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Songs For The General Public vs. Imploding the Mirage

So needless to say 2020 has been a pretty trash year, however it does boast one thing that I don’t think any other year can, my two favorite bands released new albums within a week of each other. That being The Lemon Twigs with Songs For The General Public and The Killers with Imploding the Mirage. I’ve got a lot of mixed feelings about both of these albums, but I’m not really interested in how good these albums are (because spoiler alert, they’re both pretty good). No, I want to know which one is better. So let’s take a look into both of these projects, shall we?

Let’s start with Songs For The General Public. This is definitely an album that grows on you, especially if you’re familiar with The Lemon Twigs’ normal sound. I went in expecting Do Hollywood part 2, that’s not it chief. Songs For The General Public is very experimental to say the least, there isn’t really a set sound that unites it and it’s kind of a hodgepodge of different genres. The biggest thing that makes it feel so disjointed is the stark contrast between Michael and Brian’s songs. All of Michael’s songs are very straightforward retro rock ballads, all about sex, love, breakups, drama, you know, what you expect from an epic rock song. If you just listen to songs like Moon, Hell On Wheels and Hog it really does sound like a cohesive album. I’d also like to add that it’s super cool that they released different versions of Fight, and the two that I’ve heard are both fantastic. Then on the flip side you’ve got Brian’s songs. Now, Brian’s songs have always been a bit experimental. In interviews they’ve both said that nobody could make music that sounds the way that Brian’s songs do, and I completely agree, nobody else could’ve made songs that sound like The Bully or Haroomata. But the thing about experiments is that sometimes they don’t work, and the thing about his songs on this album is that there are so many sounds happening at once and it’s kinda overstimulating. I think the two biggest offenders of this are Somebody Loving you and Only a Fool. I actually really like Somebody Loving You, but it took like 5 listens to realize that because there’s just so much going on, and I think the thing that makes me like it so much isn’t the music, it’s how good Brian’s vocals are in it, and I didn’t realise how great he sounded on it at first because of just how busy it is. Then on the other side is Only a Fool, the worst song on the album, you can’t convince me otherwise, it just is. It’s just as busy as Somebody Loving You, but it’s really weird and chaotic and it feels really out of place. Also, while Michael’s songs all sound like they came from the same album, Brian’s definitely don’t like the difference between The One and Only a Fool is night and day. I admire how ambitious his songs were, but it just didn’t work for me. Overall, I do think this is a good album, but you have to go in with an open mind and be prepared to not like it that much on the first listen. Once you hear all the little nuances and small details that are in it it really does help you appreciate it more. 

Alright, so Imploding the Mirage. If you just look at the album cover you know exactly what you’re greeting yourself into, a project that is really focused on the aesthetics of its setting. Imagery and descriptiveness are things that The Killers have always been pretty good at, but this album dials it up to 11. This is about the desert and how lonely and beautiful it can be, and it won’t let you forget that. The only problem is that for me, sometimes aesthetic sounding music is boring? That’s why I’m not a huge fan of more lofi stuff, call me shallow but I’m a sucker for theatrics, and the fact that The Killers are so good at being theatrical is what made me love them so much. That’s not to say that this album is boring, but there definitely are a few luls. Personally, I think the slowest points in the album are Blowback, Lightning Fields, Fire in Bone and Running Towards a Place, the last three are all in a row, so it makes the middle drag a little bit. But oh boy, the beginning and the end are fantastic! I didn’t initially like My Own Soul’s Warning and Dying Breed but I grew to really love them, and I don’t care what anyone says, Caution is a bop and I love it. And the last three songs are *chefs kiss* just perfect. My God is super catchy and it leans more on the dramatic side kind of building up the momentum, then When Dreams Run Dry comes in and has all of the theatrical vocals that I love that really only Caution came close to, and though it’s kinda cheesy I think Imploding the Mirage was a great closer and it ended the album on a bang. This was a very good record, but the middle was just a little too slow for me to really love it.

Alright, so now that all of my thoughts are out there, which one is better? Well listening to them back to back made me realize that although they’re both good albums, there was never really a competition, it’s Songs for the General Public. I think that Songs for the General Public definitely has lower lows than Imploding the Mirage, but it also has higher highs, and I’m not neutral on any of the songs, they all evoke an emotional response from me, and that’s not quite something I can say about ITM. I also think it takes a lot more risks, I really admire how ambitious it was and I think that ITM definitely takes a few risks as well, it has more featured artists than any other The Killers album, but I don’t think they were substantial enough to have a really high risk high reward ratio. Overall, I think these are both solid albums and I’d highly recommend checking them both out.

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The Midnight Gospel: A Review

The Midnight Gospel is an adult animated mini-series that was co-created by Pendleton Ward (the creator of Adventure Time) and Duncan Trussell, and it is one of the coolest and most original things I’ve seen in a long time. The series follows a dude named Clancy who lives on a faraway planet where he spends his time exploring simulated realities and interviewing people in those simulations to put into his space-cast. Going in I was kind of expecting this to be like an adult version of Hilda like it was gonna have a lot of death, gore, and swearing but overall it was gonna be something that you could vibe with despite all of that. That certainly is true about parts of this show, the soundtrack, color schemes and the voices of all of the characters are really nice and calming. However, it can get a little bit intense, and there are a lot of things that you need to be paying attention to at any given moment. 

