The Audio Glow

If the Moon went Skinnydipping at Night…

It would let out a long, relieved sound of ambient satisfaction that sounds like the musical atmosphere of Tash Sultana.

God, I was looking for a way to connect—thinking I need to write something—need to interact. Notice me, humanity. NOTICE ME. I roar this as I stumble around a candlelit flickering room, smashing bottles and howling at the walls like a tormented suburban Quasimodo.

Anyway, I was listening to the live version of “Coma” by Tash Sultana and recognized that everything she does is earth-shifting in a way where—she is basically an emotional potter. I’m driving in the car and halfway through the six-minute song, I go from a sense of sweet springtime electricity to sadness I have only experienced during alone dark moments in bright sunshine surrounded by crowds. By emotional potter I mean, I’m just a lump and she’s oscillating her voice in such a way that every note is a gentle touch, sculpting the listener until they don’t care what they’ve become in the moment—they just want to be a part of it.

The first time I heard “Notion” was one such occasion. The second through thirtieth times I heard “Notion” was the same.

A gentle swirl of resonance, her voice melting in with the chords and laying down under a current, then resurfacing as a shimmer that rides along the surface and dives back under when the breeze shifts.

And when I start writing something like this, I feel like it needs to say something, or I need to be funny. Or profound. But sometimes what’s happening is you simply want to express how something made you feel and there should be no expectation of what anybody else thinks of your decision to express it.

I’d love to rip off some long creative hyperdramas like I was doing in spring of 2020, but the current conflict is that—my gaps of time are so constricted, and I fight against them and pummel them with fists and scream to let me out and be creative every day.

For now, I’ll enjoy the subtle moments where in the isolation, I can feel connected to the reverb, the emotion, the glowy melt of atmosphere that drifts with the chords. I’m grateful for this medium in which I can write and when I do my dopamine receptors sprout and look something like this:

And since I’m about atmosphere and hers is that clean and clear and immersive—here’s an entire Tash Sultana set.

Tell me with a straight face that her music doesn’t sound like how the moon feels.

She plays guitar, horn—whatever that sound box thing is that makes ambiance reverberate like your soul got shook the same way you hear a song blasting emphatically from someone’s car speakers on a summer afternoon.

If you’re local to my neighborhood, she plays the Filmore in Philadelphia on June 24th. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

I sat on the couch at 5:52 p.m. with a cup of hot tea held in both hands like a small child with a sip cup. Lord Huron Spotify Radio softly floated through the room, imploring me with its tentacles of sound to prance off into a midnight glen and play banjo in a top hat. I said, “No, Lord Huron Spotify! Tonight we’re covering the yet unreleased single ‘Life After Death’ by Prison Escapee! Be gone with your indie meet-cute music for two lonely people who bump into each other while apple-picking, spilling their bushels and clumsily mixing up their apples.”

Distressed that a haze of Lord Huron residue was clinging to me and attempting to lure me into a pumpkin patch of folk whimsy, I focused on the task at hand.

Erik David Hilde is Prison Escapee, a musician residing in Los Angeles with a heart that resides in his songs. I reviewed Prison Escapee’s album released early in the pandemic, aptly named 20/20, and could feel the melancholy of it, the musical representation of unprocessed grief and searching for the ability to feel again. There was also the striking resemblance of Erik’s voice to Matt Berninger of The National. His music is a cinematic blend that makes you want to night-drive through the city and reflect on loneliness.

“Life After Death” will be released on January 29th and I’m giving you a sneak preview of my esteemed thoughts on his new single. I haven’t listened to it yet – that’s about to happen now. All I know is from the single cover art (shown above), which leads me to believe the song is either an interpretation of the afterlife or possibly just a paparazzi snapshot of Greek party angels dropping acid on top of cotton candy clouds. It’s probably the first one. Let’s find out!

This is a real-time review of “Life After Death” by Prison Escapee.

Headphones in and volume UP.

I recognize the intro as kind of a signature of Prison Escapee songs throughout the last album. He’s notable for long, instrumental intros and the first 20 seconds of “Life After Death” are a shimmering organ reverb, like this is a funeral and we are now exploring his thoughts from the casket.

I do not have the lyrics in front of me for this four-minute journey, but the opening line is “Life after death/It’s real”. Hilde’s songs often intertwine a sense of heavy sadness with a firm foundation of faith, and I see a battle that goes on in many of the lyrics from 20/20, a struggle of, “well, I have a devastating existential loneliness, but my faith in God affirms my hope that after death there’s something better than what I’m feeling in this moment.”

Right around the 1:50 mark, there’s an unexpected upbeat tonal shift, like the sadness dissipated and suddenly an electro winter wonderland opens. It reminds me of the keyboard in “Be Still My Heart” by The Postal Service. There’s that extended instrumental signature again, as the interlude carries on for an extended moment, coating the song in a soft covering of electronic flurries.

His singing voice throughout this song is almost crying out, and he re-asserts the importance of having his soul at peace before death:

“I don’t wanna die from a heart attack I don’t wanna die like my grandfather did I don’t wanna die in the hospital I don’t wanna die with my sins unforgiven”.

So, this reaffirms that two-sided struggle that saturates his lyrical themes. There’s the internal battle between defying your own mortality and learning to feel again versus proclaiming that

no matter what happens, it’s okay, because there will always be life after death.

See what I did there? That was “Life After Death” by Prison Escapee. Listen to it tomorrow on all the streaming platforms and follow The Audio Glow for more musical commentary that makes you question your entire existence.  

My first admission in this post is that I cheated. Well, a little bit. I’ll usually dive right into an album or song and review it with no pretense of research (like Mordechai by Khruangbin), with the perspective that I want to experience the music without having any expectations. Callum Sheehan messaged me and said his music sounds in the vein of FKA Twigs, Bladee, Osquinn, and Frank Ocean. I thought, cool – my knowledge of those artists, despite their popularity, is at about a 1.7 out of 75 on the Richter Scale of music familiarity. So, I did my journalistic due diligence and gave myself a trap/R&B/underground rap upload, like Neo getting a Matrix plug in the back of the neck.

Okay, enough exposition.

Callum Sheehan is an upcoming artist from Ontario, Canada. His new single, “chimera”, will be released on streaming platforms on January 7th and features Aftertaste with Julian Sword. This is a real-time reaction review of “chimera”.

Sound good? Headphones in and volume UP.

Distorted, syrupy vocal effects over a melodic beat that almost feels reflective, like I should be walking down the train tracks in summer at dusk with a heavy heart full of lost love. Is that overdramatic? Nope, not when the vocals kick in and he is explicitly singing about a hurtful love. The intro clicks for me now, the swirling, soft tinges of pensive ambience that preclude the beat.

“But what does it make you feel?!”

These are the words you scream at me from across the internet, as you shatter a drinking glass against the wall for dramatic effect and remind me that you can’t listen to the song until its release in 24 hours.

Sadness. Longing. Young love. Reflective young love. The rest of the song goes a completely different direction, but the first 45 seconds of “Chimera” carry the same sense of “get lost in the moment” nostalgia that you can find in the first minute and 15 seconds of “BDE Bonus” by Mac Miller.

“I can’t let go of our memories/Watch water flow so far away from me”, he sings. It’s notable that I could feel the sense of nostalgia in the instrumental opening and then his vocals confirm it in the second verse. The featured voice that raps near the end of the song (I’m not sure if this is Aftertaste or Julian Sword) builds an extra layer of electronic sheen as the song nears a close. It gives the production a feel of soft decadence, a low-key lushness, like I can see someone sitting in a 15th story window and expressing their memories to the glow of the city streets below, watching tiny amber lights drift through the night while speaking to the city.

I liked it, and now I must dunk my head in a bucket of emotional electronic music the rest of the day to carry on the mood.

“chimera” by Callum Sheehan featuring Aftertaste and Julian Sword releases January 7th. Check it out on Spotify or Apple Music, especially if you have a 15th story loft overlooking a city skyline.

