Humanity is premiering, you jags!

the smallest artist i listen to? probably the bird outside my window

Reblog to give the person you reblogged from the ability to finish their WIPs

— David Cronenberg, Consumed

prophecy girl!!!!!

i know you guys are excited for astoria (2015), but my heart says it’s time for

a non-exhaustive list of things i love about fix me (2006):

- i suppose here’s as good a place as any to mention that the reason i embarked on my decent into marianas trench ferality was this interview maitreyi ramakrishnan did about five spots in toronto that hold personal significance to her (shoutout to any of you who’ve perused my blog after reading one of the lists to find next to no music-related content but a staggering amount of netflix’s never have i ever instead). the way she spoke of being profoundly starstruck by josh ramsay and her shock that the interviewer hadn’t heard of canadian legends marianas trench got me curious, so i downloaded their first album and, well. you can infer where the story goes from there.

- it’s hard to articulate the lightening-in-a-bottle feeling i got as soon as i hit play on this album, but there was an immediate kinship, a sense that this music was made for me to find and fall in love with. i submitted to the mortifying ordeal of listening to new music and am still reaping the rewards of insanity ✌️, pop-punk music my beloved!! etc. etc. this album holds a special place in my heart, as part of the marianas trench discography as well as in the library of all albums i love

- anyway, this’ll be a familiar refrain for you at this point but, motifs!!! this album’s interest in the unglamorous and sickening work of rehabilitation of the self lives in the thread of clinical language woven throughout, and i think that’s neat!

- the way the deconstruction of the patient’s former identity as sick makes this album the perfect complement to masterpiece theatre (2009), where we explore of their newly constructed identity as performer

“say anything”

- maybe if i loved “say anything” less, i’d be able to talk about it more (she says, just before dedicating hundreds of words to unpacking everything she loves about “say anything”)

- if you haven’t noticed by this point, i’m not a musician. in fact, despite being a theater kid for many years in my youth, i can’t even read sheet music. so when i engage in music appreciation, it’s largely with an english major’s eye and sensibilities - which means reading depth and themes (themes!!!) into lyrics rather than being able to articulate what the music itself does to enhance the meaning of the song (despite the fact that it obviously does where josh ramsay et. al. are concerned - their work would hardly render me as crazed as it does if every component weren’t working in glorious tandem). the reason i’m bringing this up is to emphasize just how fucking hard marianas trench rammed into me as a band with i can take it if you need to take this / out on someone.

- like, part of the appeal was definitely because i went into my listening experience with ‘thinking about blorbo’ disease and this lyric offers a lot of mileage there, and part of my lingering fixation has to do with the irony of the patient offering this when he’s clearly hanging on to his own sense of self and well-being by the thinnest of fraying threads. but mostly? it’s the tenderly whispered promise of it - the invitation to pour myself into this music, it has the capacity and the inclination to hold me together - being fulfilled ad infinitum

- all that said, i obviously and absolutely count the intro of this song among the band’s captivating prologues, if more as a prologue for their entire catalogue than as one that’s album-specific

- when the guitar, drums, etc. crash into the song!!!

- the extreme extreme aughts pop-punk energy of the first verse

like, they truly bottled the Moment with this

- on the subject of the first verse, it also bottles the patient’s over-arching conflict for the album, namely how he feels the pressure to rehabilitate for his loved ones even though that isn’t enough on its own, because so much of his identity is tied up in the self-destruction

- that one stings a little for being one of the first lyrics to capture the clinical/hospital motif as applied to reconstruction of self image, evoking a doctor warning you before they stick you with a needle

- how much catharsis sing-shouting along to this is where i scream from affords me. who needs therapy, this song will fix me (😏)

- something about the way lines like i don’t expect but try me and you can take it all away and i’ll miss don’t have explicit objects yet still get their meaning across lights my brain up with good chemicals in a way to which no drug high could compare

- the line there’s a little bit of you in all this for so many reasons!! punchy (‘don’t you get off thinking you have no hand in my tendency toward self-harm’) and tender (we are comprised of bits of every person we’ve ever loved) and blorbo-related alike