The first thing that I want to touch on is the art style. I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the simplistic character design and low frame rate of the animation, but honestly, I really liked how both of those things were implemented and I think it makes the show a lot more charming. And the simple character designs are there to offset the really intricate backgrounds and other trippy visuals. Oh yeah, this show is pretty much a drug trip, but if you like those kinds of visuals at all then I don’t think it’ll bother you that much. One little thing that I really love about the animation is that no two characters move the same way and it was really interesting to see what they were going to do differently with each new character that we meet. It’s also a pretty gory show, and I’ve heard people describe it as nightmare fuel, but I didn’t really get that. All of the blood and innards that are shown are so cartoony and stylized that I was never grossed out seeing them. Like for example, the blood honestly looks more like it has the consistency of jelly than it does with real blood. I think by the midpoint of the first episode you’ll know if you can handle the gore or not. The only real issue I have with the art direction is how the hands are drawn. I know from personal experience that hands are tough to draw and animate, but I feel like they could’ve made them look just a little bit more like hands. 

This show is formatted in one of the most unique ways that I’ve ever seen, that being that most of the dialogue during Clancy’s interviews are lifted directly from Duncan Trussell’s real-life podcast. I’ve heard complaints about this aspect of the show too, but I really like how it’s handled. The dialogue sounds so natural and it makes the characters feel like real, believable people, because they are. And with so many shows where the interactions with characters feel so unnatural, it’s refreshing to see these characters talking to each other in a believable way. What I’ve seen people taking issue with is all of the trippy visuals going on while the interviews are happening. I understand why people think that’s distracting, but I think it gives the worlds that the interviews are taking place in more character. Like yeah, the zombie apocalypse is happening, but it’s not that big of a deal, we can still talk about the legalization of drugs lol. Also, you don’t necessarily have to have a deep interest in the subject matter of the interviews to get something out of them. For example, quite a few episodes are about meditation and eastern philosophy, neither of which I have any interest in, but hearing the characters talk about it in such a natural way was so interesting I wanted to hear more. I actually might go hunt down the original podcasts to hear the whole thing. I think it’s worth noting that I generally don’t like podcasts because there’s nothing to look at because I’m a big dummy who isn’t really entertained by things that I can’t see with my own eyes, and that’s why I really like this show. It gets me to listen to a podcast while also getting drop dead gorgeous art to go with it.

I also really like all of the characters. There’s, of course, our main character Clancy, who is really chill most of the time. He has such a calming presence, and you can see why he’s such a good interviewer. But he’s also not afraid to talk about his own not as favorable life experiences in such a natural and lowkey way. For example in the first episode he talks to the person he’s interviewing about how he almost died from a mixture of alcohol and sleeping pills but he phrases it something like, “broooo you know I almost died from that at a party right? It was wild!” Of course, there are times throughout the series where he gets angry and sad, but a majority of the time he’s generally calm and upbeat. 

The people that Clancy interviews are just as interesting to watch though. I don’t think there was a single one of them that I didn’t like, they were all cool in their own ways, but I’ll go over my favorites. The first person that Clancy interviews is the president of an America that is dealing with the zombie apocalypse. By the way he acts, you can tell that he sees the situation as nothing more than a minor inconvenience as he just casually shoots zombies moves from one hideout to the next as he’s being interviewed. I also really enjoyed the fish man from the third episode. I thought he was fine in the episode, but then I found out that he’s voiced by one of the West Memphis 3 and that adds a whole new layer onto his character. Seriously though, you should really research the guest stars for all of the episodes before you watch them because there might be someone who you’ve heard of and that makes the episode even cooler. Anyway, I liked Trudy the knight as well. She had the most complete story out of all of the people being interviewed and her healing rose was a cool reoccurring plot point. And I won’t dare spoil who the last guest star is, because I can only imagine that if you get emotional easily that this episode is gonna be a total tear-jerker. That aside, my all time favorite guest is Death. This was actually the thing that pushed me to watch the show, I was looking through the guest stars and I saw Caitlin Doughty was gonna play Death and I was hooked. I’ve been a fan of Catlin’s work on YouTube for years and getting to see her voice act in a beautifully animated series was like a dream come true. And the subject matter of the episode was pretty much what she normally talks about on her YouTube channel, so I pretty much just got an animated episode of Ask a Mortician, and it was everything I could’ve possibly dreamed of. 

My main issue with the series is the story going on outside of the simulation. Maybe I’m just stupid, but I didn’t understand why every planet exploded after Clancy visited, like outside of it being a pretty visual. I also thought the plot of the dad of one of Clancy’s fans wanting him dead was really rushed and it felt kind of out of place. But I guess it was worth it to get to the wonderful final moments of the show. Though, I did like the sub-plot about Clancy and his sister. They never say outright what his issue with her is, but it feels like a real relationship and it’s a cool detail to add to the story.

If you were wondering, my favorite episode is Turtles of the Eclipse, for the reasons I said before about how much I adore Caitlin Doughty. I think all of the episodes are good, but the one that I personally liked the least was Annihilation of Joy. I don’t know, the time loop of the soul prison was pretty, but it was also a little too repetitive for my taste. I still think it’s worth the watch for Jason the soul bird though. 

Overall, I enjoyed The Midnight Gospel a lot. This was obviously a passion project on Ward’s part and I think it really shows. I certainly don’t think it’s for everyone, but if anything that I said sparks your interest, I would highly recommend checking it out. You’ll know by the end of the first episode if this is something you’ll enjoy or not.