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audiwolf86 · 1 year

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Ranked Panic! At The Disco Studio Albums (EXPLAINED)

[🟥DISCLAIMER🟥: May contain swearing, critically extreme and harsh opnions and insults, beware!]

[Written Between March,8th and March,10th,2023]

When you think of a pop rock band, it could be anything, it could be something founded by childhood friends and stuff. Then, you might think of anything other than a random specimen named Brendon Boyd Urie, which later became the last addition of a punk band that would later become Panic! At The Disco.

Heyo there, it is i, Wolfgang, and today, i'm gonna rank all the albums from yet another one of my favorite punk bands and that is exactly what i've mentioned above, Panic! At The Disco.

The band was formed in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, USA back in 2004. The original lineup consisted of Brendon Urie, Brent Wilson, Ryan Ross and Spencer Smith. During that time, the members were still teenagers studying in high school and was originally a Blink-182 cover band. Initially dropping out of their studies, not until Urie chose to conclude his high school online of which he would graduate in May,2005 (coincidence, right? In fact, Wilson and Smith concluded theirs as well). Upon sending a demo to fellow Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz via LiveJournal, he felt impressed of their performance and so, he wanted the band to sign up in Fueled By Ramen and its imprint label, DCD2 Records (then known as Decaydance Records) which they did in December,2004. The name was derived from a T-shirt the members and Wentz wore onstage during interviews which said Pete! At The Disco. Eventually, it was there they got its name, Panic! At The Disco.

An year after the release of their debut studio album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out, the band would gradually begin to lose its members following the firing of Brent Wilson in 2006. Wilson was replaced with Jon Walker on that same year, althrough he and Ross, another founding member, would depart from the band later on as Urie and Smith wanted to make a couple more changes to their sound which became more pop oriented rather than punk and emo oriented like its early sound had. Dallon Weekes was later recruited to replace Walker on his bassist role during 2009 as a touring member and eventually becoming a full-time member an year later. It should be noted that in a brief instance between 2008 until the following year, the exclamation mark from Panic was temporarily removed from the band's name.

Following the departure of Smith in 2015, it was there the band would eventually shift and fully transition into a solo project, as a result, Weekes was later degraded to a touring member yet again as Urie is the only remaining founding member from the original lineup and, of course, from the band itself. On December,27th,2017, Weekes announced his departure from Panic, eventually shifting his focus on his role as a frontman of a duo named I Dont Know How But They Found Me.

The solo phase would later come to an end as of this month as on January,24th of this year, Urie announced on the band's official Insta that P!ATD is coming to an end and that he's goin' to dedicate to his family more often as he and his wife are expecting a child together, though despite that, his first child was raised last month, on February,3rd. There are currently no info about their name or gender, so yeah. The disbanding would occur this week, on March,10th,2023, after concluding the Viva Las Vengeance Tour which has been ongoing since September,8th,2022.

Movin' on, P!ATD is notorious for many great hits such as "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa", "Emperor's New Clothes", "High Hopes", "This Is Gospel", ya know, a couple others to name a few. Panic released 7 albums, 4 as a band and 3 as a solo project.

I've been familiar with the band since christmas eve of 2019 and became a fan of it two years later, by 2021. The first song i had ever listened was "But It's Better If You Do" which i first heard while my half-bro was playin' either a round of Ultimate Chicken Horse or Speedrunners. Most of their releases are great, though i seem to prefer more from their band phase and there's a reason why.

Let's begin ranking all of these albums, scroll down and let that shit roll! What you're gonna read below are just my opinion so, don't ever think of bragging about it.

7. Pretty. Odd. (2008)

Oh yes, that one time the band tried to be psychedelic and folky while changing their sound. Pretty odd, right?

To start all this, the tracks looks pretty corny to listen at as it tries its best to be as sentimental as possible. In comparison to its debut release, the sound in Pretty. Odd. just divided many of its fans who did enjoy their previous album as they felt like they are being less punk and emo oriented.

It also contains some boring tracks i could find such as "We're So Starving", "Folkin' Around", "I Have Friends In Holy Spaces" and, of course, "Behind The Sea". How can you consider this album a favorite anyway? I love psychedelia and folk but this album did much and its baroque sound was barely executed and it failed to age pretty well. Of course, they would execute this sound pretty well in the next two releases as a band, particularly in their fourth album, Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die!. (NOTE: The baroque pop sound was only present in their first three albums, not in the fourth album since it became more pop oriented.)

In other words, Pretty. Odd. is my least favorite release from their band phase, it's basically as if the band is tryin' to be Cage The Elephant who in fact did better with the psychedelia sound and it should be noted their albums are, in fact, criminally underrated and i recommend listening to them if so.

Some redeeming qualities i could find in this thing is that it does have a decent cover design, their attempt at the baroque pop, psychedelic and folk rock sound was an interesting take but as already mentioned before, it didn't do much, it didn't age pretty well. And yes, some memorable tracks such as "Nine In The Afternoon", "When The Day Met The Night", "That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed)" and "Northern Downpour" to name a few.

There was once a time i looped "The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know" during one melancholic moment of my life.

Favorite Songs: Nine In The Afternoon (both versions), She's A Handsome Woman, Do You Know What I'm Seeing?, That Green Gentleman (Things Have Changed), Northern Downpour, When The Day Met The Night, Pas De Cheval, The Piano Knows Something I Don't Know, She Had The World, From A Mountain In The Middle Of The Cabins and Mad As Rabbits.

Personal Favorite: When The Day Met The Night.

6. Viva Las Vengeance (2022)

When i first listened to this album on the wake of its release shortly after coming back from school, in one moment, i considered it my least favorite album the band had ever done, though when relistening a bit, i was able to realize it ain't as bad as the aforementioned Pretty. Odd. album however.

Viva Las Vengeance was one damn of a big mistake for the solo phase of the band like, my fucking God! The songs in this album felt so off and even more soulless than its predecessor to the point it became quite more generic. Right at this moment, it was there i created a neologism to refer this album which is Viva Las Generics, or if preferred, Viva Las Vengenerics.

Besides, what was the point of releasing this album just to put an end on P!ATD? Urie, what were you thinking? How could ya fuck everything with this album?

Despite the critical acclaim from critics, this album was mixed and negatively received by fans, including myself. Viva Las Vengeance instantly lost the charm from its previous albums other than becoming more glam and stuff.

From what i've seen, Urie tries to make a revisit on how he was like 17 years ago until right now. What's even interesting is that this album has big influences from older 60's, 70's and early 80's albums and bands, althrough, it became quite more similar to something you would hear in certain Queen's songs.

Fillers are almost everywhere in this album and there's some of them i, for some ironic reason, actually liked such as "Sad Clown" and "Sugar Soaker", for example. "Do It To Death" is anything but a watered down version of either "Hallelujah" or "This Is Gospel". If i had to chose one, i'd say the latter. Alas, i once considered "Don't Let The Light Go Out" my least favorite song from this album due how empty was its chorus.

That doesn't mean Viva Las Vengeance is indeed a great album which is why i placed in the lowest tier as possible. Viva Las Vengeance is actually bad and it's the main reason why i consider this album my least favorite from the solo phase overall.

To be sincere, i still don't think this album is really going to age well, i say. At the same time, we'll never get to see another studio release from Panic just so it could redeem itself from what they just did. In fact, that's Urie's decision and so, i respect his opinion on this direction. The music video for "Do It To Death" is intriguing to watch and it, in fact, foreshadowed its disbanding.

Favorite Songs: Viva Las Vengeance, Middle Of A Breakup, Don't Let The Light Go Out, Local God, Star Spangled Banger, God Killed Rock And Roll, Sugar Soaker, Something About Maggie, Sad Clown, Do It To Death.

Personal Favorite: Viva Las Vengeance.

5. Pray For The Wicked (2018)

Pretty much some of y'all might kill me for this but i don't actually like this album that much.

It is basically Fall Out Boy's Mania but quite better than the former. We do get great bangers such as "Say Amen (Saturday Night)", "High Hopes" and "Hey Look Ma, I Made It" but that isn't enough to find filler songs such as "(Fuck A) Silver Lining", "One Of The Drunks" and "The Overpass", for example. "Roaring 20s" is an awful hit song and i hate it.

Listening to this album sounds great in the first half, then, it gradually gets worse by the second half. Prior to the release of Viva Las Vengeance, it was my least favorite album from the band, not until i relistened a little more and reconsider it.

Let's not forget that one time Donald Trump played the critically acclaimed "High Hopes" for his presidential campaign back in 2020 and i'm glad Urie told him and the White House to fuck off so they could stop using his song. Did they? Possibly. At least, i'm glad he lost the elections.

Ya know, i'm not much of a fan of the solo phase of the band which is why i placed them in a lower tier, at least, this album is still better than its follow-up but guess what? It ain't part of my favorites!

At the same time, i would like to congratulate Urie for the great work he did with this album, i even went on to watch the music videos for "High Hopes" and "Hey Look Ma, I Made It" during this midnight, they're actually good.

Favorite Songs: (Fuck A) Silver Lining, Say Amen (Saturday Night), Hey Look Ma, I Made It, High Hopes, Dancing's Not A Crime, One Of The Drunks, King Of The Clouds, Dying In LA.

Personal Favorite: Say Amen (Saturday Night).

4. Vices & Virtues (2011)

Things gradually got way better with this album, their baroque pop sound was subsequently improved and in addition to this, the pop punk sound briefly returned but then, disappeared in its follow-up.

Vices & Virtues is a fun album to listen at, though not as better than the later two albums that i'll be rankin' next. For my surprise, this album is absurdly short but not as shorter than its follow-up and i'm feelin' like they sort of rushed it but anyways.

Most of the tracks here appears to be underrated to listen such as "Ready To Go (Get Me Out Of My Mind)", "Let's Kill Tonight", "Sarah Smiles" and my personal favorite of them, "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa".

There is only a few bad songs present in this album that i don't like such as "The Calendar", "Nearly Witches (Ever Since We Met...)" and "Trade Mistakes". In other words, i do love this album but is nowhere as better than these ones i'm gonna rank next. Alas, this album is easily outclassed with its follow-ups and some of y'all might suggest me to rank this album 5th instead of Pray For The Wicked.

The official music video of "The Ballad Of Mona Lisa" is pretty neat and sorta intriguing but cool to look at, gotta love the visuals. An interesting fun fact is that the song "Ready To Go (Get Me Out Of My Mind)" is played in the end credits of the first live-action movie of The Smurfs which was released on that same year. The movie received generally negative reviews, i've seen it before on DVD but i don't remember what year was it and that was a long time ago.

Favorite Songs: The Ballad Of Mona Lisa, Let's Kill Tonight, Hurricane, Memories, Ready To Go (Get Me Out Of My Mind), Always, Sarah Smiles.

Personal Favorite: The Ballad Of Mona Lisa.

3. Too Weird To Live, Too Rare To Die! (2013)

This is Gospel for the fallen ones Locked away in permanent slumber Assembling their philosophies From pieces of broken memories

This is what i call an album of quality! It might be short but holy shit, it's a killer album!

The shortest album in their discography has one damn of a badass lookin' electropop sound and my man, it's impossible to say how this great album legit aged pretty well. This album has a lot of memorable tracks to chose from.

However, some might not appreciate the fact that this is the last album they would release under their band phase before it was fully transitioned into a solo project following the departure of Spencer Smith in 2015. TWTLTRTD is by no means one of the best albums from their band phase. Beginning with this album onwards, the songs became less baroque and more pop oriented but still retained the same charm of success.

I don't even know what to say more of this album, it just made me speechless even more, all i can say is that i loved most of the songs with the sole exception of its closing track, "The End Of All Things".

After 10 years, all i can say here is that this is one cool lookin' masterpiece.

Favorite Songs: All of them (except The End Of All Things).

Personal Favorite: Nicotine.

2. Death Of A Bachelor (2016)

So, you thought i never liked the solo phase, right? Welp, guess what? Death Of A Bachelor is the only one i actually liked and it has to be the most decent album from their solo phase.

Due to how good it is, it deserved to have the whole tracklisting to be part of my favorites, though despite that, some of the kind of songs i don't seem to loop from this album quite often are "Golden Days", "The Good, The Bad And The Dirty", "LA Devotee", "Victorious" and "Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time". The latter of which uses a sample of The B-52's "Rock Lobster".

Death Of A Bachelor isn't much of a bad album whatsoever, it's actually excellent that it deserved a higher tier.

The cover art is neat, looks sorta cheap but it's actually great. To be sincere, it's almost impossible to find at least one filler track but if you were capable to find at least one, you can comment down below.

The music videos for songs such as "Emperor's New Clothes" and "Hallelujah" are impressive and well done.

If there's one particular song i seem to enjoy the most aside from the ones i've mentioned above, i'd say anything other than "Crazy = Genius".

Why it ain't my personal favorite release? Welp, you'll find out right now. It will forever be my personal favorite release from their solo phase.

Favorite Songs: All of them.

Personal Favorite: Crazy = Genius.

1. A Fever You Can't Sweat Out (2005)

Sadly, this record has to be the best of them, at first their early fans didn't like it but then reconsidered it and found it nostalgic, an underrated gem.

Interestingly enough is that most of the songtitles are references to the 2004 movie Closer. We do get early hits such as "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", "Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Do Without Taking Her Clothes Off", "Build God, Then We'll Talk" and my personal favorite of them, "But It's Better If You Do".

Some other underrated tracks i could find in this record include "The Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage", "There's A Good Reason These Tables Aren't Numbered Honey, You Just Haven't Thought Of It Yet", "Time To Dance" and a couple others. I legit love all of the songs from this album.

Unfortunately is that this album has been easily outclassed by the later records, to the point, it gradually became a bit of an obscure record to some newer P!ATD fans.

Being the only record to feature the full original lineup, Wilson is mostly absent in the album but was still credited in the end even despite the fact that Urie played most of these bass parts in the tracks from this album. This subsequently resulted in his firing from the band an year after the album's release for not keeping the band's standards and eventually left the music industry soon after.

At the same time, it still the best thing the band would ever release and this album is legit the main reason why i was introduced to this band anyway. It will forever be my personal favorite album overall.

Favorite Songs: All of them (without counting "Introduction" and "Intermission" since they're either starting or intermission tracks).

Personal Favorite: But It's Better If You Do.

Outro

And i guess that's all for now, the solo project is doin' their final shows as some sort of farewell to both, the band and the project as a whole. We do not know if Brendon Urie will ever confirm a return but probably not anymore.

At the same time, Urie left us a legacy to this great band and will forever be considered to be one of my personal favorite bands and artists of all time. Thank you for everything, Brendon Urie, i guess it is time to say shut up and go to bed right now, this is where the end of a 19-year era comes in.

See you on the other side and have a great day/noon/night. Panic will forever be inside our "house of memories" and that is our brain and heart. Farewell for now ;)

#panic! at the disco #a fever you can't sweat out #pretty. odd.#viva las vengeance #vices & virtues #too weird to live too rare to die #death of a bachelor #pray for the wicked #2000s #2010s #2020s #pop rock #pop #baroque pop #electropop #alternative rock #emo pop #pop punk

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some-dr-writings · 3 years

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Izuru, Hajime, and Kirumi x SHSL Military General

Izuru Kamukura:

· Boring. That was what he had thought of you at first. You had no new talent he didn’t… and yet, despite your fearsome rumors, it seemed all those under your command adored you. He already knew it was not the cliché case of ‘oh you just need to get to know them’ nor you were secretly going about your work in a cult like fashion. No, there was something else, and he decided to snuff it out.

