denovocity

go bag and gtfo

2017-07-22T00:00:00+00:00

In light of increasingly frequent and worrying think pieces on irreversible climate change, buried radioactive materials, and as-of-yet frozen plagues, here is an apocalyptic playlist.

Note: I don’t recommend listening during an apocalyptic event. Pack a go bag and gtfo!

Highlights:

St Vincent - Paris is Burning

This song narrowly edged out “The Apocalypse Song” from the same album. Will news of distant falling cities come by telegram?* It’s not outside the realm of imagination.

Zola Jesus - Exhumed

So goth. So good. Says Danilova on the forthcoming album: “We’re all shackled to something – to life, to death, to bodies, to minds, to illness, to people, to birthright, to duty. Each of us born with a unique debt, and we have until we die to pay it back. Without this cost, what gives us the right to live? And moreover, what gives us the right to die? Are we really even free to choose?”

Sharon Van Etten - The End of the World

Sharon Van Etten covered this Skeeter Davis song for The Man in the High Castle.**

Everything Everything - Get to Heaven

Everything (everything) on this album could be categorized as apocalyptic. “Get to Heaven” describes the average person desensitized to everyday horrors - he passes bodies in the road and wonders where his car is parked. Judging from the number of Facebook friends who shared the infamous photo of a bloodied Syrian child sitting in an ambulance, and then promptly forgot about the conflict two weeks later, this future is not far off.***

Joanna Newsom - Sapokanikan

A tale of Ozymandian excess from Newsom’s fourth album, Divers. Come join me down the rabbit hole of unraveling Joanna Newsom cultural references on twitter @denovocity.

Bonus: Best Videos

Decemberists - Calamity Song

The Decemberists take on DFW’s Infinite Jest, complete with 30-ton tennis ball bombs.

Kate Bush - Experiment IV

Military scientists summon a freaky demon ghost who consumes them all - it’s the least likely path to an apocalypse, but still sp00ky.

*Here’s an excellent piece from The Guardian about the debt music owes to T.S. Eliot

**Speaking of apocalyptic sci-fi: if you haven’t caught Sharon Van Etten portraying a musical wunderkind in Netflix’s The OA, go watch it right now. Perhaps the movements will transport us to a colder planet?

***Overall, the impact of online social justice action proves a mixed bag.

playlists > poetry slams

2017-05-27T00:00:00+00:00

I took a few months hiatus from posting in order to join a writer’s workshop this spring and produce truly god-awful poetry. Seriously. I am a terrible poet. The workshop instructor was a former student of Derek Walcott, and very talented, so you would think that some type of talent osmosis had a chance of rubbing off on me, but sadly not.*

Here are a few (non-poetry) highlights from this spring’s playlist:

Sylvan Esso - Slack Jaw. Spoiler: I may be compensating for my poetic antics with a fixation on emotive songs about love and depression in this playlist. The talented Amelia Meath sat down with NPR recently, and described this song as “Everything is awesome — and I am still sad.”

Adult Mom - Be Your Own 3am. Another gorgeous, plaintive track from upstate natives Adult Mom. Make sure to catch them on tour this summer in support of their new album, Soft Spots.

P.S. Eliot - Tennessee. If you have a chance to see Allison and/or Katie Crutchfield live, GO. RUN. GET TICKETS RIGHT NOW. They are phenomenal, and their joint project P.S. Eliot is no different. This song is about stumbling through your mid-twenties.

Feist - The Wind. I love the return of Feist to the brand of folk that will never be used in an iTunes commercial. Drift into the wind of aimless melancholia with this song from her new album, Pleasure.

Mac Demarco - Still Beating. This Old Dog was a more serious album (and effort) than I had expected. The amount of emotion caught me by surprise. Maybe that is terrible to admit? Idk. For what it’s worth, Mac, I would love to work with you and your mom.

Kelly Lee Owens - Lucid. The deceptively simple arrangements from this Welsh electronica artist evoke shifting dreamscapes with each chord change.

The Sea Life - Red Eyes. The anxiety of young adulthood is adeptly summed up in a new release from DC locals The Sea Life. What better city exists in which to trade passions for a paycheck?

Listen here:

*Real life footage of me at a reading~

wear black all the time

2017-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

The Mountain Goats released a new LP this week, and while it can’t compete in my mind with the top-notch macabre ramblings of John Darnielle’s recent books, Goths is worth a few listens. The album stretches back to the 80’s deathrock scene in SoCal, with operatic synth, bass, and disco beats in lieu of guitars (that’s right, there are no guitars!).

I think this album takes time to resonate, and it needs to be taken as a whole and not on a song by song basis. At face value, a song like “Unicorn Tolerance” is a stark departure from the emotional upheaval of songs from The Sunset Tree or Tallahassee; despite the jazzy arrangement, a high tolerance for unicorns cannot compare to the frenetic tidings of divorce on “No Children”. Hidden underneath the upbeat chorus, Darnielle laments, “the thing I’ve been trying to beat to death, the soft creature that I used to be, the better animal I used to be”. The urgency is still there - this album is still hardcore, but it’s not that hardcore comparatively speaking.