Other Songs by Callum Sheehan to get you bothered:

Star

Artist Links:

Callum Sheehan Bandcamp Callum Sheehan Instagram Aftertaste Instagram Julian Sword Instagram

What stalls me out as a professional writer isn’t rampant house parties in The Hills where I show up in a silk tiger print gown and dine on fine coke and grilled shrimp. I’m not too busy hang gliding off St. Bart and I don’t find myself drinking rum and orange juice at 11 a.m. searching for inspiration (usually). My tango is with the low-level distortion of depression, a grey overcast fuzz that camps and clouds focus and doesn’t have the manners to leave and drift out to sea and dump its contents in the ocean.

This is an EP review for “Youthful Exuberance” by Dylan Pachecho, but because I can graffiti my Squarespace site with complete freedom, it’s also a ventilation system for my brain dampened in a smothering, suffocating humid storm drizzle draining my drive – alright, too much alliteration.

This is a mental health public service announcement:

An important aspect of being self-aware and depressed at the same time is that you can choose to try. What that means is every day for the past week I’ve sat in front of a blank Word document and written about 800 words total of gibberish. In between, I get up and do dishes. I do wash. I go for a run in the woods. I read a book. I play Parcheesi against myself on the couch. Anything to feel like movement in a positive direction.    

When you feel like you can’t move and bed is the place where you lay down to drown, I encourage you to maintain hope and keep trying. And when you feel like you’re stuck and treading water for months and exhaustion follows you and you see no end, don’t hate yourself, and keep living. You will endure. I write this for myself as much as I write it for you. It doesn’t mean you’ll be yourself in a minute. It means you’re willing to call or text someone and talk about it. It means you go outside and do something, even a low-key activity like dramatically staring off vacant-like into a misty sunrise as “Mad World” by Gary Jules plays on a loudspeaker in the front yard. It doesn’t matter what – it matters that you remember that you’re worthy of life and love and all the drama that comes with it.  

Your brain, cycling negative energy on a closed loop, is going to tell you you’re in this fight alone. You are not.

Appreciate yourself. Reach out. You will endure.

Moving on - right now I sit cradling the new EP from Dylan Pachecho, the coveted record I anxiously waited for in the record store parking lot, as I violently banged on the store window at 5 a.m., foaming at the mouth and yelling “Open up in there – I’m a’fiendin’ for new music and If you don’t unlock this door, then I’ll bite your mother and fight your children!”

Wouldn’t that be exciting?

Unfortunately, all I’ve got at this stage is the artificial screen sensation of holding a phone with Soundcloud in my hand, but Dylan Pachecho is still a gorgeous name for an artist and he’s a DIY songwriter from Austin, Texas who creates “weirdo bedroom pop”. His debut EP is called “Youthful Exuberance” and will be released October 30th. He recently released the second single, a song called “Boy Meets Void”. Since I like to gorge on music the way a lion pack gorges on a cute baby giraffe, I’m gonna go ahead and give an advanced review on the whole EP instead of just the single.

Sound good?

This is a real-time reaction review on “Youthful Exuberance” by Dylan Pachecho. Pachecho says in an interview with VENTS Magazine that the first song “Negative Space” is about “acknowledging your own mental health”. I believe I just did that two paragraphs ago – now it’s Dylan’s turn.  

Song One – Negative Space (Manic Panic)

I’m just gonna pause this seventeen seconds in already to say the synth/keyboard/keytar? riff sounds like a mix between The Flaming Lips and the song “Be Still My Heart” by The Postal Service. I’m not complaining. I dig. Let’s carry on.

I am on a road journey East to West on the I-10 watching the sun rise and fall and the silhouetted plateaus of New Mexico pass by as I free myself from a toxic relationship. No, I’m walking through an urban park, attempting to cure apathy with each step through a mound of fall leaves. I’m – can’t I just enjoy the song, brain?

I appreciate the indie electronica blend. I’m not feeling a Matt & Kim level of electronic happiness, since there lies a slight undertone of introspective self-reflection, but it has a buzzing energy and piano/horn breakdowns turn me on.    

Song Two – Boy Meets Void

Okay, it’s lazy writing for me to simply compare a song to other bands, but the influences are so specific that it becomes relevant. The sound almost directly encapsulates indie in the year 2007. It’s like Death Cab for Cutie met The Decemberists at a coffee shop and Kurt Vile showed up and sat across the room and occasionally floated single chords across the room on paper airplanes.

I say it sounds like mid-2000s indie for a couple reasons:

1. Dylan Pachecho’s voice sits in that lilting, slightly nasal but endearing range.

2. The whimsy. That’s the word I was looking for. The sound is filled with a kind of nonchalant, floating quality and tinges of electronic keyboard interject themselves throughout, like the song is looking at you through the radio and gently prods you, saying “Hey now, let me make you feel better for two and a half minutes and forget that other crap”.  

3. How do I say this…Pachecho’s has an accessible pop sound without being gimmicky. In the mid-2000s, Alternative radio is playing M83, Modest Mouse, Empire of the Sun. Now, “alternative” is like, AJR playing a kazoo, Imagine Dragons chanting arena choruses, the dude from Mumford & Sons singing with David Guetta. It’s music that sounds manufactured in a laboratory at Nickelodeon studios. Dylan Pachecho is music that can sound big without being false.

Song Three – Weak Ankle

The longest song on the EP at just under four minutes. Less chipper on the surface, a more profound sense of loneliness leaks through here and isn’t disguised by the steady beat and expressive cadence in his voice. Reflective, and for sure my favorite guitar riff of the EP.

Song Four – Parvo

I am really attracted to the calm strumming that grounds three of the four songs. There’s a definite Ben Gibbard influence in there, and that’s not a bad thing.

Nice! A guitar solo. It’s noteworthy to remember that Pachecho is a true DIY artist, so he likely edits his own music. The solos and transitions are mixed seamlessly and he doesn’t bludgeon you with too much of one thing. A little keyboard interlude here. A fuzzy warm 8-second guitar solo there. The EP is built with a light touch.

Song Five – Unkind

I know this is Dylan Pachecho’s music, not Lumberjack Twain Audio Glow’s music, but I’d love to hear more of the echoing female background vocals. I’m a sucker for haunting, nostalgic reverberating female choral vocals. Nothing like the swirling harmony of background melancholy to fade your thoughts back into the most bittersweet moments of your life.

That’s it. “Youthful Exuberance” by Dylan Pachecho out of Austin, Texas. The EP drops October 30th. “Youthful Exuberance” makes me want to remake indie-tinged movies and switch out the songs to see how it affects the moment. That scene in “500 Days of Summer” where Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel flirt over The Smiths – let’s try it with “Negative Space” by Dylan Pachecho.

I don’t consider myself a music critic – I just want to write about good music that makes you feel (see the Lil Dicky write-up or Julien Baker’s “Rejoice”). “Weak Ankle” by Dylan Pachecho makes me want to go back in time to relive all the greatest hits of heartbreak, and for someone else, the same song might sound like a catchy indie-pop driving song.

He’s put Introspection, Loneliness, and Floating Carefree Folk-Electronic Escape in a room and created a space for all these elements of the sonic and emotional spectrum to work together.

Thank you in advance to Dylan Pachecho for sharing his EP write-up with my mental health proclamations.

Take care of yourself. Reach out.

Go listen to “Youthful Exuberance.

The last album review I put out was for Taylor Swift’s “Folklore”, a perfectly produced piece of pseudo-indie faux-rustic pop. Yeah, I wrote it for the internet views – get off my back! Today’s commentary is on a true indie band, a band with a punk rock name and aesthetic that makes me want to melt down candy corn and aggressively gel it onto the plumbing under my sink. We’re talking “Dirty Grind”, the new single by The Scummies.  

Some background, The Scummies is a bass and drum art-punk duo out of the Chicago area fronted by Alex and Rowland Smelly and are currently working on their first EP. Rowland singlehandedly produces the Weird Smells Zine, a DIY production that writes on the indie/punk music scene. Its last issue interviewed artists like Cheekface and Ariel Pink.  “Dirty Grind” is The Scummies first single.

I haven’t yet listened to the song – this is a real-time reaction commentary, similar to The Audio Glow’s album reviews. So, let’s get into it and see what areas of the emotional spectrum are provoked in the next two and a half minutes.