· “It’s been several days now. If you wish something of me you need but speak, or at the least walk by my side. How much longer do you plan on tailing me?” You stopped in your tracks, turning around to face the man who was but a few paces behind. Both your expressions perfectly stoic, blank. “As long as it takes to find out why everyone loves you. That was my initial objective. But you’re boring. You’re nurturing. Your tone alone is enough to compel others to follow your lead, to not disappoint you out of respect. Now… I want to know why you’re different from me.” You needed but a glance to find your answer. “The difference… I thought a being exactly akin to myself, a person made to be a weapon would already know that.” You walked a few paces, stopping right before him. It was as if he were a statue, not moving at all as you cupped your hand on his cheek, the smallest, softest, kindest of smiles pulling at the corners of your lips. “Good luck old friend. Even with a luck talent you’ll need it.” You then walked away, Izuru following just a few paces behind.

· “Come now. If you’re going to stick around, work out with me. Surely, you’ve figured out by now that simply observing me, you’ll not get the answers you’re seeking.” Still, Izuru simply stood beside you as you were finishing your pushups atop that mountain with the sky just barely starting to show the signs of a new day beginning. “Why do you speak with me casually, unlike all others? You don’t even speak this way with those you call friends.” “I simply find it natural to speak this way with one so harmless. Just as I find it natural to speak with others in a more formal tone.” “… Harmless.” Hopping up from your pushups you began your climb back down the treacherous mountain. “You find Komaeda to be a weapon of mass destruction, and me, harmless? That’s incomprehensible.” “To you, perhaps.” You kept going for a few moments before deciding to give him some extra help. “You’re an innocent child, myself before I became who I am now, before I rejected the idiotic notion of a weapon being more powerful than man.”

· He pondered over that brief conversation for a long time. Man being more powerful than a weapon. He knew you were not speaking of how man creates weapons and are the ones who use them, so…

· “Oh! Hey, Y/N! So, your sidekick finally decided to join us!” The first day Izuru had begun to follow you, you stopped him when going for those nightly training sessions saying he would either participate or go away because you were not going to allow any bystanders. All nights after he’d disappear at some point as you made your way to meet up with Kaito and the others. But he stayed by your side that night, training with the others, giving you and Maki a run for your money when it came to endurance in these exercises.

· “You’re making everyone uncomfortable just standing in the corner. Come play with us.” Izuru did as told and joined the card game you were playing with your classmates.

· “Izuru, teach them how to set up the stall, while I take care of matters here.” He helped out your class set up for the school festival.

· “Huh…” Truthfully you were half expecting Izuru to show up to the beach his usual suit and not swim trunks, let alone playing volleyball with the others already.

· The others had already left back for school, the field trip long done, but you stayed behind to fit in some of your own exercises… Izuru did as well. “So, finally out of your emotionless emo phase, or are you still insisting everything is boring?” “… I thought by copying you I’d find why we’re different.” “And have you?” “…” He actually thought about it for a moment an answer not immediately puzzled out in his mind. “I’m still gathering information.” “I see.” Seems he was growing up faster than you did, then again you didn’t have anyone to help guide you.

· For a long time you continued your stretches. “I must admit though, I thought it’d take longer before you’d take this first step.” You stopped, beginning to jog in place, slowly picking up your pace. “This world, with how awful it is, I still find it boring myself at times. But that’s not the good part of it all. Being alive. I’m anticipating to see what you’ll find in people. For me, it’s not a certain aspect of them, but everything. True, humans are creatures of patterns, but focusing on the individual… seeing them as people and not objects, or weapons, or patterns… seeing what they actually are…Connecting… that’s my answer at least, why I gave up being you, a husk intended to be a weapon. Humans no matter how they try, can’t be anything other than human. A human being… strange and funny creatures I find us to be at least.” You placed a hand on his shoulder, lightly chuckling to yourself. “Be sure to tell me when you find your answer. I’m sure someone skilled in more than war will find something I could never hope too, and that sounds exciting to me. But for now, back to training.”

· Then you dashed away, down the shore, to that brilliantly bright sunset.

· And he ran. He didn’t even think about it. He was still unsure of what he was doing or what exactly he was searching for, but… something inside him was calling out to you, he just knew he needed to be with you. So he was going to keep chasing after you and perhaps one day, he’d figure it out and finally walk beside you.

Hajime Hinata:

· To Hajime, each and every last person who manage to be invited to the academy was an amazing person. How else could they be described? They were individuals who all had already changed the word in some way or another, but there was one individual who arguably made the largest impact to the world, more than any present or past student, the Super High School Level Military General. Nothing of their personage was known, a complete mystery, not even their name. They were solely known for their accomplishments, a child, seemingly appearing out of nowhere quickly rose up through the ranks, becoming a general, and swiftly putting an end to any war they touched. Wars still appeared, but not long and they’d appear putting it to an end with little life being lost, most countries began fighting in less direct ways because of this. What else could they do? The fighting did stop, but not the conflicts that were the root of them. Still, putting an end to so much fighting so quickly was unimaginable to most. Some say their appearance only made conflict worse, some say they saved the world. No matter what one thought, it was undeniable the Super High School Military General left an unmistakable impact that had forever changed the world.

· And such an amazing person, was the very first friend he had made at the academy, despite him just being a reserve course student.

· He didn’t even know who they were at first. The school year hadn’t technically started yet, but students were allowed on campus to move their belongings into their dorm rooms and such and that was exactly what Hajime was doing. He didn’t have much, so he was finished quickly and decided to just walk around for a bit. He found himself just looking at the main building off in the distance. So close, yet so far away, just barely out of reach seemingly when he knew deep down, he truly was nowhere close. Then suddenly he spotted something. Not far, just within reach.

· “Is the vending machine jammed?” “Not as far as I know.” Hajime looked to the machine in confusion, not noticing anything off with it, so why were you just standing before it? “What do you recommend?” Though you hadn’t done much something about how you looked to him, how your voice seemed to resonate in him, he was taken aback for a moment before collecting himself, quickly looking over the options. “Well… I like the orange ramune.” He pointed to it, showing exactly where it was. Not saying a word you placed in some yen and pressed the button for it. How you carried yourself mesmerized him. He couldn’t quite place his finger on why though. It was stiff yet seemed effortless. A rather strange combination to him. Before he knew it you had the drink and… were just looking at it, flipping it around. You had taken off the cap but seemed lost as to what to do next. “There’s a plunger in the cap, you take that out and place it on top where the cap was.” You followed his instructions without question. “Then you push it down, releasing the marble and there you go.” You seemed surprised, your eyes widening a little as the soda kinda exploded as it usually did when being opened. Then you held it out to him? “I can tell you haven’t drunk anything in the past several hours. Take it.” “Oh, thanks.”

· Your whole demeanor seemed off, somewhat alien. As you got yourself another drink, he couldn’t help but ask- “Are you a foreigner? This soda is rather common in Nippon.” “I suppose one could say that of me.” … Well, that was a strange response. “Seems like we’ve both had a long day. I saw an arcade nearby. Want to just relax and hangout there for a while?” You looked to him in what he assumed was surprise, you didn’t seem very expressive, but he could still see these small shifts in your eyes. For a moment, when he had asked, they seemed to sparkle. “Certainly, lead the way.”

· The pair of you had a rather fun outing to the arcade. So much of… well everything you seemed unaccustomed too. “What’s this?” “The prize corner? We can win tickets to trade for stuff here.” “Huh… so a transfer of currency, to test skill, to gain a new currency…” Even rather basic things. “How did you do that?” “Do what?” “Make that bubble from your mouth?” “I just blew a bubble with the bubblegum.” “There exists food to blow into bubbles?” Hajime wondered if you grew up extremely sheltered. If that was the case, you were probably from an extremely rich family considering you’d have to pour so much money to get into the reserve course. He felt rather sorry for you. “Have you been to the movies before?” “Never.” “We could go watch some if you’d like, get some more candy and some popcorn.” “I know not if I’d like it, never having experienced it before, but I am curious.” “Let’s go then!”

· For the next several days Hajime would find you around campus and you’d just go out and have fun in the town. Strangely though, he never saw you at the dorms. He did most often find you exercising so he assumed you just woke up very early.

· You sat beside him on a bench, passing an orange ramune his way. “So Y/N, feeling ready for class to start tomorrow?” “Yes, I’ve made all necessary preparations and more.” “Still doesn’t feel real that I’m even here, I think it will be a few days till this sinks in.” “… Hinata.” “Yes?” “When class stars… Well, before I ask how schools work, I find a matter more pressing. Will we still spend time together when class starts, like going to the mall, or the park together?” “Of course, we’re friends. Sure, we might get busy with schoolwork sometimes, but we can make time. If you’d like we could study together.” You were silent for a moment, mulling over his words as you took a sip of your soda. “friend…” It was strange to hear that new tone. There was no power or commend to it, it was but a faint unconscious whisper to yourself. “I wonder if we’ll have separate curriculums since we’ll be in different classes.” You knew you’d be in different classes. Maybe you were taking advanced courses or something. That was what Hajime had assumed at least. “Maybe, but we still have break and lunch to chat, we just can’t go out. At least we have holidays.” “Yes, we do have break and lunch. Then you’d be alright if I schedule to spend my breaks with you?” “I don’t mind.”

· “… Thank you Hin-… Friend. I give you my thanks, Friend. For being my friend… I’ve never had one before. There are so many things I know not, but I intend for you to know I’ll do my utmost to keep improving. You’ve… changed my view on things in such a short amount of time. I find it remarkable.” The new spring breeze rolled past, carrying along the fresh scent of flowers. The sun beamed down, warming the cool world. “Ah, I haven’t done much, but I’m glad knowing our time together means so much to you.” “It’s strange… getting the chance to live as a teenager. Never before have I had the opportunity to be anything over than a military general.” Wait… military general? “For as long as I can recall, I’ve been molded to be a weapon and nothing more. I was the top candidate in the project, which allowed me access, well more so forcibly having me join the army. I believed myself to be unfeeling, emotionless for a time. After all, the soldiers could react with horror and fear at taking life, even celebrating when a battle was won, but I didn’t, to me, it just seemed to be more training. I only ever perceived humans as more targets. That was all my existence was, fighting. But as I was trained to be smart, tactical, I had noticed their reactions. I could not relate to them, but I could sympathize with them. I thought I knew not emotional pain, only physical, but somewhere in my mind I made the connection of physical, mental, and emotional pain as all one in the same. I could not understand them directly, but at the time I knew pain was bad, and so that was what started me beginning to see humans as people, more than bags of flesh. I listened to their stories of their friends, family, and loved ones. I did not understand directly, but I knew then I wanted to protect them, just as they wanted to protect their families, and so I began to think of them as my friends. The project runners soon caught on to my realizing I was human too, and began to torture me to make me believe humans were nothing but bad… bad, good, black, white, they had such an archaic, rudimentary view of life, it’s pitiful. As I realized the humans I worked with were people, I realized those we were fighting were exactly the same. We’re all human, all people, people with causes and more importantly others to fight for… Even if I was but an outsider looking in, not truly able to understand, I knew with all that was thrust onto me I was going to change the system. Be a humanitarian. Save all I could. I would mold my soldiers not in my image, but make them strong enough so they can protect others and themselves even without my leadership, to draw out their true strength from being human… but now…” You looked to the ramune bottle you held. “Before I saw humanity, but now I’ve experienced it, even if but a fraction.” You turned to him, cupping your hand on his cheek, the smallest, softest, kindest of smiles pulling at the corners of your lips. “Simply doing things others do everyday I find so exciting, but something I found with my soldiers, hearing their stories of their loved ones, connecting with them, and now, connecting with you, connecting with other human beings… I think this is the best part of being alive. You’ve shown me the world from a new perspective. I can now finally understand. I had some semblance of it before, but… I was still fighting, not… whatever not fighting is, what you’ve shown me, playing at an arcade and watching movies. THIS is what they were all so desperate to protect. I just wanted them to live, but I didn’t know what being alive was. And so… I suppose I fear us not getting to have our outings as often. This, being friends with you… It’s the most… My vocabulary has failed me, I can’t even begin to describe this, but, I will do whatever it takes for you to not just see, but understand how much I appreciate and treasure all that you have done for me… You are my very first friend after all. I want to treat you right. And I will.”

· “Wait… so, you’re the Super High School Level Military General?” “That is a title I have been christened recently, but it is not all I am. After all, I’ve more recently gained the title as your friend.” This… was a lot for Hajime to take it. Now he felt a bit weird about telling you so much about his adoration for Hope’s Peak and it’s students, who you were one of, how he wished he could belong there and not just paid to be on the side lines. Yet… despite you being one of those students… he was just talking to his friend… remembering that made this feel less awkward, though a little embarrassing still.

· It was strange having the stares of his classmates as they just watched him eating with you, to the point you’d often walk around till you found a quieter place to just enjoy your time together in peace.

· You’d still hangout outside of school, it was both of your favorite time together. You could just be together and be happy without this strange divide that others forced between you two.

ENDING 1:

· When Hajime befriended Chiaki and her class, he dragged you along, helping you to connect with the others. You both became honorary members of the class.

· These connections were things you were never going to allow to fade, making sure to regularly keep in contact with everyone even after graduating.

· With the world having relative peace you retired, working as a personal trainer. You’d come out of retirement temporarily if a new war sprung up, but you always ended it quickly with as little life lost as possible… “Ah, Y/N, you’re back!” “I said I’d be, didn’t I?” Your face instantly flushed a bright red upon Hajime hugging you so tightly. “You took much longer than usual, I thought something had happened.” “A-ah… I…” ... happily returning to your husband and your peaceful life together. This was all both you and Hajime wanted, and you were happy just to be together.

ENDING 2:

· Even still, no matter how much you tried, you just seemed to be naturally pulled to separate worlds, the staff always causing trouble for Hajime when he’d go to see you, only for you to end up defending him. Moments like these…

· His mind was a blur, he couldn’t hold onto a single thought, and so he went out for a walk, hoping the fresh air could clear his mind.

· “Friend.” “Oh, Y/N-” He turned around, finding you were but a few paces behind him. “- you startled me.” You were stoic, standing there stiffly, the only movement was the wind lifting up pieces of your uniform. “You want to talk about something?” “Indeed. The Kamukura project… What’s with that expression, surely one such as I would know of an experiment such as this.” “Y-yeah, I guess so.” “I but wish you to place my mind at ease, after all… I’ve never trained you, you’re not my soldier, I… know not if you’ll be safe on your own, so… I wish to know if you are informed as to what you’ll be doing from kin, one who has attempted to be molded into a weapon as well.” He looked you up and down, searching for something, though he wasn’t sure what himself. Then he nodded. “By partaking in this project, you may never return to now. They may attempt to make you a weapon, but that will not come to be. Friend, should you follow my path, I still will not take you in as a soldier for you have no need of such. They will say you’re someone entirely new, and that you may be. I know not the consequences of one following my path after being allowed to be human for so long. Likely for a time, you will know nothing but fighting, you may have to relearn what it is to be human, is that a process you are willing to go through? It is one I in fact am still stumbling through.” “… Yeah. I know you say all life has meaning, that everyone matters, but… I want to do more!” “And I shall never stop you from any endeavor for self-improvement. That is not my intention here.” You held out your hand to him. “I but wish that after you follow me, you catch up so we may walk side by side once more.” “Of course. Whatever happens next, I know I’ll be alright, I have my friend with me.” Taking your hand into his own he could feel the warmth that seeped through your glove. “Well then…” With an outstretched arm you presented Hope’s Peak. “Shall we be off?” “Yes.”

