Music

 

Sewerslvt - Pretty Cvnt, Mr Kill Myself and Kawaii Razor Blades

 

 

When I go deep enough into the underground noise scene, sometimes it really does feel like you're in a sewer, but occasionally you can strike gold down there. Though she often makes depressive music, Jvnko, the producer behind Sewerslvt, is really good at making really creative feelings emerge from her music that only uses vocals when it's sampled. Breakcore, basically. Though there was enough anime imagery for me to be drawn in, all the feelings that she managed to conjure up, made me love all this, i don't even think that she's trying so hard to be edgy, because these do not really feel 'edgy' as such, more of a release of negative feelings, and as I've often said in the past, that's something I can recognise and respect.

 

"Pretty Cvnt", though the oldest of these songs, is the one that I played the most in 2020, its sampling of an old anime ending theme is really uplifting, and brings to mind the best of this sort of downtempo dance, the sampled vocals struggling to rise above the noise as the song goes on, love it.

 

"Mr Kill Myself" is a lot more grindy, and a bit longer, but a little clear in its distortion, while "Kawaii Razor Blades" is more along the nanobii style of candy-ish electronic music, with only the minimal bit of distortion to create a bright summery track.

 

Sewerslvt has released a lot of stuff in the last 12 months, after getting a dispute with Spotify sorted more tracks seem to be coming out very quickly, and they show a bit of growth and change from someone young who seems to be growing with their music, already the titles at least seem more self aware and less sad. I need time to get acquainted with her other songs, but she's a very talented producer in the vein of goreshit that I'll be following for a bit more now.

love love love this list so far - sewerslvt is a fav. vtubers are a genre I’m familiar with but I haven’t watched any aside from hololive so the analysis is really interesting~

love love love this list so far - sewerslvt is a fav. vtubers are a genre I’m familiar with but I haven’t watched any aside from hololive so the analysis is really interesting~

 

 

I've watched a few independents that I've seen good stuff from, but mostly I've just watched Hololive too, I just like getting real deep in that particular fanbase, you find some amazing memes that way that make sense when you know all the Hololivers/Holostars and staying in one of their streams for a while is always a great mood enhancer, no matter what they're doing.

Really loved Pretty Cvnt, it's such an intense experience and has a slight witch house vibe to it, really quite a heartbreaking DNQ, If all their stuff is like that, then I'd love if you could send another one of their songs to get justice x

 

I'm halfway through the Queen's Gambit (

so Alma's just died :'(

), I'm not clued up on chess and even now, I find it awfully confusing and I don't normally like period dramas either, but I'm really enjoying the show, the look and feel of it just looks so authentic, I really liked Anya Taylor Joy's performance in The Witch, but she is on fire here, and I like that it's as much a battle with herself as much as the times. There's no comically evil characters or antagonists, it feels refreshingly realistic.

Really loved Pretty Cvnt, it's such an intense experience and has a slight witch house vibe to it, really quite a heartbreaking DNQ, If all their stuff is like that, then I'd love if you could send another one of their songs to get justice x

 

I'm halfway through the Queen's Gambit (

so Alma's just died :'(

), I'm not clued up on chess and even now, I find it awfully confusing and I don't normally like period dramas either, but I'm really enjoying the show, the look and feel of it just looks so authentic, I really liked Anya Taylor Joy's performance in The Witch, but she is on fire here, and I like that it's as much a battle with herself as much as the times. There's no comically evil characters or antagonists, it feels refreshingly realistic.

 

Actually I had been considering whether to give another sewerslvt track a go, maybe in a few months if I can select the right one, there's one on her new album which would be really nice but we'll see.

 

That's really good with The Queen's Gambit, I like that it's set up that people who don't know chess can appreciate it, and even maybe begin to understand some of the terms used and why it gets so intense for those playing it, and it being set so well in the 60s is a really nice touch.

 

(think I'm gonna finish my music posts first then focus on the anime)

 

MUSIC & FILM

 

 

 

Actually I recall there was one film I watched this year that I wanted to write about. Well, that's not true, I think my favourite film that I watched in 2020 was undoubtedly Parasite back at the start when it won its Oscar but this is why I don't really write about films, I have nothing really extra to say that wasn't already gushed over by many at the time and idk, I'm spinning a lot of plates here. However, Hamilton has the advantage of having a lot of good songs attached to it which is the main purpose of this post. A lot of good songs that I only really got introduced to by watching the film version.

 

I like musicals for similar reasons that I like anime OPs, and songs attached to films and TV series, because there's something extra there, and Hamilton in particular covers a very interesting event in history, the war of Independence and the first days of the USA, which is a very interesting and admirable event even as a Brit. And throughout this musical, there's a lot of very good and listenable songs. And a very good retelling of Hamilton's career and filling in some of the gaps I missed not being educated in America and learning about all the Founding Fathers.

 

I have to throw some appreciation to the quick-witted '12 Duel Commandments', the barbed anti-centrist 'Aaron Burr, Sir', the anthemic opener of 'Alexander Hamilton', but my favourite is the audacious 'You'll Be Back', sung by George III (Jonathan Groff), giving an anthem lamenting the lost colony of America, filled with the sort of lyrical satire against imperial colonies that I will eat up whenever it's presented. It also sounds pretty banging with a sing-along chorus that follows a line about 'sending a fully armed battalion/kill your friends and family to remind you of my love'. Hard to forget a song with lyrics like those.

