if it's not clear from everything about me, i try to reject preconceptions as strongly as possible, especially with regards to art. like, i refuse to narrow the view of stories, or art in general, that connect with me to works that meet someone else's standards of quality just because they've decided to call them "objective". it seems like everyone i talk to about this has their own preconception that things are "objectively" good and can be, separately, "subjectively" good. sorry you're insecure in your taste! but you can (not) be objective. you cannot detach your time-and-place impressions from your overall view on a work, and if you think you can, your definition of "objectivity" its itself subjective, because that's not how the brain works. our own memories of life are demonstrably unreliable; when you add in the layer of "something meant to be interpreted and interpretable" there is even less water carried by the idea of "one prevailing truth" in a reading. if it does exist, its a floating ideal that has never touched matter, and will not affect your life to ignore completely. in short, "objectively good" makes no sense as a condition applied to something that will be internalized massively differently by different people at different points in their lives. whether that breaks your heart or comforts you, make peace with it. if i were wrong there'd be nothing to write about here !
so given that anecdote i opened with, it only makes sense for me to talk about music first. hey, validate my topsters.
Like i said, i'm not immune to patrician taste. actually a lot of the older stuff i like is super basic, so much so that it probably seems less than genuine. the filter of what's remembered over time works really well with my unforgivingly particular taste to create that illusion; as much as my classic rock favorites are basic so is a lot of the older stuff i hate. but this isn't about my dislikes !! Rumours is one of the best albums ever, especially for the exhausted, angry, grieving place i first listened to it. Unknown Pleasures is great too. i don't remember much from the time i got into that one, which also makes sense. it's a great album for that exact implacable feeling that's probably just depressed-brain-fog-unto-dissociation, but you don't need me to tell you that it's great. i like a lot of that near-universally lauded proto-punk and garage rock too. and frustratingly, for all i've railed against critical acclaim, The White Stripes have stuck with me from a time when i was still very insecure in my own music taste. they were my favorite band in like freshman year of high school because they were one of the few bands that people i wrongly acknowledged as cooler than me liked and i could at all stand. even despite the obviously lingering bitterness there, so many of the Stripes' lines and songs had stuck with me, bits of melodies in my subconscious, and when i was getting back into them this year i found most of them were from Get Behind Me Satan. i like all their albums quite a bit. it's really hard to talk about these bands everyone's said everything about already without sorta feeling like im looking at my own thoughts from third person.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the big categories for me i've mentally dubbed "genuinely transcendent emo". there's a lot of music that's kind of worked its way into the fabric of how i think, in terms of lyrics i think about a lot or songs being glued to a certain mood in my mind. stuff i see as so foundational that i start to take it for granted in the same way my mom does the music she grew up with. but i'm also always going back and revisiting these albums and trying to find new stuff to take away from them. there's a lot of music out there, so should be a stiff competition to be one of my favorites, but i love my favorites and want to keep loving them. sometimes it doesn't work out, but with these it does. i feel like i always walk away with something not just new, but personality-expanding. as for "why emo?"... i'll talk about this more when i talk about comic books, but having to come to terms with the fact the person i am diagnosably changed and cannot go back as a result of my past, i do very strongly identify with art that's about and revolving around angst. i don't see "too much angst" as even a category that can be approached. i get it, very deeply, and have for long enough i consider it a part of me. plus that sound's just always been there, as long as i've had a say. and i don't think i'm unique for this; now, it seems like everyone's come around on a lot of the bands i was laughed off for being so into, just as a matter of nostalgic goodwill. that's fine, i suppose. but like, the first two songs i ever chose to download were The Diary Of Jane and Not The American Average (when i was WAY too young for that last one) and that sound's meant so much to me ever since.
MyChem is maybe the easiest band for me to slip into taking into granted. They've always been there and are relatively smiled upon even by normies who can't even like Attack Attack!, which i can't even begin to fathom. Again this chart is unranked but Three Cheers is at the top of it all for a reason. its everything this kind of music is to me. the wailing guitars, the watercolor bloodspray, black shirts and red ties. its dramatic and weird and faggy; and so deliberate, in all these aspects that embody vulnerability. it dares the listener to make fun and plenty did but if you're actually paying attention its musically complex and lyrically powerful enough to knock you on your ass. every time i open them, the liner notes on this record unfold like a blooming rose, and something new jumps out to stick with me each time. as music, it carries on like a blood trickle over uneven floors, falling through cracks, going places. as it evolves and progresses, everyone in the band brought such weight to their musical performances, the sound remains stained pitch dark, the flow frantic even when it's slow. coexisting with this evident confident performance, the overall record is about unpopularity. the text cards in the music video for I'm Not Okay are the strongest testament to this. (speaking of, that was my first ever favorite song, and its title was the first of those phrases that change the way i think.) even the concept of the album... its the story of a revenge quest, after all–someone, alone, being so solely bothered... they kill ninety-nine people and sacrifice themself as the last evilest person alive to try and fail to make it right.
