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hi! this is my reviews section. here, i write about media i like and things i've explored recently. this can include art, plays, short stories, collections, albums, general music ....... anything i really really really liked enough to write about!

this is also to keep me accountable for actually getting into things. a lot of this is interpretation or just the way i personally feel about it, so please dont get mad at me if you dont agree. in fact, id be more than happy to hear exactly why you dont agree (civilly. we are probably both civilized people)

feels like you, whirr

this is the first whirr album i listened to in full (i think), and i have to say, i'm super impressed. 'feels like you' manages to swaddle me in love and warmth, smotheringly sweet. it's like being in an initially toxic relationship, kind of. it's sweet at its most wonderful moments- so sweet, you almost can't imagine anything else. so sweet it's addicting. you never want to leave. you never want to be anywhere else. the good moments sweep the bad moments under a rug, and by the time you're stuck in the iron, unyielding arms of the album, you've already forgotten anything bad even happened. the bad moments are scary by themselves. they're enough to make anyone crumble, even the strongest emotionally and physically. you are entirely at war with yourself and your lover; every good thing you've ever had is cheap and faulty now. everything you ever known is nothing but the cut of a scalpel. facing them and making it through to the other side yields a glorious triumph over your own faults and your partner's. it's sunny, but not without its work.

this album brings up a lot of dense, packed feelings within me. it encases me in its sound, isolating me from the outside world and trapping me in a cocoon of suffocating, soothing noise. it is trapping. it's like watching a car crash. it's beautiful. it has caught me entirely in the wreckage. i LOVE IT!!!

i've been listening to a lot more of whirr's work recently. this specific album pokes out to me because of the pulling, pushing, swaying motions it takes on. while some say whirr's previous work is repetitive, i can't help but disagree. i think they play with atmosphere, something i've always admired and looked for in music.

their sound here is absolutely marvelous. they capture this weird sense of yearning very well. i'm trapped in a web of something i can't put a name to, but have always experienced.

very well done!

raw blue, whirr

'raw blue' is a narrative follow-up to 'feels like you.' 'raw blue' exists in dreams, where you wander between the waking world and unreality. it is not transparent, but more of a dim fog that covers you like that carpet between good and bad things; it is noticeable, ever-present, ever-visible, but not a real obstacle. it obscures your vision, preventing you from seeing anything else. still, you have to walk.

where 'feels like you' is soft and romantic while still tugging at melancholic yearning, 'raw blue' is akin to its album cover: spinning solitary, hopelessly independent. 'raw blue' is lonely. it's knowing something isn't good for you because you know better, but it aches to separate. 'raw blue' is a cold hole in your heart. its dreams paint hopelessly empty, snowy, concrete cities, but also beautiful meadows and lights at the end of tunnels that only seem to be getting further out of reach.

soundwise, the band's sound only gets better. songs like 'enjoy everything' have wonderful musical ornamentation (a muted trumpet in this case), making the spinning feeling improve even more. the atmosphere crushes you, smothering you in sweet sound. 'raw blue' is reminiscing on a goodbye kiss. it's feeling the warmth of your lover in your bed, smelling their scent and hearing their laughter, long after they've left. it is a staticky kiss, pins and needles of hypothermia freezing skin that rejects close. songs like 'swing me' pulse in and out, pain throbbing and aching like a heart pulsating outside of the body.

in heat lies the chill of sweat, like in 'crush tones.' in the cold lies the warmth of hypothermia (enjoy everything). the comparison between 'raw blue' and 'feels like you' has been likened to yin and yang. indeed, there is presence of love and warmth in 'raw blue;' bliss soothing the listener into a lull of euphoria, heady and sweet on the tongue. and 'feels like you' is not scarce of its scary agony, claws tearing deep into flesh and ripping where it hurts. i scratch what i said about 'feels like you:' the inclusion of trumpet on the ending track was utter genius.

man's best friend, sabrina carpenter

yes im doing a serious review of this. im procrastinating my physics homework and im insanely bored

sabrina's latest album is in the wake of the success of 'short 'n sweet.' where short 'n sweet focused on the rollercoaster lows and highs of being a very beautiful woman in a world where power is regained through laughing and reminiscing on terrible relationships from the top of a cloud, this entire album is more mournful and regretful. as it turns out, there is serious baggage that comes with quick and fun relationships. 'short 'n sweet' hides its troubles in the nooks and crannies of clouds, while 'man's best friend' brings the problems of turbulent relationships to the forefront of its messages about men.

sabrina's voice has matured, specifically in songs like 'sugar talking.' shes coming into her own as a singer, and although i dont make it a habit to listen to pop all of the time, i think pop is popular for a reason: sabrina has mastered the art of honey-sweet vocals, comprehensible and easy lyrics, and electric instrumentals. they're well-made songs, even if people complain about the lyrics. her humor and sass is easy to love, especially when theyre accompanied by the light and smooth sounds of the backing music.