Music

 

Temperance - Viridian (My Demons Can't Sleep)

 

 

One of my favourite bands of the last few years has been Temperance, an Italian symphonic metal band that seem to be carrying on the traditions of bands that are beginning to age, like Within Temptation and Nightwish. Having some new blood to mix up the genre is very welcome, and so I got rather into their 2020 album, Viridian, which, even more so than their great album from a couple of years ago, Of Jupiter And Moons (which had The Last Hope In A World Of Hopes on it), provided a lot of operatic highlights. They also make full use of their multiple vocalists to create a great male-female harmonising routine that's lovely to listen to.

 

First off, it's referring to a beautiful colour, Viridian's title track, a real highlight on a great album is an ode to that beautiful shade of blue-green replacing a world, a world that's ravaged by the Temperance of 'I Am The Fire' and 'My Demons Can't Sleep', two other highlights. Both really do well in the hands of the band's vocalists, but 'My Demons Can't Sleep' adds a sense of urgency by the vocalists melodically finding their way through a heavy guitar track. This is how you stop symphonic metal from becoming boring, both singers sound like they're fighting for control of the mic in a track that never lets up.

 

It's not the only track they do that on, 'Start Another Round' also goes for it with a clear hook line, and you get more cold northern evocations with 'Nanook' later on the album.

 

Honestly, all of this sounds pretty similar, a bit like a lighter Amaranthe, but it all sounds great. If you like duets with male and female rock singers and like the idea of them constantly one-upping each other to deliver lines that feel like biting against a wild natural world, then this is excellent.

MUSIC

 

Katie Dey - MyData (Darkness)

 

 

Laura Bousfield - Palimpsest (Clean Strategic Narratives With Relatable Messaging Murder Them Violently Make Their Children Watch)

 

 

I'm including this pair of albums and phenomenal main songs I love off of the albums in the same post because I got them from the same source - some of the anime folk I follow on Twitter also happen to be excellent music geeks, and so I take notice whenever they post about some alternative album that I think looks weird enough for me to be listening to. This is how I discover music these days. Otherwise, while both of these are electronica, they're quite different.

 

Katie Dey is an internet artist apparently located in Australia. I say internet because the entire album of MyData is about being lost in the technology and how feelings through technology are hard to express and master. And also because she seems about as online as I am. That's enough to make me a fan. But she does really well on this album by stretching her voice through distortion to give off this somewhat unsettling feeling of pop songs sounding distorted. It sells the idea of a disassociated presence reaching out to you, and it also manages to give me nostalgia for the pop I liked back in 2011, as it sounds like twisted machine-messed up versions of the bedroom pop I got into as a teen. There's a lot of rawness that makes it all feel real. Highlights are of course the fist-pumping 'Darkness' and the torturous 'Happiness', but every song on here twists pop in a new direction and it's well worth a listen, even if someone looking for perfect vocals won't find it all pleasant (and that's part of the appeal, I can majorly connect with her on this record).

 

As for Palimpsest, this also takes the idea of making music uncomfortable to listen to and in doing so making it brilliant and memorable to listen to, though that's through excessive beat and track manipulation this time, as stabby noises permeate the entirety of Palimpsest to the point where you have to lean back in amazement wondering just what will show up next until you notice the thing common to the track, the underlying power of the vocal line slowly coming out from behind the sound effects to take over the track. It does this best on the track with the longest title here 'Clean Strategic Narratives...' but it also does it on say, 'If We Save One Child It Will All Be Worth It', or on the brilliantly titled 'Crawling Into A Fireplace Cackling'. It's a short listen at just 31 minutes with 13 tracks, so if you feel like your music should be attacking and capturing you, then this is absolutely worth a full listen.

Music

Power metal and Avantasia

 

 

I love power metal and I don't apologise for it, for the most part it just manifests as really earnest European rock that is heavy on the melody, heavy on the guitars and creates a bunch of memorable songs with good lyrics, even if they're often nonsense about fantasy lands. It might not have much subtlety, but it's a very fun genre and everyone involved tends to look like they're having the time of their lives, just look at the people in Gloryhammer's "Hootsforce" for example. Beast In Black, Twilight Force, Dragonforce, these are bands I'm very happy to have in my life.

 

I turn to Avantasia, a power-symphonic metal operatic rock project thing, specifically because in my period of lockdown at the start of the year, I picked out Avantasia from among the rest to go through their back catalogue and familiarise myself with it, because Tobias Sammet's particular brand of making it a rock opera project he turns to whenever he feels he hasn't been flamboyantly pompous enough elsewhere makes it really appeal as a band with a consistent narrative, and concept albums, lots of concept albums, always my favourite type. Particularly falling in love with their most played song, "Farewell", from their 2001 album was a good experience, it's a great and ridiculous way to say goodbye or sayonara or whatever. Avantasia covers of popular songs are also always a highlight, "Lay All Your Love On Me" being of particular note.

 

Avantasia's most recent album was the lunar Moonglow, as usual about some sort of fairytale fantasy, including a cover of "Maniac", but most about fey and lunar folklore. The best is the title track, a rock ballad duet between Sammet and singer Candice Night, with a beautiful set of dramatic backdrops against lyrics a magical moon that carries you with its light all the way to the other side, with great spoken interjections like the lyric 'in this enchanted magic night' to create a breath before the chorus. Best symphonic metal track I've discovered this year, it's from 2019, but it made up enough of my year by leading the charge of my Avantasia obsession.

