remember me??? LMAO.
so this thing happened in june where i watched all the extended cuts of the lord of the rings movies and ceased to care about anything else. i was also really tired. i had 99% of my post for may written up but i just never finished it because i truly could not be bothered to listen to one of these albums a second time in able to give cogent thoughts about it. y’know??? but here i am now, refreshed and ready to deliver my inane thoughts about music to your inbox once again. who missed me!!!
may 2024
“never for ever” - kate bush
not my favorite kate, but i think i preferred it to “the kick inside,” which is probably my rock bottom, which isn’t saying a lot considering the bar is high even at the bottom. opening with “babooshka” is wild because it’s a banger. like, i might as well turn the album off right away because she just gives me what i want right away. she’s so good at writing stories set to music. i love the narrative of “babooshka.” like, get his ass, girl. i like the transition from “babooshka” to “delius.” “all we ever look for” sounds like something that would feel at home on the earthbound soundtrack, so it’s really charming to me. the best song is “violin,” which i find unhinged and goofy and honestly a bit camp.
“the sensual world” - kate bush
i’m so sorry, kate. i slept through this one.
“currents” - tame impala
i first read about tame impala Forever Ago, which is an actual measurement of time that is viable, in an issue of spin magazine. i thought wow, what a great blouse on that guy, and then i proceeded to never think about them again. they’re not, like, a they anymore? it’s just one guy and then some other people he takes on field trips?? anyway, before i listened to this album my only other exposure to tame impala besides the stray song on sirius XMU was this video, which is not the original but i think it’s funnier with this song.
“currents” peaks hard and early with “let it happen,” which i easily listened to like ten times in may and i often couldn’t be bothered to go past that. i really love the beep boops in this, it makes me feel like i’m getting shot by lasers. i love the way the song shifts at about 2:39. the next song loses me almost immediately, so it’s good it’s a shorty. “yes, i’m changing” bores me, but i like “eventually,” especially the beginning. “love and paranoia” i also liked, particularly the “sparkles,” per my notes. the marquee song, evidenced by its million-plus plays on spotify, is “the less i know the better.” It’s a banger. the beginning riff(???) is so, like… ooh!!! the lyrics are very juvenile-sounding, describing tangled relationships, and the way that subject is portrayed makes it seem huge, life-making or life-breaking, which is how everything feels when you’re an adolescent, so there’s an artificial nostalgia to it for me. artificial, i guess, because i’m far from my adolescence, and i’ve only listened to this song now at my big age, even though the album did come out when i was still about that age.
my biggest take away from the album was oh, this was 100% an influence on “decide.” or, if not, it’s at least in the same family sonically. even if you just take “let it happen,” which i have verified is the only song on this album. the bit that starts at 5:30 is definitely “decide”-esque. or vice versa, since this is older. like my friend jody might say, i’m making fucking connections.
“seven swans” - sufjan stevens
i feel like “seven swans” is kinda underrated. to be fair, most of suf’s discography is pretty underrated when compared to “illinois.” i think the only album that comes close in casual conversation is “carrie and lowell.”
“seven swans” came out right before “illinois.” it is lacking in the scale and pageantry of “illinois,” which makes it feel, to me, like a breath before a scream. it’s very barren, except in places like “sister” and “he woke me up again.” i feel like a lot of people tend to oversimplify sufjan. yeah, he has religious tendencies that he wears on his sleeve, but that doesn’t mean that all his work is based in that religion. i remember someone on the web saying that “john my beloved” was a song from jesus’s perspective, or that “to be alone with you” was a disciple singing about jesus. and yeah, art has multiple multiple meanings, as many as can be gleaned. but it feels like a disservice to characterize songs about such emotional agony as solely being bible character studies.
“to be alone with you” is one of the great yearning songs of all time. and, honestly, no one does yearning like suf. “size too small” is agonizing. “he woke me up again” is the classiest song that, under any other circumstances, you might hear on religious public access television. i wrote a note for “in the devil’s territory” that just says “alien” so do with that what you will. “all the trees of the field will clap their hands” is clearly about the ents from lord of the rings—
anyway, this is ultimately rock-solid suf.
(me reading the wikipedia page on “seven swans”) okay so i’m receiving information that a lot of the songs are in fact about bible stories. even so!!! my point stands.
