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dustedmagazine · 1 year

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Bill Callahan – YTI⅃AƎЯ (Drag City)

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The initially frustrating title of Bill Callahan's new album YTI⅃AƎЯ suggests that the songwriter holds up some kind of mirror to the world. The dozen songs themselves do nothing so direct. Callahan has his own way of processing the world, and while that way might be different than it was in his Smog days, it still has as much to do with refraction as it does reflection. On YTI⅃AƎЯ, Callahan looks at domestic life – among other topics – with this bent, in-and-out-of-a-dream world as he inscribes an imperfect but wondrous actuality.

“First Bird” begins the album with a few languid guitar chords before Callahan provides the album's setting. “And we're coming out of dreams,” he sings, “as we're coming back to dreams.” Callahan's awakening leads to glimmers of a hoped-for reality: two healthy kids, one flying above the ground because “everybody wants to carry her around.” There's a beauty here, siblings connected, real life not dissimilar to a good dream. We can't relax, though, as the following track, “Everyway,” begins with Callahan singing, “I feel something coming on / A disease or a song.” The mirroring and the dreaming provide only loose anchors in an unsteady world.

That instability shows up in “Naked Souls,” one of the album's longest and most disorienting tracks. The track starts calmly, sleepily. The lyrics track people who isolate themselves to avoid encountering other people in true and revealing ways. That approach to life tends toward disfigured thinking and ultimately to violence. The song starts to become more unhinged with the introduction of more instruments and more aggressive percussion as Callahan sings, “God destroy these naked souls.” The tension rises when his characters clamor for destruction; the one thing people can come together on is the need to kill others.

Threat continues in “Coyotes,” in which predators creep at the edge of a domestic scene. The family dog, a descendant of wild canines, sleeps unaware of the risk, in a nesting-doll part of Callahan's dream world (reality spun around yet again, but not exactly mirrored). Callahan recognizes the danger but can't quite get out a signal. The best he can do is to remain a “loverman,” not just now but throughout time, somehow holding the pack together with the power of heart.

Callahan won't settle on a clear line; the message isn't something trite about domestic bliss or familial love, as much as those themes color the album. He's still taking in information (“Two million years of data / Humans still in mode beta”) and still wary of crises. In sorting through this mess of life, he finds very meticulous arrangements to embody these waking dreams. The album seems like a simple, straightforward work, yet every song carries fitting surprises within its construction.

By the time the disc closes, Callahan accomplishes the strange feat of sounding comforting and unsettling at the same time. You can settle into these numbers and think about a bright future even while he pictures burning buildings and terrible situations. It's the singer's own version of reality, but it probably isn't that far from whatever's actually out there. If it's a little bent and a little brighter at the same time, it somehow only feels truer.

Justin Cober-Lake

#dusted magazine #justin cober-lake #albumreview #bill callahan #YTI⅃AƎЯ #drag city records #singer songwriter #rock and roll

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twitchytyrant · 2 years

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#masaki batoh #nowhere #drag city records #2010s #m

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sinceileftyoublog · 5 days

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Six Organs of Admittance Interview: More Than a Couple Chairs

Photo by Kami Chasny

BY JORDAN MAINZER

When Ben Chasny dives into something, he usually dives deep. Upon answering the phone in February, when I called him to talk about his new Six Organs of Admittance album Time Is Glass (out today on Drag City), he seemed a bit scattered. Despite mentally preparing himself all day for the interview, he got distracted by a "What are you digging lately?" Bandcamper compilation Drag City asked him to put together to advertise his record release. (A music fan with a voracious appetite, Chasny was rediscovering music he had purchased a couple years prior and forgot about.) Six Organs records often occupy the same dedicated headspace, Chasny setting aside blocks of time to think about nothing else. That is, until Time Is Glass. On his latest, Chasny blurs the lines between his outside-of-music life and the music itself, the album a batch of songs that reflects on the magical minutiae that sprout during a period of needed stasis.

