Melisma Summer 2021 by Melisma Magazine

FROM ZOOM TO THE MAB

INBOUND

STAFF

FROM THE EDITORS

Julia Bernicker Ethan Lam Lola Nedic

Concerts are back, and so are we! We’re excited to resume bringing you 3 issues of high-quality, well-thought-out music journalism every year. As concerts return, so have our members (thank goodness!). Even if they are just here to request press access for shows**, we are excited to induct the new class of music perverts into the MAB Hall of Fame.

EDITORS IN CHIEF

MANAGING EDITORS Michael Cambron Miranda Feinberg

EDITORS Andrés López Ian Smith

SOCIAL MEDIA Kayla Avitable

STAFF Sawyer Banbury Max Chow-Gillette Thomas Feit Leo Ikke-Maizlish Taylor Jacobs Donovan Menard Georgia Moore James Morse Mike Norton Grace Rotermund Jaclyn Sweeney

Dear Melismaniacs,

First up, the gorgeous, charismatic, and noted Dallasite Max Chow-Gillette conjured up a personal article about the importance of Texan metal – specifically Pantera and Power Trip – and the political complications of being a metal fan. Riley forever. Next, our shining star and sweet cinnamon roll Andrés López penned a review of the much anticipated and confusingly self-titled album by Vince Staples. His opinions may shock you. Even as we return to more of our feature-based journalism – goodbye for now, zine :( – we couldn’t help but include another crowdsourced article in this issue, this time on music videos. Finally, have you ever thought to yourself: “man, I wonder what college freshmen are listening to these days?” Well look no further! Continuing our centuries-old tradition of asking incoming first years to submit their playlists of the summer, we’ve compiled the best playlists submitted by the class of 2025, complete with individualized blurbs about the toils of being eighteen. The return to live music has us spending most of our time looking for shows to attend, so we’ve decided to share the fruits of our labor in the form of a comprehensive fall show calendar, so just call us the new Songkick. As always, Melisma is your go-to for soul-searching quiz content. In case you need help deciding which of the many fall concerts to attend, we’ve got you covered. Pro tip: take it as many times as you need to get each answer and have an excuse to attend them all. Hugs and kisses, Julia Bernicker, Ethan Lam, and Lola Nedic

COVER BY: Isa Arabia **Our email swells with press requests during the day. The press requests come to us in our dreams, like visions to a maddened prophet. Please save us.

MELISMA | SUMMER 2021 | 3

OUTBOUND

FROM SUMMER TO FALL

VINCE STAPLES' S/T - A REVIEW

NORTH TEXAS, METAL, AND ME

By Andrés López

By Max Chow-Gillette

FRESHMAN PLAYLISTS Compiled by Ethan Lam

MUSIC VIDEOS

FALL PREVIEW

15 LEGEND

Compiled by Kayla Avitable

By Julia Bernicker

QUIZ

By Lola Nedic

PINK IN THE NIGHT LINE

GREEN LIGHT LINE

PURPLE RAIN LINE

ORANGE MOON LINE

BLUE MONDAY LINE

TRANSFER STATION

Melisma Magazine is a non-profit student publication of Tufts University. The opinions expressed in articles, features, or photos are solely those of the individual author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the staff. Tufts University is not responsible for the content of Melisma Magazine. If you would like to submit a letter to the publication, please send it to melismamagazine@gmail.com; please limit your letter to 400 words or less.