im still in love with her instrumentals. songs like 'we almost broke up again last night,' although the lyrics dont stun, are able to allure me just with the dedicated care given to the instrumental and the background. her and her producers are most definitely starting to experiment with different styles and borrowing from different places in the music industry. sabrina carpenter, i think, is proof that pop is changing. pop songs are becoming more complex musically, even if their lyrical content varies.

no matter what forms they take or where they come from (cough some chappell roan in 'go go juice,' dolly parton in 'don't worry i'll make you worry'), this album is extremely fun to listen to.

i think she should go do a country album but thats... extremely self indulgent

showbiz, muse

i got suggested to listen to this by a friend i made recently, so i figured i would. it was advertised to me as radiohead-adjacent, which i thought was fun, so i listened to it through that lens. i feel like i should have gone in with no expectations at all. radiohead holds too high a position in my heart to be overtaken.

this album is kind of like if deftones and mcr had a baby. i think the comparison to radiohead has ground but isnt really something i can agree with: the lyricism isnt quite there yet, not as abstract. still, the vocals and instrumentals from the very beginning and end of the album remind me so much of 'the bends' that it made my heart ache.

'sober' and 'unintended,' as well as 'hate this and i'll love you,' are by far my favorite songs on this album. they are full of energy; not necessarily hard, screaming, angry energy or aggression, but a burning passion that roars to a boil as much as it enjoys simmering. 'sunburn' does a great job of really selling the album, but i'd be a fool to say the energy is kept up or the passion is explored more. the lyricism falls flat in a few places, but the gems in this album i think give it a really great show. i think it fell flat in the first half, but the second half was absolutely spectacular. i dont know what didnt captivate me about the first half, but i had almost given up until 'showbiz' came on, and i was immediately pulled back in.

i did some more research and apparently them being a radiohead clone is a common criticism when it comes to this album, but i think that's unjustified. you can tell where the inspiration comes from, but i dont think a british guy screaming passionately about hurt in his soul over a humming, blazing guitar and a drumbeat-to-death rock tune makes something a radiohead clone. like, you can definitely hear the inspiration, but i don't think it's fair to define this album based on that, i just think people are looking at something to pick on. i dont think an album being derivative of the greats is proof that the album is automatically bad, it's proof that the greats were just... that good. to say that an album is derivative to be derivative is an insult to both groups; it may be restricting their emotional expression, but they are practicing the techniques and skills given to them by other bands to innovate new techniques and new ways of writing and new lyrics and new things. we wouldn't get anywhere without things being derivative of other things first, we're constantly referencing the past to create new things. it already becomes new, just with our perspective on it. it isn't the same album. i think this is a band drawing on what seems to be popular and what they know; this is a band finding their sound, finding their identities.

i dont think the album is just okay because it doesnt live up to the style i expected, but because i see a learning and developing band in the lyricism. rhythmically, they're spectacular. i enjoyed all of the instrumentals i heard. in the sense of instrumentals and beats, they have a mastery of pace. their creative spirit just needs more kindling.

i've been informed this probably wasn't the best album to start out on. maybe a review of one of their other albums will come out in a bit.

dreamtigers, by jorge luis borges.

"A man sets himself the task of portraying the world. Through the years he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that that patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his face."
Dreamtigers, Epilogue, p.93, Borges.

dreamtigers, to me, is the apex of postmodernism. first, i'm in love with the structure: part one is comprised of prose poetry/short stories/flash fiction/whatever you wanna call it, and part two is comprised of verse. borges' style here feels paradoxical, contradictory, absurd and perplexing: he is frustrated but peaceful, restless but tranquil, knowledgeable but emptyheaded. all of his work stares directly at reality and crushes it beneath his fist; deems it the oppressor by likening it to spain. borges aims to escape to the world of metafiction; fiction about fiction, living inside of a dream about a dream. still, this restlessness and dissatisfaction resonates where borges admits the written word is incapable of describing reality. all of fiction and word is perfect: everything has already been written about before. every phenomenon has already been documented. every aspect of human nature has already been written down. and yet, it cannot perfectly capture the real world, because written word emerges specifically from people and people are simple creatures who cannot grasp the complexity of the world. borges lives inside the world of contradiction and paradoxes and absurdity, and it is exactly why this collection works so well: it governs itself in the logic of dreams and their natural state of symbology, of complexity, of references, of intertextuality. it weaves tapestries out of tapestries and flouts its incoherence and imperfections and fear. i love dreamtigers.

one specific device i like seeing borges employ is writing people writing about others; he has a specific collection, museum, where he organizes fictional writings of the past exploring the human condition across time. regret, pride, existential dread, dissatisfaction, rage, and love. nothing more to be said about it, im just generally a huge fan of it.