The last time I spoke to Chasny, he and his partner [Elisa Ambrogio of Magik Markers] were still settling in from their move to Humboldt County in Northern California. "When Elisa and I first moved here, we didn't have any friends," Chasny said. "But there's a group of us that live in Humboldt now. A bunch of my friends moved up since the last time I talked to you." That includes fellow Comets on Fire bandmate Ethan Miller and his partner, fellow New Bums musical partner Donovan Quinn, and folk singer Meg Baird and her partner. "Every New Year's Day, if it's not pouring rain, we take a walk on the beach," said Chasny. One such photoshoot on January 1, 2023 yielded the album cover for Time Is Glass: That's Miller and his poodle, along with Baird's Heron Oblivion bandmate Charlie Saufley. This unintentional artistic collective meets up often, whether for coffee or as Winter Band, a rotating cast of area musicians who form to open up for musician friends when they come through town, like Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls. As such, according to Chasny, Time Is Glass is a celebration of community.

Perhaps the supportive strength of his artistic family gave Chasny the willpower to incorporate elements of his daily life into Time Is Glass, something he couldn't avoid. He didn't share with me exactly what in his personal life made it impossible to separate the two, though he mentioned his dog, a difficult-to-train puppy that was a mix of three traditionally stubborn breeds. Said dog inspired "My Familiar", a song that uses occult language to inhabit the mind of his obstinate canine companion. "And we'll burn this whole town / No one says there's good," Chasny sings, alternating between his quintessential hushed delivery and falsetto, his layered vocals atop circular picking exuding a sense of sparseness. Indeed, you wouldn't expect a Six Organs record about home life to sound totally blissful; Time Is Glass is at once gentle and menacing. The devotional "Spinning In A River" portrays the titular carefree act as lightly as the prickle of Chasny's guitar or as doomily as the song's distortion. "Hephaestus" and "Theophany Song" imagine their respective mythological characters as gruff and voyeuristic. "Summer's Last Rays" indeed captures a sense of finality, Chasny's processed guitar and warbling harmonium providing the instantly hazy nostalgia before the fade-out. The album is bookended by songs more straightforwardly hopeful, the opener "The Mission" a dedication to friends falling in love with their new place of residence, the closer "New Year's Song" a twangy ode to dreaming. But it's the moments in between that Chasny was forced to capture on Time Is Glass. And thankfully, what was born out of necessity yielded, for him, new ways to interpret the same old, same old.

Read my conversation with Chasny below, edited for length and clarity. He speaks on domesticity, mythology, playing live, and Arthur Russell.

SILY: You've lived in Humboldt County for a bit. Is Time Is Glass the first Six Organs record in a while you made while situated in one place?

Ben Chasny: I did do a couple records here before. The first one, I was in the process of moving here, so I wasn't really settled. The second was at the beginning of lockdown. This is the first one I felt like was recorded at a home. Everything was settled, I have a schedule. When I was doing the first one, I didn't even have furniture in the house. I had a couple chairs. [laughs]

SILY: Do you think the feeling of being recorded at a home manifests in any specific way on the album?

BC: I started to incorporate daily domestic routines into the record, more often. A lot of the melodies were written while taking the dog for a walk, which I've never done before. There was always stuff to do as I moved in. The times weren't as separate. Before, it was, "Now I'm recording, now I'm doing life stuff." There was a merging of everything here. I would listen to it on my earbuds while taking walks and constantly work on it for six months.

SILY: It definitely has that homeward bound feel in terms of the lyrics and the sound, like you've been somewhere forever. There are a lot of lyrics about the absence of time, and there's a circular nature to the rhythms and the guitars. Does the title of the album refer to this phenomenon?

BC: A little bit. Time does seem, in general, post-lockdowns and COVID, different. The lyrics on the record have a bit more domesticity. It always seems like there was something that had to be done, that would normally keep me from doing music, that I tried to incorporate here. Maybe I'm just getting older, too. I'm getting more sensitive towards time. I'm running out. [laughs]

SILY: Was there anything specific about your domestic life that made you want to include it in your music?

