Tag: depression

34 Samia: Bloodless

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

There’s something oddly comforting about cattle mutilations, isn’t there? No? Just me? Cows mysteriously and clinically slaughtered, no footprints, tire tracks or evidence of human involvement at all. Like the cows were painlessly Raptured from this stinking Earth and their own servitude that only leads to slaughter by different means. The corpse left there decaying in the son, but their bodies hollowed out by draining, lying there empty and bloodless.

There’s something quite undeniable about the possibility of just… disappearing. You wouldn’t need any reasons, no tragedy or story to worry your family with, you can just – poof! – drain your whole body of all its essence and leave an empty husk in the sand to be discovered by an Idaho rancher.

but where’s the blood

31 awakebutstillinbed: chaos take the wheel i am a passenger

~ Lex Leeson ~ 4 Comments

Fucking yes! Fucking yeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! Three and a half fucking years I’ve held on to this screenshot!

People laughed at me when I saved that Tweet from 2020. Laughed at me! Of course, back then it had only been two years since the release of their incredible debut album ‘what people call low self-esteem is really just seeing yourself the way other people see you*’, a furious and intoxicating powder keg of intense self-hatred infectiously narrated. All us ‘Bedheads’ ate it the fuck up, because we are all reprehensible vultures. We had tasted the blood of Shannon Taylor as they eviscerated themselves for our entertainment, greedily sucking it down as they slit their wrists above our mouths and let it flow so beautifully down our gullets. Yum yum yum yum. Please, Mommy, can we have some more?

IN FACT, I DON’T WANNA FEEL, SO I STICK TO SIPPIN’

20 Poppy Ackroyd: Pause

~ Lex Leeson ~ 6 Comments

2018 #21

Up one place since her last album! If the unbelievably talented Brighton-based pianist/multi-instrumentalist continues on at this rate, and with a similar schedule between albums, then she’s going to place #1 sometime around Necessary Evil 2081! Will we all be dead by then. No. You will, obviously, but I’m never going to die. And neither will my pet Pomsky, Zeus Bertha Pepper, I wuv hm sooo muuuuuuch! But, erm, yes, you’ll all be dead. Zeus Bertha Pepper will have likely killed you, he has quite the bloodlust. Have you read that 2018 review though? Yeah, I loved the album muchly – I even suggest she score the recently released movie Bumblebee, which is of course meant as a compliment, how could it not be? – but I seem like I was in a pretty bad place on that particular day, doesn’t it? Three years on, has my brain’s general countenance improved? Today, absolutely. These past few months, definitely. This past year… weeeeeeeeeeeeell, there was a bit of a struggle that I invited it into.

I’ve touched on how toxic and damaging my 2020/21 marriage was, and how it left my self-belief, my mental comfort and my dang desire for life in the absolute toilet. Well, this post is going to be the final reckoning, the complete and total exorcism, the slicing open of old wounds so that they can bleed completely out and not poison me again. Starting on the 14th December 2020 I started keeping a diary of how much the marriage was hurting me, it ran until abruptly stopping on the 29th January, likely because my illness became too much to leave time for such pathetically solipsistic concerns. There were thirty three entries.. I think this was in response to my wife showing disbelief that I could be feeling that way, or perhaps she had challenged me to name instances in which I was hurt and my decrepit old brain struggled to give precise details when called up on it. Whatever. I started writing them down and put them in a password and fingerprint secured OneNote file. I never showed or even mentioned them to my wife, and before recently I hadn’t looked at them myself in months. It was actually reminding myself what I said about Poppy last time around that convinced me to dig them up. I couldn’t remember the password and had to keep guessing until about three in the morning, but I got in! And here the entries are.

Now, I don’t want to make this feel like I’m piling on my ex-wife – she wasn’t right for me I wasn’t right for her, but she otherwise deserves all the love in the world. I don’t come out of these records looking great either, please just take this all as evidence of how incredibly awful the relationship was. Oh, and I’m sure there’s roughly a dozen trigger warnings I should be offering here, so maybe just don’t read any further if you’re having anything like a decent day that you don’t want ruining, or if dark depictions of mental states or terrible relationships are likely to set in motion grim and traumatic thoughts of your own, then get out now! Seriously, not many jokes on this one…

AT YOUR PERIL

48 Drowse: Light Mirror

~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

Drowse are a pretty special band. I’m not sure any other artist working today has the same ability to produce such accurate sonic reflections of what the mind feels like when it’s being battered and shook by the illogical and harsh whims of depression. I mean, yeah, sure, you had Swagger Jagger by Cher Lloyd, but that was eight years ago now, and after listening to it nonstop for the past 100 months* I feel like I could really do with another option for when I want to close my eyes and wallow in the distressing cacophony of my own head being echoed back to me. Seriously, I can’t tell when this album stops playing, the noises I hear keep going on!!

