[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Malankazooie, on 06 May 2021 - 03:33 PM, said:

A day late... but what the heck.

[Serenity]

Over the weekend I've mostly been listening to SHISHAMO

[Malankazooie]

You guys familiar with this? It is the song playing during the credits of part one of the documentary "Tiger." I've never heard it before but it seems quintessentially British.

[QuickTidal]

I feel it's my duty to post this. Sakanaction is a great band already, but this song AND video are both incredible.

[Malankazooie]

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'[Chai] might not be overtly political, but their new album – "an amusement park for insecurities" – has a radically positive vision

[...] "When everything was cancelled, suddenly we had the chance to make music in a way we never really had until now. It's been a really satisfying process."

[...] "Everyone kept complaining about how difficult lockdown was because you couldn't do the things you normally do. For us, though, that was a good thing!"

[...] Not smiling-for-the-cameras, fingers-in-a-V-sign joy (although, as a band on a mission to reinvent kawaii, there is plenty of that, too), but something closer to their core, a real driving force. My Zoom starts popping about from one face to the other, everyone nodding and beaming and talking at once. [...]

[...] Yuuki was on the same psychology and robotics course as Mana and happy to play any instrument. Musical chemistry, keen commercial nous and unshakeable ambition set them on their course. [...]

"you know the way there's an order in which you do the rides to have the best time? We conceived of Wink in that way, an amusement park visit, but for insecurities or body complexes. A rollercoaster bursting out of a giant nose. An ankle-shaped train."

"Tooth cups!" interjects Yuna. Everyone laughs again. It is a typically left-field answer and an example of how they write their songs: the playfulness with which they weave English into their Japanese lyrics; the way food is a constant reference. Wink features doughnuts, milk, kiwi, OJ, karaage (fried chicken), chocolate chips as facial moles – "because that's exactly what moles look like!" says Yuuki, pointing to a tiny one on her left cheek.

[...] Neo-kawaii – as a quality everyone innately possesses – chimes with what kawaii was when it emerged out of 60s student protests. As the Japanese consumer culture specialist Hui-Ying Kerr has noted, cuteness was "a symbol of resistance and boundless possibility"'

https://www.theguard...aiming-cuteness

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 May 2021 - 03:42 PM

[Malankazooie]

Okay network sitcom watchers, I could be wrong, but I think the one girl in this band played the older brother's gf in the show The Goldbergs.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Pop's Buzziest New Songwriter Knows Exactly What to Say

Olivia Rodrigo's sharp debut album, Sour, confirms that metaphor and ambiguity are so last generation.






Great breakups aren't just painful; they're surreal—a space-time fissure, a smack from God, a bulletin that you're not the world's protagonist. Someone who was always there just vanishes. A future crumbles into a past. [...]

Rodrigo's analytical, tell-while-showing songwriting is both effective and off-putting: Her musings have the personable crispness of a good college-admissions essay. [...] The result is a clever feat of songcraft, but it's missing a note of complication or ambivalence. You feel as if Rodrigo is trying to pin down every concrete detail to keep from having to tackle sensations that are harder to talk about.

"When I was making music in my early 20s, what was in vogue was to be more metaphoric or suggestive," Rodrigo's go-to producer, Nigro[...] "Nowadays, you have to be as literal and specific as possible." For a new generation of balladeers, this literalism also comes with an emphasis on psychoanalytical problem-solving. The TikTok-famous Norwegian singer Girl in Red chalks up the complexities of human sadness to variations in serotonin; the young U.K. folkie Rex Orange County quantifies his emotional state on a one-to-10 scale. As with Rodrigo, the music of these artists has a distinct '90s whiff, calling back to Fiona Apple, Radiohead, or Alanis Morissette. That era's thirst for poetic ambiguity or existential woo-woo is gone, though. It's good that recent songwriter pop aims to be comforting and therapeutic. But it can also come off as simple and, in something of a paradox, reserved: honesty that doesn't reveal much.

