Hello everybody! It’s been a while. I say this at the start of every issue. Perhaps I will stop saying it when it stops being true, but that seems unrealistic.
Anyway! First things first: obligatory Maple image.
I had a lot of half-baked ideas about what to write about this time around, but there’s been so much going on in my life that none of them have really been able to get off the ground. Even this one, as I write it, is barely more than a vague concept living in my head, returned to when I need to zone out at work. Today, I’ll be talking about music, and about hope, and about the ever-present, crushing, draining battle that optimism and despair wage within me at any given moment.
In less purple terms: I will be discussing May music releases.
Listen, I’ve come to rock this boat
May music releases were well and truly insane. Even now, as I scroll back through my Spotify ‘What’s New’ tab, I feel a little winded. I don’t know why everybody decided this was the month to come after my throat, but I’m feeling very tenderized and unable to listen to my Spotify On Repeat anymore out of deep mortal fear for my perception of life.
We started the month off swinging: a new Arcade Fire album WE, and the holy resurrection of Voxtrot. I don’t know if my friend Micah reads these, but I just realized this is a very Micah-esque section. Love you, babe.
I cried the first time I listened to WE, and have only been able to revisit it in bits and pieces since then. A song played on shuffle, a lyric stuck in my head. Arcade Fire is one of those bands that is so storied, so defining, that it feels silly for little old me to be making any comments on them, but obviously I will anyway. I think that, as somebody who follows a lot of new, younger (in terms of industry experience) artists, Arcade Fire represent one of the best trajectories a band can have to me. WE doesn’t feel new in the grand, overarching sense; Arcade Fire are so settled into their identity and their creation that that steadiness comes through in everything they make. Being settled —— not complacent, or worn, or unchallenged, but settled into their own identity and presence —— is a state that a lot of musicians never quite achieve, and I can only hope to see some of my current rising favourites get there one day. I have a lot of vague thoughts about the way music exists under capitalism, most of which I’m too uneducated to coherently voice, but it is nice to think of people making music that they love in the ways they know best, simply because they love to. No need to reinvent the wheel, but we’ve come very far from circles and spokes carved out of wood.
On the complete other end of the spectrum regarding this topic, it is also delightful when artists well and truly surprise me, which is what Voxtrot did when they announced they were reuniting. Literally what the fuck! I had, privately and with dignity and with no crytyping on Twitter whatsoever, resolved myself to the knowledge that they were gone, and they were not coming back. One of my favourite bands ever and they disbanded before I even got into them. To hear, in 2022, that not only were they releasing new music, but also going on concert has changed me at the DNA level. Like, I now have to go to the “United States” to see them live. I don’t think that’s even a real place, and now I’m going to go there so I can fulfil the dreams of my sad, gay and repressed 16-year-old self? Who would’ve thought?! Look at us (me and Micah) —— who would’ve thought?!?!
Relistening to their discography, even though I pretty much know it like the back of my hand, was illuminating and lovely. It’s nice to hear some of these songs and not have a teenage crisis about them. Or have different, more adult crises.
I’m not my body, it’s mine
A bit later on, we come to Mallrat’s Butterfly Blue and Florence + the Machine’s Dance Fever. Honourable mentions go to Lydia Wears A Cross by Julia Jacklin, which is very good and very Julia, and Yo-yo by Mika, which simply slaps.
I will be discussing Dance Fever later, because that album is an integral part of my thesis statement for this newsletter, and also deserves a bit more fanfare than Butterfly Blue (sorry Mallrat!). Not to say that Butterfly Blue isn’t a good album; I am well and truly obsessed with it. In my opinion, Mallrat’s strengths have always been in very personal, intimate lyricwriting, and this album showcases it perfectly. Yes, the Azaelia Banks feature on ‘Surprise Me’ is maybe one of the worst things I’ve ever heard in my life, but the rest of the album is so lovely, so vulnerable and so charming that it makes up for it. My favourite non-single song is ‘Arm’s Length’, because it makes me deranged. I like how she’s trying a lot of different things on this album —— the edgier rock songs like ‘Rockstar’ and ‘Teeth’ are some of my favourites of all time from her —— but still retains so much of that classic Mallrat meandering, explorative vibe. If you can’t listen to a Mallrat album while walking around the Australian suburbs in the middle of the day feeling displaced from the world, it’s not a Mallrat album.
This hell is better with you
Time to speedrun through some of these May singles. We had ‘This Hell’ by Rina Sawayama, which fucking slaps, and also makes me feel very hopeful about RS2. It’s not that I didn’t like Sawayama, because I did, and the singles off of that album are some of the most iconic pop moments of the last decade, but I always enjoyed her sound on Rina more, and ‘This Hell’ reminds me of that charm and energy. My favourite Rina song is ‘10-20-40’, so any of her songs with a sizzling guitar solo bridge is an instant hit.
