Fucking hell, liberals, enough with the purity tests!!
[EDIT: Sorry, but I went to bed last night hating this post. I just feel it was all over the place, undecided on what to focus on, dipped its toes into saying something more important but wimped out of it when I was worried that it wouldn’t come across how I hoped it would, then the post just garbled about nothingness. I wanted to say things that were thought provoking and interesting, but just ended up with milk toast nothingness. I’ve left the final couple of paragraphs, plus the amazing lyrics, but the rest of this post can get to fuck. I’ll take another swing at the topic I chickened out of another time in the future. Fucking incredible album though]
Wow. I am so impressed. This is quite an astonishing achievement after all this time. It’s actually really refreshing and – dare I say it? – inspirational for someone so long in the game still able to surprise us. The fact that I – Alexander Franchise-Palmer – can still highly rate this album despite thevery public feuds that Pusha T and I have had in the past, is an incredible show of maturity and commitment to my unbiased reporting. Maybe there’s still hope left for us all?
“a website”: I have a name, you know??
And by showing how I’m actually the bigger man and appreciating how some things in life are some important than silly little rap beefs (which Pusha’s and mine most definitely was), this all kind of means that I won the feud, doesn’t it?
So, erm, yeah, suck it, Pusha T, choke on my hairy balls.
Right we need to start with some important points:
It’s apparently pronounced ‘OK-Lou’. If you struggle to remember this, just imagine that you agreeing with the former Dinosaur Jrfrontman that his later work with Sebadoh was actually up there with his best. I have, however, heard Oklou themselves not really give a shit how you pronounce it, because they lack fucking conviction.
2. Their real name is actually Marylou Vanina Mayniel, which, I dunno, sounds a bit like
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.
Protest with love, baby Clap your hands Stomp your feet And if you want to You can shout Hallelujah We found love We found love We found love Protest with love Protest with love
Should we, though? When we are combatting forces so lacking in love, so bereft of humanity, is there really a benefit to having ‘love’ on your side? Will the oppressors eventually down their arms with a shrug, saying “Fair enough, they’ve been the better person here, played an absolute blinder, have to admit when you’ve been morally beaten, fair’s fair”? My first reaction to someone enthusing that we “Protest with love” is picturing those fucking Portland, USA gimps wearing unicorn and frog fancy dress costumes to somehow protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. Fucking liberals! If you’ve bought into the propaganda about politics being a binary choice, and you see one side acting like that?? Whooo! Trump 2028 baby! USA! USA! USA! Seriously, I know next to nothing about Portland, but I know that I fucking hate it!
Another reading to the song would be to protest with love in our heart. Which, fine, listen up liberals, I kinda agree. I would never phrase it like that, because that sounds gay as hell, but I can at least understand the feeling in a certain sense. Again, if you truly believe that politics is a binary made up completely of the right and liberalism (which is centrist, swinging to centre right when capital is threatened) then sure, yeah, whatever, speak of the benefits of your own side rather than just complain about the other. That Blue Sky Heroine Kamala Harris lost an election because her only policy was “I’m not Donald Trump”. The deteriorating shell of the Labour Party currently in power in the UK have only ever used the fact that they’re not the Tories/Reform as a potential vote winner, all the while pushing policies that both of those right wing loony bins might balk at for being “A little too racist“. ‘Not being the other ones’ only really works for the people who were always going to support you, probably because their Dad did and they think politics is like supporting a fucking football team.
[one more shot from The Oracle, who has written enough on this blog to have their own category on the site. They’ve long been a fervent believer in the music of Cam Cole, which you will have gathered from their review of the 2023 Freaks in a Field festival. However, Cam Cole’s new single was released a couple of days ago and Kitty HAS THINGS TO SAY]
I’ve loved Cam Cole for nearly 7 years. Since the days when his music sounded like it was clawing its way out of a dark alley at 2 a.m. Raw, ragged, alive, and impossibly human. I promoted every track, shouted from rooftops (not sorry for pissing off friends, family, neighbours, my kids). I annoyed everyone and embarrassed myself frequently. All part of being in the outer circle of the fan circus. I didn’t care; I’d get the tracks in people’s ears one way or another.