· You followed Hajime, but a few paces behind till he stood before those doors off limits to most staff and all students but him. He looked over his shoulder having herd your steady footfalls come to a stop. You both knew you could follow him no longer. This next step he’d have to take on his own, but it was alright, he knew he’d be lost and run after you for a while, but in the end, he’d be someone better, someone who could not only walk beside you, but keep in time and never fall behind. No more chasing after you or leading you around. This time around, you could truly keep in time with one another.

Kirumi Tojo:

· Kirumi had met you through Korekiyo, he introduced the two of you thinking you’d make for good friends given how similar you were. You both lived to serve others, to make them as great of people as they could be. Kirumi admired the lengths you’d go for your soldiers, keeping mental and emotional health in mind, not just physical. All you wished was for your soldiers to be even greater than yourself so that together the whole world could be a safe place. Being your maid was something she had considered, but you were perfectly fine on your own, even being able to work on self-improvement without the assistance of others. Surely being your maid, she’d be able to an extent serve and help many others but given you absolutely couldn’t find someone like her to be of use, she became your friend instead.

· Whenever the pair of you had free time, you’d share stories of the past. On occasion you’d trade advice, but the both of you felt it almost wrong to assist one another. You both loved helping others, but also valued self-improvement above all else which included your own improvement. Both of you were simply so self-reliant any assistance would simply be a hindrance from improving yourself in some way. Even so, your chats together were your favorite. You both understood one another in ways most others simply could not even begin to comprehend.

· You always spent time with one another when you were taking breaks. Taking breaks was vitally important, even for workaholics such as yourselves. You both would change your schedule so they could align. Often, you’d make a day of it, going out and trying something Hajime had shown you recently such as going for a walk through a botanical garden, going to the cinema, or just lazing about on the beach. These were rather awkward but fun excursions, the both of you not exactly sure how to relax in a way similar to others. Often the awkwardness could looked back on with laughter at how silly it’d look to others.

· By chance the pair of you had but a short break for an hour or so you’d most often exercise, something light for you like a thousand push-ups or curl-ups and other such things while Kirumi would speak of her past experiences as a maid. One time it’d be how she saved he client from a literal army, the next being about her setting up a whole wedding due to the caterer just being plain awful at their job. You’d so curiously ask her questions such as what catering was or how to bake a cake so you could gave one to one of our classmate’s for their up coming birthday. Kirumi loved answering your every last question, it was one of the few things she could do to truly help you without getting in the way. She’d eagerly teach you any and all skills you were unfamiliar with, and you rather liked knowing Kirumi was enjoying this so much. You’d think of any possible skill you were lacking and asked her to be your teacher and in exchange you’d teach her battle and fighting tactics even she didn’t know.

· You adored being able to help one another, and you’d search out excuses to do so.

· “So what you’re saying is you’re out of work.” “Indeed.” “Meet me at the front gate, sixteen o’clock.” That was all that needed to be said for the both of you to be there right on time, down to the exact second. Not a word was exchanged as you lead her down the streets through town. Though you enjoyed your chats with one another, you didn’t speak too often. Speaking wasn’t needed to build a connection with one another. Being together was enough most of the time.

· “Hey General.” “There you are Y/N, oh Tojo? So Y/N brought you here too, that’s why they’re late today.” Kirumi found herself in a rather cozy building, many people with various injuries, along with Shuichi as well. Most of them sat at one main table where biscuits and tea sat on a platter. “So this is the General’s other new friend. Come in, come in. Everybody’s welcome to the drop-in center. Come have some tea and share some stories.” “The Generals says you have quite the yarns to tell.” Both you and Shuichi knew what was to come next. “If you so wish. And if the tea is low, I shall make more.” Kirumi immediately made herself at home, serving all the ex-soldiers so attentively. You and Shuichi simply started some training while everyone else ooed and awed at Kirumi and her skills in seemingly everything. It was fun for the pair of you to see the others amazed by the girl both of you were used too, no longer surprised by anything she could do, she could take over the whole galaxy and neither of you would bat an eye, to the both of you she could do anything.

· Due to the both of you being rather stoic neither of you ever really confessed your feelings. After graduating high school you were just together, no matter the distance or time you’d always reunite with one another eventually. Kirumi often worked with soldiers, helping them get back onto their feet after war. You’d do the same when you weren’t fighting. You both were a perfect duo, doing all you could to make life easier for your soldiers and getting them to a place where they no longer needed your help. The pair of you were simply perfect together.

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sagehaleyofficial · 4 years

Photo

HERE’S WHAT YOU MISSED THIS WEEK (1.15-1.21.20):

NEW MUSIC:

· Vic Fuentes of Pierce the Veil teased new music in a number of Instagram stories, where the singer showed how he uses software to layer vocals. The frontman ended the videos by saying he can’t wait until we hear the song.

· Four Year Strong took to social media to announce they will be releasing their new album, Brain Pain, on February 28 via Pure Noise Records. The band also released two new songs, “Talking Myself in Circles” and the title track “Brain Pain.”

· Blink-182’s Travis Barker and Machine Gun Kelly participated in an interview at the Beats 1 studio, where they announced to host Zane Lowe the title of MGK’s upcoming pop-punk album, Tickets to My Downfall. The album will also feature Escape the Fate’s Kevin Gruft.

· Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams teased more from her Petals for Armor project, posting another black box with the caption “Nothing cuts like a mother.” The Instagram page also posted screenshots from multiple movies including Bird Box and Kidnap.

· Green Day dropped their newest single off their upcoming album Father of All…, titled “Oh Yeah!”. The accompanying music video pokes fun at modern interactions due to the influence of technology.

· Derek Sanders of Mayday Parade announced that he will be releasing a solo record in 2020, a five-song EP titled My Rock and Roll Heart. The EP is scheduled to drop on Valentine’s Day and will feature a cover of Jimmy Eat World’s “A Praise Chorus.”

· Anti-Flag released a live, in-studio, full-length album playthrough of their newest record, 20/20 Vision. The multi-cam video gives us a look at what everyone is doing to create such a killer album.

· Grayscale dropped a live music video for “Tommy’s Song,” a tribute to lead singer Collin Walsh’s late cousin, and are raising money for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. The band revealed that they have raised close to $2,500 in donations.

· Creeper dropped the second single off their upcoming album titled “Annabelle,” which premiered on BBC Radio 1. Soon after, the band dropped a second tweet linking fans to the official lyric video.

· Halsey announced that she is releasing an extremely limited version of her new album Manic. The album is now available with its alternate album art and will be signed by the singer, but under her birth name Ashley.

· Australian act Trophy Eyes and WWE star Seth Rollins joined forces for the band’s new music video for the song “Figure Eight.” The music video, or “lyric visual” as they’re calling it, features Rollins lip-syncing to the song as he prepares to fight.

TOUR ANNOUNCEMENTS:

· Jeffree Star recently spoke out to fans regarding the cancellation of his European makeup masterclass tour, due in part to his breakup from longtime boyfriend Nathan Schwandt. Star went on to discuss the complications in his life and that it was more than just the breakup.

· Angels and Airwaves postponed their remaining shows for this month as frontman Tom DeLonge has fallen ill. The band took to social media to tell fans that DeLonge “has come down with a nasty upper respiratory infection.”

· Citizen announced a new tour with support coming from Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, Fury, Snarls and Rosie Tucker. The 19-date tour will begin in Detroit on March 20 and finish off its rounds in Indianapolis on April 24.

· Scary Kids Scaring Kids kicked off their reunion run with Secrets and Push Over, the latter of which features Kurt Travis and Thomas Erak (The Fall of Troy). The band hit the stage for the first time since disbanding following a final tour in 2010.

· Sum 41 canceled the second night of their Paris stop for the No Personal Space tour after an explosive device was detonated outside of the venue’s door. After playing Zénith Paris Friday, the band were set to play a sold-out show at the Les Étoiles Saturday.

· My Chemical Romance unveiled details for their much-teased UK show, taking to YouTube to share a video titled “An Offering…” on their channel before adding the same to social media. The band revealed they will be playing in Milton Keynes at Stadium MK on June 20.

OTHER NEWS:

· Panic! at the Disco’s “High Hopes” has officially held the number one spot on Billboard‘s Hot Rock Songs Chart for 52 straight weeks. The song first hit number one on the chart in November 2018.

· Another defendant in the ongoing Juice WRLD case filed for an extension to February 4. BMG Rights Management requested on January 13 that they have until the new date to respond to the initial complaint filed by Yellowcard.

· My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero announced that he will be making an appearance in a new movie to premiere at SXSW called Drunk Bus. Iero announced the name of the film through an Instagram post.

· Woes announced their breakup on social media, stating that they are prioritizing their own well-being, but will finish out their journey with a tour in the UK. The group dropped their first and only full-length, Awful Things, last year on June 28.

· Fall Out Boy was the topic of heavy debate in Comedy Central’s new satire video. In the video, which includes former Smosh co-founder Anthony Padilla, we see the panelists engaged in hot debate about whether or not the band’s music is considered emo.

· Panic! at the Disco frontman, Brendon Urie, opened Notes for Notes, a new music studio aimed to help young people create music, at the Boys and Girls Club in Henderson, Nevada. The studio was also made possible by a $500,000 donation from State Farm.

· Post Malone announced he would be making his film debut on TV screens everywhere, starring with Mark Wahlberg in a new Netflix action movie Spenser Confidential. The film was first announced in 2018 and originally titled Wonderland.

· Former Black Veil Brides bassist Ashley Purdy revealed in a new interview that he didn’t choose to depart from the band back in November. In an interview with Sonic Perspectives, he said “Technically, I didn’t leave; I’m just not in the band anymore.”

· Funko unleashed plans for their newest Pop! vinyl figures including ones for bands like Slipknot, Weezer, Ghost and more, plus movies like The Craft and Creepshow. The company has many more figures they will be revealing at the 2020 London Toy Fair.

___

Check in next Tuesday for more “Posi Talk with Sage Haley,” only at @sagehaleyofficial!

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officialbroski10-blog · 4 years

Text

i’ll be your ohana(brian kendrick x oc)

a/n: i really could not think of a good title nor will i ever release this

a/n: welp it’s time to publish this. my magnum opus, my passion project that has taken me a year of on and off writing. lots of shit has happened in the span of a year.

•|•|•

PLOT: echo celeste (the oc) meets brian kendrick while she’s sitting on the beach in the middle of the night. upon coming closer, brian is intrigued by echo, and decides to talk to her. they soon find out how much they have in common.

many cameos will be made by various indy wrestlers that you may not know. if that’s the case, look them up online, they’re phenomenal workers!

also this takes place in honolulu, hawaii for some odd reason but oh well

Rating: this part is all fluff and angst

•|•|•

echo celeste was not what one would consider to be normal. she didn’t sleep much, was obsessed with things people took for granted, and could often be found staring at the sky sitting on waikiki beach at times when everyone else would be asleep. she described herself as an occult soul, unsure of her place in the world. on this particular night, the full moon was out, one of her favorite things to see in the sky, which made it just barely bright enough for her to do sketches on the beach.

brian was also not the definition of normal. he was a wrestler, for christ’s sake! he felt that normal society would never understand him, and was still stuck in some sort of emo teen phase. he looked different than most, preferring to let his hair grow out. whenever he was stressed, he found himself walking on waikiki at unholy hours in the night, which coincidentally was the same beach echo frequented.

maybe it was the way the moonlight hit her, but brian was mesmerized by echo. her lavender hair seeming like something straight out of a scifi movie, or like the wings of a fairy. her face scrunched up in concentration made her glasses almost cover up the tip of her nose. Either way, brian just had to talk to this woman, even if she turned out to be a figment of his imagination.

“hey there, whatcha working on?” brian asked, making sure he wouldn’t startle echo. that plan didn’t work.

“jesus fuck you scared me!” echo said in reply, also giggling at the end.

“oh sorry about that,” brian apologized, “i didn’t mean to do that to you! my names brian. brian kendrick. and what do they call you?”

“my full name is echo celeste svensson, but call me echo or echo celeste.” she smirked. “i’m working on a sketch!”

“oh that sounds cool! i’m assuming you’re an artist, then?”

“you would be correct! what do you do for a living?”

brian wasn’t sure if he should say he’s a wrestler. almost everyone who he told about his career had shunned him, saying that wrestling was fake. but he felt strangely at ease with echo, almost as if she had a calming aura about her that told him everything would be alright.

“i-i’m a wrestler. its not the best paying job in the world, nor the most liked job.” he admitted, seeming ashamed of what he did as a living. echo’s eyes almost burst out of her head. she was a huge wrestling fan, and this was one of the first wrestlers she ever met!

“that’s nothing to be ashamed of, brian! maybe i could catch one of your matches sometime. got any coming up soon?” brian’s eyes lit up, like a child on christmas day. nobody had ever shown interest in his line of work!

“uh, yeah, i do, today at 7pm-“

“then you can see me there! so, what brings you out here at 4AM on this friday morning?” echo questioned. it was rare for her to run into anyone on the beach at this hour, let alone anybody interested in what she was doing.

“i had a nightmare, and it helps me clear my mind if i take a walk in the night. i don’t have all my marbles, and when combined with a rough childhood, i get nightmares pretty often, but not normally bad enough to where i have to take a walk to calm myself.” brian obviously was not in a good frame of mind, and echo could sense that. she could relate with what brian was going through. she had an okay childhood, but got bullied all through school, which traumatized her and made her unable to trust most people. she never trusted anyone when she first met them. brian was an exception to this rule.

“hey brian, it’s okay. i got you, bud.” echo said, wrapping a blanket around her and a now-teary eyed brian. “everything will be alright. do you have a place to stay?”

the answer came as a surprise to echo. “not anymore. just got an eviction note and i have to move out all my stuff by noon. i don’t really talk to anyone here on the island, and don’t have any place to stay.”

“oh my god, that’s horrible! well i’ll tell you what: you can stay with me at my place for as long as you need to. you don’t have to chip in to pay for rent, and i can give up my bedroom for you.”

“t-that’s too much, echo! you don’t need to give me a spot to live at! i mean, i don’t deserve this-“ brian was awestruck at this proposition. nobody offered him anything in life, and he had gotten used to just dealing with things himself.

“oh, please! it’s the least i can do for someone who is actually interested in what i do. let’s go get your stuff, brian.”

•-•|•-•

“and there! we got all your stuff here safe and sound.”echo sighed, a bit exhausted after helping brian bring his stuff to her apartment.

by this time, it was almost 5am, and it was blowing echo’s mind to think that just two hours ago, she hadn’t known brian kendrick, and now he was moving in with her! he felt like an old friend at this point.

brian only had one medium box full of his clothes, but one huge box filled with wrestling memorabilia. three large binders contained various wrestling dvds from many different places, and pictures of him in action.