- the way determination to rehabilitate the self lives in there’s a better bit of me to see yet / ‘cause you haven’t seen any of my best

- the lyrics everybody wants a piece of you, every- / one takes a piece of me for how they introduce the motif i brought up in the masterpiece theater (2009) list: the patient/performer’s tendency to see his identity as bite-size pieces, loosely connected and finite in number (and i love love love the way each album having a distinct speaker and identity while also clearly drawing on and feeding into a singular mythology also plays into this motif)

- the way this part of the bridge says consonant👏 rights👏

- the way this part of the bridge clues the audience into the fact that this is well-trod ground for the patient, this journey of rehabilitation. the difference this time is the pieces of self are dwindling in number

also, again with the phrases that have no stated object but prompt you to fill in the blanks like the bangingest mad-lib

- the guitar part that always takes us from the pre-chorus into the chorus getting it’s moment in the spotlight!!! the compulsion i have to headbang along every time!!!!

- the lil note variation in the final little bit of you in all this!!!!!!

- outro gives me shivers it’s not enough to listen to this song i need to burrow inside until i hit the lava-filled core

- just. fucking epic from start to finish sorry if you’re normal about this song couldn’t be me

+ bonus: the performance of “say anything” (and “ever after” let’s be real) from the ‘live from inside’ concert solidified the pink and black flying v as my favorite from the guitar vault iykyk

“decided to break it”

- dialogue from recording sessions making the final mix ❤️

- the inherent eroticism of i’m the bad seed, i think i swallowed it whole (why are you booing me, i’m right?)

- matt webb. period.

- the way the momentum of the song inspires shoulder wiggles to the point where i turn into that one gif of shaq every time. you know the one.

- the tambourine embellishments on the chorus!!

- how satisfying it is to sing along to the bridge 🎶dahh-owOWowyehhOWooowOWWWoooOOOOWN🎶

- the scream of the penultimate ignore

- how well this song evokes frustration and being at the end of your tether in general while also being a fuckin bop

- the way they all bite off the it of the outro

and also how this line reads as the patient breaking off connections with the things/people that frustrate his rehabilitation and the way the performance emphasizes that there’s nothing demure or easy about the decision

“september”

- i was born in early september and am a winter-lovin’ girlie and i’ve always felt like the world owes it to me to have moved onto chillier weather by the time my birthday rolls around even though it never does because my birthday takes place when it is undeniably summer so this song would obviously play over the opening credits in the movie about my life and i have to stan

- anyway, the way the title and the chorus evoke a shift in season, specifically from summer to autumn, a time of both bounty and decay, and how that symbolic dissonance emphasizes the nature of the patient’s journey ahead (can’t erase the way it pulls when seasons change, indeed)

- speaking of the journey ahead sucking in direct proportion to how essential it is to have gone on the journey, clap your hands if you feel the significance of another piece of me is gone again and how the patient’s identity being tied to his sickness means that committing himself to get better necessitates giving up an integral part of his personhood (👏👏👏)

- the way the line and you can leave it if it’s easier tastes

- how the pre-chorus

has the power to transform me into someone with 2008 emo bangs on the spot and like, legally, you have to wail this at the top of your lungs you have to be over-the-top embarrassing about it that’s just the law

- the way there’s something mildly unsettling about the break in the line this sun is melting my / skin that makes me itchy to escape from underneath my own skin and is therefore so, so unspeakably perfect

- anyway, just wanna sit with the season metaphor some more

and how the exhaustion of the blaring sun gives way to the promise of new life, what’s old being washed away by the rain

- the bite down hard, bite down being another prime example of the medical motif and how the screams that echo after this line make it especially cheeky and dark. none of the patient’s pain has actually been muffled.

