#seeing a fantastic concept lose its way at the hands of its own writer(s) is devastating (dramatic much? IDC!!!)

[boobdolan]

a review of melodrama (2017) by lorde

hey what’s up it’s your boy b-dawg. the b is for boobs as in breasts. this post is a track-by-track review of melodrama, the grammy-nominated sophomore studio album by ella yelich-o’ connor (aka lorde), a new zealand singer-songwriter who likes to dance funny and eat onions. her first album was pure heroine which was pretty big bc i think people (angsty teens) related to her songs about being an angsty teen.

i’m gonna keep it real with you chief. when i first heard green light (the lead single from the album) i thought it was pretty ass. but you know what. i’m an ass man despite my username. so eventually by some karmic circumstance i was reintroduced to the album and i realised: “hey! this is pretty dope! 😎” and then i ended up writing a 4000-word extended essay on it for the IB. but that’s another story.

green light is also the first track on the album, and it’s a hella effective one. with its intro bringing listeners acapella ella™️ over sparse piano chords, it kicks open the door to the sound of melodrama and immediately subverts any expectations for a pure heroine 2.0. as the song progresses we get additional elements of new and old - the boom-bap drums recall the hip-hop influences that permeated pure heroine, while her high-pitched backing vocals in the chorus introduce listeners to new vocal stylings from a singer who was previously known for being a Cool Bean who was Too Cool for all that stuff.

as the maximalist bop green light ends, listeners are thrown even further away from the sound of pure heroine with sober. personal note: sober was the song i most liked on the album upon first listen. and I can see why. it’s because i’ve got good taste! from the spacey uber-processed backing vocals to the bongo beat to the horns in the chorus, the song’s really unlike much else in the pop scene today. i especially like the “night, midnight, lose my mind” intro because when i first heard it i was like “wtf???? cool 🤠” anyway, point is, ella and her bf did well on this track.

at this point one might think, “this girl has a thing for acapella intros to her songs”. and she does! homemade dynamite starts, like an action movie, in situ, with its musings about top gun and the house party that the album is conceptually based around. one thing i love about the song is its synths. the 80s inspiration is obvious, with the synth pad emulating the iconic Fairlight sound on kate bush’s running up that hill. however, the moodiness of the synth pad is contrasted with a sprightly riff that comes in every now and then, emphasising that Potent Teenage Mix of Emotions™️ that the album is focused around. lorde also uses contrast in her lyrics, pairing wordy, literary, stream-of-consciousness style verses with almost childish phrases like “know I think you’re awesome, right???” it’s things like this that really encapsulate the state of being teenaged to me - that uncertain transitional period between adolescence and adulthood.

the following song starts with a very indie-sounding guitar, which is an unconventional sound for a lorde song. but the louvre is so typically lordey in that it shows off one of her greatest skills - the ability to create memorable, quotable lines with unique phrasing. who else would think of stammering the line “i overthink your punctuation use”?? who else would think of using a spoken “broadcast the boom boom boom boom and make ‘em all dance to it” as a hook??? another thing of note in this song is its extended U2-esque instrumental outro, courtesy of jack antonoff. sometimes when i listen to it, i understand why ella is banging him.

jack then mumbles the intro to the next song and starts playing the piano. after a few bars, ella joins him and her voice basically has sex with his tinkling on the ivories. liability is objectively great. lyrically, she reaches mind-bending extremes that many of her contemporaries can only dream of achieving. there’s a verse where she goes “home, into the arms of the girl that [she] loves” which is very interestingly constructed - it hits listeners with the initial shock of “oh wait is ella coming out” and just Leaves It for a few lines. and theN BOOM!!!! she’s actually talking about herself. that’s pretty cool. one other thing is her rhyme scheme in the line “the truth is, i am a toy that people enjoy ‘til all of their tricks don’t work anymore” which has a devastating effect that always gets me, even though it greatly takes advantage of her bananies voice.