Despite my lack of a common upbringing (unfortunately I was neither a teenage goth nor Long Beach resident), the picture TMGs paint of an aging goth rocker reminiscing about his time spent sweating eyeliner off in the 90-degree dry heat, listening to KROQ, hits close to home. He used to be paid in cocaine, now he wears black to the intervention. For all of the goth subculture obsession with mortality, there is no escaping it.

There is something poignant in thinking about what it means to be a lifelong fan: of goth culture, or of any other genre of music. How do these fans move through life as they age, and to what degree does their fandom influence their life choices? We arrange ourselves into tribes, especially in the music scene, and the intersection of your personal interests and corner of the fandom becomes a chicken and egg scenario. Flaming Lips fans* and recreational drug use, Neutral Milk Hotel fans and their propensity to recommend that you listen to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, LCD Soundsystem fans and…well, probably being a dad at this point. Anyone prone to over frequent contemplation of their own mortality will be drawn to Goths, and to wearing black all the time.

*I’m not talking shit about The Flaming Lips, Wayne Coyne is a veritable rockstar and also a seemingly nice human being.

unpopular opinion

2017-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

Okay, I’ll be the first to say it. I just don’t get Lana Del Rey*. I don’t understand the fetishization of 1960’s convertibles, or of a counterculture that ages her core demographic by forty years on the long side of things. It feels like every album is background music for rich kids with drug-fueled ennui. Can you be existentially upset with your life if it’s trust-funded?

Maybe it’s the nature of youth to amble towards these nostalgic feelings. We haven’t experienced the deeply upsetting parts of life yet (for the most part), so we sip cocktails, dressed to the nines, and slouch around our parent’s mansions in an effort to feel these things and arbitrarily label ourselves older or wiser. If someone takes a candid insta photo of us looking dolefully at our reflection in the perfectly teal waters of the 36,000 gallon pool, all the better.

Listen to Lana’s new song, ‘Love’, here:

*related: I also really dislike Coachella - not a surprise considering it’s the same audience of drunk narcissistic rich kids sporting flower crowns.

new website, still not urban outfitters

2017-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

Hey, this is a quick note to say we’ve migrated to a new website and posts will live here from now on. “Awesome”, you whisper to yourself, “now I can contribute shitpost-y comments in total anonymity!”. Yes, please comment, like, and subscribe!

Here’s a new playlist which, as always, doesn’t include the background tunes playing at urban outfitters.

Highlights include:

Saltland - I Only Wish This for You // A cello-centric song from Rebecca Yoon that mourns what could be.

Kyle Morton - Survivalist Fantasy // I can’t get this song out of my head, especially the imagery evoked by the last chorus. Check out Kyle’s band, Typhoon, if you’re into this.

Japandroids - North East South West // Near to the Wild Heart of Life is a much-needed, well, shot to the heart. Listening to this album makes me feel like I could be sweating in a mosh pit right now in some alternate universe, and the boundless enthusiasm of this band is SO. NEEDED. at the moment.

Cloud Nothings - Modern Act // Cloud Nothings also released an excellent new album this week.

Joni Mitchell - A Case Of You // to balance out all of the positivity (jk). I’ve found that wallowing in the occasional Joni Mitchell binge-listening session is an easily achievable method of self-care. Put your phone on silent, turn off the lights, and lie face down in your bed listening to Blue.

I’ll be adding new music throughout the month, so follow along on spotify!

bad tours and good tourists

2017-01-27T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been a huge fan of Allison Crutchfield since her response to that annoying pseudo-feminist Noisey article about being “the only girl in the band” (to save you from reading the piece: it’s a tour guide for coooool girls, who aren’t like ooooother girls*). Allison’s new album, Tourist in This Town, is exceptionally great, and not just because it’s a narrative-focused breakup album.**

The overall vibe of the album is one of reflection through untethered nostalgia, which certainly justifies the divine cover art; past events seem clearer when seen from the future, not in an immediate objectivity but in the appeal of being washed clean in the haloed light of nostalgia. No one wants to remember the bad parts of a relationship, and going through the process of measured evaluation is necessary in order to arrive at the detached place where there is room to grow and move on. Crutchfield walks us through the last chords of a relationship in ‘Broad Daylight’, the reminiscence guided by the pulsing drums in ‘Dean’s Room’. The veil is lifted in ‘Mile Away’, as we are forced to reckon with the aftermath grounded in reality, and Allison’s voice rises over the synth to lament “…your prized radical opinions, you assume you understand because your voice is the loudest”. In the end we end up in a stable, if mutually unrecognizable, place. Isn’t that the ideal?

from ‘Expatriate’:
I know people change
And we’re both moving on
I can’t be involved in this, you were my only family
Now you feel foreign in a way, an expatriate

Listen to Tourist in This Town: https://allisoncrutchfield.bandcamp.com/album/tourist-in-this-town

*sorry for the tangent, the misogynistic “cool girl” attitude really rustles my jimmies. Here is the article in question.

