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kimmyiewrites · 4 years

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Dreams Coming True

Fandom: The Last Five Years, Newsies Ship: Jamie Wellerstein x Katherine Pulitzer AN: This idea came from my music going from the Newsies cast album to The Last Five Years soundtrack. I love the chemistry that Kara and Jeremy have and well this one shot was born. I hope you enjoy it and I'd love to know what you think!

As soon as the divorce was final, it was like the appeal he had to women vanished. The thing he had going with Elise didn’t work out. It had truly just been a fling, unlike what he had thought before going to Ohio one last time. He threw himself into writing his next book then. He wasn’t going to just be someone who wrote one good book and then never be heard from again.

The parties started up again when it was time to release the latest book. Random House had really out done themselves this time. He knew more people this go around. Mingled with those he hadn’t seen in some time and spoke with the ones that had become his friends while answering questions from the press.

“Pen and paper, huh? Isn’t that a little old school?” Jamie asked as he approached the bar. He had been watching her for most of the evening. The lanyard around her neck informed him that she was with the press but those he had spoken to had a tape recorder or just their phones. Not to mention, she was gorgeous. She had a polite smile that just teased at the real thing. He was sure it could light up just about anything if it was unleashed.

“Maybe but it gets the job done and I don’t have to worry about batteries dying or trying to make out what the person said through the background chatter.” She shrugged, looking towards him, that polite smile making its appearance as she held out her hand. “Katherine Pulitzer, The New York Times.”

He took her hand, giving it a shake before letting go. “Jamie Wellerstein, author.” He smirked a bit before ordering another drink. “Any relation to the designer?” There were times Cathy would always come back. He remembered his ex-wife always complaining about it.

Katherine looked at the author with wide eyes. No one ever linked her to her cousin first. It was always her father since she too was a journalist. “Actually, yes. She’s my cousin.” She smiled fondly, smoothing out any wrinkles in her dress, which happened to be the original dress in the design that was named after her. “I’m surprised you didn’t ask about my father first.”

Jamie’s eyebrows furrowed. He really only knew about her cousin because of Cathy. Should he know who her father is? “I’m sorry but maybe I could get a refresher?”

She then laughed and he smiled, knowing that he had been right. Her entire face lit up. “Oh my god, you don’t know. I think you might just be my new favorite person.” She said in between her laughter. “Joseph Pulitzer, owned The World before selling it and going into semi-retirement to terrorize the grad students at Columbia University?”

He shook his head, still not knowing who this man was, which seemed to be just fine by Katherine. “That’s it. You are my new favorite person. Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

He smiled, motioning to her lanyard. “By all means. That’s what you’re here for after all.”

She finished off her drink and picked up her pen. “So how -”

“You’re not going to ask about my ex-wife, are you?” He interrupted her. Too many others had asked that tonight, starting off the same exact way and he just couldn’t any more.

She looked to him, brows furrowed. “No. Have people actually asked you that?”

He nodded his head, waiting for her to finish her original question.

“While I’m glad people have thought of men to ask that question to, it’s still just as tasteless if you had been a woman. I’m sorry my colleagues don’t have any class. I was going to ask how you found your inspiration for this book? It’s much different from your first, yet it still has the same heart that draws your reader in.” She looked to him expectantly.

He smiled fondly, explaining how he wanted a different kind of coming of age story. One where the main character stayed true to themselves and still completed their goals without changing their appearance or who they were. He called it a finding of purpose story.

Katherine smiled and it wasn’t the polite one he had been seeing her show everyone else once she got what she needed. “Great quote, thanks. Enjoy the rest of the evening.” She pushed away from the bar closing her notepad.

“You’re not staying around for the rest of it?” He asked, not wanting her to go just yet.

She shook her head. “No, I’ve got a deadline I need to make. It was great meeting you, Jamie.” She started making her way towards the door before turning back around to face him. “Off the record, I hope you find your own brigade.”

Jamie stared after her. How did this woman know? There was no way she could somehow guess that this story had spurred from all of his frustrations from these past few years.

~~~

It had been months since they had last seen each other. He had printed out her review, a mix of wit, honest opinion, and persuasion to go get his book. It may not have had to do anything with the spike in book sales but he was definitely giving her that grateful credit. There was also the twitter conversations. It remained strictly about books but they had begun an exchange of recommendations for each other. Books turned into movies which turned into what to binge watch on Netflix.

Of course the others in their world began to gossip and Katherine had nipped it before it could grow into a large enough rumor for TMZ to cover. “If you do not wind up befriending the creators you write about, you’re doing your job wrong or are in the wrong business.” She had started a whole other controversy with that tweet that their small conversations went right back under the radar.

Random House had orchestrated another party. A different book launch for a different author and because he too was under the publishing house, he had been invited. He briefly wondered if she would be here. He hadn’t really noticed her before the first time they had met. Then again, he had been caught up in Cathy in the beginning.

At this point these parties had become a bit of a routine. Mingle here, grab a drink there, graze whatever food was laid out and then back to mingling. “Did you finish season one yet?” Her voice cut through the background noise as he was waiting for his drink.

“I’ve got like two more episodes. I still can’t believe how good it actually is.” He turned to face her, signaling for the bartender to come back over.

Katherine placed her order and smiled up at him. He shouldn’t feel special that he got a genuine smile from her but it sure did make his heart flutter. “I told you, you would.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He waved her off with a laugh. “What’d ya think about this one?” He motioned to the party to signal he meant the book they were supposed to be celebrating tonight.

She shook her head. “Not his best work but not his worse either. He hit the sophomore slump bad so anything is better than his second book.”

He choked on his drink, not quite expecting that reply. “Yeah, this one was a little dry.”

“Can I quote you on that?”

“Keep me anonymous. We’re under the same publishing house after all. Don’t want to stir anything up.” He nodded.

“Thanks.” She scribbled down the quote and finished her drink. “Guess I’ll see you around then. Tell me what you think once you finish season one.”

“Wait, you’re leaving already?”

She gave him this look that said you should know by now. “I’m Cinderella at these things, remember. Midnight and I turn into a write up for not making deadline.”

“At least give me your number. It’ll make things so much easier.”

“Twitter’s not that hard to navigate. I should be at the top of your dms anyway. I’ve stayed too late already. I gotta go.” She waved and hurried off.

He let out a sigh as he watched her maneuver through the crowd. He brought his glass up to finish off his drink when he realized what she had said. ‘I’ve stayed too late already.’ Had she been waiting for him?

~~~

The next party, she slipped a piece of paper into his pocket. He didn’t even realize it until he got home. He unfolded the torn piece of notebook paper and gasped. Pulling out his phone, he immediately tested the number.

If this is really Katherine. Tell me something that only she would say.

The fact that you don’t believe that I would give you my number is a little disheartening, Jamie.

The Writer: You did just slip it into my pocket without me realizing it.

The Critic: I was trying to keep Twittergate from happening again.

The Writer: The fact that you want to keep this friendship a secret is a little disheartening, Kath.

The Critic: Oh you’re hilarious. Ha. Ha.

The Writer: Did you make your deadline?

The Critic: I did. Thank you. Good night, Jamie.

The Writer: You don’t want to watch Casablanca with me?

The Critic: Can I get raincheck on that?

The Writer: How about tomorrow?

The Critic: Tomorrow works.

~~~

They started out with weekly movie nights, switching off who chose the movie each week. Those movie nights then turned into sleep overs and those sleep overs turned into spending the weekend together. There were comments, glances, and touches that suggested she wanted more but he never pushed his luck. If someone like Katherine wanted to be in his life then he was going to do his very best to keep her around. The last time he rushed into something it didn’t end well.

She was so full of life and ambition. She wasn’t where she wanted to be but she had dreams of getting there. She worked so hard to be the best that she could be and he finally realized why people wanted to know her opinion. People listened, made decisions off of what she wrote and she wanted to use that influence somewhere other than the entertainment section. She could do it too, he knew she could. He just was nervous that all of this was going to wind up like the last time and he wasn’t sure if he could survive another five years of that misery.

He had decided to surprise her. He finished the meeting early and it was movie night. He knocked on her door before letting himself in. After a night where she lost complete track of time, she told him where she kept a spare key. Despite the tv set up for the movie she planned to watch tonight, Katherine was nowhere to be found.

Then he heard the crash and the shout.

Jamie walked down the hall to her in home office, knocking on the doorframe. “Is there a reason it looks like a storm blew through here?” Writing utensils were scattered along the floor. Notebooks and books mixed with them. Pages ripped to shreds and Katherine standing in the middle of the chaos.

“I tried to pitch another story again. Guess who was told to stick to reading books?” Frustration laced her voice as she stood in the midst of the mess she created. Her hands were on her hips as she was trying to catch her breath.

He didn’t even get a chance to respond before she launched into her rant. “I was because that’s all I am to them. Their favored book critic. No one cares that I’ve been at this since I finished my education, hell, even before that. No one cares that my stories are given to other writers who couldn’t get the people to care even if there were tear stains on the printed version. No one cares that the glass ceiling is actually just different floors to a fucking high rise building. No one cares that each time I rear back to punch my way through they tie my arm back to make sure I don’t.”

“Maybe -” She cut him off again.

“Don’t. I don’t need any advice. I’ve been fighting this bullshit for too long and I’ve tried everything. I even wrote my own fucking story and they rewrote everything and published it under someone else’s byline.”

“Then what do you want from me, Cathy?” He shouted, not being able to take this anymore. It was too similar, being cut off when all he was trying to do was help. He hadn’t even truly registered the words Katherine had said. They weren’t filled with pity, they were filled with anger and determination.

She pointed to the front door. Her poster had gone rigid from hearing the name of his ex-wife. She knew enough from the stories reported on the two and connected some dots from what little Jamie had told her. There was a new kind of anger behind her eyes. “For you to go.”

“What?” Things finally began to dawn on him. Oh, he truly messed up.

“Go and don’t you ever call me Cathy again. I am not her. This is just one more set back, one more rope for me to cut through. They’ll eventually run out and you’ll see my byline on the front page. I know you had an important meeting today and if you being here earlier than what we had decided on indicates anything, then I can’t be happier for you because you deserve everything you ever dreamed of. I just will not stand to be compared to your ex-wife when I have even the most minor of setbacks because I come out of it fighting even harder. So right now, you need to leave.”

Jamie looked at her in shock before he gathered himself and did as she asked. He had a lot of rethinking to do. Sure both women had ambition but unlike Cathy, Katherine knew her worth and she was going to prove it to everyone. Katherine wasn’t about to let anyone stand in her way.

~~~

The Idiot: I’m sorry for calling you Cathy. You are a million miles away from her. I just wanted to say that and that whatever you do, you’ll always have me in your corner.

Katherine looked over at her phone, spoon sticking out of her mouth as the planned movie of the evening played. She read it over and sighed. His text was not helping her with her guilt for feeling like she overreacted. She was throwing a temper tantrum even if she thought she rightfully deserved it. It also reminded her that she lied a bit when she had told him, she had tried everything.

There was one solution she hadn’t tried yet. This one scared her to no end because it meant that she could potentially lose her job. Then again. She jumped up from the couch and hurried back into her office. She wasn’t going to get anywhere she wanted if she wasn’t willing to take some risks.

She set up a youtube channel, a blog, and changed her bio on twitter and instagram. Not just the book girl.

Her first blog and video went into detail about what she was doing, what she would be covering, and hoped that people would follow her. She drafted everything up, linked all of her profiles together, and then stared at her computer screen. This was it. Now or never. She was making a change for her future. She took a deep breath and hit publish. She tweeted a link to her blog post. She posted the thumbnail on her instagram with linking her new blog in her bio. She even went to her stories and linked it there with the swipe up option.

The One: Check out the link I just posted on twitter.

Katherine stared at her phone as she waited. The five minutes that passed felt like life times but when her phone dinged with his response, she felt like she could cry.