 

Nightwish - Human :||: Nature

 

 

5 years since the last album by my favourite band. Five long years to discover whether Floor Jansen could build on the brilliant start that she'd made with Endless Forms Most Beautiful. It would have been easy for Human Nature to be underwhelming, and it was a little, as it's the first time in 5 albums that the Nightwish album released in that year (2004, 2007, 2011 and 2015) isn't my favourite album released in that year. In part that was because of so much change in my life that old things went by the wayside a bit.

 

But it was still very good, and showed a lovely progression from the scientific and biophysical concepts present on Endless Forms Most Beautiful to a more anthropological examination of the human condition. Which you might expect from an album with this title. I foresee tough times ahead for Nightwish, as early in 2021, male vocalist Marko Hietala left the band, I've always valued his vocal and guitar skills as central to the band, so he'll be tough to replace. But for now, this was a nice and much desired new entry into the voluminous Nightwish canon. :wub:

 

Nightwish are still very much aligned to the realms of astrophysics and the natural world with their song concepts, harkening back to a more primordial time with many of the evocations they use, but they went a bit more advanced here, the first track "Music" is a soundtrack extravaganza aimed at exploring the very concept of music itself. This follows directly into lead single "Noise", like last album's lead single "Élan" it's not the best they've ever done but is so much of an easy listen that I racked up loads of plays of it without even thinking about it.

 

The best track is "Harvest", which follows their album tradition of providing a folksy song like "The Islander" on Dark Passion Play, or "My Walden" on Endless Forms Most Beautiful, always different but it works every now and again, and really does here. Again, with the Human Nature theme, this is early man in the Agricultural Revolution, though it's also about the meaning of life as a whole, as is the great and charismatic track "Pan" which follows it.

 

The final half of the album is a big Nightwish half hour project "All The Works Of Nature That Adorn The World", but this time split up into separate tracks, as opposed to being one 24 minute song like last time. This is filled with great quotes, e.g. "I love not man the less, but nature more" and stunning string instrumentals to lead you through a long journey that I must admit I've only set out on a couple of times but will surely do more so in the future. The last part is named "Ad Astra" (or "To The Stars") and brings the best of this hopeful, evocative feeling on a long album to a close in an absolutely glorious way, making me feel complete while doing so.

 

Human :||: Nature is very overblown and is probably not going to win Nightwish many new fans (those need to go start with Once or Dark Passion Play), but camp overblown feelings about just WHY we are here and what we can do with our limited time in the sun is why I've stayed on board this train through a long journey from fantasy into reality. There is no band quite like exactly them.

Music

 

Clipping.

 

 

I like rap groups, particularly if they seem to treat music as an exploration of their own interests/messages to give out, and in all intents and purposes act like a band that raps rather than sings. There's a direction behind clipping, and that solid artistic direction made me get on board with them fully in 2020, through their late 2019 album There Existed An Addiction To Blood and its 2020 companion peace Visions Of Bodies Being Burned.

 

They have a high range, starting with highly creepy rap on "Nothing Is Safe", which is so unnerving as a track I'm often apprehensive about listening to it, there

to violent floorstompers on "Blood Of The Fang" to the attitude of '96 Neve Campbell', to the haunting backdrop of "Enlacing", it's a lot of excellent hip-hop that you won't find a whole package of anywhere else. Particularly the flow done by rapper Daveed Diggs is very addictive, mostly menacingly lethargic but occasionally coming alive in a very frightening and energetic way.

 

Both albums are very dark and pessimistic, downright horrific in the way it describes certain scenes at times, which I guess earns it the label of horrorcore. But that's only because it's clearly got a bone to pick with the societal position of hip-hop. "Blood Of The Fang" is essentially "This Is America" ground up and given an +18 label for violence, still on the ills of American society and their love of violence. But yeah, the idea is to make the listener scared, and I'm happy to say that they've succeeded, going in for a clipping. listening session is not something I take lightly, even though I love all of it.

 

To sum it all up, I guess I will look at the lyrics of, I could pick many, but to keep it short, "Say The Name" off Visions Of Bodies..., which like its counterpart "Blood Of The Fang" on There Is An Addiction, opens up with distorted chanting of the album title. It quickly builds a picture of a tortured place, a mob demanding justice, references to Guernica and Scarface, a woman in an abusive relationship, it opens the album with a description of a devilish, occult ritual of bodies burned and the rest of the album is no less scary. Most clipping. songs describe something happening detached from the speaker, which just serves to make the whole enterprise more unnerving, this is abstract body horror demanding your empathy.

 

Horrorcore rap with excellent background production and topics that occasionally makes reference to modern issues and with a great flow besides, I love this group.

Music

 

Clipping.

 

I like rap groups, particularly if they seem to treat music as an exploration of their own interests/messages to give out, and in all intents and purposes act like a band that raps rather than sings. There's a direction behind clipping, and that solid artistic direction made me get on board with them fully in 2020, through their late 2019 album There Existed An Addiction To Blood and its 2020 companion peace Visions Of Bodies Being Burned.

 

They have a high range, starting with highly creepy rap on "Nothing Is Safe", which is so unnerving as a track I'm often apprehensive about listening to it, there

to violent floorstompers on "Blood Of The Fang" to the attitude of '96 Neve Campbell', to the haunting backdrop of "Enlacing", it's a lot of excellent hip-hop that you won't find a whole package of anywhere else. Particularly the flow done by rapper Daveed Diggs is very addictive, mostly menacingly lethargic but occasionally coming alive in a very frightening and energetic way.