“Dirty Grind” by The Scummies.

The upbeat bassline kind of makes me want to stroll around town in the sarcastic montage of a nihilistic comedy show with the offbeat oddball protagonist. Does that show exist?  

The first impression I get from the vocals is an echo of David Byrne of Talking Heads. I appreciate the sing-song fluctuations of his voice over the spastic drums and bouncing bassline – gives the song kind of an “I don’t care because life is whimsical” vibe. Infectious is a solid word to describe the bass. It’s like a carefree beat on rollerblades with an ice cream cone. An orange sherbet ice cream cone.  

Lyrically, the song seems to be a critique of the standard of content produced in television and music right now:

“Now I hate to talk about what I’ve seen on tv it’s too easy to call it lazy”

And:

“Laugh because the friends I know have better taste than who I follow”

My immediate reaction is to compare Rowland Smelly’s musings about the quality of mainstream creative output to the struggles of a writer sending stories to esteemed journals. I’ve seen stories win first prize in major contests, and read it thinking “is this better than mine?” Then the winning story is about a guy birdwatching on the beach having a pretentiously cryptic conversation with his intern, and somehow that constitutes high art. The question The Scummies provokes from me, then, is what constitutes art quality and if art is subjective for everyone, who holds the power to decide what constitutes “good” art?

Go check out “Dirty Grind” by The Scummies, or do it up big and go rollerblading with an orange sherbet cone while listening to “Dirty Grind” by The Scummies.

Your neighbors might call you weird – I call it art in motion.

Artist Links:

The Scummies Instagram      The Scummies Bandcamp Weird Smells Zine Depop

Let me start this review of “Folklore” off with some T-Swift blasphemy. I’ve never listened to an entire Swift album. I don’t even know if I can name five songs. Let me see… Kodak Yellow, Old Town Road, Thank u Next, Without Me…This…this isn’t right. Moving on.

What I do know is the album is stacked, and it’s probably named “Folklore” to account for its depth of mythical Indie frontmen storytellers. Aaron Dessner of the National helped write and produce 11 tracks. Bon Iver was in the studio. Jack Antonoff is quoted as being around the “Folklore” production unofficially, so that means he probably just stopped in to blow in the microphones and whisper future Grammys into the mixing boards.

As a snob who was too cool for Harry Potter in 5th grade because everyone else was reading it (I was in the LOTR clique),

I understand why I never gave T-Swift a chance. It’s time.

This is a real-time reaction review to “Folklore” by up and coming lo-fi songwriter Taylor Swift. If shared experiences turn you on, use the Spotify link or listen with big headphones like you’re in Garden State.

Sound good?

Headphones in. Volume UP. Enjoy.

Track One – the 1

Is it making a statement if T-Swift curses 7 words in? I think so. Will this be a bad girl album? I don’t know. I’m more expectant of a “screw the haters – this is about me” vibe.

If I had to throw a wild guess in the production wishing well, I’d say Bon Iver helped produce this track and not, say, DJ Khaled.

Track Two – cardigan

It’s notable to see dialogue around this album and see people say “Oh, she sounded hipster during the RED era versus political in the ‘Lover’ era”. I wasn’t around in the sixties but is Taylor Swift on a Bob Dylan level of fame plateau at age 30?

If I had to call it, I’d say her next couple eras are probably a Great Gatsby-style theatrical Pop Queen hostess era, and then around age 38, she escapes to Sweden to dabble in minimalist piano.

Track Three – the last great American dynasty

As a professional editor, the casual lowercase song titles just make me feel like an old man yelling at the seagull shitting on his French fries. I get it, capitalization is hard. Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande made it cool to be grammatically illiterate and it stuck.

Anyway, the song’s unique in that its lyrics follow the actual story of an oil heiress. Swift now owns the decadent mansion of said oil heiress.

Swift wrote an album with an Indie nature aesthetic from a mansion in Los Angeles. Makes sense.

Track Four – exile featuring Bon Iver

Justin Vernon’s voice in the opening verse honestly sounds closer to Aaron Dessner of The National than his normal dramatically high vocal resonance. It’s heavy, weighted with the words. I was hoping this track would be heavily influenced by the Bon Iver sound, and now that I want to crawl into the shower and lay in the fetal position, I’m not disappointed.

Track Five – my tears ricochet

RiCochet TeaRs. A perfume by T-Swift.

Musically, they did beautiful work, setting layers of building strings, ebbing and flowing choral voices, and space to breathe. Her words end and the keyboard lingers before it fades. It’s not punctual because the thoughts she expresses are not a punctuation – they are a lingering reflection, and the keys follow her down that path.

Track Six – mirrorball

The purest “indie-folk” feel on the album thus far. Swift reflects on her relationship with the industry and the public, her confidence now against her confidence in the past, and…well maybe she just likes to wear shiny things.

Track Seven – seven 

This song belongs in a coming-of-age tale, a la “The Spectacular Now”. It’s beautiful – I mean that sincerely. It’s also the song the 17-year-old awkward-yet-heartthrobby guy plays on a midnight porch on guitar just before she tells him she has cancer.

Track Eight – august

I see what you did there, Taylor, August being the 8th month of the year. It speaks to Jack Antonoff’s skill as a producer when you can make a song sound Pop but it could also fit in on a coffeehouse singer/songwriter album from 1998.   

Track Nine – this is me trying

Aaron Dessner’s fingerprints are on this track. Prominent background strings with a little reverb attached to her voice. Basically a song by The National with T-Swift’s voice.

Track Ten – illicit affairs

She uses the phrase “dwindling, mercurial high” to describe what it’s like to carry on a secret romance. If we’re going by the folky theme of this album, that scandalous high takes place in a wooded glen in late October underneath a frayed rope tire swing.  

Track Eleven – invisible string

There’s a dramatic irony quality to a song about fate, and the fate discussed is one of the biggest stars in history meeting her boyfriend in a dive bar. What line did he open with?

“Hi Taylor, would you like a shot of Fireball?”

Track Twelve – mad woman

“mad woman” is heavy on the “screw the haters” vibe. And by “haters”, I mean her shit ex-labelmate, Scooter Braun. And she said the F-word for the first time! It’s like she’s human or something!

Track Thirteen – epiphany

Ummm, is this Frau Frau? Music supervisors, take note: this song is a slam dunk to feature on an “appreciate front line workers” commercial with a nurse sitting on a hospital bench alone, exhausted.

Track Fourteen – betty

Really nice use of harmonica throughout. Not overwhelming, but a firm presence. I fully expect Neil Young to make a guest appearance by the end of the song.

Track Fifteen – peace

An intimate aspect of being a Pop star, Swift laments how she can never really give a lover a peaceful life because of the public scrutiny. To be fair, most of her boyfriends are already familiar with public scrutiny, except, well, the dive bar guy.

Track Sixteen – hoax

It’s the type of debate Greek philosophers used to initiate, as they bathed nude and oiled in their eunuch saunas: Who talks toxic relationships best, Ellie Goulding or T-Swift?

***

I appreciated Folklore. Elite production. Lyrics worth analyzing. Three F-words! I hope T-Swift sits in this era for an album or two, instead of feeling like she needs to reinvent again in two years.

If we had another 16 tracks produced by The National, Bon Iver and Taylor Swift, would that be so bad?

***

Artist Links:

website for Taylor Swift The T-Swift Instagram

Songs by Taylor Swift to get you bothered:

It’s already been viewed 32 million times, but the “cardigan” video is a magical thing. It’s like if you dropped Enya in the Jumanji rainforest. Watch it here.

Deep down in my heart I could hear this sprite-infused channeled resonance of golden light, so angelic it sounded like it was dipped in mithril. Then I just realized it was Ellie Goulding, somewhere in my soul, telling me she came out with a new album last week called “Brightest Blue”.

I fell in love with Ellie Goulding’s music back around 2010 when she was adding tracks to the Kick-Ass movie soundtrack and getting sampled by Chiddy Bang. Ten years later I see “Brightest Blue” is out, and think she must be on about her 11th album and 15th Grammy. Nope, it’s her fourth, which makes it worthy of swift, harsh, unrelenting public criticism.