i have about as much of a history with The Black Parade, but not as many thoughts on it ? i feel like everyone already gets why this one is great, too, for a while it felt like the only MyChem album it was "okay" to like. it is really good, though. if i had to say, its just a little too polished for me to connect with it in the same way as i do Three Cheers, and i mean conceptually more than sonically. though it is much more lavishly produced. at least, the production is bigger. that's not necessarily a good or bad thing, but the record as a whole is a lot more theatrical and focused on the concept–i guess the difference is, The Black Parade was made to be a rock opera. and as that it really works. that unfolding liner notes quality is multiplied here, on songs like The Sharpest Lives and Mama that are very literary to me in the way i've thought about them throughout the years.
MyChem don't have a bad album, but those are my two favorites. i may not be original, but at least i have good taste !! listen to Conventional Weapons if you haven't already.
Pierce The Veil is another band that's definitely had a reappraisal; i almost refuse to accept that given just how little i could even talk about my love for them in the past without getting picked on. but i'm glad they're getting their flowers. do kids today still talk about how genuinely musically impressive they are ? if there's anyone who should be just blinded by the fact of their sound it's me; they were introduced to me (with Bulls In The Bronx) as a "metal" band and while they're solidly in the heavier end of that era's post-hardcore, it was still some of the heaviest music i'd ever listened to. it scared me; i loved it. the cover art, with a rotten-in house bleached out by the sun, same as the sky, stuck with me for years. but the albums they released directly before and after Collide With The Sky that impress me even more. Early Pierce The Veil had this fascinating elegance to their first two albums' soundscapes that really makes them stand out among the post-hardcore of that era. As sad as i am that they abandoned it after Selfish Machines, they honestly perfected it there. and the lyrics... at the risk of giving too much away, a lot of the imagery on this record inspired my web novel. it really feels like the kind of experience you might call a "waking nightmare," so to write the "reality" of my book like a nightmare, i leaned on it. either way, i'm interested in something that can capture that kind of feeling so well.
Misadventures is my favorite of theirs, though. a lot of times bands in this sphere will use "maturing" as a euphemism for "selling out", but it really does just feel like the natural progression of everyone involved as artists. the lyrics are more emotionally complex than Collide With The Sky, which was desperately needed. it lives up to the title "Misadventures": a mosaic like a tapestry, pieced together from shards of romantic mistakes and asphalt epics. when i say "canon," i mean it; the liner notes on this record were like a formative text for my dreams of life as a runaway writer on the road. but more than that, and more than any album PtV put out before (or frankly since) this album goes places, musically. it really does feel like a beautification and expansion on the ideas of the directly-preceding era of hardcore in the same way as the original post-punk wave was a response to, well, punk. that is to say it redefined how i see post-hardcore as a genre. even more than that, the way each song progresses so much without drawing attention to itself is not just impressive on its face but for what it means for the themes of the record. these romanticized times fly by in a flash to a totally different mood. tires flatten, moods swing, adventures become... well, you get it. it's such genius songwriting it genuinely boggles my mind !! i think the pigeonholing as a "Hot Topic/Tumblr band" has something to do with how they pulled this off. in the shadow of those expectations, they made something truly exceptional when no one was looking. (and i'm sorry, but now that they've been reappraised they don't currently have it. The Jaws Of Life is exactly the kind of album i'd fear a self-described "more mature" Pierce The Veil would put out.) Still, we'll always have Misadventures to look back on.