The Idiot: I’m so proud of you.

~~~

People ate Katherine’s blog up. They loved it. She updated every Tuesday and Thursday with doing various small videos on instagram and twitter about certain stories. Companies began to ask to be sponsors and the day she had been waiting for finally came. The New York Times let her go. She was upset of course but as Jamie had reminded her, it allowed her to spend more time doing something she wanted to do. Luckily the sponsor money helped and she was able to tap into her trust fund if she needed.

Jamie had gotten a movie deal for his latest book. A party had been organized by not just Random House but by the production company as well. With Katherine no longer a part of the media list, he had to figure out how to ask her to join him. She had easily become his favorite part about these things.

“Hey Katherine?” Jamie looked up from his dessert.

“Hmm?” She hummed around her latest bite of pie.

“Would you want to be my plus one to this event tonight? And then well for every event after that?” His voice grew quieter and more rushed at his second question.

“Are you asking me on a proper date?” She leaned a little forward, eyebrow raised.

“If I am?”

“Then I’d say yes.” She whispered, smiling at him before leaning back and taking another bite of her dessert.

He grinned, going to take another bite of his as well when a question came to mind. “Wait, what do you mean by proper?”

“I haven’t been seeing anyone since our movie weekends started, have you?”

“No.” He shook his head. If he was honest ever since he met her, he had stopped looking at other women.

“Then this will be our first proper outing as a couple then, wouldn’t it?” She quirked her eyebrow up once again.

“So you’re saying you want to be my girlfriend?” He really couldn’t believe it. Then again she had always been the one to set the pace in their relationship.

“Yes.” She smiled and he was reminded of how he wondered what a genuine smile from her would look like. He was reminded that he now got them all the time.

“Then I guess we’re officially dating.” He matched her grin with one of his own. He didn’t think he’d been this happy in a long time.

“Picking me up at seven, then?” She asked, after finishing off her dessert.

“I’ll be there.” He promised.

~~~

They still kept movie nights but the sleep overs definitely strayed away from sleeping in different areas and moved towards sleeping together. The night he found out that her father was Jewish but the only thing she practiced was Hannukah due to her Episcopalian mother was a night they missed the movie completely. They appeared at every outing together. She stayed by his side and never hid by the bar, steaming with jealousy. Despite working her ass off to make her blog the most successful it could be, she stayed on top of every party that he had to attend. She knew the book, researched the author, and wound up mingling like the best of them. Everytime he would compliment her, she would just brush it off and credit her mother for her behavior.

She had moved to covering the news during the week. On the weekends however, she would give a review of the newest book, tv show, theatre production, or movie she had seen that week. With the first one she did, she stated how it was important to remain in touch with her roots while bringing the hard hitting stuff throughout the week.

A few months into their new relationship, Katherine ran through the halls of Jamie’s apartment building. She knocked on his door, more like banged, until he opened it. His eyes were frantic until he realized the crazed person on the other side of the door was Katherine.

She squealed when he opened the door, raising her arms in the air in a victory celebration while bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I’m gonna be on the Today Show!”

“Oh my god!” He wrapped her in his embrace before picking her up and twirling her around a bit. “Congratulations! I knew you could do it.” He set her back down and ushered her inside. “Tell me everything.”

She launched into how she was getting a segment right before Kathy Lee and Hoda did theirs. It was going to be called Watch What Happens with Katherine Pulitzer. It would cover all the news stories she thought people needed to keep an eye on. She would then end it with a review of some sort or even an interview. They were going to allow her to keep the blog and actually encouraged her to keep it running. The only thing they were going to change was her youtube channel, making it more on brand and instead of uploading her own home made videos, they would upload video clips from her segments.

Jamie just grinned as he listened to Katherine tell him everything. She couldn’t even sit still, she was so excited. Once she was done, he pulled her in for a long, deep kiss. “I’m so proud of you.” He whispered after they separated.

