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fieldsofplay · 1 year

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Michael Gorwitz’ Top Albums of 2022

25. Daphni – Cherry

Hello and welcome to 2022. You made it. We made it. Things kinda seem like they’re getting better, no? So what better way to kick off this annual survey than with a perfect little dance record, Daphni’s Cherry. Daphni is the pure dance alter-ego of Dan Snaith, better known as Caribou (and once upon a time, Manitoba). So if you ever wished the song craft would stop getting in the way of albums like Our Love or Swim, then Cherry is the record for you. Side projects often let artists flex muscles that don’t get enough workout in their main gigs, and thus often provide simple pleasures in unadorned forms, and Cherry is no exception. No one is reinventing the wheel here, but more importantly, nor is anyone trying to do so. The first track “Arrow” tells it all, a steady, brisk beat, a fun vocal loop, and that’s it, but really, what more do you need to get your booty shaking? More importantly, that simple purple and pink cover is just too beautiful to behold, so it had to go first to set a lovely hue for all the good music to follow.

24. Vince Staples – Ramona Park Broke My Heart

Vince Staples is approaching a similar place to Kevin Morby (see below) where his supreme consistency is starting to almost work against him. Ramona Park Broke My Heart is Staples’ fifth album, and its just as perfect as the proceeding four, which does create a bit of indistinguishability with each successive release. Unlike Morby however, Staples’ string of releases do chart more a stylistically-varied path, even if it’s a bit circular. Summertime ’06 was the stark Clams Casino produced statement of purpose, Big Fish Theory was a fascinating detour into club beats, FM! was experiment in minimalism. Last year’s self titled was the first without a formalistic construct, and thus felt closest to Summertime ’06, and this year’s Ramona Park is more of the same. However, that same remains some of the best hip hop around. The one-two of “Papercuts” into “Lemonade” are some of Staples’ best songs. If this is what it sounds like to be in a rut, why not revel in a place of such excellent output.

23. Toro y Moi – MAHAL

MAHAL is emblematic of a fun phenomenon, namely, where you pick up a release from artist you once cared about, but not a ton and haven’t checked in in a minute, and you’re pleasantly surprised that they’ve still got it. Toro y Moi was simultaneously kind of a chillwave also ran, and also someone who seemed like would be around after the hype-wave crested. MAHAL is definitely not chillwave, but it’s definitely good. It has a 70s skronk to it, and a summer bounce, like T. Rex it’s equally good for a sunny road trip and to chill out to.

22. King Gizzard – Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms and Lava

Jam bands (whom I do not like) often try to cloak their musical meanderings in the intentionality of jazz, as if to say “we’re not bullshitting here, we’re engaged in serious praxis,” when in reality, they’re just hitting the bong, then the record button, and just going with whatever wanders out of their instruments. This year’s King Gizzard album (I’m not typing that whole title out, banner year for long-ass album names, shouts Sufjan!) is dangerously close to being a jam-band record, but I’ll point to one key stylistic divergence. Unlike a jam band pretending its playing a version of jazz, King Gizzard here are working in funk, with all the looseness, energy, and yes, jams, that that genre entails. For generations, funk has given artists room to spread out, find a groove, and lock in, taking the listener along for the funky ride. Am I splitting hairs? Perhaps. But if you swapped out of the vocals on “Ice V” I think you’d be hard pressed to tell it wasn’t a deep cut from Sly’s Family Stone.

21. The Reds, Pinks and Purples – Summer at Land’s End

When I write these lists I normally try and serve two masters: the first is the larger story of music in a given year, the second are my own idiosyncratic predilections. Summer at Land’s End is definitely me looking in the mirror and doing finger guns, and hey, its my list, so why not? One of my favorite forgotten records of the last 20 years is Wild Nothing’s Gemini, and while Summer at Land’s End lacks that record’s uptempo jangle, it traffics in the same gauzy reverb guitars and sad structures. As pop music and R&B continue to steamroll the “discourse,” I continue to light a candle for these little off kilter guitar albums.