- on that note, the way, sonically, the whole song feels like violent thrashing against the pain that necessarily comes with destroying a part of yourself, even a part you’re better off without

“alibis”

- in terms of the marianas trench albums’ first-act ballad hierarchy, “alibis” tops my chart most days, we respect a classic in this house

- just like “september” sounds exactly like the stage of the journey it’s meant to represent, “alibis” evokes thoughtful reflection as the patient contemplates what identity he wants to construct from here really effectively

- how gEnDeR the line wearing my best little girl pout is

- the way the refrain all my faces are alibis slots quite nicely in with the ‘identity as fractured pieces’ motif

- shoutout to this verse

because it’s my favorite, but also because it marks a shift in perspective for the patient. renouncing the sickness doesn’t mean it stops being a part of him, after all. those impulses live so deep within him as to be phantom sensations

- the way the bridge is like. fuck subtext, we ball

if the patient is not his old self, but also not not his old self…what does that make him?

“shake tramp”

disclaimer: this song didn’t age well. it’s a certified banger!!, and the obnoxiousness is definitely intentional in a way that shields the whole thing with irony, but i still think the language having a different cultural acceptability today than it did in 2006 means this song has a high barrier of entry for new listeners. speaking from experience, of course - once upon a time, this was my most skipped marianas trench song… and then i watched their performance of it for the ‘live from inside’ concert and i was like. oh. oh.

- the earworm of an intro!!! fun fact about me: i get drunk and my brain starts playing the “shake tramp” intro on loop forever and i absolutely make it everyone else’s problem

- BOP BOP BOP BUH-DAH-DOP BOP BOP BUH-DAH-DOP BOP BOP BUH-DAH-DA BAH-DAH-DA BOP

- the way the drums evoke getting relentlessly stomped upon

- the line and break my knees to get release for how succinctly it captures the patient’s relationship to self-destruction

- how you needed some just to take you from tastes. also, hello object-less lyrics, i am snorting you up i am transcending this plane of reality

- how galaxy-brained bleeding the lines between sore and sorry is because it doesn’t really give you the time to sit with the shock of and i hit you more, is your face still sore? before it’s apologizing for the abuse of it

- for as much as i feel like this track is a glaring detour in the context of the album as a whole, i like how this part of the pre-chorus

arguably ties us back to the fourth verse from “alibis”

- what a cheap perfume, i hate this room because i am once again sprouting my emo bangs and shouting this at the top of my lungs, throwing my whole pussy into the bitchy energy

- being called little handshake tramp like, this better not awaken anything in me……..

- the backing i’m so sorrys

- anyway, wild how a track from masterpiece theatre (2009) ended up on fix me (2006), am i right?

“low”

- the way this part of the first verse

establishes where we are on the journey to rehabilitation. namely, that the patient’s reached a kind of plateau and is having trouble holding onto the desire to change when they miss the clarity of the self-destruction

- the way the chorus reinforces this

like, it should be easy to stay the course, but it’s depressing to feel like he’s stopped making much progress (dude’s definitely thinking about break[ing his] knees to get release)

- sometimes the bridge just fucking hits. i sure do get so tired, tired. i Sure Do.

- the resonating guitar transitioning us into “push” is something i like a normal amount!

“push”

- the weird cross between whimpering and moaning that happens during the intro 😳

- the way the music explodes outward for the pre-chorus, the way the hey explodes out of the patient (i DO feel it now, i DO)

- up against the wall, you say? 😳 

- the post-chorus push 😳

- the gritted-teeth performance of using like it’s goin outta style

- woof.

- the switch from and you’re getting sick / and you’re feeling it to and you’re getting stuck / and you fucked it up (any time josh ramsay et. al. drop a ‘fuck’ into a song, really 😳)

- matt webb. period.

“far from here”

- hey, now that we’re flirting with relapse, let’s reckon with parental disappointment! i bet that’ll do wonders for the patient’s commitment to rehabilitation!

- god, but all the complicated emotions that exist on the spectrum from ‘it’s partially your fault i am this way’ to the unconditional love felt by the patient in verse two

how are the patient’s parents still able to believe he’ll get better when he’s kept them waiting for so long, when he’s still so far away from true rehabilitation, when the waiting only hurts them more the longer it goes on?

- the way we start the final rendition of the chorus quiet, introspective, until we get to the line i laughed aloud to drown it out when the music gets boisterous again, drowning out the thoughtfulness of before. what could it mean what could it all mean?

“vertigo”

- relapse, that’s what it means!