now the listener is halfway through the album, and at this point they’re likely as hard as the feelings in the title of the next song. hard feelings/loveless brings us back into the world of electronic drums and synths after the minimalism of liability, and it does so excellently, providing an ambient atmosphere with its muffled beat and echoey distorted guitar. this song used to be one of my least favourites on the album because I thought the L O V E L E S S chant in the second part sounded kinda dumb and edgy. but then i watched lorde’s performance of the song for VEVO and ?????? WtF????? it really shines with a small choir and a boombox. fantastic. i also appreciate the little paul simon sample that bridges the two parts together - it’s a rare example of lorde wearing her influences on her sleeve for this album. also paul simon is one cool mf. i pop my pussy to graceland 24/7. 😎👌

taking a note from jack antonoff’s albums, the next song is a reprise, which have been used by many artists after the beatles to say “hey look my album is cohesive!” even though the only reason why it’s cohesive is because it’s cohesively shit. that’s not the case with sober II (melodrama), which functions as a response to the first sober. the parent song’s repeated calls of “can you feel it?” are immediately countered in sober II’s first line: “you asked if i was feeling it, i’m psycho high”. that’s cool because it reinforces the house party concept of the album. however, while i think the strings and trap drums combo sounds cool on paper, this production choice is the album’s first misstep because it sounds like jack put together 2 apple loops on garageband that didn’t quite fit.

luckily, before lorde turns into one of the migos, we’re treated with another piano song - writer in the dark. a word about lorde’s vocal performance in this song: WOW!!!!!!!!!! 😃😃😃 good stuff! in the verses, her raspy, imperfect voice highlights the intimacy and personal nature of the lyrics. in the chorus, she double tracks her voice and sings with a more round tone, which gives the eerie effect of sounding a bit like kate bush. it’s ok. i’m a bush man too. jack does a little production trick in the outro where ella sings the hook progressively louder as he fades out her vocal and lets the song be overtaken by strings. while it’s cool, i feel like he quite obviously snagged it from the outro of david bowie’s “heroes”, where a similar trick was achieved by the production god brian eno. jack then did it again on the song slow disco by st. vincent later in the year. side note: i’m still kinda pissed about what he did to st. vincent’s masseduction. more on that another time.

the next song, which should’ve been a single, features the metaphor of a supercut. i’m not sure how i feel about that because, on one hand, the term feels very millennial, like a better-written version of katy perry’s save as draft. you know what i mean? like those songs that aged fast - crazy in love with its pager reference, and payphone with its..... payphone reference. on the other hand, a supercut is pretty timeless, as montages have been used in cinema since the french first figured out how to make moving pictures. and the word sounds cool, so it’s ok i guess. but that’s beside the point. the song’s really nice, with some very interesting moments. one notable instance is lorde’s phrasing and the instrumentation in the prechorus - “in your car, the radio on”. the instrumentation just stops for a beat after ella sings the line, in a genius move that makes the song Even More Boppable!!. another moment is how the beat changes during the final choruses - from mellow, with her voice sounding like it’s coming out of a cassette player, to full, regaining all the instrumentation of the original choruses. then the song ends with a weird echoey vocal outro that’s a fantastic moment for me, especially after the intensity of the final choruses. boner time!!!!! 😃 one last cool thing about the song is that i feel the line “so I fall into continents and cars” is an Excessively paul simon thing to say. it’s one of those abstract things that just sounds GREAT, like “fat charlie the archangel sloped into the room” from his song crazy love, part II.

speaking of part twos, the end of supercut transitions into the bassy, atmospheric synths of liability (reprise). unfortunately, i still haven’t gotten round to fully appreciating this song. to me, it’s the biggest misstep on melodrama. don’t get me wrong - it’s a nice enough song, it’s really chill, but it feels slight because of its association to the majestic, melodic liability. apart from their lyrics, there’s not much that links the two. i feel that liability needed no reprise; it’s a work that stands on its own. i felt the same way about yandhi when kanye west announced it. yeezus doesn’t need another album associated to it! it’s perfection by itself. also, someone pointed out that the drums on liability (reprise) are the same as those on taylor swift’s call it what you want, and the last time taylor and jack screwed up a great indie artist’s work was fast slow disco, which we don’t talk about in this house.