“twenty twenty” - djo
THIS IS THE ONE I COULDN’T BE ASSED TO LISTEN TO AGAIN I’M SORRY GIRL THIS IS NO “DECIDE” THAT BEING SAID I DID ENJOY IT JUST NOT ENOUGH my favorite song was “BNBG” and i felt a current of loneliness weaving throughout this album!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“white light/white heat” - the velvet underground
so the thing about me is that i’m in a constant state of slumdog millionairing my way through life and what i mean by that is i’m always seeing something that reminds me of something else. that’s often how i choose albums to listen to. so my slumdog millionaire moment with this was the fact that the song “here she comes now” is in adventureland (2009) which was a formative movie for me.
i loved this! i remember i listened to it late at night when the house was quiet and the night was heavy and it was the perfect ambiance. i mean, the best part is obviously “the gift.” i hung on every word and, honestly, i wouldn’t mind an album of just short stories like that.
not much new to me in may! only one “new” artist. but i did a lot of listening, a lot of relistening, a lot of revisiting. in keeping with the tradition established last month, if i had to recommend one album from this bunch for everyone to listen to, it’s probably “white light/white heat,” if only just to listen to john cale recite a very dark, very funny short story. here’s a playlist of some of my faves from may.
june 2024
“you forgot it in people” - broken social scene
so we saw i saw the tv glow back in the latter half of may and there’s a cover of “anthems for a seventeen year-old girl” in it. and i’d never really heard it before and i kinda loved it immediately. this song is definitely on the more romantic end of the spectrum, especially when the violin kicks in, but it slots in with the teenage angst greats like “teenage dirtbag” by wheatus and “popular” by nada surf. according to me.
there is really nothing comparable to being a teenage girl. if you’ve experienced it, you know. it is simultaneously so hopeless and hopeful, mundane and extraordinary, and everything is dialed up to 100, most of all the shit that absolutely does not matter. and this song just completely embodies that. it’s manifest. it’s perfect.
sadly, the rest of the album did not make an impression on me. that’s just me! whenever i listen to something and it does nothing for me, i always think oh, maybe someday. you know? like taste buds, shit changes. things find you at specific times. cosmically. maybe it’ll change my life someday. not right now, though!
“pet grief” - the radio dept
there were about two weeks where leo and i would be out driving and i would have dj duties and i’d play “anthems for a seventeen year-old girl” and follow it up immediately with “the worst taste in music.” i think they pair well together! so, i decided to finally listen to this album.
i’d rediscovered “the worst taste in music” by trawling my old spotify playlists. i’ve had the same account since high school, and i don’t clean out my playlists, so there’s a lot of good (embarrassing) stuff in there. i had a playlist i made in 2013 that had it on there, and i was like “oh, leo has a radio dept album, i like that one, i should listen to this one.” so i listened to it.
and i liked it! i keep comparing it to BSS in my mind because i listened to them in succession, which isn’t fair. this was far more memorable, but it didn’t stick, because i haven’t listened to it since. man, i would be awful at this if it was a for-real gig, huh?
“bright future” - adrianne lenker
this is deeply unsurprising if you’re a devoted abbiestacker and have developed a deep understanding of me and my taste and what i come back to time and again. leo is the big adrianne lenker liker in this relationship (he does NOT like big thief he is SOLELY an adrianne fan) and he brought her to me a couple years ago.
we listened to this in the car twice and i really loved it. the second time, we had my dad in the car with us and he connected with it, too, which isn’t surprising because he likes this sort of sound at this point in his life.
“vampire empire” is my favorite here. again, if you’re a devoted reader, you know i love vampirism and cannibalism and the evocation of both, however mild it may be. “evol” is a nice song, but it is so goddamn corny. “ruined” is a heartbreaker and i think if i listened to it with headphones on it might be a tearjerker, too. same for “real house.” actually, if i listened to this straight through with headphones on at two in the morning i would probably cry through most of it.
“brat” - charli xcx
what can i say, i love the color green.
i’d been thinking about listening to this album for some nebulous reason that i don’t remember. leo told me a lot of people liked it and that the melon had given it a 10, which is, embarrassingly, what made me say okay, i’ll listen to it.
i do not feel the same way about “brat” that everyone else does… but i am still bumping that.
i only have a few things to say about this album. firstly, i love when in “club classics” she says “i wanna dance to ME.” secondly, i love “sympathy is a knife.” thirdly, i love “i think about it all the time.”
“i think about it all the time” is so… direct and mature and relatable and touching. i, too, am at a point in my life where i think about it all the time, too. i don’t know, i haven’t really heard anything like it in pop music before, which is probably just a me thing, and the vulnerability of it was really striking when i listened to it for the first time. this song single-handedly made the album, for me.
“how i’m feeling now” - charli xcx
well, how do you think this one will go?
i honestly think this album might be perfect. like A+, 10/10, five stars perfect. i’ve listened to it 100 times. i’ve listened to it once. i was born with these songs in my head. i heard them for the first time just weeks ago.