BC: Just that I had to include it in order to do anything. It was no longer separate. The way life ended up working out, I could no longer separate my artistic life from other life. I had to put the artistic aspect into it in order to work. Instead of getting frustrated, I brought [music] more into the house.

SILY: Did working on the record give you a new perspective on domesticity?

BC: I don't know. A little bit. I was just trying to come to terms with basic life things. Let me look at the record, I forgot what songs are on it. [laughs] The song "My Familiar" is about my dog. I got this book called Cunning Folk and Familiar Spirits, which was sort of taken from transcriptions of witch trials from Scotland in the 1500's. A lot of dealing with things like witches' familiars and demon familiars. I found a very strong similarity between that and my dog, which seemed like it was maybe a demon. She's a Husky-German Shepherd-Australian Shepherd mix, so as a puppy, she needed a lot of work. So that became a song. That's a more humorous way everyday life made its way into the music.

[With regard to] the last song, "New Years Song", Elisa and I have a contest on New Year's Eve when we're hanging out where we go in separate rooms and have one hour to write a song. We come out at 11 or 11:30 and play the song for each other. We've done it for a few years now. This was the song I wrote for New Year's Eve going into 2022.

SILY: You talk about God on Time Is Glass and delve a little bit into mythology. Was that something you were thinking about on a day to day basis when writing?

BC: The “Hephaestus” song was just a character. That was a rare song for me in that I was trying to make sounds that particularly evoked a mythological figure. I've made nods to mythology in the past, but the titles were almost an afterthought. This particular song, I was trying to make the sounds of that character in their workshop with the fire and anvils. I was trying to evoke that feeling. That was kind of a new one for me.

SILY: Maybe I'm reading into it too much, but you also seem to talk a bit about your state of mind on "Slip Away".

BC: It's funny you caught onto that, because I wasn't really expecting to bring it up during interviews. I wouldn't say that I came close at times in the past couple years to schizophrenia, but I could see way off in the distance and horizon what that would be like. I...was trying to write about that. At the same time, the lyrics that have to do with two minds and the splitting of the mind are also somewhat of a reference to the idea of a celestial twin or Valentinian gnosis, how you have a celestial counterpart. That idea [is behind the concept of] someone's guardian angel.

SILY: On a couple songs, you sing to someone or something else. "The Mission" you've mentioned is for a friend and their new partner. What about on "Spinning in a River"?

BC: Maybe it was more of a general idea. It wasn't so much to a person as to a general concept of Amory.

SILY: What were all the instruments used on the record?

BC: I had some guitar, I was singing, and there's some harmonium on it, which I did a lot of processing on, lowering it octaves. I've got some really basic Korg synths. Electronic-wise, there's a program called Reactor I like to use a lot. I do it a little bit more subtly than electronic artists. I use it more for background.

SILY: I picked up the harmonium on "Summer's Last Rays"! I feel like you never truly know when you're hearing a harmonium unless it's in the album credits. Sometimes, that sound is just effects.

BC: There are two different harmoniums. When the bass comes in, that's also a harmonium, but I knocked it down a couple octaves and put it through some phaser. It has a grinding bass tone to it. This is actually one of the few Six Organs records with bass guitar on it. Unless it's an electric record with a band, there's never really been bass guitar. I was really inspired by Naomi Yang's bass playing in Galaxie 500 and how it's more melodic. I told her that, too.

SILY: On "Theophany Song", are you playing piano?

BC: Yeah, that's at my friend's house. I just wanted to play a little melody.

SILY: Was this your first time using JJ Golden for mastering?

BC: I've worked with JJ before. He did Ascent and a few others. I particularly wanted to work with him this time because I had just gotten that Masayuki Takayanagi box set on Black Editions and saw he had done that. I have the original CDs, and I thought he did such an amazing job that I wanted to work with him again.

SILY: Is that common for you, that you think of people to work with and you dig a record they just worked on and it clicks for you?

BC: That's the first time I had just heard something and thought, "Oh, I gotta work with this person." I usually have a few mastering engineers I work with and think, "What would be good for them?" or, "What does this sound like?" I usually like to send the more rock-oriented stuff to JJ, but I was just feeling it this time.