 

Both albums are very dark and pessimistic, downright horrific in the way it describes certain scenes at times, which I guess earns it the label of horrorcore. But that's only because it's clearly got a bone to pick with the societal position of hip-hop. "Blood Of The Fang" is essentially "This Is America" ground up and given an +18 label for violence, still on the ills of American society and their love of violence. But yeah, the idea is to make the listener scared, and I'm happy to say that they've succeeded, going in for a clipping. listening session is not something I take lightly, even though I love all of it.

 

To sum it all up, I guess I will look at the lyrics of, I could pick many, but to keep it short, "Say The Name" off Visions Of Bodies..., which like its counterpart "Blood Of The Fang" on There Is An Addiction, opens up with distorted chanting of the album title. It quickly builds a picture of a tortured place, a mob demanding justice, references to Guernica and Scarface, a woman in an abusive relationship, it opens the album with a description of a devilish, occult ritual of bodies burned and the rest of the album is no less scary. Most clipping. songs describe something happening detached from the speaker, which just serves to make the whole enterprise more unnerving, this is abstract body horror demanding your empathy.

 

Horrorcore rap with excellent background production and topics that occasionally makes reference to modern issues and with a great flow besides, I love this group.

 

Love clipping! My route in was discovering “Nothing Is Safe” at Halloween in 2019 and I haven't looked back since. The concepts/ideas behind There Existed An Addiction To Blood and Visions Of Bodies Being Burned combine two of my favourite things (horror films and music) so I was always going to be on board.

 

Finally: Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop. If you vote for him again, you're a white supremacist, full stop.

 

:D

Music

 

Demondice - Alkatraz (album)

 

 

(bonus: Séyetana collaboration)

 

Somehow, though I discovered it in November, "Alkatraz", the song, became my most played song of 2020 just as the turn of the year happened. I think it's fair to say I'm a little obsessed with it and DEMONDICE in general, as there's very few artists like her. She's another rapper, but unlike clipping., her discography is almost entirely fun - though she's certainly a weeb and involved in the Japanese rap scene more than the American rap scene (I can tell because there's occasional Japanese sprinkled throughout her songs and some of her early songs talk about her move to Japan), some of her early work also laments the general bad situation that America is in (particularly her 2018 album and opening tracks American Saikoro).

 

The album that she'd put out when I found her and the one I got most attached to was Alkatraz, where, clearly in honour of the 20s coming back around again, she went down an electro-swing direction and added plenty of sax, swing and jazz influences to this short mini-album. And that really created something unique.

 

Alkatraz as a track is brimming with attitude and charisma, telling a story through its music video of criminals sent to max security Alkatraz, then having to sell their soul to a demon (DEMONDICE herself) in order to escape. I can't stress enough how much I love her flow on this track, fast and with unusual INCREDIBLY verbose rhymes ("hell's unbroken stallions, valiant swing rapscallions", "he who runs a circus tends to be nefariously merciless", the insane "hide your claws obey their ridiculous laws and mimic their dance, be reverential soldiers until we get that chance", the unintentionally cute "I'm gonna make it out alive with or without you, man", I just really feel her personality all through this track, the incredibly boppy electro-swing backing helps elevate it and it's one of my favourite songs I've heard in a long time.

 

Fortunately, she's far from being only as good as one song, even if we're just limiting it to this album, and I shouldn't really. Well worth listening to a short 30 minute album if you want some modern sounds of the 1920s in your life. "Sick Outta Fashion" is a downtempo ballad that digs deeper into her clashes with people's expectations of a musical hip-hop artist and her own beliefs in people being themselves, stop complaining and being a "sad boy", "Raging Ray & Jin" goes further with the swing theme, telling a classic 1920s story about an eccentric couple, rapped very fast by a talented demon rapper, while "You're An Ace, Kid", the closer, is a classic pick-me-up encouraging someone down on their luck to step up and keep going. I would normally suspicious of motivation songs like this, but it's delivered so brightly I can't help but find it inspiring.

 

More than anything, I find this style of pop rap where the focus is on lyrical flow more than anything else, but with everything else sounding bright and peppy so not a bad thing, absolutely addicting to listen to and I'm playing the shit out of all of Demondice's discography right now. She's so good.

Love clipping! My route in was discovering “Nothing Is Safe” at Halloween in 2019 and I haven't looked back since. The concepts/ideas behind There Existed An Addiction To Blood and Visions Of Bodies Being Burned combine two of my favourite things (horror films and music) so I was always going to be on board.

 

Finally: Donald Trump is a white supremacist, full stop. If you vote for him again, you're a white supremacist, full stop.

 

:D

 

I found "Blood Of The Fang" just over a year ago, that and "Nothing Is Safe" got me hooked for life.

 

Oh yes, I almost referenced "Chapter 319" but forgot to, I often overlook it because it's not on either album but that's probably one of their best contributions to popular culture by going direct out and saying what is more in subtext in the rest of their songs in favour of horror stuff being more front and centre - both of course absolutely based ways to deliver music.

I'm making this the penultimate music post, as the one after that contains what I've decided is my favourite song of 2020, but for this one, it's time to actually talk about a Buzzjack fave:

 

Music

 

Rina Sawayama - SAWAYAMA

 

 

I had had Sawayama on my radar for a little bit, particularly because "Alterlife" back in 2017 was so good, though I'd also have a renaissance with it this year to the point I think even better of it now. But I wasn't really prepared for her to put out perhaps the best Western pop album I've heard in a long time. And I think the principal reason for that is that she's Japanese* that she's very talented at melding together different genres, and seems like a wonderful person to support what with getting vocal on Twitter in just the right way:

 

@1352227246224891904

 

Very proud to be a Pixel. I used to not hold with fan names but between Mori Calliope (Dead Beats) and Rina, I think they're growing on me.