Okay, we’ll go a little easy.

Listen along on the Soundcloud above if you like. This is a real-time reaction review, no prior research.

Sound good?

Headphones in. Volume UP. Enjoy.

Track One – Start featuring serpentwithfeet

I’ve seen a serpent with feet, and it looks more like the girlfriend who sexes your best friend in a car than an Ellie Goulding song. Ugh, dad jokes, but it’s too late to delete it now. Honestly, I just finished the new Weeknd album (I was late to the Weeknd party). This is like a Weeknd beat tattooed with Ellie’s voice.

Track Two – Power

I love the lyrical dynamic – Ellie says it’s about being tired of the superficial nature of today’s relationships, but at the same time, you’re caught in a riptide of sexual attraction with that person and can’t pull away. Based on the heavy (even if a little cryptic) self-analysis of the first two tracks, I’m curious to see what kind of pain she’s ready to dump out over the next 17 songs. Yeah, pain is entertainment – we’re a cruel species.

Track Three – How Deep Is Too Deep

I think Ellie Goulding sings about being used by a man and wanting it to be more than sex better than any other synth-pop songstress. The production, the conviction. I dig it.

Track Four – Cyan

This is a short interlude, but I talked about Julianna Barwick’s “Inspirit” on Monday, and the first 15 seconds of “Cyan” have that vibe of ambient, rising emotion.

Track Five – Love I’m Given

It’s clear to me that Ellie isn’t going for a drastic change in sound on the album. She stays true to herself with loaded content about relationships and vocals that sound like they were born in the Ferngully rainforest… That’s a compliment!

Track Six – New Heights

Another song reflecting on the need for a man to validate you, but here she focuses on the joy that results in finding fulfilment from self-love.

Track Seven – Ode to Myself

Melancholy, a slow song, but a slow song that only lasts two minutes. The songs have an anecdotal feel to them, like a thought pops up and she turns it into a two-minute slow-pop self-history lesson.

Track Eight – Woman

A natural progression of the earlier reflections on her pride in self-love. It blooms here into a full confession of feelings on her place in the world as a woman and a woman artist.

Track Nine – Tides

I’m so distracted by a song that chants “Take those elbows off the table”. I’m sitting on the laptop, making sure my elbows aren’t on the desk. I don’t think anyone has ever described Ellie Goulding as a schoolmarm, so…we’ll leave it that way.

Track Ten – Wine Drunk

Just think of the level of artistic freedom you’ve reached when you can lay on a couch and get drunk and think “I wonder if thousands of people will want to repeatedly listen to me talk about this drunk couch moment”.

Track Eleven – Bleach

…is not what people should drink to cure Covid-19. Or maybe some should. Anyway, I know the sentiment, the wish to scrub an ex from memory. But do you really want to?

Sadness is a bathtub people love to fill with memory and sit in for an hour until the water gets cold.

Track Twelve – Flux

I fully regret saying I looked forward to what kind of pain Ellie had to share with us. Sonically, this is my favorite. Lyrically, I’m a person who frequently splashes around in the things that were, and the things that could have been. Here, Ellie holds your head under the water.

Track Thirteen – Brightest Blue

Ellie says this song is her version of a “happy, peaceful place”. That may be, but it’s near impossible for the listener to feel happy after the last track asked you to look back on all your love and wonder why it’s no longer there.

Track Fourteen – Overture

An instrumental – dramatic, cinematic, operatic. Did not know the Russian opera was featured on this album. Oh, it’s not? Okay, carry on.

Track Fifteen – Worry About Me featuring Blackbear

Finally, an upbeat song! Kind of? A further commentary on the concept of the independent woman, Pop radio might be saturated with “Worry About Me” by September.

Track Sixteen – Slow Grenade featuring Lauv

When you listen to an album as a whole, you have to step back and look at the flow. It sounds like she got tired of wallowing in broken relationships for 14 tracks, and woke up to make a marginally perkier song about…broken relationships.

Track Seventeen – Close To Me feat. Diplo and Swae Lee

I have no idea what to expect from a Diplo feature on Ellie Goulding’s soundtrack to melancholia. There’s optimism here! She and Swae Lee sing about their fresh loves AKA future break-up song material.

Track Eighteen – Hate Me feat. JuiceWRLD

Solid song and great collab. Between Ellie and JuiceWRLD, but just elicits a sadness towards JuiceWRLD. It makes sense why they’d be attracted to working together – she makes Emo Heartbreak Pop – he made Emo Heartbreak Rap.

Track Nineteen – Sixteen

Some of us reflect on age 16 fondly, like Ellie, on the innocence of youth. Some of us reflect on age 16 as a transient wolf boy with webbed feet in the Northern Territories, tossed out by an angry den mother. Hey, we all live the best we can.

***

Brightest Blue is sad reflection dressed in Pop clothing. If your search is for an artist with “realness”, listen to Ellie. Musically, “Power” and “Flux” have earned playlist spots. Lyrically, some songs felt too close, and

I wanted to put this album in a locked box and throw it off the Brooklyn Bridge.   

***

Artist Links:

Ellie Goulding website Ellie Goulding Insta

Songs by Ellie Goulding to get you bothered:

Your Song Human Keep On Dancin’

Deep down in my heart I could hear this sprite-infused channeled resonance of golden light, so angelic it sounded like it was dipped in mithril. Then I just realized it was Ellie Goulding, somewhere in my soul, telling me she came out with a new album last week called “Brightest Blue”.

I fell in love with Ellie Goulding’s music back around 2010 when she was adding tracks to the Kick-Ass movie soundtrack and getting sampled by Chiddy Bang. Ten years later I see “Brightest Blue” is out, and think she must be on about her 11th album and 15th Grammy. Nope, it’s her fourth, which makes it worthy of swift, harsh, unrelenting public criticism.

Okay, we’ll go a little easy.

Listen along on the Soundcloud above if you like. This is a real-time reaction review, no prior research.

Sound good?

Headphones in. Volume UP. Enjoy.

Track One – Start featuring serpentwithfeet

I’ve seen a serpent with feet, and it looks more like the girlfriend who sexes your best friend in a car than an Ellie Goulding song. Ugh, dad jokes, but it’s too late to delete it now. Honestly, I just finished the new Weeknd album (I was late to the Weeknd party). This is like a Weeknd beat tattooed with Ellie’s voice.

Track Two – Power

I love the lyrical dynamic – Ellie says it’s about being tired of the superficial nature of today’s relationships, but at the same time, you’re caught in a riptide of sexual attraction with that person and can’t pull away. Based on the heavy (even if a little cryptic) self-analysis of the first two tracks, I’m curious to see what kind of pain she’s ready to dump out over the next 17 songs. Yeah, pain is entertainment – we’re a cruel species.

Track Three – How Deep Is Too Deep

I think Ellie Goulding sings about being used by a man and wanting it to be more than sex better than any other synth-pop songstress. The production, the conviction. I dig it.

Track Four – Cyan

This is a short interlude, but I talked about Julianna Barwick’s “Inspirit” on Monday, and the first 15 seconds of “Cyan” have that vibe of ambient, rising emotion.

Track Five – Love I’m Given

It’s clear to me that Ellie isn’t going for a drastic change in sound on the album. She stays true to herself with loaded content about relationships and vocals that sound like they were born in the Ferngully rainforest… That’s a compliment!

Track Six – New Heights

Another song reflecting on the need for a man to validate you, but here she focuses on the joy that results in finding fulfilment from self-love.

Track Seven – Ode to Myself

Melancholy, a slow song, but a slow song that only lasts two minutes. The songs have an anecdotal feel to them, like a thought pops up and she turns it into a two-minute slow-pop self-history lesson.

Track Eight – Woman

A natural progression of the earlier reflections on her pride in self-love. It blooms here into a full confession of feelings on her place in the world as a woman and a woman artist.

Track Nine – Tides

I’m so distracted by a song that chants “Take those elbows off the table”. I’m sitting on the laptop, making sure my elbows aren’t on the desk. I don’t think anyone has ever described Ellie Goulding as a schoolmarm, so…we’ll leave it that way.

