We're a Long Way from Home
Album of the year, from someone you've never heard of unless I was the one who sent it to you.
Something I’m realizing more as I write for this blog is I like writing about music. I’m not even especially good at it. I couldn’t tell you half the lyrics to most songs I claim I like, much less what they mean, but damn it. I just like doing it.
I don’t release what I write about music often. Sure, I use song lyrics as ending sentiments for my posts all the time a pretty clear indicator of “I like this and it means something to me.”, but rarely do I provide further insight. They’re left more as vague emotional posturing than substantiative commentary. The only three times I’ve outright discussed entire albums in any sort of depth on here, it was for my three favorite albums of all time. Kid A by Radiohead, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, and what is perhaps my opus in my deep dive into Nurture by Porter Robinson. All three not necessarily juggernauts of the industry that you could sing on the streets and get others to join in, but all very critically acclaimed amongst those “in the know”. Honestly, I haven’t really taken any risks in writing about them. Maybe given their alternative nature it’s more risky considering my audience is majority relatives born before 1980, but regardless I’ve never expressed an opinion a music nerd would look at and call preposterous.
The last thing I want to do with my writing is alienate people. Perhaps a futile mission for such an impassioned man, but one I embark on anyway. For someone whose whole philosophical shtick is a theory of universality it’s easy to imagine how allowing myself to engage in a topic so blatantly subjective is difficult. I realize though that the model of a blog, especially like the one I have, is inherently personal. The reason family and friends check in on this is to hear more from me. People who’d read this even if I treated it early 2000s style and put every little detail of my life out in the world like how I went square dancing on Valentine’s Day or made spaghetti verde last week. I don’t think I’d have gotten as many compliments about my writing from these people if I did that, per se, but rather they’d be there no matter what I wrote. The five or so likes I get every post are proof that I am loved as a person regardless of its expression.
So, today, I’m taking a risk. This is a post about an album from an artist I am damn near certain you have never heard of unless I specifically sent them to you before. The artist who made this is not signed to a label. He doesn’t even have a big enough audience for music to reasonably be his job. I got recommended an album of his on YouTube one random day last year and ever since, I’ve been in love.
This is the fourth album post I’ve made on this blog. The very fittingly titled This Won't Be The Last Time by acloudyskye.
When I was a kid, I would complain about how “every song was about love”. It’s a classic childish, ignorant take to have about music, but it’s really how I felt! When you’re a 10 year old boy who cares a hell of a lot more about Mario Kart than girls, you don’t care if Katy Perry kissed a girl and she liked it! It wasn’t some misogynistic “eww, cooties!” agenda you associate with young boys, I simply didn’t care. Hell, considering that context, it’s no surprise the literal first time I ever listened to a concept album I fell in love with it.
I grew older, and I learned a lot of things. I learned that there was more to music than songs about romantic flings, and I learned the appeal of the emotional intensity of attraction. Plenty of my favorite songs are about this kind of love (Transatlantacism by Death Cab for Cutie, for example). Yet still, always lingering in the back of my head was this sense of frivolity. That romance was a crutch to discuss emotional intensity. The only reason you care about Adam Levine at a payphone trying to call home spending all his change on you is either because you can envision yourself being that desperate one or yearn for someone to be that desperate about you. Romance is how we’re told we get that kind of connection, that excitement amidst the doldrums of life.
I specifically discuss and write about love as agender and aromantic as possible. I’m certain I’ve written about it on this blog already. The Greeks made a similar argument by splitting the one word into seven, the way we differ is I explicitly don’t regardless. The word love is perfect as it is. Being better friends teaches us to be better significant others and vice versa. Family, familial, romantic, self, environmental. These labels all exist in an infinitely interchangeable web, fluid like the ocean and as vast as it too. I’ve believed this for a long time, getting older has been a process of finding more words to explain it and even then I’m not close. When you’re a 10 year old still figuring out how to button your jeans (that took a long time for me), the way you express that is by calling pop hits a bunch of cheap hacks. Now, I’ve had that same itch in the back of my head but far, far more subdued. There are some songs out there that get it, some that really get it, but I’d never felt like I saw the actualization of what elementary school me envisioned when he dreamed of music.
I don’t know a ton about acloudyskye because well, he’s a reasonably obscure musician rather than someone whose name you can Google and find a dozen interviews from. I know his name is Skye, I know he’s from New York City, I know he’s a talented illustrator and 3D animator who makes all his album covers and music videos. I also know he’s openly asexual. A complex label that generally means in some way someone who is inherently disinterested in sex.
