Art for @asimp4bee of my human Bumble Bee and their cute tf oc Mea. No one question why he has a giant saxophone

Dancing Lessons With the Radio Demon

Content: Alastor x GN!Reader, no use of y/n, size difference mentions, reader is sleepy, fluff

Word count: 2,076

No trigger warnings

The bed creaks slightly as you turn and wiggle on it, trying to get into a comfortable spot. Unfortunately, despite the pure exhaustion from your day of running errands for the hotel and essentially being the gofer, your brain refuses to allow you to slip into sweet unconsciousness. It has now gotten to that lovely part of restlessness where no matter how you lay, no matter how long you stare at your phone to distract yourself, you cannot get comfortable. At this point there is nothing you can think of but to get up and find something to do and hope that something is enough to help your brain calm down. You don’t care if you fall asleep walking down the stairs as long as you get a wink.

You wrap your blanket around yourself before leaving the bed, not willing to part with it. Once up and walking you felt like one of those edited cat memes with those dumb relatable captions. One of the good things from life that still made it down into Hell. Cats look different down here and look slightly terrifying with their shark-like 4-way opening mouths, but they’re cats nonetheless.

Once in the hall, you somehow feel like you’re stomping and floating at the same time. Not awake enough to be fully aware, but aware enough of how your walking is the only noise being made. At least in the part of the hotel you reside in. As you meander around and approach the grand staircase, you hear the faint sounds of piano and sax playing a slow jazzy tune. Right then you were reminded that there would be only one other person awake at this hour. A person a little too chipper for the state you were in, but at least it would be company.

You recalled how when you were alive people would say that sometimes it would be hard to sleep because your brain feels like it’s in danger and having someone there or having a stuffed animal can help. Things that trick your brain into thinking you’re protected. Would you feel safe around this ever smiling demon? Would the same logic even carry over now that you’re a demon? Well, you’re going to find out.

As you wander up the hotel floors the song becomes louder and the air seems to feel thicker. It’s not as if it’s never been ominous to visit Alastor’s room before, after all you never know what you’ll open his door to see him doing. There’s always that little fear at the back of your head telling you that you know better than to walk right into a lion’s den like this. The feeling that just walking into his room is asking for a contract you’ll regret later but can’t refuse in the moment.

Once you reach his door, everything comes to a halt. Your walking, his music, and even time, seemingly. Did he know you were standing here? Just outside his door? Did you make a noise you didn’t hear but he did? That wouldn’t be unusual for you. Maybe he was simply getting ready to play a different record. ‘Perhaps now is the time to interrupt, then.’

You softly knock on his door and almost immediately the door swings open which causes you to jump back a little in surprise. He looms over you, crimson eyes peering down over a practically glowing sharp grin. You stare up at him, a shy smile slowly creeping onto your face. “Why, good evening! To what do I owe the pleasure of such a late visit?” Alastor greets.

You stutter a bit as you answer. “Ah, good evening! I just couldn’t sleep and I thought that, uh, I should come say hi!”

“Well, this is a very nice visit! I don't get many late-night callers these days; make yourself at home!” He opens his door wider and gestures with a grand swish of his arm for you to come inside.

And you do. As you walk in you glance around his room, wondering what he was up to while listening to his music. Some of his furniture was moved closer to the walls and a fire blazed in his fireplace, growing ever bigger as a breeze came in from the forest half of his room. ‘Huh, didn’t know that there was weather in here. Noted and hoping it never rains.’ With the warmth of the fireplace it feels unnecessary to have a blanket on so you placed it on one of the couches that is pushed to the side.

“I didn’t have much to do tonight so I resorted to getting into the swing of dancing to pass the time.” The red head explains as he made his way to an awaiting record player that looked to have seen better days, but from what you heard on your way here, it did it’s job much better than appearance would lead you to believe. “Would you care to join me, my dear?”

“Join you? Oh, I don’t really know how to-”

“I’m sure you’ll pick it right up! It does get so boring singing and dancing by oneself, and you seem like you need something to pass the time, yourself.” He looks over his shoulder at you, record in hand. His usual big grin had become more of a smirk, as if he knew about your tired wondering.

You nod at him, figuring he just wasn’t going to take a ‘no’ or an ‘I’d rather watch you dance and hang out on your couch’. You step over to the record player and pick up the sleeve the demon got the record out of. Judging by the title, it seemed to be a collection of old hits from the 30’s. None of which you were familiar with. There is a respect that comes with older music since more modern music couldn’t exist without it, however older music just tends to be a bit too slow for your liking. Perhaps you’ve been listening to the wrong songs though, since Alastor doesn’t entirely seem to be the type to enjoy slow music either. At least not on boring nights with guests like tonight.

As you set the sleeve back down where you found it, music started playing from the record player. A bit distorted at first but sounding just as clear and blaring as it was earlier once it had a second to do its thing. A much more energetic tune than earlier begins to play, confirming your earlier suspicions. Alastor leads you to the center of the room where it’s the clearest and stands next to you, offering his hand for you to hold. It was when you comply and take his hand in yours you begin to remember the sheer difference in size between you two. His clawed hand easily swallowed yours and at this closer proximity than normal it felt like he was a tower to you being a cottage.

“Now, all we’re gonna start with is moving side to side like this.” He shifts his weight from foot to foot, keeping his hips loose and going with the motion. You stare for a moment before awkwardly (at least it felt awkward) mimicking the action. “Use the same foot I’m using on my count. 1, 2, 3, 4.” He kept count until you got it and were able to keep up. Simple enough. “Now we’re going to do the same, but vertical. Slightly more tricky, try not to tie your legs together, dear. Outside foot goes back.” It was trickier, and you did lose balance in the beginning, but luckily Alastor didn’t entirely seem to mind it. You guess it would be less bothersome to someone who could lift you with their pinky. You think you got it down and it seems that Alastor thought so too when he directs, “Now we’ll combine them. Bring your outside foot back up, there you go, and rock on your outside foot, inside foot, outside foot rocks back, then rock back to the front foot.”

As soon as you got that down Alastor was off, adding an extra tapping step, throwing in a few kicks for himself, even switching the position so you were holding hands in front of each other. Once in front of the other you could swear that Alastor is staring a bit too intensely. It’s like he is attempting to peer further into your being and get a better read on your soul. What is more jarring is you could swear his eyes flicker to your lips and stay there, but your tired brain isn’t able to confirm for sure that’s what you saw. Honestly, you had no idea what was going on. Trying to focus hard on his steps and mimic and predict them was difficult, especially in your half awake brain. Considering he kept going you figured you were somehow keeping up well enough; you haven’t been looking at his face much, trying to watch his feet.

Your focus retreats entirely once you hear him say something, but as you look up at him you are suddenly stumbling right into a twirl and then into the deer demons’ chest; one clawed hand now on your waist and the other moving your hand to his padded shoulder. Your nose suddenly filled with a pine and metallic smell and your face so close to the crimson fabric of his clothes, it took a second before you realized your feet had been dragged for a second before the both of you weren’t moving.

“I did try to tell you I was going to pull you in, my dear.” His radio filtered voice brought you fully back. You find your footing again and look hesitantly up at his ever grinning face. Alastor is leaning over you, face coming closer until his sharp teeth become a little too close. Just inches from your own lips.

“Sorry.” One of your feet tries to go back so you would be able to create a bit of distance so you could see him properly, but his hand on your waist keeps you solid against him. You instead opt to move your hand from his shoulder to his lapel to keep your stability. ‘Did he just freeze for a second?’

The demons’ grin widens impossibly more, eyes flashing with an unknown emotion. “No need to apologize, my sleepy friend. I’ve found your company to be quite pleasant on this eventful night. Perhaps it’s time to bring this evening to an end.” He suggests. The hand that is still holding yours let’s go and lands on top of yours on his lapel. “ You caught onto the steps very quickly. You do enjoy keeping me on my toes.”

“Thank you.” You reply a bit flatly, your vision starting to unfocus as you stare at your joined hands. You both were just dancing so it makes sense, but somehow the warmth was still causing cogs in your mind to stutter. As if you can’t believe this as anything but a dream. “I think it’s time I head back to my room. I think I’m at the point where I could go into a coma for the next few days.”

He chuckled a bit to himself. “I see that. You look like you’re going to collapse as soon as I let go of you. Tell you what, I’ll send you back to your room if you agree to come back for lessons after supper tomorrow night. A time when you should be more awake. I am so curious to see how you fare fully awake.” You nod your head numbly, just wanting to allow sleep to take you. “Splendid! Have a lovely rest, dear.”

As he snaps the fingers on his free hand, you could feel the floor disappear under you. Before you could drop, Alastor allows you to essentially float for a second while he lifts your hand he had been covering and kisses the back of it. Next thing you know you fall into inky blackness before feeling the familiar softness of your bed. As sleep begins to over take you, you think back upon those final moments and let them sink in. ‘Oh shit.’ The radio demon just kissed the back of your hand. Not to mention, he also now has one of your blankets. Your eyes snap open, and suddenly you didn’t feel tired anymore. ‘God fucking damn it, Alastor.’

How far into modern music do you think Alastor would go? I can't imagine him listening to mondern pop, but maybe he would at least give a shot to things in the 50/60?? I just can't imagine him not having so many music opinions, all of them a bit out of date. Do you think that he thinks "queen" were promising upstarts? He loves music and, though not his type, wouldn't he at least listen to a bit¿?

I do think Alastor actually kept up with music for a while after his death—and with tech too, at least the tech that interested him. In life, he was on the cutting edge—he didn't just use the newest, hottest technology, he worked with it, he was a pioneer in a completely new field of media and so deeply enmeshed in the industry that it formed the basis of his soul's identity in death. Going from "I'm so cutting edge you'll bleed if you touch me" to "if it wasn't invented before the 26th of December in 1933 at 3:12 p.m. I will hiss like a vampire exposed to sunlight if you try to make me use it" is a harsh change, and I don’t buy it. It makes more sense if we assume there must have been a transition period during which he lost his enthusiasm for keeping up with the latest and greatest and slowly withdrew into the past.

Same goes for music. When he first arrived, he probably soaked up new music like a sponge. What about beloved musicians who had died too young—how many of them had ended up in Hell, and had they produced new music since they died? What strange mutations of jazz were cropping up down here where people who were familiar with the earliest iterations of the genre were trickling in and it had evolved and progressed in near isolation from the latest developments in the living world? Are there medieval bards playing covers of "Royal Garden Blues" on the hurdy-gurdy? Who else has played new versions of songs he knows? Who does he get in contact with in the next few years to ensure he gets a steady supply of new songs by his favorite artists still in the living world, either in the form of smuggled-in phonograph records or new arrivals who learned the songs and can now share them in Hell? What songs that have been forgotten for centuries can he learn? What musical genres are unique to Hellish culture? Where are all the artists and styles and genres he's interested in going next?! He's got to find out!

I've got two different headcanons for when that changed.

In the fic verse I'm writing, due to Circumstances, Alastor spent roughly all of the 70s being a depressed lump and the 80s in the Cannibal Colony. Those years where he withdrew from the world are when he stops keeping up with both technology and music. By the time he starts trying to engage with broader Hellish culture again, it’s been a couple of decades, everything on the radio sounds different and weird, and rather than trying to catch up he just kinda defaults back to what he’s used to, which peters out in the mid-60s.

In less-fic-verse more-canon headcanons, I think it was a gradual tapering off over the same time period. I’m restraining myself from going all The Psychology Of How Humans Develop Their Tastes In Music, but the short version is that, VERY BROADLY, people’s tastes tend to develop & solidify in adolescence/young adulthood—anything that came before then is old-fashioned and boring and anything that comes after that is weird and sounds like noise. Alastor, who’s All About Music, can keep up with new trends longer, but slowly the newest hottest sound will evolve out of what he’s able to hear as Good Music. Just, over the years, there will be fewer and fewer new musicians that are playing in a way that he likes. I figure it’ll be about the 70s before all the popular music makes him go “eh, they don’t make it like they used to,” and from there he sticks with what sounds good to him.

Now, in either one of these scenarios, I think there’s still some modern music that he’ll enjoy, but for the most part it’s going to be music that sounds closer to what he’s familiar with. So like, swing revival as a genre. Generic lounge jazz would bore him, and so would jazz of the “pushing so hard on the boundaries of music that you have to be neck-deep in the last 60 years of jazz history just to understand what they’re doing” variety, but modern big band-style jazz would appeal. He might listen to some modern ska when it swings more toward the “big brass sections” side of things rather than the “punk rock” side of things. He’d dislike electro swing that’s like “chops up songs he heard in the 30s and sets them over a drum machine” but he’d like electro swing that’s like “composes original modern swing that’s good enough to make up for the fact that there’s a synthesizer in the background.” Vintage style covers of modern songs would appeal to him, and no I’m not talking about “Postmodern Jukebox” as if they’re the only folks on the planet who’ve ever done that, I’m talking about “Alastor goes to a jazz club twice a month to join jam sessions and sometimes the musicians there go ‘hey we heard this great new song on the radio, listen to this’ *two demons play Uptown Funk on a sax and a piano.*”

And I think he’d put in an effort for musical theater no matter WHAT genre it’s in. We see him hear Charlie’s song once and immediately perform a cover of it, and Charlie’s song is definitely way outside of the kinds of genres he’d be inclined to listen to, except that it’s musical theater style. So—would Alastor listen to industrial rock? No. Would he watch and enjoy Repo! The Genetic Opera? Hell yeah. Would Alastor listen to hip hop? No. Would he watch and enjoy Hamilton? Hell yeah.

Musical theater might be the best way to ease him into modern music tbh. Get him into a few musicals he likes in spite of the modern sound and use them as a stepping stone to branch out to similar-sounding modern music.

As for Queen—honestly I don’t think he’d think about Queen. Almost half a dozen folks now have asked me specifically about that—but what about Queen tho, do you think he’d at least think Queen is good?—and like I just don’t think he’d care lmfao. Why is Queen always the first and only band people wanna know his opinion of? He’d like that the music video for “Radio Gaga” uses clips from a movie he saw while he was alive, and the lyrics would secretly make him a little emotional, but he’d dislike the song itself because they couldn’t even be assed to have a real human play the drums; and for their other songs he’d be like “yeah, that’s music.”

Hello I finished my July playlist a week ago but when I went to post it tumblr was down, and then I just plumb forgot! Anyway, here it is - properly sequenced this time for a very special listening experience that seamlessly delivers you from disco heaven to black metal hell and everything in between. Also I’m thinking of making these playlists a tinyletter that people can subscribe to that comes out on an actual schedule, rather than me posting them at a random time weeks after they’re finished. Is that something you’d be interested in? Who knows. Check back next month! Anyway, here goes:

listen here

Stay Away From Me - The Sylvers: You know when you’re listening to a song and the sample is super hot but the rest is just ok, so you think to yourself well why don’t I just listen to the original instead? That’s what happened to me with Final Form by Sampa The Great. That song is good but it’s also kind of not doing enough to convince me not to just listen to this super hit by The Sylvers instead. A fun thing with this song is to try to count how many instruments you can hear because it is surprisingly densely arranged for some reason. There’s a xylophone back there going off if you listen.

Sizzlin’ Hot - Paradise: The same thing happened with this song and Sizzlin’ by Daphni. I think they were going for an Armand Van Helden style distillation of the pure essence of the song, sampling the hookiest part and speeding it up and thickening up all the percussion and all that, which can work amazingly but for me it just made me want to hear the original and so I have been all month. What’s so good about being alive now is that in most cases it’s just as easy to access music from 2019 as it is to access music from 1981 where an original copy is apparently going for $1000 on discogs. Every day I thank god for inventing mp3s and putting them on the ark.

Manaos (Canzone) - Fabio Frizzi and Crossbow: I forget how I came across this, I was going through random Fabio Frizzi soundtracks for some reason. I just love the concept of a disco song about escaping from vicious assailants. Funkily singing ‘God help us, if they catch us we all are gonna die.’ as spears fly past you.

Holding On - Julio Bashmore: I think this is one of my favourite pieces of sampling ever. The way the vocals in the background are cut they don’t even sound like vocals. They just a strange contextless textural sound that works so well before eventually revealing itself as vocals in the run before the drop. It’s just so good.

Weight Watchers - Parallel Dance Ensemble: First of all I love this disgusting bass sound. It sounds like two different indistinct bass lines playing at the same time and they both drowned. I’m also mounting a change.org petition to bring back this kind of extremely naff Tone Loc flow, it rocks.

Dance - ESG: I found this incredible band while I was looking for the rapper ESG and I’m so glad I did. Their song UFO is one of those songs that’s been sampled so many times you think of it as more of a sound effect than a song, like it comes preloaded on a drum machine everyone has or something, but it’s also a good template for ESG’s sound. Every ESG song I’ve heard so far goes like this: a straightforward beat that doesn’t change for the whole song, a functional bassline that doesn’t change for the whole song, and good old fashioned simple lyrics about dancing and having a good time that sound more like schoolyard clapping games than anything. It doesn’t sound like much but over the course of an album it adds up to this incredible sort of hypnotic post-punk funk that I cannot get enough of. It sounds like kids who have 1 idea making a whole album out of it because that’s exactly what it is and it’s great!

Crave You - Flight Facilities: I love how elementally simple this song is. The vocals are hypnotising enough so everything else just quietly supports it. The only part that stands out is the thick bass synth halfway through which makes the short sax solo at the and all the sweeter, a tiny little cherry on top.

You - Delta 5: Get a load of this band bio: “Initially inspired by the success of local heroes The Mekons and Gang Of Four, Leeds, England’s Delta 5 later emerged as one of the key figures of the feminist new wave. Formed in 1979 by vocalist/guitarist Julz Sale, fretless bassist Ros Allen and bassist Bethan Peters.” Just going to gloss over them having TWO bass players before they even have a drummer?? Absolutely amazing. I love this song because it’s such a specific, targeted fury. Imagine being the loser at your girlfriend’s gig when she launched into this one for the first time. ‘who’s got homebrew with lots of sediment?’ oh fuck that’s me ‘who took me to the Windham for a big night out?’ oh fuck that’s me ‘I found out about you’ oh FUCK

Siren - Gong Gong Gong: I love the way the bass works in this, just looping and layering different variations of this noisy, stationary riff on top of itself - steadfastly staying in the exact same place the whole song and growing in power the whole time as it sits in its stubbornness.

Changes - Antonio Williams and Kerry McCoy: This came up on my Discover Weekly and I completely fell in love with it, then I realised it’s Antwan and Kerry McCoy from Deafheaven which is extremely intriguing collaboration and fell in love even more. The vocals are so good. The pure broken-hearted anguish, and the super blunt delivery that progresses to straight up yelling by the end of it combined with the Radio Dept type instrumentation is just so powerful. This feels like it’s a song that could really be a life-changing piece of catharsis for everyone in a 5k radius done live.

Fuck A War - Geto Boys: Absolutely in love with the conceit of this song: rapping a whole song down the line to the army drafter. The incredible part being of course that Bushwick Bill would be able to dodge any draft easily, being as he was both a dwarf and blind in one eye.

God Make Me Funky - The Headhunters: I found a lot of great songs going through the samples list for We Can’t Be Stopped by Geto Boys and this is one of them. I have so much love for any song that takes its time like this: nearly two minutes to set the scene and somehow taking deadly seriously the very funny lyrical idea of desperately praying to god to PLEASE make you funky.  The way this song escalates is also amazing, moving from a hot groove that sits in place to a full-on saxophone meltdown that feels like god placing his finger on your forehead and saying ‘so you want to be funky, do you?’ in a scary voice.

Use Me - Bill Withers: Fortunately and unfortunately, because of how this song was in Anchorman and because I’ve seen Anchorman one million times I can’t listen to it without hearing the noise Ron Burgundy makes when he sees Veronica in the first few seconds. Anyway, this song is so horny. The part where he has to explain to his bro how good this shit is? Doing all kinds of weird dom shit like ‘getting him in a crowd of high class people and then acting real rude to him?’ Weird. And the escalation into the claps at BABY! is amazing, he’s just going off powered by horniness and god bless him for it.

America! I’m For The Birds - Nicolas Jaar: Unbelievably, the deluxe edition of Sirens is possibly superior to the original. It’s a whole new tracklist, new songs interspersed throughout rather than the usual ‘three new songs at the end’ and it really gives it a whole new feel. This song is my favourite of the new ones and it’s a song I had in my head for a solid week. A perfect song to sing to yourself because the lyrics are so indistinct that you just end up mumbling pleasantly exactly like he is.

Cable Guy - Tierra Whack: I’m finally catching up on Tierra Whack and everyone’s right: she rocks. The sheer restraint in these songs is amazing, they just get in and out with only the good parts and no bullshit. It reminds me a lot of To The Innocent by Thingy which is one of my favourite albums for the same reason - the economy of the songwriting just serves to amplify the feeling of it. They both have this total irreverence in the lyricism where the songs are kind of about nothing but they’re so short and heartfelt that you dig for the feeling underneath it.

No Drug Like Me - Carly Rae Jepsen: I’ve previously written that what I love the most about the Carly Rae Jepsen is how horny it is and I’d like to double down on that sentiment here. I love how slow this song is, it’s the perfect tempo between danceable and ‘fucking’.

Con Calma (Remix) - Daddy Yankee, Katy Perry and Snow: I’ve been on a european holiday for most of this month and I would like to report that across Spain, Portugal, Czech Republic, France and Germany this is the absolute song of the summer. It is completely inescapable and personally I can’t get enough. Informer is one of the greatest and strangest one hit wonders of all time (it’s also canada’s highest selling reggae song of all time and Snow is thusly named because he’s white) and I’m psyched to hear it reworked by Daddy Yankee like this. Katy Perry being on the crossover attempt remix isn’t a good sign for her new album but she kills it so maybe that’s all that matters.

Chase The Devil - Max Romeo and The Upsetters: Here’s the other half of my short lived dub phase from the end of last month. This is a good example also of how completely beguiling lyrics can still be so effective. I have no idea what he means by putting on an iron shirt but it rhymes and he’s saying it with conviction so I’m nodding!