Katherine grinned before pulling him down to her for another series of kisses. Needless to say, Jamie was late for his morning meeting that day.

~~~

Katherine’s segment was going well. The rankings were beyond what NBC had predicted. The movie based off of Jamie’s second book was dubbed most anticipated and he was already working on a third book. Life was finally going the way that each of them had dreamed about. They had their dream careers. They had their dream relationship. They even had their dream living arrangement after they moved in together after the first year of them getting together. Jamie didn’t feel like things were moving too fast and Katherine finally felt seen and heard. Most importantly they had each other and the support from the other was something they never thought possible. All of their dreams really did finally come true.

#the last five years fic #newsies fic #crossover fic #jamie wellerstein imagine #jamie wellerstein fic #jamie wellerstein #katherine pulitzter imagine #katherine pulitzer fic #katherine pulitzer #jeremy jordan #kara lindsay #jamie x katherine #one shot #dreams coming true #kim writes things

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lothiriel84 · 6 years

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Only last night I found myself lost (by the station called King's Cross)

Here follows another of my long rambling travel blogs. You have been warned.

Saturday 8th September

It’s fair to say that I have a complicated relationship with Stansted Airport; on the one hand, it’s my default gateway into the UK (I’ve only ever landed at Gatwick Airport exactly once, and of course Edinburgh Airport on my one trip to Scotland). On the other hand, it’s stupidly far from London, and I’ve been seriously sleep deprived every single time I set foot in it. (Oh, and there’s also that one time when I actually missed my flight, but let’s not dwell on that.)

Still, it’s been way more fun than it had any right to be to stand on the train platform right outside the airport, and watch the music video of Single-Bilingual by the Pet Shop Boys on my phone. It’s quite a silly video, and it’s actually been filmed at Stansted Airport. I hadn’t been this much into Pet Shop Boys’ music on my previous visit, or, you know, at all; now they’re probably my favourite musical group, and a brilliant sountrack to my trip on top of that.

But I’m digressing. The thing is, rather than going straight into London from Stansted, I took a train to Cambridge instead. As it turns out, Cambridge is relatively close to Stansted, and as I had recently watched (and fell in love with) James Ivory’s Maurice, I was really looking forward to seeing one of the main locations of the film/novel. Given how I was planning to go on the Ghost Bus Tour in London that same evening, I was on a rather tight schedule; still, I managed to visit King’s College and its chapel (which is one of the locations where Maurice was filmed), and Queens’ College with its Mathematical Bridge.

After that, I had to rush and take a train to London; and as it happened, my train arrived into King’s Cross station, which is not only the title of a Pet Shop Boys song (yeah, I’m going to bring up PSB a lot throughout this post, I’m not even sorry), but also the location of a statue dedicated to Sir Nigel Gresley, of Infinitely Bad fame.

In the end, @smegandtheheads and I both succeeded in reaching Northumberland Avenue on time for the first Ghost Bus Tour of the evening (sorry again, Lizzie, for making you dash all the way there at such short notice). Neither of us had ever been on that specific tour with Peter Davis as the conductor, so it was quite brilliant; Peter is such a sweetheart, and terribly funny on top of that. Here’s a picture of the man himself, looking as if he’s some kind of ghostly gentleman. (Sorry.)

On a side note, I’m absolutely sure he added the final “Get out of my bus” specifically because he knew Lizzie and I were on board. I really can’t wait for the re-release of the old Monster Hunters episodes, and the new ones to follow.

(Peter also hinted that there might be a fourth season in the cards, which would be absolutely amazing.)

I was really quite tired after that - not only I had had very little sleep prior to, or even during, my flight, but I had been carrying my cabin baggage on my back all day long, both in Cambridge and in London. I’m so glad I eventually decided to accept when Lizzie invited me to join her and her boyfriend for dinner, along with their podcaster friends. I had such a fantastic time listening to Max talk about all of Definitely Human’s past, present, and future projects - including the Monster Hunters re-release, which is probably the one I’m most excited about at this moment in time.

(Well, that, and the final few episodes of The Infinite Bad. I’m so going to die before it’s over, the one thing that still needs to be seen is whether that will happen out of dread, grief, or both of those things at the same time.)

Anyway, for those of you not in the know, The Monster Hunters is an absolutely brilliant comedy/horror podcast, set in swinging London in the early 1970s; written by and starring Peter Davis and Matthew Woodcock, featuring (among others) the incredibly talented voices of Simon Kane and Laura Marshall. All existing episodes will be re-released under the Definitely Human label, each one featuring a short commentary from the creators themselves; there will also be additional Patreon-exclusive content, and new episodes coming up in due course.

(And, well, sorry Max if I sounded much more excited about MH than any of the other projects you’re currently involved in, but I’m so grateful that DH stepped in to make the rest of series 3 happen, and so much more.)

Sunday 9th September

Sunday was a rather quiet one, as I was still tired from the previous day. Passing through Brixton I accidentally discovered they have a David Bowie mural there, which I hadn’t known in spite of having very nearly walked past it on two previous occasions, and it was a nice surprise to find out.

Eventually, I did reach the Festival of the Great North Wood in Sydenham Hill Wood, which I think I had previously heard about from one of Carrie Quinlan’s tweets. It was a relatively small event, but they did have a few birds of prey on show, including this lovely little chap.

They also did guided walks through the wood, and it was lovely to be able to join one of those. Our guide talked us through the history of that particular wood, and the railway that once ran through it; it was quite nice, even more so as I do tend to spend quite a lot of time in parks and green areas whenever I’m in London.

After that, I headed to Crystal Palace Park, which is not very far from there. I had already been there before, but it’s always nice to see those big dumb Victorian dinosaurs loitering in the shrubbery.

Monday 10th September

After spending quite some time on Google Maps trying to work out whether it made any sense to attempt a day trip to Ottery St Mary (for much obvious Cabin Pressure reasons) or anywhere else in Devon, I had eventually settled for Dorset as a much more feasible option. Quite apart from some rather specific associations that I’m not going to mention here, Poole was the perfect place for a Jurassic Coast boat trip; and given how the stunning Durdle Door is quite a difficult place to reach, that was the next best thing, at least as far as I am concerned.

The coastal cruise, sailing from Poole Quay, allowed a really stunning view on Poole Harbour and Old Harry Rocks; and after a brief stop at Swanage Pier, it circled back, giving us passengers another chance to admire the chalk cliffs on our way back to the quay.

Once back on dry land, I went to visit Poole Museum, and also stopped by an old sweet shop which somehow reminded me of Carolyn Knapp-Shappey. It’s even called Truly Scrumptious, which is - an interesting coincidence, I guess?

And then, back to London, where I had a bit of a random walk, ending up in the approximate spot - facing the Palace of Westminster across the Thames - that is featured at some point during the music video for West End Girls. Which I then proceeded to watch on my phone. (Nothing to see here, guys - just a completely normal human being, doing completely normal stuff. Yep.)

Tuesday 11th September

Having worked in a mail centre for a little over two years, I thought it would be fun to go and visit the Postal Museum, even more so as they give you the option to ride the Mail Rail, which was basically an underground railway used to move mail between sorting offices. The museum was nice, and the ride was quite cool, albeit rather short.

On my way back to my hotel I made a detour to St Pancras Gardens, where the tomb of Mary Wollstonecraft is, and also that rather curious landmark that is the Hardy Tree. Plus, I very cleverly accidentally located the Mornington Crescent underground station, which is apparently the subject of a game I literally know nothing about, save for its name.

In the evening, I went to the first preview show of An Execution (by invitation only), which was the actual reason why I was in London in the first place. I will probably try and write a proper (-ish) review as a separate blog entry at some point; for now, suffice to say that it was weird and brilliant in equal measure, with quite an unusual set design combined with decidedly intense performances from all four actors.

(The cast included Simon Kane, Tom Lyall, Greg McLaren and Shamira Turner. I assume most of you will at least be familiar with Simon’s voice as featured in John Finnemore’s Souvenir Programme; as for Tom Lyall, he played a rather magnificent Oberon in last year’s Mighty Fin musical A Midwinter Night’s Dream, as well as the delightfully over-the-top boss of a record company in The Devil Gets All The Best Tunes.)

After the show, I took a detour in order to get a few pictures of the Post Office Tower (yeah, I do realise it’s mostly referred to as the BT Tower these days, but to me it will always be the Post Office Tower of Monster Hunters fame) and King’s Cross too, despite having already been there on Saturday.

(Sir Nigel Gresley still hadn’t turned into a mass of writhing hands, which I decided to take as a good sign. I still hadn’t listened to the episode of The Infinite Bad which was due to be released the following day, which definitely had me screaming at the unexpected turn of events. Well.)

Wednesday 12th September

As I was planning to go to the Wellcome Collection, I decided I might as well have a walk through Regent’s Park first. The weather was a bit changeable, and it even rained for a bit; still, it was nice, and I accidentally stumbled upon the Frieze Sculpture 2018, which included some rather curious works by contemporary and modern artists. The malevolent looking penguin was quite a treat, giving off such powerful Infinitely Bad vibes - though there were no carcasses of supernatural stags knocking about, much to everyone’s relief.

(On a side note, how long has the Wonderpass under Marylebone Road been there? I’m pretty sure I’ve been in that area at least a couple of times before, but I might have simply failed to notice it, I guess?)

In order to gain further dread, I then proceeded to visit the Teeth exhibition at the Wellcome Collection; it was a must see for a fan of The Infinite Bad, and I had been hoping to be able to just sit outside the exhibition area afterwards, and listen to the new episode. As it turned out, data roaming was just awful inside that building, and as it was getting late I was forced to postpone the listening.

(Which I then ended up doing whilst packing my bag for my flight back home, much later that night. Not exactly ideal for such a detail/reveal-packed episode, but still.)

That evening I went to the second preview show for An Execution (by invitation only); it was still as good as the first time around, with the added bonus of a rather - shall we say, interesting? - poem about a spider, which had apparently been added in the space between the two shows.

And, well, that’s it for me this trip, I guess. Or, rather...

Thursday 13th September

As it turns out, there’s about one thing that can make a forty-five minute walk to Victoria Coach Station at four in the morning marginally more bearable, and that’s listening to Pet Shop Boys’ music.

What is rather less pleasant is having your flight departure delayed by over an hour - though thankfully with us passengers already boarded, or I would have literally fallen over - because they had taken too long to load the baggage onto the plane, and the flight plan had expired. Which, I’ll admit, is an interesting piece of information for a Cabin Pressure fan, but it doesn’t quite help when you’ve had no sleep and there’s no way you can actually manage to doze off on one of those contraptions that Ryanair insists on calling a seat.

(Arthur, dear heart, as much as I adore you, could you please stop referring to takeoff delays as ‘brilliant’? And we didn’t even have Monopoly to play, such a shame.)

#Cambridge #London #Poole #September 8th to 13th #2018 #An Execution (by invitation only)#Ghost Bus Tour #Festival of the Great North Wood #Old Harry Rocks #Swanage #Postal Museum & Mail Rail #Wellcome Collection #The Monster Hunters #The Infinite Bad #(this was such a good trip podcast-wise)#(in other news it's 1.14 am and I've only just realised 'Cambridge' has the word 'bridge' in it)

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vroenis · 3 years

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2020 Music In Review

When this was a draft, it opened with a bit about me not writing, but then I started playing board games again and wrote two bits on board games. In the trashfire that 2020 was (add “trashfire” to dictionary, no I did not mean “trash fire”), and 2021 continues to be, somehow I ended up getting back into board games. Actually there are good and logical reasons I returned to them and if you’re interested in that, I go into some of it in those journals, but more interesting is just playing the games so you should totally HMU if you’re local, sorry I don’t do virtual/digital, I like handling physical pieces and sharing food.

The most natural way for me to wrap a year for me is in music and since Melbourne locked down in March, I spent a lot of time working from home and listening on my own gear which I can’t express enough the joy at being able to do - firstly at having good reference transducers and secondly not having to listen to trash radio.

Writing about art is always a bit weird but it’s good fun so we do it anyway so let’s write some words about art. There are three main ways I engage with music in no particular order - more or less however I happen to notice them;

Music and musicianship - tonal and rhythmic composition

Technical production - recording, editing/manipulionation, processing/production, mixing and balance, and mastering

Song-writing/lyrics - should there be any - excludes vocal performance as this is covered under the first one.

To get weirder about it, I tend to have both emotional and also pragmatic responses to those three things separately so that means there’s a wackadoo matrix of 6 criteria I seem to be assessing every piece of music I encounter against and yep, that’s a thing I do, all the time, every time. The better a piece of music is, tho, the more the line between the emotional and pragmatic blurs as the overall quality of the work is established. I might begin with an initial pragmatic appreciation of an excellent mix and balance, and technical execution of a recording and production, then come to get a feel for how emotional a work is - and vice-versa. Sometimes on rare occasions, it all happens at the same time - an album is just a smashing work of excellence in every way and I just love every aspect of it more over time.

It’s worth mentioning I don’t really have any great axe to grind with pop music - there has always been and continues to be great pop, and good pop isn’t by any means easy music to create. For me at least, and likely many people, what destroys pop as a listening experience is repetition which usually isn’t under the listener’s control, but an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying culture that sustains pop as an industry. I still appreciate and admire so much about pop-music and always keep a little in my collection from each decade. No matter what, always remind yourself that the kids are OK and that there’s always great pop-music around - stay in touch with it. Some of it is truly awesome, and I use the superlative with sincerity.

Albums Of The Year

A few things happened on the way to me actually getting to write this journal, including some surgery (I’m fine), but also I ended up nominating no less than 4 Albums Of The Year. I think they deserve their own lengthier write-ups, in a weirdly me thing to do, I feel like I want to talk less about them and you should just go and listen to them but they have been getting a lot of air-time on my channels - in any case, here’s a lazylink to the instagram post I did for them. They’re all great and they feature in the lists coming in this entry so give them a listen, they’re outstanding.