Track Ten – Wine Drunk

Just think of the level of artistic freedom you’ve reached when you can lay on a couch and get drunk and think “I wonder if thousands of people will want to repeatedly listen to me talk about this drunk couch moment”.

Track Eleven – Bleach

…is not what people should drink to cure Covid-19. Or maybe some should. Anyway, I know the sentiment, the wish to scrub an ex from memory. But do you really want to?

Sadness is a bathtub people love to fill with memory and sit in for an hour until the water gets cold.

Track Twelve – Flux

I fully regret saying I looked forward to what kind of pain Ellie had to share with us. Sonically, this is my favorite. Lyrically, I’m a person who frequently splashes around in the things that were, and the things that could have been. Here, Ellie holds your head under the water.

Track Thirteen – Brightest Blue

Ellie says this song is her version of a “happy, peaceful place”. That may be, but it’s near impossible for the listener to feel happy after the last track asked you to look back on all your love and wonder why it’s no longer there.

Track Fourteen – Overture

An instrumental – dramatic, cinematic, operatic. Did not know the Russian opera was featured on this album. Oh, it’s not? Okay, carry on.

Track Fifteen – Worry About Me featuring Blackbear

Finally, an upbeat song! Kind of? A further commentary on the concept of the independent woman, Pop radio might be saturated with “Worry About Me” by September.

Track Sixteen – Slow Grenade featuring Lauv

When you listen to an album as a whole, you have to step back and look at the flow. It sounds like she got tired of wallowing in broken relationships for 14 tracks, and woke up to make a marginally perkier song about…broken relationships.

Track Seventeen – Close To Me feat. Diplo and Swae Lee

I have no idea what to expect from a Diplo feature on Ellie Goulding’s soundtrack to melancholia. There’s optimism here! She and Swae Lee sing about their fresh loves AKA future break-up song material.

Track Eighteen – Hate Me feat. JuiceWRLD

Solid song and great collab. Between Ellie and JuiceWRLD, but just elicits a sadness towards JuiceWRLD. It makes sense why they’d be attracted to working together – she makes Emo Heartbreak Pop – he made Emo Heartbreak Rap.

Track Nineteen – Sixteen

Some of us reflect on age 16 fondly, like Ellie, on the innocence of youth. Some of us reflect on age 16 as a transient wolf boy with webbed feet in the Northern Territories, tossed out by an angry den mother. Hey, we all live the best we can.

***

Brightest Blue is sad reflection dressed in Pop clothing. If your search is for an artist with “realness”, listen to Ellie. Musically, “Power” and “Flux” have earned playlist spots. Lyrically, some songs felt too close, and

I wanted to put this album in a locked box and throw it off the Brooklyn Bridge.   

***

Artist Links:

Ellie Goulding website Ellie Goulding Insta

Songs by Ellie Goulding to get you bothered:

Your Song Human Keep On Dancin’

“Healing is a Miracle”, Julianna Barwick’s 4th album, came out last week. In a way, it scared me. I listen to a song and I want to immediately place it in an atmosphere. I want to plug it into a memory that doesn’t exist or a memory that’s too close. “Inspirit” puts you in one of the “too close” memories.

I’ve made it a mission to entertain on The Audio Glow, while intertwining little bits of my own journey to heal. I heard this album ten days ago when it came out, and said:

“NOPE”.

“Healing is a Miracle” is a calm ocean after a long storm. As soon as I heard “Inspirit”, I went back to 2012, and just sunk into it. Julianna Barwick has a very powerful talent to pull all the memory of a tragedy up by the roots and drop a pile of trauma sod in your lap. “Inspirit”, and the entire album, dip you back in this contemplative pain. It reminded me of all the times I listened to something with a similar evocation of feeling, because I felt numb and wanted to listen to anything that put me back in the moment.

It sounds like I’m saying she wants you to feel sad, and I think it’s exactly the opposite. To heal, you have to reflect on where you started, and that brings up a certain sadness, but I think what she does is allow herself to be open again, and it’s expressed in the song.

Open yourself to allow new growth.

These are the entire lyrics of “Inspirit”:

Open your heart/It’s in your head

I don’t know what Julianna Barwick has been through, but I respect it. I see “Healing is a Miracle” as this contemplative meditation, like with each ambient hum or heavy synth opening (like on the title track), she’s professing a melancholy acceptance, and there’s a self-awareness of the beauty in that process.

When I first heard “Inspirit”, I thought Sigur Ros had a musical love child with Enya, and this song was meant for a lone human standing on the cliffs of Wales with their eyes shut as waves crash below. Then you see the official video, and that’s exactly what she’s doing!

Maybe not Wales cliffs, but a surreal water source in an undisclosed elvish location on a mystical sea. Like, I expect to see Lord of the Rings Wood Elves sailing into the West to “Inspirit”. This song easily could have belonged in the “Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?” scene where the Siren women tempt the men. Really, any scene in the history of movie-films which has a heavy theme of redemption – “Inspirit” fits. Shawshank Redemption re-imagined? Yeah, you can put “Inspirit” in as Andy dufresne crawls out of the poop pipe. A perfectly acceptable soundtrack.

That wave of low synth at 1:40 is the moment that feels like your entire heart opens back up and floods. Julianna Barwick puts you in a calm, isolated pool under a rock overhang against the cliffs, out of reach of the tide and the current, where you lay half-in the water, only your face protrudes, and let all of the emotion absorb into you from the sea until you have emotional prune-fingers.  

After a time of terrible loss and grief, there comes the Numb. In the Numb, you find yourself searching out ways to feel something, even if that something is the heavy melancholy. Yeah, I know, “the Numb” sounds like a trope from Stranger Things. And while Stranger Things is fiction, “Inspirit” is not.

It reminds you how amazing it feels to be in a place where it’s okay to be okay again. Years of trying to overcome angst and grief can just release itself inside the four minutes of an ambient masterpiece which will surely be played at elvish weddings for millenia to come.

You spend years putting in the work to grow better and overcome, and it’s all necessary, but in a few minutes, the “Inspirit” hypnotic slow-lapping wave of sound takes you straight to an emotional tranquil.

It’s a clarity, ebbing in and out with the tide, and “Inspirit” lets you know healing really is a miracle.

***

Artist Links:

Julianna Barwick Bandcamp  Julianna Barwick Insta

Songs by Julianna Barwick to get you bothered:

Healing is a Miracle One Half This entire mesmerizing performance for KEXP

Reading Time: It’s a Breaking Bad article - do you care?

In a cage match, it’d be a brutal fight to pit the best TV villains against the best movie villains. It’s a truly inspiring question all pop culture nerds should consider daily before bed. Who wins the cage match and who gets blindsided in the back of the head with a folding chair?

See, for television I can run through a list with my eyes closed the way a little bratty kid recites the names of all the Power Rangers to his parents:

Boyd Crowder (Justified), the Billy Bob Thornton character in Fargo: Season One, The Yellow King in True Detective, Al Swearengen in Deadwood. You can just go in every direction. Newman in Seinfeld, if that’s your thing. Movies you’ve got The Eye in LOTR, the melty Terminator guy in Terminator, Heath Ledger’s Joker. The grasshoppers in A Bug’s Life.

So while some of you wander off to argue about this life-altering topic over an IPA and a vegan pizza, the rest of us will stay here and discuss just one villain:

Gus Fringe of Breaking Bad.

If you haven’t seen the show, I’ll begrudgingly say: SPOILER. Go watch all 60 episodes and come back and contribute to this scholarly discussion. For everyone else, the music to which Gus walks towards his death by wheelchair bomb is one of the greatest 2 and a half minute build-ups in television history.

That sacred music is “Goodbye” by Apparat featuring Soap&Skin.

I’ve played this song in every scenario, and it’s always incredible. Waiting in line at the grocery store and you just want to stare down the cashier as they bag your groceries: Goodbye by Apparat. A herd of wild stallions is stampeding through your neighborhood, neighing and trampling the neighbors with gleeful abandon? Goodbye by Apparat. Or maybe you’re just laying in bed and you want to stare into the ceiling and contemplate your mortality. Goodbye by Apparat works there, too.