SILY: Have you played these songs live?

BC: The instrumental "Pilar" I have been playing since 2019. That's the oldest song on the record. I did do one show last September where I played a couple of these songs live. I have some ideas on how to work it out. It will be a solo acoustic show, but I [hope] to make some new sounds so it's not so straightforward. One thing about this record is I tried to write songs in the same tuning. On previous records, I used a lot of tunings, and it was a real pain to try to play the songs live. I did write this record with the idea that most of these songs would be able to be done live.

SILY: What have you been listening to, watching, or reading lately?

BC: I just got the Emily Robb-Bill Nace split LP. I just saw her live a couple nights ago. The latest one on Freedom To Spend from Danielle Boutet, which is awesome. Freedom To Spend is a go-to label for me. Also, this split with Karen Constance and Dylan Nyoukis.

I've been reading Buddhist Bubblegum by Matt Marble, about Arthur Russell and the systems he developed, which I knew nothing about. His compositional systems have almost a Fluxus influence. The subtitle is Esotericism in the Creative Process of Arthur Russell, so it's also about his Buddhism as well. When I first heard about the book, I didn't know if I needed to get it, but I heard an interview with Matt about the detailed systems Arthur Russell came up with. It gives me a whole new level of appreciation for him. It's so good.

SILY: Did you listen to Picture of Bunny Rabbit?

BC: It's so good, especially the title track. It seems like when he has us plugged into some kind of effects or delay, he's switching the different sounds on it, but it makes the instrument go in so many different areas. To me, the title track is worth the price of the entire record, even though the whole thing is good.

SILY: What else is next for you? Are you constantly writing?

BC: This is gonna be a very busy year release-wise. I have a couple more things coming out. It's hard to write stuff because I always think it'll take so long for it to come out. I'm halfway working on something, but I have no idea when it will come out.

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teoriacritica · 3 months

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#DRINKS #hippo lite #mp3 #drag city records

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affairesasuivre · 1 year

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People Helping People / No Age (Drag City, 2022)

No Age’s breakthrough release, Weirdo Rippers, came out 15 years ago, when Billie Eilish was five years old and people could still afford to live in Los Angeles. The compilation of early lo-fi singles shifted guitarist Randy Randall and drummer-singer Dean Spunt into indie rock’s low-watt spotlight; stories tended to focus on their deep involvement in L.A. performance art venue and community space The Smell, a hub for the city’s burgeoning bohemia. The Smell is still kicking. And so are No Age, thankfully, even though their hazy, propulsive, and blissful skate-punk hasn’t changed substantially since 2007.

Between 2008’s universally acclaimed Nouns and 2020’s Goons Be Gone, Randall and Spunt have remained committed to their foundational sound—wielding whirls of guitar effects to smear three- or four-chord punk songs—but tend to differentiate each release through mixing and tweaking. They’ll lower the levels of distortion or accentuate Spunt’s slurred, slacker vocals; they’ll cut out the drums, or anything resembling a song, entirely; they’ll thrash away or chill out. But on People Helping People, No Age’s sixth album, Randall and Spunt break from their template with music that’s more abstract and eccentric. For the first time since their early releases, they’re playing with a renewed sense of possibility.

Of all No Age’s LPs, People Helping People has the most in common with the jagged arrangements of 2013’s An Object. Yet that album was still primarily song-based, whereas People Helping People emphasizes sound and texture. It’s bookended by two ambient pieces, and the first track resembling classic No Age—the squelchy, nervy, and unexpectedly poignant “Plastic (You Want It)”—doesn’t arrive until nearly a third of the way in. Seven of the 13 cuts have no vocals; five have no drums. The most straightforward songs are an unusual hybrid of IDM and post-punk. No Age draw lots of comparisons to Hüsker Dü, but People Helping People is more like Mouse on Mars trying to make The Flowers of Romance.