VINCE STAPLES LP-3 Andrés López Editor

ong Beach, California rapper and Twitter extraordinaire Vince Staples returns with a self-titled project after a three year wait after his last album, FM!. Entirely produced by Kenny Beats with the help of some co-producers, this 10 track, 22-minute-long project is similar to FM! on the surface, yet Vince Staples takes a completely different sonic direction. Opting for mostly wavy and laid-back instrumentals, Vince picked the perfect sonic palette to dive deep lyrically on. Vince divulges various personal details about his life that he had not touched on before and further explores topics discussed on previous projects. As explained to Pitchfork, Vince stated that the album “really gives much more information about me that wasn’t out there before. That’s why I went with that title. I feel like I’ve been trying to tell the same story. As you go on in life, your point of view changes. This is another take on myself that I might not have had before.” The album opens with “ARE YOU WITH THAT?,” a moody track that Vince glides over while rapping about his past lifestyle as a gang member in Long Beach. The lyrics are laid-back, heartfelt, and set the tone for the rest of the project. The next track is the first single, “LAW OF AVERAGES,” a track that I was not initially excited by. At first, I thought it was minimalist to a fault, that something felt off about it, and that Vince’s rapping was boring. However, after listening to it a few more times, I found the slightly unsettling and eerie highpitched background vocals quite interesting and thought that they actually added to the track. On Vince’s end, he comes through with another low-key flow and clever bars about how people should leave him alone and not mess with his money. This motif surrounding money shows up throughout the album, which he notes in an interview with Ebro Darden. While the song is well-executed, it still remains one of my least favorite on the album.

The next song, “SUNDOWN TOWN,” is a soulful cut with a nice vocal sample that stands out and adds to the themes of the song. Vince opens up about how growing up in the hood and his past as a gang member have led him to become paranoid and return to his former lifestyle. This is just one of many moments throughout the album where Vince opens up about his personal problems and how his upbringing affected him. On “THE SHINING,” Vince describes how youth from Long Beach live without purpose in their lives and would rather die gangbanging than get a job. He then goes on to explain how he finds himself in a similar situation, getting stuck in his old ways and dragged back to his dangerous hometown instead of settling in a wealthy area like Malibu or Calabasas permanently. He is “too active” to do that, he says. While not an awful song, this is easily my least favorite song on the album, as it does not compare to the others in terms of production, energy, and flow. “TAKING TRIPS,” the following track, has an infectious melody and standout production. Vince glides over the beat once again, rapping about how dangerous his hometown is. The bridge and outro show how the youth in Long Beach get peer pressured into gang life, while the chorus suggests that Vince disapproves of this violent lifestyle. He expresses this idea in the lines “I hate July, crime is high, the summer sucks/ Can’t even hit the beach without my heat, it’s in my trunks/They ride the tide, I don’t got no one to trust.” “THE APPLE & THE TREE” is the first of two interludes on the album. It is a voicemail of Vince’s mom describing how she lied on the stand to defend Vince’s father, who was convicted for attempting to shoot someone. She later also tried to find the person who Vince’s father shot.

MELISMA | SUMMER 2021 | 5

*** *** **** *** ***** “Vince expresses concern and paranoia about people who are out to get him due to his past actions, and reminisces about his past and the emotional weight that those days have piled on him”

The voicemail shows the generational struggles filled with violence that plague Long Beach. Furthermore, the title of the interlude highlights the loyalty that Vince’s family shows to each other, as it references the adage that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” On “TAKE ME HOME,” Vince is complemented by a slick guitar melody as he describes how all he knows is gang life, and that he feels trapped in the cycle of violence. Vince expresses concern and paranoia about people who are out to get him due to his past actions, and reminisces about his past and the emotional weight that those days have piled on him. Additionally, the song boasts a beautifully sung chorus and outro from Fousheé. “LIL FADE,” a reference to Vince’s old nickname, has a super clean flow and a head-bobbing beat. Vince describes his old gangbanging lifestyle and calls for his friends to be released from prison at the end of the track. The straightforward nature of the song works to its advantage since it is one of the more energetic songs on the album. “LAKEWOOD MALL,” the penultimate track on the record, is another interlude. It tells a story about trying to separate oneself from guns, potentially violent situations, and “bullshit.” Tyson, the narrator, tells the audience how he would have gotten arrested if he did not give his gun away earlier, and how later, Vince could have been arrested along with some of his friends at a party he chose not to go to that ended up turning violent. The album concludes with the one true banger of the tracklist, “MHM,” which is easily my favorite song on the album. Pounding 808s and wavy synths play throughout the track, giving Vince the perfect soundscape to rap over. Vince once again details his

gang lifestyle in Long Beach with a dope flow and a catchy chorus. To end the album, Vince gives directions around his neighborhood, showing what the hood of Long Beach is. By providing directions, Vince puts into perspective how much of North Long Beach is consumed by the area that he describes as the hood. The last words uttered are “dead homies,” reminding the audience what the cost of the gang lifestyle is. At first, I had mixed feelings on the album and found it underwhelming. I was frankly disappointed that it was only 22 minutes long, given the three years between albums. However, this is a solid and succinct project from Vince that sheds light on his personal experiences with gang life and his current struggles to completely separate himself from it. Vince Staples delivers an honest and personal yet laid-back album with his self-titled release that imparts upon the listener a change in sound to match the change in perspective Vince had reflecting on his past.

