Just wanna say thanks for your positivity and encouragement, both on this blog and my Marvel blog! It means a lot!
Girl I woke up to pee and saw this and... You got me all emotional and shit in the middle of the night.
You deserve all the good and wonderful things, babes. You are truly a bright spot in this place... No matter which blog you're posting to. You should be told multiple times each day of your magnificence. You're an incredibly talented writer and person and you've been an incredibly supportive and encouraging soul for me.
I love you. I'm glad my fangirling could brighten your day. I'll gladly shout your praises from the mountain-tops if need be. 😘
Kisetsu no kawarime no kaze no
Nurusa ni mo narete kita n da
Aimai na hana no iro ni wa
Namae wo tsukenai koto ni mo
Kotoba ya suuji ja kanawanai
Afuredasu genshoku no omoi dakishimete
Feel it! How precious it is
Nanimo kidzukazu toki ga tatta
Futatsume no karendaa wa
Nanigenaku mou sukoshi
Demo kitto
Furitsumotteta hibi wa sarigeni
"Change my feeling"
Katachinai mono fuan ja nai sa
Kono hibi ga tsudzuku no nara
Aoi kaze ni te wo yatte
Shiroi kumo wo miokutte
Toritomenaku waraiatte
Taburetto no uindou de wa
Yosoku ga genjitsu ni kawari
Demo kono bushitsu no mado ni wa
Souteigai no kaze ga fuku
Dareka no nokku ni sasowarete
Mokuteki to keisan no soto e arukeba...
Nanimo kawarazu sugoshiteita
Nijikan no houkago wa
Kokochiyoku sawagashii
Soshite ima
Nokku shita shoutai ni kidzuku yo
"Change my feeling"
Kimi wa yotei ga kasanattatte
Wazatorashiku nageiteru
Sore wa gogo no seorii de
Kifuku no aru heitan de
Toritomenaku nagareru
Nanimo kidzukazu toki ga tattemo
Ki ga hayai karendaa wo
Teinei ni mekurou
Sou motto
Kazoekirenai kimochi taisetsu ni
"Change my feeling"
Katachinai mono fuan ja nai sa
Kono hibi wo tsudzukeyou
Aoi kaze ni te wo yatte
Shiroi kumo wo miokutte
Toritomenaku...
Tayutau muudo kanjite
Ugoku haato kanjite
Toritomenaku waraiatte
~*~*~
English:
I've begun to grow accustomed to
The warmth from the changing season's winds
As well as to these vaguely colored flowers
For which there is no name
Things like words and numbers just don't compare
I'll embrace this overflowing feeling filled with primary colors
Feel it! How precious it is
Without even noticing, time has passed
Just a little bit more
And I'll be on my second calendar
But surely
These days that piled up will casually
"Change my feeling"
This formless thing it doesn't make me anxious
So if these days can continue
I'll feel the blue wind on my hands
I'll let the white clouds send me off
And we'll keep smiling together without stopping
On my tablet window
Predictions change to reality
But from this club room's window
An unexpected wind blows
Someone's knock invites me
If I go outside to take a walk, then my goals and calculations will....
Time passed by without anything changing
The two hours spent after school
Are noisy and comfortable
And now
I become aware of the identity of the one who knocked
"Change my feeling"
You said that our plans just happened to overlap
With a forced sigh
My theory of this afternoon
Is that this routine with its ups and downs
Will continue without stopping
Without even noticing, time continues passing
Let's carefully turn the pages of
This hasty calendar
Yes, even more
I'll treat these countless feelings with care
"Change my feeling"
This formless thing it doesn't make me anxious
So let's continue these days
I'll feel the blue wind on my hands
I'll let the white clouds send me off
Without stopping...
I'll feel these fickle moods
I'll feel this wavering heart
And we'll keep smiling together without stopping
Kilynn Lunsford presides over a stylish nightmare, her lurid poetry draped over skittering rhythms and sonic landscapes that are both cavernous and deeply claustrophobic. “She lives in the gateway to hell,” the singer intones on the mid-album cut “Gateway to Hell,” surrounded by shrieks and moans and pulsing, churning thumps.
Lunsford hails from out-there Philadelphia, a city that birthed her best known outfit, Taiwan Housing Project (Little Claw started earlier in Detroit) before tossing her out on her own. Dusted reviewed her last solo album in 2020, calling Custodians of Human Succession, “a woozy, ominous world that Lunsford bumps and bops and chants through, but one well worth visiting.” Her latest salvo constructs concise dioramas of sound, each self-contained and distinct, but aligned in an eerie, dystopian miasma of echo and unease. In Lunsford’s house, there are many mansions, but every single one of them is haunted.