20. Sorry – Anywhere But Here

Sorry got a lot of hype two years ago for their debut 925. Honestly, it never did much for me, it just kinda sounded like a band that liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs as much as I did (not a knock, well it’s kind of a knock, but liking the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is cool). Normally, that means I wouldn’t have paid much heed to their follow up, but when I heard it was breakup album, I was interested enough to give the band another go (I don’t know what it says about me that I thoroughly love a good breakup album, but here we are). Less interested in being “experimental” for its own sake, and more focused on channeling those artsy influences into rock solid songwriting, Anywhere But Here takes Sorry’s conflicting interests in pop and trip hop and channels them into a rain soaked album (there’s literally a song called “Screaming in the Rain”) that surmounts the sum of its parts rather than always breaking apart into arch referents. Take “Baltimore” for example, a tiny piano intro is passed along to bass and guitar, with the vocals hopping along in lock step with the bass in classic post punk fashion. On Anywhere But Here, Sorry live up to the initial hype.

19. Kevin Morby – This is a Photograph

As briefly discussed above with Vince Staples, Kevin Morby is fully a victim of his own consistency at this point. This is a Photograph is arguably the best album he’s ever released, and if that’s the case, why is it down here at 19? The reason is by putting out great albums of similar sounding (or, at least, structured) music every single year, it becomes impossible for any one release to break through not only the crowd of music in a given year, but even amongst his own catalogue. If this was Morby’s third release instead of his eighth (!) it might top this list, it’s that good. Gelling all the elements that have come to define prior Morby releases, This is a Photograph stands as his best statement of freewheeling americana. “Stop Before I Cry” actually moves me to tears, it’s that beautiful.

18. Wild Pink – ILYSM

Wild Pink’s ILYSM is an interesting pair with Morby’s This is a Photograph. Billed months before it came out as the band’s Yankee Hotel, that advanced praise actually proved to be a bit of a disservice, setting the expectation bar at unreachable heights. However, unlike Morby’s eternal consistency, ILYSM actually does take some big swings at stylistic experimentation, which of course, are what generated those Yankee Hotel comps in the first place. Opener “Cahooting the Multiverse” sets the stage perfectly, opening portals to different universal variants of this band’s maudlin country pop. The music cuts out for a few off-kilter beats, backup singers join in, and the music warbles through processors. “Cahooting” presents several different versions of a Wild Pink track, all withing the same song. The title cut employs a robotic chorus to chant the album’s mantra (“I LOVE YOU SO MUCH”), and the whole song comes off as the most interesting War on Drugs song in several years.

17. MJ Lenderman – Boat Songs

While Lenderman’s main act Wednesday made waves with Twin Plagues, it was their cover album Mowing the Leaves Instead of Piling ‘Em Up that caught my ear, and on his solo album Boat Songs he continues the drift into more countrified sounds evinced on Mowing the Leaves. While his lyrics—fixated as they are on ‘90s sports icons—have garnered a lot of attention, I sometimes find them too cute by half. What makes Boat Songs truly great is the way Lenderman is able to make big sounds out of low fidelity. He gets a lot of comparisons to Jason Molina, and you can hear why. These are capital “G” guitar songs that share Molina’s reverence for Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr., but whereas Songs:Ohia tracks usually collapsed back into themselves, Lenderman’s tend to burst outward from the speakers, taking the listener along for a ride through his twangy tales of Dan Marino and actual Dolphins.

16. Beach House – Once Twice Melody

Beach House have no business being relevant in 2022. Perhaps it’s just because I’m old and they’re not actually relevant, but I’m still seeing lots of love for Once Twice Melody on the year end lists (though again I could just be reading the lame lists). Except for the brief period when the band employed an actual human drummer, the band has spun gold from nothing more than Victoria Legrand’s narrow vocals & lush synths, stuttering drum machines, and Alex Scally’s slide guitar. As all of the great bands of their (read: my) generation have slowly faded away into irrelevance (Deerhunter, Animal Collective) or broke up (the Walkmen) somehow Beach House remain at the same level they were at when their self titled debut first made me swoon way back in 2006. I’m not going to go so far as to say Once Twice Melody is their best album (Teen Dream still holds a special place in my broken heart), but the fact that its in the conversation is a testament to their unparalleled abilities. “Another Go Around” is not only one of the best songs of their career, but a perfect encapsulation of this record’s place in 2022.

15. The Soft Pink Truth – Is it Going to Get Any Deeper?

The Drew Daniel half of Matmos continues his excellent recent run of form with the cheekily titled Is it Going to Get Any Deeper? Whereas his last full length, the stellar Shall we Go Sinning so that Grace May Increase?, was devotional music disguised as house music, the equally questioning Is it Going to Get Any Deeper? worships at the altar of the dancefloor. While I can’t imagine actually dancing for the entire 11 minutes of opener “Deeper,” this is house music in the sense of envelopment, of losing one’s self, if not always in the sea of the dancefloor, then at least in the gently undulating currents of the throb of the music itself.