- always and forever obsessed with the snottiness of you got here just in time to see everything fall apart / i’m not upset at all. sure, champ!

- how the first pre-chorus

tells us once again that the external pressure from loved ones is not enough for - and is perhaps actively detrimental to - lasting change. with everyone’s eyes on him, the patient can’t muster more than the admission that maybe [he] could want [to change] more

- dizzied up in my never try because it makes my head spin!!! we’re getting caught in the destructive cycle!!! vertigo!!!!

- the way the distinct parts of the song (verse, pre-chorus, chorus, etc.) all bleed into each other and how that complements the sense of lost control with which the patient’s grappling

- speaking of, there’s this part

and how it makes the strongest case yet for the external pressure causing active harm to the patient’s rehabilitation. as long as he doesn’t grow too sensitive to the disappointment, he can always try

 - not another piece of him……

- the switch from maybe i could want it more to maybe i could miss it more and how that communicates the way the starting point and the goal of the rehabilitation have become confused in the patient’s mind. lost in the vertigo, it all starts to blur together and look the same and you can’t stay on a path to recovery if you’ve fallen down a hole.

- the do do do do dos bop

- the way the song seems to flatline for a measure (heartbeat…) before coming back to life with one last rendition of the chorus

- the defeat that lives in so what’s a little vertigo? the patient has resigned himself to the downward pull of self-destruction

“alive again”

- the way the second verse

is the patient talking to himself, the fractured pieces of identity that want wildly different things yet can’t seem to find any satisfying way to stop life from hurting so much in conversation

- sometimes it hurts, but that’s no worse / than all those times i guess it works and how the patient is acknowledging that the self-destruction fails him as much as it provides clarity. the way that doesn’t get him anywhere new because the end result is the same: it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

- the way the patient walk[ing] around like [he’s] alive again while the sickness inside of him just won’t die plays with language, because his rehabilitation is actually what’s on its deathbed, his sickness is actually what’s thriving and alive. brb need to fling myself into the sun!

- i’m fading ending the song on a dreadful chill, on a dwindling sense of any self at all

“skin & bones”

- the way turn all the water on / and bury that sound is reminiscent of the “september” chorus, only here, the healing properties of the water have been turned on their head, enabling instead of revitalizing

- how, with all this talk of fractured identity, we don’t look into a mirror until here at the end

so naturally, this part is loaded with meaning. the tell me you can see feels like the patient pleading with his reflection to reinforce the idea that sickness is his truest self even though he knows it’s not (lie to me).

- thin / where the hell have you been? and how it’s the patient greeting an old friend with equal parts relief and anger in a way that catches me in the gut every freaking time, with every rendition

- fucking!! it all looks so big / never mind, i don’t feel anything and how evocative the one-two punch of this is!! numbness as an empty, hollow sanctuary from the horrors of being a person

- the way laughin’ like it works is reminiscent of “far from here” and now we’ve gone and admitted that the patient could never actually drown out the noise of everyone else’s concern, could never actually pretend like going on this way was a viable option

- the patient’s declaration that it’s too fucking easy (to turn to the self-destruction) bringing to mind how rehabilitation should have been easy in “low” and how the injustice in the truth of that hurts, hurts, hurts

- how all these echoed moments reinforce the cyclical nature of the patient’s journey to rehabilitate - commitment to change and relapse and hitting bottom and commitment to change and relapse and here he is now, once again hitting bottom

- the scorched-earth outro (i will burn all this, i will burn all this, i will burn all this) being at once dark and hopeful. maybe actively sacrificing the last piece of his identity instead of watching it get consumed by the cycle means he’s truly done with the old, sick self, but maybe it’s just another commitment to change that can’t and won’t pan out.

in conclusion: this album is conceptually tighter than i usually give it credit for - the irony being that, instead of fixing me, it repeatedly breaks my heart over the course of a listen. four out of five stars, would submit to being driven actively insane again (and again and again and again).

Fic Aesthetic: it’ll hurt like a mother when your foot comes out by @catty-words

@pscentral event 24: team tools (smart sharpen, high pass, channel mixer, vibrance and gradient text)

You cannot have a crush on something that is dead, and, and evil, and a vampire.