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poppyseedheartAs you may or may not know, I had a terrible week and the new SKZ album Maxident absolutely fucks.
I was talking to a friend recently about how there are angles of mental illness and trauma that freak out most people who haven't been there themselves. Considering my line of work, I think I'm kind of hard to freak out at this point, but it's different when it's friends and family, right? That unprofessional heart-first connection can throw that cool calm out the window a little. In my own life as the Sometimes Alarming Friend, that used to mostly manifest as eating disorder thoughts, but it's shifted over time. These days it's mean little intrusive thoughts that talking about doesn't tend to help. I won't get into specifics here for the same reason I haven't gotten into specifics anywhere. It's ugly stuff, and (in the least self-effacing way possible) nobody needs to hear it. It's enough that it's in my head, you know?
Chill is my favorite song off of Maxident on a first listen. I put it on and my brain went quiet. Han Jisung has always been my favorite songwriter in the group — the number of times I've listened to Slump, to 19, to Sunshine, to Wish You Back, to Alien, to Close... to Fairytale, which is a random b-side on a Japanese mini album that's almost definitely going to be my top listened to song of the year... I just think he has this beautiful elegant earnestness to the way he puts feelings into music and I appreciate it very much as someone who tends to resonate with them. This one is groovier, laidback and fun and a little bittersweet. An ode to an ending. Me Bait, if you will. I'll always get swept up in the seductive promise that the hard thing can be pretty and fruitful.
Can't Stop might be my second favorite. Vocalracha are so fucking cute. I have other reasons but you need to know that this is the main one. I feel so healed when I listen to this song. Their cheerful Day 6 slay. Their darling choreo-assisted party anthem. If Chill is about the breath after letting go of too much of a good thing, Can't Stop daringly and delightfully promises forever. This time it's the good thing that's easy. To throw yourself at something. For that to be enough.
I only had to attend one of my three classes this week, and worked and wrote and recorded videos and pretended to be a slug, mostly, for the rest of the time. I'm generally at my worst without a schedule, and am looking ahead to the next few days of freeform time with no small amount of dread. When I'm like this time goes mushy, and the murk of my emotions feels colorless. I'll try and plan some stuff, try and sit quietly with friends in person or on a voice call. Try to fill the empty space with something other than myself.
Super Board glitters and riots in equal measure. The sheer amount of fun they managed to pack into every second of that song made it my third favorite, and it's going to get a lot of play time from me. It's playful as hell, which is definitely a theme in chunks of this album. I love its irreverence. I love its goofy camp. In my head this one goes with the title track: Case 143 as the opposite of apology. As riot and technicolor, as the other side of shame. A love song where love is a mess, and thank god for that. A catchy hook, a can't-tear-your-eyes-away meta-as-hell music video, a beat you could march to. I was nervous about liking it, but I'm all on board. Sometimes what I need is an explosion. It delivers.
When my brain is bees I come back to the same phrases compulsively. Lately it's been wanting to ask people to mercy kill me, which— jeez, talk about bringing the mood down. But there is an ironic little edge to it, the grin under the pang. Like wanting someone to punch you so you can smile all bloody at them after. I hear that in this album sometimes. I hear it all over the place. Maybe it's just the echo chamber of my own head, but maybe it's the same adrenaline rush that has people getting tattoos or jumping out of planes. I would go to a field and scream if I thought this body remembered how.
The rap at the start of Give Me Your TMI is, in my opinion, better in the mashup, and I can't tell how many of the ten different songs in one I truly love, but the chorus wins me right back every time I try to write it off. The opposite of an omen, perhaps. A sign that dissonance doesn't have to fracture. That there can be something worth grabbing onto even in a mess.