“would you like to get some breakfast or something? there’s a coffee house called apostles of smoothies nearby that has really good smoothies. then, while we’re there, we can figure out what our schedule will be. that sound good?”

brian responded with a gigantic hug. since he initially told echo about his situation, he couldn’t bring himself to talk. and echo understood that. she wasn’t much of a talker, either.

•-•|•-•

“logan, you son of a bitch, get over here!” echo yelled at her old friend logan black, owner of apostles of smoothies. logan was also a professional wrestler who, as his second job, ran a coffee house/wrestling arena on the beach. it was located in an old surf shack, with artwork of various artists decorating its walls. logan and echo were old friends from before they moved to hawaii. they grew up together in the middle of manhattan, and frequented concerts and wrestling shows together.

“well well well, look who we have here! you want your regular?”

“sure thing!”

“and who’s the guy with you today? is he a special someone?” logan asked. echo turned a bright red and punched logan in the arm.

“um hi, my names brian kendrick.” brian extended his hand out for a handshake.

“the names logan. this here is apostles of smoothies, the only coffee house/wrestling arena in honolulu! would you like something today?”

“i’ll have whatever echo’s having.”

“sure thing! if you’re a friend of echo’s, you’re a friend of mine. don’t worry about paying, it’s on the house.”

“logan,” echo teased, “you’re going to run out of business if you keep doing this!”

“i only do it for you, echo celeste svensson.”

echo rolled her eyes at logan.

“do you want to sit outside?” echo asked brian. “maybe we could talk over today’s schedule while we watch the sunrise.”

brian nodded in agreement as echo and him sat at a table facing the ocean.

“and here you go! two celestial sunrises for you guys!” logan said, giving them the smoothies.

“so, brian, i was thinking of getting some work done in the studio this morning, and ordering pizza for lunch around 12. is there anything you want to do today?”

brian’s response warmed echo’s heart. “i’d like to spend time with you today, if that’s alright. it’s gonna rain all day, so we’ll maybe watch a movie or two together and make a castle out of blankets. do you think you could hold off on your work in the studio until tomorrow?”

echo made some weird noise of excitement, like a giddy schoolgirl. “i’d love to watch a movie with you!”

•-•|•-•

echo queued up a mini studio ghibli marathon of her two favorite movies, my neighbor totoro and kiki’s delivery service. luckily, brian liked those two choices.

after they finished the movies and pizza, echo put on some chill step mix to calm her down. not that she was overly hyper, she just loved the feeling of being calm and loved, which was how she felt with brian in her apartment. the feeling of being loved was something echo had not felt since she moved to hawaii, three years ago.

however, the concept of being loved and safe was unfamiliar to brian. every time he thought about his past, it made him feel really down and not okay. all the years of repressing his bad memories had turned brian into a shy, broken, and unsure man. but he felt like a different man with echo, like he was missing a piece to his puzzle.

he looked down at echo, who was just snuggled into his side, looking at him lovingly.

“fuck it, i’m just gonna do it.” brian decided, leaning in to echo, lips meeting.

to say the kiss was amazing would be an understatement. the two fit together like puzzle pieces. brian pulled echo in, like a magnet. his lips met hers in a passionate embrace, with just the right amounts of roughness and romance. after an eternity and a half, the two finally broke apart, catching their breath.

“holy shit,” brian gasped, “that was totally uncalled for.”

“to be honest, that was exactly how i wanted my first kiss to go, brian.”

•-•|•-•

“well well well, look who’s back again!” logan yelled, scaring echo shitless. “you coming to see brian wrestle?”

“yeah, how did you know he wrestled?”

“looked up his info on the internet. he’s quite the journeyman, he’s been all over the states! wonder why he came to hawaii, though.”

“hey echo,” brian said, calling over echo, “i’d like you to meet some of my friends. you may know them. Say hello to Tony Booze.”

“Hey there Echo, I’m Tony.” Tony introduced himself, shaking Echo’s hand.

•-•|•-•

There were seven matches scheduled for that night’s event. Echo loved them all, and couldn’t keep her eyes off the action! But Brian was not in any of them, yet she still had a grand old time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your main event of the night here at Oahu Championship Wrestling!” Echo and the crowd of around 150 fans cheered. Judging by how good the matches were already, she was going to be in for a treat. “This next match is a No Holds Barred match, and it is for the Oahu Heavyweight Championship!”

The opening notes to Raining Blood by Slayer invaded the airwaves, and so did a chorus of boos as a tall, buff, and tattooed man made his way to the ring, adorned in a black cape and crown. He was the current champion. “Making his way to the ring, from the ninth circle of Hell, the King of the Hallowed, VOID!”

“And his challenger,” Body Talks was now beginning to play, “the Unholy Savior Of The Masses, Grayson Del Toro!” The match kicked off with a fever pitch, both participants delivering clobbering blows to each other, like two drunken men at a bar.

Fifty minutes later, and VOID had retained his belt in an absolute masterpiece of a match. But, he still continued to beat down a bloodied Grayson Del Toro. Then, a cloaked figure ran down to the ring, mercilessly attacking VOID with a steel chair shot to the head. The crowd was at a loss for words. They absolutely despised VOID, and were genuinely afraid of him. The fact that someone decided to attack VOID was beyond them. “Could it be Brian?” wondered Echo.

After the referees separated the masked attacker from VOID, he revealed his face to the crowd, who popped so loud that the walls shook. “Ua hoʻi wau.” He dropped the mic. It was none other than Brian.

He walked over to Echo, and invited her into the ring. He gave her a black flower crown and stole VOID’s cape, dressing Echo in it. “I am Brian Kendrick, and this is my queen. Together we will rule this company, and usher in a new age of chaos.” He then placed his lips on Echo, who was quite surprised by the events that were transpiring. What had gotten into Brian? Well, whatever it was turned on Echo, impressed by this dark side.

#the brian kendrick #wwe imagine #wwe fluff

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theeverlastingshade · 4 years

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Favorite Albums of 2019

2019 proved to be another harrowing year to be alive, but there was plenty of phenomenal music released throughout the year to help distract from the encroaching apocalypse. While there were unfortunately a few artists like Kanye, Chance, and Xiu Xiu that dropped absolute bricks so unlistenable that you’d be forgiven for questioning your fandom in the first place, we were graced with much better than expected returns from the likes of Fennesz and Vampire Weekend, a culmination of a decade’s worth of increasingly realized releases courtesy of (Sandy) Alex G, Sharon Van Etten, and Weyes Blood, a further sharpening of their respective aesthetics from the likes of Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, Kim Gordon, Solange, and Sun O))), and promising first impressions from artists like 100 Gecs and glass beach. Duster ended their almost two-decade long silence, Empty Country rose from the ashes of Cymbals Eat Guitars, the legendary Jai Paul demos finally received a proper release, and plenty of artists like Big Thief, FKA twigs, and Oso Oso that completely leveled up this year and released the best work of their careers to date. No matter what kind of music you’re into, there was plenty to enjoy throughout this year. Here are my favorite albums of 2019.

10. Anima- Thom Yorke

While his work with Radiohead has been consistently great throughout their three plus decades together, Thom Yorke’s solo work has generally left a lot to be desired. That all changed with the release of his third LP, Anima. The record is full of the skittering beats, sinister synths, and general feeling of encroaching dread as the bulk of his work, but the execution has never before landed with such force. Yorke was inspired to tweak his approach to electronic composition after watching some recent Flying Lotus live sets. He began to improvise with loops the way that FlyLo did while performing, and then he sent the files to Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich who parsed the arrangements down to manageable samples for Yorke to work with. The songs on Anima all sound familiar from someone whose been recording electronic music on his own for over a decade, but they’re each far punchier and allow for more space to develop in all their exquisitely rendered texture. Anima is the rare veteran record that leans into the artist’s sweet spot while introducing just enough new wrinkles to an established formula that it allows you to hear them anew.

Anima consists of nine songs that are firmly rooted in the sort of moody, minimal electronic music that splits the difference between experimental bass and minimal techno that he’s always trafficked in to some extent. What’s noteworthy here is how crisp and sharp everything sounds. The songs throughout Anima are minimal but memorable, with instantly recognizable melodies that waft unassumingly from a few synths and a sprinkle of percussion. Whether it’s the strutting bassline propelling “I Am a Very Rude Person” or the unsettling synths juxtaposed against the steady hi-hats and repurposed samples of children cheering from “15 Step” on “Twist”, or the blaring sirens and chimes that give a great deal of dimension to “The Axe”, Anima is a gorgeous listen at every turn. Every song here is produced superbly, with great pacing and a generous use of space that allows plenty of breathing room for every arrangement. Nothing sounds rushed or inconsequential, and the record wouldn’t work nearly as effectively if any single song was omitted. It’s the first release that Yorke and Godrich have put together that doesn’t sound like it exists strictly in the shadow of Radiohead or any specific genres/scenes of electronic music.

The themes of the songs on Anima are the kind of tormented, dystopic nightmares that Yorke has been writing about throughout the vast majority of his career. Nothing else is as explicit as “The Axe”, in which Yorke chastises some unidentified piece of tech for denying him the experience that he sought “Goddamned machinery/Why don’t you speak to me?/One day I am gonna take an axe to you” and in most of the songs on Anima Yorke conveys images with abstract imagery and minimal phrasing. On opener “Traffic” Yorke grapples with an increasingly online world gripped by groupthink and hivemind “Submit/Submerged/No body/No body/It’s not good/It’s not right/A mirror/A sponge/But you’re free” while on “I Am a Very Rude Person” he finds solace in the creative process “I have to destroy to create/I have to be rude to your face/I’m breaking up your turntables/Now I’m gonna watch your party die”. On the record’s most impressive song and centerpiece, “Dawn Chorus”, Yorke looks back on his life and questions whether he would be capable of not repeating the same mistakes if he had a chance to do it all again “In the middle of the vortex/The wind picked up/Shook up the soot/From the chimney pot/Into spiral patterns/Of you, my love”. It’s one of the most quietly devastating songs that Yorke has ever written, and a testament to his unrelenting, unassuming brilliance.

Essentials: “Dawn Chorus”, “Last I Heard (...He was Circling the Drain)”, “The Axe”

9. Basking in the Glow- Oso Oso

Oso Oso became one of the defining contemporary emo bands with their exceptional 2017 sophmore LP, The Yunahon Mixtape, and with their phenomenal third LP, Basking in the Glow, they’ve continued to heighten the very things that landed them rapturous reception with TYM. Frontman Jade Litiri is still penning the most absurdly tuneful melodies I’ve heard on any album that’s come out this year, and his command over songcraft has only gotten tighter in the years since his 2015 debut, Real Stories of True People Who Kind of Looked Like Monsters. BitG is a collection of 11 tracks that blend emo, pop-punk, and straight up indie rock into a concoction of warm guitar pop that’s as immediate as it is accomplished. Nothing on BitG is surprising or unprecedented in any way if you’re familiar with Oso Oso’s prior work, but the band has improved considerably on all fronts, and they’ve never played with such confidence. Few records that I’ve had the pleasure of coming across this year offered such immediate pleasures right out of the gates while letting the intricacies of the music slowly make their way to the surface after repeated listens to the extent that Oso Oso managed with BitG.

Oso Oso did little to alter their approach this time around. They’re still playing ridiculously catchy guitar pop that places a premium on melody above all else, but the songs on BitG are sharper, and more fleshed out than the bulk of their past work. The hooks are massive, and don’t sound like afterthoughts in the way that hooks do in so much music today, and are for the most part the main draw here. The compositions are mostly upbeat, and draw from each of the aforementioned genres seamlessly without ever sounding strictly beholden to one dominant scene or sound. Oso Oso are working within fairly limited parameters which makes the immense range on display all the more impressive. There are immediate pop-punk anthems (“The View”), urgent emo slow-burners (“Priority Change”), acoustic lullabies (“One Sick Plan”) and thematically timeless, immensely cathartic sendoffs (“Charlie”). Nothing on BitG sounds forced, or derivative, or anything less than a tasteful display of staggering growth. Frontman Jade Liltri doesn’t have tremendous range as a vocalist, but few vocalists working today are as consistently expressive as he is, and the melodies that he’s imbued these songs with are richer, and more generous than those on any other album that I’ve heard from this year.

The songs on BitG are accounts from someone losing themselves in the thrall of newfound love. They’re primarily upbeat guitar pop songs that perfectly capture that dizzying sensation of the honeymoon phase when everything is rendered through a warm, euphoric glow. But even the more straightforward sentiments are peppered with self-deprecating jabs that allow you to glean his songwriting from more than just the obvious angles, such as on “The View” when he delivers a phenomenal hook “My eyes lit up when I saw it/A way of lookin for everything I wanted/My eyes lit up when I saw it/The view from where you sit/And apathy, I was in love with it” and the last line completely alters the depiction that he’s initially setting up. “Wake Up Next to God” tackles the struggle to love yourself (“Maybe I’ll figure out what it means/When I mean more to myself”) while the title track deals with navigating complacency “And these days, it feels like all I know is this phase/I hope I’m basking in the glow/Is there something bigger I don’t know?”. Everything comes to a head on the astonishing closer “Charlie” where Jade comes to terms with a breakup and resolves not to let it break him “I know it has to end/We’ll just play pretend, pretend/Yeah, I think that’s fine/’Cause you and I had a very nice time”. Those lines perfectly encapsulate the ethos of Oso Oso, and cap off one of the decade’s most accomplished emo records.

Essentials: “Charlie”, “The View”, “Basking in the Glow”

8. Titanic Rising- Weyes Blood

While every Weyes Blood record preceding Titanic Rising was a perfectly solid release in its own right, few artists managed to improve on all fronts as dramatically as Natalie Mering did this year with Titanic Rising. TR is a lush chamber pop record that finds Mering composing some of the grandest, and most impressive songs of her career to date. With the exception of the instrumental title track and closing track “Nearer to Thee”, the songs on TR are sweeping chamber epics flush with strings, brass, and synths that congeal remarkably well under the weight of her stirring voice. The songs are paced superbly and never verge on overstaying their welcome, but are produced with such rich texture that they allow new details to emerge with each listen. Not unlike acts like The War on Drugs or Amen Dunes, Mering tapes into well-worn forms with immediate comparisons that come to mind right out of the gates, but the music unfolds in a spellbinding haze that renders those points mute. Although her music has never before swelled with such expansive arrangements, she still manages to imbue these compositions with her strongest writing to date. TR sounds like the culmination of a singular voice that she’s been honing throughout the past decade.

TR is a gorgeous sounding record, and there’s nothing here that sounds fussy or overworked. The compositions are dense, but the arrangements move with a sense of grace that magnify Mering’s sentiments without drawing anything away from her stunning voice. Songs like “Wild Time” and “Everyday” contain some of the sharpest melodies that I’ve listened to all year, and the way they emerge patiently beneath heaps of tastefully arranged piano, strings, and brass only serves to maximize their impact. Even on songs like “Picture Me Better” that showcase the closest that TR veers towards minimalism, she’s composing with a deft intuition that keeps the arrangements economical without forsaking a sense of wanderlust. “Andromeda” begins with a lumbering bassline and kick drum rhythm while acoustic guitar softly snakes around her slowly blossoming voice. Shortly afterwards a string section slides into the mix and a massive chorus springs forth from beneath the mix. It’s anthemic but rendered in a dreamy hazy, and it already sounds like a classic. “Everyday” and “Something to Believe” are baroque pop at its most immediate, the former deploying a jaunty kick rhythm, lush strings, and sun-kissed harmonies while the latter is a breather that features terrific interlocking harpsichord/electric guitar leads snaking around her soaring vocals. And on “Movies”, her finest song to date, her effect-laden vocals and warbling synths build to a transcendent peak before transitioning into a spell-binding string-led coda. It’s an incredible sounding coda, and not a moment of it feels unearned.