Hold you closer, closer than those damn gloves Kiss you longer, longer than a opera If we keep on dancin’, we gon’ make love Hold you closer, closer than those damn gloves I don’t need no weed, I don’t need no liquor I just wanna keep grind-grindin’ on my nigga Whatever’s on his leg, good God, it’s gettin’ thicker It’s gettin’ thicker
Whatever happened to shame? Remember when people had shame? I miss that. We need to bring shame back ASAP. Hey, you know that depraved, ugly thought that you have in your head? Keep it there. The whole world doesn’t need to know about your perversions. Nobody needs to know. Maybe your therapist, but otherwise you should be rightly overwhelmingly ashamed of these dark, sexual thoughts inside your mind.
Remember when you met people in person? Remember when there was a place to go that wasn’t home or work? Remember what it was like when you had, like, four people together, talking face to face? Imagine if one of the people you were with looked you dead in the eye, did not even blink as they took one last sip from their pint, and then loudly and proudly that they believed that all men should want to impregnate 12-14 year old girls because that’s when they’re most fertile. That just wouldn’t happen. Every person would be too ashamed to air these horrendous intrusive thoughts in public, even among friends. And yet @not_reece_brah is confident airing these insane perversions to more than fifty thousand people. Plus it’s on this blog now, so you can add another six or seven people to that.
I can’t sleep, I can’t eat I feel small, so petite I act strong, but I’m weak Ha, ha, ha, ha (livin’ is difficult) I was born to survive See the pain in my eyes I been stressed and deprived Ha, ha, ha, ha (livin’ is difficult)
So, imagine you’re Generation Z. You’re a Zoomer. You were born between 1995 and 2012, because the dividing lines of these ‘generations’ are fucking ridiculous. I’m a Millennial because I was born between 1980 and 1994. I’m the same generation as Rishi Sunak (1980) and Justin Bieber (1994), which explains the similarities between the three of us.
that’s me that is
But not you though! You’re Gen Z, you’re in the same pool as Beyoncé’s daughter Blue Ivy (2012), Millie Bobby Brown (2004) and Tierra Whack (1995). You likely won’t remember a time before the world was fucked:. You were four years old at most when NATO bombed Yugoslavia and announced the new laws of violent neoliberalism dominance, where peace would now only be reached with bombs. You don’t remember a time before 9/11, the War On Terror is your life. You’ve never caught a plane without first taking your shoes off. All your life everyone has known that the worldis fucking burning up and going to die pretty fucking soon. Your whole life, the entire human race has known that it’s killing itself, and has done nothing to prevent this spectacular suicide. I mean, the old fucks like me and KSI (1993) have had time to ponder accept this death cult, but imagine being born into it!!
Soft scars on my skin, silicone, porcelain I’m not one of them, love you ’til thе end Give me onе more dose, turn me into a rose Water me ’til I wither, 404 error
God created man, motherboard, wires and Blood, bones, flesh, breathing, suicide engineering Soft scars on my skin, silicone, porcelain I’m not one of them, love you ’til the end
Oh my God! That’s it! Fuck you, Protomartyr, with your “kissing the ass of billionaires” nonsense, why should I listen to any of you? You’re all, like, a million years old. Nat Ćmiel, the Singaporean genius behind yeule, is in their mid twenties, they know what human beings’ attempted relationship with the online world is grasping at. Ćmiel knows that we’re not reaching out to praise a capitalistic God. They know that capitalism has already beaten any true beliefs out of us. Late stage capitalism has divided us, it has forced us into isolation, crushed anything approaching ‘community’ into tiny pieces of dust and demanded that those pieces of dust reach out to nobody, just become statistics and scrolling machines to tempt enough of the other specks of dust to pay their own subscriptions so they can wokescold you for buying a McDonalds, because you don’t really have the time nor money to do all you’re allowed to do to protest Israeli genocide. Of course, if we just came together and organised we could maybe make real roads towards overthrowing the imperialist system, making atrocities like the ones taking place in Israel, Yemen… Oh, never mind, you’re still writing a lengthy post complaining about Nat Ćmiel using they/them pronouns, aren’t you? We’re all on the same side, you egg sucking dog.
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 hadSwagger 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!!
(*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)
Necessary Evil 