Personal Charts

When I set out to write a musical summary of the year, I went to my last.fm page to see what I’d listened to by number of plays polled. As mentioned, given the Covid lockdown and working from home so much, I’ve actually gotten to register a lot more of my listening on the site whereas in general so much of my listening happens offline, so to speak, be it in the car or on my mp3 player. This year has also seen a serious shift in my buying habits shift entirely to Bandcamp for a few reasons; Google shut down their Play store in favour of streaming because naturally it favours them and not artists - it also just makes sense for them from infrastructure and administrative perspectives, but also I just did more and more research and naturally found more and more artists and Bandcamp just made sense. I want to write a digest as to why you should do the same but I feel like people need to find their own way there or approach me directly so the motivation comes from them. Streaming is bad for artists and while I and indeed artists don’t want you to close your premium accounts just yet because closing any revenue streams to artists in any way is bad, I encourage you to do some research into just how much revenue there is in streaming, and what your expectations are for how you think the artists you love so much are supposed to make a living. I guess if your engagement level is fairly low, or the culture you’re into is pop-music, then this is the end of the discussion and that’s OK, we don’t need to take it any further. If you’re in any way curious about what this issue is, this video by Benn Jordan is a great place to start.

There are two charts I’d like to share - one is my top 10 albums I’ve chosen, the other is the same albums by number of plays as per my last.fm polling. These aren’t the top 10 albums I polled, mind-you. Sometimes I listen to an album a whole bunch just because I’m into it or because it slaps, but it isn’t one I’d nominate as an album that encapsulates the year.

You’ll immediately notice not every album was released in 2020, however my conditions are that they either had to have been released close enough to 2020 that I’d have done heavy listening in the year, or I had to have purchased them in 2020 so they were new to me in the year.

Here are the 10 albums I chose;

And here they are by number of plays polled in 2020 - bear in mind I probably played one or two favourite tracks a few times more, so they don’t neatly divide by number of tracks listed on the album;

A few immediate things to note;

- Dreams Are Not Enough is significantly underrepresented because I don’t listen to it at my PC while I work. In general, I definitely listen to this far more in environments offline, but also it’s not exactly an all occasions album given its tone and atmosphere, if you know what I mean, and if you don’t - give it a listen and find out.

- La Favière on the other hand is more or less a bit of a party so I play it a lot… yet when it comes to my personal rankings, it’s not that I like it less per se, it’s just that I love the other albums more - tons of respect to Iversen. It still made 10th on a list of hundreds of albums and netted 161 plays out of thousands of files I have.

- Had I done this kind of list in 2019 and known about Reid Willis, I suspect The Longing Device would have been an Album Of The Year then. It was a dead ringer for an Album Of The Year for me this year except then he released Mother Of and that is an absolute killer, so he outdid himself and I selected that instead. Reid Willis is a genius.

- There’s a long story as to why I only bought Hanan Townshend’s soundtrack for To The Wonder in 2020 but at least I was delayed long enough to not produce any more plastic, given my original intention once upon a time was to get it on CD. In any case, I had to buy it on iTunes and was bedstricken from illness for days after. iTunes is cursed.

Telefon Tel Aviv - Dreams Are Not Enough (October 2019)

In 2009, Telefon Tel Aviv released their album Immolate Yourself and then Charles Cooper died. I didn’t actually find out about his death until after I’d heard the album a few times over, but the album stayed with me for the 10 years to the new album as a landmark like no other. In part for the mourning of Charles, but simultaneously and separately as something that stood apart as some sound for my life that no other music could touch. Maybe The Haxan Cloak’s Excavation, maybe Darkside’s Psychic, but each of those in different ways.

10 years later and Joshua Eustis continues his long journey and releases Dreams Are Not Enough in the Telefon Tel Aviv name. After my first listen, I tweeted to him that I felt like deleting the rest of my music collection which we had a laugh about (he’s a very sociable person, by the way, if you’re not an asshole - he’s also someone you can learn a lot about the industry from). The thing is - I want to have these kinds of exaggerated reactions to the art I engage with - I want them to be world-destroying. Sure, not every piece of art has to be immense and euphoric and devastating, but it can’t all be run-of-the-mill either.

It’s difficult for me to describe Dreams Are Not Enough in practical terms, it is still a Telefon album, it is also Telefon without Charles, it’s also mourning him, is it moving on in his absence? It is definitely its own art for you to engage with as a unique work, to you the individual. It’s uniquely Telefon Tel Aviv in a way that no other electronic artist does the same way - it feels a specific way and there are times when no other music will do. One of my running jokes is that Porpentine’s Howling Dogs and Cardboard Computer’s Kentucky Route Zero will be my Game(s) Of The Year every year forever and Dreams Are Not Enough now with Immolate Yourself are going to last 10, 20 years - longer - as Albums Of The Year forever too because there’s just never anything else like them.

Reid Willis - The Longing Device (January 2019)

The good thing about having made my choices earlier in 2020 is that Reid WIllis’ Mother Of wasn’t out when I wrote-up the list, so I get to talk about The Longing Device.

Reid Willis was an absolutely random find on Bandcamp. Occasionally I like to dive into subgenres and just go hunting. You can imagine that 9 times out of 10 this is a fruitless endeavour and might think this is frustrating but I really enjoy doing it as an exercise in critical listening. By whatever turn of divine Bandcamp listing, I came across the first chronological album he has up, Crude Healing (2016) and from memory listened to four tracks before instant-buying his entire discography available. I did go hunting on the Google Play store before it was shuttered and buy the most recent album from 2013, The Sunken Half listed from his older works before he jumped over to Bandcamp for all his newer albums and it’s definitely a transitional work to what he does now and well worth having. While Crude Healing initially blew me away, The Longing Device is a more mature album that has been more carefully shaped, skills having been honed and focussed into a less raw and yet more powerful sound. Very rarely am I ever an “I liked your old stuff better than your new stuff” kind of person, in general I tend to go with an artist when they evolve and grow unless on occasion they go in a completely different direction in which case hey - I respect it but sometimes it’s just not something I feel.

Here Willis’ orchestrations are careful, beautiful and languished in the right moments - cut with beats and edits, and the beats and edits likewise deftly cut with orchestrations. This is such a stunning exhibition of creativity, it’s one of the more esoteric examples of my music collection and also in some ways perhaps one of the more approachable works. Then in November Willis released Mother Of where he just takes everything to the next level.

Mat Zo - Illusion Of Depth (October 2020)

In July of 2020, Above & Beyond released their ongoing regular compilation Anjunabeats volume 15 and finished the first disc with a bangin’ Mat Zo track called Problems, an instant favourite of mine as soon as I heard it. It’s a tough year for DJs and musos all round not being able to tour, Josh Eustice and many others have been doing year-round commentary about irresponsible alleged “underground” gigs have nothing to do with the old-school spirit of underground at all and have turned into superspreader events, and how publishers and labels haven’t supported artists through Covid. Leading up to October, Anjuna and Mat Zo promote his forthcoming album and I have to admit, I’m pretty hyped and then it drops.

Holy shit.

In a year of such terrible events, this felt like such a timely dose of positivity that arrived at just the right time. I wrote a whole damn entry for this on instragram, and it’s one of my Albums Of The Year, but far out the digest of this album. On one hand, it’s a hugely technically accomplished work - it’s a diverse exhibition of styles, musicianship, stellar production, and absolutely pristine mix and balance - on the other hand, it’s just an absolute fucken banger-riot-party of an album. The album stands up to a clinical listening on reference transducers, it’s such a delight to audition and examine in every way, but you can set all of that aside and just enjoy the experience, front to back through the tracks in order and as an album, that’s becoming quite rare. There are levels of production discipline on display in this album, especially for electronic music in difficult mixing environments with potentially cluttered frequency ranges that a lot of artists need to learn from, yet Maz Zo executes with ease. This has a lot to give no matter who you are, whether you want to sit down and listen, dance all night or go for a drive - a word of warning, it might make you want to drive fast!

It’s also worth noting that Mat toured this album virtually in Minecraft in order to be Covid-safe and that is absolutely freaken amazing.

Hanan Townshend - To The Wonder (April 2013)

Not the best choice of cover-art, but to be fair, no-one likes Terrence Malick films so it doesn’t really matter. Like most things, getting into music tends to be multifaceted. To The Wonder is my favourite Malick film and yes, I love many of them (you can check the Film Notes page), probably because it’s the most intimate and grounded of his narratives. I still like the more grand and abstract stories he tells, they’re very much my bag, too, but To The Wonder really is a simple story about people told from a closeness that is for some perhaps uncomfortable, but I love that closeness. There’s a dream-like quality to Malick’s filmmaking and indeed cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s photography that is both surreal and organic that makes the film feel very real and then like recollection once it’s done. Hanan Townshend’s music perfectly matches it, and then like all good soundtracks transcends the purpose for which it was written and can be applied to life outside of its matching media. There is a certain framing I have in my mind and at times, with the way I quite literally see, that makes me cue this soundtrack. Very few other soundtracks have this kind of power - Kenji Kawaii’s work for Ghost In The Shell (inclusive of Innocence), Hajime Mizogughi’s Jin-Roh and Cliff Martinez’ Solaris would be some of the others.

Daniel McCagh - Altered States (April 2020)

Another semi-random Bandcamp find, I was chuffed to learn that Daniel McCagh is from Albury, NSW, Australia. It’s always amazing to find local artists who are this astonishingly talented. I tend to associate Australian musicians at the not-quite-there-yet level of art and still do. That’s not a criticism of the artists themselves, it’s a criticism of our government and their backwards attitude towards arts funding and economics in this country. We are a developed country in the age of the internet where information and culture is shared instantly but we deny our people opportunities in so many ways - in education, facilities, commerce and economic infrastructure - the state of internet services in this country for a start is appalling and has been behind global standards forever. It will take us so much time, funds, resources and coordination to catch-up and of-course the longer we wait, the greater the cost and each successive government makes their excuses as to why we can never quite afford to do things right.

Props to individuals who can make it stick, tho, and Daniel McCagh is one of them. It’s probably shockingly unfair to hold someone up on a pedestal every time they do well but I can’t help it - Altered States is on par with Reid Willis’ and other dark ambient/electronic works or whatever genre you want to put them into. On Bandcamp these darker synth and drone-centric artists are a dime a dozen and to be fair, a lot of them are quite good but finding works that truly stand out in excellence can be difficult. The low play-count is due to having only found and bought the album quite late, but it goes into rotation fairly often and it’s a growing genre in my collection.

The 1975 - Notes On A Conditional Form (May 2020)

The closest thing to pop music to hit this list, NOACF was going to appear at some point - just getting pipped at the finish-line by Reid Willis, all told. I listened to this in the car quite a bit when I was still in rotation in the office before full lockdown.

Writing about The 1975 will be a Thing - either you’ll know something about them or nothing at all. For me, I guess I engage with them entirely differently from superfans - I’m in my late 30s so it won’t surprise you that I don’t have a TikTok account nor do I op a Spotify account and I’m not active at all on Facebook altho neither are gen Z. That said, I’m not entirely sure who their core fanbase will be - they don’t strike me as chart-topping, TikTok everpresent pop-culture icons. Their lead singer certainly has the awareness of pop-culture to communicate with their fan-base to keep up, but they don’t seem to engage at the same level of the lists you see on say, Todd in the Shadows - but I’ve not watched enough of him to know if he’s ever mentioned them.

Anyway I’m enough of a musician (read: snob) to dig their lofty musical stuff - it’s the perfect follow-up and follow-on from ABIIOR and I Like It When You Sleep... before that. Their sound stays uniquely theirs while slowly evolving with contemporary sounds, all the while the production stays top-notch and I’m always pleased with what I hear from a mixing and balance perspective. It also sort of launched with one of the most exciting singles I’ve heard in a while If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know) which has to be one of the absolute best recreations of the quintessential 90’s sound yet with contemporary production discipline I’ve ever heard. Many have tried yet most have failed. I always have so much respect when an artist can nail this kind of thing because it’s immensely difficult to do and I’m so proud of The 1975 for pulling this off. All of their genre homages and tilts on this album - actually on all of their albums since I Like It When You Sleep… have been stellar and I continue to be impressed.

I’m also completely onboard with their performative behaviour - they remind me of the angsty political U2 et al of old, but with the necessary contemporary tilt we need. Matty as a front-person is grounded, sensible, vulnerable, flawed - been thru some shit and talks openly about it. I don’t care how much of it is genuine, it reads and plays genuinely. I’m not a superfan so I don’t have posters of him on my wall nor hang on every word he says, but if I was 16 or 23 and did, I think he’s saying the right things. Setting that aside because it doesn’t matter, as a late 30’s adult, this album is fucking great and the band is aging, whether the fanbase likes it or not. There is so much creativity in it and I feel like while they play like they don’t care whether anyone comes along with them or not, they actually really sincerely hope we all do - and I also hope we all really do come along with them because I am coming along with them. None of this “play Antichrist” bullshit - leave the past in the past. Play Nothing Revealed / Everything Denied. They just cancelled their 2021 tour plans due to Covid which was a really good move, and confirmed a new album in the works, and I can’t wait to hear what they have coming.

The Midnight - Monsters (July 2020)