North Texas, Metal, & Me by Max Chow-Gillette I was born in Dallas on October 11, 2000. My parents migrated to North Texas from New York and New Jersey in the late 90s for my father’s research job at the medical center, with the full expectation that they would return to the northeast after a handful of years. They’ve since lived there for over twenty years, and thus, I had the distinct privilege of growing up a Texan. North Texas (the northeast quadrant of the state, also known as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, a term invented solely for our own usage) doesn’t have its own nationally recognizable identity like other Texas regions, outside of shooting JFK and JR. Sure, Dallasites like myself can wax poetic about the rich history of the blues in Deep Ellum, or where we were when Big Tex burned down, or how Luka is gonna bring a ring back to Big D, but to the greater American public, our notability in the greater American consciousness isn’t all that substantial. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative, DFW’s primary export is electronic goods, topping over 7 billion dollars per year. Not mentioned on their list is another key export, one that has spread the labor of North Texans all across the globe: heavy metal. North Texas’ influence on the global metal scene began with the July 24, 1990 release of Pantera’s Cowboys from Hell, an album recorded in

Pantego, a postage stamp enclave within the city of Arlington. Pantera, which formed in Arlington as just another shitty glam metal outfit riding the coattails of Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot in the early 1980s, had released a handful of mediocre records before Cowboys. This, their fourth studio album and their first release on a major record label, was nothing short of revolutionary. Drawing clear influence from the thrash legends that had reinvented the genre in the mid 80s, Pantera’s slower, groovier, angrier delivery hit the stagnating North American metal scene like a lightning bolt. Phil Anselmo’s trademark growl and astounding vocal range, Dimebag Darrell’s legendary drop-D shredding, Vinnie Paul’s signature double kick, and Rex Brown’s thunderous bass lines put Pantera, and by extension, North Texas, on the heavy metal map. Pantera’s popularity and influence only continued to surmount as the decade progressed. 1992’s Vulgar Display of Power was even heavier and groovier than its predecessor. Songs like Walk, Mouth for War, and Fucking Hostile displayed a violent, masculine energy that would typify metal in the years that followed. Their 1994 release, Far Beyond Driven, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 charts. Pantera was selling out arenas around the globe, and even performed in front of a million-person audience in Moscow

Dallasites like myself can wax poetic about the rich history of the blues in Deep Ellum, or where we were when Big Tex burned down, or how Luka is gonna bring a ring back to Big D, but to the greater American public, our notability in the greater American consciousness isn’t all that substantial.

alongside some of their musical idols, AC/DC and Metallica. Even throughout their dramatic success, they never forgot their North Texas - and Southern roots, for better and worse. Pantera was the metal band of the South in the early 1990s. Like many Southern, White bands before them, they proudly displayed their heritage in the form of the Confederate rebel flag. The Flag of Dixie, the battle flag of the traitorous secessionist states that split off from the Union in an attempt to preserve their right to own and abuse Black people through chattel slavery, was plastered on their merchandising, their guitars, and their backdrops. Pantera didn’t hit their peak during the Reconstruction period. This was less than 30 years ago. Hell, NASCAR barred some of their drivers from displaying the Confederate flag on their cars in the early 90s. Fucking NASCAR! This was unacceptable then, and it is unacceptable now. Pantera’s use of the rebel flag was later walked back by Phil Anselmo in the mid 2010s, echoing the fact that he and his associates viewed it as, as the common refrain goes, “heritage, not hate.” Anselmo himself was rightfully criticized for “jokingly” giving a Nazi salute and shouting “white power” at a concert in 2016, an incident which he played off as an inside reference to drinking white wine at the show. To the band’s mild credit, many of their songs did address the dangers of racism, but the imagery and opinions of Pantera still

