Okay Kaya drawn by Jessica Ganis, 2022, permission via CC ASA 4.0 license. Cropped to fit this blog post.
Note to readers: this blog contains brief mentions of sex, pedophilia, arson, drug abuse, gun violence, involuntary commitment, and more while discussing music that covers such themes.
Listeners now may not recognize how old the concept of an album as a narrative device is. The history of the concept album is murky, the history of strictly narrative albums with characters, setting, and a climax are murkier. Some say, including literary review writers at the University of Connecticut, that “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles started the idea. Paul McCartney (alongside Boston-based radio station WERS) traces the Beatles’ inspiration to Frank Zappa’s “Freak Out!” released in 1966.
Album cover for “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” by The Beatles.
Fiona Sturges at The Independent goes further, saying that commercially available song collections including a broader narrative may have originated with Woody Guthrie in the 1940s. If you consider musicals or opera as part of this history, you can go back centuries. Even in spite of its unclear origins, the narrative album continues to be a significant and growing part of contemporary music.
Two classic Russian books, "Dunno on the Moon" and "Alice in Wonderland." Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin
Whether English or Spanish or Swahili or Japanese, learning a new language is always going to be a challenge. One of the best ways to help with language learning is to immerse oneself in media content with that language being the primary.
I grew up with a couple languages being thrown around the house. Between having lessons from my parents, school, the fact that my grandparents didn’t speak English and passive media consumption, I was able to pretty successfully grow up juggling three languages and being able to communicate decently.
Movie Poster for Russian adaptation of “The Town Musicians of Bremen,” an originally German fairy tale.
I’m sure having to speak the languages on a daily basis had a significant impact. I spoke with both parents, had workbook assignments and readings daily. I remember that my folks had a rule for me about what kind of television I could be watching. I was only allowed to watch films or shows with English dub on weekends and only foreign films and shows during the week. This was mostly childrens’ series and cartoon or animated films. My own father has shared several anecdotes from my childhood of me using a word or phrase properly which he had never used in front of me.
I also remember growing up with music in these respective languages, among others. My childhood playlist was a modge-podge of classical music, German oom-pah celebratory, Italian disco, Russian pop and rock, Spanish ballads etc.
As I got older, I realized that I spoke one of those languages too formally. Having had most of my exposure from children’s and limited adult media, speaking to my parents and grandparents, some more traditional and pop music, it made perfect sense that I wouldn’t have known slang, expletives, and casual language.
After realizing the problem, I decided to pay more attention to my speech with vocabulary and pronunciation and such. I also made a point to find some more modern music in that language. After a few months of combined active and passive effort, I was more comfortable with some slang and profanity. I felt more comfortable to speak among people in a peer setting rather than a professional or familial one.
Russian rave singer, Lida at Teen City Day (2023). Image provided by Okras, licensed CC ASA 4.0 International.
Obviously, there is so much work that goes into learning a language. No matter how you spin that web, there will always be hard work. Just turning the TV onto your favorite sitcom with a French dub won’t get you anywhere without consistency, immersion, and someone to actually talk to. Learning another language is like anything: the more you practice the easier it becomes. But just because the work is hard and there’s a lot of it, doesn’t mean that there shouldn’t be some fun thrown in. Learning another language is fun and exciting and opens up so many avenues for culture, music, media and just other people and their stories.
Nostalgia for the past is by no means a new thing. It isn’t just kids these days who believe they were born in the wrong generation, because culture has always been cyclical to a degree. The style of the 00s making a comeback with the “Y2K aesthetic” craze is no surprise at all. Many fashion scholars reference the idea of a 20 year cycle. The 50s heavily borrowed from the style of the 1930s, which borrowed in turn from the 1900s. Despite this, nostalgia today feels different somehow.
Walking into clothing stores is jarring, with the most chic decade changing from rack to rack. 60s style babydoll dresses hang right next to a bedazzled tank top right out of an early 2000s pop music video. Right next to that rack is a shelf of neatly folded sweaters with orange and brown stripes, which makes my mom cringe. “I haven’t seen that color combo since the 70s,” She says.
Fleetwood Mac "Rumors" album on record player. Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin
What does it mean to have a diverse musical palate? Does it mean liking many artists in one genre? Many genres but few artists? Many similar genres? A few wildly different ones? As someone who loves exploring different genres, I don’t think there is a “right” answer.
Everyone is allowed to like whatever they like. There is no right or wrong answer to the question: What is good music?