The kitchen-sink sound design is likely a byproduct of the recording process. People Helping People is the first No Age album created without an outside producer, in their own studio in Randall’s garage. Some songs feel like experiments with new tools. A motorik-paced synth-drum beat is the sole backing on “Compact Flashes,” with clipped guitar scrapes and drum hits entering at random. “Interdependence” is a phased-out passage of psychedelic guitar shredding that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Six Organs of Admittance LP. The ceremonial and downright dreamy “Blueberry Barefoot,” backed by orchestral synth chords, could be a Disintegration demo, a punk church wedding, or hold music for androids.

Spanning just over half an hour, People Helping People requires a few listens before its logic begins to click, but eventually the fractured music overlaps with their catalog, even suggesting new directions for their work to come. No Age’s music always felt like it was equally at home in a gallery or a basement show, but now they seem to be inching further toward the art world. That holds true for Spunt’s lyrics, which are still too cryptic to be sloganeering (“I don’t like the obvious, I made you my man,” he sings on the single “Tripped Out Before Scott”). The video for closing track “Andy Helping Andy,” directed by noted L.A. photographer and experimental filmmaker Kersti Jan Werdal, shares a similar sensibility, with a montage of found footage of Andy Warhol. None of these gestures are pretentious or off-putting. In fact, they’re in line with No Age’s persistent virtue: to inspire and energize through ambiguity and without resorting to cheap sentiment.

#People Helping People #No Age #drag city records #2022 #rock #affas #affairesasuivre #affaires a suivre #Youtube

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mywifeleftme · 10 months

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92: Aquariana // Aquariana

Aquariana Aquariana 2013, Drag City (Website)

The Source Family were one of the more successful new religions (read: cults) operating in Southern California during the early 1970s. Founded by Father Yod (pronounced “Yoad”; né Jim Baker), a towering, bearded figure with a few alleged murders (via karate chop!) and bank robberies under his robes, the Source Family operated a popular health food restaurant in L.A. and cut dozens of brainstewing psych rock records that have become holy grails to men who physically resemble late period Jerry Garcia. Yod assigned one of his 13 wives (Isis Aquarian, née Charlene Peters) to document the cult’s journey over the years, resulting in an incredible trove of video recordings, some of which were used to assemble 2012’s The Source Family documentary. The footage, much of it eerie and gauzily beautiful, gives us a good idea of what day-to-day life in the Family was like, from its origins to Yod’s corporeal demise in Hawaii following a hang-gliding accident (!).

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The Source Family were as close to a prototypical cult of the era as you can get: white robes, buffet approach to Eastern and Western spiritual concepts, illiberal attitudes toward “personal possessions,” semi-involuntary polygamy, institutionalized drug use, etc. If you’ve ever listened to recordings of the sermons of Jim Jones or David Berg, Baker’s hep gibberish will sound strikingly familiar, and indeed, the Source Family followed the standard trajectory—from monogamy to a form of free love that mostly allowed the leader to fuck all the hot girls; from soft notions about kindness and peace to dark mutterings about an imminent apocalypse; from vegetarianism to moral loopholes that sanctioned the killing of dangerous outsiders. The Source Family never went the way of the Peoples Temple because, when faced with a mounting crisis (the cult’s disastrous move to Hawaii), Baker decided to disclaim his godhood instead of doubling down on it. No one knows why he eventually told his followers he was only a man, but I have a hunch: he wasn’t a sawed-off little gnome, and he wasn’t crazy. Unlike his murderous peers, Baker didn’t have much to overcompensate for; he was a huge, built guy who didn’t need a cult to get laid, impose his will, or feel important (though he got off on all of the above). In the end, no one died, and so it feels a little less vulturine to nibble at this particular cult’s artistic output than it does, say, the Manson Family’s.

On that note, let’s turn to the music. Record nerds are always on the lookout for cult music because it often goes extremely hard, be it Manson’s acoustic freak folk, Scientology space jazz, or “Veteran of the Psychic Wars.” The albums the Source Family are known for (released under a variety of names like Ya Ho Wha 13 and Father Yod and the Spirit of ’76) are out-there freeform acid jams in which the cult’s more experienced musicians try to work around frontman Yod’s untrained drumming and bellowing—a member of the No-Neck Blues Band pops up on the 2012 documentary to gush about their records, and you can see why acts like NNCK and Jackie O Motherfucker would lose it for this stuff.

