I have suffered, for most of my life, with an affliction of hating what is “popular”… It started with Star Wars and has hit at different times - Boy bands, the tv show Friends, MySpace, the list goes on. Some symptoms include hastily made decisions, binary thinking, and stubbornness. As a parent, I have had to really sit with this sort of thinking and have deemed it problematic and have actively been holding up the mirror to myself. Not sure where this all started… let’s get real probably some traumatic childhood event. In my younger years, I wanted to fit in by having hard boundaries on what’s folx deemed cool and have thankfully gotten out of that. We just like what we like and that’s is fucking rad. To be completely unadulterated - what liberation. So as I try to gracefully enter my 40th year - I am saying fuck off to the idea of guilty pleasures/stifled thinking and embrace pleasure. All that to say.. the BRAT album is PURE PLEASURE. It makes you dance, feel, move, think, and just be in the moment. It is a sandwich of sick ass pop music and raw emotion. I didn’t want to like it - I snickered at Vince and my son who were sooooo into early on. There isn’t much to say other than pop music doesn’t get much better than this. Pop albums like this might only be a once or twice in a lifetime thing. I am glad I am there to witness it, hear it, and be into it. Just like may the 4th be with you day or whatever that is - there is a reason that last year was a brat summer. (Also the original Star Wars movies slam, thanks to my son for wanting to watch them with me).
Enjoy 2024 in review - it’s a nice reprieve from 2025. Much love.
-a
1:CHARLI XCX - brat
2:CONTENTION - artillery from heaven
3:KNOCKED LOOSE - you won't go before you're supposed to
4:FRENCH POLICE - bully
5:LESSER CARE - heel turn
6:SOFT KILL - escape forever
7:MALE TEARS - paradísco
8:KALI UCHIS - orquídeas
9:REMI WOLF - big ideas
10:ALKALINE TRIO - blood, hair, and eyeballs
11:SHOOTING DAGGERS - love & rage
12:GOUGE AWAY - deep sage
13:GLARING - dr666 & hope
14:DOECHII - alligator bites never heal
15:COLD CAVE - passion depression
16:CIRCUS - one big joke
17:THE BODY/DIS FIG - orchards of a futile heaven
18:SPENT CASE - s/t
19:SINKANE - we belong
20:JUICEBOX - s/t