Glass - Bat For Lashes: The new Bat For Lashes songs have got me revisiting Two Suns which is an all time great five star album and this is my favourite song from it. Maybe the most powerful opening track of all time, it does as much worldbuilding as most fantasy novels do in 1000 pages. In fact almost every line in this is a viable fantasy novel title. A Thousand Crystal Towers. The Hand Of The Watchmen. A Knight In Crystal Armour. A Cape Of Rainbow. The way she sings ‘to be made of glass’ is.. incredible. I love Natasha Khan and I cannot wait to see what she does next.

Unsquare Dance - Paddy Milner: In searching spotify for other interpretations of Unsquare Dance after getting obsessed with it last month I came across this absolutely bonkers version. It’s maniacal, it feels like you would be physically and mentally drained by the end playing it because I am just listening to it. Need a little lie down.

Gimme Some Skin, My Friend - The Andrews Sisters: My girlfriend has turned me onto The Andrews Sisters lesser known hits recently and this is the best one: a song from when high fives were a novelty that those wacky blacks over in Harlem town were inventing. Extremely odd but an undeniable banger. The thing about The Andrews Sisters is one of them was an absolute force of nature as a performer and the other two were complete wet blankets and it’s kind of funny they were together as a group for their whole career because anyone with eyes can see where the real star is. The way she sings ‘baby’ at 1:25, and that whole run really, is absolutely amazing and so much better than this extremely dumb song deserves.

Kids On The Run - The Tallest Man On Earth: The piano sound alone in this is just so beautiful. This song could be about anything at all and it would still make me cry, and luckily for me: it basically is!

King Of Spain - The Tallest Man On Earth: Good song I had in my head the whole time I was in Spain. It’s incredible that his voice is so good. It feels like if it was even the tiniest bit different, slightly rougher or tinnier he would be completely hilariously unlistenable but instead he’s amazing. Plus the fact that he leans into it with the purposefully lo-fi trebly production is just so confident you can’t help but love it.

Romeo And Juliet - The Indigo Girls: A great cover I wasn’t aware of before that I heard in this great documentary Wildwood I was watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOWxnh012J0. The way she absolutely flies off the handle and nearly tears the song down around her near the last chorus is pure power and I love people who can do that in an acoustic song without it feeling overblown, just getting totally swept up in it and taking everyone along with you.

On The Bus Mall - The Decemberists: Definitely the number one song about gay teenage prostitutes who love each other and are optimistic against the odds.  

White Fire - Angel Olsen: This song feels like a piece of dark magic. It feels like a 4am moment of clarity, speaking everything true in a five minute monotone and then instantly falling back to sleep with only a dim memory in the morning.  

Glass Eyes -JW Ridley: JW Ridley is a genius and I cannot wait to see what he does with an album. Every song he puts out seems to be better than his last. The central melody in this is just beautiful, and the whole thing has so much space in it it feels so much longer than 3 minutes. It’s like a song you can live in.

Nullarbor - Floodlights: I love how rough this song is, and driving across australia because you’ve got nothing else going on and want to rattle your own cage is a Huge mood.

Made Too Pretty (Audiotree Live Version) - As Cities Burn: I’m so glad As Cities Burn are back, because it means they get to do good shit like this Audiotree session where they absolutely killed it.

Dirty Hearts - Dallas Crane: I think I’ve put this on a playlist before for exactly the same reason: it’s a song I wake up with in my head fairly often for some reason and it’s a very fun slice of pub rock that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

Ruin This Smile - The Number 12 Looks Like You: Did you know The Number 12 Looks Like You have reformed after 10 years away and haven’t missed a step at all?? I’m salivating. This song is as good as anything they’ve put out before, and feels like it fits somewhere between Mongrel and Worse Than Alone which is fantastic news for me who always loved those a lot more than their earlier more explicitly grindcore stuff.

Nutrient Painting - Yellow Eyes: A special thanks to my friend and yours Powerburial for linking this song on his twitter. There’s something about the guitars in this song, in almost every riff, where it sounds like they’re playing backwards somehow. Like the structure of the melodies is backwards. It doesn’t make sense but that’s what it sounds like to me and it’s very disconcerting.

Jejune Stars - Bright Eyes: I think this an underrated Conor Oberst era, when he became a sort of buddhist for a while and wasn’t sad anymore but just observed earth from outer space instead. I also love the instrumentation of this song, Bright Eyes and blast beats a match made in heaven. Also the strange sample about pom’granite at the end is one of my favourite things ever. A very strange album to retire the Bright Eyes name on but a very good one too.

At The Bar - Dirty Three: When I was overseas I was thinking about cultural music, and Australia’s place in the world and things like that. I ended up thinking about Dirty Three who I think along with The Drones make the most distinctly Australian sounding music to me. Just the vastness they manage to conjure from such straightforward barebones instrumentation is incredible.

listen here

That video where it was "Imagine Gladio and Iggy at 2 am stopping for gas and dancing" was the cutest thing? Could you please use ur amazing writing skills to make a small short fic about that?? ❤❤❤

[I had this ready,  the introduction comments included, since Monday but, y'know, life got in the way.¯\_(ツ)_/¯  Posting this because I have to come back to my askbox sooner or later, right? YOSHI!]

Okay, so.

This was an obscenely LONG time in my ask. Literal months. This is the oldest entry I have.

I sincerely apologize for the wait, dear anon. This wasn’t as difficult to answer, so I really offer no excuses. :’(

I hope from the bottom of my heart that you’re still around, dear anon, and that you see that I answered. Late, but I did! And if you are, there’s nothing I want more but for you particularly to enjoy of it.  ❤

1. The video dear anon talks about was very sadly taken down; it was my visual reference, and watching it with Gladio and Iggy in mind was incredibly adorable, far beyond anything that could be written. I’m sorry I took so long even the video was took down :’(  Here’s the link of my reblog, anyway.

2. The idea wasn’t mine; I was tagged and given the idea by @penguinqueen102301​ (their tags included)

3. “ ur amazing writing skills “ OIAJSDJSAOPJDAONF DFIODAJDOSI AHDASOD you anon have a virtual cookie AND ALL MY LOVE, thank you SO MUCH for such cute words!!  (*ﾉ▽ﾉ) ♡

Thank you for this incredible, delightful prompt that had me laughing and smiling and grinning the entire time :)

Ignis and Gladio dancing at a gast station at 2 a.m.

Because they’re adorable dorks.

It was very late at night by that point, but the car was running too short on gasoline.

There was no way in the world that Ignis would return Lord Amicitia’s car with an empty tank; his boyfriend’s dad kept him on a very positive view, and Ignis did not want to disappoint him. It was enough with taking Gladiolus back home at two in the morning (“I know it’s normal, but I still feel terrible each time. Yes, I know he knows and that we’ve got permission and that we want to stay out as late, but I still feel terrible each time. I don’t know, Gladiolus, stop questioning me!”), so to come back smelling of alcohol (not drunk, but how could Lord Amicitia know that?), probably disheveled, and on top of that with the car’s tank empty? Thanks, no, Ignis was a fine gentleman and an even better son-in-law, he was going to be properly grateful with Lord Amicitia for the support.

So, as late at night, with the streets empty like a ghost land, Ignis parked at the gas station. Perhaps it had been the silence of the night, or that they had already poured all their energy and words back in the ramen stall, or the club, or the park, but both of them had stayed quiet during the ride. They required of no words to enjoy of each other’s presence; they did not need to interact to let their bond grow. If anything, being as quiet was only more beautiful, for it meant they had enjoyed their date to its limit, and hence had nothing more to say. It was greatly enjoyable, driving in absolute silence.

Once parked, Gladio took his hand, kissed its back, and whispered “I’ve got this, babe”, before exiting the car and taking the task of filling the tank. Ignis, by nature, quickly glanced at the rest of the gas station. It was deserted.

By mere curiosity, maybe to occupy himself while the tank was getting filled, Ignis turned the radio on. The broadcaster only said a couple words, before music came on.

“Oooh…” Gladio let out long along a hiss. “That’s my jam.”

Ignis grinned and laughed lowly; he knew as soon as the first beat had sounded how Gladio would react. The man had at least 30 different “my jam”s, and “Maneater” was definitely one of them. Gladio could be in a heated argument, but as soon as the first beat came on, he could stop to dance.

What Ignis did not expect was for Gladio to suddenly start dancing right there, in the gas station.

The adviser laughed and shook slightly the head, amused at Gladio’s silly movements next to the gas dispenser. To make his man happier, Ignis raised the volume. Gladio again let a hissed ‘Ooow’, and his silly dancing movements only increased.

Ignis thought his boyfriend would dance in his place.

But before he could notice, Gladio had moved, by dancing, with silly steps of tiptoe, sole, tiptoe, sole, and the arms moving as if exaggerating a walking move, to the literal middle of the station like it was a stage.

Ignis looked at him with wide eyes and an equally big smile, both amused and in surprise.

“Gladio, what are you d-” Ignis paused to laugh when Gladio turned to look at him, hips moving to a side, back to their place, and back to the side, while the man’s shoulders moved according to the beat. “Gladio, that’s embarrassing!”

“Ain’t no one here, sweetass” Gladio said while his body continued moving. Gladio turned over himself with more dancing according to the beat, saying as he did, “louder, DJ!”

Ignis only laughed, put a hand to his forehead as if to hide himself from the invisible audience, but turned the volume up yet again. He heard Gladio howl lowly with pleasure, focused in just dancing. He had grace, even for subtle pop dancing as that.

Ignis looked at him with an amused grin again. Gladio danced alone, but he timed and, right as the sax gave its first long note, Gladio pointed at him. With each of the following notes, timing on each of them, Gladio gestured for Ignis to approach and join him. At first Ignis just laughed at the ridiculously accurate timing. Gladio, playfully, gestured towards him again with the next of the sax notes.

Ignis really did not hesitate much.

Right as the singing voice came in with an emphasis beat, Ignis was closing the door and jumping into the scene right in front of Gladio in one movement. With the new, more lively beat, and now together, both started dancing with more emphasis; right shoulder out, then the left one, over and over, while their feet moved side to side, both doing a little circle together, dancing to each other, and hands moving from place to place. An arm went up here, another went to a side. Heads turned at times too, the entire body following the soft rock playing on the radio.

When the next verse hit, Gladio did backplay to it, movements growing a little more ridiculous. Ignis laughed lowly in response, but continued dancing with him, matching up with the energy. At some point, Gladio got closer, at which Ignis replied by moving backwards away of him, before Ignis did as Gladio and Gladio did as him previously. Both laughed, and then Gladio raised a knee and kicked to the sides, arms up. Motivated out of his shyness, and following the example, Ignis threw a leg to the side twice, as if it was a contest on who could look sillier.

Gladio jumped closer to him when the chorus hit, and put the hands to Ignis’ waist. Ignis didn’t hold him back, only continued dancing, none their feet stopping, following each beat of the background, while the rest of the body did as the melody. Gladio took one of his hands, at which Ignis replied by moving back fast, being stopped only by the grip of their hands, and returned by twirling. Gladio let go and both continued dancing in front of each other.

“Oh, oh, here she comes” both sang while making slightly silly faces, and let the music go as they laughed again.

“She’s a maneater!” Gladio sung alone, closing the eyes, and looking way too into it. Ignis only laughed, and thanked the astrals at least it had not been a disco hit what had come on in the radio, or they would really be offering a show to the security cameras.

Then, needing just once glance to suggest it and one to understand, they switched to dancing in an almost perfect imitation of some iconic dance scene from a movie, and their dance turned absolutely ridiculous by that point, Ignis swinging the hips too much, Gladio’s arms coming and going. The exaggerated movements with stiff grace (but still grace) had them growing more and more silly and energetic with each beat, yet, both tried to do their best impression of serious faces and direct eye contact. While their exaggerated dance movements continued, flashes of contained smiles came here and there, both with obvious struggles to not laugh. At some point, Ignis lost when they started moving the arms as if swimming, and stopped dancing for a moment to step away and laugh loudly, if shortly. Gladio laughed too, but continued dancing and brought Ignis back to join him again, the latter trying to keep composure.

The two returned to stand together, continued dancing for a while, as if in some competition of who could look the dumbest. The sax solo came in, and arms continued to come and go, feet skipping and stepping, hips twirling. They held hands and continued like that, dancing according to what they could do without letting go of each other. Needing no words and only glances and little gestures, Gladio took both of Ignis’ wrists, and the adviser let himself fall and slip on the floor between the Shield’s legs, only to be brought back up; Gladio let go of one of his hands, Ignis twirled over himself once, then twirled back, moved back once again stopped only by Gladio’s grip on his hand, and when Gladio pulled him back, Ignis, out of wanting to add more to their dumb dancing, suddenly raised a leg and rested the ankle on Gladio’s shoulder, while still dancing on his other tiptoe.

Gladio did not only laugh, he also hooked Ignis’ leg on his arm to not let it go back down as they continued dancing in tiny circles. Ignis, unable to put the leg down, threw the head back and laughed with Gladio’s name among the happy noises, but continued dancing as he could on a tiptoe and the leg, sure that they were looking majestically ridiculous, the leg hanging from Gladio’s arm, almost unnatural looking. Gladio asked a playfully naïve ‘What? Gotcha, babe’, but his laugh betrayed him as he too continued dancing, making sure to not move too rough to not drop his boyfriend.

A while later, Gladio let go of his leg, only to suddenly clap once as the chorus hit again, and he went frenetic mode; legs kicking one after the other, arms hitting to the sides, and Gladio making of the dance an absolute mess, too exaggerated, and playful. Ignis, not wanting to stay behind, started doing dramatic, exaggerated movements as well. Suddenly, they transformed into two “tube men” that were uncontrollably and dramatically flailing around with all four limbs and the head, as if suddenly possessed by some wild demon that made them behave like laces tied to a fan.

Each danced more and more ridiculously with each step, far too energetic, too ridiculous, limbs flying and flailing at high speed, one going down to the knees while still dancing here, the other twirling over himself as if having gone mad, arms up as if making some ancient ritual there.

While making eye contact with his boyfriend and going closer to him, Gladio mouthed one of the “Oh, oh, here she comes” before he hovered over Ignis, catching him off-guard, and biting his head, throwing Ignis into a loud yelp followed by an equally loud ‘Gladio!’ as he laughed, trying to get the other off him. The teeth still buried on Ignis’ head, Gladio muttered and unintelligible and screamed ‘She’s a maneater!’, while Ignis still tried to push him off, laughing. By the time he got it, Ignis tried to calm down enough to continue dancing, as Gladio did.

However, when the one part of the song that always made Ignis snort with amusement (because it was a way too quick and rushed ‘that woman is wild, wo-ah’ that was too sudden and incomprehensible) it did not only sound from the radio; Gladio stopped in his dancing to throw the head back as if roaring at the heavens, which he did, except instead of just a roar he literally screamed out that rushed, unintelligible phrase, as unintelligibly and rushed and as loud and as ridiculously as he could do it.

Ignis lost it; he stopped dancing and burst into the loudest laugh he had let out in months. He had to step away as if leaving, but his steps were staggering from how loud he was laughing; he stopped only a few steps ahead just to continue laughing as loudly as he was doing, while Gladio still danced in the background, sometimes quick and ridiculous, or slow and ridiculous, making exaggerated expressions and arms coming and going. Ignis returned over his staggering steps, still laughing.

“Gladio” he called among laughter. “Stop that, we’ve got to-”

“Watch out- watch out- watch out” Gladio sang as loudly and ridiculously, and while it could not compare to the unintelligible rushed phrase, it still sent Ignis back to laughter.

The adviser staggered over his place again and put a hand on the car’s cap for support. He lost the breath for a moment and held his tummy when it started aching, and he continued laughing as the song faded. Soon enough, he heard Gladio laugh as well, not as hysterically as he was doing. While he calmed and cleaned his eyes from a few tears, Gladio let out a loud ‘Huff’, putting the hands to his waist and smiling both innocently and as if proud.

“Now that’s what I call a pit stop!” Gladio said and went over to the adviser, laughing shortly and lowly while patting his shoulder. “What? Why are you laughing so much, Iggy?”

Ignis didn’t reply; he laughed again for a few moments. Gladio laughed and hugged him playfully, giving some silly slow and long steps side to side, until Ignis calmed enough.

“Better now?”

“Yes, thank you” Ignis said with a last short laugh, forearms and hands trapped between their chests. He quickly stood up on tiptoes to press a chaste, quick kiss to Gladio’s mouth, which was responded as sweetly. “Let’s go, we’ve got full tank now.”

“We sure do” Gladio said while letting go of him and heading for the nozzle to remove it. “We’ve got style, Iggy.”

“Sure we do” Ignis replied playfully as he opened the door and sat back down in his place.

By the time he was putting the seat belt on, Gladio was opening the other door and sitting at his side. The Shield sighed as he closed the door and put his own belt on, and stared at nowhere ahead while Ignis stared at him for long seconds, smiling, before Gladio stared back.

“What?”

“Nothing” Ignis said with the smile still present. “We’re going to go viral on Eosbook or Kupogram, you know that? Mad, drunk couple do the most ridiculous dance ever at a gas station at two a.m.”

Ignis stared at him with a smile and slightly raised eyebrows while Gladio just stared again through the window, slowly nodding, as if processing the info. He turned to Ignis, took a breath in before talking.

“I like fame” he jokingly murmured, and it only made Ignis laugh again as he turned the engine on.

Before driving off, Ignis took one of Gladio’s hands and brought it up to give a kiss to the knuckles.

“Gods, I love you, Gladiolus Amicitia” the adviser said, if with that playful smile still present, very tenderly. Gladio smiled and blinked, but wasn’t given the chance to reply. “Maneater.”

“Be grateful it wasn’t Gloria Gaynor” Gladio joked, and Ignis laughed yet again, but at least controlled and calm enough so that he could push the pedal and drive off into the road again, headed for the Amicitia manor, slightly later than expected, but much happier than anticipated. And also a little more sweaty.

That had to be, so far, one of Ignis’ favorite dates with Gladio; a great, delicious dinner, hours of dancing, sharing drinks, kissing, laughing, jumping, and a stroll through the park to unwind. Yes, sure, that had been great.

But Ignis’ favorite part of the night was, probably, the unexpected and silly dancing in a deserted gas station late at night coming back from their planed date. It had been unplanned, and silly, but Ignis adored that Gladio did not need a special place or a proper date to have fun with him. He did not need to buy any gifts, or to take him somewhere expensive, or to make plans with anticipation, he did not even need to say anything.

With a deserted gas station at two in the morning and a radio, Gladio still had the ability to make him the happiest man on Eos.

He was a keeper, definitely.

That moment, and the one when a patrol that came from the parking lot of the gas station stopped them only a minute later, and, trying to not laugh, the officer told them it was only protocol, he understood if they were as weird in the everyday and this was normal for them, but he really had to ask if they were high or drunk before letting them go.

I know you said “small short fic” BUT MY HAND SLIPPED, i’M SORRY ;A;

Liked the fic? Tip Racc with a coffee, please? ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ 

Thank you for reading! ( ´ ▽ ` )

All The New Albums Coming Out In September 2018

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Keeping track of all the new albums coming out in a given month is a big job, but we’re up for it: Below is a comprehensive list of the major releases you can look forward to in September. If you’re not trying to potentially miss out on anything, it might be a good idea to keep reading.

Friday, September 7

Adult. — This Behavior (Dais Records)

The Alex Skolnick (Alex Skolnick of Testament) — Conundrum (Palmetto+)

Alvaro Soler — Mar De Colores (Sony Music Entertainment Inc.)

Amnesia Scanner — Another Life (PAN)

Ava Luna — Moon 2 (Western Vinyl)

Ben Danaher — Still Feel Lucky (Soundly Music, LLC)

Ben Fisher — Does The Land Remember Me? (Treleven Music)

The Blaze — Dancehall (Columbia Records)

Boston Manor — Welcome To The Neighbourhood (Pure Noise Records)

C418 — Excursions (self-released)

Cauldron — New Gods (The End Records)

The Chairman Dances — Child Of My Sorrow (Black Rd)

Chilly Gonzales — Solo Piano III (Gentle Threat Ltd.)