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” – Margaret Wolff Hungerford.
A less literal paraphrase might be along the lines of: “Good music is in the heart of the listener.” Everyone has different upbringings and experiences and tastes. There might be some music that is objectively bad but if someone likes it there has to be a reason behind it. Maybe they are noticing something others aren’t.
12 week old puppy (Daphne) sleeping on lap of piano player. Image by Sophia Dutton-Rodkin
Any musician worth their salt could say with full confidence that practice is the cornerstone of success. Practice at home, in the dorms, in the practice rooms and even in between classes. While your roommates might think you’re strange, it doesn’t matter if you aren’t disturbing anyone. In my case, the one most affected by my practice would be my lovely lady, Daphne. She’s an Australian cattle dog mix and she both loves and hates when I play music.
The ability to coin it is just the tipping point; what is with these things that make our lives “easier?”
Is there something to be said about the valor and experience of having to do something, go somewhere or be someone?
When I talked to New York’s lo-fi dram pop duo Phantom Handshakes, they talked about being inspired by the “in-betweens,” the liminal spaces of work and play, walking on the street or on the train.
What do we gain by having it all at our fingertips?
Wilson from Raleigh’s Thirsty Curses mentions Christine Rosen’s “The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” elaborating on the advantages of “the trivial” — when you stop for gas, chatting with someone near you; meeting thy neighbor.
Proponents of the digital sphere talk about finding niche communities and meeting people you never would’ve before, and I wonder how good of a thing that is.
By nature of living in the same area, you’re likely to share more in common with your neighbor than someone through the phone.
I also want to posit about our associations of pleasure; it worries me that increasingly, our brains are accustomed and acquainted to eliciting pleasure from the silicon, plastic, glass, heavy metals and the like that go into these handheld dopamine machines.
When there are so many people in this world to love, to get attached to, to feel ties to and advocate for, I worry about machine-learning in our brains, making it so that the way we feel good is through touching plastic plugged in to some ether.
Beyond this, I wonder what that feel-good is.
Is dopamine the most sustainable neurotransmitter? I dont think so. Mostly built on action potential, it’s probably the reason we all feel so fried, so constantly tube-fed and sedated, which averages “content.”
Furthermore, what are the distinctions between art, entertainment, content and media? Where do we fit within that ecosystem? Where do we want to?
I encourage the harder route, the longer path, the possibly more scenic one, enjoying the effort of critical thinking in the hope it might dig us out of our incompetency hole.
Cover for "The Lonesome Crowded West" by Modest Mouse
I don’t remember how I found Modest Mouse, and maybe that part doesn’t matter. I just remember how I felt: lonely, disconnected, achy in that way only teenagers on the precipice of young adulthood can ache.
It was almost winter, and everything was crisping up and preparing for death. I trodded up and down the roadside, shapeless in layered flannels, and gave myself windburn.
I had no destination in mind; I would simply walk as far as the grass would take me, pretending I had some greater purpose. Occasionally, I’d listen to music.
I’m on my way to God don’t know
My brain’s the burger, and my heart’s the coal
I’m trying to get my head clear
I push things out through my mouth
I get refilled through my ears
“Heart Cooks Brain,” by Modest Mouse
“Heart Cooks Brain,” an ode to emotions dominating logic. The song sounded the way I felt: lumbering, wind-chapped and just a little pathetic. There was a thread of humor there, too, a shock of self-deprecation highly attractive to my melancholic teenage self.
The song came from Modest Mouse’s sophomore album, “The Lonesome Crowded West,” listed by Pitchfork as one of the greatest albums of the 1990s.
It’s a long album — with a runtime of over an hour — and despite its various stylistic shifts, it manages to maintain a cultivated sense of honest disillusionment throughout.
I think of dried out autumn leaves and the scent of car exhaust, or clumps of fur falling off a squirrel carcass. Ephemeral things. An orange sun dragging across a bleached-bone sky. The ineliminable passage of time. Nostaglia like a knife through your ribs.
When you’re a teenager, misery feels eternal. Time flows like concrete. Everything smarts like you’ve rubbed yourself raw with pumice. You put on eyeliner and pierce your own ears and buy a digicamera, because all of these things are Acts of Self-Actualization and they’re the only things you can do that seem to matter in your state of semi-powerlessness.