finally, we come to the end of lorde’s house party with perfect places. and what a brilliant ending it is. there’s something so stirring about the drum beat, with its crunchy, decisive snare. there’s something equally moving about the synths and chord progression in the chorus, which give me chills like loud organs echoing in a church. when put together, they sound industrial, menacing, as if they move into your soul and alienate you from your own body. but at the same time, they’re an emotional release, a source of comfort like bruce springsteen’s cathartic 70s and 80s albums. another cathartic element - the use of the word “fuck” in the chorus. i could write a whole essay on it tbh. to me, it represents an intensely freeing release of the bad vibes and negativity in one’s life - for lorde, perhaps, her failed relationship and the state of the world in 2016. you know how studies have shown that when you shout “FUCK!!!!😡😡” after hitting your toe on furniture, it helps ease the pain? it’s like that. so while saying something taboo on the record is such an edgy angsty teenage thing to do, but also reflects lorde’s release from her pain. or maybe i’m reading too much into it.

the album ends as it begins, with ella’s bare vocals, reminding us that she is once again the Queen of Indie Pop. overall, melodrama gets a

9/10

for being really cool. peace out bitches. 🤠

#lorde #melodrama #review #music #music review #album #album review

[maddyanarchist]

Blabbering what’s inside

Welcome back to the weekly doses of insights,wisdom, philosophy, thought provoking blogposts & articles that gives the reader a wonderful experience to cherish.

This week I want to blabber a little about the things & the thought I found interesting which may sound appealing to you. 

These are the two practices that I do daily & find it really useful.

 READING : This is one of my favourite passtime other than scrolling through instagram feed or watching interesting videos or listening to nerve- breaking podcasts. Honestly I was never a book lover & I think that is also the reason , why I started liking it in the first place. I guess we should try out more such interests that contradicts our preferences for a while , for that is not something we have exposed ourselves to , hence they might sound a stranger but also interesting.  I was never an avid reader , for I was so much stuck in my study books that even the thought of reading a book irritated the hell out of me. I always found it always binding to myself , for I always bounded myself to it with a certain conditioning of the limitedness of its availaiblity in my space. I lived with this conditioning for several years of my life until  I accidently happened to find myself drawn to mythological stories. The one thing that interested me about the Indian heritage I belonged to is the diverse amount of stories in that one space & that same story being illustrated in a different format that will amaze the reader even when he /she knows the complete story. Mythological stories are mostly labelled as fiction , but to me that are somewhat of a truth for the message , values & the intricacies that they shower is something that helps us in our real lives , even if we don’t accept it. I also have this weird thought wherein I think that even if these stories are fiction , the writer who wrote them had an experience of creating that within his headspace for the time that was intended to finish the complete book. So , even if for the world it is a fiction , the writer lived that experience in his/ her head & comprehended the same on paper that is availaible to us. The journey that started through his wired imagination when dipped in to the ink of the pages makes that experience come true not only for the writer , because till that point he was living with that experience in his head , but now he has imprinted the same & sharing to millions who will be viewing too with their own lens of imagination. So , in absolute sense it becomes a truth even if its labelled as fiction.  My first experience was with the fiction mythological story of THE IMMORTALS OF MELUHA by AMISH TRIPATHI , & it was such a fantastic read that i viewed every part of it through my inward lens. It was more of a film that was going on in my head wherein  my brain was deciphering WHAT SHIVA MEANT TO BE?.I can’t say whether I would be having that same feeling if I would have just viewed it as a film. Like the creative juices that worked in my head was my interpretation of my understanding of the character which may not be the same with others. And so it was more of a personal camaraderie that I build with the plot of the story , liking it more & more. I can still remember the smile I had on my face when I read a part of it that seemed amusing , & i also cries when that character was facing through the most dark times. It was all going on & it seemed damm true to me when I read every part of it. Starting off from that , I happened to fall in to the habit of reading that led me read quite a few non-fiction which I really enjoyed without feeling bored , making note & enjoying the most. As if not just the writer is speaking to you , its more of like you are speaking to the writer too. I know , in times where you have audible next to your side , that need of reading books may not seem juicy. But , even if you are just listening if you are able to picture it, you are half way there. The only point of difference is that when you read your eyes, your ears & your brains work simultaneously. You can’t even imagine how powerful this tool for you are living three different sense at the same time & how fast is one’s brain in programming every information in the way one wants to project. It is  just not seeing , its hearing , listening , talking inside your friend & visualising the same. So much happening  within  a fraction of a second.  JUST try that experience. It is one of the wholesome meals one can have.  I know  many of us don’t like to read, but I can assure you that if you hate it , you are most likely to fall in love with it. Try it out. Often the best things are in front of us , but we look for alternatives to substantiate the same. But the originality is something that can never be replaced , howsoever different forms may take place. Be a little ordinary, when it comes to exploring new things out. 