In making these posts i'm realizing a lot about my music taste. like, the 20th anniversary editions of the two first and best Linkin Park albums are not only fully worth listening to, but Meteora's especially might be definitive ? At least, i've long held that Hybrid Theory is the ideal of a nu metal album in particular, but that Meteora is a slightly better album overall for how expansive it is on the genre ideals LP had just helped codify in the mainstream. Well, you don't need me to tell you Hybrid Theory was insanely influential. Especially since Chester Bennington's passing, Linkin Park's early output has been analyzed dry by everyone with every amount of expertise. but this is definitely a case of reappraisal. i got into LP because they were kind of treated as a joke, but i just genuinely liked their music, a lot more than the stuff i was told was "classic" or "essential". my essentials were Hybrid Theory and Meteora. that might have even been where i got the whole "personal canon" idea from– they were my first ever favorite band, so i don't know if there was something about their music that influenced this or if it's just how my taste would have developed. However i do know that for as at-odds-with-the-world as i felt at that time,
its just as mind-boggling to hear this version of Faint, a song that's been omnipresent in my life for well over a decade, but tweaked slightly as if pulled from a different universe. then from around the same time there's Cumulus that sounds more like Parannoul meets Yakui the Maid than anything else Linkin Park ever did. their range is on fullest display in what's on the cutting room floor. the track Soundtrack has a really fuzzy tone to it as well. its really not something i associate with Linkin Park's driving riffs but it works perfectly, like acid and fat. the hard, aggressive tracks that make the album proper so tight and endlessly listenable are balanced by these richly atmospheric soundscapes, only a few of which made it onto the album proper and really do elevate it a bit above Hybrid Theory. but it's clearest here on the deluxe edition. rather than interludes for texture, which i already appreciated, the contrast fills in the shapes of a listless, harshly hot daytime and a cool, high-energy night, lit gently in flickering warm bulbs but no less lonely.
it's a feeling best exemplified in the one that blends both feelings best. drawing (the breaking the habit demo). it's genuinely an experience beyond words to hear the most personally significant of their songsjust completely disintegrate into breakcore (a genre that consistently means a lot to me when i'm in the kinds of places that Breaking the Habit, or at least its iconic music video, are about. those rapid ragged beats feel like something between de-rezzing and the present fear of organ failure.) in this context, in the context of "this is an early version of breaking the habit", it's a frantic attempt to claw back what has been and still is being lost, but maybe not fast enough ? at least, i'll say while Breaking the Habit is something like the story of reaching that sort of loss of sense of self, Drawing feels like a near-death experience. if you like have any amount of connection to those first 2 LP LP's you owe it to yourself to spin these demos. for as diverse an array of sounds as they already have, the demos demonstrate even more range and give me a fuller picture of the impression hinted at on the original.
In a similar vein, not enough people listen to fromjoy. in a word they are epic, with their references to mythology and larger-than-life anime, sampling serial experiments lain and Neon Genesis Evangelion and earning those references, truly, with heart-on-sleeve chest-ripped-open vocal delivery. everything screams can be at their best is found here; and on Enter Shikari's Mothership, where they're impassioned howls for unity and openmindedness over the kinds of chugging riffs and bleepbloops i'm damn near hardwired to crack into a smile hearing. both those albums speak for themselves so strongly i'd feel wrong saying much more than giving them my highest recommendation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
it's really hitting me how there's really only one other "category" left, for some reason i thought there would be more. A lot of this stuff is still under the umbrella of "alt rock", but as much of it isn't... i guess, if "genuinely transcendent emo" achieved that status by being there during unfortunately formative moments in my life, this is all the stuff i listened to when i was first learning to cope with them. i had a phase where anything people described as "dreamlike" be it narrative, visual or auditory art would be something i'd make a note to check out. but for music in that vein specifically, that mindset stuck with me. it's sort of like the kind of lifeline that can reach me where everything is sediment drifting in cold water. maybe because it's just auditory, and i have to focus more for auditory processing... i don't know. also, because of the state i was in when i first listened to a lot of this, what i consider "dreamlike" might be way more expansive than yours to the point its kind of an ill-defined category. that's okay, it's just a way of organizing otherwise-unranked favorites. the defining factor here more than genre is how i listen to them waking up from night terrors to feel like myself again.
Crest sort of singularly represents why i like bladee at all–well, my brother and i bonded over red light and icedancer in particular, but i think Crest encapsulates the appeal to me best. it's light, airy, almost effortlessly beautiful. at first blush, it'll probably be one of the most oddly gorgeous records you ever hear. there's something about the way bladee's lyrics stand out even among drain gang for how perfectly they weave philosophy with threads of poetry–it's undeniably changed the way i think (and write) down to the gratuitous references to 90's and aughts bubblegum pop. if that's citing an influence, it's brilliantly incorporated–not just in the glitzy production, but in the fact those boy bands and pop stars performed often-babbling lyrics (famously, "I Want It That Way" is a nonsense phrase). the beauty in the lyrics here is something teased out of the shape of pretty incomprehensibility into the kind of idea you feel more than understand, which is only notable for how "strictly" philosophical they are. strictly feels like the wrong word for something that feels so stream-of-conscious, but it was very clearly carefully crafted to convey a specific impression. by the very nature of them, its hard to talk about my thoughts on Crest by their very nature, but it scratches the appeal of pop music so much for me and goes beyond to speak to what's interesting about art in general that i could call it my favorite pop record.
