the just like heaven e-zine has landed! click through a stellar collection of art and musings inspired by just like heaven artists and beautiful pasadena, ca 🌠
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the just like heaven e-zine has landed! click through a stellar collection of art and musings inspired by just like heaven artists and beautiful pasadena, ca 🌠
poem by langston hughes // the predatory wasp of the palisades is out to get us! by sufjan stevens // from war of the foxes by richard siken // art by archbudzar // rivers and roads by the head and the heart // signs by bloc party // in a dream you saw a way to survive by clementine von radics // anne sexton // the plagues by stephen schwartz // aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe by benjamin alire sáenz // elysium by bear’s den // as long as there is love, there will be grief by heidi priebe // five stages of grief by linda pastan // chasing shadows by alex warren // wandavision (2021) // eternity by alex warren and gigi perez // installation by robert montgomery // time does not bring relief, you all have lied by edna st. vincent millay // in the wind by lord huron // trade it all by jerub // ocean vuong // when you lose someone by nina nesbitt // jeff buckley // art by things you wanted to say but didn’t
‘Indie sleaze’ is not 2014, ‘Indie sleaze’ is not 2014, ‘Indie sleaze’ is not 2014, ‘Indie sleaze’ is not 2014!
It’s not tumblr-core and it’s not Lana Del Ray or 2013 AM, it’s not #girl interrupted, it’s not Ethel Cain (she literally is an artist of our time, what are you on about.)
It was 2001 with the Strokes on the cover of the NME every 2 weeks, it was cabaret night and English poetry with the Libertines in 2002, it’s those red and blue military jackets, it was the fucking grease in Julian Casablancas’ hair, it’s ’cocaine was the banker’s drug’ quoth Alex Kapranos, it was Don't Go Back To Dalston and the heroin, it was red and black horizontal striped tops and tight black shirts as evening wear, it was Russell Lissak’s mop top and a full page interview with London hairdressers in the NME in 2005, it was Jack and Meg’s saturated red and white dresses, it was glued glitter on the cover of Santigold’s first album, it was the sleaze and the sex of CSS’s music, it was ‘cold light, hot night’, it was the anti-Bush and anti-war stances of the bands at the time, it was America by Razorlight, it was Popworld on telly and Simon Amstel being a little shit to musicians, it was Karen O defying death on stage nightly, it was throwing up in shitty nightclubs on god knows what drugs, it was the fucking danger knowing this could all collapse any second—and rightly, it should. It was the godawful egos at DFA, it was knowing that while you were lucky to be seeing these bands live, you’d fucking hate them if you had to spend even a minute in their individual company. It was Amy Winehouse telling the world to get the fuck out of her business, it was Leslie Feist and Peaches sharing a dilapidated flat above a sex shop in Toronto.
It was horrible camera flash and red-eye editing softwares and putting your feet by the warm, spinning fans of your computer while it whirred away and downloaded your albums in *checks* 46 more minutes. It was horrible, it was dirty, it was gritty, we all hated it and thought the 90s were the last time music was good and that nothing good had happened since 1997. It was garishly bright clothes we were all embarrassed of by 2011, it was multiple layers and leggings and asking your mum to cut the itchy tag on the back of your low rise jeans only for her to snip your back. It was bell bottoms at the start of the decade. It being thankful that by 2017, no one would dream of wearing low rises anymore, please please, please let them never come back.
It was faux nostalgic of the past itself. It was ‘please make sure baby you’ve got some colours in there’ in your clothes. It was moral panic over emos. It was wanting to escape into a better past that you could see was visibly impoverished in the present. It was watching your favourite programmes become less and less relevant on air. It was watching MTV decisively die a horrible death. It was watching important venues and nightclubs get bulldozed. It was watching the last regular broadcast of Top Of The Pops in 2006. It was seeing how the 2009 financial crisis most definitely put a stop to independent music in the western world for a decade, it was watching the rise of bedroom DIY and electronic music. It was seeing the phrase ‘SoundCloud rapper’ being coined. It was the rise of Disney pop. It was counter-culture Justin Bieber hatred. It was the MS paint meme of those tumblr girls thoroughly unimpressed by the guy.
It was not using the words ‘indie sleaze’ at all, in fact. That’s a retconned word. It was garage rock revival. It was ‘post-grunge’. We didn’t care what it was called, we hated it all the same. It was a lead into a decade of despair and nihilism, it was the last hurrah for the music industry before it splintered into a thousand little online ecosystems, it was the last time we had physical community and any shared pop cultural moments. It was Live8 2005. It was the same as it is now, and it was a time that’ll never happen again, for better and for worse.
But one thing is for sure: it was decisively dead by 2014. Santi and Karen O’s 2012 collab was its last hurrah and it was dead by Comedown Machine by the Strokes (2013). It has nothing to do with 2014.
Bloc Party
not liking rap/hip-hop isnt an excuse to sleep on black artists, bc theyre in every genre. heres some of my favorites. please reblog with more suggestions!
if you like noah kahan, listen to mon rovîa
if you like musical theater in general, listen to jhariah
if you like poppy, listen to alt blk era
if you like in this moment, listen to nova twins
if you like avril lavigne, listen to meet me @ the altar
if you like the killers, listen to bloc party
Smelly’s Song of the Week…..
Bloc Party - Love Bombs
TOS
We are in a state of F L U X
🎵 Bloc Party - Flux | Steve Pemberton & Reece Shearsmith fanvid | YouTube
My epq poster looks fucking snazzy