verdant
owl beanie
Emeritus

Reviews 110
Approval 98%

Soundoffs 43
Album Ratings 433
Objectivity 63%

Last Active 11-27-20 3:47 am
Joined 04-14-17

Review Comments 2,505

 Lists
02.13.19 everyone's having a really groovy time 12.04.18 My End of Year List ♦
11.13.18 life ending patent pending (13/11/2018)09.01.18 TOP 200 BEST GTA FAILS EVER (1/9/2018) ♦
08.02.18 if the sink ships (2/8/2018) ♦07.21.18 99 problems (21/7/18)
07.07.18 one foot in the time capsule (7/7/2018) ♦06.20.18 new single from this band that i play i
06.17.18 beautiful rocks, inviting hard places ( ♦06.04.18 billy corgan calls in sick for hallowee ♦
05.22.18 checking in (22/5/2018) ♦04.14.18 one year sputnik anniversary ♦
04.02.18 placeholder (it is early april, 2018) ♦12.09.17 helo this is what i liked most in 2017
10.24.17 YouTube10.15.17 An Education: Electronic
09.11.17 i got a new job :sunglasses:09.04.17 An Education: Post Punk/Noise Rock
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Tearjerkers

a playlist for that ugly, choked-up, red-faced, ignominious kind of catharsis (lmao u a bitch jack as if music elicits an emotional response from you like stop crying grow a pair or whatever) p.s: check these out p.p.s: you guys are great p.p.p.s: refer to previous post-scripts
1William Bonney
Good Vibes

Drug Lord

a teenage dissident howling hoarse at the moon. beat your chest until you're beaten down. the jagged edges of emo encroaching on its center.
2S
Cool Choices

Losers

on the nose but in the feels. on its head and in your head. finding its feet and finding your heart. carissa figured out how to spell weird properly.
3Julien Baker
Sprained Ankle

Vessels

julien uses reverb to gauge how much distance is between her and everyone else. feeling out the empty space, vessels is the songwriter breathing out that cloud of black smoke that has remained to tar her lungs too long. she is better off for it.
4Manchester Orchestra
Mean Everything to Nothing

I Can Feel A Hot One

andy hull's finest lyrical moment is murmured at the end of a fraying rope. an arpeggiated guitar is the only shoulder left around to cry on, playing the benevolent God when the, uhh, real one refuses to. lovely.
5Now, Now Every Children
Cars

Friends With My Sister

the spark travels slowly along a fuse. the explosion is only ever seen by the person who set it off. this is one of the most linear songs you'll ever hear, but it'll throw you through a loop if you let it.
6Radiohead
Kid A

Motion Picture Soundtrack

i will see you / in the next life
7Suis La Lune
Quiet, Pull the Strings!

Desperate Times...

the opener to Quiet, Pull the Strings! feels like a secret. the rocking chair creaks on the front porch at dawn, but the sun is reluctant to rise over the hill, and thus commences an album at once fragile and volatile.
8The Districts
A Flourish and A Spoil

Suburban Smell

confronting, fervent in its empathy. a skeleton musically but all soul thematically. peep through the crack in the bedroom door as grote sings of tarnished school hallways and suburban ennui.
9Margot & the Nuclear So and So's
Not Animal.

Broadripple is Burning

you've heard the chord progression before but it's never mattered less. it's moribund and it's haunting, collapsing in the living room of a close friend.
10Ben Folds Five
Whatever and Ever, Amen

Brick

totally belies the indifference of its album title. feel more alone than you ever have before. when the 'inspired by true events' adage is reshaped into a perpetual vehicle for pathos, and a thank-fuck-this-hasn't-happened-to-me kneejerk response.
11Grouper
Ruins

Holding

the thick fog of a half-remembered dream.

snow, drizzle, frost, a quilt of grey, infinite melancholy; some other manifestation of winter taking shape.
12Sleep Talk
Growing Pains

Breathe

like an inconsolable fist through a mirror. like the breaking point of an elastic band. like a teenager's journal entry projected on a billboard. enough.
13Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our

13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round The Side Of Your Bed

in the interest of time, 13 Angels condenses every possible memory and emotion into seven and a half minutes. that bed the angels stand guard around? it may as well be a deathbed -- because for all its winding roads and steeps drops, that central motif creates a throughline that threads all your significant moments together, so you can view them one more time before they disappear.
14Giles Corey
Giles Corey

No One Is Ever Going To Want Me

a nebulous song that loses patience as it transpires. a hand claws up, breaks through the surface for a final minute out of the grave. armed to the teeth with absolutely nothing.
15clipping.
CLPPNG

Story 2

cold detachment constantly poking at the flames of the past. children are involved, therapists are involved, neighbours are involved, but most importantly -- karma is involved.
16Levi The Poet
Correspondence (a fiction)