WRITING:  This is something which actually doesn’t look very appealing & I share the same empathy. Afterall writing was never the most romantic experience anyone can have. But the problem our ideas get the shape when they are likely to be illustrated in some form & the first approach to the same is to register it in writing , be it something you can do via app  NOTION, ONE DRIVE, EVERNOTE  or just simply & a diary & a pen. I agree handwriting is the bitter part of the journey & we will always seem to hate it , even if its not that dogmatic. Common we are our self - critics. We judge ourselves more often than anyone does. But that is a good indication of a wise human being to criticize themselves first , but don’t criticise oneself to the point of feeling like a shit. Giving oneself the space is the biggest gift one can present to oneself. Our ideas develop in our minds , but our execution of the same develops with time. So , to make sure that one doesn’t lose the track of the time spent in to something , one should try to register it atleast frequently , if not daily. An overall overview also helps in times of crisis. Depression is a severe symptom for those who don’t share , not only with others but also with themselves. It is not because you don’t have anybody to talk to, it happens because one has accumlated so much that they forget to filter a little. That filter is journaling ,even if it is a shit. The moment you get rid of the idea on paper , you are no longer bounded to that  emotion any loner, it is shared with the universe & that is what even psychologist refer to. It is one of the best exercise one can practice to gain perspective & strive for wellness. It is something that as even done by BENJAMIN FRANKLIN as a daily ritual that helped him to reconstruct his actions by deconstructing his thoughts. The process is alone , but its worth doing. Try this , give it a shot , & I would recommend you the ordinaary style using a pen &a diary except for those who are technophile. Their lives so much revolve around technology that nothing really exists than the reality that they see on-screen. The problem is not technology guys , the problem is what you are keeping yourself occupied with. You may have the best app , but remember you are occupied by several others. When it comes to filtering it should be just you & your thoughts, no other notifications.

One of the newsletters I came across , which I found insightful. This is by SETH GODIN ‘s  BRIDGES & TUNNELS wherein he stated just as we need bridges, so do we need tunnels. Bridges may connect from one point to another , but it most  does so on the xpense of deconstructing the atmosphere, by affecting the  enviromnent, whereas tunnels on the other hand doesn’t affect the environment , but makes it way within that space. That is where the difference is. The problem is we have built too many bridges , but we have experience very few tunnels. We can forget the latter one , but in times of strife it is what saves us. The former strives for glory , the latter strives for service.

There is this one article on brand equity regarding immunity marketing which I found really interesting.

It talks about how just as our body have mechanisms of innate immunity to protect us from the several unforseen & viruses that surround us everywhere through the innate potential that is naturally built over time. In a similar way should brands act as  shock -absorber, being able to cope up with the fluctuations that can happen  & to be resistant enough to handle the crisis.This is the immunity that brands can build through trust, purpose , intergrity , & right intent in their service towards their customers.

Another concept which is acquired immunity that our body develops through different medicinal components that we inject ourself with be it with the right food & nutrition , or something like Chwayanprash to keep ourselves immune to the outdoor germs& the indoor germs. Applying in context with the brand , the brand can built different systems through which it can stabilise the threats it can face through unforseen circumstance.