Chris Liebing — Burn Slow (Mute Records)

Church Girls — Home EP (self-released)

Dan Koshute — All The Way Always (Magna Persona)

Donna Missal — This Time (Harvest Records)

DOWNPOUR (members of Shadows Fall and Unearth) — DOWNPOUR (self-released)

Elijah Wolf — On The Mtn Laurel Rd (Old Flame Records)

Eric Bachmann (of Archers Of Loaf) — No Recover (Merge Records)

Escape-ism (Ian Svenonius) — The Lost Record (Merge Records)

Ferry Corsten and Saad Ayub — Synchronicity (Flashover Recordings)

Future Thieves — Future Thieves (self-released)

Gamblers — Corinthian Order (Gamblers)

Ghostland Observatory — See You Later (Trashy Moped)

Ginla — Codex (Terrible Records)

Gold Star — Uppers & Downers (Autumn Tone Records)

ITAL TEK — Bodied (Planet Mu)

JEFF The Brotherhood — Magick Songs (Dine Alone Records)

Jesse And The Dandelions — Give Up The Gold (self-released)

Jesse Harris — Aquarelle (Secret Sun Recordings)

Joep Beving — Conatus (Deutsche Grammophon)

Joey Purp — Quarterthing (self-released)

Joey Sweeney & The Neon Grease — Catholic School (Burnt Toast Vinyl)

Judy Blank — Morning Sun (Munich Records)

Kandace Springs — Indigo (Capitol Records)

Kathy Mattea — Pretty Bird (Captain Potato)

Kevin Harrison & True North — Howl (self-released)

Kilo Kish — MOTHE EP (self-released)

KINGCROW — The Persistence (The Laser’s Edge)

Kito — HAANI EP (Bimyou)

LA CHNGA — Beyond The Sky (Small Stone Records)

La Force (Ariel Engle of Broken Social Scene) — La Force (Arts & Crafts)

Lenny Kravitz — Raise Vibration (BMG Rights Management (UK) Limited)

LIINKS — Ridge Road (Westwood Records)

Macy Gray — Ruby (Artistry Music)

MAJOR. — Even More (EMPIRE)

Maribou State — Kingdoms In Colour (Counter Records)

Mike Farris — Silver And Stone (Compass Records Group)

Milo Greene — Adult Contemporary (Nettwerk Records)

Mirah — Understanding (Absolute Magnitude Recordings)

mmph — Serenade EP (Tri Angle)

MNEK — Language (Virgin EMI Records)

The Molochs — Flowers In The Spring (Innovative Leisure)

The Mommyheads — Soundtrack To The World’s End (Dead Frog Recrods)

Morne — To The Night Unknown (Armageddon Label)

Mothers — Render Another Ugly Method (ANTI‐)

Nashville Pussy — Pleased To Eat You (earMUSIC)

New Reveille — The Keep (Loud & Proud Records)

The Night Game — The Night Game (Interscope)

Nile Rodgers And Chic — It’s About Time (Virgin EMI Records)

The O’Mys — Tomorrow (self-released)

Papadosio — Content Coma (self-released)

Paul Carrack — These Days (Carrack UK)

Paul McCartney — Egypt Station (Capitol Records)

Paul Simon — In The Blue Light (Legacy Recordings)

Pig Destroyer — Head Cage (Relapse Records)

Pile — Odds And Ends (Exploding In Sound Records)

Pohgoh — Secret Club (New Granada Records)

The Primals — All Love Is True Love ((RED) Southern Lord)

Rae Spoon — Bodiesofwater (Coax Records)

Rebecca & Fiona — Art Of Being A Girl (Stereo Stereo)

Renée Fleming — Broadway (Decca Classics)

Rudimental — Toast To Our Differences (Atlantic Records UK)

Russ — Zoo (self-released)

Ruston Kelly — Dying Star (New Rounder)

Say Hi — Caterpillar Centipede (Euphobia Records)

Seasaw — Big Dogs (self-released)

Sauna Youth — Deaths (Upset The Rhythm)

Shannen Moser — I’ll Sing (Lame-O Records)

Spiral Deluxe (featuring Jeff Mills) — Voodoo Magic (Axis Records)

Spiritualized — And Nothing Hurt (Fat Possum Records)

St. Paul & The Broken Bones — Young Sick Camellia (RECORDS, LLC)

Steven A. Clark — Where Neon Goes To Die (Secretly Canadian)

Stoned Jesus — Pilgrims (Napalm Records)

The Stray Birds — Let It Pass (Yep Roc Records)

Stoned Jesus — Pilgrims (Napalm Records)

The Stryker Brothers — Burn Band (Scriptorium Rex)

Sudakistan — Swedish Cobra (PNKSLM Recordings)

Suicidal Tendencies — Still Cyco Punk After All These Years (Suicidal Records)

Suicideboys — I Want To Die In New Orleans (G59 Records)

Super City — Sanctuary (self-released)

Swamp Dogg — Love, Loss And Auto-Tune (Joyful Noise Recordings)

Teksti-TV 666 — Aidattu Tulevaisuus (Svart Records)

Teleman — Family Of Aliens (Moshi Moshi Records)

Tom Freund — East Of Lincoln (Surf Road)

Tuomo & Markus — Dead Circles (Grand Pop)

Waxahatchee — Great Thunder (Merge Records)

Yotto — Hyperfall (Anjunadeep)

Friday, September 14

Ace Clark — Black Privilege (self-released)

Active Bird — Amends (Barsuk Records)

Alejandro Escovedo — The Crossing (Yep Roc Records)

Alex Clare — Three Days At Greenmount (ETC Recordings)

Ann Wilson (of Heart) — Immortal (BMG)

Aphex Twin — Collapse (Warp)

Art Thieves — Russian Rats (State Line Records)

Asleep At The Wheel — New Routes (Bismeaux Records)

The Band Of Heathens — A Message From The People Revisited (BOH Records)

Ben Poole — Anytime You Need Me (Manhaton Records)

Beta Radio — Ancient Transition (Nettwerk Records)

Billy Moon — Punk Songs (Missed Connection Records)

Black Belt Eagle Scout — Mother Of My Children (Saddle Creek)

Blanca — Shattered (Word Records)

Bob Moses — Battle Lines (Domino Recording Company)

Bosse-de-Nage — Further Still (The Flenser)

Brandon Coleman — Resistance (Brainfeeder)

Brant Bjork (of Kyuss) — Mankind Woman (Heavy Phych Sound Records)

Calvin Valentine — Keep Summer Safe (Mello Music Group)

Capital Punishment (Ben Stiller’s high school band) — Roadkill (Reissue) (Captured Tracks)

Carrie Underwood — Cry Pretty (Capitol Records Nashville)

Cedric Burnside — Benton County Relic (Single Lock Records)

The Chills — Snow Bound (Fire Records)

Coming Soon — Sentimental Jukebox (Kidderminster)

Conan — Existential Void Guardian (Napalm Records)

Dad Brains — Dad Brains EP (self-released)

David Guetta — 7 (What a Music LTD)

David Nail And The Well Ravens — Only This And Nothing More (One Five Sound)

Dilly Dally — Heaven (Dine Alone Records)

The Dirty Nil — Master Volume (Dine Alone Records)

Dream Child — Until Death Do We Meet Again (Frontiers Music)

Dunbarrow — Dunbarrow II (RidingEasy Records)

Emma Louise — Lilac Everything (Liberation Records)

Emma Ruth Rundle — On Dark Horses (Sargent House)

Erik Deutsch — Falling Flowers (LoHi Records)

Exploded View — Obey (Sacred Bones Records)

Fatherson — Sum Of All Your Parts (Easy Life Records)

Film School — Bright To Death (Cobraside Records)

Fit For A King — Dark Skies (Solid State Records)

Fred Thomas — Aftering (Polyvinyl Record Co.)

Future Generations — Landscape (Frenchkiss Records)

Gareth Sager & The Hungry Ghosts — Juicy Rivers (Creeping Bent)

Good Charlotte — Generation Rx (BMG Rights Management (US) LLC)

The Goon Sax — We’re Not Talking (Wichita Recordings)

Grave Digger — The Living Dead (Napalm Records)

Guerrilla Toss — Twisted Crystal (DFA Records)

Hawkwind — Road To Utopia (Cherry Red Records)

He Arrived By Helicopter — The Shiny Hostel (Very Special Recordings)

The Holydrug Couple — Hyper Super Mega (Sacred Bones Records)

Howard — Together Alone (Fashion People)

Infernal Coil — Within A World Forgotten (Profound Lore Records)

Jack Drag — 2018 (Burger Records)

Jean-Michel Jarre — Planet Jarre (Columbia Records)

Jóhann Jóhannsson — Mandy OST (Lakeshore Records)

Jonathan Scales Fourchestra — PILLAR (Ropeadope)

Juiceboxxx — Never Surrender Forever EP (Dangerbird Records)

Jump, Little Children — Sparrow (self-released)

Jungle — For Ever (XL Recordings)

Knife Knights (Ishmael Butler and Erik Blood) — 1 Time Mirage (Sub Pop)

Lawrence — Living Room (self-released)

Leland And The Silver Wells — Leland And The Silver Wells (self-released)

Living With Lions — Island (No Sleep Records)

Lonely Parade — The Pits (Buzz Records)

Low — Double Negative (Sub Pop)

Loudon Wainwright III — Years In The Making (StorySound Records)

Lyrics Born — Quite A Life (Mobile Home Recordings)

Malcolm Holcombe — Come Hell Or High Water (Gypsy Eyes Music)

Medeski Martin & Wood with Alarm Will Sound — Omnisphere (Indirecto)

Monster Truck — True Rockers (Dine Alone Records)

Night Shop — In The Break (Woodsist)

North Americans — Going Steady (Driftless Recordings)

Old Faith — Old Faith (Refresh Records)

Ominous Eclipse — Sinister (NONE)

Orbital — Monsters Exist (ACP Recordings Ltd)

Pale Waves — My Mind Makes Noises (Dirty Hit)

Paul Weller — True Meanings (Parlophone)

PYREXIA — Unholy Requiem (Unique Leader Records)

Richard Thompson — 13 Rivers (New West Records)

Saint Slumber — Youth//2 EP (Kingless Co. Records)

Sandro Perri — In Another Life (Constellation Records)

Sextile — 3 EP (Felte)

Shortly — Richmond EP (Triple Crown)

Sleaford Mods — Sleaford Mods EP (Rough Trade Records)

Slothrust — The Pact (Dangerbird Records)

Snakes In Paradise — Step Into The Light (FRONTIERS RECORDS)

Sons Of Raphael — A Nation Of Bloodsuckers EP (Because Music)

Spirit Of The Beehive — Hypnic Jerks (Tiny Engines)

Steven Page (of Barenaked Ladies) — Discipline: Heal Thyself, Pt. II (Warner Music Canada)

Thrice — Palms (Epitaph Records)

Tony Bennett and Diana Krall — Love Is Here To Stay (Verve Label Group)

The Trews — Civilianiares (MapleCore Ltd.)

Uriah Heep — Living The Dream (FRONTIERS RECORDS)

We Were Promised Jetpacks — The More I Sleep The Less I Dream (Big Scary Monsters Recording Company)

Willie Nelson — My Way (Legacy Recordings)

Friday, September 21

A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie — The International Artist (Atlantic Records)

Adam’s House Cat (Drive-By Truckers) — Town Burned Down (ATO Records)

Advance Base — Animal Companionship (Run for Cover Records)

Amy Helm — This Too Shall Light (Yep Roc Records)

Anthony Roth Costanzo — ARC (Universal Music Classics)

Bad Moves — Tell No One (Don Giovanni Records)

Beak> — >>> (Invada Records)

Billy Gibbons (of ZZ Top) — The Big Bad Blues (Concord Records, Inc.)

Bitchin Bajas — Rebajas (Drag City)

The Blinders — Columbia (Modern Sky Entertainment)

Brooks Thomas — Poison (Hornblow Recordings)

Carl Broemel (of My Morning Jacket) — Wished Out (Stocks In Asia)

Christine And The Queens — Chris (Because Music)

Dragonlord (Eric Peterson of Testament) — Dominion (Universal Music Oy)

Drew McDowall — The Third Helix (Resident Advisor)

Elysian Fields — Pink Air (Microcultures)

The Field — Infinite Moment (Kompakt)

Greg Laswell — Next Time (Vanguard)

Human People — Butterflies Drink Turtle Tears (Exploding In Sound Records)

Hypoluxo — Running On A Fence (Broken Circles)

Joe Bonamassa — Redemption (J&R Adventures)

Jonathan Goldberger, JP Schlegelmilch, And Jim Black — Visitors (Skirl Records)

Josh Groban — Bridges (Reprise Records)

Joyce Manor — Million Dollars To Kill Me (Epitaph Records)

The Last Bison — SÜDA (AntiFragile Music)

Lonnie Holly — MITH (Jagjaguwar)

Macy Gray — Ruby (Artistry Music)

Mandy Barnett — Strange Conversation (Dame Productions)

Mount Eerie — (after) (P.W. Elverum & Sun)

Mountain Man — Magic Ship (Nonesuch Records Inc.)

Mutual Benefit — Thunder Follows The Light Out (Transgressive)

The Paper Kites — On The Corner Where You Live (Wonderlick Entertainment)

Piles — Una Volta (Aagoo Records)

Plainride — Life Of Ares (Ripple Music)

Prince — Piano & A Microphone 1983 (Warner Bros. Records)

Richard Reed Parry (of Arcade Fire) — Quiet River Of Dust Vol. 1 (ANTI‐)

Ryan Hemsworth — Elsewhere (Last Gang/Secret Songs)

Same Girls — Young Minded (Text Me Records)

Say Lou Lou — Immortelle (á Deux/Cosmos Music)

Sha La Das — Love In The Wind (Dunham Records)

Sigala — Brighter Days (Ministry of Sound Recordings)

Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators — Living The Dream (Snakepit Records)

Sobrenadar — y (Absent Fever)

St. Lucia — Hyperion (Columbia Records)

Subways On The Sun — Capsize (Spartan Records)

Suede — The Blue Hour (Rhino Entertainment)

SUMAC — Love In Shadow (Thrill Jockey Records)

Summer Salt — Happy Camper (Epitaph Records)

Supersuckers — Suck It (Steamhammer)

Tahiti 80 — The Sunsh!ne Beat Vol.1 (Human Sounds)

Tiny Deaths — Magic (Handwritten Records)

Tor Miller — Surviving The Suburbs (Glassnote Records)

Transviolet — Valley EP (BMG)

Vessel Of Light — Woodshed (Argonauta Records)

Villagers — The Art Of Pretending To Swim (Domino Recording Company)

VOIVOD — The Wake (Century Media)

William Fitzsimmons — Mission Bell (Grönland Records)

Zula — New Years (Inflated Records)

Friday, September 28

79.5 — Predictions (Big Crown Records)

Against The Current — Past Lives (Fueled By Ramen)

Aizuri Quartet — Blueprinting (New Amsterdam Records)

Alexander Orange Drink (Alex Zarou Levine of So So Glos) — Babel On (Shea Stadium Records)

All Them Witches — ATW (New West Records)

alt-J — Reduxer (Infectious Music)

Amber Arcades — European Heartbreak (Heavenly)

Amy Ray — Holler (Compass Records)

Anti-Flag — American Reckoning (Spinefarm Records UK)

ATRAMENT — Scum Sect (Blood Harvest)

Bayside — Acoustic Volume 2 (Hopeless Records)

Beartooth — Disease (Red Bull Records)

The Black Lillies — Stranger To Me (Attack Monkey Productions)

The Black Queen — Infinite Games (The Black Queen)

BLOODTRUTH — Martyrium (Unique Leader Records)

Brother Reverend — The Tables Turn Too Often (self-released)

Cécile McLorin Salvant — The Window (Mack Avenue)

Cher — Dancing Queen (Warner Bros. Records)

The Crystal Method — The Trip Home (Tiny E Records)

Cypress Hill — Elephants On Acid (BMG)

Cumulus — Comfort World (Trans- Records)

Danielson — Snap Outtavit EP (Joyful Noise Recordings)

Deep Gold — Deep Gold (self-released)

Den-Mate — Loceke (Babe City Records)

Dillon Francis — Wut Wut (IDGAFOS)

DOE — Grow Into It (Big Scary Monsters)

Evilon — Leviathan (WormHoleDeath)

Exploded View — Obey (Sacred Bones Records)

Fat Tony — 10,000 Hours (Don Giovanni Records)

Four Seconds Ago (members of Periphery) — The Vacancy (Century Media Records)

Foxhole — Well Kept Thing (Burnt Toast Vinyl)

From The Bogs Of Aughiska — Mineral Bearing Veins (Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recordings)

Getter — Visceral (self-released)

GØGGS (featuring Ty Segall) — Pre Strike Sweep (In the Red)

Gouge Away — Burnt Sugar (Deathwish Inc.)

Hangman’s Chair — Banlieue Triste (Spinefarm Records UK)

Hater — Siesta (Fire Records)

Hippo Campus — Bambi (Transgressive)

Jay Som and Justus Proffit — Nothing’s Changed EP (Polyvinyl)

Jlin — Autobiography (Planet Mu)

John Butler Trio — Home (Nettwerk Records)

Jon Batiste — Hollywood Africans (Verve Records)

The Joy Formidable — AAARTH (Seradom)

Kojo Funds — Golden Boy (Atlantic Records)

Lala Lala — The Lamb (Sub Pop)

The Living End — Wunderbar (BMG)

Lucy Wainwright Roche — Little Beast (self-released)

Lydmor — I Told You I’d Tell Them Our Story (HFN Music)

Marissa Nadler — For My Crimes (Sacred Bones Records)

Mary-Elaine Jenkins — Hold Still (Good Child Music)

Mini Mansions — Works Every Time EP (Fiction Records)

Miss World — Keeping Up With Miss World (PNKSLM Recordings)

Mudhoney — Digital Garbage (Sub Pop)

NAVVI — Ultra (Hush Hush Records)

Onkel Tom — Bier Ernst (Steamhammer)

Ouri — We Share Our Blood EP (Ghostly International)

Palaye Royale — Boom Boom Room Side B (Sumerian Records)

Parquet Courts — Wide Awake! Remixes EP (Rough Trade)

People Museum — I Dreamt You In Technicolor (Girlie Action)

RALPH — A Good Girl (604 Records)

Restorations — LP5000 (Tiny Engines)

Rick And Morty Original Soundtrack (Sub Pop)

Rod Stewart — Blood Red Roses (Republic Records)

Roosevelt — Young Romance (City Slang)

Salopecia — Meanderthal (Hydra Head Records)

SCHAMMASCH — Contradiction (Prosthetic Records)

Seasick Steve — Can U Cook? (BMG)

Shigeto — Weighted EP (Ghostly)

Spain — Mandala Brush (Glitterhouse Records)

Spesh — Famous World (Killroom Records)

St. Lenox — Ten Fables Of Young Ambition And Passionate Love (Anyway)

Starset — Vessels 2.0 (Fearless Records)

Summer Salt — Happy Camper (Epitaph Records)

SUNFLO’ER — No Hell (Noise Salvation)

TAUK — Shapeshifter II: Outbreak (self-released)

Tilian Pearson (of Dance Gavin Dance) — The Skeptic (Rise Records)

Tim Cohen — The Modern World (Sinderlyn)

Tim Hecker — Konoyo (Kranky)

Tina Disco — Fastland (BMG)

Tom Petty — An American Treasure (Reprise Records)

Tommy And The Commies — Here Come… (Slovenly Recordings)

Tony Joe White — Bad Mouthin’ (Yep Roc Records)

Viagra Boys — Street Worms (YEAR0001)

VULCAIN — Vinyle (Season Of Mist)

VREID — Lifehunger (Season Of Mist)

Walking Dead On Broadway — Dead Era (Long Branch Records)

Wolfheart — Constellation Of The Black Light (Napalm Records)

Yumi Zouma — EP III (Cascine)

source https://uproxx.com/music/new-albums-coming-out-this-month-september-2018/

YEAR OF WHAT HAPPENS ON EARTH STAYS ON EARTH

[longer version of what I contributed to the new yorker’s year-end package. you can read that here, and listen to the accompanying megamix the video team made! links to previous year’s lists at bottom.] I did not grow up going to church, and I am not a particularly religious person. A few days after the inauguration, I wandered into a nearby church and took a seat in the back pews. I’d gone there right after the election. There was some time for anyone with anything on their mind to stand up and speak. If you need others to pray for you, just let us know. A middle-aged black man in a leather jacket got up and began telling us about an argument he was having with a friend on Facebook. It was about the election, but it was actually about the intractability of racism. He was getting frustrated while describing it to us, in part because he seemed to value being the cool and level-headed one. Plus he was describing the kind of argument millions of people were having on the Internet. “I just hope he finds peace,” the guy said. He paused, then put his hands on his chest. “On a lighter note, today would have been Jimi Hendrix’s seventy-fourth birthday.” He opened up his leather jacket to show everyone his Hendrix t-shirt. “I just wanted to say that, because he was just awesome.” So I returned here, the day after marching through Manhattan with a poster that said “HOLD ON, BE STRONG.” I needed to be in a room that was powered by something other than hate--to be reminded of vision and purpose, even if they weren’t mine to claim. To listen to wisdom gleaned from a book I’ve never read, and pick and choose what I wanted. To hear others pour themselves into songs I never, ever sing along to. I wanted to steal their vibes.  Instead of a hymn, they passed out small pieces of paper with the lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine.” This is not the type of church people come to for the music. The pianist started playing, and I remember thinking about how it felt like magic when I learned how to play those chords as a kid. I couldn’t believe we were doing this. We sang, tentatively at first, as though we could not believe these words in this space. Picture it: singing of “no heaven” and “no religion, too,” with humility and hope, inside a house of worship. It was like an admission that faith was inadequate. All we had was one another. “Imagine” is a song I’ve heard millions of times, the type of song that is so ubiquitous that we rarely bother scrutinizing its words, its vantage point, the possibility that someone wrote these words because he actually believed them. I sang along with a room of strangers, and we looked at one another, and, for the first time in months, I began to cry.   TWO LYRICS THAT REMINDED ME OF POLITICS EVEN IF THEY HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH POLITICS "Wrote this shit January 21″ “Take me back to November / Take me back to November” “I’M AN ANGRY TEENAGER” Novelist, “Street Politician” ONCE THEY START, I HAVE TO LISTEN TO THE END Jim O’Rourke’s recently unearthed cover of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” Kanye’s sitcom-length remix of “Bed” THURSDAY NIGHTS ON NBC Ross from Friends’ very Madchester guitar-y Boiler Room set DJ Seinfeld, Time Spent Away from U Nino Man, Jadakiss and Styles P, “Friends”

IN ANOTHER YEAR FULL OF NIRVANA/KURT COBAIN REFERENCES (DID YOU SEE JAY:Z’S JACKET?) MY FAVORITE SONG, PROBABLY: this Trippie Redd snippet