14. Pusha T – It’s Almost Dry

King Push is back. Splitting production between Pharrell (😍) and Kanye (☠️) It’s Almost Dry is fascinating as it shifts back and forth between Neptunes-style slinky bangers (“Let the Smokers Shine the Coupes”) and vintage Kanye’s trademark chipmunk soul (“Rock n Roll”). It’s Almost Dry is Pusha’s strongest release since 2013’s My Name is My Name, if not his Clipse days. From top to bottom, this album is filled with songs that live up to the strength of the production. While many knock his continued lyrical fixation on coke dealing, “Diet Coke” was probably one of the biggest songs of the year. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Beyond merely continuing a proven recipe, on It’s Almost Dry Pusha elevated his craft to its highest levels, constantly pushed there by Pharrell and Kanye’s first rate production.

13. Palm – Nicks and Grazes

These days it seems like the most interesting ideas in what used to be called good old fashioned indie rock are coming out of Philadelphia, but on seeing Palm live this year I realized the Philly band have more in common with Baltimore’s Animal Collective. It isn’t necessarily that Palm sound like Animal Collective (they don’t really), but Palm meld ecstatic exuberance with odd time signatures and vocals that are more tonal layers than sense conveyors that is spiritually, if not sonically, akin Animal Collective in their heyday. What was so cool about that Palm show was that it was readily apparent that this was a bunch of kids who grew up post Animal Collective and managed to import their spirit without aping their sound. Sometimes seeing the torch passed from generation to generation can you make you feel ancient, but other times it makes you thrilled to see the youth pick up the spirit of something you once cherished and make of it their own. So long as there are weirdos making fun music who barely seem to know how to play their instruments, there’ll be bands like Palm.

12. JID – The Forever Story

In a year where Kendrick Lamar put out a (bad) record, it was JID who to my uneducated ear put out the most technically interesting flows. While speed is impressive (see: Twista), and JID can unfurl 20 words in the time it takes zanax rappers to get out a single syllable, these aren’t speed trials devoid of rhythm or sense. While a bit overstuffed at 15 songs with an hour runtime, on The Forever Story JID continues to match top notch chops with first rate story telling. In a year in which Kendrick put his first foot wrong, give JID a chance instead.

11. Panda Bear & Sonic Boom – Reset

Speaking of Animal Collective, even though Time Skiffs was well-reviewed, I had long ago given up on them doing anything of interest, which is totally fine seeing as they put out five consecutive albums that completely rewrote the possibilities of “folk” music. (2003’s Here Comes the Indian through 2009’s Merriweather Post Pavilion). It’s arguable that the most important album of that run wasn’t even put out by Animal Collective proper, but was Panda Bear’s seismic Person Pitch (2007). While he continued to release great solo albums, often produced by Sonic Boom, like his main act, Noah Lennox seemed to be gradually receding from the center of cultural relevance. While Reset doesn’t rewrite the fabric of pop music like his previous towering achievements, it does make you remember why we all fell in love with Panda Bear in the first place. Pared down to pop perfection, songs like “Getting’ to the Point” and “Edge of the Edge” remind you that when Panda Bear gets his Brian Wilson on, there is almost no one who can write a better pop song.

10. They are Gutting a Body of Water – S

Despite possessing the worst band name of 2022, They are Gutting a Body of Water put one of the year’s most interesting albums. If you liked last year’s release from Spirit of the Beehive (a very narrow group of people) then S is precisely for you. Without sounding much like them, They are Gutting a Body of Water remind me a lot of the Unicorns, but maybe that’s just because their lead singer also put out a hip-hop album this year. (Th’ Corn Gangg Anyone??? [This is a joke just for Brad Romsa if he is reading this]). On S, They are Gutting a Body of Water (I can’t believe I have to keep typing that out, but I hate acronyms so here we are) are constantly shifting shapes, but most of the songs are sonically tied together by shimmering processed guitars that sound like they came from Broken Social Scene’s early records. The songs that aren’t outright instrumentals often featured chipmunked vocals, or shoegazy coos that barely constitute “vocals” proper. If you’re looking for 2022’s most sonically adventurous rock record, look no further than S.