 

Sawayama is a fantastic album, and I'd call it my album of 2020, it's everything I want from pop, it really feels like a real record made with care by the artist, put out to say something, that it is her statement to the world about who she is, straddled between two worlds, and using the opportunity of that to forge one's own path and make life your own beast. "Paradisin'", my favourite optimistic track on the album, pretty much says as much.

 

Not that it ignores the issues either, with "XS" being about late stage consumption, making a traditional pop refrain of 'give me just a little bit more' sound sinister, "Commes Des Garçons" being about the rejection of traditional gender roles, or my favourite, "STFU" going absolutely HUGE and hard with a heavy rock backing - this was the first track that signalled to me that something was up with the latest Rina era, and it's awesome, like a lost Grimes song.

 

I think every track on this is great, from the rest, there's the melodic "Bad Friend", "Who's Gonna Save You Now?" has great momentum after the chorus, and I can't not love her crooning out TOKYOOO on "Tokyo Love Hotel", as well as admitting that 'it's just another song about Tokyo'.

 

Ultimately what's different with Sawayama in comparison to other albums like it is the lyrical skills and complex genre influences that Rina used on here, that hold my interest for the opening part of the album to loving the rest of it, to the point where I'd call her a generational talent. It's not starting a new genre, it's just taking the best of British and American music in the last 2 decades and putting all of that into a very personal record that could only have been made by the artist who did it.

 

*on this: Eastern pop is generally quite different and I tend to like it more for reasons of chords and classical influences (which is basically why I'll take anime songs over whatever is in the charts most of the time), this counts as modern Western pop (and so is an exception) because it's in the Western pop tradition of other indie-pop artists, nothing to do with her ethnicity and while that made me take initial notice of her, it's obviously got nothing to do with me loving her now or I'd have been stanning her with "RINA", which, Alterlife aside, was only okay.

Music

 

Sufjan Stevens - America, The Ascension, My Rajneesh

 

 

 

 

Another artist that I really started listening to properly for the first time in a big way in 2020 was Sufjan Stevens. Prior to this, I'd enjoyed Chicago and occasional scattered songs that I'd heard fans of indie-pop recommending me, Christmas Unicorn, Impossible Soul, the like. I'd never really listened to a full album, though I'd been impressed with his artistry.

 

Somewhere along the way I changed that, including one particular part, having to write about Carrie & Lowell for a Buzzjack Ultimate Album post, made me change that, though in truth I'd already been changed by the single he released in the middle of the year, and I'd listened to whatever "Aporia" was when it came out, so I'd been primed into becoming a huge fan. But I've been loving playing Carrie & Lowell so much since I did that, it's an awesome indie-folk album. I bet a lot more sophisticated commentary was written about it in 2015. But it's hautning and beautiful and hold on, let me go find what I wrote about it for that Ultimate Album post:

76 – Sufjan Stevens – Carrie And Lowell – 93 points

 

As with other albums I’ve written for, my first thought on seeing ‘Carrie & Lowell’ is ‘this isn’t my favourite album from this artist’. That’s not to disparage ‘Carrie & Lowell’, it’s still good, even great, but the only track from it that I’d personally call a Sufjan fave is ‘Drawn To The Blood’. Though I’d also say that I’m in the process of exploring his discography a lot more lately, so this is subject to change, and the relaxed nature and underlying emotion of ‘Carrie & Lowell’ certainly give off the impression of an album that grows on you.

 

Released in 2015, ‘Carrie & Lowell’ is a lot more lo-fi than a lot of Sufjan’s work, with limited instrumentation, and to its credit, it does show off Sufjan’s wonderful voice very well on most of the tracks. Named after Sufjan’s late mother and her husband, it does feel a lot more personal than the others of Sufjan’s albums that I know. Considering I know him a lot more for really weird experimental tracks from The Age Of Adz or the more bombastic stuff from his latest album, to hear a whole folk album from him now feels the unusual experience. It’s a good one though, Sufjan is well worth getting interested in, I think he’s starting to really, finally, cultivate a good fanbase on Buzzjack and the appreciation of albums like this is at the cornerstone of that.

 

Knew it was something blasphemous! I disavow! It is my favourite Sufjan album right now! Hell, "Fourth Of July" I began loving barely a week after I wrote that, "In The Shade Of The Shadow Of The Cross" and "Should Have Known Better" are also now in my favourites. The description of the relationship of his mother and stepdad that he goes into such detail writing beautiful lyrics for, following it up with gorgeous instrumentation, and given it's following his mother's death... I'm very late of course, but it's incredibly heartbreaking and so good for those reasons.

 

Anyway, his 2020 stuff. Got sidetracked.

 

"America" was something I heard when it came out, I am very attracted to songs that are clearly about the sickness of American culture. Not because I hate America but because it so clearly can be better than what it is, and this song knows it too, lamenting what's happened to American culture as something that shouldn't have happened.

 

Then The Ascension released, and that's yet more amazing indie-pop, with songs like "Run Away With Me", "Ativan", "Ursa Major", the choral bits of "Lamentations", the outwardly demanding nature of "Make Me An Offer I Cannot Refuse", there's a lot to love on this grand appreciation of most of Sufjan's styles that I've heard from him over the years. Great album and great entry into the canon of 2020.