Chapter Five: Tuxedo Black

a horrific bedtime story -- peter pan in palliative care. spoken word spoken in a paroxysm.
17The Chariot
One Wing

Speak

the most hardcore hardcore song ever written, and somehow it's only accompanied by piano. if you shout loud enough, some semblance of a God might hear you. last thirty seconds are like jumping out of a highrise window.
18Many Rooms
Hollow Body

The Father Complex

sneaking into heaven will guarantee you end up in hell. sparse chords float around the empty space in your chest, like a placeholder for genuine human connection.
19Raccoon City Police Department
Nightlife

All Life Is Lost

dread, as appraised by the industrial, clanking, mechanical style of production that defines this record. sometimes we genuinely believe the hyperbole that we engage in.
20Laura Stevenson
Sit Resist

Finish Piece

there is a quotidian beauty to laura stevenson's voice. like she's got a typical dainty folk tone but then she'll rise to something like "all these weeeeEEEEAAAARRRRY EXTREMITIES" and you will exhale sharply, accordingly. a ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds.
21Merchant Ships
For Cameron

Sleep Patterns

open chords for a closed chapter. of loneliness and nightmares and lessons learned.
22Tom Waits
Glitter and Doom Live

Falling Down

thank you butcher

grizzled, jaded, embittered. a world-weary proponent for blues sways back and forth as he ruminates.
23Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate)
What It Takes to Move Forward

What Safe Means

thanks ian

as brittle as sandpaper -- consistent with empire's ethos, but boundlessly more intimate and resonant
24Red House Painters
Red House Painters

Katy Song

thanks art

kozelek, again, tells a story that meanders gently along an equally meandering chord progression. beautifully written, evocative in an unassuming way and deeply human -- is this not all we ask from songwriters?
25mewithoutYou
Pale Horses

Rainbow Signs

thanks DNS

i absolutely, positively adore MwY but couldn't pick a song. this will do -- weiss' perfect application of lyrical motif strikes out amongst the plaintive atmosphere, making for a highlight in this incredible band's most underrated (imo) record.
26Jawbreaker
24 Hour Revenge Therapy

Condition Oakland

thanks pjorn

this feels like such an honest portrayal of sadness. the music makes no effort to wallow or emphasise the discontent with a languid atmosphere, but those serrated chords sound as unforgiving as the memories the song is founded on. jack kerouac, too. nice.
27Alice in Chains
Jar of Flies

Nutshell

thanks ephemeraleternity

cavernous. a "dimly lit oasis" as a wise blushful once said, about something entirely different but possibly tangentially inspired.
28Mount Eerie
A Crow Looked At Me

Ravens

thanks con

i've listened to A Crow... twice since it was released and i don't think i want to listen to it again. this song, as a flagbearer for the record itself, is painfully quiet and painfully candid. every metaphor is clarified as such ("i knew it was an omen" phil says of the birds) and every action is documented on impulse. a dead loved one will always be more than the dust in a pot on the mantelpiece. a dead loved one will always be more than bones kept in a box underground.
29Autechre
L-event

newbound

thanks daniel

feeling for a pulse that disappears and reappears like the chirping of crickets. melancholy engendered by arithmetic, by the binary code of a machine. a contradiction, to be sure, but a marvelous one at that.
30Elliott Smith
Either/Or

Ballad of Big Nothing

thanks daniel [2]

to the delicate hands and delicate words of elliott smith: there are cracks of hope in your downtrodden facade, and theres the trace of a smile in the acoustic-folk leanings of this song. it will stay that way forever. rip.
31AJJ
Knife Man

Big Bird

thanks bloon

a real fucken echo chamber of misery and societal fears. wear a bulletproof vest every time you leave the house, and have downcast anthems playing in your headphones while you walk to work.
32Fiona Apple
When the Pawn...

I Know

that tired sadness, where the pillow is a life raft and you just want to drift in the ocean of your bedroom forever. cellos and violins assist the piano, a sleepwalking double bass makes its peace.
33Converge
All We Love We Leave Behind

Title Track

thanks unique

a pummeling stampede and a frantic scramble to higher grounds. let's translate our sadness into sick shredding and a bunch of post-harcore touchstones.
34Emma Ruth Rundle
Some Heavy Ocean

Shadows Of My Name

thanks dewi

oh is it ever a song that uses its kick drum as a faint pulse. i can't tell if its a plea for forgiveness or a refusal to forgive someone else, but either way, those ambient tones and that sonorous acoustic guitar lie a little off center; beautiful but oblique.
35David Bowie
Blackstar

Lazarus

thanks cylinder

a swansong from the most elegant, torchbearing and universally exalted swan in the pond. if you look hard enough you might see him in heaven. the star at the top of the Christmas tree.
36The Saddest Landscape
You Will Not Survive