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The album we’re looking at today, by contrast, is a solo piano recording from the mid-‘70s by Aquariana, another of Yod’s wives, that went unissued till 2013. Aquariana had a Queen Guinevere-type look, and the liners note that she would frequently spin her own long golden hair into thread to sew and embroider with. A capable pianist with a multi-octave voice, Aquariana’s music could broadly be called folky, but it feels a little more theatrical than that, influenced by show tunes and AM soft rock. Her songs are mostly about love (-ing Father Yod), bearing children (of Father Yod), and the magnificence of Father Yod. It’s midway between devotional music and the type of stuff a medieval bard would be retained to write in praise of an egotistical baron. You can practically see Baker being fed grapes in the producer’s chair while she plays. Though it’s not as overtly weird as Ya Ho Wha 13, there’s still a lot of stuff on Aquariana that no sane producer would’ve allowed, like the way she tunelessly holds and holds and holds her notes on “Oh My Love” and “One Love” until you start to think your record is skipping. That strangeness is why it exerts the particular appeal it does, and it does have a particular downbeat intensity that holds my interest, despite its rudimentary songcraft.

Chicago’s Drag City label was behind the documentary and mid-2010s series of Source Family music reissues. Unlike reissues of, say, Manson-adjacent music, the label was able to work with surviving Family members like Isis Aquarian. This meant of course that they couldn’t dress up the reissues too salaciously (see LIE: The Love & Terror Cult), but Baker’s group already had such a strongly creepy aesthetic that there wasn’t much need to. A designer would be hard-pressed to come up with a more uncanny cover than Aquariana got: the singer at the piano in her ruffled gown with an unreadable expression, the head and shoulders of her husband-father visible behind the instrument, the portrait framed in ornate white fabric. It feels like the work of an outsider trying to underline the cult’s depravity in red pen—yet the composition and cover design were by Yod himself. Make of that what you will.

92/365

#aquariana #the source family #father yod #jim baker #cults #cult music #drag city #'70s music #female singer #vinyl record #music review #freak folk #hang gliding

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passengerpigeons · 1 year

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So back in the day i followed someone who was posting about how this gay porno called The Drifter had a really good soundtrack but there wasn't an official release. This was one of the songs she ripped where she could filter out most noise besides some rain and stuff i think.

anyway this song from an obscure gay porn is the song that got me into six organs

#and of course as artists i get into recently often are #he is (or at least was at some point) on drag city records #Bandcamp

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musicollage · 10 months

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Bill Callahan — YTI⅃AƎЯ. 2022 : Drag City.

! enjoy the album ★ provide a coffee !

#rock music #folk rock #bill callahan #2022 #drag city records #singer songwriter #2020s #2020s rock

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zaphmann · 2 years

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In Memory of John Peel Show 221007 Podcast & Playlist

Bill, Ben and Weed (not Loretta Lynn) “A coruscatingly brilliant show“ >> the best new music, independent of the industry system – back this show on patreon Paypal to [email protected] heard in over 90 countries via independent stations (RSS)Pod-Subscribe for free here or Embed/listen at podomatic – itunes Apple, Audacity, Google Podcasts, Gaana, Boomplay, Amazon Music. Audible, Player FM,…

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bandcampsnoop · 2 years

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10/4/22.

The Artist in Residence series for Joyful Noise Recordings this year features Yonatan Gat, who has seen his fair share of mentions over the years. There are five artists in the series - Yonatan Gat's American Quartet, Medicine Singers, Maalem Hassan BenJaafar, Mamady Kouyaté, and Monotonix (originally from Tel Aviv, Israel).

I'd obviously never listened to Monotonix. If I had they certainly would have garnered several posts and mentions. This is punk in the vein of Sonic Youth crossed with The Stooges. They have a couple of releases on Drag City, but haven't released new music in 12 years. Yonatan Gat is a member of the band, but this music is much more raw and energetic than his solo or collaborative work.