Gus Fringe deserved a dramatic death. He was completely unique in his character development for his emotional pendulum, which swung from quiet professionalism to throat-cutting rage. A meticulous dresser. Chilean soup maker. A selective killer.

The “Last Walk” scene is the definition of expanding the moment. The song lays the foundation and Vince Gilligan does the rest, with the slow zoom-in on Gus’s face as he sits in the car, relishing the expulsion of the long-contained vengeance stored in his body’s pores and every vein and bone and nerve.

One derogatory comment: the henchman in the Gus car.

This has to be the most generic henchman of all time. This is a Sam’s Club Great Value Walmart henchman. You find these henchmen in little boxes at Costco in groups of 6, powdered or glazed. Zero props for original henchman.

This is poor people henchmen. You know the old classism example, white bread versus wheat bread? This is a white bread henchman. You cast this henchman using food stamps. Okay, enough henchmen insults.

I’d consider The Breaking Bad soundtrack elite throughout the series. Of course it was. The show was too complete to not be great in all facets. Their music supervisor was exquisite, like an aged cheese from caves in Spain, except, you know, a live human being.

In fact, let’s single him out, Mr. Thomas Golubic. He won the Guild of Music Supervisors award for both of the last two seasons of Breaking Bad, and was nominated for an Emmy for Season 3 of Better Call Saul. Well-deserved.

Pulling off the atmosphere of death is a feat. Lean one way and it’s heavy-handed and bordering on cheese (see sporadic moments through all seven seasons of Sons of Anarchy). Lean the other way and you miss out on the opportunity to land a devastating emotional blow to your living room couch crowd.

Goodbye by Apparat with Soap&Skin is gorgeous without the support of one of the best shows of all-time. It stands alone in any environment, at a funeral or as you enter the coffee shop in slow motion to break up with your significant other and leave them sobbing in the café. It all works.

Argue there’s better villains in television history – I’ll wait for your thesis. Try to assert there’s a better villain/soundtrack death scene combo in television history?

You’ll have to show me the science.  

***

Artist Links:

Apparat Bandcamp Apparat Insta

Soap&Skin Bandcamp Soap&Skin Insta

Shows with Great Soundtracks:

Better Call Saul Stranger Things Atlanta

Reading Time: One Freddie Mercury Piano Beer

Yeah, I know the Queen Live Aid show has been covered more than a discarded watermelon rind dropped into a dirt mount full of ants on cocaine. I know – but I dare you to complain about it. Can you name a six-song set with better lighting, song sequence, execution, Freddie Mercuryness, or dare I say…atmosphere?

I don’t care if it has 46 million views on Youtube – I treat it like an obscure gemstone found deep in the Amazon every time I put it on. I even put on a little Percival Fawcett 1920s explorer cap and British knee high beige socks from the 1880s and thrash about the room to “Radio Ga Ga” with an antique machete and…no, no, I don’t do any of that.

But it is must-see musical theatre for all (see how I spelled ‘theatre’ the fancy way). I haven’t yet figured out the coding to embed a Youtube video in the same window as you read (I’m a voice of my generation, not a hacker for Anonymous) So I’ll post the video up top, which you should watch, and thanks to a glorious user on Soundcloud, we’ll do a song-by-song remembrance of the mythical performance, in honor of the 35 year and two day anniversary.

Sound good?

Headphones in. Volume UP. Enjoy.

Song One – Bohemian Rhapsody

I actually feel both elated and spiteful of all the children who did not learn about Queen until the biopic, “Bohemian Rhapsody” came out. Elated because, discovering great music you haven’t heard is akin to riding a stampeding, trumpeting elephant for the first time – nothing beats it. That’s like, 32 percent of the reason I write this blog, to show the Gen Z crowd all the music they missed from 2007. Spiteful because, Freddie operated from titan heights, and the movie couldn’t reach up to his knees.

Rami Malek was adequate, sure. He tried – I get it. But Freddie Mercury was a sassy animal, a sarcastic, cigarette-ash-tapping, droll, flamboyant, wiry cord of sexual electricity and brooding magnetism at once. He overcame pronounced buckteeth to be possibly the greatest breather of vocalist dragon fire of all time. He was…you can watch for yourself in the video. Peak Freddie charisma.

Song Two – Radio Ga Ga

Look at that power stance. This is a textbook, educational video for 13-year-olds aspiring to be Rock Frontmen. Notice the posture, the facial expression, the confident determination.

Yes, that’s right, get your notebook out.

Watch the power strut with the mic – write down “using a prop”. You’ll need to practice at least 37 minutes a day by breaking your mom’s broom in half, down to Freddie microphone size. Then, what does he do? He waves at the crowd and holds tens of thousands of individuals in the palm of his hand. Should you jet off on a cross-country bus to a leather basement club in Greenwich Village to fully put yourself in Freddie’s shoes? Couldn’t hurt.

The lighting is at its best right here. Dusk is just settling over the stage. The lights are changing over, and the smooth delivery of “Radio Ga Ga” encapsulates the next three minutes in an amber bubble of memory sap, to be mined for a musical Jurassic Park 15 million years from now.

Interlude – Ay-oh!

Honestly, could you imagine if you went out in the wild and there was an animal that orchestrated that glorious array of notes like a barnyard noise?

You walk out to feed Clementine Donkey and instead of “hee-haw”, you just hear “Ay-oh” for 50 seconds. Go to feed the chickens – instead of clucks – it’s “Ay-oh”. Give the cows some hay food, their response is “Ay-oh”. You walk away from the barn and just hear the goat: “Hey hey hey hey, how ‘bout a song!”

Okay, I’m buying a farm now.

Song Three – Hammer To Fall

Again, see the masterful air guitar play of Mercury, as he nails every fake chord. See the real guitar play of Brian May, fluid and steady. See the beautiful camera work of the men dressed in all white, like a group of generic psych ward attendants who moonlight as Live Aid filmmakers in nurse costumes.

Song Four – Crazy Little Thing Called Love

The best line of this song is the first.

“This next song is dedicated to only beautiful people here tonight…that means all of you.”

Freddie goes for what we Frontmen scholars call the “soft power stance” in this one. Left leg direct, right leg keeps the beat. Microphone positioned just off-center for a relaxed yet authority-driven performance posture.

Song Five – We Will Rock You

Another soft layer of dusk has gently laid itself upon the arena. Today, Queen would have let A24 or some other prestigious indie production studio walk in and film the show documentary-style, and they would then walk out with an Oscar for the newly created category of “Best Live Show Cinematography”.

Song Six – We Are The Champions

I want to know what Pepsi’s sales looked like after this performance, with all those quaint 1985 Pepsi cups littering Freddie Mercury’s piano.

At this point the crowd just looks like a wave in unison, 100,000 people in Queen hypnosis. Or maybe they’re just in normal tired festival mode – they’re super dirty, there’s one guy who smells like farts and B.O., everyone’s exhausted from taking biker Speed during George Thorogood.

There you have it – 22 minutes end just as nightfall drops a curtain across their final bow.

“So long, goodbye!” yells Freddie Mercury.

The crowd screams and a six-song set that started at 6:44 in the evening is immortalized in memory by a singer who still holds us in the palm of his hand.  

***

Artist Links:

Queen Insta (So weird that Queen has Instagram)  Queen website

Songs by Queen to get you bothered:

Brighton Rock Love of my Life And of course, Queen in D2: The Mighty Ducks

1992 was the year of Home Alone 2, the G-rated blockbuster about a small child who attempts to murder two predators with house tools. A compelling and family-friendly story for all. There’s a scene in this classic, (I will growl and stomp my feet defensively towards any human who says it’s not really a classic) where Macauley Culkin walks out of the big city hotel, a fantastical limo awaits, and a Rob Schneider bellhop says “Mr. Mcallister, here’s your very own cheese pizza.”

The box opens, steam gushes from this fabulous cheese pizza and infiltrates the hungry nostrils of every New Yorker from Manhattan to Ithaca. This personal cheese pizza, so coveted by all, is the fantasy that we wish was the year of 2020. It has not been that. It has not been a steaming free 1992 blockbuster city limo pizza.