“pink diamond”?? what a way to start. “forever”?? sixteen year-old abbie would’ve burned a hole in their brain listening to that song 100 times in a row lovesick over their first boyfriend (leo). same with “claws.” “7 years”?? that was me in the seventh year of our relationship. “detonate”?? i love being depressed. “enemy”?? i love being depressed!!! “i finally understand”?? I HATE MYSELF REALLY BAD, TOO!!! “c2.0”?? i also miss my friends!!! “party 4 u”?? put it in the yearning hall of fame!!! “anthems”?? there are strobe lights in my brain!!! “visions” ends?? back to “pink diamond”!!!!
okay, but sincerely, i love this album. there are no skips. not a one.
i can’t even begin to highlight the best because i will just word vomit about it all, top to bottom, and that would be… repetitive. annoying, even. instead, i’ll say a few words about my absolute favorites: “claws” and “party 4 u.”
“claws” should be in the pantheon of crush songs (other songs in the pantheon include “boyfriend” by best coast and “thinkin bout you” by frank ocean). of songs that you download illegally onto your itunes and put on loop and lay on your bed and close your eyes and imagine yourself and your crush to. the endless repetition of “i like, i like, i like” followed by the hyperbolic declaration “everything about you” is such a prime example of the side effects of love (being rendered inarticulate). even besides the lyrics, the song just embodies the supernova that is having a crush. hyperpop excels at conveying emotions that’re huge, which feels redundant to say because it feels very obvious.
“party 4 u” makes me want to throw plates on the ground to watch them shatter. when i talk about yearning, THIS is what i’m talking about. this is a sufjan-level yearner. it is so pared down compared to the other tracks, and it betrays such a raw vulnerability that can be rare in this sort of music. i have never and will never be in a position in which i throw a party just to catch the attention of another person, but the CONCEPT is making me froth at the mouth. has anybody made a great gatsby edit to this before??? this song makes me levitate.
“crash” - charli xcx
i listened to these three charli xcx albums in pretty rapid succession. i liked “brat” and “how i’m feeling now” so much, and i thought i’d seen favorable things about “crash” before, so i had my hopes up. maybe this would be a hat trick. maybe i’d drink the kool-aid. but then i listened to this and i HATED IT!
just kidding. but i didn’t like it anywhere near as much as i liked the other two. horrifyingly, there are two songs on this album that’re on the playlist at my day job, so that was a real mood-killer. the playlist for my job is the same every single day, and when i say that, i’m not joking or exaggerating or anything. they play the same exact songs every day. different order, thank god, but it’s always the same songs. the playlist changes very slowly over the course of a year, a new track here or there, and never anything up-to-the-moment. everything is a few years removed. it is probably the very worst thing about working there.
this album just doesn’t hit in remotely the same way, to me. it sounds way more “radio-friendly” than “brat” and “how i’m feeling now,” which is a stupid thing to say because it’s all pop. but i’m right. anyway, i’m probably never going to listen to this again.
“10000 gecs” - 100 gecs
i’ve been a gecs enjoyer since “1000 gecs.” it was the first hyperpop album i’d ever heard and i was pretty immediately taken with it. it was a leo find. it was short and energetic and direct and i listened to it a lot, and we eventually saw them in concert, which was an awful experience because i was standing next to a girl who kept shouting “YOU GUYS ARE FUCKING GENIUSES” every five minutes. and no, i couldn’t just move because i’m short and i actually had a really great view for once.
anyway, listening to all that charli xcx drew me back to gecs and i finally gave their second album a listen. i listened to it while i was out thrift shopping before a shift. if anything, it’s fun to try clothes on to. i don’t think anything they do will top “1000 gecs” for me.
i enjoyed this just fine. it’s really silly. i said this about it on twitter:
and i stand by that!!! i think that would be a fun pivot, if they ever wanted to change things up. a 100 gecs childrens’ show??? in the vein of yo gabba gabba. i think i’m onto something. “frog on the floor” and “i got my tooth removed” are already over halfway there. coincidentally, those were my favorite tracks. “i got my tooth removed” is literally stuck in my head right now.
it kinda goes without saying that my rec for june is “how i’m feeling now.” if i hadn’t listened to that, though, i’d be recommending adrianne lenker. but i did. so i can’t!
if i was being, like, 100% real, the playlist for june would just be “how i’m feeling now.” but it’s not. because i’m not being real. anyway, here are some of my selects from june.
"sadly, the rest of the album did not make an impression on me" Bozo!!