Even at the album’s most indulgent, (as on “Movies” which is also unsurprisingly TR at its best) the music still still brilliantly serves the narratives at hand. TR consists of 10 songs that examine the highs and lows of love through a distinctly contemporary lens. “Andromeda” begins with a reluctance to allow love into her life “Stop calling/I think it’s time to let me be/If you think you can save me/I’d dare you to try” before Natalie eventually succumbs to the temptation to not close herself off completely “Love is calling/It’s time to give to you/Something you can hold on to/I dare you to try”. “Everyday” finds Natalie lamenting the state of modern dating “True love is making a comeback/For only half of us, the rest just feel bad/Doomed to wander in the world’s first rodeo” while “Mirror Time” examines a periodic love without boundaries that plays out in short burst from time to time “Got a feeling our romance doesn’t stand a chance/Stand a chance to last/You threw me out of the garden of eden/Lift me up just to let me fall hard/Can’t stand being your second best”. On “Movies” Natalie is offering her ode to the films that she loved growing up that have helped shape the person that she is. She longs for her life to have the same sort of neat dependability as she’s come to expect from movies, lamenting the mundane realities that defines actual human life “Some people feel what some people don’t/Some people watch until they explode/The meaning of life doesn’t seem to shine like the screen”. Like the rest of TR it’s an unabashedly intimate yet grand sounding song that exemplifies the multitudes of Mering’s songwriting, and it’s as human as music gets.

Essentials: “Movies”, “Andromeda”, “Wild Time”

7. Purple Mountains- Purple Mountains

After over a decade since the last Silver Jews record, Dave Berman returned to music earlier this year and released a self-titled album under the moniker Purple Mountains. Purple Mountains detailed Berman’s struggles with depression in the years following the dissipation of Silver Jews, and a few weeks after the record came out he took his life. The music on PM is unrelentingly bleak on its own terms, but when viewed through the context of its aftermath it achieves an unbearable melancholy that makes it difficult to revisit. Berman has spent his music career as the mastermind behind Silver Jews penning sharp songs that use humor and wit to navigate the inner turmoil that’s plagued him throughout his whole life. Although PM isn’t a particularly easy record to digest from a thematic standpoint, I can still hear quite a bit of humor and hope embedded within the music that runs counter to the narrative. There isn’t a single Silver Jews record that’s anything less than good, but on PM Berman’s songwriting hit a new peak that showcased his singular voice in a newly refined, mature temperament with all the effortless irreverence that he’s provided in spades throughout all these years held perfectly intact.

PM is a jangly indie rock record that sounds like a perfectly natural extension of the music that Berman was making in Silver Jews, but it’s disarming to hear just how straight up tuneful this record is. Immediacy is not the first thing that comes to mind when describing Berman’s work, but the songs on PM are some of the tightest that Berman has ever penned, and many of them contain his finest melodies to date. “All My Happiness Is Gone” is a dead ringer for any kind of conceivable anthem for 2019, and when Berman sings those lines throughout the chorus against a stirring string section, rollicking drums, and a jaunty acoustic guitar lead it sounds far more like a triumphant admission of apathy than the sort of shrugged off platitude the words themselves alone might suggest. The following song “Darkness and Cold” slows down the tempo, but works in tandem with what came right before it as an anthemic melody swells up while he describes the experience of watching his ex-wife begin to go on dates again “Love of my life going out tonight/Without a flicker of regret”. The juxtaposition between the music and lyrics animates the record from start to finish, and helps offset some of the particularly devastating moments.

There’s no way around the fact that the record was written in the wake of the dissolution of his marriage. The struggles with depression and substance abuse penned throughout the record are commonplace themes in all of Berman’s work, but the collapse of his marriage happened in the years following the last Silver Jews record, and every song here feels tethered firmly to the end of that relationship. “She’s Making Friends, I’m Turning Stranger” finds Berman coming to terms with his innate introversion “She’s making friends, I’m turning stranger/The people on her end couldn’t make it plainer/Sometimes I wish we’d never came here/Seeing as I’m held in such disdain here” while closer “Maybe I’m the Only One for Me” suggests that Berman is able to find contentment in the admission that perhaps he simply wasn’t meant to be in a lasting relationship “If no one’s fond of fucking me/Then maybe no one’s fucking fond of me/Yea, maybe I’m the only one for me”. At its core, PM details the sort of weary acceptance of life in all of its difficulties that Berman has resigned himself to. There are moments of profound beauty sprinkled throughout his deadpan sentiments that hint at something beyond the veil of frustration and apathy.

Although things panned out tragically in the wake of PM, there’s a rush of catharsis that his vulnerability allows for that elevates the sentiments throughout the record to dimensions beyond the sort of gloomy, one-note rock of which it runs parallel to the pantheon of. Berman has always written with an unflinchingly honest gaze at himself and the world around him, and while not necessarily portraying himself in the best light he’s always grounded in his genuine beliefs. Thankfully, he hadn’t lost an ounce of his wit or wisdom in the years following Silver Jews, and his penchant for the absurd is kept well in check throughout PM. This is particularly evident on the album highpoint “Margaritas at the Mall” which finds humor by poking through the holes of the hollow capitalist complex “We’re just drinking margarita’s at the mall/This happy hour’s got us by the balls”. On “Storyline Fever” Berman examines the way we’re swept up by the narratives that we construct to examine life more neatly “You got storyline fever, storyline flu/Apparently impairing your point of view/It’s making horseshit sound true to you” and even on the bleak state-of-affairs- recap opener “That’s Just the Way That I Feel” Berman slips in some amusing imagery in-between his morose depictions of his inner torment “I nearly lost my genitalia/To an anthill in Des Moines/I was so far gone in Fargo/South Dakota got annoyed”. No matter the tone that he struck, Berman was always resolute in his openness, and thankfully his parting gift to us remains steeped in that conviction.

Essentials: “Magiritas at the Mall”, “All My Happiness Is Gone”, “Darkness and Cold”

6. Magdalene- FKA twigs

It’s been five years since Tahlia Barnett’s last full-length LP as FKA twigs, and in the time since she’s released the exceptional EP M3ll155X, directed several music videos, and acted in the film Honeyboy as the rest of the musical landscape slowly began to catch up to her warped approach to avant-garde pop. M3LL155X suggested a more maximal, mutated take on club music, and it now seems like a sly feint within the greater scope of her artistry in light of Magdalene. The songs on Magdalene rarely utilize more than strings, keys, drums, bass, and Barnett’s heavenly falsetto, with very little generally happening at any point in time. The vast spaces allow for her highly expressive vocals to emote more heavily than we’ve ever heard from her, the instrumentation is rich and varied despite the tight parameters, and she’s managed to make the most of the eclectic roster of collaborators that worked on the album. The album was inspired by the story of Mary Magdalene from the Old Testament, and in examining how Mary was maligned by her peers Barnett draws a clear through line from the cruelty women suffered as a result of conservative ideology from then up to the present day. The result is a deeply moving record about her experiences within a continuum of marginalization. It feels urgent but far from self-important, and cautiously hopeful without any tangible sense of real optimism. Magdalene has stronger writing, singing, and production more adventurous than the vast majority of records that I’ve listened to this year. It’s the most compelling and expressive release in her short but singular career.

Magdalene sounds like a perfectly natural extension of LP1. It’s more minimal, and sways with a more forlorn baroque undercurrent that propels her skittering electronics into warmer abstract shapes. Arca, Oneohtrix Point Never, Nicolas Jaar, Hudson Mohawke, Future, Sounwave, Skrillex, Cashmere Cat, and Kenny Beats are among the people who are featured or produced songs on Magdalene, but despite the myriad of people that contributed it’s still an incredibly cohesive record perfectly suited for Barnett’s voice. “Thousand Eyes” opens the record to a chorus of pitched vocals set against swelling strings pouring down from the heavens. The record gradually grows more pensive and moody as it progresses, allowing the Future collaboration “Holy Terrain” to sound like the most fitting pairing imaginable by the time we reach track four. Their chemistry is undeniable, and it’s a perfect bridge between the corrosive piano ballad “Sad Day” and the sleek synth rhythms of the record’s centerpiece “Mary Magdalene”. Unsurprisingly, the Jaar contributions and the OPN contribution rank as some of standouts here. Daniel Lopatin’s touch is all evident all over “Daybed” as a lone violin plays in the distance while a kick drum and synths collide softly. It’s the ideal ambience over which Barnett’s voice urgently sings of her experiences with depression. And the skittering keys coupled with the drum and bass assault that propels Barnett’s massive hook on “Fallen Alien” make for some of the most powerful and compelling music of her career to date.

Magdalene opens with “Thousand Eyes” which is the sound of the wall of voices signaling the disintegration of a relationship, presumably the one between her and ex-fiance Robert Patterson “If I walk out the door, it stars our last goodbye/If you don’t pull me back, it wakes a thousand eyes”. Magdalene primarily delves into the aftermath of her relationship with Patterson, with songs like “Cellophane” and “Sad Day” that touch on not being enough for someone “They’re hating/They’re waiting/And hoping/I’m not enough” and taking the chance on being hurt again “Taste the fruit of me/Make love to all you see” respectively. In addition to the songs that focus on heartbreak Magdalene also touches on the ways that women have been maligned throughout history on the album’s centerpiece “Mary Magdalene”. Here she touches on how women have had their achievements erased from the history books “A woman’s war/Unoccupied history/True nature won’t search to destroy/If it doesn’t make sense” and pays tribute to Mary by acknowledging her as someone who was maligned as a whore due to a misreading, instead of an equal to Jesus. And on “Daybed”, one of Tahliah’s most impressive songs to date, she lays out in stark terms her struggles with depression “Tired of my resistence/Smothered is my distance, yeah/Careful are my footsteps/Possessive is my daybed” over eerie synths and strings courtesy of OPN.

Despite the thematic ambition on display throughout all of Magdalene, it never comes across like an oppressive slog. It’s all too common for records with such weighty concerns to collapse under the weight of their subject matter, but Magdalene is never anything less than an immensely engaging record. The production is gorgeous from start to finish, and the restraint that Tahliah opts for allows the impact of her outre leaning sound design to land that much more powerfully. With nine songs across 38 minutes every moment feels like it’s purposefully building towards something transcendent. She continues to fuse r&b, baroque pop, synth-pop, experimental bass, trap, and avant-garde electronica into something only recognizable as hers. The pacing is superb and while the obvious peaks like “Fallen Angel” and “Cellophane” provide a great deal of momentum, the transitional breathers like “Mirrored Heart” are just as exquisitely rendered and deeply felt as anything else she’s ever done. Magdalene sounds at once both very much of this current cultural climate and completely out of step with everything but her own sensibilities. Tahliah has been in a class of her own since LP1 dropped, but Magdalene makes a much stronger case that she’s one of the most compelling musicians of our time.

Essentials: “Fallen Alien”, “Daybed”, “Mary Magdalene”

5. Agora-Fennesz

The music that Christian Fennesz conjures as Fennesz has always taken on a larger than life quality far greater than the sum of its parts. Through a combination of heavily processed guitar, manipulated samples, and droning synths Fennesz has managed to carve out a singular lane within ambient music that began in earnest with his 2001 masterwork, Endless Summer, and can still be felt deeply on this year’s Agora. Agora consists of four massive ambient compositions within the span of forty-seven minutes. The music is darker, and flickers with a discernable sense of dread that’s most reminiscent of his stellar 2008 record Black Sea. But tone aside, Agora is a singular record unto itself, and quite possibly the best thing that Fennesz has done since ES. There’s a sweeping sense of scale present in these compositions that’s notably grander than we’re accustomed to hearing from Fennesz. This is still unabashedly ambient music, but there’s a weight to these songs that lends them a more dramatic and unnerving disposition than the genre typically allows for. Plenty of compelling ambient producers have emerged this decade and have helped push the genre forward to thrilling new heights, but with Agora Fennesz proves that he’s still in a class of his own.

There are few producers throughout this century, working within the parameters of ambient or otherwise, that have consistently crafted such vibrant soundscapes that flow so effortlessly with texture, space, and undeniable melodic intuition. Despite not a single song clocking in under ten minutes they each justify their length through exceptional pacing, sublime sound design, and a palpable sense of discovery lurking around every corner. Each song on Agora is constantly in a state of building towards or coming down from some massive peak, and there isn’t a moment that doesn’t feel earned or purposeful. Fennesz gives himself just as much time as he needs to really flesh out each of the compositions, and we’re better served for his patience. Each composition consists of droning synths, loops of guitars caked in distortion colliding alongside each other, and the occasional reverb-drenched vocal sample. The tone of these songs are uniform in their remote temperaments, but the dynamics of contrasting textures that animate each are in a constant state of flex and offer plenty to unpack throughout the course of multiple listens. Like most of Fennesz’s work, there’s a warmth to Agora that’s unusual for ambient music, and even at Agora’s darkest it still sounds positively radiant. The sound design and mixing of Agora is the main real draw, and there’s a strong case to be made that it’s the best produced album of 2019.

Right from the moment that the droning synths begin to flare up on “In My Room” it becomes clear that this is going to a far more ambitious outing than one could have reasonably expected from Fennesz this far into his career. Much like the two great 2019 Sunn O))) records, Agora exemplifies the greatest qualities of the musician making the record on a grander scale than we’ve ever heard prior. “In My Room” gradually builds up volume and additional texture as it progresses, slowly blossoming into a massive wall of sound that seems to slyly live up the grandiose production of the group whose name likely informed the song’s title. “In My Room” builds steadily throughout the course of its runtime culminating with an enormous eruption that trickles out organically, while the following song “Rainfall” builds to a blistering peak of guitar distortion early on and simmers in a vat of field recordings smeared in reverb, and soft-swelling synth melodies peaking out beneath the rumbling of the samples. His careful restraint is felt throughout all of “Rainfall” as he teases another eruption that never quite arrives. The title track then follows suit, and continues in the vein of slow-burning, doom-laced ambience that sifts through a multitude of texture while it simmers eerily yet gorgeously for several minutes before transitioning into closer, “We Trigger the Sun”.

As “We Trigger the Sun” slowly drifts towards its majestic conclusion it ends Agora with the slightest hint of uplift, courtesy of calamitous, droning synths that envelop the mix in a bright haze. Agora doesn’t end too differently from where it began, and it’s remarkable to hear how Fennesz managed to wring such potent emotion out of such a narrow set of parameters. No two songs on Agora sound alike, but the pacing of each individual song, and the sequencing of the record on the whole, renders it a spectacularly cohesive listen. For nearly two decades now Fennesz has proven himself to be one of ambient’s greatest contemporary practitioners, and with Agora he’s continued to lean into his intuition for melody, atmosphere, texture, and tone, while trimming down his compositions so that, despite being unabashedly maximal, they still adhere to a purposeful sense of economy. Like most ambient music Agora necessitates your patience, and it doesn’t offer any immediate entry points to give a quick summation of what you’re getting into. But if you allow Agora to let its spectacular sound design wash over you, you’ll find that it's a pleasure to continuously lose yourself in its spellbinding current.