9. Axel Boman – Luz

Along with Kornel Kovacs (whom I love) and Petter Nordkvist (not familiar), Boman founded the influential Swedish label Studio Barnhus. With Luz, Boman put out my favorite electronic album of the year. Like the aforementioned Kovacs, and DJ Koze, Boman traffics in house music shot through with psychedelia. The normally steady rhythms of house tend to bend and shift across the course of his tracks, as the music takes you more on a voyage of the mind rather than getting your hips moving. Take, for example, penultimate track “Grape.” What starts out as a bouncy Herbert homage, gradually picks up cascading vocals, and then stuttering jungle, until finally dissolving as the sea of rhythms it had gradually built up begin to recede like the tide. Each track on Luz is a journey, so why not see where it takes you.

8. Anteloper - Pink Dolphins

2022 not only was a big year for jazz, it was a big year for Jeff Parker (see below). On Pink Dolphins, the sadly dearly departed trumpeter Jaimie Branch and percussionist / electronics guy Jason Nazary (who combined constitute Anteloper) paired with Parker in the role of producer, to stunning effect. If not for They are Gutting a Body of Water, Pink Dolphins would probably be the strangest record I’ve heard this year. The review I read compared the album to Live-Evil era Miles Davis, and that was basically all I needed to know. Pink Dolphins is like a new age version of that Miles, and I’ve also read the album’s sound described as aquadelica (aquatic psychedelica). The pairing of Anteloper and Jeff Parker is a match made in heaven, as he helps the duo push their sound out to the moon, where Branch’s trumpet functions more like a stab of noise rather than a source of melody. On “Earthlings” the driving force of the song is Nazary’s scattershot drum beat paired with a haunting bass line, as a series of electronic effects and Branch’s understated but effective vocals swirl around like a whirlpool. Her trumpet doesn’t cut through the swirl of noise until about 4 and ½ minutes into the song. It is terrible to comprehend that Pink Dolphins is the last thing we will ever get from Branch, but at least it’s a hell of a way to go out.

7. Beyonce – Renaissance

We can keep this one short. You don’t need me to tell you anything about Beyonce. All I need to say is someone derisively said of lead single “Break My Soul” that “it sounds like C+C Music Factory.” My only complaint with Renaissance is that I wish it sounded more like C+C Music Factory.

6. Yard Act –

The Overloard

Yard Act are the most british band on this list, by a mile. There is just some sort of bratty nonchalance that only the Britsh can pull off, and The Overloard is soaked in it. While most post punk—especially the vein currently back in vogue—is defined by dark brooding, Yard Act practice a different type of post punk always very close to my heart, the minimalist, strutting, arty variety perfected by The Fall, Wire, and Buzzcocks several decades ago. So long as there is someone somewhere sipping a coffee, smoking a cigarette, reading a book (Kafka?) over the top of wayfarers perched archly at the end of their nose, but more importantly, always aware of the ludicrousness of such a pose, there will be bands like Yard Act. According to internet-based statistics, “Dead Horse” was my most played song of the year, and there is no surprise there. It’s everything I love in a song and nothing else.

5. Big Thief – Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You

For a folk-rock outfit that doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, Big Thief’s permanent position towards the top of this and most other lists year after year is fairly outstanding. It’s not that their sound has changed from Masterpiece to Capacity to U.F.O.F./Two Hands to Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You, but their sound has somehow gotten better with each successive release. A sprawling double album in the truest sense of the word, Dragon New Warm Mountain is where it all should have gone wrong. Their familiarity should have grown a little tiresome as they drowned in the sea of their self indulgence. Instead, the name of their first album notwithstanding, Dragon New Warm Mountain stands as their clear masterpiece. Like the Beatles on the White Album (which has become my favorite Beatles’ record as I’ve aged), here the double album format allows Big Thief to focus a little less on perfecting their folk gems and allows them to spread their wings a bit. Like the Beatles, rather than resulting in a slip-shod series of half baked results, the looseness of the double album allows their genius to shine through all the brighter. Top to bottom, start to finish, this thing is absolutely stuffed with perfect little songs. For my money (which is none, because this is free) of all their small gems, “Certainty” is the best they’ve ever penned.