Look, A Rainbow and As Much As I Forget are kinda two oddities here ? they're still kind of hazy, but more in the "i can't believe this was recorded and exists" way rather than dreamlike. part of it has to do with how loud they are, but that frantic nature really made them both stick with me. there was a time not too long ago that i had to try really hard to change myself so i could keep being there for someone who didn't see all that effort, the coexistent care and panic in both these records really resonated then. these records being so painfully earnest, like the truth breaking out, it was a matter of catharsis, but a lot tenderer than the kind provided by outright angstier music. Similarly, Aratamemashite Hajimemashite Midori Desu is just a genuinely head-cracked-open insane album. it's nothing like anything else i normally listen to (or honestly can stand to for very long–i like noise pop, i am the normiest noisehead) but from the word "go", the way Midori's brand of jazz-hardcore jumps between sugary sweet to the total opposite in an instrument implosion, there was no way to look away. all of these songs about relationships that feel, more than angsty or even anguished, like they come from a place driven away from a connection from reality. in putting this album out there as it is, as an outburst like that, its existence comes to feel like the oddest kind of warm hug. as for natsu.install, its the best Shinsei Kamattechan album for all the feelings it's allowed me to associate with it. i got into Shinsei from the opening for Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko, so i have a bias towards associating them with a summer spent wired to the computer; diving deeper into their discography, Noko's distinctive vocals born from wanting to sound cute became the strongest shorthand for my feelings about the band as a whole. My favorite of their songs are like elegies to impermanence, whether the aimless heat-heady daze in Os-Uchujin (the aforementioned Denpa Onna OP) or their undeservedly-infamous, beautiful and genuine tribute to Roro-chan's life. (a lot of people correctly recognize Ruru-chan's Suicide Show On A Livestream as one of the best songs of all time but just as many if not more rubberneck at it as "the song about the girl who killed herself. at the risk of going on a tangent that misses the point so bad it's like calling Fire Walk With Me "the movie about the girl who gets murdered".) With natsu.install in particular, even ignoring its name, it feels so particular to my summer experiences, so sunbleached and frantic. even as it is so melancholic, it bounces along, trying to make the most of that certain magic that perseveres even where the heat can't reach. i also bonded with my best friend over this record in particular and i think that speaks to something about it. as with a lot of Shinsei Kamattechan its not the kind of noise pop you have to have a fully cracked-open music freak mind to fully appreciate. "accessible" feels like the wrong word but it's definitely really solid while also just making (emotional) sense in a way that a lot of music that's cool in this same way just doesn't to me. Please don't revoke my cred ! i promise tsumanne is my second favorite.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of the soundtracks i consider favorites i think they all have this same kind of appeal to me, too. Kajiura Yuki is in fact a god of music, as the memetic praise for her goes; its hard to express how much i love the Kara no Kyoukai scores both in the context of those films and completely detached from them as albums. Overlooking View's is my favorite. It's not the kind of contrast that calls attention to itself, but listening to the score album alone, it feels a lot more elegant than it does when paired with the grungy urban fantasy film it was written for. but in the context of the film, it elevates what would be just "an ordinary ugly yet beautiful cityscape" into a darkly magical vista. i haven't even seen .hack//sign yet but its a high priority solely on the strength of the imagery that its score conjures in my mind. it cannot be stressed enough how, every time, the richly layered fantastical soundscapes here just carry me away. i loooveee the way Kajiura uses vocals here, as any other instrument; its not something i can say about much other music i listen to and certainly not of many other soundtrack composers.
Of these three, Silent Hill 3's is probably the most important to me, though. i talked about this a lot more in my last post about my favorite characters but SH3 is just generally a very important game to me, so maybe that's why i have a harder time seperating my feelings on its soundtrack. Or maybe it's just a similar feeling. i just know that The End Of Small Sanctuary is exactly how moments like the opening of Silent Hill 3 feel; that no song ever more consistently gets how i feel than the studio version of I Want Love. its quietly growing desperation, and the strength of the same throughout... i recall reading something along the lines of Yamaoka intending this soundtrack to be "like something a teenage girl would listen to," and that aspiration definitely shows. given my strong taste for emo music maybe it makes sense this one hits so hard for me. in many ways my taste has only matured as far as i get better at describing it !!
anyway, speaking of emo and soundtracks, i very intentionally didn't talk about Ave Mujica's Completeness in this post. next time i'm going to talk about my "personal canon" love live and bandori songs specifically !! look forward to it, and thank you for reading !!