball title, but I didn’t expect for the full force of miscellaneous childhood car rides to come speeding back at me. Like my faint recollection of “Tender” before I heard it again in high school (for at least a decade, all I remembered was the “come on, come on, come on/get through it” part), the tiniest slice of the chorus had been bonking around in my head on and off for years—I recognized “Birds in Perspex” the minute I heard “come alive” in the chorus. Just like most of his songs, there’s a charmer’s whimsy about it that, it seems, has never faded with age; behind the glossy, folky strumming, Hitchcock immediately admits that “Well I take off my clothes with you/But I’m not naked underneath/I was born with trousers on.” Y’know. Just another day at the office. Presumably after a rather eventful encounter with Balloon Man. As the song goes on, it’s so bizarrely romantic that you feel like you’d be seduced if he’d written this song about you. Robyn Hitchcock has the kind of voice fit for a black turtleneck. a cigarette, and love notes stuffed with rose petals, but I’m honestly so much more glad that he stuck with his whimsical weirdo style.
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy New Year’s Eve!
2023 has been a year of growth for me; I’ve taken a lot of leaps that I never thought I would take, and all of them paid off. December has been busy, but now that I’m home for break, I’m glad that I’ll get some rest before the end of the year.
Let’s begin, shall we?
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
First off, I hit 600 followers a few days ago! Thank you all for sticking with me for all these years. Lots of love to you all.
Most of December was fairly stressful and chaotic, what with finals and all. The good thing about being an English major is that I typically don’t have any final finals that I have to take in class, but instead, I typically have to write rather long papers and slap some portfolios together. But now it’s all done! Now, I’m nearly done with my science credits, and I recently declared a minor in Women and Gender Studies, so I’m starting those classes next semester!
Blogging and reading are always slower around this time of year—the finals slump comes for us all. College (and getting older, I suppose) has slowed down my reading speed somewhat, but it makes me glad to spend more time with books on some days. (Doesn’t mean I still blow through books in a day sometimes. Happens to the best of us. The Siren, the Song, and the Spy was incredible.) It’s also been fun to introduce some book pairings to my Sunday Songs—I’m glad I can introduce a bookish aspect to them!
Other than that, I’ve just been getting work done pre- and post-finals, putting puzzles together, drawing when I can, celebrating the holidays with my wonderful family, and starting every week eagerly looking forward to Wednesday because of the new season of Fargo. (Dear LORD, what was that ending for episode 7?????? I’m SCARED)
READING AND BLOGGING:
I read 16 books this month! Inevitably slower going because of finals, but I’ve had a ton of great books towards the end of the month! I also passed my reading goal of 200 books—I read 207 books in 2023!
), I’ve been looking back at her old catalogue. “Death By Chocolate” appears on Collection, a re-recorded…collection of songs, many of which were originally self-released on Bandcamp; it originally appeared on 
The Bookish Mutant 