What Happened This Week? Funeral Selfies, Sky Ferreira, Speedy Ortiz, Halloween
by Alan Hanson
Funeral Selfies
What a fine time to be alive! Quick rundown on ME: I’m a fun loving radical anarchist who stops for garage sales, goes all in for allspice, and enjoys a low-cal beer bong. I’ve got feet for hands and my hobbies include Godzilla, being ~cheeky~, and totally breaking down barriers, whether they be social, cultural, political, or literal barriers at concerts, sporting events, Thanksgiving Day parades et. al, because CAN’T TELL ME NOTHIN and also HARDER BETTER FASTER STRONGER. Whip the lambo when drunk but still got love for PETA. You see, we out here, and we are the change we want to see in the world. Social media maven and/or guru, possibly a ninja, and this is the new world, baby, welcome to the future, it’s right in front of your stupid fucking facetime screen and I’m just holding up a mirror to society, dog, and reflecting on my permanent impermanence, contextualizing a millennial trend in the face of Death and his Sexy Souls, who are actually playing The Echo tonight, and I like totes know the doorman, we should go, P-fork gave ’em a 6.66 which is the ULTIMATE these days. All Hail Satan, then go ahead and hail me, too, cause I’m worth it.
Speedy Ortiz’s “No Below”
I’m pretty late on this album but I finally got around to stealing it and thanks to this song now I spend my stretched, gray days crawling on my hands and knees, picking up pieces of all the precious things I’ve forgotten and trying to stuff them in my pockets, wheezing with the wind knocked the fuck out of me for the entire foreseeable future, transporting thirty-three slabs of cold concrete strapped to my back, buried and beaming, trying not to cry with my whole legible face in every meeting, in every elevator, in every subway car.
Sky Ferreira’s “Night Time, My Time”
In which my girlfriend and I disagree over gchat:
Me: I mean, just listen to the album.
She: I am rn. It’s fine. It’s trendy. “Remember the 80s” “I don’t.” “I’m 20.”
Me: Rolling my eyes.
She: I’m tired of white teens singing love songs written by other people. Or I’m too old for it. “You’re not the one.” No shit. You’re six years old.
Me: Ageism!
She: Taste!
Me: I just meant, teens are allowed to have feelings. They’re not supposed to be mature yet.
She: I know that. But in her case it emphasizes the disconnect between her and what she’s singing. She’s narrating stock photos. Vague, relationship-y lyrics. Heavy aesthetic. She’s cute, they’re hoping we’ll buy it.
Me: I’m not saying it’s art.
She: You’re saying it’s good. It’s average. It’s on the good end of average, for sure.
Me: I’d rather listen to her version of those basics, with this production, over most anything else on the radio.
She: It’s v listenable but it’s not compelling. She doesn’t have a personality. I’m not invested in anything that she says ’cause I don’t know who she is. And she mumbles the lyrics anyway.
Me: All right, but were you convinced who Katy Perry was fresh out the gate?
She: That EP had a voice.
Me: Imagine you’d never seen her documentary.
She: I liked her long before the documentary. The EP was cool and funny and talked about MySpace and the internet and the kind of guys you meet on the internet, long before music acknowledged the internet. And I was like 19 or whatever at the time and like, “oh, this is funny, she’s funny.” Then she became a giant pop star but she had a voice. Still. A Katy Perry song doesn’t sound like a Rihanna song doesn’t sound like a Britney Spears song. Idk, Sky Ferreira won’t matter in two years. She’s a nap.
Me: Sure, and you’ll shit on this but these Sky songs don’t sound like other songs either. They might remind you of things, but so does half of “PRISM.”
She: I don’t think it’s fair to say half. “Walking On Air”, sure. But it expounds upon it. Sky is just mimicking.
Me: Back to what I said, lyrical content and personality aside, I can listen to this and nod my head and feel pretty cool about it rather than cringing at nearly every Aviici/Lumineers/Whatever whatever is floating around the pop atmosphere. So for that, I will say it’s “good” because it’s deff better than average.
She: Right. I already conceded that.
Me: I’m having a good time when I listen to it. I would try heroin with Sky Ferreira in an attempt to have two hours of weird fun even though the next morning would be horrible. I’m down for the ride. The scuzzy, filthy, ride.
She: Gross!
Halloween
Ghouls on ghouls, my morning started packed underground Bryant Park with a smiling man hammering out the spookiest melodies on an accordion half his size which played me down the tunnel to the blue-haired amNewYork woman who is cheery and blue-haired always, not just on Halloween, but now I notice. Beer at work, cat ears poking out of cubicles, “Monster Mash” in the kitchen and then steampunk filled subways and NYU a true living nightmare, cops and co-eds everywhere. On the way home from the party, which was quiet in the right way, tasting cherry moonshine still on my tongue, I pass a couple chopping cocaine on a low wall on 150th St. and the woman, watching her boyfriend make the lines with eager eyes, exclaims “happy Halloween!” and it was and I felt it and wet leaves never looked so good.
Alan Hanson is a Californian writer living in Harlem.