Essentials: “In My Room”, “We Trigger the Sun”

4. Remind Me Tomorrow- Sharon Van Etten

Sharon Van Etten has been releasing increasingly well-realized, intimate folk rock records for a full decade now, and with her fifth LP Remind Me Tomorrow she’s released what may very well go down as her magnum opus. Eschewing the narrow sonic parameters of all her prior records, RMT is a pristine, synth-pop record that’s brighter and bolder than anything that she’s released prior. The shift towards synths being the most prominent instrument in these compositions doesn’t fundamentally shift her songwriting the way that those sort of observations tend to posit. There’s still a hushed intimacy at the heart of her compositions, and the arrangements on RMT offer more texture and atmosphere than we’re used to hearing from her guitar-led compositions, but her approach to structure and songwriting remains recognizable to that of everything that she’s done prior. RMT is elevated, simply, by stronger songwriting and a heightened level of experimentation that Sharon has never really indulged in prior. There’s nothing that will rewrite your perception of her artistry, but it’s the most consistent and comprehensive testament to her greatness as musician to date.

What’s particularly impressive is how cohesive a listen RMT is despite such a heightened range on display throughout the entire record. All of her past LPs are cohesive, but they all work within incredibly narrow parameters. The album was produced by John Congleton, and therefore has an unsurprisingly massive sound that allows torch-bearing epics like “Seventeen” and “Hands” to tremble with an immense fervor that she’s never quite summoned beforehand. On RMT the downtempo, industrial-lite noir ballad “Jupiter 4” emerges right on the heels of the the synth-fuzz swagger of the record’s first single “Comeback Kid”, but nothing about it sounds contrived or forced. It’s easy to get the sense that Congleton may have encouraged her to step further out of her comfort zone than ever before, but regardless of the impetus the sheer audacity behind some of what she attempts here would be impressive even if they didn’t quite land with the impact that they do. The pacing is masterful, with comedown waltzes like “Malibu” and “Memorial” popping up after heavyweights like “Seventeen” and “No One’s Easy to Love” respectively. “You Shadow” and “Hands” emerge towards the end of RMT and each slowly continue to build up one final, cathartic peak before the serene closer, “Stay”. Sharon was well ahead of the pack of introspective singer-songwriters well before RMT dropped, but the vast gulf between her artistry and the bulk of her contemporaries has widened immensely as a result of this record’s eclecticism alone.

RMT is her first album in almost five years, and in that time Sharon has acted in the OA and Twin Peaks, she’s obtained a degree in psychology, she’s gotten married, and she’s had her first child. The album on the whole isn’t explicitly about motherhood, and the bulk of the songs actually focus on her relationship with her now husband, but that monumental transition animates every moment of the album with a renewed sense of focus and clarity. There are straightforward love songs like “Malibu” that revel in small details “I walked in the door/The Black Crowes playing as you cleaned the floor/I thought I couldn’t love him anymore” and some that are sonically more abstract like “Jupiter 4” that succinctly hone in on her emotional headspace “I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting my whole life/For someone like you/It’s true that everyone would like to have met/A love so real” even as the songs threatens to collapse in on itself at any given moment. RMT’s first single “Comeback Kid” was the first indication of her sharp sonic overhaul while also hinting at the emotional stakes she was grappling with in her private life “Don’t let me slip away, I’m not a runaway/It just feels that way”.

“Hands” is a slow-burning, sludgy synth-pop song about getting over the small things in relationships that really don’t matter “Put your hands on your love/I’ve got my hands up/Mean no harm to one another” while “No One’s Easy to Love” illuminates Sharon’s reluctance to enter into another relationship with the ghosts of past ones continuing to haunt her “The resistance to feeling something that you put down before/But keep quiet of it as you could not face it anymore”. One of the record’s most powerful sentiments arrives on the last song “Stay”, with Sharon expressing how the love between a parent and child is a bond that will last a lifetime “You won’t let me go astray/You will let me find my way/You, you love me either way/You stay”. Her voice is calm but firm, and confident in the uncertainty about how the relationship between her and her child will progress outside of the love that she’ll always feel. It's one of the most tender and vulnerable moments in a discography with songs brimming with those descriptors, and it ties the rest of RMT together as a snapshot of what her life looked like as she transitioned into motherhood.

The highlights on RMT are immense, and every song here is worth talking about, but the song that's impossible to ignore, which happens to be the greatest song that she’s ever written, is “Seventeen”. An epic of grand proportions in the lineage of Springsteen epics of grand proportions, “Seventeen” slowly builds and builds and builds while quaking with a level of urgency I’ve only heard a few other times this decade. “Seventeen” is propelled by a motorik rhythm that underpins a delicate piano melody and a procession of blaring synths while Sharon’s voice increasingly swells with fervor. The song is about Sharon talking to her seventeen-year old self and trying to provide a sense of reassurance that things will turn out alright despite what she’s going through in the moment “I see you so uncomfortably alone/I wish I could show you how much you’ve grown”. As the centerpiece of RMT, it serves to reinforce how far Sharon has progressed as a musician throughout the decade, and RMT on the whole hints at a myriad of other compelling directions that she may take her sound moving forward.

Essentials: “Seventeen”, “Jupiter 4”, “Hands”, “No One’s Easy to Love”

3. Leak 04-13 (Bait Ones)- Jai Paul

Before June of this year I thought there was a very strong chance that I would never get to hear Jai Paul’s exceptional debut LP. After it leaked in early April 2013 all traces of it vanished from the face of the internet and Jai went dormant. “BTSTU Demo” and “Jasmine Demo” were the only songs that he actually released from the album, and those two alone suggested that Jai was onto something truly idiosyncratic. They teased a remarkably well-realized fusion of Prince, Neon Indian, and J Dilla with a lighter, more malleable touch. After Bait Ones leaked Jai went reclusive, but as the decade progressed you could hear the influence of those irresistible leaks trickling down into the entire landscape of pop music, particularly when sampled by de-facto gatekeepers like Drake and Beyonce. By early 2019 it should have been evident to anyone that heard those leaks that pop music throughout the second half of the decade had come to resemble a post-JP world despite there being only two songs officially released to his name. On June 1st of this year Jai released the leaks in their demo forms, sequenced the way that the leak was initially. Six years on from that leak, the demos not only validate the hype, but present something of a wunderkind who was years ahead of his time.

After an unassuming ten second interlude “Str8 Outta Mumbai” kicks off the record proper, and it becomes immediately clear that Bait Ones is a very different kind of pop album. Constructed from sleigh-bells, lazer synths, a propulsive low-end, samples of Ravi Shankar’s soundtrack to the film Meera, and Jai’s infectious, understated falsetto “Str8 Outta Mumbai” is remarkable for striking a simultaneous balance between sounding like a timeless classic and the future of pop music. Everything is layered superbly, nothing dominates the mix, and it’s difficult to fathom anyone arranging music quite like this save for Jai. “Str8 Outta Mumbai” is the best song that he’s released to date, and is well worth the price of admission alone, but it’s just the beginning. Following right afterwards is “Zion Wolf Theme Unfinished”, and it sustains the momentum of the former while continuing to showcase Jai’s intuitive sense of melody and rhythm and providing some meta-commentary on his elusive nature “Can I make you fall in love with me?”. The percussion is warm and jittery, and there’s the constant thrill of discovery at every moment as some new instrument enters the fold without disrupting the sense of flow. All of the songs on Bait Ones are beats that stretch the confines of pop music through the incorporation of eclectic styles, disparate genres, and the pervasive sensation of of borders eroding between different sounds and cultures. Nevertheless, Bait Ones has the feel of a plunderphonics record, with the sequencing in particular giving the impression that it was constructed from a patchwork of influences he plucked from in accordance to his whims alone.

The songs on Bait Ones all split the difference between art pop, synth pop, and r&b to seamless effect. Some songs are built around samples, but for the most part these are compositions that Jai recorded from the ground up himself. Aside from the intro interlude and the “Good Time” interlude, “Str8 Outta Mumbai” is the only song here that isn’t a demo. The official release of Bait Ones is very similar to the version that was leaked, with overall fidelity improvement and the removal of unlicensed samples being the primary differences. Bait Ones is sequenced the same way, but it’s clear that the overall mix on the vast majority of these songs isn’t quite finished yet. Nevertheless, the songs on this album are examples of pop music at its finest. The smooth bass and synth strut coupled with Jai’s sensuous vocal delivery on “Jasmine Demo”, the back and forth harmonies over flickering hi-hats and bright synth lines on “Genevieve Unfinished”, the gorgeous multi-tracked harmonies that close “100,000 Unfinished”, the short-lived, but satisfying clipped harmonies and stomping percussion on the “Baby Beat Unfinished” interlude, and the slow, synth-fuzz creep and overall superb arranging alongside Jai infectious vocal line on the “BTSTU Demo” are just a few of the many exceptional moments on Bait Ones where it sounds clear that Jai is just as intuitive and inventive, if not more so, as most of his peers. Bait Ones is a sharp example of pop at its most omnivorous, inviting, and curious. With just a little bit of tweaking, Bait Ones could have been a serious contender for AOTD.

Most of the songs on Bait Ones seem to touch on a missed connection and the struggle to remain present. On “Str8 Outta Mumbai” Jai struggles to strike up a conversation with a love interest “Want to talk to you, but you don’t know what to say/And you don’t know what to do” but makes a resolution that he’s in it for the long haul “Grinding, this ain’t no quick ting/I wanna last/It’s gonna take time”. “Jasmine Demo” and “Genevieve Unfinished” are tender pleas for connection, the former draped in funky basslines and soft synths swells while the latter is up-tempo synth-pop propelled by cow-bells, frantic kick drums, and bright synth arpeggios. On the other end of the spectrum there’s “Crush Unfinished”, which finds Jai taking things as they come and not rushing into anything serious “It’s just a little crush/Not like I faint every time we touch”. The rough vocal mixing actually heightens the sentiments that Jai expresses throughout the course of Bait Ones. Jai’s first song, “BTSTU Demo”, in a strange feat of prescience features the hook “I’ve been gone a long time/But I’m back and I want what’s mine”, which makes it a perfect fit for the album’s closer. There’s an undercurrent of weariness that runs throughout Bait Ones, a sense of trying to make up for lost time. By the time we reach “BTSTU demo” Jai sounds comparatively renewed, and unwilling to be taken advantage of any longer.

Along with the release of Bait Ones Jai released two one off singles titled “Do You Love Her Now” and “He” respectively that were recorded during the same sessions but weren’t leaked. Both “Do You Love Her Now” and “He” are great singles that rank up there with the rest of Bait Ones and confirm Jai as among pop’s true auteurs of the moment. It’s surreal to have the demos still in the same form as when they were leaked, as well as the prospect of new music from Jai supposedly on the horizon. Whether or not he ever decides to follow-up this masterful collection of demos seems uncertain, but it’s nothing short of miraculous that Jai saw fit to revisit the pain of having his work compromised for the sake of sharing it with the world this far after the leak. Few pop albums from this decade seemed to so fuse such disparate genres so seamlessly and inventively with such striking, undeniable melodic intuition. Bait Ones already sounds like a future benchmark of pop craftsmanship, the kind of record that still probably wouldn’t have gained a tremendous amount of traction had it been released through conventional channels, but one whose influence would still continue to ripple for years to come through the underground and mainstream alike regardless.

Essentials: “Str8 Outta Mumbai”, “BTSTU Demo”, “Zion Wolf Theme Unfinished”

2. U.F.O.F.- Big Thief

There are few musicians that have developed as remarkably this year as Big Thief. Their first two records, 2016’s Masterpiece and 2017’s Capacity, are both solid records that demonstrate a song command of songcraft and a striking, singular voice in songwriter and vocalist Adrianne Lenker, but with U.F.O.F. and then again later this year with Two Hands, Big Thief have become one of the best bands active period. U.F.O.F., the first of these two phenomenal records, is one of the most beautifully realized folk albums that I’ve had the pleasure of listening to all decade. The music is delicate, but sturdy, intricate and well-constructed but never showy despite the band’s considerable chops. The arrangements are economical and tight, and the band have superb chemistry with one another that allow the album’s naturalistic compositions to feel that much more organic than they would otherwise. Each of these songs unfolds with a natural sense of grace and patience that plays down how intricately they’re each composed. No other album this year achieved such a well-realized aesthetic, and for that alone U.F.O.F. is an impressive record. But the dreamy compositions coupled with Lenker’s wise-beyond-her-years voice touching on loss, nostalgia, growing old, and questioning who she is elevates U.F.O.F. to the state of one of the decade’s understated greats.

Big Thief is a four piece that, in addition to Adrianne Lenker, consists of guitarist Buck Meek, bassist Max Oleartchik, and drummer James Krivchenia. Each member of the band contributes equally to these recordings, and it’s unlikely that these songs would work with anyone else filling in for one or more of these roles. With the exception of the solo acoustic guitar and vocal interplay of “Orange” each of these songs is fleshed out considerably by the remaining members of the band, and the tight interplay between the members on U.F.O.F. is more pronounced than on the vast majority of records that I’ve heard this year. In a decade dominated by bedroom auteurs and laptops, the notion of a four-piece band playing dreamy folk songs skews downright subversive. But whereas Capacity found a hungry band that sounded unlike anyone else on the precipice of greatness, U.F.O.F. is the sound of that band mastering their voice and claiming a sound for themselves. Electric and acoustic guitars snake around each other nimbly, the rhythms unfurl patiently, and Lenker’s delivery is soothing and eerie simultaneously. Their music conjures all manner of nature, but through a surreal gaze that could only exist within your subconscious. Both “From” and “Terminal Paradise” originally appeared on Lenker’s solid 2018 debut solo LP Abysskiss, and while they were among the highlights of that record, when fleshed out with the rest of the band and rendered through the same production as the rest of U.F.O.F. their potency spikes dramatically. On U.F.O.F. Big Thief claim this sound for themselves alone.

As a lyricist and vocalist, Lenker has continued to develop immensely from record to record. The sentiments on U.F.O.F. are wise, touching, and ultimately profoundly human. She remains an astute observer and masterful impressionist, painting vivid scenes with the barest of words “Vacant angel, crimson light/Darkened eyelash, darkened eye/The white light of the living room/Leaking through the crack in the door/There was never need for more/Things we’re meant to understand/Crawling closer to your hand” as on the first verse of “Open Dessert”. The title track finds Lenker nostalgic for her home state of Minnesota “Going back home to the Great Lakes/Where the cattail sways/With the lonesome loon/Riding that train in late June” while “Contact” finds Lenker confronting her habitual state of feeling numb to everything around her “Wrap me in silk/I want to drink your milk/You hold the key/You know I’m barely, barely”. On “Strange” she’s contemplating the nature of mortality and the beauty that will outlive us “You have wings of gold/You will never grow old/And turquoise lungs/You have never been young” while “Century” seems to find Lenker contemplating power dynamics in a relationship “No resolution, no circling dove/Still caught in the jaw of confusion/Don’t know what I’d do for love/But stay another hour”. And on the stunning closer “Magic Dealer” Lenker looks back on her life so far with a resolution to remain more present moving forward “Starve, magic mirror/I thought the crumbs of your life wouldn’t dry/It hurts to see clearer/Falling like needles, the passage of time”.