i also admit, me reading the collection is very, very, embarrassingly self-indulgent. (it does, in fact, draw on the works of dante, which i am so embarrassingly partial to and adore. i sat there fanboying). borges has a very captivating way of describing the human condition as performance and culture as eating itself alive. it deals with creation and destruction as mutation and distortion; things blend into each other, lending to a dreamy feel as the stories and poems mutate symbols (specifically in the moonand distort the truth of reality into fantasy that tastes sweeter and goes down easier. this fantasy is necessary because language cannot describe reality. dreamtigers grapples with original language and the ability of language to describe real events; fearing distortion of the beauty of events he witnesses through the simplicity of language (he likens it to a mirror) he draws in on himself, becomes terrified of reality because he craves to understand it and cannot. the image that exists in his mind will never be part of the real world because the world is more complex than we can comprehend. our language directly impacts our ability to understand and communicate about reality: is there, then, a 'perfect' language that perfectly describes the world? borges argues 'no.' this work might have convinced me.

arcadia, by tom stoppard

my first review for a tom stoppard play. despite being fans of some of tom stoppards other works, i was recently gifted a collection of his plays by CS, so i decided to read all of them and then reread them again. arcadia is one of his more... i dont know, understandable? easily comprehensible plays as opposed to other classics of his.

arcadia covers the nature of knowledge and truth, positing that truth is cyclic and knowledge always circles back in on itself. i really significantly enjoyed how the past occurs at the same time as the future in the end; the objects on the table covering the entire history of the play. i think what i enjoyed most of all was the respectful usage of mathematics and actual science to make a point. the usage of chaos theory by thomasina and chloe is incredibly well done, and there is no 'dramatic science' used that would immediately turn off anyone who knows what chaos theory actually is.

i was initially surprised by how much sense arcadia made. i think the first time i read it was after i was introduced into stoppard's works by R&C are dead and was like 'wow, science? ill probably enjoy this!' but despite how much sense it made and my clear preference for absurd, strange, odd, nonsensical works that i have to think on and hallucinate about, this work is still super super enjoyable and fun to read as well as watch.

i think i still enjoy stoppard's more enigmatic plays, but this one was a good refresher to getting back into stoppard's works. arcadia is like a base for understanding the concepts addressed in some of stoppard's other works, i think, or thats at least how i've always thought of it. it checks most of the boxes; wit, determinism, existentialism... in fact, i wish most other postmodern works took themselves a lot less seriously. humor and joy is one of the hardest things to elicit from an audience. stoppard's tragomedies are nothing short of hilarious and heart-wrenching, this included. the fact that we are aware of characters like thomasina's fate (her tragic death in a fire before her 17th birthday) makes her final moments on stage all the more rewarding and beautiful to live in. the act of making the audience aware of the impending doom of the characters they love but still eliciting joy and comfort in the present moment neatly ties up all the dread that comes with that fate; it concludes in the face of the heat death of the universe that the act of loving and enjoying the present moment is all that matters.

no exit, jean-paul sartre

one of my forays into sartre's work. i've been interested in his philosophy and ideas since i started reading camus a couple of years ago and i heard about their interactions. funnily enough, camus directed another play on my reading list, so that's next, but for now, i thought no exit was a good place to start.

'no exit' explores the interactions of three people in a drawing room. they have all died, and their punishment is posed as an eternity together. although they originally anticipate torture and hellfire and brimstone, they quickly discover that being in each other's company is worse; close to the ending, one of the characters declares 'hell is other people.'

the strangest connection i made here was estelle to blanche dubois from a streetcar named desire. both leverage sex and carnal desire in order to achieve power and are stuck as postergirls of femininity in their pieces. i really enjoyed this piece and sartre's writing! he's witty and captivating and probably one of the better examples of 'show don't tell isnt always the best advice.' when he needs to make a point, he makes it. there's a lot of guns waiting to be fired, and when they go off, it feels like a huge moment in a tchaikovsky piece.

i feel like there was more than just 'hell is other people.' how i read it was that each character differed in how they sought power: garcin seeks power in physical dominance, estelle seeks power in attention and sexual appeal, and inez seeks power in intellectual pursuits. because their pursuits for power shift the balance between them constantly, and they are all equally matched in their abilities to control each other, they will eternally suffer because there is no resolution and true victory. this makes their struggle inherently meaningless if there is no victory.

if hell is a punishment, the bad action here is continuing to strive for a victory when one is not able to be achieved. it's searching for that release and resolution when there is none available, rather than accepting it. to be fair, the characters do try to accept it, but they lapse in this constantly.

i feel like i'd have to read sartre's other works or his essays to understand this piece better, but the things he proposes in here make me really intrigued. i need to read more sartre now...... he's so cool...... wait he's real.........