SOME VERSIONS OF THE NINETIES THAT WILL NEVER COME BACK THE WAY GRUNGE ENNUI HAS, BUT WERE SO POSSIBILITY-RICH TO ME BACK THEN Kicking Giant, This Being the Ballad of Kicking Giant, Halo: NYC/Olympia 1989-1993 Helium, The Dirt of Luck/The Magic City LIKE MANY WHO LOVED “A STORM IN HEAVEN,” I OVERLOOKED THEM AT THE TIME Acetone, 1992-2001 A REALLY GOOD BOOK ABOUT ACETONE, LOS ANGELES, DREAMS OF GREATNESS Sam Sweet, Hadley Lee Lightcap WOULD HAVE LOVED THIS IN 1994, 2002 OR 2017 Big Thief, Capacity CREDIBLE AND DOPE EARLY NINETIES R&B HOMAGE, SAX AND ALL Joyce Wrice, “Good Morning” SPEAKING OF THE NINETIES, LEECH MADE A MIXTAPE OF JUST THE FLOATY/DREAMY PARTS TAKEN FROM CLASSIC GOOD LOOKING/MOVING SHADOW SINGLES Leech, “Just the Liquid” FOR THE COMEDOWN, DARK-ASS STUFF ASSEMBLED EXCLUSIVELY FROM SLIPKNOT SAMPLES Croww, Prosthetics NOSTALGIA, ULTRA (UK GARAGE/BASSLINE EDITION) tqd, ukg SUMMERTIME ‘SECOND SUMMER OF LOVE’ VIBE Opus III, “It’s a Fine Day (Burt Fox remix)” UNEXPECTED BURIAL SUMMERTIME VIBES Monic, “Deep Summer (Burial remix)” NO REISSUE OR  tk ANNIVERSARY TIE-IN, JUST SOME OLD SONGS I RE/DISCOVERED THIS YEAR Active Minds, “Hobson’s Choice” El-B, “El-Brand” Kamal Abdul Alim, “Brotherhood” Spiritualized in Reykjavik  U2, “Numb (Soul Assassins remix)” U2, “Mysterious Ways (Massive Attack remix)”

SAME, BUT TAIWANESE INDIE ROCK EDITION Chocolate Tiger, “Piecing Together” REISSUES, OR: PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN WEIRD AND SPACY#, OBSESSED WITH NATURAL BEAUTY## # Planetary Peace, Synthesis # Pauline Anna Strom, Trans-Millennia Music ## Pep Llopis, Poiemusia La Nau Dels Argonaut REISSUES, OR: WHEN I WAS A CHILD THERE WERE NO BETTER SONGS THAN THE ONES THAT PLAYED THROUGH TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE AND FOR SOME REASON THIS JOYOUS EP REMIND ME OF THAT SHEEN, THOSE HOOKS, THE PERFECT, THEATER-SIZED ECHO Om Alec Khaoli, Say You Love Me BEST ALBUM-LENGTH METAPHOR FOR THE CITY, ITS LIMITATIONS AND POSSIBILITIES Wiki, No Mountains In Manhattan SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE IT WAS DESCRIBED, JAMAICA VIA OUTER SPACE Equiknoxx, Colon Man I NEED TO GO OUT MORE Jex Opolis, “Mt. Belzoni” KH, “Question”

I LISTENED TO THIS ABOUT TEN TIMES, MY SENSE OF ENCHANTMENT GROWING AND GROWING EACH TIME, BEFORE REALIZING THERE WERE BARELY ANY DRUMS ON IT Mr. Mitch, Devout SERIOUSLY THE MR. MITCH ALBUM WAS REALLY MOVING AND FANTASTIC Mr. Mitch f/ Denai Moore, “Fate” CRAZY WISDOM MASTER Vince Staples, Big Fish Theory C’MON AND RAISE UP Rapsody f/ Kendrick, Lance Skiiwalker, “Power” SO ICEY Zomby, Mercury’s Rainbow ECHO PARTY Demen, Nektyr Evy Jane, “Give Me Love” THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Vic Mensa, The Autobiography DUNGEON FAMILY, EVEN IN DARKNESS Earthgang f/ J.I.D., “Meditate” FUNNY HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY Lee Gamble, Mnestic Pressure Pessimist, s/t NOT SURE HOW THIS BECAME THE DIWALI OF 2017 BUT OKAY French Montana f/ Mariah, Rae Sremmurd, PNB Rock, Belly, Elephant Man, Vybz Kartel, J Balvin, NORE, Wizkid, “Unforgettable” HOW ARE THIS MANY PEOPLE ON A FOUR MINUTE SONG? GOOD VIDEO THOUGH A$AP Mob f/ A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti, Quavo, Lil Uzi Vert and Frank Ocean, “RAF” I LIKE IT WHEN FERG’S VOICE GETS ALL NAGGY Ferg, “Plain Jane” METRO BOOMIN MADE A BEAT THAT REMINDED ME OF RADIOHEAD Post Malone f/ Quavo, “Congratulations” THE MARIACHI VERSION IS PRETTY SWEET Brian Imanuel, “How I surprised Post Malone with a mariachi band” ”IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR LYRICS, IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO CRY, IF YOU’RE LOOKING TO THINK ABOUT LIFE...” JonWayne, Rap Album Two CORNBALL PIANOS AND THEN THAT SYNTH DRAGS, AND THEN THE DRUMS KICK Tee Grizzley, “First Day Out” “BUT WILD/WITH MY MONOTONE STYLE” 21 Savage, “Bankroll” Kodak Black, “Candy Paint” Rich Chigga, “Glow Like Dat” ANNUAL SPOT RESERVED FOR LA MUSICA DE HARRY FRAUD French Montana f/ Pharrell, “Bring Dem Things” WHEN LAETITIA SAYS HER OWN NAME ON “EMBERS” Vagabon, Infinite Worlds WHEN JESSIE LEANS INTO THE WORD “FUCK” Jessie Reyez, “Figures” THAT LIGHT MISTING, THAT CASUAL SPRITZ OF SYNTHS Lanark Artefax, “Touch Absence” A GOOD ANTI-DJT THING THAT CAME OUT EARLY THIS YEAR, WHICH FEELS LIKE EONS AGO Lushlife + friends, My Idols are Dead + My Enemies are in Power THE BABY, THE FLUTES, PIERRE’S OBNOXIOUSLY LONG TAG, THE JESSE LINGARD DANCE Playboi Carti, “Magnolia” ILLEST SHIT I SAW THIS YEAR, BABY-RELATED A child at a restaurant watching an iPad and an iPhone at the same damn time “[FREE] PLAYBOI CARTI TYPE BEAT” YBN Nahmir, “Rubbin off the Paint” GUNS N ROSES, BEFORE ONE OF THE WEIRDEST BEEFS OF THE YEAR Trippie Redd f/ 6IX9INE, “POLES1469″ SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE YOU CAN SING, AND DO IT WITH CONVICTION, AND I WILL LISTEN Trippie Redd, “Rack City/Love Scars 2″ ALL THE BACKGROUND NOISE/ECHOED-OUT ADLIBS MAKE THIS BlocBoy JB, “No Chorus Pt 10″ SMERZ HAS FUN DESPITE THE AWKWARD OF IT ALL Smerz on NTS IT SEEMS REALLY EASY TO MAKE A GOOD-SOUNDING SONG THESE DAYS Global Dan, “Off White” OF ALL THE DOPE SHIT THAT FUTURE APPEARED ON THIS YEAR, THE MOMENT I WILL REMEMBER IS That tiny pause before he sings “I need fresh air,” when he seems happy and content IS THAT A GEORGE MICHAEL SAMPLE? Mozzy, “Prayed for This” THE FIX C Struggs, “Go to Jesus” "IT’S COOL, BUT IT’S NOT...END ZONE” Lil Uzi Vert, “XO TOUR Llif3″ AN ALBUM BOOKENDED BY TOTALLY DIFFERENT KINDS OF COLIN KAEPERNICK/TAKE A KNEE REFERENCES Miguel, War and Leisure IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR Brockhampton, Saturation I-III SZA, Ctrl SPEAKING OF SZA: WHAT A GREAT TITLE, BESIDES IT BEING ONE OF MY FAVORITE ALBUMS OF THE YEAR Kingdom, Tears in the Club THE KELELA ALBUM WAS LOVELY, AS ARE THESE Kelela x Bok Bok, Dub Me Apart A RANDOM YOUTUBE COVER THAT I ALSO LIKED, BECAUSE IT CAPTURED HOW MELODIC THE ORIGINAL ACTUALLY IS Kathleen Nguyen covering Kendrick and Zacari’s “Love.” DAMN. WAS GOOD Almost as good as “The Heart Part 4″ LIKE A DE LA SOUL ALBUM, SOMETHING THAT I KNOW I WILL CONTINUE ENJOYING/UNDERSTANDING ANEW FOR YEARS TO COME Tyler, the Creator, Flower Boy ”BLONDED RADIO” MADE ME JOIN APPLE MUSIC Frank Ocean, “Chanel” Frank Ocean, “Biking (solo)” Tyler and Frank, “Where This Flower Blooms” MACH HOMMY MAKES GOOD MUSIC THAT’S HARD TO ACCESS “x Earl Sweatshirt” EP ty Soundcloud IT’S A WEIRD TIME B/W THIS BEAT IS SO DEMENTED Tay-K, “The Race” PROBABLY MY FAVORITE PHARRELL BEAT Kap G f/ Pharrell, “Icha Gicha” MAYBE THE GREATEST MUSIC EVER MADE, REISSUED Pharoah Sanders

REMINDED ME OF PHAROAH, WHEN IT WASN’T REMINDING ME OF BON IVER Joseph Shabason, Aytche AND I ENJOYED AYTCHE FOR SIMILAR REASONS I LIKED ZONING OUT TO Tom Rogerson and Brian Eno, Finding Shore ANNUAL SLOT RESERVED FOR MUSIC I LOVED THAT FEATURED HARP Alice Coltrane, World Spirituality Classics Vol 1

SAME, BUT FOR HARP STUFF THAT ALSO SHOUTS OUT WAWA Mary Lattimore, Collected Pieces ANNUAL SLOT RESERVED FOR TASTEFUL VIBRAPHONE Jenifa Mayanja, “Warrior Strutt” YOU TRYING TO GET THE PIPE, TO PLAY IT, OF COURSE, AS PART OF AN EXPERIMENTAL COMPOSITION? Mary Jane Leach, Pipe Dreams THERE’S A MOMENT DURING THAT BAD BOY DOCUMENTARY CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP WHERE IT BECOMES CLEAR THAT EVERYONE WHO WORKS CLOSELY WITH DIDDY EVENTUALLY TURNS TO GOD, AND IT WAS LIKE THE STRANGE OBVERSE OF Jay Z et al, 4:44 footnotes 2016, BUT I SAT IN THE MET BREUER AND WATCHED THIS OVER AND OVER FOR ABOUT AN HOUR Arthur Jafa, “Love is the Message, The Message is Death” I WANT TO WATCH THE FULL FOUR HOURS OF THIS Dev Hynes talking to Philip Glass TRICKSTERY BUT KINDA MESMERIZING! Klein, Tommy Lolina, Lolita EP Hype Williams, Rainbow Edition “NOT ANOTHER GOT MORE SEOUL, UNLESS YOU KOREAN” (CHILLWAVE REMIX) Mogwaa, Deja Vu “THE TING GOES SKRRRAHH, PAP, PAP, KA-KA-KA/SKIDIKI-PAP-PAP, AND A PU-PU-PUDRRRR-BOOM/SKYA, DU-DU-KU-KU-DUN-DUN/POOM, POOM, YOU DON’ KNOW” Big Shaq, “Mans Not Hot” IBID., BUT “PERKY” Drake, More Life I WANTED TO LIKE THE WIZKID ALBUM MORE, BUT THIS WAS AWESOME Tiwa Savage f/ Wizkid and Spellz, “Ma Lo” LISTENED TO THIS QUITE A FEW TIMES SIMPLY BECAUSE ”BREAKING NEWS: WILD GOAT ON THE LOOSE” IS A WEIRD LINE Lancey Foux f/ AJ Tracey, Kojey Radical and Jevon, “Wild Goat” UNITED TIL I DIE BUT AJ TRACEY’S TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR KIT LAUNCH FREESTYLE HAD ME BUZZZZZZIN AJ Tracey, “False 9″ DIFFERENT TIME OF DAY, KINDA LEFT ME SPEECHLESS Grouper, “Children” Colleen, A Flame my love, a frequency Kara Lis Coverdale, Grafts Ryuichi Sakamoto, async LEFT RYUICHI SAKAMOTO ENVIOUS Metaphors: Selected Soundworks from the Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul FROM OMNI TRIO TO THIS, A PRETTY VISIONARY CAREER Robert Haigh, Creatures of the Deep A SONG THAT FEATURED TWO PEOPLE WHO SHOULD BE PRETTY BIG IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF YEARS DJDS f/ Amber Mark and Marco McKinnis, “Trees on Fire” LIKE, THIS IS GREAT Amber Mark, “Lose My Cool” AWESOME YEAR FOR POTIONS Social Lovers, “Drop Me a Line” Boss, “Song for Gods” WHISKED ME BACK TO MEMORIES OF the enormous room Joakim, “Samurai” Calvin Harris f/ Frank Ocean and Migos, “Slide” Amp Fiddler, “I’m Feeling You” Chaos in the CBD, Accidental Meetings LIKE FALLING ASLEEP ON THE SUBWAY, OR A TRUCK HITTING A POTHOLE AND SPITTING OUT A RECORD COLLECTION, OR HEARING A NANOSECOND OF BRAND NUBIAN THROUGH SOMEONE’S HEADPHONES AS YOU PASS THEM ON THE STREET, IT’S A VIBE Standing on the Corner, Red Burns MIKE’S A SAVIOR Mike 1. I SPENT A LOT OF TIME THIS YEAR THINKING ABOUT THE STRENGTH, ELASTICITY, FRAGILITY, GRAIN OF THE HUMAN VOICE AND SOME OF THIS WAS TOTALLY NECESSARY AND SUBLIME Deep Throat Choir, Be Ok Diamanda Galas, All the Way Moses Sumney, Aromanticism 2. SO ACHINGLY GOOD AND INTIMATE, ESPECIALLY THAT FAINT CROAK IN THE FIRST CHORUS Rostam f/ Kelly Zutrau, “Half-Light” 3. OF COURSE THESE WORLD-MAKERS TOO Bjork, Utopia Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, The Kid Valerie June, “Astral Plane” 3a. A STRANGE PROPOSITION THAT I ENDED UP ADORING KAS covering Sade’s "By Your Side" THE BAY AREA IS JUST DIFFERENT Droop-E, Trillionaire Thoughts Lil B, Black Ken THE “BUILD YOU UP” VIDEO WAS FUN AND ALL BUT I’M REALLY GLAD THIS WASN’T THAT Kamiayah, Before I Wake THE BAY TO L.A. AND BACK AGAIN Mozzy f/ G Perico, “Blammatory” G Perico f/ Mozzy, “What’s Real” GYEAH MC Eiht, Which Way Iz West OUTRUN THE BEAT SOB x RBE, “Lane Changing 2″ BANDS THAT ALWAYS SOUND LIKE THEMSELVES, IN WAYS THAT I FIND COMFORTING the xx, I See You King Krule, The Ooz SAME AS ABOVE, MIDDLE-AGED DIVISION The Feelies, In Between Slowdive, “Star Roving” SOMEONE WHO SOUNDS LIKE NO ONE ELSE Jlin, Black Origami THE NEW NATIONAL ANTHEM Dreezy f/ 6LACK and Kodak Black, “Spar” I LOOKED UP EACH TIME THIS CAME ON THE SHUFFLE Shanti Celeste, “Loop One/Selector”

PROBABLY MY FAVORITE SONG GoldLink f/ Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy, “Crew” OR MAYBE Jorja Smith x Preditah, “On My Mind” THIS WAS SICK TOO GoldLink & Co. covering Outkast’s “Roses” MAYBE THE BEST SONG J Hus, “Did You See”

ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER YEAR WHERE MY FAVORITE RELEASE WAS PROBABLY FROM YAEJI, THE “GLASSES FOGGING UP” LINE WAS VERY RELATABLE Yaeji, EP2 THE SONG OF THE SPRING, SUMMER, WINTER   I MEAN, IT’S WAYNE’S WORLD, WE JUST LIVE IN IT ### SIKH DEVOTIONAL MUSIC :: 2016 SPOOKY BLACK :: 2015

NOS Primavera Sound 2019

Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

It’s starting to be too common: no matter how warm and sunny it is in the week leading up to the festival, NOS Primavera Sound (NPS) is doomed to be ruined by at least one day of rain. The first day did not look promising after the announcement of the passage of depression Miguel (no, not the rnb star who performed there a couple of years ago) through the north of Portugal. Flights were cancelled, Ama Lou and Peggy Gou could not reach Porto in time to perform, strong winds and rain showers threatened to turn Parque da Cidade into a muddy mess, the gates were opened almost an hour later than it was scheduled. 

JARV IS.... Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

But then there was music. Under a temporarily clear sky, and in front of probably the smallest crowd ever in the 8pm slot at the main NOS stage, Built to Spill performed what was one of the longest shows in NPS history. In over an hour and a half, they have not only revisited Keep It Like a Secret in full, but have also played selections from their 25+ years long career, from the marvellous “I Would Hurt A Fly” off their 1997 masterpiece Perfect from Now On to Untethered Moon’s “Living Zoo”. At times, the stage looked too big for a quartet of introverts playing for other introverts, but their set was engaging enough for us to have to miss a few songs off Jarvis Cocker’s first solo show in the country in nine years. JARV IS… a six-piece band complete with guitars, a harp, sax, keys, and, of course, a rolling-all-over Jarvis, agile and charming as ever. A couple of new songs were the highlights among songs off Further Complications (“Homewrecker!”, “Further Complications.”). There was also time for a single incursion into Pulp material (“His ‘n’ Hers”) that left everyone nostalgic for one of the best Portuguese festival shows in recent history: Pulp’s takeover of the Paredes de Coura festival back in 2011. 

Allen Halloween. Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

At the green, lush Pull & Bear stage that once was sponsored and programmed by ATP, and after another surprise rain shower, local hip hop hero Allen Halloween was on. Although he has struggled to gather a big crowd as headliner Danny Brown prepared to take over the NOS stage, and his Portuguese lyrics clash into a language barrier that drove most foreign visitors somewhere else, his devotees seemed to be delighted after his short set (we know we were). In “greatest hits” mode, he and his two fellow Kriminal crew MCs dropped hit after hit, starting with the catchy “Drunfos”, a song off A Árvore Kriminal about prescription painkillers that miraculously solve back pain. The most recent album Híbrido got plenty of love throughout the show, too, as Allen strolled through “Bandido Velho”, “Youth”, and “Mr. Bullying”, the best revenge song of the 2010s. But the highlight of the show had to be set closer “Fly Nigga”, off 2006’s Projecto Mary Witch.

Stereolab. Rita Carmo / BLITZ

Back at the SEAT stage, a blast from the past as Stereolab performed for the first time in ten years. The long, jammy, jaw dropping “Metronomic Underground” was the highlight in the first half of the show that had to be cut short so we could witness the full extent of Tommy Cash’s odd world. The Estonian rapper/producer combines the funniest visuals of the whole festival with nonsensical lyrics in a seemingly faux-Eastern European heavy accent, but it’s when the Russian hardbass-influenced tracks drop that the Super Bock stage crowd properly erupts. But the greatest moment of the night was still to come, as Solange took the NOS stage by storm. Not in a bombastic way, as we know her sister would do, but through a meticulously prepared, aesthetically spotless show. The finesse of the performance, focused on her latest record When I Get Home, was only interrupted in the semi-ecstatic, early-career banger “Losing You”, before an epic, copious rain shower sent half of the audience home halfway through the encore. We wanted to see Yaeji later on, but perhaps she shouldn’t have ordered all that rain.

Courtney Barnett. Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

Friday started with yet another major headache for the organisers: a radar problem in the airport has led to major delays and flight cancellations, and Mura Masa’s show was also cancelled, but the rest of the festival ended up going on as planned. Major headache for us, then: a somewhat tedious Aldous Harding show didn’t let us see what was one of the highlights of the festival for everyone who saw them (Jambinai); on the other hand, the triumphant return of the Basque rock powerhouse Lisabö (two drummers, plenty of guitars, beautiful, beautiful noise) made up for our choice of dropping our favorite Nilüfer Yanya, who we have seen earlier in May. We haven’t seen Courtney Barnett ever since she released her latest record Tell Me How You Really Feel, and we feel like we made the right call on this one, even though that means snubbing another marvellous Sons of Kemet show. Unlike Built to Spill the day before in the same exact time slot and stage, the Australian singer-songwriter’s trio knew exactly how to fill up a big stage. And how can something go wrong if you start off with the addictive “Avant Gardener”, the song that made us quit the Slowdive reunion show ten minutes into the concert so we could see her perform for an half-empty Pitchfork tent back in 2014? With a setlist that drew equally from both her LPs, plus a couple of oldies (good to know “History Eraser” is still part of the show) and non-album tracks (“Small Talk” and the very recent RSD single “Everybody Here Hates You”), Courtney Barnett’s band is a well-oiled machine destined to make new fans in every single festival show this season.

J Balvin. Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

Speaking of well-oiled machines, do we really need to review Shellac’s show yet another year and tell you it was the best hour we spent in the festival? This time around we got a few funny lads in the pit, including one dressed like Mickey Mouse (the true MVPs), and Steve Albini dropping some Ed Sheeran diss lines during “The End of Radio”. Wash your bedsheets you pig. And then the little, sad, grey world of “underground” indie purists that can only dance to “Blue Monday” fell apart as reggaeton giant J Balvin took the stage; the word “Reggaeton” filling up the screen as he performs the song with the same name. It looked like a foreign power taking by force a territory that will be their colony for the next hour and a half, sticking a pole and hoisting their flag as high as they can. But, this time around, it’s not a bossy bunch of Europeans landing in a tropical island; it’s the “tropical island” folks biting back, as the sound of Latin barrios becomes, at least temporarily, the lingua franca at the NOS stage. The show itself could have used more tracks off the excellent Vibras, released last year, and both “Machika” and “Ambiente”, two standout tracks off that record, could have gotten the full treatment instead of being only partially played; some songs in which Balvin features are perfectly discardable. But the apotheotic finale with his biggest hit to date “Mi Gente”, featuring a colorful bunch of cartoons, both on stage and on screen, has to be the highlight of the day and possibly of the whole festival. Dios bendiga el reggaeton. 