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exemplify a particular type of mindset that many White Southerners hold. The “Lost Cause” mythos surrounding the Confederacy came about in the late 1800s following the end of the Civil War. The argument, which was used to promote usage of the Confederate Flag at the turn of the century and place statues of Confederate generals in predominantly Black areas, asserted that the Confederate cause was a just one that sought to preserve the “Southern way of life” (which was built on the back of slavery) and state’s rights (to own slaves). Naturally, this argument is completely fraught with historical inaccuracies and completely invalid, but this concept has stuck, and is still prevalent today. Confederate flags and statues are still present all throughout the South, including North Texas. In Dallas, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson Elementary weren’t renamed until 2018. This public hagiography of Confederate leaders and imagery may soon come to an end, but the Lost Cause mindset will take time to fade. People like Phil Anselmo and Dimebag Darrell may have viewed the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of their “heritage”, but it is still a shameful and racist symbol that should be relegated to museums and history textbooks, not the merchandise of multimillion dollar recording artists. Internal tensions ultimately broke Pantera up by the turn of the century. Following Dimebag’s

murder in 2004 and Vinnie Paul’s death in 2018, the likelihood of a Pantera reunion has all but disappeared. Even so, their musical influence continues to be heard in practically every metal band that formed after the mid 90s, from Slipknot to Lamb of God to the inheritors of their North Texas metal throne, Power Trip. Power Trip formed in 2008 in Dallas, Texas. The band quickly lit the North Texas underground music scene on fire, with their eclectic mixture of hardcore punk riffs, thrash metal speed, and powerful lyricism. The band got their big break after signing with legendary metal label Southern Lord, releasing their debut album Manifest Decimation on the label in 2013. I first heard of Power Trip in 2017, just as the band released their second album, Nightmare Logic. Their brand of metal spoke to me in a way that few other bands had. They were hardcore as hell, and outspoken about societal injustices. They talked about the horrors of the police state, the hypocrisy of Southern evangelicals, the evils of capitalism, the danger of global warming, the importance of challenging racism head-on. They transformed the fun yet often meaningless anger and aggression that is intrinsic to metal into something meaningful. They stood up for the marginalized. They gave this young Chinese-American metalhead something that I could bang my head to without feeling guilty about the genre’s typical

masculine posturing. And they were from MY city. Tragically, Power Trip’s lead singer Riley Gale was taken from us far too soon. Even after his death in 2020, the legacy of Power Trip and Riley Gale lives on. The Riley Gale Foundation was created earlier this year by the Gale family, an organization that disperses funds to Dallas-area LGBTQ orgs, mental health support networks, and animal rescue facilities. I am proud to be a North Texan and a Dallasite. I love many things about my state. I go to Whataburger on my way back from the airport every time I go back home. I drink Dr. Pepper like it’s water. I watch every Mavericks game. I’m thinking about getting a Willie Nelson tattoo. I’m overly critical of any barbecue spot I go to up here in Boston. Even so, I do acknowledge the work that has to be done in Texas to rectify the historical injustices that have plagued my state for hundreds of years. Racism, both institutional and societal, is still alive and well. As fun as it is to rock out to Pantera, and as much as I may enjoy their music, they symbolize an antiquated Southern viewpoint that has no place in the modern world. Bands like Power Trip represent the new wave of young, diverse artists all throughout the South that want to fight for a better tomorrow. The future is now. Riley forever, Texas forever. To read more about and contribute to the Riley Gale foundation, more information can be found at https:// www.rileygale.org/.

As fun as it is to rock out to Pantera, and as much as I may enjoy their music, they symbolize an antiquated Southern viewpoint that has no place in the modern world. Bands like Power Trip represent the new wave of young, diverse artists all throughout the South that want to fight for a better tomorrow.

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First-Year Playlists As per Melisma tradition, we asked incoming first-year students to submit playlists with the songs that soundtracked their summers. We hope that their writing can serve as a personal time capsule: a record of who they were at the start of college – something they can look back fondly on in four years time.

