I’m back! And not explaining why I didn’t do this article for the last two months. Let’s check out some Cool Stuff For Cool Lifeforms: June 2023!
Music
This album is 19 years old, and it’s still as weird today as it was back then. Most of Black MIDI’s most inventive shit on their last two albums could have been ripped from this album, from the pervasive horn blasts to the shape-shifting compositions grounded in an eternal bass. This album is a glorious adventure of post-punk experimentation. Get into it.
Okay, I’m going to say this right up front; this is not Bully’s best album front to back. It isn’t. There’s filler here. BUT, I will also say that the highs here are higher than anywhere else. Days Move Slow is an alt-pop-rock masterpiece that kicks off Bully’s best-ever three-track run — “Days Move Slow”, “A Wonderful Life”, and “Hard to Love”. If you must, listen to those tracks on repeat and then skip to the final track, which is short and stellar as well.
This may not be her best work, but fuck it. Sometimes you need to bang out some hits on an uneven album before you can make that next jump forward. You’ll want to check this album out to know how she got to the next one. Because I feel pretty confident the next one will be her best.
Trevor Powers has never hit pop perfection like this and with an undercurrent of sadness that makes the sweetest-sounding moments hit like a punch from a prizefighter. The best tracks here have almost a hip-hop quality to the way Powers orients his vocals around the beat. And the otherworldliness of his lyrics tended to stick with me while I wasn’t listening, like a feeling oscillating around me.
Videogames
I mean, I know everyone is playing Zelda, but Diablo is also perfection with by far the most flexible build/skill tree system in any Diablo game. And the move to an open world (as opposed to more level-based areas in previous games) is so welcome. For the first time, I feel like I’m part of the Diablo world. I still need to be able to get my horse in-game. Yeah, there are horses.
If you’re a cool lifeform who enjoyed the cool stuff of June 2023, please consider previous installments here.
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