You’re a kid-but-not-quite, teetering on the precipice of ego death, writhing in your ill-fitting skin. You’re barely autonomous, and no one understands you, so you commune with radio waves. You look for salvation in strange places and in strange music. The act of listening transforms into the art of ritual and you keep the magic to yourself so no one can steal it.
Live in trailers with no class
Goddamn, I hope I can pass
High school means nothing
Taking heartache with hard work
Goddamn, I am such a jerk
I can’t do anything
“Trailer Trash,” by Modest Mouse
My friends didn’t “get” Modest Mouse, and I didn’t bother trying to make them understand. Sure, everybody knew “Float On,” but the band’s other stuff? Too abstract. Too weird.
Maybe they were right. Isaac Brock’s penchant for colorful metaphor — (“eating snowflakes with plastic forks“) — and reedy, sometimes staggering voice wasn’t for everyone. Especially in “The Lonesome Crowded West.”
The album wore many hats. Sometimes it was plain indie, slow-paced and stripped down (“Out of Gas“). Other times, it was almost punk (“Sh– Luck”) or straight-up folk (“Jesus Christ Was an Only Child“).
The multitextural quality of the album was one of its principal appeals. It wasn’t a cohesive narrative, per se, but it was like an impressionist painting; stepping back from the flurry of discordant brushstrokes revealed a harmonious picture.
Life gets lonelier when you’re an adult. The energy to sustain social relationships, let alone make new ones, is often far too finite. It often seems unsurmountable.
Over the summer, I moved to the country. As I puttered away from the city and through miles and miles of farmland, I felt lonelier than ever. Familiar landscapes and familiar people melted into sprawls of tobbacco fields and sunbleached barns.
In the first few weeks of the new semester, I spent these drives near tears, languishing in the agony of complete and utter solutide. My chest ached like a bruise. I felt as frivolously miserable as a teenager with a bad haircut. I was borderline inconsolable, on the verge of total breakdown.
So naturally, I cranked up the radio.
Out of gas, out of road
Out of car, I don’t know how I’m gonna go
I had a drink the other day
My opinions were like kittens, I was giving them away
“Out of Gas,” by Modest Mouse
The feeling of comfort I felt as a teenager returned as the album progressed. I hummed the chords as I drove farther and farther from the city. The lyrics were tired like I was tired, but the beat’s energy lured me away from that Edge of Young Adult Madness and into a state of tacit acceptance.
The idea of a “Lonesome Crowded West” is intentionally oxymoronic, and more real than ever. The breakdown of community leaves us isolated even as the bloated bellies of our cities progressively swell.
Whether it be the result of neoliberalism, socioeconomic instability, climate change or TikTok, the loneliness epidemic is rewriting the mechanics of our social culture and leaving young people fractured and disconnected.
I see the themes of “The Lonesome Crowded West” reflected in my own lonesome crowded East. We’re all overworked and overtired, watching the landscape be rendered unrecognizable in real time. We ache for lost familiarity and hunger for the new and exciting.
Things are different and things are the same in the best and worst ways. So it goes.
As the leaves change color and the eventual chill ever-so-capriciously sets in, you may find yourself craving some sweet beats alongside your leftover Halloween candy. In that case, you’re in luck, as many of WKNC’s favorite electronic artists have recently put out new work.
The New Tunes
bye2, a jungle and breakcore artist from the UK known for her album “Teeth Restoration,” just dropped a new album at the beginning of October called My Wife Is Drink Paint.”
Its frantic breaks interspersed with deeper subterranean-sounding instrumentation and patches of coarse noise make for some cool tracks.
It’s a little tale of love and digestion that should be fun for anyone who enjoys breakcore or jungle. You can even download it completely for free on Bandcamp right now.
Another big release is Machine Girl’s new album “MG Ultra,” which came out Oct. 18. The New York electronic duo continues their tradition of hard-hitting sound that crosses into industrial and results in a kind of electronic hardcore.
This noisy vibrancy is boosted by founding member Matt Stephenson’s howling vocals and drummer Sean Kelly’s relentless hammering. “MG Ultra” features plenty of tracks that fans will enjoy; my personal favorite is probably the catchy “Psychic Attack.”
Heading in a calmer direction, the artist TURQUOISEDEATH released their new album “Kaleidoscope” on Oct. 11.
TURQUOISEDEATH has an interesting discography, spanning atmospheric drum and bass, breakcore, breakbeat, dark ambient and even some emo, post-rock and shoegaze.
On the album “Se Bueno,” they collaborated with Korean indie flagships Asian Glow, Parannoul and BrokenTeeth to produce a unique blend of these genres.