JPEGMAFIA. Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

Elsewhere, Interpol has recovered from what was possibly the worst trainwreck we have witnessed in NOS Primavera Sound history (not sure if the 20 minutes long Neil Michael Hagerty show a couple years back was as terrible or the best thing we’ve ever seen, so there’s that) by performing a pretty solid show, anchored in what they know are the most vital records they’ve released: Turn On the Bright Lights and Antics, going fifteen and seventeen years back in time to bring us some of the most iconic guitar-driven of that decade (“C’mere”, “Take You On A Cruise”, “Leif Erikson”, “Obstacle 1″, “Roland”...). If you know when to avoid any recent tracks - although we have to say new single “Fine Mess” did not sound as bad as anything else they have released in the past decade - it’s a fine moment to see Interpol for old times sake, as Paul Banks apparently learned how to sing. With his sunglasses on at midnight, of course. Our night ended at the Pull & Bear stage with JPEGMAFIA wishing Morrissey was dead, rapping, jumping and crawling around the stage as a one-man-show should, and with a late night SOPHIE live act. If the more atmospheric, less interesting first half of the show threatened to send us all home with the feeling we could have went home earlier instead of freezing to death, the “Whole New World”/“Ponyboy”/“Faceshopping” combo was enough to bring us back to life. 

Shellac of North America. Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

Saturday was the most guitar-driven day of the bunch, and our decision to have lunch in a nearby restaurant paid off when we learned Shellac was playing an extra 4pm show at the entrance of the festival for a handful of lucky people, including Low’s Alan Sparhawk, who sat at the floor as happy as any of us. Hop Along had the tough task to open the big stage as a dozen of Rosalía fans were already lining up for her much later show on the same stage. The Saddle Creek-signed indie rock quartet spearheaded by songwriter Frances Quinlan is always great live, as we have recently seen as they opened for the Decemberists on a recent European tour, but we soon had to hop to the SEAT stage to check out post-punkers Viagra Boys. You wouldn’t tell from their looks (frontman Sebastian Murphy is up on stage half-naked, showing a full-tattooed torso) that this funny group of Swedes loves taking the piss of macho men (and, apparently, everything else), but that’s just what they do. 

Viagra Boys. Hugo Lima / NOS Primavera Sound

Coming up next was Big Thief, our favorite new band of the past couple of years. This meant we had to miss both Lucy Dacus and Tomberlin, who we would be obviously excited about, if only we had three sets of eyes and ears (and another couple of brains to process it all). We seem to get plenty of Masterpiece songs every time they perform in Portugal, and we’re not complaining. From “Paul” to “Real Love”, with the sad but hopeful “Parallels” thrown in the middle, there was plenty of songs off their debut to enjoy until the whole crew joins the band for one last performance of the title track to finish off the European leg of their tour. There was even time for guitar player Buck Meek - finally back with the band - to shine and play one of his solo songs, and for a couple of unreleased songs. Please release a studio version of “Not” ASAP, guys. Thanks. Still on the SEAT stage, Guided by Voices tried their best to stuff 36 songs in one and a half hours - and although we did not count them, someone else did. I cannot seem to memorize half of my passwords, and yet Robert Pollard can go through lyrics of three dozens of songs from eleven different albums (with a focus on the most recent albums - both released this year - Zeppelin Over China and Warp and Woof), including semi-hits “Game of Pricks”, the highly celebrated “Tractor Rape Chain”, and set closer “Glad Girls”. A lesson of what we now call “indie rock” for newcomers to learn from.

Kate Tempest. Luís Sousa / Música em DX

The 10pm slot of the festival was one of the busiest. We’re sad to know Tirzah was playing for less than a hundred of people at the Pull & Bear stage and decided to check out Rosalía, way closer in the NOS stage. It was the busiest we saw the main stage during this edition of the festival, and the Spanish singer seemed to have full control of the big stage as she, accompanied by half a dozen of dancers dressed in white, performed her duet with James Blake, “Barefoot in the Park”, a new flamenco-inspired song (“De Madrugá”), and “Catalina”, a highlight from her debut album Los Ángeles. Too bad we cannot be near Kate Tempest and not go see her, even though we were at one of her ‘trial’ shows for the upcoming new album tour less than a month ago, and we had to go back to the SEAT stage, where Tempest was already performing “Europe Is Lost”, one of the standout tracks off 2016′s Let Them Eat Chaos. She’s on stage with only her keyboard player and a very simple setting: some sort of circular canvas where her figure is sometimes projected as she delivers the heaviest, the most hopeless, but also the most hopeful lines you’d hear all festival. Especially on the second half of the show, as she focuses on her yet unreleased new album, The Book of Traps and Lessons, from which she draws tracks like the "singles” (if we can call it that) “Firesmoke” and “Holy Elixir”, plus “Hold Your Own”, one of the most beautiful moments of the whole weekend. We do not deserve Kate Tempest, one of the best artists of our generation.

Low.

Along with the fantastic Shellac/J Balvin sequence, the last three shows of the festival ended up being the best we’ve seen. There were legitimate concerns that Low’s music was too quiet and solemn to be played simultaneously with the likes of Modeselektor and Neneh Cherry in nearby stages, but although some of the sound from other stages made its way into the surroundings of the Super Bock stage as the Duluth band played their set, we wonder if people in the other stages were not equally affected by the whirlwind of sound Low has managed to produce during a breathtaking and extra loud “Do You Know How To Waltz?”, the majestic, noisy long track off 1996′s The Curtain Hits the Cast, complete with a maelstrom of strobes and visuals that were absent from the arguably quieter European 2018 fall tour. Although the setlist was more focused on their recent Double Negative, an album with a radically distinct production but that sounds exactly like classic Low when translated to a stage, there were a couple of trips to older records (“Lazy”, from debut I Could Live in Hope) and some of the most interesting tracks off their albums from the 2010s (Ones and Sixes’ “No Comprende” and C’mon’s “Especially Me”). If we knew the show would be as good as it was, we would have hugged Alan Sparhawk as much as he was hugging Bob Weston halfway through during that extra Shellac show.

Yves Tumor. Hugo Sousa Photography

But the real surprise of the night (and of the whole festival) came on our final show: as Erykah Badu was already more than half an hour late at the main stage, Yves Tumor took the opportunity to steal the show with one of the most energetic concerts of the festival. The androgynous performer, some kind of 22nd century glam-rock inspired Prince, completely dominated the stage from the moment he sets foot on stage and starts giving out signed tour posters (“nobody buys them anyway, just have them for free”). And off-stage too, as he was carried in the arms of an army of fans trying to avoiding being hit by his large heels. He performed only four (very celebrated) songs off his latest record, Safe in the Hands of Love, including the sing-along masterpiece “Lifetime”. Instead of being safe in the hands of his familiar old tracks, Tumor chose to focus on unreleased songs instead, completely suiting his band (guitar, bass, drums, and electronics) that sounds like has been playing together for ages. No video can truly capture what it was to be there, but here you go (Thanks Campainha Eléctrica for doing the Lord’s work).

NOS Primavera Sound

All in all, we left Parque da Cidade with the feeling we have witnessed what was, against all odds (weather included), the best NOS Primavera Sound edition of all time. It was the only time since we first visited the Barcelona festival, back in 2009, that we could not find half an hour to sit down, relax and have a long chat with our peers because there was nothing interesting going on (and, in that regard, we have to thank the recent decision to open all stages during the first day of the festival). Sure, some overlaps of artists that appeal to the same groups of fans (Allen Halloween vs Danny Brown, Big Thief vs Lucy Dacus vs Tomberlin, Hop Along vs Viagra Boys, Amyl and the Sniffers vs Guided by Voices, Tirzah vs Rosalía vs Kate Tempest) look like they could have been avoided. This could have attracted more people to the festival, especially those who feel the organisation have somehow “betrayed” them by focusing less on indie rock and guitar music on the festival’s prime time slots. That being said - all the bands we could not see could have easily filled another full day of the festival. And, at the same time, we feel the smaller amount of festival attendees has ultimately benefited and rewarded whoever still decided to go to the festival, as less people also means less queues, better views of the stages, a friendlier environment, less people chatting over the artists - we have never experience such a quiet festival in Portugal, with no one to argue with. Except those four girls who couldn’t turn the volume down during Kate Tempest’s quiet songs - you know who you are, and, well, your loss! Maybe we have hit the ideal spot, and entrances could and should be capped to 2019′s levels. See you at Porto’s Parque da Cidade in June 11-13 2020, where Pavement is scheduled to perform one of the only two shows of the second coming of their long awaited reunion. Tickets are available next June 17 for a short period of time, only for 2019 ticket holders, and from July 4 (for a period of 48 hours) for everyone else.

Lams, 5!

5. things you never said at all

“He takes after you.”

“He’s your son.”

Alex laughs and bumps his shoulder against John’s. “Are we sure? Freckles don’t run in Eliza’s family, and we both have the straight dark hair going on. Is there something you should tell me?”

John rolls his eyes. “More likely you got the wrong baby at the hospital.”

“Well, I was gone that one year…” Alex starts the joke but trails off, an embarrassed flush darkening his face.

They stay quiet for a while, braced against the kitchen counter, listening to Philip practice piano in the living room. It is ostensibly a Brahms waltz, but he keeps swinging the rhythm, adding blues notes between phrases. Like he can’t help it, like this is how he hears the music.

“See?” Alex murmurs. “That’s all you.”

It wasn’t like that, John wants to say. His father wouldn’t have let him “waste his time” doing anything besides scales and orchestra excerpts. He wouldn’t have turned German romantics into jazz, he would have lain in bed at night and dreamed of Miles Davis on the radio and wanted wanted wanted without release. Philip is lucky to have two parents who love and support him and bring out their musician friends to give him advice.

But he knows Alex means talent, so he hums in agreement.

“Hey.” Alex leans into him. “You know you’re good, right?”

John breathes a laugh. “My calendar is packed with gigs, Alex, I can’t do another album.”

“No - although that’s a good idea, we should do some Norman Dello Joio, make an arrangement for piano and sax - but you. You’re good. You’ve always been good. Not just at music.” Alex makes a frustrated noise, tips his head back so he’s looking up at John. “You’re busier than anyone, and you come out here every free weekend to spend time with us. And you deserve to know that. That you’re good.”

John squeezes his shoulder.

The front door opens and Eliza comes into the kitchen, a half-asleep James perched on her hip. “Well, Angie and AJ are excited to spend a weekend with Pegs. We can only hope she doesn’t feed them ice cream for dinner. Speaking of which, John, are you staying? You could use a home-cooked meal, I know you live on take-out.”

“So long as Alex isn’t cooking, sure.”

Alex punches him in the arm. “Shut up, I make great eggs.”

“You break the yolks every time.”

“Who wants to eat runny snot?”

“You’re supposed to dip your toast in it!”

“Well, some of us aren’t fancy enough to eat toast with our eggs.”

“Oh, don’t give me that, you hit the charts last week, you can afford toast.”

“Boys, mind the baby.” Eliza hoists the toddler in her arms. His eyes are closed and he’s sucking on his fist, not at all disturbed. John figures with three Hamilton siblings, James has had to develop a high tolerance for noise. “Alexander, take him; we’re having dandan noodles and I need to chop pork.”

James snuggles into Alex’s shoulder like he hasn’t even switched parents. The two of them look so alike - long lashes and generous mouths and furrowed brows - it makes John’s heart ache to watch them.

He ducks into the living room. “Hey, Philip. I liked what you were doing there, with the Brahms. How did that one part go?” He slides onto the piano bench and taps out a fragment of the melody, twists the phrase at the end.

Philip grins up at him. “No, like this.” His fingers move over the keys, effortless, and John starts comping along in the lower register, throwing in some syncopations. Philip crows with laughter but doesn’t stop playing. John stumbles along - his piano skills are rusty at best - and in the background there’s the warm smell of chili and pork frying and the sound of Alex talking non-stop.

Chasing all the lights.

[Summary: For the artists and the artists-at-heart, Voltron was the dream, the next big thing. It’s a little scary if you’re living up a legacy like Pidge, daughter and sister of two of the Garrison Academy for the Arts’ esteemed alumni. Or if you’re a little down-on-your-luck like Lance, who dreams of saxes, trombones, and jazz. Part one of the many.]

It would go down as the biggest traffic jam in history. Not that anyone would care.

Past 9 in the morning, cars lined down the freeway en route to Voltron, the city where dreams came true. The romance of it attracted artists of all kinds - painters, actors, musicians -  closing doors to no race, nor species. Not surprisingly, one would find humans and aliens alike stuck in their vehicles, squirming impatiently as they awaited any sort of movement.  

It was hard to pinpoint how it began, exactly. Ask anyone present that morning, and they would tell you the same story: it was warm, their windows down, a plethora of musical genres blared through radios. 

Then, someone began singing. Perhaps out of boredom, perhaps an attempt to make sense of the cacophony. One voice drowned out the rest of the noise in sharp, sweet melody:

I think about that day,

I left him at a Greyhound station

West of Santa Fe,

He was seventeen.

Entranced, the other seemed to take notice. The horns died down, and so did the radio - a few began singing along, making up the lyrics as they went. Before long, everyone erupted in chorus, forgetting  the heat and the traffic and all the frustration in between.

Without a nickel to my name

Hopped the bus, here I came

Could be brave or just insane,

We’ll have to see.

One by one, they began to emerge from their cars as they kept to the rhythm and harmony. It all seemed surreal, unimaginable. 

But then again, this was the freeway to Voltron. A musical number every now and then was inevitable.

'Cause maybe in that sleepy town

He’ll sit one day, the lights are down

He’ll see my face and think of how he

Used to know me.

Not all its pilgrims were inclined to break out in dance and song, however. One person in particular watched the spectacle begrudgingly, sighing as the rest paraded down the already-congested roads.

“Please don’t tell me this happens all the time.”

A laugh came from the driver’s seat. “I’m afraid so, Pidge. Joined one myself one time.”

Groaning, Pidge slumped into the backseat, watching the rest of the dancers wearily. 

Behind these hills, I’m reaching for the heights

And chasing all the lights that shine.

“I can’t believe you, Shiro. Garrison top-class,  dancing like a loony on the street.”

“Come on, Pidge,” he said, in good humor. “It’s not as bad as you think it is. Plus, you get to meet some really nice people along the way.”

This didn’t stop Pidge’s chagrin. Wearily, she eyed the person in the passenger seat. “Don’t tell me that’s how he met you.”

And when they let you down

Another, more charming laugh came in response. “Not really. However, I would be lying if I said I did not join him when he did so.”

You’ll get up off the ground

Another groan. “You guys are meant for each other.”

The two smiled at each other in amusement. “You’re going to have to get used to it,” came Shiro, jokingly. “We’re talking about Voltron, after all. Everyone’s a little colorful in their own way.”

As morning rolls around, 

And it’s another day in sun.

“Yay,” came Pidge, albeit flatly.  She clenched the hem of her skirt a little nervously. “I’ll probably blend in just fine.” 

“Oh, Pidge,” came Allura, reassuringly. “Don’t think about it too much. I’m sure you’ll find your place here somehow. You’ve always dreamed of going here, haven’t you?”

Pidge didn’t say anything. That, at least, was true. It was her brother’s stories that prompted her from the start. Being distinguished alumni from the Garrison Academy for the Arts, her father and brother were a shoo-in for the city - Voltron, after all, was the next step, the next big thing. She knew it was up to her to continue the legacy. 

Stuck in her thoughts, it took a while for her to register the honking, Shiro’s muffled curses, and the bright blue convertible that breezed past by them.

“Jesus,” Shiro said. “It wouldn’t kill him to wait a little longer.”

“Relax, darling,” said Allura. “We’re nearly there, after all.”

Her temper got the better of her, however. Rolling down the windows, she took a hard glance at the person who overtook them (the vehicle in question was temporarily stalled) and flipped the bird. She paused for a while to see his reaction, and once she was certain he had turned his head to face her, she slipped back into the vehicle. Shiro eyed her in admonishment.

“Katie...”

“Yeah, yeah, I know - it’s rude,” she said. “But he totally deserved it.”

Shiro resigned with a sigh.

It would go down as the biggest traffic jam in history. Not that anyone would care.

Anyone but Lance McClain, that is.

With gritted teeth, he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he waited. Normally, he was a patient person. People who knew him more would even go as far as “laid-back.”  

Today just wasn’t one of those days.

“Come on,” he muttered, trying not to glance at the clock or think about how late he was. Mentally, he scolded himself for waiting up until the last minute to leave, even if he knew how bad the traffic was. To make things worse, it seemed like everyone was on the verge of a song and dance number.

A few seconds later, he groaned. Correction: they were having a song and dance number.

(He recounts how many times this has happened and averages it to around twice a week.)

He tries to keep his cool a bit more as he watches the others prance around, standing on the tops of car roofs and - was that a band? - growing increasingly enthusiastic as they engaged in some sort of dance-off. Probably in another time, he would have enjoyed the spectacle. 

He glances at his watch, banging his head on the wheel.

But today was not the time to enjoy.

Once the crowds cleared up, he gave a relieved sigh, ready to rev up his engine as the roads began to show signs of movement. He went in fast, weaving in and out of the lanes as he overtook the rest, until he hit a roadblock with one of the vehicles.

The black car wasn’t picking up as fast as he wanted to, and his patience was wearing thin.

Honking as loud as he could, he wondered, silently, if the driver was in a daze. (“Hellooo? There are people behind you!”) Feeling at his limit, he then swerved past the car, cursing silently as he found himself at another standstill.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he cried, exasperated. He tried to distract himself, tried not to think about how much of a disaster the day was (and it only just begun!), before he found his eyes straying towards his rear-view mirror.

He noted the people in the car behind him - the black one he had overtaken - and took to mind their appearances. One guy in the driver’s seat, looking a little agitated. One woman in the passenger’s seat, who - as he would put it - looked absolutely gorgeous.

Then there was the girl, sticking out of her window, giving him the finger.

He paused for a moment. Did this actually happen? Was she really giving him the finger? He tried to figure out whether he was really seeing this or if it was a hallucination from the heat.

But she was. She was there, and once he found the drive to turn and look at her, she slipped back into the vehicle, rolling up the windows.

The little shit.

The vehicle in front of him, at least, began to pull up. Ignoring the girl, he shifted back to drive and began his haphazard pace once more, setting his focus on his destination. Time, after all, was a little too short for his liking.

The Roots of Punk Drinking Songs

The last time we looked at drinking songs we divided them into two kinds, the upbeat, celebratory hymn to Bacchus and the introspective, dirge-like ode to alcohol as (to quote Homer—the Springfield one, not the ancient Ionian) “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

Our choice for the greatest drinking song of them all, Roger Ferris’s “The King is Gone (So Are You)” as cut by the mighty George Jones, fell firmly in the latter category, as do many of the greatest drinking songs. But the Bacchic hymns, packed as they are with exhilaration, disorder and anarchic freedom, have their moments, too.

Many of those moments are found in a subdivision of the category, the one devoted not to praising alcoholic beverages collectively or individually or to extolling drunkenness in general, but rather to celebrating and chronicling one particular drinking session. Call it—to use German, the language of genre theory and excessive drinking—the Sauforgienepos; the “swill-session epic.”

There are countless fine examples of the genre, from the Hibernian hilarity of the Dubliners’s “Finnegan’s Wake” (as cited in our previous article) to Virginia O’Brien’s jaunty toe-tapper, “Did I Get Stinkin’ at the Club Savoy,” from the 1942 film Panama Hattie, to “Drunk,” Jimmy Liggins’s monumental military-spec floor-pounder from 1953.

My favorite example, however, is “Peter and Paul,” a 1931 rarity by the Gene Kardos Orchestra that is both hotter than a shot of upcountry corn shine and also one of the weirdest songs ever recorded. The weirdness lies not in the music itself, the instrumentation or even the performance, but rather in the fact that it was recorded at all. Read the lyrics, given here in full, and you’ll see what I mean.

One summer day it came to pass

That Peter and Paul upon an ass

Went up to town to take a glass

And bum around Jerusalem

O Jerusalem,

O Jerusalem,

O Jerusalem,

Jerusalem the golden!

Then Peter started falling in:

“Come on, let’s have a hooker of gin.”

“Brother,” says Paul, “it would be a sin

To liquor in Jerusalem.”

O Jerusalem, etc.

But when they got into the bar,

Says Paul, “O look, Pete, here we are—

We must have followed the Hennessy star*

Instead of that of Bethlehem.”

[*Until the 1960s, a Cognac’s age was generally indicated by the number of stars on the label—ed.]

O-o Bethlehem, etc.

The barmaid had an ankle neat;

It soon began to get to Pete,

He grabbed her right behind the seat—

The seat of old Jerusalem.

O Jerusalem, etc.

Says Peter, “Paul, I have a notion:

Time to tend to my devotion.”

Says Paul, “you’re rolling like an ocean—

You’re all wet in Jerusalem.”

O Jerusalem, etc.”

Indeed. It’s not often you encounter scurrilous fanfic about the Apostles. What gives?

About the song itself, little is known. It was copyrighted—or at least the melody was—in November, 1931, by one “F. Arnold.” The label of Kardos’s recording—the only one the song has ever received—expands that “F” to “Florence.” After extensive searching, I believe that this is also the only song Florence Arnold ever copyrighted or published.

As to who she was, besides an impressive wiseass, I cannot say. There was a Florence Arnold, alias “the Irish nightingale” and “the blonde pony,” who sang and danced in vaudeville in the 1900s and 1910s and then married Charles Koster, the king of American circus publicists. Koster was a famous wiseass himself, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he married another one, but beyond that there’s no proof we’re talking about the same Florence Arnold or even if that was the composer of the song’s real name.

We know a little more about the song’s performers. Yugin “Gene” Kardos (1899-1980) is not one of the great names in jazz. He was neither a paradigm-shifting soloist nor a brilliant composer nor a flamboyant, larger-than-life personality. He was a Hungarian Jewish kid born and raised on the then-tough Upper East Side of Manhattan who lived with his parents. He talked with a thick, dese-dem-and-dose New York accent and had worked as a bookkeeper. But he could play the violin and the saxophone and he knew how to lead a band; how to keep it together; how to focus its energies; how to make sure everyone zigged when they were supposed to zig, zagged when they were supposed to zag, and went BRAP! BRAP! BRAP! with their horns precisely when they were supposed to go BRAP! BRAP! BRAP!