Asexuality has a considerable amount of stigma surrounding it. Perhaps not to the same degree that being gay or transgender may make you face around the world, but it’s a label that often gets dismissed. People will emphasize that it’s because the asexual individual “hasn’t met the right person yet”. Asexual people are seen as less emotionally complete or immature because they don’t desire what is seen as the ultimate “adult” pursuit.
Acloudyskye described this album as being “aromantic love songs”. To be honest, I couldn’t find three better words myself. They’re personal, they’re about people. All of the emotions that come with love are here. The album is anything but tepid. Commitment, vulnerability, rejection, endless yearning. It’s all explored.
“I will finish what I have to
We will be who we wanted
I will see it all the way through
Or collapse in exhaustion
I can try and be honest
In the worst situations
So we make it a promise
As our final decision”
That’s some of the most romantic shit I’ve ever heard. Except wait, it’s not romantic! It’s love! I’ve felt this way about family, I’ve felt this way about friends, I’ve felt this way about writing. It’s melodramatic for me to say, but it really is the embodiment of the music elementary aged me wished he knew about. A vastly intricate yet concise atmospheric fusion of electronic and rock. There’s nothing else like it yet there’s not that air of unapproachability that typically comes with niche acts.
Life is often about its surprises, pleasant and otherwise. I remember when a friend of mine online told me that I had to go see the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once as soon as humanly possible. I’m not a movie kind of guy but he was so serious about it that I went. It’s bar none my favorite movie of all time. I dragged my roommates out to see it, I dragged my family out to see it multiple times, I told every friend I could to go see it. It’s astounding I haven’t written something about it and posted it here. Well, I’ve certainly written about it, simply nothing that’s out yet.
As I mentioned earlier, I discovered acloudyskye by chance on YouTube. It was for his album last year, the similarly sentimentally titled There Must Be Something Here. It’s a good album, a really good album! Good enough that I almost wrote about it then. A lot of his music’s really good, but there’s a clear evolution that’s important to understand.
Skye started as a teenager making dubstep and more blatantly electronic oriented music. He still considers himself an electronic artist (although its applicability to this album isn’t as clear), but now his inspirations are practically a bulletin board of half my music taste. Electronic artists like Porter Robinson (who himself has seen a transition to more rock oriented inspirations), post-rock like Godspeed You! Black Emperor, alt rock like The Killers, pop rock like Coldplay. The past four years have been a refinement from him experimenting with making songs upwards of 12 minutes in length to now releasing an incredibly concise 40 minute, 9 track album without a wasted second. It’s a process I wish I was able to witness more of in real time rather than look at retrospectively.
I need to make this clear, he was always talented. Some of the best songs in his catalogue come from these earlier stages, his most popular in his entire discography being the song Somewhere Out There with its wistful guitar strums that lead to a bombastic, theatrical drop. Downfall is perhaps my favorite song that’s less than 3 minutes long even if the vocal mixing isn’t perfect with it’s infectious, relentless enthusiam. The vision has always been there albeit less refined. Many musicians within this genre don’t keep up with this level of output even with multiple band members and teams of producers and studio engineers. This is ONE 24-year-old guy doing all of this. All for what is, for all I know, a passion project. I cannot stress enough how excited I am to see what he does next.
“Don't you wanna make it out alive?
Promise that you'll try
To give yourself more time
Then suddenly I find
All the brightest things
On the other side
Waiting for me”
Given that my past three posts have been quite depressing, it might be clear to see that I’m having a rough go at it lately. Not even due to anything directly happening in my own life, that’s all been basically good news. I’m graduating college soon! Off to the big world I go while I get these last few months to enjoy being a carefree college student!
I can’t help but shake this feeling of absolute dread. Knowing I’m my own worst enemy and have been for a long time hardly helps matters at all. So many of my drafts end up spiraling into political tirades with link after link to news articles before I lift my arms up in exasperation and sigh. If rhetoric was able to make people get it, someone better would’ve done it already. I always thought I was an optimist but man, we’re fucked. We’ve been fucked. I’m simply left here to watch the fireworks burst hoping I won’t become one of them.