“Kaleidoscope,” meanwhile, is firmly on the electronic side of things, but it still implements newer sounds for TURQUOISEDEATH like IDM and trance.
I’m personally partial to trance, and find some of the tracks very pretty. “Kaleidoscope” is a smooth listen that can be downloaded for free off of the artist’s Bandcamp page.
Also, WKNC now has music from all of the above releases in our Afterhours automatic rotation, and there’s more to come.
Tune in from 6pm to 5am on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday nights for a chance to hear some cool new electronic stuff on the radio waves. (Provided that a DJ isn’t on air, of course—but then you get to listen to their awesome music instead.)
"Anxiety" by Mariana Zanatta. Uploaded to Flickr licensed CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Ever experienced that jittery feeling where your legs shake and your hands tremble so much it could be mistaken for Parkinson’s? Accompanied by a sudden chill you feel despite sweating buckets?
No, it’s not public speaking, coming off a high or confessing your undying love to someone who doesn’t spare you a second glance.
It’s good old-fashioned test anxiety.
Okay, maybe I exaggerated a bit. Or a lot. But you get the idea. Test Anxiety affects everyone— from the most studious students to the least.
We are only four weeks into the semester, so what’s this about test anxiety?
With first exams around the corner, the season of test anxiety begins. I speak from experience because, just this Thursday, I had my first exam in my Astronomy class.
I had prepared well enough for the exam but still, I couldn’t shake off the dreadful feeling. So, I rushed to a nearby coffee shop. I got myself an iced caramel latte (it somehow reduces my jitters) before heading to class.
Wanna guess how the exam went? It was easy. And that made me mad. Why? Because I had spent the whole week stressing about it. I probably slept less than four hours the night before, just to make sure I covered every single detail.
I had spent 72+ hours stressing over an exam that was over in twenty minutes. It didn’t feel fair. But who knows—- maybe it was thanks to my paranoia that the test seemed so simple.
I miss being a child. I really do. Waking up to belly rubs and kisses instead of blaring alarms feels like a luxury long gone.
I long for the time when the only problem I had in the world was trying to go everywhere my parents went, I miss not having to decide what to eat for every meal, and just a week ago I missed not having to go for a medical appointment on my own. These little comforts of childhood now seem like distant memories, replaced by the demands of adult life.
While my friends couldn’t wait to grow up, I always secretly treasured my childhood.
As the second-born, I had a front-row seat to my older sister’s gradual departure from the carefree years we once shared and it never seemed as glorious as everyone raved it was.
I noticed how she played less and less. She no longer watched the shows that we had both loved and had been obsessed with, she no longer laughed at silly little things like we used to.
Adulthood seemed like a scam, and I wanted no association with it.
But yet there I was last Friday, exactly where I have always feared I’d be. Sitting ALONE in the sterile, waiting room of campus health services, I couldn’t help but reflect on how far I’ve come from those carefree days.
Doctor appointments have always been awful, but for the first time, I felt awfully cold sitting there alone after struggling to sign myself in and understanding what was required of me. I tell you, sitting alone in a waiting room waiting to be called in is now on the list of experiences I hate.
Why was I at campus health, you may ask? To get vaccine shots, but I can happily say that waiting to be called in was the last of the awful experiences because once I was called, I was attended to by a truly wonderful nurse.
She made me feel as though I was no longer alone for the visit. In addition to her sweet persona, she had an aura I can only describe as motherly. She was the first person to clearly explain why I was there and why I needed the vaccines, and took the time to describe how each of the three vaccines would feel once administered.
We rounded up the session with her asking me to pick some stickers she had laid out on a table.
‘You can have more than one,’ she said, transforming my first health appointment from a dreadful one into a very memorable experience. Sadly, I don’t recall her name because she told me while I was still nervous, but I’d like to say a huge thank you to her.
On that note, make sure you have fulfilled the requirements for your immunization records and are no longer on hold.
The deadline is September 13, which is only two weeks away. I’d suggest going now rather than later because it might get a lot busier with longer wait times.
Going to a clinic, especially alone, might seem scary, but I promise it’s all in your head. My whole visit lasted about an hour, and yes, the shots stung a little, but it’s nothing compared to the pain of being dropped from classes and having to pay the $150 fee.
So, if you haven’t yet taken care of your immunization records, don’t wait until the last minute. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later—and you might even walk away with a sticker or two.