Nothing on U.F.O.F. underwhelms or sounds out of place, but the best of what’s here makes a strong case that Big Thief have grown into one of the defining bands of their generation. Album opener “Contact” sets the tone with delicate fingerpicked guitar, jangly electric guitar, and a lumbering tom rhythm that lays a nice foundation, but by the time the chorus hits Lenker delivers a goose-bump inducing vocal melody that propels their cozy arrangements into anthemic territory. The singles “U.F.O.F.” and “Cattails” are both delightfully knotty compositions that sustain the wanderlust temperament through faint traces of droning bass, the aforementioned intertwining guitars, and sparse percussion. “Century” provides a nice mid-point breather with a jaunty rhythm and some of Lenker’s sharpest and most restrained melodies, while “Strange” chugs along with a comparatively quick rhythm and steadily builds into, what might have been a piercing guitar solo on Two Hands, but is instead a cathartic wall of Lenker’s multi-tracked voice that soars triumphantly over a rollicking bass solo. And on career highlight “Jenni” Big Thief come the closest that they’ve ever come to straight up shoegaze as the band chug along at a crawl while thoroughly enveloped by distortion. The pacing is immaculate, and when the chorus of “Jenni’s in my room” hits, it lands like one of the most awe-inducing moments that I’ve listened to on a song all year. It’s the sound of Big Thief fearlessly pushing past their acknowledged parameters, and into the unknown.

By the time we reach “Magic Dealer”, Big Thief have completely grown into themselves as a band “. They play with a sweeping serenity that feels timeless, but somewhat far removed from the current musical climate. There’s something profoundly human that the four members of Big Thief are able to tap into with their playing that imbues their compositions with a heightened sense of catharsis. Adrianne Lenker is able to articulate what’s ultimately so sacred about human life, her voice aching and tender but with firm conviction. Their intensity and earnestness sound genuine and well-earned, and there’s no pretense of self-righteousness or self-seriousness. Two Hands is a remarkable record in its own right, and cements their position as one of the most compelling bands currently active, but it’s U.F.O.F. that stands as their magnum opus to date. Their progression into the sublime, singular indie folk band that they are today is genuinely inspiring, and their 2019 records provide a compelling example of a band breathing new life into well-worn forms of music. U.F.O.F. and Two Hands provide an engrossing dichotomy of the band’s sound, and regardless of where they decide to take their sound moving forward, it’s clear that right now Big Thief simply cannot miss. Contrary to what one of the decade’s most relentless myths would lead you to believe, bands like Big Thief have helped ensure that guitar music is in a great place at the moment.

Essentials: “Jenni”, “Strange”, “Contact”

1. House of Sugar- (Sandy) Alex G

Very few artists have released a body of work this decade that’s as rich and rewarding as that of Alex Giannascoli’s. After having released several great records on bandcamp he signed to Domino starting with his great 2015 grab-bag Beach Music, followed by his terrific, eclectic 2017 record Rocket, and this year he dropped his magnum opus and eighth LP House of Sugar. On HoS Alex marries his strongest proclivities, those being off-kilter, supremely melodic guitar pop songs with warped production and a plethora of pitch-shifted vocals that tastefully imbue his vignettes with direction and distinction. Most of the songs consist of Alex’s vocals, acoustic guitar, drums, piano, and bass, with a variety of synths that provide welcome texture all throughout. He’s also supported by a variety of musicians that he tours with, in addition to the vocals and violin of Molly Germer and vocals of Emily Yacina. The songs are richer, and generally more unpredictable than we’re used to from Alex, but they perfectly exemplify his gift for songcraft through strong melodies, engrossing narratives around gluttony and deceit, and spectacular production. It’s not quite as immediate as 2012’s Trick or 2014’s DSU, and it doesn’t have the kind of range that 2017’s Rocket does, but on the whole HoS is the most well-realized record that Alex has released to date. It caps off a strong decade of experimentation from one of the most exciting voices in music at this moment.

Like the rest of his records, HoS was written and recorded primarily by Alex, but contains plenty of tasteful contributions from members of his touring band that also helped flesh out Rocket including Samuel Acchione, Colin Acchione, John Heywood, and David Allen Scoli, Molly Germer, and Emily Yacina. The music on HoS still retains the intimate, bedroom pop glow that’s marked all of his records despite the heightened fidelity. HoS is the richest, most beautifully produced record in his catalogue to date. More so than on any of his prior records HoS finds Alex seamlessly weaving analog and electronic instrumentation to infectious effect. Opener “Walk Away” begins with slurred pitched shifted vocals over warm acoustic guitar and within short order a lumbering drum beat, droning violins, and harmonized chants emerge alongside Alex’s low-pitched croon. “Walk Away” could have easily collapsed under the weight of how packed this mix is, but the pacing is sublime, and by the time a lone jangly violin begins to ripple down the mix it sounds like euphoria. The next few songs lean into Alex’s sweet-spot for infectious guitar pop, but by the time we hit career highlight “Gretel” HoS begins to shift back towards more abstract compositions. And a song like “Gretel” is just impossible to simply gloss over. Opening to chip-tune chants, a decayed synth melody, and a boom-bap drum beat “Gretel” erupts into sinister, distortion-laced guitar pop and quickly introduces one of the most anthemic melodies that he’s ever penned. Like Sharon Van Etten’s “Seventeen”, “Gretel” sounds like a victory lap, the culmination of sorts after an incredibly impressive decade as an artist despite in this case being a meditation on greed that twists the story of Hansel and Gretel into one where after leaving Hansel to die, Gretel can only think about returning for more candy “I don’t wanna go back/Nobody’s gonna push me off track/I see what they do/Good people got something to lose”. “Gretel” perfectly balances the dichotomy between sweet and sinister, and contains some of Alex’s best production to date.

Although the opening suite of songs on HoS consist of the singles, and therefore by default some of the record’s most buzzed about songs, the abstract, electronic-influenced (particularly what sounds like the influence of Oneohtrix Point Never) middle section of HoS accounts for some of the most compelling production of Alex’s career to date. “Taking” unfolds slowly as the acoustic guitar that opens the song begins to make way for what sounds like warped sitar drones, a barrage of chip-tune vocal melodies, and subdued synths. The repetitious, Panda Bear-esque vocal dirge “Near” provides some of his most thrilling, and unpredictable synth arranging to date while the following song “Project 2” is propelled by an erratic hi-hat/kick rhythm and radiates the new-age sheen of early decade vaporwave. The bad trip nightmare-fueled rush of “Sugar” bleeds otherworldly pitch-shifted vocals, violin arpeggios, and a sinister synth melody while providing a sublime transition between the jaunty, country-influenced swing of “Bad Man” to the acoustic ballad “In My Arms”. By this point Alex has gotten all of the overt electronic experimentation out of his system, and ends HoS with two more gorgeous acoustic ballads, “Cow” and “Crime” respectively, and the surprising, but welcome Springsteen-esque live cut of “Sugarhouse” (which doesn’t yet have a studio recording). HoS is paced superbly, and despite having more range than all of his records that aren’t Rocket, it remains a remarkably cohesive listen through even the most overt sonic shifts. While it’s understandable that many longtime fans of Alex G may have found some of the experiments on Rocket a little too gimmicky, on HoS it’s hard to deny that he completely commits to the warped-americana meets electronic guitar pop aesthetic, rendering the atmosphere rich and engrossing from start to finish.

The lyrics on HoS aren’t particularly direct for the most part, which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to any fans of his, but they do a nice job of framing his depraved vignettes which each fixate on characters succumbing to their gluttony. “Taking”, “Hope”, and “SugarHouse Live” hone in on drug dependency, with the narrator of “Taking” succumbing to it “That’s how she found me this morning/Buried my head in her arms/Lifted my spoonful of sugar/Taking”, “Hope” providing a harrowing look at the havoc that opioids have wreaked in Alex’s community from a survivor’s perspective “Yeah, Fetanyl took a few lives from our life/Alright” and “SugarHouse Live” using gambling as a metaphor for drug addiction “You never really met me/I don’t think anyone has/But we could still be players together/Let SugarHouse pick up the tab”. “Near” depicts its narrator in a state of unrelenting lust “I said no/Hold my hair/I’m not there/Black feather/Come big boy/Tear me up/Draw my blood/No fucking” while “Crime” finds its narrator sidestepping his comeuppance for an unidentified misdeed “They killed him for the crime/But I know that they’re mistaken/It was me the whole time”. Throughout HoS Alex does a superb job of blending reality and fiction to deliriously blurry effect, with aspects of both informing one another and making it increasingly difficult to hone in on the distinction.

HoS doesn’t have too many songs with the kind of immediacy that many of his past LPs have, but the highs on HoS are without question the best songs that he’s ever written. “Hope” opens with unbearable devastation “He was a good friend of mine/He died/Why write about it now?/Gotta honor him somehow” and finds Alex singing about the opioid crises in Philidelphia, “You can write a check in my name/Eddie take the money and run” over some of the sharpest guitar arrangements of his yet. On “Southern Sky” Alex, along with the harmonies of Emily Yacina and Molly Germer, provides one of the most gorgeous vocal melodies of his to date over jangly acoustic guitar, violin, and a lumbering rhythm. The warped collage breakdown “Sugar” is one of the most fascinating songs that he’s recorded to date, and is perpetually on the verge of breaking down as guitar drones, violin arpeggios, and the unsettling, borderline-incomprehensible vocals “You will be a bird/All of my life/Whirl in the air/Speck in the sky” collide violently with one another. The tender deep-cut “Cow” ranks as among Alex’s most beautiful songs, even more so for obfuscating the object of his affection “You big old Cow/You draw me out/Lie on the ground/Kiss on the mouth”. Most of HoS takes multiple listens before the pleasures of each song begin to emerge, but few records I’ve heard this year struck such a fine balance between immediacy and abstraction.

From Race through HoS it’s hard to deny that Alex G has had a remarkably fruitful decade of releases. With HoS he’s cemented his status as one of the most compelling artists in not just indie rock, but music in general. His surreal storytelling, sharp melodic instincts, and relentless tinkering have propelled his rich catalogue of lo-fi DIY releases onto a level, alongside Car Seat Headrest’s Will Toledo, that’s far beyond the bulk of his peers. HoS, alongside Rocket before it, has further expanded the parameters of Alex’s sound, and teases a multitude of future directions that he could pursue that are far beyond anything that records like Race or Winner could have ever suggested. That sense of unpredictability and adventurous spirit are traits of his music that are just as compelling as the singular voice and immense sense of intimacy that all of his music is imbued with, and with each release from DSU onward those traits of his have been paying some serious dividends. Regardless of what his next record sounds like (I’m really hoping for some freak-folk or straight up ambient) it’s impossible for me to not to just give him the benefit of the doubt at this point. As long as Alex is following the direction of his whims alone, the results will likely remain captivating for many years to come.

Essentials: “Gretel” ft. Molly Germer, “Cow”, “Southern Sky”, “Sugar” ft. Molly Germer, “Hope” ft. Molly Germer & Emily Yacina

#alex g #big thief #Jai Paul #Sharon Van Etten #fennesz #fka twigs #purple mountains #weyes blood #oso oso #Thom Yorke

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recommendedlisten · 4 years

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Album Review: Hayley Williams - ‘Petals for Armor’

Though it’s been three years since since her band Paramore fully evolved from emo pinups to slick pop-rock stylemakers in After Laughter, you could argue that Hayley Williams began writing her debut solo album Petals for Armor since the very beginning of her band. Going on 16 years now as a moving unit, Williams has spent half her life as part of something bigger, and along the way, has seen some shit. Internal drama (in which public opinion had habit of pointing the blame toward her,) being a woman in front a male-dominated scene, suffering grief and enduring public heartache, and the constant pressure of having to reprove your own worth when you’re already outdoing the rest of them has toughened Williams’ skin, but also finessed her songwriting as well to use what’s ugly and depressive of life instead of faking happy in a rose-tinted juxtaposition of faceted art pop.

The journey Williams shares on Petals for Armor is one of not just surviving the seasons of life, but one where she blossoms as both an artist and an individual. The listen -- initially released across three EPs representing phases of her healing mindset in process -- is wholly the sound of what Williams was and can be in her own vision of art pop. Early sections find Williams untwisting her limbs from decaying roots or trauma and rage, with listens like “Simmer” and “Leave It Alone” mediating the gleam of Paramore’s soft lit synthetic textures between ebbing Radiohead-indebted arpeggio and the subtle nightlight rumble of her emo heroes mewithoutYou.

When Williams applies her pop craftwork into her search of the self, we start to hear her heart re-open within the album’s most vivid displays through their own weird confections. Their styles vary in elasticity, with songs like ”Cinnamon” and “Dead Horse” interloping bandmate Joey Howard’s pastel beat basslines around their bounce, and weightless ‘80s electro-pop allowing Williams to control her end destination and soar on “Over Yet” and “Pure Love”. Much of the dirt that buries Williams under her own history’s weight is swept away from the surface by the end of Petals for Armor, and is instead coated a more hopeful sparkle as she learns to love again by the time the album concludes on the upnote of “Crystal Clear”.

Every step forward is met with the occasional bout of worn wisdom that keeps her evolution challenged. On “Roses/Lotus/Violets/Iris”, a string-churning, collaboration with boygenius’ Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, she likens the process of self-discovery to that of a flower’s life cycle. “Forgot my roots / Now watch me bloom,” she sings. Though flowers are oft viewed as delicate, Hayley Williams has redesigned their nature as well as her own to represent both the delicate and the resilient. Petals for Armor sees her making strides toward an elevated conscious of the self and her creative identity that braces for the harshest of elements, and finds new ways to outlast any of them.

Hayley Williams’ Petals for Armor is available now on Atlantic Records. Physical | Apple Music | Bandcamp | Spotify

#albums #hayley williams #atlantic records

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hitmeuponmyspace · 4 years

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The 20 Albums That Have Had the Biggest Impact on My Life

Some time during 2016, there was a popular status on Facebook in which users would list the twenty albums that had made the biggest impact on their lives. Quite a few of my "friends" (I was notorious for adding people I didn't know on Facebook) participated in posting their 20 albums, and I did the same. At this point I was still in the habit of listening to the same albums I had liked during my high school emo phase over and over again, so I copy-and-pasted the preface (which also requested not listing more than one album per artist/band), and listed 20 of these favorite albums of mine. Meanwhile, I read other people's lists, and quickly realized that I had screwed up.

No, I didn't screw up by admitting to the world that The Silence in Black and White by Hawthorne Heights was one of my favorite albums. I screwed up because, while I had posted my "favorite" albums, mostly everyone else had followed the rules, and posted "the albums that had made the biggest impact on their lives". This became apparent as I read the comments on other people's posts, in which they answered questions and discussed the specifics of why some of the albums they listed meant so much to them. I let my status become consumed by the endless abyss of Facebook posts, but one question stayed in the back of my mind in the meantime: Could there really be that much of a difference between "favorite" and "most impactful" albums?