However, Prison Escapee (the musical pen name of Eric David Hidde) released his new album “20/20” the first week of June. I have not yet listened (obviously), but my razor-edged instincts tell me it will be much more heartfelt than a Home Alone pizza.

I empathize so greatly with musicians who spent immense swaths of 2019 working on an album, only to have their album release sneezed on by a pandemic. So, we will treat “20/20” as the alternate redemptive 2020 we can all live in for seven tracks and 23 minutes. It is a sliver of expression from an artist who continues to grow since his 2015 debut “Braves”, and lives in a genre of what I call “dreamscape heartache”.

This is a real-time reaction review for Prison Escapee’s “20/20”. Listen along through the Bandcamp player up top if shared experiences turn you on.

Sound good?

Volume UP. Headphones in. Enjoy.

*** 

Track One – A Figment of Your Imagination

When I said Prison Escapee continues to grow two paragraphs ago, well, here’s evidence. I really noticed his voice open up more on the last album, “You Only Live Twice”, but before that record, vocals were often distorted electronically, or ached out, like it hurt just to sing them. “A Figment of Your Imagination” is declarative and bold, even with the lonely lyrical content. It’s impossible not to notice the tonal similarity to Matt Berninger (The National), whom we wrote about last Friday for the “Warrior” soundtrack atmosphere.

It’s cinematic. It’s heavy, and driving. It belongs as the backdrop to a scene of say, Michael Fassbender running through New York City at night.

Track Two – Empty Wishes/Feeling Light

I can only speculate on the lyrical content, and that’s what I’ll do. I know that Erik David Hidde lost a close friend years ago, and it resonates throughout his music and the melancholic nature of his sound. This, to me, has the nostalgia of someone missing the way things were:

I need 1999 again/2020 is too much time, my friend

If you have to pull a theme from the varying tonal shifts between the first two tracks, it’s that whatever the sound, you know the lyrics will be introspective truth and completely transparent.

Track Three – The Art of This

We shall call this…high drama. There’s a clear theme to produce a sound that’s cinematic and heavy. You often hear the cliché “the music is a way to escape the pain”. Or maybe you don’t hear that – I’ve heard that. But here, there is no escape. It is complete immersion. As he sings “I don’t want to feel your pain”, that pain still feels fresh. It has not detached or grown numb. It’s striking to me, as someone who has gone through the phase of “I’ve been numb so long and I want to re-immerse myself in that sadness just to feel”. Here, the initial pain is still close enough that he may be trying to find his way to the numbness.

Yeah, I know, we’re gettin’ heavy in here!

Track Four – Patience/Human Interaction

Many of his songs have a tendency to not start singing until well over one or two minutes into the song. It happens here and gives the song kind of a contemplative entrance.

Let’s lay it out like this: Put this in a movie with two long-lost loves. They see each other from across the boardwalk, and for a minute and 20 seconds they just stare at each other, and just as Prison Escapee sings the first verse, they run into an urgent embrace.

Track Five – Too Soon

It’s clear that faith is paramount to all else in the tracks. You notice the stream of consciousness element to his songwriting here, as he reflects on feeling lost, but then ends the song with “Praise your name, father”, as he remembers where lies his anchor.

Track Six – At the Bottom of the River

If you stripped all the vocals out of this album, there may be some songs where one may ask “Is this The Album Leaf?” This is one of those songs.

Track Seven – The Holy Wild

I’m going to walk out on a suspiciously bendy tree limb and call this song a hymn. I don’t know if my labeling assertion will break the limb off, or if I can stand here for a while after listening, bounce on my feet, and say “I was right, it’s a hymn.” Yes, this hymn is a lo-fi, electronic proclamation of faith, but the music is a backdrop for the self-reflection.

Thus concludes 20/20 by Prison Escapee AKA Erik David Hidde.

I feel like I just spent time in a room with him as he recorded it. That’s the intimacy that comes through – the searching, the loneliness, the reflections on faith and loss. Should you play it over the loudspeaker at your neighbor’s six-year-old son’s birthday party? Maybe hold off on that.

Put it on in the car at night and drive around under the city street lights, like this is your movie and you’ve chosen the soundtrack?

Well, that’ll do just fine.

Artist Links:

Prison Escapee Website Prison Escapee Bandcamp Prison Escapee Insta An Artist Takeover by Prison Escapee for Indie Wavves Blog

Songs by Prison Escapee to get you bothered:

Street Fighter (official video) Not Enough Love Stop Killing Black People

Reading Time: About 1/3rd of a Pay-per-view cage match

Spoiler alert!

First off, if you haven’t seen “Warrior” and you want to remind yourself what you look like with tears in your eyes, quit everything and go watch it now. Then come back and read the analysis, and salt a bowl of popcorn with bonus tears. “About Today” by The National plays during the climax of “Warrior”, and I’ll do everything in my power to not copy and paste 30 Youtube clips to just show the whole movie.

It’s that good. I don’t say that because I’m a testosterone-infused minotaur man, stomping around my apartment punching holes in the drywall while drinking a six-pack of Mountain Dew Code Red. The fight scenes are brutal and choreographed better than Lady Gaga choreographs neon body paint, but the cage-grappling is a vehicle for three gorgeous performances and a deep story of trauma, healing and forgiveness.

The context:

Tommy (Tom Hardy) is a former Marine who fled as a youth with his mother, due to his dad’s (Nick Nolte) violent alcoholic abuse. Brendan (Joel Edgerton) is Tommy’s brother, struggling to provide for his family, and fighting in underground bar parking lot cage matches for side money. Both are estranged from their dad, Paddy, who attempts to reconnect with Tommy and Brendan.

They’ve both entered the Sparta MMA tournament with $5 million on the line. After multiple grueling matches, they face off in the championship round, and Brendan has just snapped Tommy’s arm like a piece of sun-baked driftwood.

Tommy, consumed by his rage and pain of abandonment, finally finds forgiveness with Brendan on the mat.

I can imagine it would be hard to brand a fight movie for the Rom-Com crowd. “Warrior” made $23 million off a $25 million budget, which is criminal. It’s not only the greatest movie ever made in the crowded genre of “two estranged brothers in a cage match” – it transcends genre as a movie you need to see.

I spent five paragraphs talking story and didn’t even mention the Tom Hardy-Joel Edgerton combo. I’ll watch a movie just because Tom Hardy. I’ll watch a movie just because Joel Edgerton. Both of them together as traumatized brother fighters? It’s like taking a boat out at midnight and floating past a pair of Assateague stallions braying and galloping in unison under a full moon. There’s just nothing you should want to do other than sit still and watch that for two hours, and then close it out with “About Today” by The National.

Nick Nolte’s performance was too good to not throw one of the greatest alcohol-soaked scenes of all time into this article. He got a Best Supporting Actor nomination and could have won on the strength of this scene alone. Sober for years, Paddy relapses in the hotel when Tom Hardy tears him down and berates him in the downstairs casino.

Again, if you haven’t already seen this, and you aren’t here just splashing around in the reminiscent goodness of “Warrior”, go steal your in-law’s Hulu password and watch it.  

“Warrior” is a powerhouse emotional conflict without The National snipping your heart tendons with kid scissors. The ending, however, is perfectly placed and necessary for the resonant impact. All the pain and rage, years of entrapped abandonment, for six minutes, is exchanged in a transaction of fists. \

Then, the breakdown, and reconciliation.

Many conflicts with people you loved hard go unresolved and fade into a quiet, bitter piece of stone, and grow over with moss. “Warrior” is about one of those devastating, strung out, residually damaging conflicts, and it ends with the love that was always there.

That’s why “Warrior” is such a unique film: maybe you’ve been trying for years to overcome a hardened conflict, without resolution.   

All you had to do was step into a cage.

***

 Movies with Tom Hardy to get you bothered:

The Revenant Bronson Locke

Movies with Joel Edgerton to get you bothered:

Animal Kingdom The Gift The King

Reading Time: The time it takes for Wood Elves to crash your formal dinner and dance on ya girl

“I’ll be honest – I’m terrified to meet your parents.”