On the strength of that, Kardos got his Orchestra—any band too big to fit in the back of a taxi was an “orchestra” back then—a long-running gig at the Gloria Palast, a German dance hall on East 86th St., a contract with Victor records and a weekly half hour on national radio. In the depths of the Depression, that wasn’t nothing—indeed, those were the kinds of things that made most normal bands who had them famous.

That didn’t happen with these guys, although at first glance, Kardos’s band seemed perfectly normal. In its instrumentation, it was the standard eleven-piece dance band of its day. Two trumpets, a couple of guys who doubled on alto sax and clarinet, a tenor sax, a trombone, a rhythm section—banjo, tuba, piano and drums—and, of course, Kardos, who mostly waved a baton.

Most of the band’s material was pretty standard, too, at least on record: the way things worked, the A&R guy gave you the song and you played it, and most of those songs were corny, “synco-pep” (as it was sometimes called) dance numbers with novelty “vocal refrain.” For records, Victor even teamed the band up with Dick Robertson, their A-list vocal refrain-suppliers and a star in his own right.

It should have worked. I can’t say why it didn’t, but I think the recording session Gene and the boys held on October 23, 1931; the one where they cut “Peter and Paul,” gives us a pretty good clue, as does a band photo taken eight days later. The photo, which can be seen here, was admittedly taken on Halloween. But the band, although dressed in suits like everyone back then, come off as a bunch of stone punks.

One guy’s drinking a beer, a couple appear to be munching on sandwiches, all are disheveled and there is a disconcerting number of flat, “yeah, so?” stares into the camera, including from Kardos. The guy next to him, trumpeter Sid Peltyn, who appears drunk (and he’s not the only one) is pointing a toy gun at his head and leaning on a cane. He had the cane because he got shot in the leg during an affray at the Gloria Palast a few weeks before. Yeah.

During the session, they cut five songs, four of which were released. The one that wasn’t was a ditty called “Sweet Violets,” a novelty number where the verses set the listener up to expect the word “shit” only to have it replaced with “sweet violets.” Not funny, but indicative of the way things would go that day. I suspect the regular A&R guy, who was supposed to keep a tight leash on the proceedings, was hungover or out with the flu that day. In any case, the band did at least plod its way through an utterly forgettable ballad of the most commercial sort. But that left three songs: a college number, a thing called “You’ve Got to Sell It,” and our biblical Sauforgienepos.

They play “a Hot Dog, a Blanket, and You,” the college number, for laughs, throwing in a couple of made-up college cheers, one in a ridiculous falsetto (“Riddledy tiddledy tootsy toot / We are the boys of the institute / We are not rough, we are not tough, / But we are detoimined”). The other cheer, however, gives a clue to the amount of fuck you that the band, made up of nine Jews and two Italians, had in reserve:

Ikey, Moses, Jake and Sam

We are the boys that don’t eat ham

Baseball, football, swimming in a tank

We’ve got the money but we keep it in the bank!

At this point, Kardos closes things off by adding, in his East Side honk, “The only way to make us cheer / Is to give us back our prewar beer.”

“You’ve Got to Sell It” is a fast-tempo flag waver, as they used to be called, with the band riffing while Kardos explains the realities of the band business (“Now most people don’t know a good band when they hear it, good or bad / They most always say it’s the last woid when it’s really very sad … I’ve hoid some coahny bands who knock ‘em off theah seats / And I’ve seen Paderewskis kicked out in the streets”).

And finally, “Peter and Paul.” You don’t need electric guitars, leather jackets and bangs to play punk rock. With the right attitude, a mess of brass and reeds, a piano, a banjo and a drum kit will make plenty of noise. The blisteringly fast double time here, the chords punched out at maximum volume, the blaring trumpet solo, the shouted choruses, the scurrilous, even blasphemous subject matter, the drinking and the sex—pure punk. The Ramones didn’t come from nowhere.

Source: http://allofbeer.com/the-roots-of-punk-drinking-songs/

from All of Beer https://allofbeer.wordpress.com/2019/04/20/the-roots-of-punk-drinking-songs/

The Roots of Punk Drinking Songs

The last time we looked at drinking songs we divided them into two kinds, the upbeat, celebratory hymn to Bacchus and the introspective, dirge-like ode to alcohol as (to quote Homer—the Springfield one, not the ancient Ionian) “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

Our choice for the greatest drinking song of them all, Roger Ferris’s “The King is Gone (So Are You)” as cut by the mighty George Jones, fell firmly in the latter category, as do many of the greatest drinking songs. But the Bacchic hymns, packed as they are with exhilaration, disorder and anarchic freedom, have their moments, too.

Many of those moments are found in a subdivision of the category, the one devoted not to praising alcoholic beverages collectively or individually or to extolling drunkenness in general, but rather to celebrating and chronicling one particular drinking session. Call it—to use German, the language of genre theory and excessive drinking—the Sauforgienepos; the “swill-session epic.”

There are countless fine examples of the genre, from the Hibernian hilarity of the Dubliners’s “Finnegan’s Wake” (as cited in our previous article) to Virginia O’Brien’s jaunty toe-tapper, “Did I Get Stinkin’ at the Club Savoy,” from the 1942 film Panama Hattie, to “Drunk,” Jimmy Liggins’s monumental military-spec floor-pounder from 1953.

My favorite example, however, is “Peter and Paul,” a 1931 rarity by the Gene Kardos Orchestra that is both hotter than a shot of upcountry corn shine and also one of the weirdest songs ever recorded. The weirdness lies not in the music itself, the instrumentation or even the performance, but rather in the fact that it was recorded at all. Read the lyrics, given here in full, and you’ll see what I mean.

One summer day it came to pass

That Peter and Paul upon an ass

Went up to town to take a glass

And bum around Jerusalem

O Jerusalem,

O Jerusalem,

O Jerusalem,

Jerusalem the golden!

Then Peter started falling in:

“Come on, let’s have a hooker of gin.”

“Brother,” says Paul, “it would be a sin

To liquor in Jerusalem.”

O Jerusalem, etc.

But when they got into the bar,

Says Paul, “O look, Pete, here we are—

We must have followed the Hennessy star*

Instead of that of Bethlehem.”

[*Until the 1960s, a Cognac’s age was generally indicated by the number of stars on the label—ed.]

O-o Bethlehem, etc.

The barmaid had an ankle neat;

It soon began to get to Pete,

He grabbed her right behind the seat—

The seat of old Jerusalem.

O Jerusalem, etc.

Says Peter, “Paul, I have a notion:

Time to tend to my devotion.”

Says Paul, “you’re rolling like an ocean—

You’re all wet in Jerusalem.”

O Jerusalem, etc.”

Indeed. It’s not often you encounter scurrilous fanfic about the Apostles. What gives?

About the song itself, little is known. It was copyrighted—or at least the melody was—in November, 1931, by one “F. Arnold.” The label of Kardos’s recording—the only one the song has ever received—expands that “F” to “Florence.” After extensive searching, I believe that this is also the only song Florence Arnold ever copyrighted or published.

As to who she was, besides an impressive wiseass, I cannot say. There was a Florence Arnold, alias “the Irish nightingale” and “the blonde pony,” who sang and danced in vaudeville in the 1900s and 1910s and then married Charles Koster, the king of American circus publicists. Koster was a famous wiseass himself, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he married another one, but beyond that there’s no proof we’re talking about the same Florence Arnold or even if that was the composer of the song’s real name.

We know a little more about the song’s performers. Yugin “Gene” Kardos (1899-1980) is not one of the great names in jazz. He was neither a paradigm-shifting soloist nor a brilliant composer nor a flamboyant, larger-than-life personality. He was a Hungarian Jewish kid born and raised on the then-tough Upper East Side of Manhattan who lived with his parents. He talked with a thick, dese-dem-and-dose New York accent and had worked as a bookkeeper. But he could play the violin and the saxophone and he knew how to lead a band; how to keep it together; how to focus its energies; how to make sure everyone zigged when they were supposed to zig, zagged when they were supposed to zag, and went BRAP! BRAP! BRAP! with their horns precisely when they were supposed to go BRAP! BRAP! BRAP!

On the strength of that, Kardos got his Orchestra—any band too big to fit in the back of a taxi was an “orchestra” back then—a long-running gig at the Gloria Palast, a German dance hall on East 86th St., a contract with Victor records and a weekly half hour on national radio. In the depths of the Depression, that wasn’t nothing—indeed, those were the kinds of things that made most normal bands who had them famous.

That didn’t happen with these guys, although at first glance, Kardos’s band seemed perfectly normal. In its instrumentation, it was the standard eleven-piece dance band of its day. Two trumpets, a couple of guys who doubled on alto sax and clarinet, a tenor sax, a trombone, a rhythm section—banjo, tuba, piano and drums—and, of course, Kardos, who mostly waved a baton.

Most of the band’s material was pretty standard, too, at least on record: the way things worked, the A&R guy gave you the song and you played it, and most of those songs were corny, “synco-pep” (as it was sometimes called) dance numbers with novelty “vocal refrain.” For records, Victor even teamed the band up with Dick Robertson, their A-list vocal refrain-suppliers and a star in his own right.

It should have worked. I can’t say why it didn’t, but I think the recording session Gene and the boys held on October 23, 1931; the one where they cut “Peter and Paul,” gives us a pretty good clue, as does a band photo taken eight days later. The photo, which can be seen here, was admittedly taken on Halloween. But the band, although dressed in suits like everyone back then, come off as a bunch of stone punks.

One guy’s drinking a beer, a couple appear to be munching on sandwiches, all are disheveled and there is a disconcerting number of flat, “yeah, so?” stares into the camera, including from Kardos. The guy next to him, trumpeter Sid Peltyn, who appears drunk (and he’s not the only one) is pointing a toy gun at his head and leaning on a cane. He had the cane because he got shot in the leg during an affray at the Gloria Palast a few weeks before. Yeah.

During the session, they cut five songs, four of which were released. The one that wasn’t was a ditty called “Sweet Violets,” a novelty number where the verses set the listener up to expect the word “shit” only to have it replaced with “sweet violets.” Not funny, but indicative of the way things would go that day. I suspect the regular A&R guy, who was supposed to keep a tight leash on the proceedings, was hungover or out with the flu that day. In any case, the band did at least plod its way through an utterly forgettable ballad of the most commercial sort. But that left three songs: a college number, a thing called “You’ve Got to Sell It,” and our biblical Sauforgienepos.

They play “a Hot Dog, a Blanket, and You,” the college number, for laughs, throwing in a couple of made-up college cheers, one in a ridiculous falsetto (“Riddledy tiddledy tootsy toot / We are the boys of the institute / We are not rough, we are not tough, / But we are detoimined”). The other cheer, however, gives a clue to the amount of fuck you that the band, made up of nine Jews and two Italians, had in reserve:

Ikey, Moses, Jake and Sam

We are the boys that don’t eat ham

Baseball, football, swimming in a tank

We’ve got the money but we keep it in the bank!

At this point, Kardos closes things off by adding, in his East Side honk, “The only way to make us cheer / Is to give us back our prewar beer.”

“You’ve Got to Sell It” is a fast-tempo flag waver, as they used to be called, with the band riffing while Kardos explains the realities of the band business (“Now most people don’t know a good band when they hear it, good or bad / They most always say it’s the last woid when it’s really very sad … I’ve hoid some coahny bands who knock ‘em off theah seats / And I’ve seen Paderewskis kicked out in the streets”).

And finally, “Peter and Paul.” You don’t need electric guitars, leather jackets and bangs to play punk rock. With the right attitude, a mess of brass and reeds, a piano, a banjo and a drum kit will make plenty of noise. The blisteringly fast double time here, the chords punched out at maximum volume, the blaring trumpet solo, the shouted choruses, the scurrilous, even blasphemous subject matter, the drinking and the sex—pure punk. The Ramones didn’t come from nowhere.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-roots-of-punk-drinking-songs/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/184327805242

The Roots of Punk Drinking Songs

The last time we looked at drinking songs we divided them into two kinds, the upbeat, celebratory hymn to Bacchus and the introspective, dirge-like ode to alcohol as (to quote Homer—the Springfield one, not the ancient Ionian) “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

Our choice for the greatest drinking song of them all, Roger Ferris’s “The King is Gone (So Are You)” as cut by the mighty George Jones, fell firmly in the latter category, as do many of the greatest drinking songs. But the Bacchic hymns, packed as they are with exhilaration, disorder and anarchic freedom, have their moments, too.

Many of those moments are found in a subdivision of the category, the one devoted not to praising alcoholic beverages collectively or individually or to extolling drunkenness in general, but rather to celebrating and chronicling one particular drinking session. Call it—to use German, the language of genre theory and excessive drinking—the Sauforgienepos; the “swill-session epic.”

There are countless fine examples of the genre, from the Hibernian hilarity of the Dubliners’s “Finnegan’s Wake” (as cited in our previous article) to Virginia O’Brien’s jaunty toe-tapper, “Did I Get Stinkin’ at the Club Savoy,” from the 1942 film Panama Hattie, to “Drunk,” Jimmy Liggins’s monumental military-spec floor-pounder from 1953.

My favorite example, however, is “Peter and Paul,” a 1931 rarity by the Gene Kardos Orchestra that is both hotter than a shot of upcountry corn shine and also one of the weirdest songs ever recorded. The weirdness lies not in the music itself, the instrumentation or even the performance, but rather in the fact that it was recorded at all. Read the lyrics, given here in full, and you’ll see what I mean.

One summer day it came to pass

That Peter and Paul upon an ass

Went up to town to take a glass

And bum around Jerusalem

O Jerusalem,

O Jerusalem,

O Jerusalem,

Jerusalem the golden!

Then Peter started falling in:

“Come on, let’s have a hooker of gin.”

“Brother,” says Paul, “it would be a sin

To liquor in Jerusalem.”

O Jerusalem, etc.

But when they got into the bar,

Says Paul, “O look, Pete, here we are—

We must have followed the Hennessy star*

Instead of that of Bethlehem.”

[*Until the 1960s, a Cognac’s age was generally indicated by the number of stars on the label—ed.]

O-o Bethlehem, etc.

The barmaid had an ankle neat;

It soon began to get to Pete,

He grabbed her right behind the seat—

The seat of old Jerusalem.

O Jerusalem, etc.

Says Peter, “Paul, I have a notion:

Time to tend to my devotion.”

Says Paul, “you’re rolling like an ocean—

You’re all wet in Jerusalem.”

O Jerusalem, etc.”

Indeed. It’s not often you encounter scurrilous fanfic about the Apostles. What gives?

About the song itself, little is known. It was copyrighted—or at least the melody was—in November, 1931, by one “F. Arnold.” The label of Kardos’s recording—the only one the song has ever received—expands that “F” to “Florence.” After extensive searching, I believe that this is also the only song Florence Arnold ever copyrighted or published.

As to who she was, besides an impressive wiseass, I cannot say. There was a Florence Arnold, alias “the Irish nightingale” and “the blonde pony,” who sang and danced in vaudeville in the 1900s and 1910s and then married Charles Koster, the king of American circus publicists. Koster was a famous wiseass himself, and it wouldn’t be surprising if he married another one, but beyond that there’s no proof we’re talking about the same Florence Arnold or even if that was the composer of the song’s real name.

We know a little more about the song’s performers. Yugin “Gene” Kardos (1899-1980) is not one of the great names in jazz. He was neither a paradigm-shifting soloist nor a brilliant composer nor a flamboyant, larger-than-life personality. He was a Hungarian Jewish kid born and raised on the then-tough Upper East Side of Manhattan who lived with his parents. He talked with a thick, dese-dem-and-dose New York accent and had worked as a bookkeeper. But he could play the violin and the saxophone and he knew how to lead a band; how to keep it together; how to focus its energies; how to make sure everyone zigged when they were supposed to zig, zagged when they were supposed to zag, and went BRAP! BRAP! BRAP! with their horns precisely when they were supposed to go BRAP! BRAP! BRAP!

On the strength of that, Kardos got his Orchestra—any band too big to fit in the back of a taxi was an “orchestra” back then—a long-running gig at the Gloria Palast, a German dance hall on East 86th St., a contract with Victor records and a weekly half hour on national radio. In the depths of the Depression, that wasn’t nothing—indeed, those were the kinds of things that made most normal bands who had them famous.

That didn’t happen with these guys, although at first glance, Kardos’s band seemed perfectly normal. In its instrumentation, it was the standard eleven-piece dance band of its day. Two trumpets, a couple of guys who doubled on alto sax and clarinet, a tenor sax, a trombone, a rhythm section—banjo, tuba, piano and drums—and, of course, Kardos, who mostly waved a baton.

Most of the band’s material was pretty standard, too, at least on record: the way things worked, the A&R guy gave you the song and you played it, and most of those songs were corny, “synco-pep” (as it was sometimes called) dance numbers with novelty “vocal refrain.” For records, Victor even teamed the band up with Dick Robertson, their A-list vocal refrain-suppliers and a star in his own right.

It should have worked. I can’t say why it didn’t, but I think the recording session Gene and the boys held on October 23, 1931; the one where they cut “Peter and Paul,” gives us a pretty good clue, as does a band photo taken eight days later. The photo, which can be seen here, was admittedly taken on Halloween. But the band, although dressed in suits like everyone back then, come off as a bunch of stone punks.

One guy’s drinking a beer, a couple appear to be munching on sandwiches, all are disheveled and there is a disconcerting number of flat, “yeah, so?” stares into the camera, including from Kardos. The guy next to him, trumpeter Sid Peltyn, who appears drunk (and he’s not the only one) is pointing a toy gun at his head and leaning on a cane. He had the cane because he got shot in the leg during an affray at the Gloria Palast a few weeks before. Yeah.

During the session, they cut five songs, four of which were released. The one that wasn’t was a ditty called “Sweet Violets,” a novelty number where the verses set the listener up to expect the word “shit” only to have it replaced with “sweet violets.” Not funny, but indicative of the way things would go that day. I suspect the regular A&R guy, who was supposed to keep a tight leash on the proceedings, was hungover or out with the flu that day. In any case, the band did at least plod its way through an utterly forgettable ballad of the most commercial sort. But that left three songs: a college number, a thing called “You’ve Got to Sell It,” and our biblical Sauforgienepos.

They play “a Hot Dog, a Blanket, and You,” the college number, for laughs, throwing in a couple of made-up college cheers, one in a ridiculous falsetto (“Riddledy tiddledy tootsy toot / We are the boys of the institute / We are not rough, we are not tough, / But we are detoimined”). The other cheer, however, gives a clue to the amount of fuck you that the band, made up of nine Jews and two Italians, had in reserve:

Ikey, Moses, Jake and Sam

We are the boys that don’t eat ham

Baseball, football, swimming in a tank

We’ve got the money but we keep it in the bank!

At this point, Kardos closes things off by adding, in his East Side honk, “The only way to make us cheer / Is to give us back our prewar beer.”

“You’ve Got to Sell It” is a fast-tempo flag waver, as they used to be called, with the band riffing while Kardos explains the realities of the band business (“Now most people don’t know a good band when they hear it, good or bad / They most always say it’s the last woid when it’s really very sad … I’ve hoid some coahny bands who knock ‘em off theah seats / And I’ve seen Paderewskis kicked out in the streets”).

And finally, “Peter and Paul.” You don’t need electric guitars, leather jackets and bangs to play punk rock. With the right attitude, a mess of brass and reeds, a piano, a banjo and a drum kit will make plenty of noise. The blisteringly fast double time here, the chords punched out at maximum volume, the blaring trumpet solo, the shouted choruses, the scurrilous, even blasphemous subject matter, the drinking and the sex—pure punk. The Ramones didn’t come from nowhere.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-roots-of-punk-drinking-songs/

REVIEWING THE CHARTS - CHRISTMAS SPECIAL: 9th December 2018

Geez, today was a busy week. Before we talk about the top 10, however, let’s just get the massive elephants out of the way.

CHRISTMAS NONSENSE

It’s the festive season and one way people celebrate the holidays is by listening to its music – usually, Christmas music, of course, and since I review all returning entries that I haven’t talked about yet, sigh... There are seven of these so I’m going to go as quick as possible, but just bear with me throughout this section because I really don’t like Christmas music all that much. Let’s just get it over with.

#39 – “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” – Brenda Lee

This is “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”, a song written by Johnny Marks and released in 1958 in the US, being left on the shelf for four years until its release in the UK in 1962. In 1963, it peaked at number-six and has since re-entered due to digital downloads, with one of its highest recent peaks being number-seven last year. It’s pretty inoffensive rockabilly, with some nice very-50s guitar licks coming in throughout, and some decently-sounding production, but really it’s not anything of internet until that sax solo. That solo is freaking gorgeous, and I’m glad it’s there, because otherwise this would just kind of fall to the wayside. Not sure I like Lee’s voice on here, it comes off as a bit nasal, but it’s not a big deal. It’s alright, I guess. I expected to say RIP here since she was popular such a long time ago, but no, she’s still alive and kicking. Good for her.

#36 – “Merry Christmas Everyone” – Shakin’ Stevens

Now this is where it all breaks down into dread. This song by Shakin’ Stevens is Godawful, mostly because of how painfully manufactured the whole thing is. It’s overproduced Christmas music that is just jolly feelings and nothing else. Those horns that kick in after the first verse are pretty cool, but Stevens doesn’t sound great here – or at least I can’t tell because he’s drowned in reverb – and the choir might as well be a computer for all I care. Also, the sax solo was cool the first time in Brenda Lee’s track, but here it’s just trite, especially when you add those shooby-doo-wops over it. This track was initially the Christmas number-one for 1985, and I understand why, but does it really have to come back every year since 2007 – for over 60 weeks in total? Oh, it peaked last year at #10 too. Let’s hope this upwards trend doesn’t continue.