One of the most exciting releases last year, I was amped for the drop and was anticipating another solid, top-notch contemporary synthwave album from who I regard to be one of the very best in the genre. They’d released America Online some months prior which I really loved but it didn’t really indicate what the album was going to be like. Monsters ended up being waaaaay better than I expected - and I expected it to be really great. I don’t know whether it was a conscious decision by the band that perhaps the synthwave space was perhaps wearing out the 80’s a little bit - even pop-music was starting to take nibbles at the genre albeit pretty poorly by comparison, not that radio-punters would know it. With the new album tho, we’re taken into this wonderful in-between of not fully 90’s but not wholly 80’s either and even some contemporary r’n’b thrown in there but always stellar production and it’s just a massive album. It’s like a film you watch that ends up being an instant favourite you wish you could watch again for the first time because that first experience was so great. EVERYTHING lands perfectly in this album… with perhaps the exception of the lyric

“friends become lovers under covers”

in the song Prom Night because celebrating teens being sexually active is probably not something I cherish too much but hey, whaddayagonnado some things are just facts LET’S TURN THIS INTO A TEACHING OPPORTUNITY ABOUT CONSENT let’s not at least not right now.

Jeremy Blake - Object Permanence (December 2019)

Jeremy Blake is also known as Red Means Recording and he is a Synthlord. He has a YouTube channel and I am a superfan of his, so much so that I wrote a feature about him right here in this journal. I have a lot of his albums and Object Permanence is one of my favourites.

Jeremy is the definition of good faith. Everything he does is done with the intention of creating goodness in this world, in whatever way it can, somehow. Whether it’s just by listening to something that you might find pleasing, or whether it’s watching a video intended to help you create music on a piece of hardware or learn about software or licensing or platforms, distribution or business in some way. I happen to really dig the kinds of music styles he’s into as we seem to have had similar roots when it comes to some of the rock and electronic music we grew up on and have been into in our music lives, so the music he makes now really gels well with me. It was super difficult to choose between the album he released before this called Soft Music To Do Nothing To and Object Permanence but ultimately I think this is the right choice as far as an exhibition of his talent goes. Soft Music is still great, it’s more of a long jam he performed with only three pieces of gear which is pretty amazing and I listen to it all the time, but Object Permanence has some distinct tracks in varying styles I really get into.

I highly recommend Jeremy’s YouTube channel as an entry-point into his style, but if you’re a synth-head and like beats, breaks and groovy bleeps and bloops, you definitely won’t go astray by dropping into any one of his albums on Bandcamp.

The Paper Kites - On The Corner Where You Live (September 2018)

File The Paper Kites under “holy shit another Australian artist that isn’t rubbish” and from Melbourne, my hometown at that. In 2018, they split their new tracks effectively into two albums which works really well. The first is called On The Train Ride Home which is wholly downtempo and almost entirely acoustic with no drums, the second is this album and is a more energetic. I don’t actually prefer one over the other and have just made myself a playlist with contributions from other artists that only includes songs from On The Train Ride Home, but for this list I chose the second album for its exhibition of the band’s overall breadth of song-writing, performance and production. I guess I associate this sound with bands like Rogue Valley and other north and Pacific Northwest bands in the US but to be fair, I don’t really go hunting for this kind of sound - Nashville?? I don’t associate this very cooled-down acoustic-electric sound with Nashville, it’s not very Country (I have some Country in my collection which probably doesn’t surprise you), it’s almost like ultra-chilled mid-90’s ballad in a sense. Someone will have to tell me what it really is and where to find more but only of this calibre because I’m picky about quality. Google says they’re “folk music, folk rock, indie rock, alternative/indie” and that’s useless so throw that in the bin where it belongs.

This sound is definitely a mood. I hunted thru my entire collection including the aforementioned Rogue Valley and started a first playlist of just this kind of thing. I have the acoustic list done and will do an electric counterpart that will include more material from this album, as well as the one song I bought from Night Traveler called Don’t Forget Me as long as it’s not too energetic, it all depends on what makes it to the final list. This music speaks of drives thru rural landscapes, late nights in the city, time alone or with just one other person, closeness, loneliness, introspection, of long journeys and separation.

Iversen - La Favière (August 2018)

The story of how I got this album is hilarious - one of my gaming friends who buys stuff on Humble Bundle and itch.io and god knows what else tweets me this link and says “hey there’s this synthwave bundle for like $2 you should get it it’s $2 it has all this music in” and as someone who won’t buy bad music for even $2, I go investigating and you can listen to some samples and lo-and-behold, most of it is pretty great. I paid a lot more than $2 as that only got you 4 albums and for another $5 or something, you got another 4 albums plus I always pay more because I want more revenue to go to the contributing artists. I ended up not liking about half of the music on offer but in the bundle I discovered Lost Outrider, Morgan Willis and Iversen, all of which I’ve gone on to buy more music from on Bandcamp. As for La Favière, I bought it again on Bandcamp because I love the album so much and wanted to support the artist - it’s really excellent. Oddly tho, two of the best tracks from it were bonuses that only came with the bundle version and not the Bandcamp version, called Sunset Rider and Visions of Blue, so if you want those, I’m not entirely sure how you can get a hold of them - I’m sure if you contact Josh Iverson and tell him you want to pay for them, he’ll try to sort you out unless there are labels involved in which case, not his fault. Regardless, you still get one of the best chilled synth tracks of all time In Dreams which is worth the price of admission all on its own, it is absolutely epic and you should give it a listen.

Goodbye 2020

Time of writing is Sunday 16th January and what a ride it’s been already, hey. I might still write up my actual Albums Of The Year given two of them didn’t get mentioned - Reid Willis - Mother Of and Gidge - New Light, so I cheated a bit, but they’re my nominations, awards and lists so I can do whatever I like. I’m always excited about music, both listening with a critical ear and also emotionally engaging with it. There’s never a shortage of good new music or discovering material I hadn’t from years past. Sometimes it feels like wading thru endless fields of dross to find the gold but it’s always there and getting to it is a true delight.

There were honourable mentions and I couldn��t quite get the list to 10 - there are 8. I might write them up but for the moment, here they are in vague order of vagueness. Importance? Order of purchase? I got into Lapalux and Enter Shikari very late in the year. Apparat’s - LP5 is a very special album to me, almost Dreams Are Not Enough special. I do want to talk about how Jacob Collier’s album is both very very good and also not good enough.

The majority of the music listed here can be purchased on Bandcamp. There are links to most of it on my Bandcamp profile if you want to go hunting - I might add lazylinks later-on if I get the time.

Here is my last.fm full listing for 2020 if you’re curious about that kind of thing. Stats are great.

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pisc1s · 6 years

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Entertainment by Waterparks (Review)

Every pop-punk connoisseur has heard of this iconic band, I’m sure, and lo and behold, they released a sophomore album only a few days ago! Did it – in my opinion – match up to its predecessor, Double Dare? You’re about to find out.

Track 1: 11:11

The 10-track album opens up with 11:11, a song that plays with mystical and mysterious sounds, beginning with distinctive synth-sounds and then it elaborates with the guitars and drums. Unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. I think it is sufficient; it definitely grows on you the more you listen. Also, it does the job of giving the listener a small taste of what’s to come later on the record, but it’s not particularly memorable. I did notice that the drums are remarkable so, kudos to Otto!

Song rating: 6.5/10

Track 2: Blonde

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From there we move to Blonde, the first single and one of the best songs of the album. At a first listen it can be deceiving, the upbeat rhythm and lyrics like I think the blondes are done with fun and I think the blondes are done we’re all too cool for fun may seem fun and shallow. Nonetheless, if you pay close attention to the words, they speak of sadness and depression, but at the same time they hint of recovery through love, so it’s both sad and happy. Musically it’s exactly what you’d expect of Waterparks, a tune! So yeah, 10/10 would recommend!

Song rating: 10/10

Track 3: Peach (Lobotomy)

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I must admit, this track had me hook within the first 10 seconds, and for the most random of reasons. It reminded me of Dick & Jane by Sidney York, which is the theme song for the South Korean series Age of Youth or Hello, My Twenties! on Netflix (if you haven’t seen it I would also recommend it ;-)).

Anyways, Peach (Lobotomy) is a very pop-inspired song about being so in love with somebody they take over all your thoughts. It does an exceptional job of conveying this feeling of obsession, and madness even. It seems to me that the guys dared to step outside the box on this one and do something a bit different to what they would usually do, which is so commendable and it definitely worked!

Song rating: 10/10

Track 4: We Need To Talk

We Need To Talk is a difficult tune to judge, in my opinion. It’s catchy, for sure, but what bug me are the lyrics. The song discusses Awsten’s doubts with a previous relationship and his revelations that had occurred whilst he was in the relationship. Loads of songs deal with this kind of issue but with this one it just sounds cliché and overused, unfortunately.

Song rating: 7.5/10

Track 5: Not Warriors

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I don’t know if it’s just me who finds Not Warriors to be particularly obnoxious and annoying… it’s a more pop generated track compared to their other works. It’s sang on high-pitched voice for most of the song and, I don’t know, I don’t really like it, so let’s just move on, okay?

Song rating: 4/10

Track 6: Lucky People

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Halfway through the record we get to hear Lucky People, my absolute favourite, no doubt. Where do I even start! The best way I can think of explaining this song is what the band account tweeted once: THIS IS THE MOST HAPPY JASON MRAZ ASS SONG YOU EVER SAW. ALSO THE SADDEST. YOU DECIDE, I GUESS. Fairly accurate because the song is cheerful and upbeat, but the lyrics vaguely speak of being madly in love, only to end up “sitting, wishing, waiting for your call”. Also, I find it pretty refreshing for pop-punk bands to compose songs that are different than their usual stuff, that are acoustic and melodic, like 21 Questions on their debut album, that one it’s just g e n i u s!

Song rating: 10/10

Track 7: Rare

I was about to rank it low, but I think you gotta give Rare a bit of a chance and listen to it a few times. By when it gets to the bridge and the beat drops right before the last chorus, I’m sure it will have you convinced. Still, it’s not a wow from me but also, not too shabby!

Song rating: 7.5/10

Track 8: TANTRUM

I must admit, this song hit me like a ton of bricks. I was not expecting something like it at all. TANTRUM is mainly Awsten venting about injustices, double standards, and unoriginality in the music industry and how these have affected him. I admire the way all elements correlate together so perfectly, the title of the song, the fact it’s written on uppercase letters, the words of the song and of course, the music. Screamy and angry. Again, it’s venturing a bit away from what they usually do, much like Little Violence on their first record so, very much appreciated :-)

Song rating: 9/10

Track 9: Crybaby

Reaching the end of Entertainment, I feel like we hit a small bump on the road with the last two songs. It’s not like they’re awful but they’re definitely the ones I’m least bothered about. It seems to me that one particular defect of Crybaby is the chorus. It repeats itself for way too long, to the point it becomes monotone. I just think something more – and better – could have been with that time.

Song rating: 6/10

Track 10: Sleep Alone

I believe that Sleep Alone sounds just like every other Waterparks song which is a bit disappointing; given it doesn’t show any effort towards evolvement and growth.

Song rating: 6/10

Overall, it’s sad to admit this album was nowhere near as exceptional as Double Dare. Maybe the expectations were too big, maybe the bar was set too high, whatever the reason, the guys have failed to deliver this time, but it’s okay, they’re still baes! ♥

Album rating: 7,65/10

If you want to get into them or are interested to hear what they’re like, be sure to check out Double Dare first, and then perhaps give Entertainment a chance, who knows, you might love it.

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theworstbob · 7 years

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yellin’ at songs: 1997, part one

the songs that debuted on the billboard chart between 11 january and 8 march 1997

that may seem like an arbitrary cut-off, and that’s because it is, my sleep got hella fucked and i couldn’t focus on listening to these songs for more than like three at a time (bob we know sgdq was last week) LET ME BELIEVE I TRIED MY BEST, but i have a soft deadline of tuesday for these posts and DIDN’T WANT TO SHORT YOU so here are 50+ reviews and i will do my darndest to catch up with 1997 by the end of the week

1.11.1997

65) "In My Bed," by Dru Hill

oh gosh this just kicks it off right. this is the epitome of '90s cheese: an absurdly talented man singing a song about heartbreak and/or lovemaking over a thousand chimes. bravo, everyone that could have made this happen. i expect i'll get as tired of slow-jam r&b tracks a thousand chime noises as i am of dumb meathead trap songs by the time i get to week 27 of 1997, but right now, it's a treat to hear a singer who is legitimately good at singing.

85) "What They Do," by The Roots

You know, I've never actually checked out a full The Roots album. I've always understood they would be something I like, and I understand it's something of a tragedy they're relegated to a sideshow for Jimmy Fallon (of all people, Jimmy Fallon), like, I'm familiar enough with them that listening to this song was like... Like, I went to a friend's birthday party a few months back, and it was at this bar I hadn't heard of. I'm not usually the sort of person who goes to bars, and I haven't been back since, but something about that bar just instantly felt like home to me, like, maybe the tacos, or maybe the atmosphere, or maybe the fact I nearly smoked weed for the first time with the chef, but I left that bar thinking, "This is the sort of place I'd like to be a regular." That's what listening to a 20-year-old Roots song is like. It's like instantly knowing you're home.

96) "Tears," by The Isley Brothers

"God so loved the world/That he blessed us all with you/Then he gave me a heart/And now I'm giving it to you" THAT IS AN AMAZING LYRIC AND THAT SINGLE-HANDEDLY SALVAGED THIS SONG AND THIS REVIEW. Like I was struggling with how to say this song was boring, but then that line just dropped into my lap, and it... It's as if the Christian god God so loved the world that he gave this lyric to us all, and then he gave me a heart so I could give it to this song. That is quality corniness, right there.

1.18.1997

62) "It's All About U," by SWV

1997 is batting 1.000 right now. This isn't quite an absolute jam, but there's some solid harmonies, a really fun funk-influenced track, and what sounds like Jay-Z going "unh" once every few seconds. This is a good time! 1997 is so much more fun than the other years, is the snap judgement I am making twenty minutes in. 2017 is the confused goth kid who mistakes being dark with being interesting, and 2007's a chill dude with the right person but kind of a stiff sometimes, and 1997's just the life of the party.