Declaring War On Nostalgia

thanks mistacrave

ironically, the saddest portrait -- of a jaded, yearning human being. maddox spends the track scratching at old bedroom wallpaper, broken beyond repair and so he refuses to try.
37Frank Ocean
Blonde

White Ferrari

thanks blushful

hollow synthwork indicates a heart set on the future, but part of it is snagged on the past. flawless (for better or worse) falsetto and the hum of an acoustic guitar stay after the party is over, just to help clean up the mess.
38Joy Division
Unknown Pleasures

New Dawn Fades

thanks laeddis

post punk pioneers filtering maudlin themes through a thick malaise. as always, ian curtis sounds overtired but in too much pain to sleep, but the drooping, stretched-clay bassline almost puts him in a dream state. that is, until the blistering climax slices through the lethargy.
39Jackson Browne
Late for the Sky

For A Dancer

thanks aiwaz

feels like the genesis of the singer-songwriter. a lamenting piano, embellished by a sole violin -- the perfect tribute to a lost friend and the memories thereof.
40Son Lux
Lanterns

Lanterns Lit

thanks claire

a thousand wind chimes and a steady heartbeat. leave some room inside for hope.
41Deathprod
Morals and Dogma

Tron

thanks winesburg

storm cloud depression / impending gloom / kicked-up dust from the chimney sweep / the wind whispering pejoratives in your ear as it passes / submerged in all the intangible feelings / a soul trapped in hell's waiting room.

currently listening to My Girls by AnCo to cleanse the palette, balance the scales
42McCafferty
Thanks. Sorry. Sure.

Outlaw

according to my dad this song says 'fuck' too many times, but it is apropos to the emotions intrinsically linked with a mangled home life and a past that hides behind violence.
43Yellow Swans
Going Places

Opt Out

overwhelmed by negative space / a therapeutic acid bath: dissolve, dissolve, dissolve
44Nine Inch Nails
The Downward Spiral

Hurt

thanks rowan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7_Te7iDojA captures pain on the smallest of scales and then it opens up to encompass the agony of all and then it reverts back into the fetal position. a classic that is entirely reluctant about being called as such
45August Burns Red
Rescue & Restore

Spirit Breaker

thanks kingdede

a cavernous, burning hole in your skin. intense -- like if your heart-beat was a blast beat.
46Pearl Jam
Ten

Black

thanks thalassic

languorous are pearl jam. eddie vedder was the voice of a generation; a generation of people who could turn passion sour with a word, then wallow in the bitterness with a hook about broken glass and photographs.
47Krzysztof Penderecki
Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima

Treno por las victimas de Hiroshima

thanks worthless

dissonance as a metaphor for some unfathomably inhumane act. there's the panic before and there's the panic thereafter. the fat man and his child take no prisoners, and the wailing emergency sirens of this piece will tell you as much.

"a new and most cruel bomb"
48Sigur Ros
( )

#3

thanks ryu

a slow see-saw between the incontrovertibly uplifting and the abyss. this song -- and the record as a whole --- blow most emotionally exploitative film soundtracks out of the water, and sigur ros do it as an aside. phenomenal.
49The Blue Nile
Hats

Lets Go Out Tonight

thanks doof

a love story subsumed by limbo. the plaintive sounds will not listen to buchanan's increasing desperation, and neither, i assume, will the object of his affection.
50Burial
Untrue

Near Dark

thanks risodo

there are people out there that have talked about this record better than i ever could (see: plane, jade, dev) but this song truly encapsulates the feeling of being stuck in that thick, idle nothingness, through a mish-mash of concrete clatter and robotic voices with human emotions. love.
51Fleetwood Mac
Greatest Hits (Warner Bros)

Man Of The World

thanks jamie

when a major key is cruelly ironic. a song about being on top of the world and being so lonely you just want to jump off.
52Motion City Soundtrack
Go

Happy Anniversary

thanks dctarga

from the very real idea of a deathbed. a loss for words and all i can think to say is: "cancer sucks, i'll send the kids your love"
53Swallow the Sun
Hope

Doomed To Walk The Earth

thanks sullen

username of the person that suggested the song/band name/song title/atmosphere SYNERGY. that album title sticks out like a really fucking sore thumb. doom metal is perfect for conveying that raw, guttural despondency.
54Talk Talk
Spirit of Eden

I Believe In You

thanks chortles

goddamn this band was good. chords so metallic yet so warm, lyrics so indecipherable yet so profound, a song structure so enervated but so determined. unrefined beauty.
55Captain, We're Sinking
The Future Is Cancelled

Annina, We'll Miss You

thanks ebola

her future is cancelled
56Drowning With Our Anchors
You can never go home again

Crushed & Empty

thanks mars

late night, shopping for ways to handle your own distress at the supermarket. i hope those rhetorical questions become something other than rhetorical, i hope those slow-motion minor arpeggios find some persistence.
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