 

But in all that, there was something else that stood out from the pack, that combined everything I love into a single 10 minute track. Melodic undercurrent, voice straining with emotion, lyrics with symbolic representation, lyrics based on a real-life story. When I thought about it, I don't think there's a 2020 song I love more than "My Rajneesh", something that makes me go on a beautiful journey every time I listen to it, that I HAVE to turn the volume up to lose myself in the crashing soundscape, that I've made a regular start to my playlist on my walks to the subway station because it's the right length and right form of exuberance for me to enjoy walking.

 

Something was up with "My Rajneesh" from the moment I heard "They gave us names, they said my name means war, Dwelling in song, the lion and the lamb were restored". Lion and lamb indicates something religious, something dominant, and the note of 'giving names' indicates someone inducted into something they probably shouldn't be. Without actual knowledge of what Rajneeshpuram actually was prior to this, my first thought was British colonialism in India, but reading up about this 80s cult movement and terrors it did give the song a new level of menace, something it always had but now a little less divorced. There is no way that lines like "and now we are blessed by the righteousness of the Lord" are anything but pointed satire, though Sufjan certainly plays the part very well as the song builds to a crescendo. And what a crescendo it is. Beautiful deliberate lyrics, huge walls of sound with multiple instrumentation, it's a perfectly layered song that makes me feel alive.

 

Now that I know it's about a cult leader and the devotion that his followers had to him, it hits even harder with the feeling of elation. "Stare at the sun to see the sublime, forgetting the light that makes you go blind" is a perfect lyric for both the tunnel vision that members of a cult have, and for losing yourself in the beauty of this song.

 

Ultimately, it's powerful. Very powerful. In all senses. Best song of 2020.

Great write-up for Sufjan, glad there's another big fan of My Rajneesh here, it got me interested in the topic as I had never really read much about it before! The album as it was was great though, America & Run Away With Me were special highlights. I shamefully haven't heard his other albums yet, I should really change that!

 

Blood on the Fang did really grow on me throughout the year even though I didn't point it at the time, I started appreciating alternate/experimental hip hop a lot more this year (listening to some classic albums of the style definitely helped).

I've heard a few Sufjan songs this year but not any of the ones you've listed I don't think. Giving Run Away With Me a play now, whilst it's not the sort of music I would generally listen to it is sounding quite nice, the soft vocals are nice and the piano adds a nice touch as well.

Thank you to everyone who commented while I was doing my music rundown. I'm going to try and finish off this thread, by covering the remaining good anime (about 13 or 14 posts worth) I want to talk about, finishing with a writeup on the new Higurashi anime, which was my favourite anime of 2020. All of these shows are given my recommendation, as well as the previous ones I've talked about in the thread x

 

Anime

 

Baccano! (2007) and Durarara!! (2010, 2015)

 

Baccano! and Durarara!! (sometimes known as DRRR) often get compared, as they are by the same author, and follow the same style of story, multiple viewpoint characters with vague supernatural elements taking part in an environment of gang warfare where the theme is how seemingly incredibly unrelated people can end up being connected.

 

Baccano! was the first anime I completed in full in 2020, and the only one I completed, along with Anohana, without the threat of lockdown looming, so I completed it in high spirits. It's actually one anime that I feel I should have watched the dub for, as it's set in America with American characters, I shall have to do that on a rewatch. Anyway, while it was initially very confusing, as it opens in media res and constantly switches back and forth between three time periods, it tells a very punchy, fun story, with great art, characters and vibes.

 

It's set in 1930s America, with the major point of action being set on, before and after an incident on a train travelling from Chicago to New York. Involved with this incident are a variety of colourful characters, from the oddball on-the-run thief couple Isaac and Miria, who act as comic relief, to the cowardly Jacuzzi Splot and his partner Nice Holystone, to precocious child Czeslaw Meyer, to train hijackers led by gang leader Ladd Russo, to a mysterious old man called Szilard Quates and his companion Ennis. All of them are connected, along with a bunch of others, and you get a bunch of really high-octane, nonstop action for your troubles. It unfortunately doesn't end the story, the anime never got a continuation, but as a standalone on just the train incident, it's a well-contained story for anyone who likes disaster train stories and gangster wars. And Isaac/Miria really are a unique pairing that are either intensely annoying or ludicrously and hilariously dumb depending on your viewpoint.

 

The opening, 'Guns & Roses' by Paradise City is an unusual example of an (mostly) instrumental anime OP, a spunky jazz instrumental that pans over all the characters in some really inventive transitions and importantly, gives you their names so you have less trouble figuring out who is who.

 

 

Durarara!!

 

Durarara!! at first glance seems like people who read the author's first work liked the idea of Baccano, and wanted him to do a version of it that was not set in America in the past, but rather in Japan, in the present, in a very specific neighbourhood of Tokyo, Ikebukuro (and many of the incidental locations in the anime are accurate to this setting). Again, there's a lot of connection between seemingly disparate characters, some gang members working behind the scenes, lots of people working behind the scenes in fact, and certain characters having powers which, while not so apparent as to be called superpowers, are quite supernatural in origin.