4. Destroyer - Labryinthitis

Well Dan Bejar, you’ve done it again. I have no idea what number Destroyer release this is (I just checked, it’s the project’s 13th!) but with Labryinthitis Bejar continues his recent run of excellent form. Destroyer never really puts out bad records, but his sea of releases has crests and troughs just like any body of water controlled by the moon. To my ear, those peaks occur every three or four albums or so (Streethawk, Rubies, Kaputt), and while I really enjoyed Have we Met, I think Labryinthitis is his best release since Kaputt. Mixing the electronic textures of Ken and Have we Met with Kaputt and Poison Season’s chill, Labryinthitis is a culmination of all of Bejar’s recent preoccupations (see “June.”) If “The Last Song” were not only the cap to this excellent album, but to an outstanding career, it would be a fitting testament. And as someone who once thought “I used to live in New York” constituted a personality, there is no biting line than “you wake up / you stand up / you move to LA / you’re just another person that moves to LA.”

3. Cola – Deep in View

There’s a pretty easy test for whether or not you’ll love Cola as much as I do: does the phrase “the slow Strokes” appeal to you? If so, this is your band. Formed out of the ashes of the occasionally great Ought, Cola take Ought’s nervous, angular guitar rock, give it a nice glass of white wine on a balmy day, and unwind that pent up energy into the best chilled out strummers this side of Julian Casablancas and Albert Hammond Jr. At one point I declared Deep in View to be the “album of the summer,” and now with a little perspective I stand by my own dashed off opinion. This is music for driving around with the windows down and nowhere in particular to go.

2. Jeff Parker – Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy / Forfolks

If Alex G had the best album of the year (spoiler alert!), no one had a better year than Jeff Parker. In addition to producing Anteloper’s Pink Dolphins as discussed above, he also put out two outstanding, and completely different, albums under his own name. While I enjoyed Suite for Max Brown, Forfolks is the record that really got me into Jeff Parker (not counting all his excellent records with Tortoise of course). Comprised almost entirely of looped acoustic guitars, it somehow sounds the most like Django Reinhardt of anything put out since the days of that unequaled gypsy. While Forfolks is excellent, and would have made this list somewhere in here, Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is Parker’s best achievement in a year filled with his excellent music. Comprised of recordings from a two year period (presumably on Monday nights) at the LA cocktail bar (to which I have never been, but now hold in almost religious esteem based on my time listening to this record), Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is one of the most hypnotic jazz albums I’ve ever heard. Fitting in perfectly with Nala Sinephro’s excellent album from last year, this is ambient jazz of an entirely different variety. The product of a quartet—Jay Bellerose on drums, Anna Butterss on bass, Josh Johnson on saxophone, and Parker of course on guitar—locked in to one another with laser-like focus, on these four recordings you can hear the air in the bar hum with the energy of their playing, and also the tinkling of the bar patrons’ glasses from time to time, which gives the album a lived in energy. These songs are somehow simultaneously taught and languid, electric and unplugged, looping and driving. Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy is the product of four players at the absolute heights of their powers, and probably the best “modern” (i.e. post 70s Miles) jazz record I’ve ever heard.

1. Alex G – God Save the Animals

Without having gone back through my records, I’m not sure a single artist has ever topped these lists more than once, but with God Save the Animals, Alex G has once again proven himself to be the best around (and lets be fair, if I was publishing these lists in the mid Aughts, I would have put every Sunset Rubdown release at number one). It isn’t that God Save the Animals is somehow different from, or better than, House of Sugar, but instead it feels like a continuation of the slight turn Alex G took on that exceptional record. While all his albums have trafficked in the same basic building blocks (pitch shifted vocals, acoustic guitars, little pieces of Elliott Smith without ever really sounding like Elliott Smith) on House of Sugar things got just a little bit weirder, and the results were absolutely stunning. With God Save the Animals, I continue to be stunned. While these songs seem fixated on God / the divine, Alex G never loses his connection to the here and now. Before the album even came out my friend John sent me a live version of “Miracles” and told me it brings him to tears, which is perfectly understandable. What is strange is that another song on the same album, “After All,” has the same effect on me. To my ear, it’s not only the most beautiful song on the record, but one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. In an album filled with God, blessings, and miracles, the truly divine thing is we continue to get more albums like this from Alex G.

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gay-jesus-probably · 4 months

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I like the general fandom trend to just take the plot of Hyrule Warriors as a loose guideline at best and just use the whole concept as a good excuse to get blorbos to interact across timelines, BUT I'm very disappointed that everyone is missing the comedic potential of a very specific squad of characters:

Young Link (aka Mask), who walks out of the nightmare of Majora's Mask and immediately gets portal kidnapped into a temporal war, takes one look at the whole mess and decides that you could not fucking pay him to admit to being the resident expert on Time Shenanigans. He introduces himself with the title of Hero of Termina, and definitely doesn't have any other ones, that would be crazy. Hero of Time? Never heard of him.