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(…)

(*it was released in July 2011, so it actually has been exactly 100 months. I hate that! The very rare occasion that I do a bit of fucking research and it looks like I’ve just picked a randomly high number! Maybe I should have gone for days. 3’054 days. Yeah, that sounds better. Ah well, too late to change it now)

Continue reading “48 Drowse: Light Mirror” →

55 Don’t Do It Neil: B/X

~ Lex Leeson ~ 7 Comments

“Descend deep in my body
Ascend me from my body
From my body tonight
Free me from my body tonight”

OK, fair warning- maybe even a trigger warning, but I’ve got to be careful because some people get so fucking angry when you word a content warning that way*- but this post might go to some pretty dark places. I mean, I’m just going to talk about my life a bit, which is always going to be a bit dark, isn’t it? For you, I mean. I’m alright with it, I fucking live with it, but I appreciate how some people might get a bit uncomfortable. These people can just read my Princess Nokia bit again, that was pretty funny. I’m going to use the brilliant ‘B/X’ album as a jumping off point to talk about how I was ‘freed from my body’, then masterfully bring it back at the end to Don’t Do It Neil. It’ll be a fucking amazing post, and I don’t know why more people don’t read this blog, it’s fuckin’ straight fire.

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(*because some people- and I can’t stress this enough- are fucking dumb)

Continue reading “55 Don’t Do It Neil: B/X” →

99 Prince Rama: Xtreme Now

~ Lex Leeson ~ Leave a comment

My mood goes in waves, see?

+5

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Mid way through 2016, which feels like roughly seventeen ice ages ago, I felt positive and excited enough to collate what were my top 13 (or something) <you should probably just check this, it looks shamefully lazy otherwise- Ed> songs of the year so far as a tantalising preview of the majesty of Necessary Evil 2016 that would arrive at the year’s end

+3

Now, close to eighteen months later, and far too late to be of any relevance or usefulness, I’m finally naming my albums of the year after my mood hitting rock bottom around Christmas 2016 and never again quite scaling those heights since. My whole life is a fucking shambles

-9

The waves of me mood were high and mighty in June (or July, or possibly August) 2016 <again, it would be really simple to check, it was probably the last post you made on your blog- Ed>, crashing loudly and majestically against the shore of my self-belief, and I wanted other people to know how good I felt! I feel that when my waves are high I am a markedly better person.

+6

download (1)

Back then, many beards ago, I felt like I had life sorted out, felt like I knew who I was and what I was meant to be doing. I felt happy

+7

I was moist and ripe for Prince Rama <hmmm, less creepy phrasing, perhaps? Also: doesn’t really make sense- Ed>, and so felt confident in naming Bahia, the ludicrously upbeat opening track of the ludicrously upbeat ‘Xtreme Now’ (starts with an ‘x’, very futuristic +1), as my 7th or 8th or 12th <I mean, this is starting to look really unprofessional now- Ed> favourite song of the year

+5

Bahia is the greatest example of the album’s modus operandi: shiny happy music for shiny happy people, and way back in 2016 I was ready to drink it in! +3

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‘Modus operandi’ is a Latin phrase literally translating as ‘modelled on Oprah’, as Empower Tibirius believed that all methodology should be steered toward appearing on the Oprah Winfrey show

+1

No, not that Oprah Winfrey, that wouldn’t make much sense, would it? Like, a Roman one…

-8

However, one of the strange byproducts of my see-sawing moods is that when my waves are pathetically low I seem to spend much of my time obsessively analysing everything I said and did when my waves were high, and almost entirely convincing myself that I should be utterly, cripplingly ashamed of the person I am when I’m happy, like my subconscious is trying to warn me against ever enjoying life ever again. It’s fucking awful…

-24

prince rama.jpg

I get not dissimilar feelings listening to ‘Xtreme Now’ now… ‘Xtreme’ now… ‘Xtreme Now’ now now now…

-12

These days, when I listen to ‘Xtreme Now’, I get similar emotions: the cracks are easy to spot, the imperfections all too prevalent

-5

All too often to glum ears it can sound cheap and rushed, and if you aren’t enamoured with the record’s charisma then it can sound laughably amateur in places

-4

Ocassionally I worry whether it solely exists in my record collection now as a sad monument to how good I used to feel…

-15

 

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But, then I see a picture of Prince Rama:

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pri3

prince approves

Really, so we’re getting Prince Points (easily a score of 7 for this album bee tea double you) and a ‘Prince Approves’ award?? Isn’t that a little bit overkill <ouch, too soon- Ed>

I can’t stay mad at you, Pri-Ram 🙂 🙂 🙂

+5

Also: Shitopia! Loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool!!

+1

That song starts almost exactly like Crystal Ball too. So, y’know, there’s that…

Metacritic: +68

I mean… Yeah, come on… I mean… Yeah…

Length 37 minutes +9

Best Lyric: ‘And keep your money, I got my own/Keep a bigger smile on my face being alone’ +1

Is the last song just the first track but played on Ukulele? No -1

Total 73

I’m pretty convinced I’m not doing the maths correctly…

 

Pics stolen from:

Minnesota Declares June 7th ‘Prince Day’

Prince Rama

http://music.princerama.com/

http://animalnewyork.com/2012/prince-rama-needs-your-help-to-make-psych-opera/

Stream Prince Rama Xtreme Now (Stereogum Premiere)

http://www.wrestlingnewsworld.com/chris-jericho-explains-coming-list/

Black And White Water GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

http://www.dogbreedplus.com/dog_names/black_dog_names.htm

 

Lot of pictures on this one, aye?