‘Haircut’ by Alex the Astronaut, also featuring ‘Octopus’, ‘Airport’ and ‘Growing Up’, is simply lovely. I cried the first time I listened to it, and cried a few subsequent times as well; at the risk of assigning political value to something that’s obviously very personal, I’m never not going to find it moving and significant when gay artists make music. Even more so when those artists discuss parts of the gay experience that don’t really get considered in mainstream: the inherent questions of gender that it brings, and the challenge of answering —— or not —— those.
Harry’s House was also released in May. It was… fine. If I want to listen to quirky indie girl music, I’ll listen to a quirky indie girl. But like. It’s nice enough.
It’s getting weirder & weirder out here, baby
Finally, we get to the main course of this newsletter. Yes, the past 1K or so words were simply the appetizers; it’s time for us to really get into the meat of it.
It’s not often that four of your all-time favourite artists release music in the same month. Rarer still is it for all of these releases to be career-defining, and frankly miraculous for two of those to be on the same day. The fact that in many ways, all of these releases speak to each other? Astronomically epic. Sorry for using the word epic in my newsletter in 2022. Sometimes it just applies.
The four releases I’m talking about here are Dance Fever by Florence + the Machine, Doomscroller by Metric, Weirder & Weirder by Ball Park Music, and Face The Sun by Seventeen. Disclaimer that Doomscroller isn’t actually a full album like the other three, but is a single consisting of 2 songs. Regardless, from these two songs I’m confident in saying that Metric’s upcoming album is going to be career-defining and will speak to the same themes that these other three speak to. Also, Doomscroller is a 10 minute epic —— maybe I’m not sorry —— of a song, so it seems as though it has earned the spot.
Starting over won’t be easy begins Metric on ‘All Comes Crashing’, the first single from their upcoming album. This line succintly encapsulates everything that the four great May releases are about: after almost three years of the world seemingly crashing and burning, of isolation and despair and anger and what-have-you, each of these artists have turned to the future and asked themselves, where to from here?
I’m under no illusions that the pandemic, or the awful state of the world in general, is any better than it was in the past few years, nor do I particularly think that these rich successful musicians have faced the consequences of said awful state of the world like we have (with the maybe exception of Ball Park Music, because being a successful Australian indie band is, to quote The Social Network (2010), like opening a chain of very successful yoghurt shops), but regardless, I’m inclined towards hope, and I enjoy it when other people are too. It’s very easy to be a pessimist, especially in this current day and age, but I don’t know if it’s all that productive. It is good to be realistic about things, lest we fall into naivete or ignorance, but in my opinion, every good thing, every positive change, every incremental bit of progress wrought in the world in my lifetime has come from a place of hope.
This is the core theme explored in all of these releases. ‘Doomscroller’ starts out as an angry, harsh condemnation of society and beautifully blossoms into a touching ode to forgiveness and hope; Weirder & Weirder dives into what I like to call the Grand Disillusionment of Australiana before rallying around simplicity and togetherness; Dance Fever speaks directly to the pandemic and sees Florence finding a reason to want to create again, and Face The Sun is about Seventeen’s reckoning with their own transient existence and uncertain future. All of them are abour uncertainty and rebirth and progress, and in a cultural climate that is otherwise so thoroughly depressing, it’s nice to have my hand held by these artists that I admire and told that it’s going to be okay. Heaven is here if you want it, Florence chants, and I listen and think, yes, I do want it. I do.
The personal is political and the political is personal; stories are about one person saying to another ‘This is the way it feels to me. Does it feel this way to you?’; music is first and foremost meant to be heard. Despite all of these albums obviously speaking to a larger, grander sense of hope, they’re also all intensely personal. Weirder & Weirder possibly most of all; this album dips so quickly out of barely-contained frustration to tenderly afraid confessions that it’s almost dizzying. Not a lot of bands would be able to pull off having the lovely, haunting ‘Caramel’ be followed by ‘A Field To Break Your Back In’ which is angry to the bone, but god, Ball Park Music can. The struggle between trying to hold onto the people you love as everything deteriorates —— wrap me in blankets, plan a surprise / tell me that I still have stars in my eyes & please just be with me / you know one day we will never meet again & nothing can change the things I feel for you —— and lashing out at a world that offers so little solace —— no one wants to say it / but there’s no way to get away from this & no one will ever love you & I’m afraid that there’ll be no change / that things will stay / exactly the same —— has always been at the heart of BPM’s music, and with this album, they map out the emotional rollercoaster that comes with being alive perfectly. Then, after all of that, after it’s all out in the open, they offer the conclusion: I’m a big boy now / I have the means to get free. They tell us that they were told, through writing on a bathroom stall, greatness is just goodness / over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and in doing so pass on a message that humanity has been saying for as long as evil and pain has existed. Baby steps, everyone. The power of the people and etcetera.
Whoops. I totally forgot this was supposed to be comparative and let Ball Park Music completely take over. I should probably redo that section, but it also slaps extremely so I think I’ll just leave it in. This is an Australian indie music review blog now. Anyway, all of the other albums are intensely personal as well: on Face The Sun, Seventeen detail a gorgeous battle with their inner shadow on the song ‘Shadow’.