84) "Firestarter," by The Prodigy

Pobody's nerfect, 1997. Solid start, but even the best fall down sometimes. This dude describes himself as twisted in the chorus and in one of the verses, and when someone has to insist that they're twisted, that's how you know they're crazy. Oooh, this dude loves fire, that's not a trait this dude shares with a thousand teenage boys who all think they're funnier than they are. (Speaking from experience.) Such a wondrous mind to be so tortured! Truly the Kanye of his generation!

90) "Colour of Love," by Amber

OK. OK, so, this was an unpleasant thing to listen to, but man, listening to this song while having the video on in the background was an assault on the senses. The video is pastel in all the wrong ways, and I was heretofore a believer that there is no such thing as a wrong way to use pastel, but ye gods, the awful color scheme and the aggressively cheery song (LOVE IS GOOD. YOU WILL AGREE THAT LOVE IS GOOD. THIS IS HAPPY NOISES FOR HAPPY THOUGHTS.) made this potentially the most unpleasant listening experience i've had so far for YAS. 1997 has established a high ceiling and a frighteniningly low floor.

1.25.1997

11) "Wannabe," by Spice Girls

This song has 58,236 dislikes on YouTube. Mind you, this song is 20 years old. YouTube, to the best of my knowledge, does not allow you to view a video at random, though I'll cop to not knowing the full extent of YouTube's features. But to have listened to this song on YouTube, you had to go to YouTube intending to listen to this song, which means there are nearly 58,236 people on this planet who intentionally went to the official "Wannabe" music video on YouTube dot com solely to hit the dislike button. There are, obviously, more worthless people; I doubt that the entire Republican party is on YouTube. Hitting the dislike button on this video, though, is still a demarcation of general worthlessness. Anyway, this song, it's not as good as you remember or as bad as you want it to be. It's just a bad pop song elevated by memory. Also, none of these girls could sing. Like I didn't expect SWV-level work, but man, this was disappointing to listen to. Like, I watched Space Jam once as an adult because I was awake at 1 AM and wanted to fire off some tweets, only to learn that Space Jam wasn't like an amazingly bad movie it was just a lazily-written and poorly-acted and boring-bad, and hearing this song made me feel the same disappointment I felt watching Space Jam.

32) "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down," by Puff Daddy ft./Mase

I talk a lot about The Game's 1992 because it's an amazing album, but like the entire time I was listening to this song, I couldn't stop hearing the hook for "Orange Juice." Mostly because it's easy to ignore Mase. Not a good rapper, this man! Nor is P. Diddy! It's a classic track, and I am glad someone else made a better home for it.

33) "On & On," by Erykah Badu

This seems like one of those songs that sort of defies the point of this whole enterprise, because it demands a deeper listen and more thought than I, needing to cram hundreds of pop songs into a few hours spread across a few days, an able to give. This seems like a track that'll reward multiple listens, and Erykah Badu's on the same musical to-do list as The Roots, and it does not seem like a good track to gloss over so we can get to whatever trash is next. Leah Andreone, always a good sign when you don't recognize the name.

79) "It's Alright, It's OK," by Leah Andreone

MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. MOM WHERE DID YOU PUT MY ALANIS CDS. OH MY GOD DON'T EVEN JOKE, IF YOU REALLY THREW THEM AWAY I'LL BE SO SAD. UGH, YOU'RE RUNING MY LIFE! This song is as wonderfully bad as I wanted "Wannabe" to be. Like, some of the pained noises she makes with her voice are making me laugh out loud. My goodness. SHE WAS 24! Man, I mean, this really puts Tay Tay into perspective a little bit, y'know? Like, Tay Tay wrote a lot of bad songs, but she never wrote anything so dumb as "Her ideas need expression/Her wounds never bleed/Her beauty lives in my eyes/Too bad she can't see." Like, the same age this woman was when she made this song, Tay Tay made "Style." We take Tay Tay for granted, is what I'm trying to say. "Cloudy diamonds freebase fun house." Just say meth, dude.

87) "Setting Sun," by CHEMICAL BROTHERS

You could give me a thousand hours and I wouldn't be able to tell you how this was meaningfully different from "Firestarter."

89) "Stand Up," by Love Tribe

This is a dance track I can get behind! Not some awful thing with noises meant to evoke darkness and mosery, a song that says "Hey, dancing is fun! Get out there and do it! Don't feel bad about it!" It's still Eurotrash, but at least it's the fun Eurovisiony side of the genre, not trash trying to disguise itself as recyclable materials.

91) "Another You, Another Me," by Brady Seals

...You know, I don't like that I had to listen to a Charlie Puth song for YAS 17, because Charlie Puth is a boring dude and his songs are bad, but at least Charlie Puth has something akin to a personality. "Marvin Gaye" is a song devoid of creativity, but at least I can identify Charlie Puth as someone who enjoys Marvin Gaye. Milquetoast white dudes in the '90s were just boring fucking white dudes. They didn't have to have ANYTHING like a personality, they could have a nice haircut and sing about love and that was it! I can't believe someone out there loved this song enough to keep it with them and uploaded it to YouTube. I can't believe someone remembered this song and uploaded it to YouTube.

92) "Don't Stop Movin'," by Livin' Joy

So all the dance tracks have been boring and don't really move my needle, but at least electronic music in the '90s wasn't trying to infuse itself with sensitivity or artistic ambition. It was just trash to dance to. None of these songs are "Something Just Like This." The Livin' Joy Wikipedia page states, "Sadly Livin' Joy never managed the same level of success from their first two singles," and I am glad there is a page on Wikipedia being so neglected that some subjectivity can sneak in. That "Sadly" speaks volumes about the state of Livin' Joy's Wikipedia page.

2.1.1997

19) "Every Time I Close My Eyes," by Babyface

This was fine. It's nice to dip back into the sexy R&B slow jamz, it'd been a week, I was worried maybe the trend was over, but nope, here it is, slow and sexy as ever. Well met. ...I think I might be exaggerating the slow jamz, looks like it may be a couple weeks before we get another one, I dunno, I just couldn't come up with anything fresh to say about this song. Guy loves his girl and sings well about it. Great!

52) "Things'll Never Change/Rapper's Ball," by E-40 ft./Bo-Rock

As a longtime enjoyer of podcasts on the Maximum Fun network, I have long been aware of E-40 from all the times Jesse Thorn has upheld the virtues of San Francisco rap. This is probably not a great introduction to E-40. I would not have guessed E-40 would have made a message song based on all the descriptions of him I had heard. It's not a great message song, it's like "What It's Like" but with a weirdly bouncy beat and a weaker condemnation of the listener ("some things will never change/that's just the way it is/when will we ever learn" are we supposed to, what, accept that things don't change? what do you want from me, song. how am i supposed to help).

76) "Watch Me Do My Thing (From All That)," by Immature ft./Smooth & Ed from "Good Burger"

It's kind of amazing that All That was ever a thing. It's a show that presumes that: 1) children would want to watch sketch comedy, 2) specifically sketch comedy performed by other children which are just incredibly silly things to presume. No child should be watching sketch comedy that isn't going to grow up to be a sketch comedian. This song, made with one of All That's most beloved recurring characters, is about as good as any song made by 10-year-olds for 10-year-olds is ever going to be. Well done, congrats, oh hey Marques Houston you pop up ten years later great for you!

77) "Let Me Clear My Throat," by DJ Kool

This song is one verse and then a man shouting at people for three minutes. I thought I listened to the live version on accident, but nope, this is the actual song, this is the canonical version, one verse and then A THOUSAND EXHORTATIONS. Ah! Ah! Ah ah ah! That means I want to party like DJ Kool and his friends. Ah! Ah! Sorry, sorry, he just told me to say "Ah!" after he said "Uh." He said that when he says freeze, he wants me to stop on the dime, so I guess I have no choice to obey him! I feel involved in th

93) "Runnin'," by Tupac, Notorious B.I.G., Radio, & Dramacydal

oh whoa a song with tupac and biggie on the track, that's crazy, i wonder if anything else happens in 1997 that would bring tupac and biggie together? Technically, this song is a 1995 release that people happened to purchase in 1997 for whatever reason, so despite being rather dope, I do wish I had found a reason to disqualify it from any consideration. I wouldn't have heard this song, but I would've saved five minutes and also not had to make the decision on whether I, someone mostly ignorant of hip-hop history, should write about the Tupac/Biggie feud. ...I mean, we're not done, not by any stretch of the imagination, but one less Tupac/Biggie-centric song would've been nice.

94) "My Baby Mama," by QT

So okay. Okay. This song, okay, this song? It's amazing. Like, let's get this out of the way, this song is the awesome bad the '90s knew I would one day need, like criminy, but this song? This song. This is a song about a man telling the mother of his child that she can always count on him, but also he pretty clearly left his baby's mama at some point, so she can't actually count on him. This song is so weird! This is the most loyal disloyal man alive. He sees his baby's mama at the mall with another man. "He was touching my baby/I went crazy/I shoulda beat that." DON'T BEAT UP YOUR BABY'S MAMA'S NEW LOVER AT THE SHOPPING MALL FOR TOUCHING YOUR CHILD, JEEZY PETES. Maybe QT isn't the greatest male role model for his kid to have. Gosh, I'm glad this song got put into my life.

96) "Whateva Man," by Redman

nothing like enjoying a classic hip-hop song and then they describe the effect the marijuana they are smoking is having on them by declaring themselves "chinky eyed." that's such a delightful turn of phrase, i hope we never get rid of it, it's so comfortable to think about and consider. also, "I smoked with a lot of college students/Most of 'em wasn't graduatin' and they knew it." that's a quality line. it's no chinky-eyed! it's still pretty great.

2.8.1997

66) "Please Don't Go," by No Mercy

This is absolutely solid. It's a fun Latin twist on the standard '90s pop song, like not 100% Latin pop, just a normal pop song with enough Latin influence to make it more unique than that Amber nonsense from a thousand years ago. Just a grand old time, better than most of the things I've had to listen to so far to be sure, if maybe not great enough to justify the enterprise. We will unearth a classic, and not an ironic one like "My Baby Mama," we will find something that didn't deserve to be forgotten, and we will find it in this post!

75) "I Always Feel Like (Somebody's Watching Me)," by Tru ft./Ice Cream Man (Master P) & Mia X

If you'll permit me to grade this song based on what it isn't, this song was not a cover of the Rockwell song with a lazy rap verse attached, and I am ever grateful for that. As for the track: neat! All involved did fine work! Mia X's verse was particularly worthy of note, that young woman was out her mind, and I appreciated it. Good work! This also is not the classic I was hoping to unearth, this isn't the nugget we're hoping to find, but flakes in our pan are nothing to sneeze at.

78) "We Danced Anyway," by Deana Carter

Hey! Country! Welcome! This is pleasant. Week 5 of 1997 has just been pleasant, not great, just nice songs by nice (hopefully) people that I can accept.

95) "Fired Up!" by Funky Green Dogs

House music, you just have to ruin everything good, don't you? Quick note about YouTube comments: the YouTube comments under every other genre are "man, my preferred genre of music was way better back when music still sounded good to me," but for house, you don't see people trashing the Chainsmokers or whatever, you just see comments like, "Man, this song was playing the first time I took mushrooms. What a trip!" and it's like, good on ya, house music people. Your music is horrendous, but y'all good people.

98) "Passion," by K5

YouTube Comments Under Shitty Dance Music, Vol. I Commenter: I shuffle skate to this almost every Saturday, the high point of my week Uploader: Wish they still had skatin rinks around here man. Miss those days. Someone in this exchange is the sadder person, but I can't tell if it's the only person whose single-greatest joy is derived from a weekly trip to the roller rink or the person who can't make time in their schedule for the roller rink. We had a good thing going with this set of five songs, and now I'm just sad for these people who love roller skating too much.

2.15.1997

56) "What's on Tonight," by Montell Jordan

"I pray that you're wearing Victoria's Secrets/Oh, that blows my mind" That's acceptable! I enjoy the image of a woman wearing lingerie that this song brings to mind! I agree with this song so far. "Now what should I bring/Strawberries I'm thinkin/Or some honey for your toes" I'm out. Nope. You can't get me to sway to your foot thing. I refuse. I'm not gonna do it. How dare you even try, sir. Gosh. We had something really great going, and the -- don't talk about toes! Not on the single, man! Sir, this is NOT how we do it.

78) "I'll Be," by Foxy Brown ft./Jay-Z

BABY JAY! This song is phenomenal. I don't really think about how deep the roster of female rappers was in the '90s, but man, the woman on "I Always Feel Like" and Foxy Brown have both killed it. Like, I defy anyone to come away from this song thinking Jay-Z badly overshadowed Foxy Brown. He overshadows her, yeah, it's Jay-Z in a moment where he was getting mighty close to the peak of his powers (if he wasn't already there), but Foxy Brown more than holds her own, and the realtive equality at play makes this song a complete jam. Highlight of the year so far!

79) "It's in Your Eyes," by Phil Collins

Ugh.

87) "Take Your Time," by Tre ft./Krayzie Bone

this was cool and also it faded from memory as soon as the song ended also i'm trying to find out more information about Tre but apparently the band doesn't exist and they have a name with really poor seo. like, the wikipedia page for krayzie bone's discography doesn't even mention this song, and i find it hard to believe this was the most forgettable song krayzie bone ever featured on. the wiki lists two songs where some entity named Damizza is the lead artist, but omits tre from the complete record of krayzie bone history. this is weird, like the song is forgettable beyond the "take. your. tiiiiiiiiiime" chorus, but it deserves better than complete erasure!

88) "The Theme (It's Party Time)," by Tracey Lee

This is chill. It's as disposable as any of the rap tracks in 2007 or 2017, no one is pointing to this basic party jam when arguing the virtues of '90s hip-hop, but not every song is going to be a classic, and this song wasn't intended to sound like something more than a red Solo cup. OK work, sir. Congrats on making an accpetable song.

92) "Without Your Love," by Angelina

...look, i've been writing these posts for 27 weeks, and i'm more than a month deep into 1997. i don't claim to know every word i write, but i know i have not used this word before, because i don't believe it has critical value, but i'm listening to this song, and i can't tell if i have the right version, but i'm with this song, and, like, the beat sounds like farts. i'm sorry. but that's the most accurate descriptor available. there are fart noises on this track. people played this song on the radio! it has been seven months and i've made myself listen to multiple piles song, i am entitled to point out that a song sounds like farts when it legit sounds like farts. i'm sorry, angelina. you seem nice. your song is unpleasant.

93) "Drop Dead Gorgeous," by Republica

ye gods, it's as if they mashed everything bad about '90s music into one song. all it's missing is an allsuion to a foot fetish, and it would've checked every box on the list of things i hate about doing this to myself so far.

2.22.1997

10) "Discotheque," by U2