#35 – “Santa Tell Me” – Ariana Grande

Now for a more recent one from arguably the biggest popstar in the world right now, with her 2014 song that actually failed to chart in the Top 40 initially until last year at #29, and that’s its peak so far... whilst I’ve never been a fan of the cleaner, refined Ariana Grande records, I do have a soft spot for this one. That melody is infectious and the sleigh bells complement the synth bass in a way I didn’t think they would, and it’s not like the drums are all that overpowering here, although a trap skitter would have worked better here (yeah, I know, not something I say often). It’s surprisingly romantic and sensual for a song with Santa in the title, actually, although it’s about men who have wronged her. Anyway, Ariana kills it but what else do you expect from a song from her at this point? It’s a good track, although the final chorus with the choir is really cluttered, just saying, it’s messy.

#30 – “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” – Michael Bublé

This here is Michael Bublé’s cover of traditional Christmas classic written in 1951 by Meredith Wilson, and it’s not great. Obviously, I mean, it’s Michael Bublé, ever since “Haven’t Met You Yet” he’s been utterly useless seasonal radio fodder. Bublé never really sounds bad but he never sounds interesting, and this production isn’t doing him any favours. It’s sickly sweet strings and brass for the most part, with some piano added in there for good measure, after what seems to be way too long of just airy synth, string and guitar noise – that’s really out of place, guys, why is this on the single edit? Ah, what else to say? Oh, right, nothing.

#26 – “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” – Band Aid

Oh, I know it’s Christmas time, alright, this song won’t let me forget it. I could ramble on about how preachy and awful this charity single is but other people have done it better. I just have four short things to say – 1.) this was the most popular song in the UK of the entire 80s. Yikes. 2.) This is the worst thing the Boomtown Rats have had any involvement in. They’re such a great band, hell so are Culture Club. How do Boy George, the Boomtown Rats, Ultravox, Phil Collins, U2, Kool & the Gang, Sting and Duran Duran make something this awful? They’re all absolutely fantastic musicians in their own right. 3.) That synth that kicks in after a while is pretty ugly, not gonna lie, and is unfitting for the condescending Christmas charity single angle they’re going for here – mostly because that’s what it really is. 4.) We’ve remade and reissued and re-entered this song too many times. Let it go, Britain. Please. We’re begging you. It’s for a good cause, and I appreciate how much money it’s raised, but it’s also garbage.

#18 – “Fairytale of New York” – The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl

They use the word because it was the 80s, it’s not meant to mean homosexual and it’s not used in that context – albeit still a negative one – and the climate of Ireland, especially the Celtic punk scene, wasn’t exactly going to care about dropping that slur in their Christmas single. It should still be censored, though, I mean, black rappers saying the N-word is morally okay, but we still mute those, right? Anyway, this is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard. It starts with a beautifully elegant piano melody, with the lead singer of the Pogues, Shane MacGowan, mumbling his way through his verse, but instead of people like Future or Lil Baby, there’s still a lot of sincerity there, I feel, and a lot of soul is put into expressing the lyrics here in the raspy tone that I absolutely love. I’m not going to talk much about the story here mostly because I’m not going to go in-depth, but it’s about a typical love story going awry at some point due to a betrayal. Oh, and the moment the Celtic traditional instruments come in is one of the best moments in music – ever. Kirsty MacColl sounds so lovely here, and the harmonisations in the chorus are fantastic. That flute solo is gorgeous, and the juxtaposition between “you’re a bum, you’re a punk, you’re an old s--- on junk, lying there almost dead as a drip on that bed” and the cheerful instrumental is just hilarious to me, especially since right after “Happy Christmas your a---, I thank God it’s our last” is immediately followed by the bombastic drunk sing-a-long chorus. The third verse is also such a great back-and-forth, man, I can’t even bring to words how much I admire and adore this piece of music. This is the best song I think I’ve ever talked about on this show, by far, but it could have easily not been close if “2000 Miles” by the Pretenders returned this week. We’ll just hope for next week, I guess. Rest in peace to Kirsty MacColl, gone much too young.

#14 – “Last Christmas” – WHAM!

Finally, we have our last Christmas song for this week’s holiday REVIEWING THE CHARTS special. It’s an anti-climactic end, to be honest, because I’m pretty indifferent to this song. It’s pretty 80s, to be fair, so I’ve got to like some of the cheesy falsetto vocalisations from the late George Michael at the start, as well as those repetitive synths that keep themselves from sounding awful by having those sleigh bells and pretty damn nice keys covering them. That chorus is iconic, but the rest of the lyrics are just forgettable. Honestly, it’s a good background song and it’s a well-written, catchy pop track with Michael putting in some good vocals throughout, but, it’s nothing special. Nothing but respect to George Michael, though, rest in peace, he’s a pop legend over here.

Christmas Conclusion

The best Christmas song on the charts right now is easily “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, but an Honourable Mention goes to Mariah Carey for “All I Want for Christmas is You”. Yup, that’s still here, we’ll get to that in a second. Worst of the Week goes to Band Aid for “Do They Know it’s Christmas?” You should be ashamed, Bob. Dishonourable Mention is going to Shakin’ Stevens for “Merry Christmas Everyone”. Other Christmas songs you should check out are “Christmas in Harlem” by Kanye West, Teyana Taylor and CyHi tha Prynce featuring Musiq Soulchild (heck, check out the longer version if you wish), “2000 Miles” by the Pretenders, “Stop the Cavalry” by Jona Lewie, “Christmas Lights” by Coldplay, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” by Tyler, the Creator and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” by DMX. Yes, those last two actually exist. Now, this Christmas section has taken longer and is longer to read than about half of my normal episodes, so I think we should get straight into...

Top 10

Well, this all feels a bit more familiar. “thank u, next” by Ariana Grande is still at the top of the charts five weeks in, and it doesn’t really seem to have much competition.

Ava Max, however, is making a surprise run for the top, up four spots to number-two, with “Sweet but Psycho”. I wouldn’t exactly be complaining if this hit the top either.

“Without Me” by Halsey is up a spot to number-three.

We have a new entry from the most recent X Factor winner, Dalton Harris, with a cover of Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Christmas classic “The Power of Love”, featuring James Arthur. I guess awful Christmas songs aren’t going away for that long, huh? Obviously this is Dalton’s first top 10, and Arthur’s fifth.

“Thursday” by Jess Glynne is down two spaces to number-three.

Up a whopping 28 spaces this week to number-six is, you guessed it, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”. This isn’t its first top 10 turn, and it’s not its peak, but still impressive to reach here nonetheless.

This means “Woman Like Me” by Little Mix featuring Nicki Minaj is down five spaces to number-seven.

“Rewrite the Stars” by James Arthur and Anne-Marie has actually gained nine spaces, surprisingly, and to my dismay, to number-eight, becoming Arthur’s sixth and Anne-Marie’s fifth.

Oh, and if you wanted even worse news, up an even larger 29 spaces is “KIKA” by 6ix9ine featuring Tory Lanez, becoming both their first (and hopefully for 6ix9ine, only) top 10 hit at number-nine. I like the song, but I don’t like Tekashi, to say the least.

We have another new entry at #10 this week with “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” by Mark Ronson featuring Miley Cyrus. This is Ronson’s sixth top 10 hit and Cyrus’ fourth (yeah, I thought she had more too).

Now, instead of separating what happened on the charts into Dropouts, Climbers, Returning Entries, Fallers and such, let’s separate into two sections: “What Survived” and “What Suffered”.

What Survived

What survived means essentially everything that still managed to chart this week, and I’m actually surprised by how much power some of these songs have. Going in reverse order, I have no idea how “Arms Around You” by XXXTENTACION, Lil Pump, Swae Lee and Maluma managed to cling on despite a 17-space fall to #40. “Promises” by Calvin Harris and Sam Smith is down 16 to #38, “Baby Shark” by Pinkfong is down four to #37, “Empty Space” by James Arthur is down 10 to #34 (why did James Arthur of all people have the strength to stay during the avalanche?), “Hold My Girl” by George Ezra is down eight to #33, “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper is down 27 to #32 (considering both streaming cuts and Christmas bloodbath), “Leave a Light On” by Tom Walker has returned to #31 for some reason, “when the party’s over” by Billie Eilish is down seven to #28 (again, surprised this one’s still here), “Taki Taki” by DJ Snake, Ozuna, Cardi B and Selena Gomez is down eight to #27, “1999” by Charli XCX and Troye Sivan is down 11 to #24, “Polaroid” by James Blue, Liam Payne and Lennon Stella is down 11 to #23, “Let You Love Me” by Rita Ora is down eight to #22, “Better” by Khalid is down five to #20, “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee is down seven to #16, as is “ZEZE” by Kodak Black featuring Travis Scott and Offset right next to it at #15, “Funky Friday” by Dave and Fredo is down five to #12, and everything else that’s currently charting is either simply not notable (a drop or climb less than four spaces), in the top 10, a new arrival, a Christmas re-entry or in the top 10. Jesus. Now, what’s gone?

What Suffered

This is a little nicer name for what’s dropped out in the absolute onslaught of Christmas music and new arrivals (all returning and new entries this week total to 12 songs that weren’t on the chart before). This week was an absolute bloodbath, and these are the murder victims. Former #1 “Shotgun” by George Ezra is out from #30, “Advice” by Cadet and Deno Driz is out from #28, “AirForce” by Digdat is out from the #20 debut, “Mo Bamba” by Sheck Wes is out prematurely from #27, “This is Me” by Keala Settle and the Greatest Showman Ensemble is out again from #36, another former #1 “Eastside” by benny blanco, Halsey and Khalid is out from #31, “Happier” by Marshmello and Bastille is out from #32, “I Found You” by benny blanco and Calvin Harris is out from #29, “MIA” by Bad Bunny featuring Drake is out from #35, “Always Remember Us this Way” by Lady Gaga is out from #39, “Goodbye” by Jason Derulo and David Guetta featuring Nicki Minaj and Willy William is out from #40 and finally, “Back and Forth” by MK, Jonas Blue and Becky Hill is out from #37. I’d say it’s time to move onto the New Arrivals – but before, I’d like to say that the BBC redesigned their UK Top 40 page, and it looks pretty cool. Anyways:

NEW ARRIVALS

#29 – “MAMA” – 6ix9ine featuring Kanye West and Nicki Minaj

Of course, DUMMY BOY only had a stunted tracking week last week, so we have the effects of the album this week. This is 6ix9ine’s third top 40 hit in the UK, Nicki Minaj’s thirty-seventh (yeah, I know, it’s insane), and Ye’s even crazier forty-third, and to be honest, it’s inoffensive, which is something I’d never thought I’d say about a 6ix9ine song, but, hey, it is what it is. Murda Beatz’s production is pretty cool for what it is, and I do like the eerie synth loop. 6ix9ine’s delivery is lazy and boring – and I still think we shouldn’t let rappers say they kick women out of doors – but he doesn’t last long so when Kanye comes in with that “man, oh my God” refrain it gets so much better. I’m so used to Kanye West’s pop-culture rambling, social media criticism/obsession, somehow relating to women nonsense he brings to nearly every single verse he does recently that I’m used to it, it’s just something I’ve heard before delivered relatively comedically. Nicki’s refrain and verse actually has some work put into it, unlike the dudes’ bars, so yeah, I appreciate that, although her delivery and cadence is exhaustingly blunt and straightforward, to the point where it’s just kind of tiring. There’s some decent wordplay there, I guess. This is okay enough, and pretty much top-tier Tekashi to be honest. “KANGA” also featuring Ye is even better, though.

#17 – “Going Bad” – Meek Mill featuring Drake

Meek Mill and Drake working together is something I expected to happen anyway. Meek and Drake have seemingly squashed their beef and have relaxed after the “Back to Back” situation and their popular 2015/2016 beef that revealed a lot about Drake, specifically his ghostwriting from Quentin Miller, and eventually stressed Meek’s relationship with Nicki enough for them to break up as a result. Oh, and you better believe they mention “back to back” because of course they do, it’s the only funny wordplay they can conjure up, apparently. This is Meek Mill’s first ever top 40 hit in the UK (congratulations) and in stark contrast, Drake’s forty-fifth (yes, even more than Kanye), and his thirteenth just this year (probably and hopefully his last), and it’s mediocre. I didn’t know what to expect because I’ve never really cared enough about Meek to listen to him, but an out-of-tune piano absolutely demolished by some bass while Drake spouts off with stuff like “I got more slaps than the Beatles” isn’t exactly the best first impression. Is there a chorus here, or not? I can’t tell, everything’s just kind of the same until the ad-lib break that’s long enough for Genius to count it as an entirely different section of the song than in Meek’s verse. It was “Interlude” when I looked but it might be “Post-Chorus” now. Yeah, it should be clear I don’t care enough about this song. I do like Drake’s delivery in the hook, though, it’s pretty energetic, but not enough to save it.

#10 – “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart” – Mark Ronson featuring Miley Cyrus

So, yeah, I like this. It starts with some beautiful strings right before Miley Cyrus fades in with her country twang that I’m starting to really appreciate, and those guitars come in to complement her and the deeper bass that I like the addition of, it really contrasts the otherwise pretty light production, that seems to be dramatic but kind of unfitting for the lyrical content about how the world can hurt you but heartbreak is the worst possible thing, because despite the beat’s melodrama it’s too upbeat to really work here, I feel. Ah, well, the hook is pretty memorable, and the orchestral stings is just one little barely-noticeable production quirk that I can talk about, seriously, Mark Ronson puts so much effort into crafting these songs over the years, it’s pretty great. It may be a bit too repetitive and slow for my taste, but, yeah, I can dig this. Good song, just not much to say about it.

#4 – “The Power of Love” – Dalton Harris featuring James Arthur

The girl gets Leona Lewis, the Scouse dude gets Kaiser Chiefs, yet the WINNER gets James Arthur?! Really, James Arthur? Poor dude. You must know you’re an amazingly talented singer when you get James Arthur put on your song and you still make a surprisingly decent winner’s single, hell, even win in the first place. Arthur is such an awful vacuum of talent, I was scared Harris would be affected by this but no, even with my half-bothering with the show this year I can tell he’s been consistently great, and he’s definitely not bad on here either, although the production has no unique charm to it and is just plastic Syco production as you expect, with James Arthur bringing an above-average performance (this means still pretty bad) with his moaning and straining that just pains me to listen to. Seriously, James, let’s have a cactus-to-man talk and let me teach you how to not sound like my dead cat who just popped some Xanax.

Conclusion

Worst of the Week goes to Dalton Harris and James Arthur for “The Power of Love” – at least “Going Bad” has some energy and legitimate soul to it, although Meek Mill and Drake still get Dishonourable Mention. Mark Ronson and Miley Cyrus take Best of the Week home for “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”, and hell Kanye and Nicki made “MAMA” bearable enough for them and 6ix9ine to get Honourable Mentions. See ya next week, where we’ll probably see a few more Christmas songs. Delightful.

The EP is such a fun format to take a deeper look into each year, because it’s like a grab bag of burgeoning artists and established ones who could very well be light years apart on the ladder of success, and yet, both have the same goal in common: To take risks and get a little weird in the music they’re making. Here on Recommended Listen, it’s got plenty of proven success stories behind it, considering the likes of everyone from Girlpool, Moses Sumney, Palehound, Shamir and Vince Staples have all graced this list in the past before going on to outdo their own potential. For the most part, 2017’s selections are the former scenario -- Young artists cutting their teeth with an impressive short-form opening statement (or in one case, two...) that has you looking forward to whatever comes next, but a couple of familiar names managed to keep the bar raised, too. These are the 10 Best EPs of 2017...

10. Ohyeahsumi - Your Friends Are Looking for You [Sports Day Records]

Los Angeles has long been the backdrop of a Hollyweird culture, and Your Friends Are Looking for You, the debut effort by Ohyeahsumi, extracts all of the danger among beauty, and mystery among romance out of the city’s perpetually sunlit sky into the bedroom for an intriguing dark pop affair. Behind its closed door sit Lena and Rena Vernon, an enigmatic pair of teenage twin sisters whose cryptophasia for disturbia throughout its six tracks is utterly entrancing. It the strange kind that has the ability to melt the walls of the room as the listen unfurls and plots hypnotic bass lines, post-punk corners, and spectral keys toeing over sublime sonic warps. While Ohyeahsumi’s debut EP introduces the sisters Vernon as two young artists searching for an identity in darker motifs and hidden diary passages with enough space to grow beyond the realm they’ve witchcrafted here, it sparks just enough questions in their morbid bedroom pop to lead you on to what comes next.

9. Julia Michaels - Nervous System [Republic Records]

Before her 21st birthday, Julia Michaels had already made a name for herself as one of the most recognizable pens writing today’s biggest pop hits for Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. This year, she stepped out on her own with her debut EP Nervous System, putting two shamelessly played-to-death singles on the Hot 100 charts in the hyper self-aware ballad “Issues” and the kinky itch-to-scratch “Uh Huh”. Those aren’t even the best of the seven-track track listen, however, with deep cuts like “Worst In Me” being one of the year’s finest examples of pop songwriting craft altogether. What has separated her from the pop kingdom at large is how her naked emotions, prose, and the soft crackles in her voice are entirely co-dependent on one another while orbiting Michaels’ signature narratives – falling in love, the eventual heartache, and vulnerability as strength – that few of her peers can claim are entirely theirs to own. Nobody in the whole world can own a song and emotion the way Michaels does here.

8. Boy Harsher - Country Girl [Ascetic House]

2017 uncovered a gem hidden between Western Massachusetts’ mounts and valleys with Boy Harsher, the Northampton duo of vocalist Jae Matthews and producer Augustus Muller whose latest collection of spectral ravers capture an oft-chased aesthetic of inhabiting darker spaces without making them feel like they’ve been walked through several times over, or by anyone at all for that matter. On Country Girl, their shadows move through seedy intersections of IDM and a cryptic tension built up by a slow pulse of phasers, corrosive drum beats, and vocalist Jae Matthews’ smokey murmurs.  A few flashes of bright bulbs intermittently flash the whereabouts of where Boy Harsher’s decrepit disco has brought you, with it being a dance floor with a dangerous foundation beneath where ecstasy is not necessarily a substance, but rather a brain chemical reaction going off in your body. To release it, they merely have to play on your fears.

7. Weeping Icon - Eyeball Under [Fire Talk / Kanine Records]

An excellent feature in The New York Times this past year told us what most of us already know: That rock music isn’t dead, it’s just ruled by women, and went on to let us eavesdrop on a round table discussion and profile a who’s who list of some of the faces at the forefront of it all. In a perfect world, there’d be more than two dozen names on that list, and the Brooklyn noise punk outfit Weeping Icon – which features members from former and current NYC scene bands ADVAETA, Lutkie, Mantismass, Warcries and Water Temples – would get just due themselves for their debut EP Eyeball Under. Where they demand your attention is in their violence of guitars and lead singer Lani Combier-Kapel ability to channel conversation between furious screams and echos, or wry group harmonies. Weeping Icon’s sound would convincingly play to the scenes of the world’s inner ugliness being burned down into oblivion, and to ensure it, there’s no shortage of fuel for them to add to the fire.

6. Courtship Ritual - Chary [Godmode Music]

Courtship Ritual’s Monica Salazar and bass magician Jared Olmsted are forward-thinking post-punk specters who have created their own lane in the oft-regurgitated realm of the sound by teasing their fingers around sensuality and rhythmic body-to-body thrusts. CHARY moves well beyond what they’ve already conjured behind closed doors, however. The duo still remain inspired by the dark, yet are more playful – albeit, kinkier – in their delivery, and over the course of five tracks, we are given just enough of a taste of their new tantalizing come-ons to satisfy carnal desires immediately. While its full-length predecessor Pith was dense, sticky, and seasonably astute to drop down the sweat-soaked skin of summer, CHARY carries its way into the air with an inviting cool and a lighter curiosity to its imagination. It’s said that to keep the flame burning, you need to be open to trying new things, and here, Courtship Ritual sound like they’re open to any idea of it does just that.

5. Nine Inch Nails - ADD VIOLENCE [The Null Corporation]

ADD VIOLENCE, the second Nine Inch Nails EP in a three-part series that began at the tail of 2016 and will presumably conclude by the time 2017 comes to a close, is held together better than its predecessor Not the Actual Events by the super-charged industrial glitch work from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Here, they have distanced themselves from the spacial soundscaping that permeated its way from their silver screen soundtracking into that listen with a more appropriately designed model to fill the walls of arenas. Any previous kinks in the system have been worked through in its bleeds of clean, cohesive electro pop spirals, ice cold percussion, and white hot guitar rash that brings to mind the dark, dystopian new wave of 2005′s With Teeth. It’s probably by no shear coincidence that this exists during a fever pitch of political unrest as well. Whatever comes after this, ADD VIOLENCE is a monstrous interstitial that in the darkest corners of Nine Inch Nails’ altered zone tends to leave the biggest clue for future directions.

4. House of Feelings - Last Chance [Infinite Best]

In 2017, songwriting chameleon Matty Fasano transformed his part-time radio show and club night gig into a full-on post-apocalyptic dance troupe with House of Feelings. On their debut EP Last Chance, he and his friends provide a fascinating peer into the human condition’s technology-made void as refracted on a disco ball. Featuring YVETTE drummer Dale Eisinger as its producer and engineer, writer Joe Fassler behind its prose, and guest vocals from Shamir, Perfect Pussy’s Meredith Graves, singer and composer Gabrielle Herbst, and music and film critic Kristen Yoonsoo Kim, it’s an amalgamation of house rises, techno rhythms, silk sax, and glitchy synth-pop that plugs itself into the conscious of the past 20 years of New York City’s underground where a dystopian outlook juxtaposes an otherwise ebullient color scheme with meta truth bombs. In spite of the jadedness, Last Chance offers up a more than acceptable consolation prize of dance grooves so clickbaiting that it’s impossible not to let them pull you into their lost world while pushing worldlier anxieties off for another day.