(I know that they’re a silly k-pop group, but I do think they deserve a place among the rest of these artists for being so consistently genuine and vulnerable; they always have been, even from debut —— listen to ‘Still Lonely’ and ‘Trauma’ and ‘Can’t See The End’.)
They sing to their other, darker self in this song —— the manifestation of all of their fears and negativities —— and while they start out rejecting this shadow, they soon realize that it’s better to accept and embrace it. Because even my darkness will shine brightly / baby I'm a shadow of you and in the middle of the vast earth / our relationship is unique / let's run together, everywhere are my favourite lines from the song, because of how beautifully they spell out the self-acceptance that Seventeen have found. Like, god, baby I’m a shadow of you is the most insane thing to say when you’re addressing the darkest parts of yourself. The idea of being components of each other, of being complementary; it’s such a beautiful sentiment that when I think about it for too long I have to lie down. Oh, god, my little k-pop boys. I love them so badly.
Metric, too, with ‘Doomscroller’ and ‘All Comes Crashing’, find personal solace and resolution. ‘All Comes Crashing’ is maybe one of the most romantic songs ever, and even though it seems to be addressed to a romantic lover, the way the overall theme applies to humanity in general is clear. When push it comes to shove we do not fall out of love / we double down, we do not fade. What a crazy line. Like, yes. It is about love. Sometimes thinking this makes me feel like I’m irrecoverably pretentious and naive, but I do think the bravest thing in the world is to love fully and clear-eyed. Gang Of Youths said you wanted to fight for a cause / then go out and fall in love in 2017 and it’s never quite left me since; it is the majority of my moral philosophy, and the driver of all of the hope I have. The way all of these releases, and especially ‘All Comes Crashing’, supports this idea means more to me than I can say.
These releases also focus a lot on each artists’ struggle with creating, which is also something that really touches me. In a world that’s so cruel and brutal, sometimes I find myself wondering what the fuck I’m doing, dreaming of making art. What the hell is the point in me writing my short stories, or making my silly little films; how does that possibly stand up against the tide of evil that relentlessly batters at our shores? I heard they cut off your writing hand / that’s what they do, to people like you and we argue in the kitchen about whether to have children. To hear that people who are infinitely more successful, more eloquent, and in many ways more creative than me (although that’s probably just my impostor syndrome speaking) struggle with this idea as well has made me feel less alone, more situated and connected in a world that would really rather if I wasn’t so.
And that, in the end, is the crux of creation. I think making art, in whatever form, is important for self-expression, and important for recordkeeping, and important for the mere fact that without it we’d all probably go crazy. It’s also important, maybe most of all, because of how it fosters connection. Community. Understanding. My favourite ever quote, from Kazuo Ishiguro:
But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you?
This has honestly formed the core of my beliefs, shaping how I approach art, how I approach other people, and how I approach life in general. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it feel this way to you? There is no art without audience, so Metric and Florence + The Machine and Seventeen and Ball Park Music pour out their hearts, their fears and their struggles and their hopes, into their music, and somewhere in the world some guy listens in his bedroom and thinks —— yeah. Yeah. I do understand what you’re saying. It does feel that way to me. Regardless of the differences, the considerable distance between me and any one of these artists, and also between any one of these artists and each other, it does feel that way to all of us.
The last song of each release firmly consolidates what I’ve been struggling this entire newsletter to say. From Dance Fever is ‘Morning Elvis’, where Florence details her struggles with the stage and creativity, and finally ends on: oh, you know I'm still afraid / I'm still crazy and I'm still scared / but if I make it to the stage / I'll show you what it means / to be spared. Seventeen closes with ‘Ash’, containing one of the best k-pop rap verses of all time: set me free, yeah, I'll fly / to the sun, to the moon / another world, blaze up anew. Doomscroller is a single with two songs, but ‘All Comes Crashing’ still speaks to this very theme: starting over when the story’s got an astounding twist / you better turn that page.
And finally, Ball Park Music with ‘Three Little Words’, the titular song for this newsletter.
Life can be so beautiful sometimes
And I can turn you on when I'm decisive
When I fight for this
The choice is mine, it's mine
It's just three little words
Of course, it’s pretty clear what the three little words they’re referring to are, but they’ve left it unsaid for a reason. Something we all know, knowledge that connects all of us; yet, there’s room there for imagination, for your own perspective. It’s I love you, but maybe it’s also we stand together and power for people and solidarity is everything. Maybe it’s have you eaten? Maybe it’s sleep well, dear. Maybe it’s anything we say, any time we extend love and kindness and connection to each other.
I found this image from a Tumblr post yesterday. There’s nothing more beautiful to me than knowing that we are all thinking the same things, saying the same things, creating the same things. All of us, looking forward to the future, trying to make it a good, sexy one.
Me reading over 1k of jordans analysis to songs ive never heard in my life: my god ur so right about all this
I think u can srsly fr make a song review blog you really put them into words so well and so heartfelt like yeah this is what the fuck its all about. “but I do think the bravest thing in the world is to love fully and clear-eyed.”-> yes. N jordan u r so brave n ur future is gonna be the best n the sexiest one
screaming crying you are so epic