It is one of the most interesting articles how something personal can be related to professional space. With  everyone talking about influencer maketing , the concept of immunity marketing took the seat.

Fourthly , I WANT to end with a philosophy. 

There is a big difference between reality & observor’s reality. What s general in sense is unique in personal space. It is when we create that difference , do we see the difference. The alignment is always there along with the distortion in it. Sometimes viewing from th other side , makes things easy to handle & judge.

Thank you for your time & patience.

#wisdom #bloggerlist #tidbits

[digiscreen]

Okay, so in today’s blog I want to address my love and passion and that is, video games. Shocker there, isn’t it? But Josh, what in particular do you want to talk about? Video games are a huge, ever changing and evolving medium, and there’s so much you can possibly cover, how will you ever choose? Well today, I want to approach games from a more textual point of view. We’re going to look at them as if we were looking at them as a film, and in particular, we’re going to look at Naughty Dog’s 2013 release The Last of Us. I am sure that many of you have no doubt heard about this game, and how it has been hailed as an ‘outright masterpiece.’  If you haven’t, don’t worry. I am intentionally leaving things vague for the time being. Just know that it is a story driven game, set in a post-apocalyptic world where zombies roam. Though plenty of narrative heavy games have come before hand, including the Uncharted series, also created and published by Naughty Dog, The Last of Us is a game that truly broke out of the gaming “bubble” and into the cultural zeitgeist. Now there could be several reasons for this; in the years leading up to its release, zombie/post apocalyptic film and television had flooded the market (the superhero boom that is still present today was just beginning to take off) (pardon the pun), with shows like AMC’s The Walking Dead garnering a large amount of attention. It could also be due to the fact that discussions about gaming had started to change and be reshaped. The time of its release (in terms of where consoles were) is also something I personally feel factors into its huge success. Microsoft and Sony were preparing to move into their next generation of consoles (with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 respectively) and so the The Last of Us was a swan song of sorts for the PlayStation 3. But I digress.

Let’s address the claim then, that “given video games are non-linear, does this mean we cannot study them using traditional textual lenses?” Well let’s first establish what traditional textual lenses actually mean in this context. What we’re thinking of here, is the ways in which we would normally analyse film. We’d look at shot composition, mis-en-scene, sound, lighting, camera movements; all the technical aspects that go into what is on the screen in front of you. These are all physical, malleable objects that are based in reality. Jean Douchet posits that filmmakers deserve to be called “great precisely because of their near obsessive focus on capturing reality and respecting it.” They know what is in the real world and what can be accomplished. But what about animation then? David Bordwell notes that the “classical model has adapted itself to different media and technologies, adjusting to the introduction of sound as well as to other technical innovations.” The whole discussion on what film is becomes very blurred when you combine those two mindsets, and that argument only gets more muddled when you bring in something like remediation. This idea that cinema takes old outdated forms and repurposes it when it creates new technologies. However, despite this mess I’ve laid out before you, and despite cinema having evolved so much, we can still break it down to it’s bare form.

Looking at the 1st Academy Awards, the categories Best Director, Best Picture, Best Cinematography and Best Story were present, just like they are today. The core elements are all still there. (Wow that was a much longer break down of that concept than I meant it to be) Thankfully non-linear is a bit easier to define. A film/tv show is linear as you as an audience member are passive in the watching of it. That is to say, you have no control over where it is heading, the story and events have all been shot and edited, and you are just experiencing them. Video games give you control, and despite games (generally) having an established story and path they want you to follow, you are by no means obliged to follow that. We won’t delve into it much further than that, or we end up in some weird reality where by my definition, Candy Crush is a linear story because I know when I play that game I have no control over anything happening in it. Anyway, point is, textual lenses=physical things we can look at in the frame or within the frame of a movie, non-linear= multiple ways of progressing (or not) through a story.