You can't tell me white privilege doesn't exist when we live in a world where U2 was allowed to continue making music after making this song. What the hell is this. If Apple tried to put this on our Apple-brand devices, they would have gone bankrupt. This is... How is dance music so fucking hard? You make a fun song that sounds like it'd be fun to dance to. That sounds simple. I don't get how every single band in the '90s trying to make dance music got it so wrong. Oh no he just went "ha! ha! ha! ha!" in the awful Bono falsetto. Mistakes were made.

17) "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," by Madonna

Man., at least when 2007 gave us Broadway, they gave us Jennifer Hudson's rendition of "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going." Who asked for this. Who was buying Madonna singing Andrew Lloyd Webber. I mean, I guess that's not the craziest decision one could make with their money, but like these people probably also paid for the full soundtrack and for tickets to see the movie and likely the VHS copy, specifically to see Madonna performing Andrew Lloyd Webber, and like, I get it, but also, I don't.

37) "Hard to Say I'm Sorry," by Az Yet ft./Peter Cetera

There's a riff about halfway through the song that nearly made me get out of my chair and shout, like I don't usually feel that way about people doing things with a collection of voices outside of Pentatonix songs, but there is absolutely a moment in this song that gave me chills. I miss this! I miss when people could sing, when the most impressive vocal feat on a song wasn't someone trilling their rs when they say "skrrt."

47) "Barrel of a Gun," by Depeche Mode

DAMNIT EVEN DEPECHE MODE IS BAD. All electronic-influenced music in the '90s was bad, and they even infected Depeche Mode. Depeche Mode is an entity I always understood to be good! This is disappointing. I thought this would at least be something I could get into the Brandi Carlisle or Paramore song I could claim was #1 over far more deserving or iconic tracks, but nope, it's just pointless noise. I'm bummed.

53) "Just Another Day," by John Mellencamp

So a ton of these songs have been absolutely awful. I don't think there's a single week in 1997 so far that would win, and despite weak weeks for the 21st century, it's not looking good for 1997. But this song is a reminder that what doesn't kill me doesn't kill me, so fill me up for just another day IT ONLY HURTS WHEN I BRwrong "Just Another Day" sorry, sorry. This "Just Another Day." It's OK. Look, it's John "Cougar" Mellencamp with another rockin' jam about small town America, I'm sorry, I don't, fuck do you want me to say about this? Just, like, some days I feel like dying, when I'm really only trying to get through "Just Another Day."

57) "Say... If You Feel Alright," by Crystal Waters

Every single house song has the exact same goddamn drum line and it's the fucking drum line from "I'm So Sexy" and it makes me angry every time it starts playing. Everyone who feels nostalgia for this is wrong. There's a comment under the video that just says "The Streetboys," and it has one like, so I'm glad someone agrees with Nairda on this topic.

73) "I'm Not Feeling You," by Yvette Michele

I haven't made the Top 20 yet but I wouldn't be surprised if the entire 1997 Top 20 is just R&B. This year got one thing right, and man, it got that thing incredibly right. Even the slow jamz, they're endless, but only one of the many has been outright awful so far, and even that was tolerable until the allusion to the foot thing, which is still incredibly upsetting I know it's 2017 and I should be desensitized but maybe let's not mainstream foot things, 1997? I'm not focusing on this song, which is amazing and I love it and is '90s in all the best ways. There's a spoken outro! A SPOKEN OUTRO! An absolute classic. It's criminal this only peaked at #44 on the US charts, absolutely criminal.

80) "The Freshmen," by The Verve Pipe

Is this legit the first alternative rock song? How about that, I thought 1997 would be teeming with this sort of thing. Depending on the day, this is either the pinnacle of post-grunge or a combination of everything silly about the genre. It can be all things to all people. The guy has a pleasant growl and it's a song on a heavy subject that treats that subject with respect, and at the same time, it is exceedingly dour and there's 30 seconds of the dude just going "yeah" like in every '90s alt-rock song.

94) "Here's Your Sign (Get the Picture)," by Bill Engvall ft./Travis Tritt

Sometimes I think I'm not where I'm supposed to be in life, and then I remember that Jennifer Lawrence used to be a series regular on The Bill Engvall Show, and I remember I'm supposed to be on a journey home. Oh, this song? Well le -- oops! My fingers accidentally typed "electrolite" into the search bar, well no sense arguing with fate!

96) "Electrolite," by R.E.M.

This is slight. Like, I was worried I was judging this against the rest of R.E.M.'s ouevre? Because obviously, if I haven't heard of an R.E.M. song before, it's because it's not good, but judging any song based on whether or not it's better than "Losing My Religion" is dumb. But like this is just a nice alt-rock song that isn't packed to the brim with Meaning. It was a pleasant four minutes and I'm sure it made a fine closing track for whatever album it was on, but it wasn't really much of anything.

3.1.1997

31) "I Want You," by Savage Garden

Yo this song is kind of perfect? The "chic-a-cherry cola" in the verse is instantly memorable, I thought I hadn't heard this song before but then he said "chic-a-cherry cola" and I shouted "I TRIED TO MAKE THAT NOISE SO MANY TIMES!" which was a fun thing to do at 4:30 AM on a Tuesday, neighbors were happy. That's also a really dope bass line, maybe I just get irrationally excited every time a bass does more than exist on a song, but that bass kills. This was great. I'm trying to put into Smart Words what makes this song great, but I keep writing "something something propulsive," but I'm having trouble, which is usually when you can tell a song is great, because your brain doesn't want to think about why it's great, it just wants to accept it's great. But this song just, I dunno, it moves forward. It's up-tempo, but with these rap-like verses and that bass line, it's like the song is trying to rush through the wanting stage and actually get to the person? I need more time but I gave myself a deadline of Wednesday MOVING ON love this song

42) "Return of the Mack," by Mark Morrison

In the eighth week, 1997 delivered two absolutely perfect songs, and I am so pleased. This is one of the best "HELL YEAH, I'M SINGLE!" songs of all time, like it's up there with "Since U Been Gone," except it's a little more well-rounded. There's an actual story arc in this song -- a man who used to be a real playa found a woman he could settle with, build a life with, but then she broke the trust, and after allowing himself to be depressed, Mark Morrison has regained his confidence and is determined to show that living well is the best revenge. He is ready to return to his former self. Like "Since U Been Gone" is just "fuck you, dude," this song is "STRIKE ME DOWN AND I SHALL RISE STRONGER THAN I HAVE EVER BEEN." I honestly don't know why we've been wasting our time listening to other songs, this is it, this is The Song.

62) "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)," by Aerosmith

The true miracle of "Return of the Mack" is that it's a song that could be a novelty. Like, I had to kind of make sure I wasn't treating the song like pure '90s kitsch. It's, as far as I can tell, a debut single with the word "Return" in the title, and it's made by a dude who had top ten singles in the UK called "Moan & Groan" and "Horny." But "Return of the Mack" absolutely holds up, it's not just some '90s ridiculousness, it is a legitimate masterpiece of a pop song. Everything works well. It's just, y'know, perfect. I want to think about it forever.

76) "Cupid," by 112

Because who wants to think about love songs? The people in love songs have lives outside of the love songs. How did they get in that bed? Who is that person they brought to bed? Is it really true love? "Return of the Mack" answers those questions for any slow jamz he might've made (because he's The Mack, it doesn't matter, and probably not but he will love her truly for a night), but when I listen to 112 say that Cupid doesn't lie, it sort of sounds like Cupid was just haphazardly spraying his arrows any which way and one of them happened to land on these people and I don't know who they are but I'm certain they're finna fuck. And that's OK. But, again, I hate to belabor the point, I could have listened to "Return of the Mack."

79) "Do G's Get to Go to Heaven?" by Richie Rich

This dude looked at the VHS cover for All Dogs Go to Heaven and before his eyes the word "Dogs" separated and he saw "Do Gs Go to Heaven" and he was struck with inspiration, and now that I know the song title is a pun I am fine saying this song is awful. It's a song about how bad life in the street is, but as long as there's reason to believe the song title is a play on All Dogs Go to Heaven, there is no reason to listen to it. There are no puns in "Return of the Mack," FWIW.

81) "Talk to Me," by Wild Orchid

The bronze medal this week is nothing to be ashamed of. Hey: how come there's only one girl group of note in 2017? We have plenty of boy bands (or maybe it just feels that way because of all the many directions), but only Fifth Harmony holding the mantle for girl groups. Seems silly. 2017 could be doing a lot of things better, but specifically the girl group thing is something to be highlighted for at least one second.

90) "King Nothing," by Metallica

Metal music is impressive on a purely technical level -- I mean, have you fucking heard "Through the Fire and the Flames?" That's amazing, that people can make music that sounds like that. But this is post-"Enter Sandman" Metallica, which isn't metal music as I understand it, is just shitty slightly-darker buttrock, so I'm not even listening to a sick as hell guitar solo, I'm just getting some bullshit I could get from Candlebox or whatever else was active.

3.8.1997

21) "Big Daddy," by Heavy D

"What do people like about The Notorious B.I.G.?" "That he's arguably the best rapper of all time at this point in music history?" "Hm... Maybe... But what else?" "I dunno, he's a big dude?" "That's it! Just find me a big dude, and we'll make him a STAR!" And this is why I'm listening to a Heavy D song 20 years later.

55) "Let It Go," by Ray J

This is a six-minute song and I just, I don't understand why this would need to be six minutes? I only got, what, three and a half minutes with "Return of the Mack," and yeah I understand I could've said nuts to this project and been listening to "Return of the Mack" this whole time, but it seems unfair I would have to put in effort to listen to "Return of the Mack" for six minutes but just let this song mosey along while looking at Prime Day deals. Happy belated Prime Day, everyone.

72) "Gangstas Make the World Go Round," by Westside Connection

1997 Week 9 is all about songs that play at a pleasant clip that are extremely listenable, not outright classics, not songs to sing from the tops of mountains, just great soundtracks for the rest of your day. I say this knowing full well it's going to make me listen to Kenny G, but hey, three B+s are nothing to complain about.

83) "Call Me," by Le Click

...I guess if I have to dive into Europe's garbage, I should be thankful to find something which either possesses some value or is edible. This song is OK, and yeah it kind of sounds like "Hamsterdance" or "Axel F" or whatever early-Internet meme you prefer, but there's a solid vocal performance and it's not aggressively awful, it's subtly awful, the awful takes a backseat to things that sound like music on this one. I am glad to have found a dance track that didn't make me want to quit.

95) "Havana," by Kenny G

You know, Kenny G is something of a cultural punchline, but I gotta say, he earned his status.

Top 20 for weeks 1-9 (33% of the way there!) 20) "Call Me," by Le Click (3.8) 19) "Whateva Man," by Redman (2.1) 18) "Stand Up," by Love Tribe (1.25) 17) "Gangstas Make the World Go Round," by Westside Connection (3.8) 16) "Take Your Time," by Tre ft./Krayzie Bone (2.15) 15) "My Baby Mama," by QT (2.1) 14) "We Danced Anyway," by Deana Carter (2.8) 13) "The Freshmen," by The Verve Pipe (2.22) 12) "I Always Feel Like (Somebody's Watching Me)," by Tru ft./Master P & Mia X (2.8) 11) "Hard to Say I'm Sorry," by Az Yet ft./Peter Cetera (2.22) 10) "It's All About U," by SWV (1.18) 9) "In My Bed," by Dru Hill (1.11) 8) "Talk to Me," by Wild Orchid (3.1) 7) "Please Don't Go," by No Mercy (2.8) 6) "On and On," by Erykah Badu (1.25) 5) "I Want You," by Savage Garden (3.1) 4) "What They Do," by The Roots (1.11) 3) "I'm Not Feeling You," by Yvette Michele (2.22) 2) "I'll Be," by Foxy Brown ft./Jay-Z (2.15) 1) "Return of the Mack," by Mark Morrison (3.1) 1997 looks pretty thin, but hey remember when 2017 had two Big Sean songs in the top 20? THE BEST IS YET TO COME apart from the fact it probably has, seriously y’all “Return of the Mack” owns but then again “Hypnotize” okay scratch that i ever scratched that THE BEST IS YET TO COME because THE BEST IS YET TO COME

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the-reading-closet · 4 years

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When PI Jordan Jenner returns to work following the death of his mother, his first case involves a murdered writer… James Fairview has been killed. As a member of a prestigious writing group hosted by bestselling author Joseph Gordon in the heart of Cardiff, Jordan not only has to cope with solving the mystery, but also deal with press attention. As Jordan investigates, he discovers his mother’s death may not have been so simple. And when another writer is murdered, Jordan realises the killer could strike again… A murdered writer, a mysterious death, and a group with jealousy at its heart, this is Jenner’s toughest case yet. A cosy murder mystery with a gay male detective, Murder on the Rocks is the first in the Jordan Jenner Mysteries series. If you’re a fan of classic whodunits you will love this!

Artist Xander Draper is being threatened by a dangerous group. With PI Jordan Jenner’s help, Xander hopes to remain unscathed. But when Xander is murdered, his body displayed as his final exhibit, Jordan realises the extent of the trouble Xander was in. Now, there are people following Jordan. They know his name, and they want him dead. Meanwhile, Jordan’s brother Ashley has returned, and he has a secret. As time runs out to solve the murder of the famous artist, Jordan begins to fear his brother may be responsible.

It’s the first day of Meet The Author, Panther Publishing edition, where you can find out more about the writers behind the books! This will be going on this week, i’ll be introducing you to authors new and the original Panther squad! If there’s any questions you’d like to ask, feel free to comment below the blog post tweet! Where did the name Panther Publishing come from? Who is this publishing house? Well:

The importance of Panther came around when comparing the Welsh publishing scene to that of Scotland. So much great Scottish fiction is published and released, and Scotland is alive with literature. Wales has it’s fair share of literature and publishers, and they’re doing great jobs. But we wanted to arrive and do something different. We don’t believe in closing our doors to anybody, regardless of their ability to speak the Welsh language, or because they write in genre fiction. We don’t believe in closing off our submissions to gender, or to those that have never published before. We’re here to champion the unknown, to find and nurture fresh talent, and to work closely with them, developing their writing, their books, and in return, they develop us. We’re a small team – VERY SMALL TEAM – and we are intent on shining light on those that might get overlooked elsewhere. We are huge fans of writing in the genres of mystery, crime, paranormal, thriller and horror, so we’re looking for writers who can bring that to us. We have plenty planned at Panther Publishing. We’re proud to be a publishing company in Wales. The first book published by Panther Publishing was Murder on the Rocks by JS Strange, a Welsh Agatha-esque cosy mystery and the first book I was quoted on as a blogger! You can find my review here, and of course I loved The Art of Murder, and you can find out how much here! The series so far, holds a place close to my heart and I highly recommend it! You can purchase Jack’s books either in e-book or physical format via Panther Publishing’s online store here!

So without further ado, no ‘now in a minute’, let’s get on with Jack’s Q&A, which I am so grateful that he agreed to be a part of! Thanks Jack! Just for fun I thought we’d start with a bit of either or: Tea or Coffee? Coffee for sure! I start my day with coffee, work coffee, function with coffee! Morning bird or Night owl? Night owl! Bookmark or corner folder? Don’t hate me, but corner folder! You and me both Jack, at least we are honest enough to admit it! Tidily organised or Organised mayhem? Organised mayhem, of course. I could have been answering these questions, i’m the exact same!