3. Kamasi Washington - The Harmony of Difference [Young Turks]

We have two people to thank for jazz’s reemergence in the pop landscape, and that would be both Kendrick Lamar and Kamasi Washington after the latter helped the former make it cool to explore free compositions within rap and hip-hop realms on 2015′s To Pimp a Butterfly. K. Dot has since moved away from the experiment on his new album DAMN. (although Washington still contributes some strings,) leaving the style to rightfully be celebrated in full by the saxophonist all his own with his Harmony of Difference, his first new music since 2015′s breakout The Epic. It’s a conceptual piece that originally stood alone as a musical installation at the the Whitney Biennial that embraces that notion that diversity is what makes the world beautiful. Washington’s whiplash chaos and big band bang compliment all the colors of humanity and our universal existence perfectly, and while Recommended Listen won’t pose that it’s knowledge of jazz study is beyond a focus on Mingus, it’s still easy to see how Kamasi Washington’s hope is far from being hidden in plain sight.

2. Yaeji - Yaeji [Godmode Music]

You don’t have to be an underground house savant to appreciate Yaeji’s self-titled debut EP, although it certainly helps. The 23-year-old New York City and Seoul-based DJ and producer is blurring lines in the scene between ambient rhythms, energy highs, and evocative vocal pop matter that in 20 minutes contorts the definition of dance and techno music into something that stands far above itself. Ambiguously-defined style cues poured over Kathy Yaeji Lee’s life reflections ultimately mirror the end user’s perception without relegating her own, creating an early contender for one of the year’s best mood-driven listens yet. What’s redeeming about the kaleidoscopic motions and mind bending detours experienced throughout Yaeji pays a great debt to the the fact that a majority of the five tracks included on the EP originally existed in a standout singular sense first, yet compiled into one body, are given a new lease on life when feeding from the same source of energy. Little did we know that this was actually just her 2017 warm-up... 

1. Yaeji - EP2 [Godmode Music]

EP2, Yaeji’s second extended play of 2017, is our clearest image yet of the enigmatic persona that she is. Over the span of five new tracks and a rework of Drizzy's “Passionfruit” that bests him at his own game, she evolves beyond a mood-driven dance scene she’s already conquered by shape-shifting her sound around trap beats and surface-level singing in the form of pseudo-raps sung in her custom blend of Korean and English that’s putting her entirely in her own lane. The latter half of the equation especially is becoming her calling card and secret weapon in molding sound around her singing. “Drink I’m Sippin On” and “Raingurl” both rely heavily on the language mash-up to compliment the way her synthetic blueprints engages with the world view of the person creating them, with the former oozing a swaggering machismo, and the latter as caffeinated microbursts. With any less control in intention, it could be misconstrued as novelty, but for this producer, it’s wholly a piece of her outsider identity as a bi-continental artist whose introverted ruminations have transcended headspace and found connection in a positive energy of expression. In 2017, shit was crazy, and for the better, shit was Yaeji.

Chapter 1

Epigraph My mind has changed my body’s frame, but God I like it. -TV On the Radio Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness. -Allen Ginsberg I’ve played the Red River Valley. Sat in the kitchen and cried… We was friends, me and this old man. -Guy Clark Chapter 1 Joanie-17, Tommy-22, Maxie-Dead On this day people excused Joanie’s rudeness, her father had just died. She was rude every day, but today there were extenuating circumstances. No one she was rude to on that day knew that Maxie Lore wasn’t really her father. Or her grandfather. Or any sort of blood relation. He was her guardian, though not a legal one. He was her sire, but that implied the events that led up to Joanie ending up in his care had been intentional. They hadn’t been. Well, not entirely. This complicated relationship was probably one of the causes of Joanie’s persistent rudeness. The other cause was the fact that Joanie had been raised by wolves both literal and figurative. Figurative because Joanie had been raised by Maxie Lore and his foster son Tommy Amaryllis. They lived in a cabin in the woods and saw no reason to change their bachelor ways once they found a girl in their midst. Literal wolves because Maxie and Tommy were both werewolves, as was Joanie. The funeral director didn’t know the gory details of Joanie’s home life, but he did know people tended to fall into set categories when grieving. One group became incredibly polite and reserved. They held a strong belief that as long as they spoke softly and didn’t dicker over the casket price then their dearly departed would look upon them with a smile. Another group wanted to get the departed in the ground as quickly as possible. Belligerence and frequent trips to the hallway to hide tears ruled the day. Because of this the funeral director did not take it personally when a 17 year old girl missing a finger on her right hand and wearing a large men’s tweed blazer lit a hand rolled cigarette in his casket showroom. “Sorry miss, no smoking in here,” the funeral director said, his voice kind but implacable, trick of the trade. The girl nodded, she lifted her foot and stubbed out the cigarette on the sole of her shoe, gently so as to save it for later. She tucked it behind her ear. The shoes also looked like they belonged to a man. Clunky, leather, brogue boots. The funeral director was glad that she hadn’t argued. It marked the first time she hadn’t argued all afternoon. Joanie eyed a simple pine box stained grey to resemble barnwood. “This one,” She said. “How much?” “That one is one thousand dollars,” the funeral director said. “Though I’d be willing to come down on that,” He added hastily when he saw her face darken. He had the feeling if he pushed her too hard she’d just plant the old man in the woods. “How about nine hundred fifty and I’ll include a dirt dispenser and the deluxe program and guest book package?” “How about eight hundred and you keep your dirt dispenser and deluxe package,” Joanie said. “Very well. Eight twenty-five and we’ll call it jake.” The funeral director said. Joanie stuck her hand out and they shook. She nearly crushed his hand, but the funeral director didn’t think it was on purpose. She just didn’t know her own strength. She smiled. The funeral director was pleased. Among the groups of grievers there were those who felt better the more they spent on a funeral. Others felt better if they’d won. He’d finally found the group Joanie belonged to. With the funeral all planned, Joanie climbed into the silver 1987 Dodge pickup that had been Maxie’s and was now hers. She had to slam the door three times before it finally stayed closed. Maxie had told her it had been that way ever since the original door got torn off and had to be replaced. It was still light out, but she’d cut it a bit close. Full moon tonight. She had to be ready. *** Joanie-9, Tommy-14, Maxie-62 It was four o’clock. He figured he’d have enough time to buy some rolling papers and go harass the kid at the record store before he had to head back to his house. He hadn’t eaten since 9am two days before. When he was working he only ate hungry man meals they sold at Martin’s food center. He didn’t know what the kid ate, but he never missed an opportunity to rank Maxie out so he must not be starving. His mouth tasted like cigarettes. The knuckles on his left hand screamed. Too much scribbling and not a single decent page to show for it. He was hungover. Max stopped at the store for provisions. He bought the kid a Dr. Pepper in a glass bottle, he knew it was the kid’s favorite. After the food center he walked across the street to the record store. It was the only source of entertainment in the tiny town of Lorraine. It was empty. Which is why it was the only source of entertainment in Lorraine. The town could barely support the one they had. Roller rinks, revival movie theaters, video game stores, and billiard halls had all fallen in the face of the town’s apathy, indifference, and hereditary alcoholism. There were three bars though and every weekend the hills were alive with the sound of gunfire as the denizens hunted coyotes, deer, and mountain lions, paying little attention to seasons or endangered species lists. “You can’t smoke in here, Max.” The kid behind the counter said as he stacked CD’s on a wire shelf. The kid’s name was Blake. Not the type of kid you took home to mother from the looks of him. Dressed all in black, tattoos, stupid ring in his lip, but perhaps he was the type you should take home. A big teddy bear once you got past all the spikes. “Music and smokes go hand in hand, Blake,” Max said. “I know Belkin makes the rules. And it’s really darling of you to try and enforce them, but the fact remains that-” He cut himself off when he saw the kid’s hangdog expression. That Blake was able to pull off hangdog while wearing eyeliner was quite an accomplishment and Max decided to reward him for it. He put the cigarette out on an anonymous boy band CD, blackening the face of the dead-eyed youngest one. “Come on man!” Blake said. “Just saving someone from a life of mediocrity, kid.” Max said. “Old man’s prerogative.” Max turned to a milk crate full of vinyl. He rifled through it. “You know,” he said. “Maybe you should spend a little less money on that garbage and use it to buy more than two jazz albums. Blake sighed. He’s heard this lecture more than a few times. Their exchange was a well worn groove in his mind, he knew where to chime in even when he wasn’t paying attention. “No one buys jazz, Max.” “I do.” “No, you just come in, look at the same records, complain, and leave,” Blake said. “I already have these.” Max said. “We can put in an order for you. I can grab the catalogue.” “Takes the joy out of the find.” Max slid an LP from its sleeve and examined it. “B-side is scratched.” “Three bucks.” Blake already had his hand out for what came next. “Play it for me?” Blake took the record and soon “All The Things You Are” filled the store. Max smiled and Blake. Blake smiled back. “Gonna buy it Max?” Blake said. “Not today, Max said. “Can’t spare the scratch. But that Charlie Parker is one gone guy don’t you think?” “The gonest,” Blake agreed. Max had shut his eyes to better hear the warbling sax. Now, they shot open. “Say, what time ya got?” Max said. “‘Bout 5:30,” Blake said. “Fuck,” Max muttered. He grabbed his shopping bag, containing the essentials of life i.e. smokes, gin, and hungry man meals, off the floor. He ran out of Belkin’s Records without another word, save for a few low “fucks” as darted to his ancient pickup. He slammed the door three times before he got it to catch. The replacement door just didn’t quite fit. Max’s rusted out silver dodge with one mismatched blue door on the driver’s side burned rubber as he turned onto the tree lined highway. Max eyed the setting sun through the bug studded windshield. Too close, he thought. Way, way too close. He could already feel the change clawing at his guts. He drove down the winding forest road that led out of the town of Lorraine and meandered into the thickly forested outskirts. One side of the road followed the path of the Chusi river, and the other was populated by evergreens. In this area vision was always obscured either by fog in the spring and winter or smoke from distant forest fires in the summer and fall. Max tried to squint through the former. The river roiled and bucked, sending up sprays of icy grey. A sharp cramp wracked his arm and he swerved, nearly clipping a tree. He righted the pickup and continued toward his home deep in the woods. The speedometer edged from a relatively reasonable 70 to upwards of 90. It still wasn’t going to be fast enough. The change was happening now. The change was going to happen at 95 miles per hour down a dirt road if he didn’t pull over quickly. Maxie saw a small path barely wide enough to drive his truck onto. Once he was satisfied his truck couldn’t be seen from the road he locked the doors, rolled up the windows, and killed the ignition along with the headlights. He hadn’t engaged the locks to keep anyone out, they were to keep himself in when the change was complete. Maxie gripped the steering wheel of the Silver Bullet as he called his rig. His grip was so strong that his fingernails managed to leave small crescent holes in the rubber of the steering wheel. A shudder ripped through his body and with something akin to relief he stopped resisting. After letting go the change began immediately. His bones slid out of joint and began to meld into different configurations. Small popping noises accompanied the change. The sounds of bare feet walking through broken glass, when the glass breaks but bloody feet muffle the sharp crack and you’re left with a low painful pop. Max wished he’d remembered to leave the radio on so he wouldn’t have to listen to that terrible sound. Though with his luck he’d end up listening to Freebird for the duration so perhaps it was just as well. In any case his hands were now too malformed to work the ignition or the dial. His fingers curled back on themselves and the skin between his knuckles melted and fused together so he appeared to have five stumps on either hand, like a fleshy paw. The skin on his palms coarsened and blackened until it was the pad of a paw. His nose fused to his upper lip and elongated. His teeth grew into fangs. Color’s grew less saturate as his eyes turned from brown to yellow. His ears drifted to the top of his head and grew pointy. Once his nose had turned into a snout he could pick up the smell of diesel and the subtler scents of butted out cigarettes in the ashtray and the frozen meat from one of the hungry man meals he had purchased not an hour previous. The joints of his knees and elbows dissolved and solidified inverted. His chest pushed forward as his neck receded. He could no longer sit properly in the driver’s seat. He slumped over on his side, his paws dangled off the edge of the bench seat. He felt goosebumps cropping up over his entire body as he grew black fur with a silvery tint. The transformation wasn’t exactly painful, only resisting the change truly hurt. It was more a feeling of quesiness paired with the feeling of cracking his neck too far. The momentary panic. The flash that this time he had broken his own neck. This feeling but all over. All scored by the sinuous popping and cracking. It was dark and the change was complete. Maxie Lore was no more. In his place was a large black and silver wolf trapped in a piece of shit pickup truck. He paced in the cab of the rig. Crawling from the back seat to the front and back again. After he grew bored of that he nosed through his shopping bags. He ripped open a hungry man meal. He tore the cardboard into tiny pieces. His fangs punctured the cellophane. He gingerly licked the frozen salisbury steak. Disgusting. He devoured it. He then worked his way through the beef tips, meat loaf, “fried” chicken, and the Mexican Style Fiesta! Maxie licked some thawed beef gravy off his paw and settled down for a quick snooze. Something rattled a branch outside on the driver’s side. Maxie barked. A racoon bombed out of the tree and skittered away. Maxie lunged at it and smacked into the glass. He snarled. He stood with his paws on the door to get a better look at the fleeing racoon. One of his paws slipped. When he repositioned it, he placed his paw directly on the lock/unlock button. All the locks disengaged. Maxie’s ear twitched at the unexpected sound. Then the driver’s side door creaked open and he jumped out of the truck. The smell of fresh blood overpowered the scent of the racoon. He ran in the direction of the dank coppery smell. *** She sometimes went into the woods when her mommy was being sleepy and weird. The house smelled like nasty smoke and she didn’t like her mommy’s friends. They talked fast and laughed too loud the later it got. She wanted to go to bed but their music thumped and kept her awake. So she would wander into the woods that butted up against their little house with the rusty cars and broken trailers in the yard. There was a creek she liked to sit next to. She’d throw rocks into it. She had a friend, a little boy as hungry and angry as she was. He sometimes came with her to the creek, but he wasn’t around that night. His father sometimes came and worked on cars in her yard and brought him, but not today. Not when it was so cold. She had a little atlas that she’d stolen from the local drugstore. It had an american flag on the cover and pretty pictures amongst the maps. There was a picture of a waterfall that was her favorite. She’d sit by the creek and imagine the water gushing over rocks into a dip below was a sixty foot waterfall instead of a six inch one. She’d look at the maps, not really understanding what they meant, but loving them just the same. It was too dark to look at the maps tonight and her flashlight had run out of batteries. A nice lady who said she was her caseworker had given it to her. Now it was dead. Her mother had said they were going to the movies tonight to make it up to her after what happened, but her mother often said things she didn’t mean. Just because this happened often didn’t make it hurt any less. The creek was close enough to her house that she could still see the fender of an old car that she knew rested up on blocks. Once her mother had found her crawling under it and had smacked her. More scared than angry. Her mother told her it could have fallen on her and squashed her like roadkill. She always kept her distance after that. She didn’t want to see that car today. Not when disappointment made her chest ache and tears hovered near the surface. Not when her mother had told her she’d make it up to her, she’d make it up to her, please don’t tell anyone she’d make it up to her. Not when the burn on the back of her hand was still stinging red. She wandered deeper into the woods. She heard heavy breathing, coming out in great snuffing snorts. She walked toward the sound, her head cocked to the side to listen but staring at her feet. She always stared at her feet when she walked. She’d stepped on still burning cigarettes that people had tossed out into the yard from the porch more times than she cared to remember, so she always watched her feet. She came close to the sound. She looked up. In a tiny clearing was a deer. It laid on its side. A hot trail of blood thawed the snow leading to the deer. There were claw marks on its hindquarters. There was a bite on its neck. She approached the deer. It tossed its antlers at her but didn’t move. She crouched down and kept moving toward it. Hand outstretched. The whites of the deer’s eyes rolled into view as it watched her. She got within touching distance. She stroked its fur with the very tips of her fingers. Its muscles seized. She froze, scared it would jump up and trample her, but not so scared that she ran away. She petted the deer again. This time using her whole hand. She sat like that for several minutes. Then she heard a low growl behind her. She turned and saw yellow eyes. Then she saw black fur tinged silver. Then she saw nothing at all. *** Animals aren’t know for their long memories. They make associations but don’t form actual memories. They only know if they like water or hate the vacuum cleaner and if a certain scent means friend or foe. Humans are better at forming episodic memories. The ones that allow someone to remember the last time they heard a Jerry-Jeff Walker song or road on a four-wheeler with their dad. Tommy was never sure if having a human memory was a good thing or a bad thing. He’d had it both ways, so it left him uniquely qualified to judge, but he never could make up his mind. Tommy’s first memory was from when he was four years old. He was crawling around on the cracked yellow linoleum of the kitchen at his old house. His mom was browning hamburger for chili. Their old cowdog Cap ate from a gigantic pitted aluminum bowl in the back corner of the kitchen. He cracked gigantic kernels of stale meat scented food between his teeth. Tommy stumbled over and sat next to Cap. He played with Cap’s ears. Cap had been there to raise Tommy’s older sister so he was used to this type of good-natured abuse and endured it with a long-suffering resignation. But then, Tommy blew in Cap’s face. He’d done it a thousand times before. Cap had always blinked in consternation then returned to his doggy business. However, Tommy had never done it while Cap was eating. Tommy had the terrible knowledge that when a dog bites your eye you can see down its throat for one moment. Tommy shrieked. His mother clocked Cap in the side of the head with the still sizzling frying pan. Cap yelped and huddled in the corner. He unconsciously licked blood off his chops. His mother turned back to Tommy and screamed. His eyeball laid on his cheek, dangling by the optic nerve. She stuffed Tommy into the front seat of her car, not bothering with the car seat. Tommy held his eye up near the socket with a paper towel. When they got to the emergency room the doctor popped his eye back in like it was nothing. He said they were lucky the dog hadn’t bitten down. He gave Tommy an eyepatch and told him he was a pirate for six weeks. The family gave Cap to a guy Tommy’s dad had used to ride saddle-broncs with. None of them blamed Cap for what happened, not even Tommy eventually, but Tommy was so scared of the dog after that he couldn’t sleep. He kept dreaming about Cap sneaking into his room and eating both his eyes. So they got rid of Cap. Tommy was always scared of dogs after that. He had no problem believing they were descended from wolves. This fear turned out to be a good instinct, but did nothing to save him. When Tommy was ten, four years before Max bit Joanie, he also met Maxie Lore in the woods. Joanie found the family she never would have had. Tommy lost his. The morning Max brought Joan home, Tommy woke up in his cage in Maxie’s shed behind his shake shingle house. The scratches on his face weren’t as bad as they had been in years past. Tommy took this as a small victory. All his victories were small in those dark days. He glanced over and saw Max’s cage was empty. The old man had never made it home. He’d been running free during the change. Tommy’s stomach curdled. Tommy stretched his arm through the bars of the cage and grabbed the key to the fat padlock that held the cage closed. He popped the lock open and stepped out of the cage. For a few minutes he paced the shed, waiting for Maxie to come back, praying nothing terrible had happened. When Max didn’t return Tommy pulled on jeans over his basketball shorts and put on his duck boots. He’d left his shirt in the house, but his carhartt jacket laid on the floor. He pulled it on and stepped out into winter morning air. He blew vapor into the air and eyed the sunlight filtering through the trees. He thought it was eight or nine in the morning. He entered the house and stepped into the mint green bathroom to see to his scratches. The scratches were numerous but they weren’t deep. He dabbed them with a twisted tube of neosporin. No stitches or butterflies needed. They would be healed up in a week. He examined where a new scratch crossed a scar from three years previous. Maxie told him he was lucky he didn’t lose the eye. Tommy told him he didn’t know shit about losing eyes. Maxie also told him he’d eventually stop hurting himself during the change. He’d gone through a similar period in the early 50’s, but it got better. Usually cooking relaxed Tommy, but Max still wasn’t back and the sound of crackling bacon wasn’t taking any of the tension out of his shoulders. He made a deal with himself, if Max wasn’t back by the time he finished eating, he’d track him down. This deal lasted about thirty seconds. Tommy’s capacity for self-delusion was incredibly low and he was certain Maxie had fucked something up and he couldn’t waste any more time. He turned off the burner and pulled on his coat. The doorknob turned just as he was about to grab it. Tommy stepped back. Max opened the door. He had a little girl in his arms. She was unconscious, her head lolled on Max’s shoulder. She was covered in blood, there was a bite mark on her shoulder. Expletives and accusations flew through Tommy’s mind. They all sounded like cliches. Maxie dismissed cliche. When Tommy spoke he didn’t want to be dismissed. Max carried the little girl past Tommy into the living room and laid her gently on the couch. He brushed a piece of hair out of her mouth. Tommy watched from the kitchen. Maxie turned and looked at him. Tommy’s face curled into a mask of hatred. Max suspected that this face was how Tommy felt at all times and his generally neutral demeanor was the true mask. Today he had not bothered to put on his mask. Tommy spoke low and slow, as to ensure his pubescent voice didn’t crack and betray the gravity of the situation. It quavered a bit anyway. “God. Damn. You.” Tommy walked to the bathroom and got his first-aid kit. He’d foolishly thought he wouldn’t need it today. He knelt beside the girl. Her coat wasn’t thick enough for the cold outside. Her purple snow boots had holes in the soles. He moved her shoulder to get a better look at the bite mark. Something creaked and cracked, bones ground together. “You broke her collarbone.” Tommy said. Max wetted a dishrag under the faucet and handed it to Tommy. Tommy wiped blood off her face and neck, revealing rended flesh underneath. “These claw marks will scar.” Tommy examined her little hands. “I think she’ll lose this finger and…” He trailed off. He’d wiped more blood from her arms and saw little circular scars. Cigarette burns. Some old, some waxy and new. Tommy swabbed the girl’s wounds with hydrogen peroxide. He sucked air through his teeth with sympathetic pain as it fizzed. He was thankful she was unconscious so she wouldn’t feel the sting. “Take her to the hospital,” Tommy said. “Then call DHS.” Maxie knelt beside Tommy. He touched one of the girl’s scars. “Tell them you found her in the woods. She’d been attacked by an animal.” “The Oregon system is terrible,” Maxie said. “They’ll send her back to them.” “Not right away,” Tommy said. “She needs a hospital.” “When she changes it will heal,” Maxie said. “But it won’t heal right,” Tommy said, his voice going fierce. Maxie ignored the scars on Tommy’s face and his own fingers, crooked from years of breaks, “It never heals right,” Tommy said.