Consider “Nice Quiet Horror Show,” which pulses with bubbly euphoria, a sweet baby 1960s girl group refrain of “Oh, oh, oh, oh-oh-oh,” running through a slash and clatter of drums, an abstract and evil-sounding guitar lick. Lunsford flickers between ingenue and devil queen like a holograph that shifts depending on the angle, murmuring about suicide and brain damage as Talking Heads style guitar funk stutters in the background.
Lunsford is unafraid of rock’s Mount Rushmore figures, disemboweling both the Beatles’ “You Never Give Me Your Money” and the Beach Boys’ “Disney Girls” in her own twisting, writhing, demon-possessed style. She likewise takes a surgical saw to Motown girl pop in “Saddest of Dreams,” against a distant jangle and beat box sputter, singing sweetly about utter failure, a man who can’t seem to rouse himself out of the bathtub.
The lyrics have the effect of a spell, mesmerizing without really giving up their secrets. First line to stick for me was “Modern day fairytales, sex films, Roger Ailes,” from “Some Mothers Do,” and I still have no idea what it means.
And yet, though dark, dangerous and somewhat mysterious, Promiscuous Genes is also a bit of a bop, much more dance-y and body oriented than the previous disc. It’s also a cabinet of curios, leading you, fun-house style past one grotesque after another. The last album that created so many different, faintly disturbing worlds for me was Cindy Lee’s Diamond Jubilee, and that’s a high compliment.
Optik Sink last caught our ear with Glass Blocks in 2023, a volatile concoction of chilly sonics and driving beats, helmed by NOTS’ Nathalie Hoffman, Magic Kids Ben Bauermeister and the Sheiks’ Ken Cooper. The band was Memphis punk all the way through, but without the visceral, sweat-stained, beer-smelling vibe of the scene that grew up around the Oblivians and Jay Reatard. We observed the the album found “an eerie seam between Suicide’s synthy menace, Devo’s robotics and early female-dominated post-punk, the Raincoats and LiliPUT especially.”
Now, two years later, the band retains its haughty froideur, while upping the propulsion. Here on record number three, Optic Sink churns out austere, disciplined post-punk grooves that burble with low-toned synths, slink with drum machine cadences and erupt with fiery bursts of guitar. Manic and dada at the same time, these cuts drive hard through surreal spaces; nothing is normal, but no one is surprised about it either. When Hoffman chants, “An obsession with motion /driving forward with no hands /laughing backwards at full speed,” in the opening cut, “Laughing Backwards” it distills the vibe into one strange, frantic image: constant movement, logical breakdown, cybernetic cool.
It's striking how hard the beats go, given that the drums are all programmed. There’s a rush of energy on this album that’s more focused than before. On standout, “Golden Hour,” the click and pop of drum machine is shrouded by massive dark clouds of Cure-like synths. Blatting dark-new-wave dance riffs, stir the cut to motion, like a robot dreaming about Bootsie Collins.
The guitar work is minimalist and spare, but altogether essential here, as it crashes and slashes through stylishly restrained soundscapes. It’s agitated and dissonant, the warmest, roughest texture on the record, and the contrast shines a spotlight on Hoffman’s aloof, poised vocals. “Do what you want” she cries, repeatedly in “The Luxury of Honesty” and the phrase has never sound more desolate, less hedonistic or more danceable.
Maura Weaver hides a razor edge in pillowy atmospheres of dream pop, her music all coo and chime until it goes for a vein. The singer, out of Cincinnati, has one previous solo album to her credit, as well as some juvenilia in the garage pop outfit called Mixtapes. This sophomore LP gains heft and urgency as it goes on, the bass ratcheting up, the guitars picking up the buzz of rougher, feedback sound. But Weaver herself stays cool and serene in the midst of it all, her voice as softly engaging over sirening, rock-forward “The Face” as in the electro-pop shimmer of “Prince.”
Weaver recorded Strange Devotion with long-time collaborator John Hoffman at a possibly haunted studio called The Lodge in Dayton, Kentucky (it’s a converted Masonic Lodge). Maybe that accounts for the reverberating, dream-casting indefiniteness of this set of songs, which, however upbeat and joyful, seem to hover and float. “Back Home” is propulsive but slippery, its melody hemmed in by criss-crossing vocal parts, its pushing rhythm blurred and softened. It sounds a lot like Brenda Sauter’s Wild Carnation project, a wild keening prisming into harmonies, while the rock song pummels on.
“I’m Not Sleeping” evokes the Cars, with its taut strummed cadence and its wiggy eruptions of keyboards. It rocks pretty hard, but Weaver never shows the strain. Her verses unfurl with clean, tuneful ease—no gulps, grunts or howls. And yet, there’s a bit of a tricky defiance to her delivery, however sweetly it goes down. She reminds me a lot in this one of Colleen Green, who spins a pretty tune without tolerating any sentiment.
This is one of those records where even the best intentioned verbiage will, by its nature, miss the point. It’s a sharp and dreamy interval of girl pop, and who can say, really, why it sounds so good?