What makes you happy? Could you share a photo?

I’ve shared two! My cats, Miley and Dolly, names after Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton. And my new found love and very relaxing activity – bonsai trees! These are such cute photos? Have you named your bonsai trees yet? I have a tomato plant that I’ve named Tia after one of the sisters of Sister, Sister, because for a plant she has sass!

What is your favourite childhood book? Is it okay to say this, seeing as what’s recently happened? It would be Harry Potter. Always will be, I’m afraid. I’ll take it! Let’s pretend that *that* didn’t happen for the purpose of the Q&A, it’s still one of my favourites too!

What did you want to be when you grew up? Harry Potter! No, I’m joking. I always wanted to be a pop star. I’ve been writing, recording, and releasing pop music since my last book, but I haven’t fulfilled the ‘star’ element yet. I also wanted to be a vet. Now, I’m an author that works in TV and pretends he can sing! I reckon you’d be able to pull off the specs and lightening bolt scar! I’ve heard your music and I couldn’t help but bop along. This year author / TV worker, next year Eurovision?

Did you always want to be an author? I’d say that I was always writing. From a young age I was adapting existing stories and also writing my own. Probably before I knew what an author was!

If you could choose only one season to last forever, what one would it be? Good question. I love the heat, so probably summer. But I really like autumn, too. You live in Wales, you’re meant to be all about the rain! I’m joking, the heat is okay in small quantities (my opinion) but I live for Autumn; boots and pumpkin spiced lattes!

What is your current read? I’m currently reading Full Service, a book about the life of a man who worked in a gas service station in Hollywood, providing sex to a lot of the rich and famous. I think it inspired part of the new Hollywood series, which is on Netflix. *Adds that to my TBR and Netflix to watch list*

What do you enjoy doing outside of writing? Hobbies etc. Singing, I think. Convincing myself one day I can do this, and the next asking myself who the hell am I kidding?! I should have asked your shower song! My shower soundtrack involves a lot of random songs, including a few Whitney Houston’s!

How many books have you written? Do you have a personal favourite? What is it and why? I have wrote four books in total. Two zombie books, which have recently been reclaimed by Panther, and will be redeveloped. And then two murder mystery novels, the series Jordan Jenner. I’m proud of the Jordan Jenner series, because they’re a different genre, one I wanted to write but didn’t think I could pull off. Jordan is a gay male PI in Cardiff, Wales. I have a soft spot for Murder on the Rocks. I absolutely adore the Jordan Jenner series and I can’t wait until the next instalment! And zombie books you say? Well that is exciting!

When writing a series, how do you keep it fresh? Is the second in the series always more difficult than the first? I find that the characters make your series. The storytelling has to be the most important part, and you need characters that people like and want to keep reading about. It’s easy for a series based on murder to go stale. It follows the same format mostly. Murder, conflict, resolution. But as long as people care about whether Jordan and Lloyd will get together, what Mark is doing, etc, then I think it keeps the series interesting. For my zombie series, the second was really hard to write, and even now I feel exhausted by it. But the second in the Jenner series was easy. Now it’s the third I’ve been struggling with! You’re a really great author, I am sure you’ll get there with book 3!

When researching for a novel, do you always have all the research before beginning or do you research as you go? What is the process? It depends on what the story is. I research when it comes to mind. I research enough to make a story plausible, but I’m not one to research loads and fit it all into the book to show off how much research I’ve done. I usually research some police procedure, as well as street names, that sort of thing. At least it isn’t research dense! You include enough to make an engaging storyline!

Describe your typical writing day There isn’t one! Life is so busy, it’s been hard to find any time to write. Another reason, I think, why book three isn’t shaping up. But when I do write, it goes two ways. The words flow, the story gets a flow, and it goes quite well. Then there are the days where it’s not clear what’s happening, I’m not happy with the story, and I scrap it all!

Describe your publishing journey in 3 words Long, slow, fast. (Because one Panther took me on, it was a fast road!)

Do you have any writing quirks / needs? What are they? Quiet. Can’t be writing with the TV on or music playing. I just need silence. And a coffee!

If it gives no spoilers, what is the hardest scene you’ve had to write? It’s always quite hard to write the reveal. You want it to be suspenseful, and for it to make sense, but you also don’t want it to be anticlimactic. You have to make sure it makes sense that the person who was responsible for the murder is plausible.

What do you find the most enjoyable / difficult thing about writing? Definitely being able to find a flow, and be happy with what I’m writing. I’m so self critical, and lose my patience quite easily. Time is the most difficult as well, because it’s hard to find any! The most enjoyable is creating characters, settings, using my imagination, and finally getting it out there.

What is a publishing highlight for you? Reaching the LGBT best-selling chart in cosy mystery on Amazon. Since it’s release, it’s been in and out of the chart all the time, which is a really proud moment. And you absolutely deserve to be there!

Can you give a one sentence teaser for anything you’re working on if you’re allowed? The Mistletoe Murders. Oh wait, did I just reveal a title?! Is that an exclusive?! Too late to take it back now! Any question you wished I’d asked but haven’t? Not that I can think of! Thanks again for asking me these questions! 😊 You’re so welcome, thank-you so much for agreeing to take part in the ‘Meet the Authors’ Q&A, I’m truly honoured to have you on the blog!

So, there you have it, the first of the Panther Publishing edition of Meet the Authors series! Have you read any of JS Strange’s books? You have time to catch up now before the next series! Both books are cosy and mysterious, the perfect accompaniment to a hot chocolate and blanket / glass of wine and pretzels! Thanks again Jack for taking part! If you’ve already reviewed Jack’s books, please feel free to share using the #MeetTheAuthors hashtag!

Tune in tomorrow for my Q&A with Will, Until then, Happy reading!

Meet The Authors - Panther Publishing Edition with JS Strange @JackSamStrange @PantherPubs #MeetTheAuthors #CosyMystery #IndieAuthors #IndiePublishing When PI Jordan Jenner returns to work following the death of his mother, his first case involves a murdered writer...

#IndieAuthors MeetTheAuthors PantherPublishing AuthorIntro

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aryapathak-ls25-blog · 6 years

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Week 14: Alt-GAMING

Elisa!!! :)

GSI elisa’s focus has been on internet art and making work on and through the internet

her work explores gender, sexuality and labor in relation to technology and internet

taught at RISD and Brown before she came to Berkeley!

some problems: free labor, big data, etc.

did the MFA program at RISD

Archive Fever: night before midterm, she took all her browsing history until her computer crashed, and then link after link is plaid back in chronological order.. there was soothing music in the background

-she trellised there were different trends and the cluster of data was able to give herself and others and idea about herself… at the time she was very interested in the narrative qualities of video montage but now it reads in an entirely different way… its interesting how the project and the way people read it drastically changes depending on the political climate

- she’s still selling her data on a flash drive online because she was interested in the whole idea of selling your data on line just like companies like Facebook do today

-started to receive warning from eBay about how she was putting herself in a “vulnerable” position

need ideas!?! PLZ!!

just a bunch of videos of youtubers talking about how they don’t know “what to do” or about how they need “video ideas” and then the youtube ask their viewers what to make… like whether or not they should sing, what they should talk about, whether or not they should make make up vids… they also ask viewers to “subscribe, comment, follow, etc.”

Labor of Sleep, Have you been able to change your habits? (2017)

touches on how sleep has been a new behavior from which data and other things are exacted…. basically sleep used to be something that was the last known method of shutting down and being unproductive but now sleep apps allow our sleep to produce something fruitful!

continuation of archive fever project in the sense that it examines how we are more and more viewing humans and things that produce classes of data… we are perceiving ourselves in a more quanitifiable way

-if you are on the whitened website during the time or sunset/sunrise in new york, the website is interrupted with her art project

techonologies of care- the projective is documenting how effective labor (a time of immaterial labor that effects and modifies emotions of consumers/ viewers) is being outsources to computer… i.e. workers on line can perform micro tasks like designing loiece was censored in the backgos/labels, pretend to be bf/gf online,

-workers on these platforms are usually from non-western countries with problematic economics and inflation (so maying low amount of dollars may look good to them), very cheap labor, etc…. most importantly for elisa, most of these works were produced by women… elisa interview 70-80 workers and selected 10 for the final projects. they all wanted to be anonymous so elisa abstracted their images with geometric shops

when the towel drops- project done by a collective that elisa is in with one ugandan artist and one indian artist called radha may

the research started in italy, next phase in india, last phase in south africa

she visited the national censorship archive of ital- all films in italy are first reviewed by a state review board.

-they did a montage of all the censored scenes and presented in italy.. at the same time someone read why the clips were censored... ex “women showing pleasure

Wednesday: Porpentine Heartscape

Porpentine Charity Heartscape - “Oakland based new media artist, video game designer, writer and curator primarily a developer of hypertext games and interactive fiction mainly built using Twine. In conversation with artist Elisa Giardina Papa”

sticky zeitfeist-the game is about girls who are animals and girls who are robots… collaboration with her friend from canada. there is a lot of music from transgendered artists. she gets bored with one thing, so the game is constantly changing,

glitches are the second best part of making a game.. the best part is not having any glitches lol

she also made another game for a contemporary art museum in chicago, very simple game

she’s interested in repetitive, pattern work

-foldscape = a game made out of posters

she’s also really interested in how the speaker/presenter in a game can mutate the entire game

another game asked people to draw things, for example. “a symbol of the new year

this world is not my home- collaborative project where her collaborator added music & where they turned their game into a portal like exhibit

tiny bubbles exhibit in SF->

to her, feeling always matters more than physical form

JOURNAL ENTRY

I’ve been in Elisa’s discussion section all semester and I had no clue that she went the #1 design school in America, and that she’s already had her work shown at various famous museums like the Whitney! I’m not surprised but I was surprised she never talked about her work in discussion before. The first piece she shared with us was Archive Fever. It was pretty funny to see what peoples’ reaction were when she tried to sell her own information on line. She got messages warning her about the risks of sharing her personal information online, which is ironic since most individuals use still such s Facebook, which we’ve just found out might not be as safe as we think! I also really loved her second piece, titled, “need ideas!?! PLZ!.” I’ve never been a huge user of any social media asides from twitter, which mostly consists of 240 character tweets that make me laugh, so it’s interesting to me that kids really care about the number of likes they get online. When reflecting back on the piece, I couldn’t help but feel sad about the direction of where this so-called form of “art” is headed. When I think backk to some of my favorite presents, like Barbara Hammer, Chip Lloyd, and Lynn Hershman-Leeson, I remember being amazed at how many ideas they had lined up in their head and ready to bring to fruition. Call me old fashioned, but I really enjoyed these presenters, not only because of the amazing work they produced, but because it was genuine and they’d truthfully believed in the whole project from beginning to end. For example, Chip Lloyd had to literally jump through hoops and get so many random permits just to blow up a bunch of TV’s! I feel like that takes real passion and self-realization that those kids will not learn if they are already taught at such a young age to just sit online a wait for people to tell you what’s cool instead of exploring/experimenting and figuring it out for themselves!! Lastly, my favorite piece was When the Towel Drops. I loved the idea of creating a montage of all censored scenes and reading why they were censored, just so people can understand how ridiculous it is that something like “showing pleasure” is ok with the Italian government for men, but subject to censorship and considered too taboo to be shown on screen for women.

Porpentine Heartscape is a well-known, tumblr famous gamer and writer who is in conversation with Elisa. I’m actually really curious to see what both of them will collaborate on because they both have such different styles on interacting with audiences and working! I really admire Porpentine because she seems very sure of the direction she’s headed. I felt like her presentation gave a very holistic view of her work, but I didn’t learn much about her and her motivations for doing what she does. In fact, halfway through the presentation she just started putting up different games without really saying anything. But, she did indicate that he believes feelings matter a lot more than physical form. This definitely rings true in her work and it seems like the closest thing she gave as a theme or motivation behind her work. For example, one of her game, foldscapn, was made entirely out of postcards. It was really cool how much she lit up when she found that boy that was obsessed with her game, and its really obvious that she loves what she does. She said that the ideal way she pictures someone playing her game is sitting in a messy bedroom with a box of pizza, and this seems like exactly the environment that some her fans would be in.

READING NOTES: Not much to say about this reading since its just archived reviews of A1 from different people, but I will say that these reviewers seem incredibly animated and loyal. It’s also very interesting how their ratings are in jibberish letters that seem like

MULTI MEDIA: [DISCLAIMER- MUST DOWNLOAD ON ANDROID OR IPHONE TO PLAY]

http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/

This links you to a game created by Jason Rohrer called Passage. Passage was one of the first experimental games to really change peoples’ prospects and persuade them to decontextualize video games as an art form. Elisa and Professor Skoller have both probably already heard of Passage because It’s apparently one of the most famous and influential experimental games, but I thought it was one of the coolest things I’ve played. In fact, in 2012, it earned one of the 14 coveted positions in the MOMA’s permanent video game collection. The game is unique because there is no tradition plot. Hopefully this doesn’t spoil the game, but the game is supposed serves as metaphor for the human condition. Players LOVE the game, and many people said they were very emotion and/or they cried afterwards.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/game-reviews/passage

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