Yonatan Gat seems to now be based in New York.

#Monotonix #Tel Aviv #Israel #Yonatan Gat #Joyful Noise Recordings #Drag City #Sonic Youth #The Stooges #Yonatan Gat's American Quartet #Mamady Kouyaté #Maalem Hassan BenJaafar #Medicine Singers #New York #Bandcamp

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dustedmagazine · 2 years

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No Age—People Helping People (Drag City)

Photo by Benjamin Clark

People Helping People by No Age

If you think of No Age as a noisy, stutter-y, rattling punk band, track one of People Helping People will be a bit of a surprise. “You’re Cooked” is more of an ambient jam than anything else, a blurred wash of keyboard sound, tones left to warp and decay in the air, some flickery bits of beeps and squeaks, an artfully placed drum sound or two, carefully spaced and un-beat-like. This sixth album from the LA duo of Dean Allen Spunt and Randy Randall is different from all the others, and not just in that it was home-recorded in Randall’s garage instead of in a studio (though it was). There are still some spike-y, fizzed-out, distortion-crusted bangers, but they sit alongside other songs in a dreamier, woozier palette.

Consider, for instance, the two singles. “Andy Helping Andy” is all whooshing drone, a swirling miasma of enveloping tone and atmosphere that is paced, oddly, by a humping, scrabbling beat that percolates just out of focus; it’s a rhythm, but also a sound like the mice in your walls make when it gets cold. “Tripped Out By Scott” bounces harder on a clipped, staccato rhythm; Spunt punctuates drawling Lou Reed-ish rants with snares on the offbeats. Randall layers hazy guitar sounds over it all, lulling its militant cadence into lyricism. It sounds like No Age, but prettier and calmer and more introspective.

Not that it’s such a departure. Pick your way through these 13 tracks carefully, and you can pretend that not much has changed. “Violence” blares and bristles with buzzy distortion, Spunt’s abstract chants busting out in emphatic choruses of “Ba ba-ba bah ba-ba bah ba-ba bah ba-ba Violence!” “Plastic (You Want It)” ramps up jangly guitars with a scratchy, blurting beat, and floats the disc’s most haunted vocal over top. And “Rush to the Pond” sweetens punk agitation with mid-1990s indie romance; it’s a Sebadoh track having an anxiety attack.

You can hear the impact of the pandemic in this latest album from No Age, not in the recording, which sounds as assured as ever, but in the bouts of introspection, the intervals of lyricism, the sweet haze and jangle of home-cooked rock. Spunt and Randall went inward, not out into the world, to find a different way to sound.

Jennifer Kelly

#dusted magazine #albumreview #jennifer kelly #no age #people helping people #drag city records #punk #post punk #indie romance

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jaebeomsbitch · 6 months

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The Princess and Eggplant (E.M.)

Summary: Your boyfriend happens to be a foot taller than you...or Eddie is afraid to stick it all the way in, afraid to hurt you

Warnings: Minors DNI, size kink, pure smut

Pairings: Boyfriend!Eddie x Girlfriend!Reader

A/N: watching Sex and the City and couldn’t stop thinking about the size difference between Carrie and Aidan. As a 5'1 they/them I'm drooling. Literally finished this a while ago but couldn't find a good gif, I'm gonna start making my own banners

Like Eddie holding you up, your thighs wrapped around his waist, his big hands on your ass. His tongue in your mouth as he kisses you more and more aggressively until you can’t breath and your head is spinning. The way he manhandles you, impaling his thick cock inside you as he grits his teeth trying to control himself from being too rough. But his cock only fits half way and you’re clinging onto his shoulders moaning like a ghost in a haunted house.

You heave for air as his cock knocks the wind out of you. He lays you out on the bed, your hair fanning out as he yanks you to the edge of the bed.

“Fuck sweetheart” he groans looking at the way his cock disappears inside of you. His neck straining as he holds himself back.