[...] she ends up with a sassy, charming, but oddly intellectualized variety of confession. With a sense of slacker-rock resignation, "Jealousy, Jealousy" diagnoses the generational sicknesses caused by social media: "Comparison is killin' me slowly / I think I think too much 'bout kids who don't know me." She understands that life is messier than what the conspicuous consumption and pasted-on smiles of TikTok suggest. Yet I wonder whether her music will create a similar variety of envy in some listeners—the sense that Rodrigo has it all figured out, including the way to sing about not having it all figured out.'

https://www.theatlan...-review/618963/

Claim that she avoids metaphor seems overblown at best. Title of the album is literally a metaphor... granted, a very obvious one. Likewise: 'She saw her ex's face in "Red lights, stop signs," but a gush of echoes and harmonies suggested stranger visions—visions no artist can put a name to.' Could be literal pareidolia, but still a metaphor. Lines like 'Who am I, if not exploited?' do have a straightforward 'angry angsty teenager' interpretation, but they can also be interpreted as evoking questions about identities' ambiguities---and seem at least metaphor-adjacent, with the conventional metaphor of the existential identification of 'I am X' (X is me?) as it veers from dead (inactive) metaphor to structuring metaphor (the label and its emotional charges). An extremely charitable interpretation could read it as a potential critique of defining oneself in terms of victimhood---or of what's left of being beyond exploitation.

Even in Jealousy, Jealousy there are a bunch of metaphors: 'paper-white teeth', 'weight is on my back, and I can't / Let it go', 'I'm so sick of myself, rather be, rather be / Anyone, anyone else, but jealousy, / Jealousy started following me [pun on 'follow' as in Twitter etc.]'

First words she says in the album are: "I want it to be, like, messy!"'... which seems at least ambiguity-adjacent. And there's some complexity in lines like 'And I hate every song I write / And I'm not cool, and I'm not smart'---in the performative contradiction of putting them out as an album. Not quite as a metaphorical as 'I feel stupid, and contagious' I'll grant.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 22 May 2021 - 09:37 PM

[Serenity]

Over the weekend I've mostly been listening to Lie and a Chameleon

[Malankazooie]

So, is this guy the TikTok generation's Justin Bieber? Fun fact: he is the spitting image of a kid I went to high school with. It's uncanny.

[Serenity]

[Malankazooie]

Okay, Memorial Day 2021. Summer is here. Time to post the music that will mark the summer of 2021. After pandemic summer and fuck the police summer of 2020, lets get things more into what summer is all about - P-A-R-T-A-Y ! Time to post your bangers of 2021 party people!

Here's one to start things off.



#BangerSummer2021

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Malankazooie, on 31 May 2021 - 02:06 PM, said:

Okay, Memorial Day 2021. Summer is here. Time to post the music that will mark the summer of 2021. After pandemic summer and fuck the police summer of 2020, lets get things more into what summer is all about - P-A-R-T-A-Y ! Time to post your bangers of 2021 party people!

Here's one to start things off.



#BangerSummer2021

IDK about that one as a party song for the reopening summer... if people listen to the lyrics at all beyond 'You're just a fuckboy', that song's pretty negative about casual sex. Also not very energetic---a bit depressive, but without any manic or comic edge---and not especially danceable. Granted, perhaps the objections to 'fuckboys' will be taken (in the context of partiers looking to get laid) as ironic, or the lyrics will be ignored in favor of empowering people who just want fuckboys for a time.

Maybe the lyrics should be, 'You're just a fuck / boy, / That's not enough, boy, / I want an or- / gy?' Better party song that way, no doubt....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 31 May 2021 - 03:26 PM

[Malankazooie]

#BangerSummer2021

This one is poppin' all over. Coming out of rolled down windows and park bbqs.


Do you guys ever feel like an astronaut in the ocean?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Malankazooie, on 04 June 2021 - 03:43 PM, said:

#BangerSummer2021

This one is poppin' all over. Coming out of rolled down windows and park bbqs.


Do you guys ever feel like an astronaut in the ocean?

Interesting lyrics for party music:

'What you know about rollin' down in the deep?
When your brain goes numb, you can call that mental freeze
When these people talk too much, put that shit in slow motion, yeah
I feel like an astronaut in the ocean

She say that I'm cool (damn straight)
I'm like "yeah, that's true" (that's true)
I believe in G-O-D (ayy)
Don't believe in T-H-O-T
She keep playing me dumb (play me)
I'ma play her for fun (uh-huh)
Y'all don't really know my mental
[...]

Falling out, in a drought
No flow, rain wasn't pouring down (pouring down)
See, that pain was all around
See, my mode was kinda lounged
Didn't know which-which way to turn
Flow was cool but I still felt burnt
Energy up, you can feel my surge
I'ma kill everything like this purge (ayy)'

Pretty relatable I'd imagine, especially now (at least for a little while)....

[Serenity]

[Malankazooie]

2:10 to see performance.

[Serenity]

[Serenity]

One for the Attack on Titan fans - a reworking of "Call your name", performed by my favourite Japanese vocalist R!N/Gemie.

[Morgoth]

Bo Burnham's Inside is now available on all the streaming services. It's still great!