Ruthless - The Marias Black Sheep - Metric, Brie Larson Heatstroke (ft. Young Thug, Pharrel, Ariana Grande) - Calvin Harris The Spins - Mac Miller SWEET / I THOUGHT YOU WANTED TO DANCE (ft. Brent Faiyaz & Fana Hues) - Tyler, the Creator Kimochi Warui - Car Seat Headrest Amoeba - Clairo INDUSTRY BABY (ft. Jack Harlow) Prom - SZA Downtown - Varsity Always Hazy - Macseal Odd Look - Kavinsky, The Weeknd That’s Life - Frank Sinatra

ISAAC DAME My summer was a mess. My family continued to drift apart like Pangaea in fast forward. I got a job and lost it a few weeks later. I made exciting new friends but lost them too. I made sure to lose old friends just for good measure. And I would be leaving everyone I did keep behind when August ended, which was quite odd to contemplate. Despite these circumstances, 2021 managed to be my favorite summer yet, and I wanted it to last forever. I had Car Seat Headrest to rely on in my low points as per usual, but I also sought out more typical summer sounds to escape to an ideal season. SZA and Mac Miller were long-time favorites whose youthful music felt truly at home in the sweltering heat and bright sun. When the sun clocked out and the moon subbed in, The Marias and The Weeknd fit the new cool, sensual atmosphere. My first summer with my own car desperately required some rock songs to blast with the windows down on the highway, and I surprised myself by settling on “Downtown” and “Black Sheep” as the epitome of this absolutely arbitrary subgenre. All of these songs served as fantastic distractions, but eventually I did have to confront reality. When it was time to say goodbye, it was clear that I wasn’t the only one who had done everything in his power to avoid the unavoidable passage of time. My friend’s last words (mumbles, really) to me reflected that this had all come too fast and none of us were quite able to process what was happening. On the drive home Frank Sinatra told me “That’s Life,” and I could not disagree. That moment felt like rolling credits, as the most turbulent and unsatisfactory era of my life was over. With this resolution, I was finally completely content.

Within the bounds of summer time live intermittent, short-lasting, cherished moments.

This playlist soundtracks the somberness in the strands of thread that run on for just a bit too long. It captures trudging through time, lying lazy when the heart is racBefore departing the only home I’ve ever known, I’d ing, slowness, stillness; hours spent indulged in novels reminisce over my own second-grade-diary stencils like Tommy Orange’s There, There and Emily St. John and scribbles. Only first would I discover a mountainMandel’s Station Eleven, eating sticky mini muffins at top view of the lush greater New Haven valley just ten the end of a paragraph; closing the eyes to ambient minutes north of my house, and for the first time in over noise and drifting into an unremarkable ether. a year, I saw live musicians – Lucy Dacus, Japanese Breakfast, and Bright Eyes – who blasted sonic harmonies in the same stadium I received my high school Piazza, New York Catcher - Belle & Sebastian diploma from. I pull a thread through these sporadic, The Shakes - Atlas Sound mundane moments to form one cohesive bracelet as a Going Going Gone (Edit) - Lucy Dacus Ker Yegu - Yann Tiersen token of my summer. Somehow. - Phony Ppl Sea - Low But in the in-between, time felt stagnant. My friends Pavane for Summer - You’ll Never Get to posted outings to their Instagram stories, and I would Heaven make false-promises to myself to only check social Appointments - Julien Baker media via Google. The world freestyled around me, and Santa Monica Dream - Angus & Julia Stone there I was treading water, almost painfully. Diving Woman - Japanese Breakfast

Yet without this tedium, the string ceases to exist, and the bracelet unravels.

IAN GLASSMAN

MAEVE GAFFNEY

somehow allowing me to come to terms with my own shifting worldview.

This summer I turned 18 years old. It’s something that happens to people every day. No discernable physical change took place, I didn’t even feel different. Yet everything has changed, everything is different.

There’s a certain beauty in a complete stranger making you feel a little less alone. My life isn’t glamorous or particularly spectacular. It’s no longer fast paced and logical, as it once was, instead it is confusing and messy and tired. But music doesn’t require clarity or control, it just requires a willingness to feel. Listed below are songs that helped me feel understood and gave me a sense of belonging during a summer that left me feeling lost and invisible.