“More Eddie, fuck give me more” you gasp, your nails digging into his back.

“S-shit baby, don’t wanna hurt you” he grunts, slowly pulling out and back halfway in. As he refuses to go deeper, his eyes already rolling back as your tight velvet walls grip onto him.

“Please Eddie” you whine, pressing the heels of your feet into his ass forcing him deeper into you. Your jaw slacks as you’re stretched open by your boyfriend.

“S-shit s-so fucking big” you moan pressing your chest into his.

“F-fuck you’re gonna kill me” he groans voice higher pitched then normal. He hisses, teeth clenched tightly as he tries to remain still. However you don’t give him the chance, you dig your feet deeper into his pale ass. Pushing him inch by inch slowly into you until his hips are flush with your ass.

Eddie knows that he needs to be the one to slow down, but it's hard when you feel this good - especially when you're moaning like that. He hasn’t even moved and yet you’re already cock drunk. You’re drooling and moaning incoherently as Eddie’s cock fits like a puzzle piece inside you, nice and deep.your pussy struggles to accommodate the stretch. Your walls pulse around him almost like it’s trying to push Eddie out.

His arms shake as he shallowly thrusts into you, little grunts leaving his lips.

“Fuck Princess, so fucking tight” he whines.

“S-shit it’s like you’re fucking choking my cock” he grunts out, looking at the slight bulge in your lower stomach every time he slides back in. The sight is enough to make him cum right then and there.

“F-fuck fuck fuck ohhhh fuck” you moan underneath him trying to grind into him but his grip on your hips tightens. You know he’s gonna leave bruises on you but you fucking love it. Love that he’s practically whimpering “princess” under his breath like a broken record, like he needs to burn the feeling and imagine in his head.

“More, Eddie please-” you whine, your pussy pulsing around him desperately trying to drag him back in. He shakes his head vehemently, his jaw tight as he grinds his teeth. No girl could ever take his full cock before and much less someone so petite.

“So fucking perfect Princess. Your pussy’s taking me so fucking good. Fucking stretching out to fit my cock baby” he grunts out starting to lose his reserve. His hips move slightly faster as he feels the burn deep in his gut.

“Made f’you Eds” you nod, eyebrows pinched together as he pulls the rubber band tighter. You flex your stomach trying to keep it together. Your moans getting louder as his his resolve starts to slack more and more.

It isn’t long until he’s snapping his hips into yours looking like a man possessed. He’s fucking feral, hair wild, pupils blown out, neck flexed. His whole body is tense as he pounds into you fast and hard completely breaking you down.

You’re more than cock drunk at this point. Babbling gibberish, writhing under him, pulling at the sheets, your eyes closed shut as you’re in your own little world taking Eddie’s thick cock.

“Jesus fucking Christ” Eddie moans at the sight of you. Most girls would’ve cried in pain, he always needed at least an hour of stretching and foreplay to get half way in and yet here you are taking it.

“M’gonna cum!” You cry, stomach flexing harder, your muscles tightening almost painfully.

“Fuck- cum on my cock, Princess,” he pants, his balls slapping into your ass, hand pressing into your stomach feeling the bulge of his cock.

“Ohh fuck- fuck- fuckkk fuckkk” you all but scream as you let go. You tremble under Eddie’s body, face contorted, jaw slacked, drool dripping down your chin. It’s like you’re high and drunk at the same time.

“That’s it Princess milk my fucking cock. Taking me so well, begging for my fucking cum” he grunts. His eyes rolling back as he clenched his jaw and comes hard. Thick white ropes paint your velvet walls already dripping down to your ass. Your pussy too small to accommodate both his cock and cum.

“Shit” he heaves, slowly pulling out not trying to hurt you further.

“I’m not gonna be able to walk am I?” You groan as he nuzzles into your neck.

He chuckles,”probably not.”

“You’re the worst” you mumble lightly nipping his bottom lip.

“Not what you were yelling two seconds ago” he murmurs against your lips. That’s dimpled grin on his face as he presses for a kiss and another and another.

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