**more on my feelings about breakup albums. I feel the need to point out how gutsy it is to write and perform songs about a relationship. Most of us (myself included) would sooner die than expose ourselves to the world by sharing our written ramblings on botched intimacy, regardless of the impact any one person had on our development as individuals.

joining a cult for the right reasons

2017-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Zolita, a talented pop singer-songwriter, recently posted an emotionally fraught video for her song ‘Holy’. A group of girls stuck in (what seems to be) a patriarchal schoolhouse form a secret feminist cult. They meet in the woods after compulsory religious classes, wearing secret emblems and pledging fidelity to one another, as a love story develops between Zolita and a feminist comrade in arms at the same time. The ending may not come as a surprise, but it will shake you.

Watch here:

not an urban outfitter’s mixtape

2017-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

Hey y’all, I’m going to start posting spotify playlists with new recommendations on a semi-regular basis. My taste runs kind of but not too eclectic within the gamut of indie rock (but hopefully not in the ‘this is the mix playing at urban outfitters’ vein of eclectic).

Here are a few highlights from this season’s playlist:

Leif Vollebekk – a warm, soulful folk artist hailing from Ottawa (what is it with Canada churning out so many good folk artists lately?). His new album, Twin Solitude, comes out February 24th.

Cherry Glazerr – feminist, LA-based, guitar-focused dream pop*

Margaret Glaspy – serious Joni Mitchell vibez from this talented singer-songwriter

Diet Cig – +1 million to punk jammers like Diet Cig who are named for nothing but stand for everything.** I don’t need a man to hold my hand, either. Their first full-length album, Swear I’m Good At This drops on April 7th.

Torres – HOW did I not know about Torres until recently. Mackenzie Scott just fucking kills it with the vocals, songwriting, and stage presence.

Voxtrot – Okay I was going through some suuuuper old playlists, and this is one of my fave bands from ~2010. Voxtrot also broke up around then (typical), but their EPs remain solidly danceable indie pop.

*I love this quote on their bandcamp page:

When it comes to sweating the major shit, Cherry Glazerr live like they want to see others live. They don’t want to preach certain politics, they’d rather hold court for an open discourse. The subject of equality among the sexes, however, holds a special, unavoidable place for Clem, torchbearer for feminism in its raddest forms. That’s so key to her aesthetic that it’s the opening sentiment of Apocalipstick via the anthemic, disaster-laden ‘Told You I’d Be With The Guys’. The song documents Clem’s realization that she needed to establish solidarity with other women and stop being a “lone wolf”. “Sexism is so ingrained in me, I can often feel that men are the only ones who can help me socially, economically. The most important thing in my life is that I’ve realized I need to work for solidarity. That song’s both hopeful and dismal!” she laughs. Clem still feels the constant need to prove herself. “Women work from behind their oppression. In order to make good art you need to be emotionally free and sadly, not a lot of women are able to do that. That always puts a fire under my ass.”

**srs they just picked a random name for the band

better late than never

2017-01-12T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve come to realize that despite the general political shitfuckery of 2016, it was a pretty good year for music. Here are my top 25 songs for the year in no particular order:

Julien Baker – Rejoice

Parquet Courts – Dust

Lucy Dacus – I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore

Hamilton Leithauser + Rostram – A 1000 Times

Daughter – Doing The Right Thing

Julianna Barwick – Nebula

Car Seat Headrest – Vincent

Holly Miranda – Blood Bank (cover)

Mogwai – Are You a Dancer?

Cymbals Eat Guitars – 4th of July, Philadephia

Frightened Rabbit – Get Out

Japandroids – Near To The Wild Heart Of Life

Beach Slang – Wasted Daze of Youth

Mitski – Your Best American Girl

The Orwells – They Put a Body in the Bayou

Preoccupations – Anxiety

Margaret Glaspy – Emotions and Math

Bat For Lashes – Joe’s Dream

Angel Olsen – Give It Up

Bleached – Wednesday Night Melody

Dinosaur Jr. – Be a Part

Japanese Breakfast – Everybody Wants To Love You

Cass McCombs – Bum Bum Bum

The Tallest Man on Earth – Rivers

Leonard Cohen – You Want It Darker

drinks on me

2017-01-11T00:00:00+00:00

Laura Marling released a new song from her upcoming album, Semper Femina, and I could not be more excited for the March release. Says Marling: “I started out writing Semper Femina as if a man was writing about a woman, and then I thought, ‘It’s not a man, it’s me. I don’t need to pretend it’s a man to justify the intimacy, or the way I’m looking and feeling about women. It’s me looking specifically at women and feeling great empathy towards them, and by proxy, towards myself’.”

One of the best things about Marling’s songwriting is the ability to feel seen, and to see yourself in her songs – especially when other artists so rarely acknowledge women and their experiences beyond the surface level. THANK YOU, Laura, for illuminating this special brand of sexism masquerading as romance that is so prevalent…well, everywhere, and not just in the music scene*. Let’s pour one out for all the women who relate.

From “Wild Fire”:

You always say you love me most
But I don’t know I’m being seen
Maybe someday when God takes me away
I’ll understand what the fuck that means

Listen:

+ An all-time favorite, My Manic and I:

*Jessica Hopper had an amazing take on objectification in the emo scene.