Summer no longer represents a break from the 6 hour school day. It’s no longer day camp or jumping off of lifeguard towers at the beach. It’s no longer staying up all night playing manhunt or walking down to the park to play wiffle ball with the rest of the neighborhood. It’s the beginning of the in-between days. Soon I will be living on my own, responsible for myself and my future, yet I still feel like a child. Summer is no longer this precious period of time, but is now a sudden and terrifying beginning to the rest of my life. The soundtrack of my summer didn’t consist of upbeat indie tracks to scream the words to on the highway with my friends. The soundtrack of my summer was instead a desperate attempt for me to reconcile my fleeting youth with my pending adulthood. Some days this meant dancing around my kitchen to The Postal Service, other days it meant laying on my bedroom floor watching my record of The Head on the Door spin around and around. I took long walks and closed my eyes and listened to Adam Duritz change the words to his greatest hits,

In Between Days - The Cure Mr. Jones (Live At Chelsea Studios) Counting Crows These Girls - Childish Gambino ft. Garfunkel and Oates 3rd Generation Nation - Dead Boys The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - The Postal Service Gimme Sympathy - Metric World Spins Madly On - The Weepies Rain King - Counting Crows The Suburbs - Arcade Fire Dancing in the Dark - Bruce Springsteen Roadrunner - The Modern Lovers Today - The Smashing Pumpkins Life is Sweet - Natalie Merchant

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FAVORITE MUSIC VIDEOS

By Staff

Kayla Avitabile (22) Social Media Editor

“Weapon of Choice” - Fatboy Slim Dir. by Spike Jonez

The video for Fatboy Slim’s funky hit, “Weapon of Choice” featuring Bootsy Collins is a pure joy ride. From Bjork to the Beastie Boys, this is one of many music videos directed by Spike Jonez, an individual who has gone on to become an acclaimed filmmaker with credits such as Her and Being John Malkovich. There isn’t much of a question as to why he has achieved such success after viewing videos such as this one. The video is pretty much a Christopher Walken dance sequence. Do I need to explain anything else? If you’re not already intrigued, I’m not sure what it takes. The video is a semi-surrealist daydream: it’s bookended by a brooding Christopher Walken sitting oh so sadly in a lounge chair, climaxes when Walken levitates across the atrium, and sports well-executed choreography.

You wouldn’t believe how entertaining it is to watch this dance sequence, which just flows as easily as the song that drives it. I love my fair share of sad music, but the fact that this one highlights the joy that arises from a dance beat is really invigorating.

James Morse (23) Staff “Microphones in 2020” The Microphones Dir. by Phil Elverum

On cold rainy days, I love to sit inside and go through cluttered drawers, peeling out postcards and pencils and paper clips to remember the years before. It’s a feeling of peace; a time to take time to bridge who I was with who I will become. Those moments are the moments of Phil Elverum of The Microphone’s music video for the Microphones in 2020. It is a video for a simple but long song about Elverum’s

self-mythology. And the video is simple too; every three seconds a glossy picture is placed onto an ever-increasing pile of photos. Sometimes a hand will clear off the stack of photos and a new stack will begin, but for 44 minutes and 761 pictures, this is the video. What sounds unremarkable, bordering on boredom inducing, becomes an incredible representation of retrospection and the redefinition of self. Yes, the music and the video are specific to the experiences of Phil Elverum, but the video is for anyone who has sat and gone through artifacts of their past. Because, as the reel of pictures flow, the faces in the pictures become less the faces of Elverum, and more the faces of one’s own self.