3Racha and Taste are both incredibly strong showings from strong units who usually put out songs I like a lot. No surprises there, but pleasure and delight all the same. 3Racha has all of the corny arrogant grandstanding I tend to love in a song like this — if you're going to get cocky, fucking go for it, you know? Why you mad, brah? Also see BTS' Ugh!, Seventeen Hip Hop Unit's Back It Up, and hilariously 7 rings by Ariana Grande. If you're going to convince me that your fame is all it's cracked up to be, then convince me. Perhaps a fatal flaw of mine that I find even the silliest most over the top renditions of this sexy. And speaking of sexy... Taste is Danceracha's answer to Red Lights, but sleeker (anyone else get the sense that if Hyunjin wasn't an idol he'd be in the wildest most toxic obsessive relationship ever? These lyrics!). Taste glides and rolls and moves with incredible grace. It was stuck in my head before the full version was even out to listen to. I understand why people who unlike me are attracted to men have been having breakdowns over it, but my primary emotion is pride. They sound confident! They're singing like they mean it! What a gift, to get good at something and show it off. What a relief.
I'm querying a short story right now. Is querying the right word? I'm submitting it places. It's a weird jaunt into original fiction with a bizarro premise, and it's in second person to boot. I'm not sure it'll find a home in a journal, but I can hope.
Hope is so fraught these days, though, isn't it? Tell me you feel that too. Am I as good as I thought? What will it do to me if I'm not? What's the use if the world is so wobbly it could all come down anyway? These are messy questions, existential and self-sabotaging and unanswerable, but they keep me awake at night. I'd like to say that tomorrow will be better, but I can't promise that to anyone or myself. Things will lighten up eventually, but this might be a season of lows for me, and that might be okay too.
I have my quibbles with Circus, a grandstanding parade of a song that's a dozen times better alongside the video but good on its own, too, even despite the wild line disparities I'm unused to with this group. You couldn't give your main dancer a few more lines, my guys? But sometimes that's the anxiety, too. Would this be just as good without me? As celebrated, as fun, as joyful?
Maxident is an 8 track victory lap, not a skip among them. It's about love and mess and endings and sex and joy. Right now, it's the soundtrack to my sadness.
I couldn't think of a better one.
I was talking to a friend recently about how there are angles of mental illness and trauma that freak out most people who haven't been there themselves. Considering my line of work, I think I'm kind of hard to freak out at this point, but it's different when it's friends and family, right? That unprofessional heart-first connection can throw that cool calm out the window a little. In my own life as the Sometimes Alarming Friend, that used to mostly manifest as eating disorder thoughts, but it's shifted over time. These days it's mean little intrusive thoughts that talking about doesn't tend to help. I won't get into specifics here for the same reason I haven't gotten into specifics anywhere. It's ugly stuff, and (in the least self-effacing way possible) nobody needs to hear it. It's enough that it's in my head, you know?
Chill is my favorite song off of Maxident on a first listen. I put it on and my brain went quiet. Han Jisung has always been my favorite songwriter in the group — the number of times I've listened to Slump, to 19, to Sunshine, to Wish You Back, to Alien, to Close... to Fairytale, which is a random b-side on a Japanese mini album that's almost definitely going to be my top listened to song of the year... I just think he has this beautiful elegant earnestness to the way he puts feelings into music and I appreciate it very much as someone who tends to resonate with them. This one is groovier, laidback and fun and a little bittersweet. An ode to an ending. Me Bait, if you will. I'll always get swept up in the seductive promise that the hard thing can be pretty and fruitful.
Can't Stop might be my second favorite. Vocalracha are so fucking cute. I have other reasons but you need to know that this is the main one. I feel so healed when I listen to this song. Their cheerful Day 6 slay. Their darling choreo-assisted party anthem. If Chill is about the breath after letting go of too much of a good thing, Can't Stop daringly and delightfully promises forever. This time it's the good thing that's easy. To throw yourself at something. For that to be enough.