Tetra, who is a kickass pirate captain with zero patience for people trying to shove her into the Designated Princess role, and realizes immediately that Oh Fuck, this Hyrule has a lot of Ideas about how the Hero and the Princess are supposed to properly play their parts, the second they realize she's technically a Zelda they're gonna shove her in a goddamn dress and damsel her again, that's not happening. So she's definitely just a really cool pirate captain, nothing else going on here at all, definitely not the heir of the Hylian royal family in her time, that'd be crazy.

Ravio, who is literally just a palette swapped Link, meaning that the second his hood comes off, things are gonna get Awkward. There's no way in hell he's dealing with all that Hero baggage, that's Link work, so that giant bunny hood/mask is practically superglued to his head, and he's not taking it off for love or money.

Spirit Tracks Zelda, who is just in the Phantom Armour the whole time, and passing herself off as just a friendly ghost posessing a suit of armour to help the Hero of Spirits. Of course she isn't Princess Zelda, that's ridiculous, if she were a Zelda then people would start getting really weird about her technically being dead, and boy does that ever sound like a whole Thing she doesn't want to deal with, so she can't possibly be Zelda, she's just a nice ghost knight. Also, her teenage grandma is here, and that's kinda weird, so it's easier to just not admit to being royalty and avoid that awkward conversation.

Finally there's Sheik, who is not the Princess Zelda of the era straight up abandoning her war torn country for months at a time so she can risk her life in extreme cosplay for no clear reason, but is instead the actual Sheik from Ocarina of Time, who just beat Ganondorf like a month ago and is still trying to process what the fuck to do now. Also, he's been pretending to be a boy since he was ten, and is realizing there's a pretty good chance that he isn't pretending anymore, so that's a whole other can of worms. But for the last seven years of his life, being Princess Zelda meant certain death, so he's not really inclined to introduce himself like when in a new and stressful situation (not to mention he might actually just not be a girl named Zelda anymore), so he automatically introduces himself as just Sheik the spooky ninja man, and fuck he's in too deep to back out now, looks like he's committing to the bit. If you think you sense the Triforce of Wisdom on him, no you don't.

Cue shenanigans as the five of them attempt to hide that they're all actually kind of A Big Deal. The group motto is "Nobody says shit", which is usually delivered as a frantic hiss whenever someone slips up. Just the reunion between Sheik and Mask alone would be absolutely buckwild given how they parted, and how they're both frantically pretending to Not be involved with each other. For added hilarity and/or drama, Sheik gives his semi-bullshit cover story of having just been a friend of the Hero of Time, then runs into said Hero of Time and they both have to desperately pretend not to know each other, because if anyone picks up on the mountain of baggage between them then Mask is busted, and he won't hesitate to drag Sheik down with him out of sheer spite. Not to mention the weird balance of Sheik being used to this Link being a teenager that's actually a small child, and now has to adjust to Link who is a small child that's actually a teenager.

Also, i really feel like we're all missing out on the comedy potential of Ganondorf recognizing Young Link on sight and the two of them immediately launching into a grudge match with some extremely personal and specific insults on both sides. Meanwhile literally everybody else is just standing there watching, trying to process the fact that out of every single person that's been pulled out of time, Ganondorf only has personal beef with a literal nine year old.

I just feel like we're all really sleeping on the potential for Shenanigans here. The whole thing is an absurd mess, why not have some fun with it?

#legend of zelda #hyrule warriors #for the record im picturing the sheik-mask reunion as being the spiderman pointing meme for like five minutes #also my mental image of sheik is extremely Bad haircut (he does it himself with a knife and doesnt care about making it even)#and a ridiculous tanline across his face from wearing a mask all day #OOT magiaclly growing out zelda's hair and manifesting a Royal Gown was some top tier bullshit and i'm always angry about it #like dude. literally all of princess zelda's finery was made for a ten year old #she's like eighteen now. nobody's making royal finery for teenage zelda. where was she supposed to get that dress.#i am eternally on my agenda to let zelda wear some goddamn pants without an immediate magic makeover to *fix* it #anyways nintendo's sexism aside i like sheik being trans its very fun and sexy of him #tfw you go into hiding to escape political assassination and accidentally trans your gender in the process

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