you're not human tonight

∀-POP // ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

1. The Idol Formerly Known as LADYBABY - LADY BABY BLUE 2. Kitty - 2 Minutes 3. Sun-El Musician - Akanamali 4. Sufjan Stevens - Tonya Harding 5. Yeule - I Saw You in My Dreams Last Night 6. Charli XCX - Unlock It 7. Koutei Camera Gal - Straight Gal Story

stream: https://www.mixcloud.com/sheartd/-pop/

In many ways Kitty's Miami Garden Club feels like an album nobody really deserved or even dared hope for -a Soundcloud digest-like crossover of Ryan Hemsworth, Unicorn Kid and Maltine singles with the most relatable lyrics this side of pre-global-stardom Lorde. It's an impressive record- strong enough to both fulfill fans' expectations and shame the most disingenuine trolls into dejected silence- and the fact that it is being slept-on is super disheartening considering, you know, 2017. 

"2 Minutes" is a hell of a bubbly earworm. It encapsulates the thrill of shedding doubts and expectations and surrendering to one's instincts and finally feeling right about something. It's a spellbinding pop song (I wish that bridge could last forever), a snapshot of the rewards held by survival and the acknowledgement of one's self-worth.

BOYS // a mixtape for early falls

1. Alvvays - Saved by a Waif 2. Kitty - Running Away 3. Cornelius - あなたがいるなら (If You’re Here) 4. Astrid S - Such a Boy 5. Japanese Breakfast - Boyish 6. Midwife - Song for an Unborn Sun 7. Nine Inch Nails - Less Than

stream: https://www.mixcloud.com/sheartd/boys/ dl: https://mega.nz/#!NxETlRTa!ajxWGT9eficr8zIaJ6WpIZ6JQAQJHF9KJORZpqefybA

SWEETWAVE // a mix for sweating

1. Hater - Stay Gold 2. HEALTH - Euphoria 3. Koutei Camera Gal - Gal Dream 4. Rozwell Kid - Futon 5. IU - Palette 6. Lorde - Hard Feelings 7. DJDS - Trees on Fire 8. Cornelius - Dear Future Person

REALGAR // A poison-red early summer mixtape

1. Palm - Walkie Talkie 2. Lorde - The Louvre 3. Phoenix - Fior di Latte 4. Koutei Camera Gal - Go! Gal 5. Recycle Culture - RELAX IV 6. Grouper - Headache 7. Alvvays - In Undertow 8. Yumi Arai - Hitomi o Tojite

stream: https://www.mixcloud.com/sheartd/realgar/ dl: https://mega.nz/#!B1s2BRJZ!yfgKPokQONO3MRaHqlE0vEl6yAgrgLMT1jPo6EKWK-0

Escapism has always been the main attraction music held for me, whether it was American -Britain has never felt far enough- or -when my English became good enough for me to realize that the actual lyrics were not as good as the ones I thought I heard- Japanese. 

And Phoenix could hardly provide that -there was something inherently ridiculous about escaping from a southern French suburb to -of all places- Versailles.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix changed that, because it is the record with which Phoenix became global, not just in terms of success, but of a musical identity which was no longer built around their nationality. In other words, WAP was a success because they didn’t feel so painfully French anymore. But more than that, the record’s fantastic melodies, Marrs’ oddly sincere lyrics and the refreshing absence of pose made their music -gasp!- relatable. I fought my gut feeling tooth and nails but there was no way around it --it is a genuinely, unquestionably great record, which is a possible understatement considering my history with the band. 

One of Lorde’s strengths as a songwriter is pointing at un-turned stones and leaving the turning to the reader. For example, when she first sings “it drives you crazy getting old”, she appears to be talking about her parents (”my mom and dad let me stay home / it drives you crazy getting old”) -but a lightly altered line later on makes it clear that it also (or actually?) refers to her (”I’ve never felt more alone / It feels so scary getting old”). Smug teenage condescension morphs into troubling identification, a condensed Holden Caulfield-esque coming-of-age realization: old people suc--wait, I’m growing old!

She merges precise details (”the drink you spilt all over me / Lover’s Spit left on repeat”) with more general comments (see above), which makes for great impressionistic portraying. These details become much more personal as the song progresses, and her tale of teenage nostalgia for times that are fading away but which are yet to disappear completely feels remarkably relatable, notably thanks to the use of intertext and mise en abyme. 

The forequoted second line (”Lover’s Spit left on repeat”) refers to a Broken Social Scene song about physical pleasure as an escape from adult life.

All these people drinking lover's spit They sit around and clean their face with it And they listen to teeth to learn how to quit Tied to a night they never met You know it's time that we grow old and do some shit I like it all that way I like it all that way All these people drinking lover's spit Swallowing words while giving head They listen to teeth to learn how to quit Take some hands and get used to it

All those people drinking lover's spit They sit around and clean their face with it You know it's time that we grow old and do some shit I like it all that way I like it all that way I like it all that way

The quoted title hints at physical intimacy in a much bolder way than the rest of the song does -it acts as a kind of window through which the teenage narrator can peep at young adult life, which appears to revolve around mindless sex and clashes with Lorde’s lyrics (”you’re the only friend I need / sharing beds like little kids”). 

Ribs is built on that innocent childhood / exciting & scary adulthood dichotomy -an ambivalence made clear by the way Lorde sings verses twice -once slowly, another time urgently, reflecting the conflicted turmoils of teen age. 