Now, the more traditional elements are not lost in The Last of Us at all. Watch the credits for the game below (fear not, you don’t need to watch them all, just the beginning):

As you can see, the game has two listed a directors, Game Director Bruce Straley, and Creative Director Neil Druckman, who is also the writer. You have visual effects artist Eben Cook, Editor Ryan M James, Composer Gustavo Santaolalla, like any credits scene at the end of a film, the list goes on and on. Now of course this isn’t the strongest argument to say that we can look at games through the same textual lenses as film because they have credits, by that logic if I added a list of names to anything they could be classified as “film;” but I do raise the credits first because I’d hazard a guess that if you’re reading this you hadn’t realised that video games could have directors, or composers, or editors.

So let’s watch the opening of The Last of Us. Remember how I told you not to worry earlier and I left the description of the game vague, now’s the time to fix that. Now just a quick note that there is violence in this clip, as well as horror themes. Nothing too intense, but worth mentioning.

Now this probably hyperbole, but I feel that there are little to no other mediums that establish so much about everything you are about to experience in 15 minutes as well as Naughty Dog has done here. The clock ticking immediately creates a sense of unease, and one of the first things we hear Joel see is “I can’t lose this job.” We know he’s down his luck. The relationship between him and Sarah is established as a loving, playful one, as shown when Sarah gifts her father a nice watch, and his response is to pretend it’s broken, and their subsequent casual discussion of selling drugs. This nicely juxtaposes when Sarah is wandering the house alone looking for Joel. Cold, muted colours now fill the pallet, and bits and pieces begin to frame the world we’re entering (the newspaper report on spiking admittance to hospitals, the news report in the background). When we see Jimmy break through the glass the camera places us behind Joel, with out eye line at his back, really conveying the vulnerability and fear Sarah is now experiencing. As the scene progresses the camera stays linked to Sarah as we control her and begin to experience the world as it descends into chaos. The fear she experiences, as well as the emotional bond between Joel wanting to protect her at all costs, is really conveyed through this introduction to the game. It sets up the protagonist Joel, and gives the player a clear understanding of what he has been through to make him the man he is when the actual game commences some 15 years later. All these emotions, the world building, they’re entirely based of cinema conventions and tropes. A small American suburban town is the originating point of a virus; chaos slowly descending as the military desperately try to contain the outbreak. A father doing everything he can to protect his child. It’s all classical Hollywood, but the story it ultimately tells is one of relationships and family, and it achieves this through perfect uses of camera movement and placement, a well written script, a score that encapsulates the emotional resonances, and fantastic acting from the cast. Markku Eskelinen excellently points out that “outside academic theory people are usually excellent at making distinctions between narrative, drama, and games” and The Last of Us is an excellent example of why those sorts of theories need to be re-worked and re-examined. HOWEVER, with all this being said, the question isn’t about whether we can or cannot apply traditional textual lenses to video games, but is actually whether we should. Eskelinen’s full quote finishes saying “If I throw a ball at you I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories.” Video Games are a medium of their own, and they will always try borrow from other mediums in doing so. They, like cinema, are constantly remediating themselves, only they have a much larger pool they can remediate from. 2018’s God of War is one single take for the whole thing, and has received praise for how cinematic it is (citation needed) and would be very easy to analyze, much like The Last of Us under a traditional lens, but throw something like Epic Games’ Fortnite, one of the biggest games right now which is being enjoyed by millions of people, in the mix, and there is no chance you can study it under traditional means. In the same way that you wouldn’t study a book on its cinematography, you shouldn’t be assessing a video game under that same guise.  

References: Moriarty, Colin. 2013. "The Last Of Us Review". IGN. https://au.ign.com/articles/2013/06/05/the-last-of-us-review.

Elsaesser., Thomas. 2016. Film History As Media Archaeology: Tracking Digital Cinema. The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press.

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. 2000. Remediation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

"The 1St Academy Awards | 1929". 2018. Oscars.Org | Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences. https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1929.

Eskelinen, Markku. 2001. "The Gaming Situation". Game Studies 1 (1). http://gamestudies.org/1801.

Druckman, Neil, and Bruce Straley. 2013. The Last Of Us. Video. Naughty Dog.