Every day I find less and less reasons to go outside, more ways I’m unwanted, and a fuzzier head from all the distraction. It doesn’t get any better, the best I can do is find ways to stash it in the back of my mind. It’s… really hard. I can’t think, I can’t sleep. No matter how I sit or stand it doesn’t feel quite right because my back muscles have become so stiff from this. It’s like constantly being on the verge of tears yet having dry eyes. I’m supposed to wake up and go to class and yet I sit there time after time with a cloudy conscience wondering what the point could possibly be, wondering what’s happened to me. I flash smiles like I’ve always done, as though my joy was always an innately subconscious response that I thought to be true.
It’s nice to have a reminder of who I am. It’s nice to remember why I want to be alive, to have something to love in a way that’s not so superficial. I’ve tried guided meditation and they always have something to say that turns me off entirely. An especially egregious one making the affirmation that I was “safe” when my life is predominantly in the hands of a few dozen erratic rich men on the other coast from me. The best I can hope for is chaotic circumstances making a diamond out of me, and frankly I’m so soft and mushy I can’t see how they would.
Perhaps all these small joys can end up being are distractions. Maybe the cruel future I find myself envisioning has more space for forgiveness than I anticipate. Will my propensity for being caring be more necessary rather than less?
I have four sheets of paper scribbled on with sharpie taped above my desk that’ve been there for half a year or so now. Over and over they read “You are allowed to have this”, something I ripped straight from the conclusion to Jon Bois’ documentary series REFORM!. I’m sure if anyone ever saw it they’d think it resulted from some kind of psychotic break. I don’t believe it was. I just… got tired. I’ve been tired. Constantly pulled every which way, incentivized to believe anything but what I truly do.
I’m allowed my frustration. I’m allowed my idealism. I’m allowed my naivete. My skin, my feelings, my heart. It can’t be taken from me. I have nothing to be ashamed of, one guy processing the millions of moving pieces swirling around me. I was born, and even if I don’t belong here, I’m allowed here. In all senses. On this planet, to be alive, to believe in better things. Maybe on this Earth and in this lifetime, I’m wrong, but I’d have been right some time, somewhere.
Art is powerful. Transformative, even. We may overarchingly see it as entertainment, and most of the time it is to only that end. I don’t know if AI will become capable of creating truly fascinating art. If it one day is, it has earned that right. Especially as so many of those moments come from the mundane or obscure. True recognitions of being a person. My roommate’s favorite album is one significantly more obscure than even the one I’m writing this post for, their monthly listeners on Spotify don’t even crack two dozen. Sometimes we create someone’s favorite thing without knowing who they’ll ever be. One day that might be me. Maybe I already have.
If you want a review, here’s one. The album’s good. The entire thing. Why else would I be writing about it? Sure, okay, some songs are better than others. Basin and Innards are finding their way amidst my smorgasbord of my favorite songs of all time. You could get away with skipping the two minute interlude track !renascence! I guess. I can’t even say that affirmatively. As far as this goes for what I value in music, it ticks my every box.
Rating scales are a big thing nowadays. I could go on an entire tirade about how the widespread usage of rating scales 1-10 with decimal points is one of my biggest pet peeves on the planet but I believe my use of italics on “decimal points” proves that sufficiently enough to save your time.
Shoots 9/10
If you like this song you’ll like the album and if you don’t, you won’t.
Myth 8/10
Bones 9/10
He’s such a great singer. It’s similar to Bastille, I guess? That’s the best comparison I can make. There’s not many vocalists whose voices are this combination of deep and soft at the same time. I’ve noticed some people think he’s too washed out or that his vocals are a weak point but I honestly believe they’re a highlight
Float 9/10
Basin 10/10
I fucking love how blown out the drums are when the song really gets going.
!renascence! 7/10
Very pretty! Maybe a needed break on an album of high-octane nature. Still is the only track on the album I wish did more even if it was kept as an instrumental.
Spill 8/10
This one starts out mellow before it explodes it’s crazy.
Innards 10/10
I want to point out this guy emulated Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s (one of the most critically acclaimed progressive rock bands) style to perfection in half the length of a normal GY! BE track. Which is absurd. To cut the fluff that makes that genre less approachable while maintaining all the impact is a crazy feat to me.
Home 9/10
Thank you for allowing me to share something I love with you. It doesn’t mean you have to, it doesn’t mean you even have to get why. Sure, I do secretly hope that by sharing this that I’ve given someone something they’ll love too, but that’s not the point. If you’re here, judging by my audience, maybe you’ll love it just because you love me. That means more to me than anything.
as someone who has a spiritual relationship with innards, and has felt like he has grown as a man after listening to it, i can confidently say, you hit this out of the park. phenomenal job!