I only had to attend one of my three classes this week, and worked and wrote and recorded videos and pretended to be a slug, mostly, for the rest of the time. I'm generally at my worst without a schedule, and am looking ahead to the next few days of freeform time with no small amount of dread. When I'm like this time goes mushy, and the murk of my emotions feels colorless. I'll try and plan some stuff, try and sit quietly with friends in person or on a voice call. Try to fill the empty space with something other than myself.
Super Board glitters and riots in equal measure. The sheer amount of fun they managed to pack into every second of that song made it my third favorite, and it's going to get a lot of play time from me. It's playful as hell, which is definitely a theme in chunks of this album. I love its irreverence. I love its goofy camp. In my head this one goes with the title track: Case 143 as the opposite of apology. As riot and technicolor, as the other side of shame. A love song where love is a mess, and thank god for that. A catchy hook, a can't-tear-your-eyes-away meta-as-hell music video, a beat you could march to. I was nervous about liking it, but I'm all on board. Sometimes what I need is an explosion. It delivers.
When my brain is bees I come back to the same phrases compulsively. Lately it's been wanting to ask people to mercy kill me, which— jeez, talk about bringing the mood down. But there is an ironic little edge to it, the grin under the pang. Like wanting someone to punch you so you can smile all bloody at them after. I hear that in this album sometimes. I hear it all over the place. Maybe it's just the echo chamber of my own head, but maybe it's the same adrenaline rush that has people getting tattoos or jumping out of planes. I would go to a field and scream if I thought this body remembered how.
The rap at the start of Give Me Your TMI is, in my opinion, better in the mashup, and I can't tell how many of the ten different songs in one I truly love, but the chorus wins me right back every time I try to write it off. The opposite of an omen, perhaps. A sign that dissonance doesn't have to fracture. That there can be something worth grabbing onto even in a mess.
3Racha and Taste are both incredibly strong showings from strong units who usually put out songs I like a lot. No surprises there, but pleasure and delight all the same. 3Racha has all of the corny arrogant grandstanding I tend to love in a song like this — if you're going to get cocky, fucking go for it, you know? Why you mad, brah? Also see BTS' Ugh!, Seventeen Hip Hop Unit's Back It Up, and hilariously 7 rings by Ariana Grande. If you're going to convince me that your fame is all it's cracked up to be, then convince me. Perhaps a fatal flaw of mine that I find even the silliest most over the top renditions of this sexy. And speaking of sexy... Taste is Danceracha's answer to Red Lights, but sleeker (anyone else get the sense that if Hyunjin wasn't an idol he'd be in the wildest most toxic obsessive relationship ever? These lyrics!). Taste glides and rolls and moves with incredible grace. It was stuck in my head before the full version was even out to listen to. I understand why people who unlike me are attracted to men have been having breakdowns over it, but my primary emotion is pride. They sound confident! They're singing like they mean it! What a gift, to get good at something and show it off. What a relief.
I'm querying a short story right now. Is querying the right word? I'm submitting it places. It's a weird jaunt into original fiction with a bizarro premise, and it's in second person to boot. I'm not sure it'll find a home in a journal, but I can hope.
Hope is so fraught these days, though, isn't it? Tell me you feel that too. Am I as good as I thought? What will it do to me if I'm not? What's the use if the world is so wobbly it could all come down anyway? These are messy questions, existential and self-sabotaging and unanswerable, but they keep me awake at night. I'd like to say that tomorrow will be better, but I can't promise that to anyone or myself. Things will lighten up eventually, but this might be a season of lows for me, and that might be okay too.
I have my quibbles with Circus, a grandstanding parade of a song that's a dozen times better alongside the video but good on its own, too, even despite the wild line disparities I'm unused to with this group. You couldn't give your main dancer a few more lines, my guys? But sometimes that's the anxiety, too. Would this be just as good without me? As celebrated, as fun, as joyful?
Maxident is an 8 track victory lap, not a skip among them. It's about love and mess and endings and sex and joy. Right now, it's the soundtrack to my sadness.
I couldn't think of a better one.
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