one-hundred thirty-seven.

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

Samson
V V Brown
Samson & Delilah
2013

♥: Don't worry. Whoever said music is dead (me? a few times actually? I repent, I repent) was full-on lying. Or at least amazingly wrong.
The process of CD-buying might be, or at least in stasis (my Used CD store post still unwritten...gah), but new music -- music meant for, derived from, the 21st century -- the year 2013 specifically -- is alive. Vibrantly, unsettlingly, passionately, and somewhat electronically alive.

And it is V V Brown's valiantly claimed territory.

There's been hype about her that I've conveniently never encountered, so when I saw this weird album cover on NAR, I had no preconceptions, no associations -- just that magical part of the universe pushing me to click "read more" (how many fantastic artists I've never found because I was too busy/not in the headspace/found the artwork too unappealing to read more, I can't even fathom). You can look up the hype if you want, but I prefer my ignorance. I prefer that feeling I had when I hit play on the embedded video for "The Apple."

I thought, or was scared, that music was going the boring, grating, insanely pretentious direction of Grimes -- hipster bullshit without substance, people playing with sounds without a point. I didn't think music like this existed. I didn't think a voice could sound like that. I didn't think there was anything that could musically exemplify the year 2013, in all its delusion, chaos, technological dependence and interpersonal destruction, pretentia, and beauty, beauty, beauty, pain, the stunning overwhelming power of the skyscraper and the cityscape, the certainty that everything is going to hell and the knowledge that something else will rise from those ashes, and the very PRESENCE, PRESENT, of it all, the inescapable nature of the year 2013, of everything it contains.

I could pick any song from the album, because each pulls on a different PRESENT tendril, each unravels the sweater a little further, each leaves us that little bit closer to naked, emotionally raw. Samson & Delilah should be consumed as a whole. But I will post "Samson" if only because it's the first single, because it's as good a start as any. The center does not hold, in these songs. You'll need to listen to them all.


I am ecstatic, ecstatic, to have found her.

one-hundred and thirty-seven

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Just My Kind
The Julie Ruin
Run Fast
2013

I can't remember the last time I was THIS EXCITED about a new album; the last time I bought an album THE DAY IT CAME OUT; the last time I listened to album from start to finish over and over and over again.

Kathleen Hanna.

KATHLEEN HANNA.

I can't shut up about her, I think she is JUST GREAT...from what I've culled from interviews, her riot grrrl-era zines, and Bikini Kill, Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin song lyrics...she inspires me to be stronger, more self-assured and to more confidently cement and state personal opinions.

The Julie Ruin is a solo-project-turned-band and Kathleen Hanna's return to music after years of suffering from, and being treated for, Lyme Disease.  Run Fast is awe-some...at turns dark and personal, but with a running thread of unselfconscious FUN.

"Just My Kind" makes me very, very giddy.  I have to be careful when I listen to it in public because I have a habit of bouncing in place (but then, when I do inevitably bounce, I think, who cares, this is a fucking good song, haha).  I love that it kind of has a 60s girl-group vibe with an infectious bongo beat; that it is an unabashed shout-it-from-the-rooftops love song:

I like your voice on the phone
The way you sleep at night
I like the way I know that
You're right by my side

You're the best of the crowd
And I'm proud to be your girl

This song is dedicated to you <3