Four years later, the answer I've come up with to this question is "I don't know; sort of". Having now branched out into the nearly infinite and somewhat overwhelming world of music thanks to my Spotify Premium subscription, I've learned that developing a "favorite" album is easy. It starts with liking an album the first time you hear it, and then returning to it over and over and over again despite having a nearly unlimited number of other albums at your disposal. There is no limit to the number of favorite albums one can have unless one places a subconscious limit upon themselves, which I have no idea why anyone would ever want to do that.

But happening simultaneously with music discovery and enjoyment is the ups and downs of real life. Sometimes there is an album that helps you through a breakup, or the death of a loved one; or on the flip-side, there is an album that becomes your go-to in the midst of falling in love, or one you always jam in the car with your friends. While these albums will inevitably become "favorites", these are also the albums that make an impact on one's life, usually for the better (now that I think about it, I can't imagine an album having a negative impact on one's life).

With this newfound knowledge, I've decided to try the list again, but correctly this time. As an added bonus, I'll be adding a description of why each of these albums means what it means to me. I'm not going to attempt to "rank" the albums, but rather, they'll be grouped by genre. As per the original rules of the status, only one album per artist/band is allowed (sorry, Silverstein). Without further ado: The Twenty Album That Have Had the Biggest Impact on My Life…

Silverstein – Discovering the Waterfront (post-hardcore) (2005)

"Sometimes betrayal can make you happy"

I debated on whether I should talk about my favorite album of all time first or last, and I decided to list it first, since in some ways I view it as "the beginning of it all". Aside from a few albums my mom bought me when I was little (I recall Hanson and The Backstreet Boys), Silverstein's Discovering the Waterfront was one of the first albums I owned in my teenage years. After first hearing the band on the music channel Fuse, I asked for the album for Christmas in 2005 and received it. I quickly fell in love, and without any ado I turned to the internet to find as many similar bands as I could, thus sparking my love for underground music.

Discovering the Waterfront is, at the forefront, a breakup album (most of Silverstein's albums are), but it has done so much more for me than help me through breakups. The initial reason why I became obsessed with this album is because it has the two things that I now still look for in any kind of hardcore or metal album – great riffs and catchy choruses. Heaviness and catchiness are the perfect musical combination in my opinion, and even when I'm not in the midst of melodramatic relationship woes, I can put on Discovering the Waterfront at any time, and singing (and screaming) along with the lyrics, all of which I have long since memorized, has always and will always improve my mood. I'll occasionally get tired of listening to most of my favorite albums if I put them on too frequently, but Discovering the Waterfront is the one album that no matter how many times or how often I listen to it, I never get sick of it, and feel the same amount of love I did for it since the very first time I heard it.

Underoath – Define the Great Line (post-hardcore) (2006)

"Oh how I've walked this white line so many times before / What a feeble attempt just to feel alive"

Define the Great Line is my second favorite album, and I discovered it not long after discovering Discovering the Waterfront. The album contains that same combination of heavy and catchy that I learned to love, and also has a bold and eerie production style that still sends chills down my back when I listen to it at high volume. Underoath's vocalist Spencer Chamberlain, who was at the time a Christian but no longer identifies as such, penned the lyrics to the album about his struggles with his faith as well as his long history of alcohol and drug abuse. As someone who has had an off-again on-again relationship with God for his entire life, as well as having my own addictions of varying sorts, Define the Great Line is always relatable, and relevant to my life. And with one of the most hopeful and uplifting final tracks on an album that I've ever encountered, I'm always left with the feeling that I can overcome any inward or outward adversity after listening.

Protest the Hero – Kezia (progressive post-hardcore) (2005)

"Resurrected to be killed and maybe born again / I'll always be Kezia so long as any hope remains"

Kezia, my third favorite album (I promise this will be the last time I say this – I only have a top 3 favorites), is a concept album which tells the story of a young girl named Kezia, who commits an unspecified gender-related crime, and is sentenced to death. The lyrics are written from the perspective of three different characters: the prison priest, the prison guard, and Kezia herself. From each of these characters' viewpoints, the listener hears about how Kezia's crime has made a major impact on the society they live in, as well as the personal impact it has had on each character. I credit Kezia for leading me to becoming interested in social politics when I was a teenager, specifically the roles of women in society. Additionally, on the purely musical side of things, I also credit Kezia for getting me into more progressive styles of metal, as Protest the Hero's propensity to jump between time signatures was a breath of fresh air at the time of my discovering the album.

Carly Rae Jepsen – Kiss (pop) (2012)

"Drive so fast baby through the night / Drive so fast and they're never gonna find you"

Carly Rae Jepsen's Kiss is the album that I credit for getting me into pop music. Now I was never one of those metalheads who disliked pop music on principle, but on the few occasions when I had checked out a pop album after liking one or two of the singles, I would find that those singles were the only interesting songs on the album. It wasn't until listening to Kiss after being bitten by the eternal earworm that is Call Me Maybe when I learned that some pop musicians care about producing entire albums of quality songs, as opposed to just one or two singles and a bunch of throwaways. Kiss, along with Carly's followup album Emotion, are still the two best dancepop albums I've ever heard, and no matter what mood I'm in, I can always put on one or the other and be singing (and when I'm alone, dancing) along in no time.

Madonna – Ray of Light (pop) (1998)

"Quicker than a ray of light then gone for… / Someone else will be there, through the endless years"

As far as pop albums go, Madonna's Ray of Light is the most multi-dimensional expression of artistic talent that I've ever heard. Composed during a period of Madonna's life when she was fascinated with Hinduism and Yoga, Ray of Light takes musical and lyrical elements of Indian tradition and fuses them with American and European dancepop. The final product is absolutely stunning, and even though it has a relatively long runtime of an hour and six minutes, I'm always left wishing there was more because it's just so pleasant and fun to listen to. If Kiss was the album that got me into pop music, then Ray of Light was the album that made me truly excited about pop music.

Ariana Grande – Thank U, Next (pop) (2019)

"Look at you, boy, I invented you / Gucci tennis shoes, running from your issues"

Ariana Grande released Thank U, Next during a dark period in her life, as well as during a dark period of my own. I'm going to spare you, faithful reader, the details of that time period, but I want to convey that whenever I listened to Thank U, Next, or even heard a single from the album on the radio, it felt good to have a reminder that I wasn't suffering alone, and that everything would eventually be okay. Thank you, next.

Utada – This Is the One (pop) (2009)

"Who am I trying to fool? / Honey, I've got your ringtone on my Blackberry"

This Is the One, an album about grieving through heartbreak and then moving on from it, was introduced to me by a friend who, at the same time as I, had been dumped by the girl he loved. I had been dumped before, but this instance was particularly difficult to get over because it had been the longest relationship that I had ever been in. But it was This Is the One, with Utada's quirky lyrics about her messy matters of the heart, that helped me more than any other album to finally move on from that relationship.

Trivium – Ascendency (metal) (2005)

"Freezing the air that stands between all of us / Closing the eyes, bear witness to me"

I almost took Ascendency off the list because I couldn't exactly pinpoint the influence the album had on me, but at the same time I knew it wouldn't feel right for me to leave it off the list, so here it stays. Although I wouldn't say Ascendency is the album that got me into metal, it was the first non-metalcore, just straight up metal album that I ever owned. Although it's not an overtly political album, it was the first album I ever owned that had any political overtones at all, and it helped sway me to the left side of the political spectrum. Although the lyrics to the album aren't overly complicated, there were quite a few individual words I had to look up the definitions to, which helped motivate me at a young age to always actively try to increase my vocabulary. Although Ascendency isn't the greatest metal album of all time, it's one that I hold near and dear to my heart.

Novelists FR – Souvenirs (progressive metalcore) (2015)

"Can you hear me loud and clear now? / Why can't you sing along? Sing your fucking heart out"

Souvenirs is my favorite metalcore album, and I haven't been able to stop listening to it since it dropped in 2015. Despite metalcore having been one of my favorite genres since 2007, every metalcore album I listened to before this one had at least one thing I didn't like about it, whether it be a certain song, some of the lyrics, the production, etc. It was when I first heard Souvenirs, with its technical riffing, crushing breakdowns, heartfelt vocals, and glossy production that I felt that every itch I had had when it came to my longing for the perfect metalcore album had finally been scratched. With their followup album Noir which is every bit as good, I now consider Novelists FR to be my second favorite active band after Silverstein.

The Contortionist – Exoplanet (deathcore) (2010)

"Endless…motion…"

Exoplanet rules!

Nas – Illmatic (hip-hop) (1994)

"Fuck who's the baddest, a person's status depends on salary"

I first discovered Illmatic while browsing the Rolling Stone's Top 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time list. After my initial surprise that there were hip-hop albums on the list at all (the magazine had originally been created to cover rock music), I decided to check one of them out, sheerly out of curiosity. At that point in my life (I was probably 16 or 17), I had heard almost no hip-hop outside of what was on the radio and television. So because I remembered hearing of Nas before but couldn't recollect what he sounded like, and because I remembered seeing the classic album cover before at my local CD and record stores, I chose to listen to Illmatic…

…and boy, did I make the correct choice. Even upon first listen, it's clearly evident why Illmatic is considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest hip-hop album of all time. The freshly produced, New York style beats; Nas's inquisitive, street-smart lyrics and effortlessly smooth flow; and the memorable hooks are all packed neatly into this 40 minute album with absolutely no skits, gimmicks or filler. I knew that there was no going back after listening to Illmatic, and I had no other choice but to begin immersing myself into the world of hip-hop.

Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly (hip-hop) (2015)

"Just because you wore a different gang color than mine's / Doesn't mean I can't respect you as a black man"

If Kezia was the album that made me care about the gender side of social politics, then To Pimp a Butterfly was the album that made me care about the racial side. Loosely structured around a poem Kendrick composed about his internal and external struggles with being a black man thrusted into a position of fame and power, TPAB hits on many of the dynamics and problems that people of color still face in America today. As a little white boy, the album has opened my eyes to many racial issues that I either subconsciously turned away from, or hadn't even known about to begin with. Furthermore, Kendrick is a masterful lyricist and storyteller; and without spoiling the ending, the conclusion of TPAB is one of the most chilling moments I've ever encounted in music.

Nujabes – Modal Soul (hip-hop) (2005)

"Time can be generous but ultimately time is indifferent"

Modal Soul, the second studio album from the late Japanese DJ, composer and producer Nujabes, is perhaps one of the most easy-listening albums in all of hip-hop. While Illmatic captures the chaotic essence of New York City, Modal Soul conveys the busybody soundscapes of Tokyo, Japan. Since discovering this album, it has consistently been my go-to soundtrack for long drives on the highway at night. The album also sparked my interest in Japanese music and culture, which, as any Westerner who has gone down that route of discovery knows, runs on an entirely different wavelength than what we are accustomed to.

Richard Jacques – Sonic R Original Sountrack (soundtrack, electronic) (1998, 2014)

"You're the one that makes me feel so high, like a diamond in the sky"

After doing a Google search for "are video game soundtracks considered albums?", I decided to add the Sonic R OST to the list. Long before I had heard any of the other albums on this list, I grew up with a game called Sonic R, which is quite simply a racing game featuring characters form the Sonic the Hedghog series. I would beat the game over and over, not because I liked it (even though I did), but because I loved the soundtrack. The fast-paced, 90's-style electropop bangers, with vocals sung by Teresa Jane Davis, would be stuck in my head long after I put the controller down. Although I have fond memories of quite a few video games from my childhood along and their soundtracks, it's the Sonic R OST that I come back to most often when I need that fine dose of nostalgia.

Pink Floyd – Wish You Were Here (progressive rock) (1975)

"We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year"

The past girlfriend I mentioned in the description for This Is the One used to play this album a lot, especially when we first started dating. Although I had never had any interest in "classic rock", I was drawn to this album due to the sheer conveyance of emotion in both the lyrics and the music that it contained. Written as an ode to a former member of the band who had gone insane, Wish You Were Here still strikes me with both profound sadness and intense hope upon each listen. On the musical side, ever since falling in love with this album, I've heard Pink Floyd's influence in so many of the bands and artists that I listen to, especially those who favor more progressive styles of songwriting. I would have to think that some, if not most, of the other albums on this list wouldn't be here if it weren't for Pink Floyd, and especially this album.

Jethro Tull – Thick As a Brick (progressive rock) (1972)

"Really don't mind if you sit this one out / My words but a whisper, your deafness a shout"

It's not for any deeply personal reason that I decided to include Thick As a Brick on this list. Rather, it's because in the most objective senses of my subjective appreciation of music, I know that Thick As a Brick is at the top of the list of the most impressively composed pieces of music I've ever heard, along with Wish You Were Here and Godspeed's Slow Riot (the last album on this list). As with To Pimp a Butterfly (unlikely duo!), Thick As a Brick is structured around a narrative poem. It is performed as one, continuous, 40-minute piece of music, rife with zany folk instrumentation and erratic-yet-cohesive song structuring. But for as complex as Thick As a Brick is, I find it to be a very accessible and pleasing listen, and it's an album that I would recommend to nearly anyone.

Mount Eerie – A Crow Looked At Me (indie rock) (2017)

A definite outlier on this list, A Crow Looked At Me is an album that I've only listened to once. It is the saddest album I've ever heard, and thus far the only one that has ever made me cry. Written by Phil Elverum (the sole member of Mount Eerie) as a lament to his wife who died of pancreatic cancer, A Crow Looked At Me is infinitely beautiful but absolutely devastating. The album has haunted me since I listened to it, and it will be a very long time before I try to revisit it, if I ever do.

Against the Current – Infinity (pop-rock) (2014)

"Everywhere we go, we leave shadows from the past / We won't die young, but we'll live fast"

In contrast to the previous album on this list, Infinity is what I oftentimes consider "the happiest 16 minutes of my life". It is a compilation of five up-beat, fun and catchy pop-rock songs sung by possibly the cutest frontgirl to ever exist in music. I can put this EP on at any time and my mood will instantly be lifted. No other album (or EP!) has consistently given me those juicy hits of dopamine like Infinity has.

Panic! At the Disco – A Fever You Can't Sweat (pop-rock) (2005)

"Well she's not bleeding on the ballroom floor just for the attention / 'cause that's just ridiculously odd"

So many different times and with so many different people, I've put on A Fever You Can't Sweat Out in my car, and whoever I was driving with knew all the lyrics to the album. I'm not just talking about I Write Sins Not Tragedies either; I've sung along to every song on this album with friends, girlfriends and strangers alike (don't ask why I've had strangers in my car). A Fever You Can't Sweat Out was and will always be a phenomenon, and it has been the source of many fun times in my life.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada (post-rock) (1998)

"You think you're god because you have a robe and you can put people up the goddamn river for 20 years? Well you're not."

I am left with no choice but to conclude this list with Godspeed's magnum opus, as one feels that there should not be, or perhaps could not be, a future after Slow Riot. Structured around a recorded vox pop interview with a man named Blaise Bailey Finnegan III, this half-hour piece of ambient post-rock – with its gloomy, apocolypctic soundscapes, and its verbal protestations against the American government – makes me contemplate time and time again whether there is any hope left for Western society. Furthermore, Slow Riot, as well as the rest of Godspeed's work, has taught me that oftentimes patience is the key is to enjoying music.

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