MELISMA | SUMMER 2021 | 13

mIRANda FEinberg (22) “Delilah” - Florence and the Machine

Managing Editor

Dir. by Vincent Haycock

Florence and the Machine’s interconnected concept videos for eight songs off her album How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful, collectively called The Odyssey, is art in its purest, most revelatory form. Each video is seeped in imagery and visual poetry that expertly mirrors the poignance of her music. While I love each video so much, “Delilah,” which serves as the penultimate video in the sequence, has always been my favorite. It opens with spoken words, first off, which is such a music-video turn-on for me; the video feels established in its own story and reality. The video is immediately and creatively inundated with imagery from classic artwork and religious allusions (which is intercut with warring images of multiple Florence Welshes), the choreography is haunting and jerky, the lighting is so eerie, the editing so intentional; it is as cinematic as it is lyrical, and I am blown away by the immense and haunted and haunting beauty that radiates from the entire video. I love how self-celebratory the video seems to be, especially because it feels somewhat cathartic. It has such an energy that is both awful and uplifting, and it feels as though the video is full of emotion. I also think it is a video that perfectly reflects the song. It is so intentional; it is hard to tell if the song was made for the video or if the video was made for the song. I am pulled in by it each time I watch, and each time I watch it I am reminded of how incredibly talented and artful Florence Welsh is.

Fall Preview ARTISTS TO WATCH Dougie Poole

Image Credit: Allison Grosso

Jockstrap

With tracks like “Vaping on the Job” and “Daddies Be Cool”, Dougie Poole brings humor and levity to straight-laced country music. This Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter released his first album, Wideass Highway, in 2017 and followed up with The Freelancer’s Blues in 2020. Poole’s music mixes traditional country vocals with dry lyrics and haunting electronic elements, perfect for fans of Orville Peck.

The music that Georgia Ellery and Taylor Skye, the duo behind Jockstrap, create doesn’t sound like it’s from one of London’s longest-running music conservatories. Their experimental pop might be a cryptic spoken-word passage one second, a jaw-dropping classical string arrangement the next, and then abruptly distort into a sludgy, lurching, glitchy dubstep-inflected breakdown. The sinister undertones of their Image Credit: Maxwell Grange surreal, acidic, and grotesque lyrics are juxtaposed by Ellery’s soft, feathery, and cooed vocal delivery – it’s a thoroughly radiSorry’s music doesn’t neatly fit cal reimagination of what music into any genre category, really, but could be. perhaps that’s what makes them so intriguing. The band describes its music as “mercurial,” which might be the closest we’ll ever get to defining them. Regardless of its abstractness, Sorry’s music has a certain atmospheric allure to it, combining bass-heavy beats with signature Brit-pop vocals. It’s an amalgamation of everything you could want in music, not-so-neatly wrapped up into one project. We recommend their 2020 album 925 Image Credit: Jenn Five or their 2018 single “Starstruck.”

Sorry

ALBUM DROP RADAR September 24th | Japanese Breakfast| Sable September 24th| Sufjan Stevens | A Beginner’s

MELISMA | SUMMER 2021 | 15

Which fall concert should you go to? because yeah, they’re back, and we know you want some tix in your email inbox.

Do you have a record collection?

Spotify all the way

Do you prefer to study on or off-campus?

I’m burying myself in Tisch for finals.

Standing in the corner with my hands in my pockets

Yeah, but it’s all my dad’s.

What’s your concert style?

What are you buying at Goodwill?

Starting a mosh pit

The French press in my dorm room

An “ironically” cheesy sign

Another ratty jean jacket

Lead me to the Davis Sq. cafes!

Were you a theatre kid in high school?

Oh, I am THRIVING right now

Steely Dan

The Sink

How’s the in-person class anxiety?

Must. Not. Cough. Or. Else. Death.

Do you sing Bowie or Mercury’s part in “Under Pressure?

How close are you to getting a mullet?

Brb, checking my barber’s schedule

Where do you get your coffee on campus?

How dare you suggest such a thing?

More ~robotics~, thanks though

100 Gecs

Google says this ahh yes! Paying to is “complex jazzsee a noise perforrock-pop music,” so mance! WAVY MUSIC about AS PRETENTIOUS MAKE BRAIN GO BRRR. AS NAMING YOURSELF STEELY DAN.

Yeah, I know a Hamilton song or two...

*hits high note*

Harry Styles

Mr Starman, step aside.

Snail Mail

make sure to take a Stay behind after book to read in the the show because front row, because The real question is, you’re not like other do you want to Be concert-goers. her or be ~with her?