Interestingly enough, Lover’s Spit also expresses the very same thing Ribs does -the fear of growing up, of growing old, the inescapable necessity of it and the impossible emergency of making the most of one’s youth, but from a twenty-something’s perspective in place of a sixteen year old’s, and the way she quotes it to express her own growing-up woes makes what could have been awkward or, at best, cute, somewhat universal : because it never ends, growing old is endlessly frightening.

For the narrator, sex is both scary and exciting but in the BSS song, rather than reflecting one’s maturation, it merely appears to add to the characters’ standstill. Neither the young adults in the song nor those in her home make it easy for the narrator to feel comfortable with growing up/old -not that anyone really could, as the closing lyrics state clearly (”we’ll laugh until our ribs get tough / but that will never be enough”).

Get Up is top-tier Xiu. 

Usually in say, love songs or songs about someone good, a typical technique is to have the narrator compliment that person of interest and then cast him/herself in a bad light to reinforce the other’s greatness in contrast to his/her assumed lameness (see Jens Lekman’s Shirin, Mark Kozelek’s Gustavo). Here, Stewart foregoes the first part entirely and the song is a ruthless exercise in self-deprecation aiming at showing how great of a friend the narrator’s friend is without once saying so. 

BUT! Where it gets super clever and my head slowly starts spinning is that the reason why this friend is great is because he/she cuts through the narrator’s self-deprecating bullshit.

In other words, Stewart uses self-deprecation to cast his subject matter in a good light, even though cutting through BS is exactly what that friend is good at and the reason why JS wrote that song in the first place.

Thus doing, he foregoes entirely attempting to appear remotely not pathetic just to show how great his friend is. Which is extremely pathetic and also incredibly touching: he does it not to make us feel pity for him, but to thank his friend by both acknowledging his own lameness and giving him/her another reason for being a good friend (=the song).

And yet (more spinning coming!) we do end up feeling kind of sorry for him, because that self-deprecating BS is sometimes actually very cleverly disguised and made fun of and thus paradoxically revealed to be justified. The succession of instruments falling on the narrator’s face, both small and huge, both  1. aims at portraying JS as an over dramatic pain in the ass and 2. intentionally fails at covering, because it points at, the actual real violence that led to the use of that cartoon violence in the first place. 

To say it differently, a line such as “a piano fell on my face”, before undermining the actual real violent experience the narrator went through, (because cartoon violence isn’t real and JS is still alive even after having allegedly received a piano on his face), affirms the truth of this violent experience by acknowledging its existence and then comparing it to how it would feel if one was hit with a piano on one’s face.

The reason why it works so well is because these cartoon violence lines exist within the same space as 100% painfully lame lines such as “Sometimes a person cannot help what they do” -followed by the good friend’s reaction (”You get up and leave the room”)- and because the whole affair is incredibly self-deprecating, it is easy to dismiss the potential reality of the violence felt here.

If you don’t care about lyrics and stuff, the music itself is fantastic, tropicalia goth but not jaded like all those terrible ironic B52s cover bands pouting in leather jackets, actually good and forward thinking, light elevator-music seguing into a guitar/drums explosion with tons of melodies which shouldn’t work together but do as Stewart concludes with a decidedly (unapologetic?) over-dramatic “you are the only reason I was born / you are the only reason I was born.”

Relating to songwriters used to happen through the act of listening, after hours of deciphering, reading out tiny lines on CD booklets and trying to connect the dots into fan-fiction narratives which often -surprise!- happened to mirror whatever I was going through. This song has me do the opposite, look for the shared narrative in the song, which may or may not be relevant but can’t be helped. 

It is haunting, the product of a spontaneous songwriting session between Kitty (formerly known as Pryde) and Rickyeatsacid’s Sam Ray which manages to be more than the Lana Del Rey mock up it initially appears to be (baritone voice -check, reverb-drenched guitar -check, L.A. as geographical core -check, disturbing gothic imagery -check).

Reasons why it shouldn’t work abound, reasons why it does are trickier to identify. Is it Kitty’s newfangled bone-chilling voice? The shriek-y, eerie backup lines which feel like they are twisted out of her throat? The lyrics? Feeling like you’re watching the narrator disintegrate and vanish along with her big Hollywood dreams? 

Or is it because I already know so much intimate information about Kitty? Is it because I can connect the song’s narrator to the singer’s deeply painful and blunt late-night tweets and tumblr posts about suicide attempts and self-hatred? To the life-draining online-harassing she bitterly jokes about? To happiness which feels too good to be true? 

NEO CALI // A fantasy noir mixtape.

1. Heaven - It's Not Enough 2. Xiu Xiu - Get Up 3. Fuji Chao - 少女 4. Kraus - Three 5. Selena Gomez - Bad Liar 6. Blanck Mass - Hive Mind 7. Syd - Know 8. Kitty + Sam Ray - Hollywood

stream: https://www.mixcloud.com/sheartd/neo-cali/ dl: https://mega.nz/#!1sMWWCKB!uMPhURMnatNOutIpTLkjzm8OC_oHfTmVIy_w5RZGUow

BIG CLEANING // A 2016 mixtape 

1. Infinity Shred - Choir VI 2. KRAUS - PITCH FUCKER 3. Shura - What Happened to Us 4. Frank Ocean - Solo (reprise) 5. Yohuna - The Moon Hangs in the Sky Like Nothing Hangs in the Sky 6. Pa's Lam System - Twiststep 7. Neon Bunny - All I Want Is You 8. Radiohead - Daydreaming