 

The original premise is that Mikado, a highschool student who is moving back to Ikebukuro, meets up with Kida, an old friend, who is used to the current street life of this area of the city, in particular one legend about an anonymous motorcyclist known as the Black Rider, who is rumoured to have no head. Additionally, street gangs marked by colours often roam the area, but one particular gang, which is colourless, known as the Dollars, has been growing lately. Even more than in Baccano, the viewpoint character changes every episode, sometimes it's Mikado or Kida, other times it's their quiet but pretty friend Anri, other times it goes right into the world of adulthood with the doctor Shinra, the two mortal enemies of Izaya and Shizuo, or the Black Rider herself, Celty. There's also a good form of comic relief in the form of a crew of four vigilantes who travel around in a van, two of whom are massive otakus and make very up-to-date references (for 2010) to current anime and manga regularly.

 

I've watched season 1 and then the first of 3 parts of DRRR's second season so far, it is at times slow-going and isn't quite as good as Baccano overall, but a fun set of characters and a continual introduction of new elements to the story keeps it interesting as the various main characters wonder around their own worlds occasionally interacting with each other.

 

Durarara's OP is more set along the lines of an indie-rock song, but it follows the same logic of Baccano of following fun cuts between characters and giving you all the characters' names to help you remember them. It pans over them all in the ending themes too. But because there's more than one, watching which characters appear and disappear between arcs as a new theme shows up is a really fun exercise to work out who's getting a focus in the story this time.

 

Anime

 

theme: Ghosty anime

 

Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun (2020)

 

 

There are a number of Japanaese urban legends that occasionally show up in supernatural anime, so I know lots of the school legends through osmosis now, and one of them is the ghost of a girl named Hanako (a female Japanese name) who died in a school bathroom and is cursed to haunt it. So how about an anime where Hanako is summoned, but he's actually a boy this time around, a mischievous boy who sets about tasking the girl who summoned him with cleaning up the school's spirit world, which is currently overrun by monsters and bad rumours. The girl, Nene, is daunted but sets about this task kind of happily.

 

Animated by the same studio that did Assasination Classroom, I think my biggest criticism of Hanako-Kun is that it was animated almost entirely on the backdrop of manga panels, with most being a 1:1 copy and only limited animation movement, as such it's often hard to tell whether a colour picture like the one above was originally from the anime or the manga. That small quibble aside, it's a great story that uses the various urban legends it covers in inventive ways, eventually has this abrasive joker of a character in Hanako become closer to Nene as she works alongside him getting rid of monsters, and is a good seasonal anime for anyone with an interest in an artsy depiction of some really beautiful abstract settings, the endless stairs based off of a rumour of death for someone who steps on the fourth set of stairs, or the hall of mirrors that reveals everyone's deep insecurities (e.g. Nene thinks she has legs that look like daikon, a root vegetable, even though in actuality she's very cute, as are most of the cast tbqh).

 

Basically a fun light-hearted comedic look at some supernatural school legends, which is I suppose what the next one was originally supposed to be...

 

Ghost Stories (2000 (2005))

 

 

"Monsters only get evil people like Republicans and we're not allowed to vote"

“The internet was a blessing from the Lord Jesus to spread the word of God throughout the world, but pedophiles and Muslims stole it and used its holy power to seduce children like yourself into sin.”

 

My recommendation of Ghost Stories comes with a couple of huge asterisks, one, the only version that's notable is the rather infamous 2005 dub version that turned what was a pretty average but forgettable anime about a bunch of kids uncovering ghost stories into an irreverent abridged version where the dub cast are doing their best to create some occasionally genius humour out of the very generic situations that occur, and obviously a lot of meta humour about being a bad generic anime. This is only about the dub, because watching this sort of thing played straight is, well, I will give many things the time of day when played straight, as I don't like to mock for the sake of it as otherwise all you'll have is mocking, but watching this sort of thing played straight is kinda dull. It's just standard Japanese ghost stories with a vague overarching theme. But this dub is a work of art unto itself, full of great quotes scattered through. At its best, it's as good at this sort of laugh-a-minute style thing as something like Airplane.

 

Because it's an irreverent comedy from yesteryear I've described it as 33% good meta jokes, 33% rather problematic jokes and 33% one of the girls is an insane fundamentalist Christian, because they decided to go that angle with her character and she can barely say any lines without sneaking some jesus lovin' in there. The problematic jokes are my second asterisk. They don't necessarily turn me off from watching it but they can be a bit off-colour, with one of the kids made into a barely legible autist, occasional ableist, queerphobic and racist jokes that can be placed into the context of a comedy show from 2005, not that it makes them any less uncomfortable when they do show up. Like shows like South Park, it does do a heavy load of targeting everyone, and is probably to the left of South Park in who it ends up saving any huge vitriol for, but that doesn't make it any better. At times, watching it this year was very fun, at other times, the fact that I generally don't like watching those sorts of South Park/Family Guy 'offensive' adult animated comedies anymore grated.

 

Ultimately, do you want a dated comedy show making out-of-nowhere references and occasional great lines, a transformative work improvising comedy out of basically nothing, set to the backdrop of a kids show about uncovering ghosts? Perhaps not, but it's something you won't find exactly anywhere else.

Anime

 

theme: sports anime

 

Chihayafuru (S1) (2011)

 

 

Season 3 of Chihayafuru was airing at at the start of this year, so with many on my anime timeline recommending it as a great sports show with a powerful lead character, I decided to give it a go. It's one of those Japanese anime that's about a very specifically Japanese concept that it fulfils my Japanophile (as in a genuine interest in the culture) needs a lot, and I've learned a lot about a game I would have otherwise never heard of, and that is Karuta.