Ranger sat in the driveway in his dad’s BMW with the car lights dimmed. His girlfriend of six months, lover of seven months, profile he Tinder-stalked for three months, Vanessa, brushed a piece of lint from his Navy blue Everlane knit blazer.

“Shhh,” she cooed. “You’ll be fine.” She smoothed a wrinkle from his Brooke’s Brother khakis. “You’ll just have to assert yourself harder since you have divorced parents and a weak first name.”

Ranger gulped audibly. “Didn’t your dad shoot your last boyfriend?”

She ran a hand over his neatly parted hair. “We had just broken up so technically he was trespassing, and it was only a flesh wound.”

“Oh God,” he cried. “I just peed a little.”

“You’re fine, Range. Just be yourself.”

Ranger coughed asthmatically 12 times and sucked in on his inhaler:

“Ah-heeeee”, he inhaled. “Ah-heeeeeet!”

“Actually, maybe just don’t make eye contact, just for tonight.” She rubbed his inner thigh. “Be good and we can play the Piggle Wiggle Nakey game.”

“Okay,” sniffled Ranger, like a small, overprivileged latchkey child.

“And this sounds weird but it’s important.” She turned to him. “My parents take so much pride as dinner hosts. Just a warning. Things can get…theatrical.”

At the front door of a house that looked like the Clue mansion, Ranger knocked loudly and the door swung open. Mr. and Mrs. Vanessa stood there, casually dressed and amicable.

“Come in,” Mr. Vanessa boomed, and shook Ranger’s hand vigorously. “Brandy? Cigar?”

“Oh no,” said Ranger. “I don’t smoke.”

“Tonight you do!” Mr. Vanessa laughed uproariously and handed him a long cigar, already lit.

“Let’s go to the kitchen table and while Melissa braises the pork we can talk about why you’re the right person to breed my only daughter.”

Ranger puffed on the stogie like Piglet trying to swallow a piece of lit firewood. They walked to an elaborate dinner table, surrounded by ornate décor and a wide-open ballroom style dance floor. Vanessa’s mom seated Ranger next to a life-sized statue of a standing grizzly bear, with an enormous sculpted furry Grizzly Bear phallus dangerously close to eating level.

Mr. Vanessa sat and crossed his legs and re-lit his cigar with a table candle. “Ranger, I’ll be straight with you tonight – I don’t want to grill you about your life details.”

“That’s great, sir.”

“So,” he ashed his cigar, “what’s your salary like?”

Dinner was served. They ate pineapple ham with mashed taters, curried duck and tossed organic yard salad from the family water garden. A most succulent meal, good enough to make a grown man cry.

Ranger gradually became disarmed. Yeah, they were weird and the grizzly bear penis near his mouth was off-putting, but if this was the worst of it, he could deal. He looked over and squeezed Vanessa’s hand.

“Cool dinner,” he said.

“You enjoyed it?”

“Of course.”

“Good.” She gazed at him with a glint in her eye. “So you’re ready for the after-dinner party.”

Her parents exchanged looks and arose. “We’ll fetch dessert.” Mr. Vanessa looked back from the kitchen entrance. “Hold on to your butts.”

Ranger missed the nuanced change of demeanor in his girlfriend, the mischievous Satanic glances exchanged between parents and daughter.

Suddenly, the walls exploded with bass and sound.

The lights dimmed and glowsticks tied to cords dropped from the ceiling. A kaleidoscope swirl of light and sound invaded the room and Vanessa’ parents danced back through the kitchen door, adorned in neon glow paint. Their faces were covered in finger paint and Mr. Vanessa gyrated towards Ranger.

His pants were missing.

“Um, what’ happening?” Ranger swirled in his seat and a pair of pygmy elephants burst through the double doors in the ballroom. “What the shit is happening?!”

Vanessa’s mom was actively shedding her clothes and Vanessa stood, swirled her hips, maintaining eye contact: “Dessert, baby.”

The elephants trumpeted. Jungle chaos broke loose.

Small orange Oompa men climbed down net ladders from the rafters, onto the table, dressed in Nordic sheepskin and faces painted vibrant hues. One of the little creatures landed in Ranger’s lap and he shrieked and reached for his inhaler. The Oompa man squeaked and rolled off his lap and waddled to the dance floor.

“Ah-heeeeet!” Ranger inhaled. “Ah-heeeeeeet!”

An emu stampeded through a side window and began fluttering in perfect rhythm to the frantic tympany. The chanting swelled and suddenly there were partygoers of all shapes and sizes filtering through the front mahogany doors. Ranger swore he saw…was that a group of people dressed as Muppets? No, there was no costume. It was just the actual Muppets.

A six-foot Bald Eagle strutted through the open doors in a leather jacket in aviator glasses. The bird looked around the room, lit a Marlboro with both claws, and ambled off to a corner.

Beating drums and dancehall breakbeats consumed the crowd and flamethrowers spouted streams of fire. Ranger reached next to him and mindlessly steadied himself on the bear statue’s enormous statuesque penis.

The bear growled.

Ranger yelped and the bear gazed down disapprovingly. The 800-pound animated carnivore shook his head, as if to say, “Creep”, and flowed off into the crowd to dance with a faction of naked Wood Elves break-dancing on the staircase.

A Billy-goat troll with the legs of a goat and the haired chest of an Irishman kicked in a foyer window and stepped over the broken glass. He carried a 40 oz. beer and a pipe and dance-strutted his way towards a group of humans wearing Peacock feathers.   

The terrified boyfriend grabbed up his Blazer and swirled. “Vanessa!” he shouted. “’Nessa!”

He looked about frantically. He saw her hair moving with the beat. There she was. Two Wood Elves. On Either Side. Dancing on his girlfriend erotically.  

“Hey, shoo!” He rushed over and swatted them away. “Be gone, Orlando Blooms!” He swatted at them with a cloth napkin. “Back to Rivendell!”

The elves chattered in a strange tongue and threw a handful of glitter in his face. Vanessa shrugged and continued to dance. “Ranger, baby, you should go if you can’t handle it.”

The beat reverberated in him. Everything swirled. Elves and elephants and giant bear penises and delicious curried duck. Man, that curried duck was good. The room smelled of incense and there was an Oompa man smoking a pipe while riding a baby giraffe through the den.

The storm swept over him and everything went black.

Attention reader – press pause!

Three Months Later

Vanessa shopped quietly in Whole Foods with her new boyfriend, Dirk. He wore Sperries and was dressed like someone orphaned him at age six in Banana Republic and he never left the mall.

“Porkchops on sale, honey.” He browsed. “Organic. No hormones.”

“Oh, that’s so nice. Maybe you can cook them while I finish Downton Abbey tonight.”

“Sounds so chill,” said Dirk. “That reminds me, what do you think of me coming over to meet your parents this Friday?”

“Oh yeah?” Vanessa looked up from the meat case. “Are you sure, hon? My parents can get pretty crazy – haven’t decided if you can handle it yet.”

Dirk laughed loudly, a bellowing douchebag laugh. “Babe, I was Psi Delta Chi Psi Chi Phi Pi. They used to call me Keg Kong. I think I can handle your suburban Mr. Rodgers parents.”

Okay, reader! Press play, again!

Vanessa glanced over, that gleam in her eye. “Okay, then. I’ll get us a bottle of wine, maybe some dessert apricots.”

The beating of drums in the deep seemed to come up through the floor and rushed the room, like a stereo underwater.

“You hear th –”

“Nope,” Vanessa shrugged. “Dinner Friday sounds great.”

Jars on shelves trembled and the lights flickered. Somewhere, in the distance, there was the bellowing of elephants.

 ***

That’s it, y’all. If you enjoyed this great expulsion of creative energy, share it with a friend or drop tips in the internet tip jar. Check out the other Hyperdramas, an Appalachian time travel set to Odetta Hartman and an office work party on Ecstasy to Mark Ronson.

Artist Links:

Major Lazer website Major Lazer Spotify Major Lazer Instagram

Songs by Major Lazer to get you bothered:

Lay Your Head on Me Lean On (Yeah, I know how overplayed it’s been — it’s still good!) Light It Up