 

So far, I've watched Season 1, and after taking a break for a few months, I started season 2 a few days ago, so this will just cover the set-up of the situation in Season 1, which, very accurately for a high-school series, covers the freshman year of the main characters at their high school exactly, and the tournaments they go to.

 

(Competitive) Karuta is a game that features a selection of 100 classic Japanese poems, known as the Hyakunin Isshu. They are all printed on cards, which are lined up in front of the players. A speaker begins reading one of the poems, and the players need to race to find its associated card before their opponent. Really good competitive players memorise it from the first sound.

 

Enter Chihaya Ayase, a beautiful strong girl with a very obsessive tendency (plus a seriously stunning character design), introduced to karuta in her childhood, the first few episodes are entirely of her at a younger age, and determined to start a high school club. She and a group of friends she ropes together form a club that otherwise wouldn't be very popular and enter nationwide tournaments, in part to find her childhood friend who taught her the game but moved across Japan to Fukui not long after he did so.

 

While I honestly have no idea how to play Karuta and ordinarily wouldn't pay attention to a show just about it, the system of tournaments, on-board strategies, the coaching style, how seriously everyone takes it reminds me very much of how seriously I took chess at one point, and this sort of intense gaming competition is something I'm very much into. The appeal of sports anime is watching characters face struggles and overcome them, and the competitive backdrop, the beautiful Japanese literature touches, the earnestness of the characters, particularly Chihaya herself, makes this show very easy to watch when I'm in the right frame of mind - and now I've gone through one iteration of cheering for all 5 of the main characters, I'm finding the second season a lot easier to pick up and go through, it'll probably continue to be an easy watch for me from now on.

 

Iwa Kakeru: Sports Climbing Girls (2020)

 

 

There was a show about Dumbbells and working out in the gym in 2019, that got me back to the gym, and this is the first thing I thought of when I saw Iwa Kakeru rock up on the seasonal schedule. Basically some dumb fun with cute girls who show a bit of muscle working up a sweat and to be entirely fair, there isn't a lot more to it than that. It does go into the sport of climbing in the way that many sports anime, unlike Chihayafuru above, it doesn't establish itself as a top-tier version of that, it doesn't have a long enough run to fully do justice to the journeys of its characters.

 

But what it does have is a fun, cute, easy-going nature with the main character translating her knowledge of puzzle gaming to that of climbing up a wall, and doing the whole scaling the route thing. It was a fun seasonal watch, basically, I need a few of those that aren't particularly anything deep or even sus. More power to muscle girls.

Anime

 

theme: misunderstanding romance anime (a severely highly populated sub-category for myself)

 

We Never Learn (2019)

 

 

We Never Learn is an anime that is partly about education (one of my favourite episodes in it ends with the teacher character pondering that 18-year olds are far too young to be deciding their life direction at the age that university applications ask them to), but more prominently is just a modern take on the harem anime concept, with a slight "intelligent" concept behind it. That intelligent concept is that the main character is a competent all-rounder, and he's being asked to tutor three girls who are all supremely talented at one thing, but for some reason, want to study the thing they are not talented at in their further education.

 

Therefore, the maths prodigy wants to study humanities, the literature beauty wants to study astrophysics and there's also a swimmer character who is hopeless at a lot of things, but particularly English. Some of their situations revolve around them being educationally challenged, many of them involve the girls accidentally getting close to the main character, some involve him unknowingly overhearing them, there's a lot of hilarious situations. Ultimately the best ones though are when the show gets serious for a second, delves into the backstories of the girls, why they actually do want to study the subjects they aren't good at, and there's some rather interesting answers.

 

It's not perfect, but it's a lot of fun for a comedic show and the girls have some of the nicest character designs I've seen in a harem, particularly Fumino, whose love of the stars I absolutely echo and her blue hair and initial mediation position in the race for the main character's heart (which obviously eventually puts her in a great position to be THE ONE (perhaps?) places her immediately in the sorts of characters I adore for being exactly like me. And while she's a clear winner, what's most surprising to me is that the other girls in the setting are almost as great. I could be rooting for them all were they in other shows. So basically a silly comedy show that occasionally makes a serious point in the right way.

 

Oregairu (My Romantic Youth Comedy Was Wrong, As I Expected (Season 3) (2020))

 

 

Season 3 of Oregairu. The first two seasons of which I watched in 2018 and enjoyed a lot for the ways you got into the characters heads, Hachiman with his anger at the world, Yukino with her detachment from it and Yui with her happiness that kept both of the others grounded. Season 3 was delayed. Quite a bit. Even more so than usual because of COVID.

 

Unfortunately the delay sort of took its toll, by the time it came round it took me a while to remember what was going on in the show and it didn't stick with me nearly as well as it had beforehand. It's now in winter, graduation is coming up, and the arc is largely just about graduation and the characters organising a prom. Which does have its unique charms considering Yukino's stubbornness (and incredible look in a dress suit), but overall, not quite as good as the previous seasons. Maybe I was in a different mood.

 

There's a good theme of overcoming adolescence, notable scenes from the previous seasons are revisited with a slightly more mature context, like a liaison with a group of students from another school. In the previous seasons, this clash of rivals took up a lot of time, with Hachiman despairing at the elitist mood and traditional outlook of his organising committee rivals, in this one, things are far more amiable and they manage to plan for events with much less of a hitch. Part of the series' overall themes of slow maturity into adolescence.

 

Oregairu is perhaps at times a little up itself, especially with the indulgence that carries over into this season. But then, aren't all the best shows? I still enjoyed it a lot.