What 'Folx' means to me

Oh god where do I start. There is so much I could say about Folx. Folx is a 112 song album with a 93 minute runtime. The majority of its songs last for about two seconds.

This album clearly means a lot to us. We made art about it.

I think Folx does too much. I think it does this on purpose. It has like, five things it’s trying to communicate at once. It’s saying things I will never bother to understand. (Who the fuck is Nick Land? This album clearly expects me to have read more communist theory than I have (none.))

I think Folx is about that communication. The struggle to be heard. The feeling of screaming out everything you’re worried about, thinking about, everything wrong with you,

It’s about how futile it is. How hard it is to communicate.

Folx is wrapped in irony. Irony is the feeling of my generation. ‘Generation Z’ is en masse steeped in irony. I really hate irony. Irony’s ‘job’ is to make communication harder. It’s a protection from other people. You can’t get hurt if you’re not being sincere.

- folx started as a facebook message sent at 11:55am on june 16th 2017. it took 8 years, 8 months, and 1 day to complete.
- folx is an attempt to reinvent pop music production.
- folx is a concept album.
- folx is about the decade i spent working as a corporate creative.
- folx is about the love employers demand employees feel towards their labour.
- folx is about the history of capital transforming ‘folk songs’ into the ‘folk genre’.
- folx is about the blip in time in the latter half of the 20th century when ageless oral traditions became a profitable industry.
- folx is about living through the death of the music industry.
- folx is about the consequences of shitpost culture subsuming all artforms in the 21st century.
- folx is about the tension between the economic unviability and the creative potential at the heart of shitpost.
- folx is about the death of my father, an autistic rateyourmusic user who died before he could retire from his job at td bank.
- folx is about the contradiction between my belief in marxist ideas and my impulse towards accelerationist cultural production.
- ‘no copyright law in the universe is going to stop [folx]!’ - sonic the hedgehog.

The feeling of listening to this album feels strange. When I first listened to it, it was unlike any other music I had ever listened to.

I think that Folx is one of the post important albums of the 2020s. At least, I hope it will be.

Topic Exploration: Identity

You can sort of go ‘looking’ for topics in this album. It has a lot of ground to cover (lyrics, samples, song titles) so you can derive a lot of meaning looking for all sorts of things. Identity is very important to me, for maybe obvious reasons.

Accept a new name
Rebrand yourself
Lose your mind to free up bandwidth

Dissociate emergencies
Plan escape
Name what’s inside you
‘I hate’ (185)

Get on the bus
Choose a persona
Mimic feelings you’ve seen
Rehearse banter
Repeat
Steal your face
Tape the whole thing
Strain for feeling
Pay in what you can
‘Playing in the band’ (113)

The one who is possessed is also dispossessed – of their own identity and voice. (Track 100)
But this kind of dispossession is of course a precondition for the most potent writing and performance. (Track 101)
Writers have to tune into other voices[…] performers must be capable of being taken over by outside forces – (Track 102)

Grief, Guilt, Loss of identity

I think dissociation and grief and guilt go sort of hand in hand.

The re-staging of the death is less an admission of ethical responsibility than an attempt to own it, to make sense of it. Such is the logic of trauma. (Track 74)

‘I think it’s feeding off your guilt’ (162)
‘If that’s so, perhaps that is how it grew strong enough to escape in the first place’ (162) […]
‘I created the folx to give myself the same nightmare every night, to make sure i never forgave myself for how much folx suffered because of me. But it seems i have not learned my lesson - for now i have only made you suffer more.’ (162) […]
‘If it gets strong because you feel bad about what you did, then you just gotta stop feeling bad for what you did.’ (162)
(Track 76)

Hide red eyes in sunglasses

Stare out from red eyes

Gush in private
Hover above your body
Trust no one
Let dull guilt swallow you up
Remember someone’s lost son

Topic Exploration: Irony

Clock your clothes being worn as jokes
Decode texts for irony
Share space with enemies

I have so much to say about irony, I guess. I think it’s a shell over self-hatred. When you decide to shed that irony. That is a key point in your life. When you first start being human. When you first let feelings through without dampening. It hurts.

I think that feeling is like noise, the music genre. Raw, unfiltered noise. Everything becomes so loud once you allow yourself to feel. And this album is so full of feeling.

Maybe this album is about shedding that irony. Recognising how much life you wasted hiding from people. How much you miss that feeling of genuine connection between friends. Or maybe it’s about being stuck in that irony. Those inner feelings bubbling, struggling to be heard, held back by how scared you are of the everything.

This is music made by people who enjoy irony more than music, for people who enjoy irony more than music.
— dudeman88

a strong case for life online being an act of plunderphonics in itself
— Goodgood

Topic Exploration: This Album Sure Loves Talking About Itself

‘Right before recording folx I was walking around in Dundas west waiting to go to St. John’s to record. I don’t consider myself to be a very educated person, ’cause I’ve spent a lot of my life in dreams… And I was walking around wondering, “If I knew the history of the world, would everything make more sense to me or would I just lose my mind?” And I came to the conclusion that I’d probably just lose my mind. The next day I went into a bookstore and walked to the wall in the back, and there was Capitalist Realism. I’d never given it any thought in my entire life. I spent two days reading it and then completely flipped out. I spent about three days crying, and just was completely flipped-out. While I was reading the book, he was alive to me. I pretty much knew what was going to happen. But that’s the thing: You love people because you know their story. You have sympathy for people even when they do stupid things because you know where they’re coming from, you understand where they’re at in their head. And so here I am as deep as you can go in someone’s head, in some ways deeper than you can go with even someone you know in the flesh. And then at the end, he gets disposed of like a piece of trash. And that was something that completely blew my mind. The references to him on the record—like “At Seventeen” refers to him being born. And I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine and somehow I’d have the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Mark Fisher.’ (139)
(Track 81)

folx make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. (Track 61)

Is there even a story to this album? Let me try to piece it together for you.

Book Theory quotes

(Really Long)

Track 1. […] in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day.

Track 4. This instant is insomniac, amnesiac; it locks us into a reactive time, which is always full ([…]). There is no continuous time in which shadows can grow, only a time that is simultaneously seamless ([…]) and discontinuous

Track 6. The machine accommodates itself to the weakness of the human being in order to make the weak human being into a machine.

Track 8. Deprived of memory and the capacity to dream, the androids can be wounded but not traumatised. Yet there are signs that precisely this capacity to experience trauma is developing […]

Track 10. Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position,
Track 11. correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.

Track 13. In time-honored fairy tale fashion, however, the acts of wish fulfillment quickly become traumatic and catastrophic.

Track 15. Do I obey economic laws if I extract money by offering my body for sale, by surrendering it to another’s lust?

Track 17. Examine the hideous machineries that produce the world-as-appearance. What did they see there? Only what all depressives, all mystics, always see[…]

Track 18. the obscene undead twitching of the Will as it seeks to maintain the illusion that this object, the one it is fixated upon NOW, this one, will satisfy it in a way that all other objects thus far have failed to.

Track 20. folx puts themself at the service of the other’s most depraved fancies, plays the pimp between them and their need, excites in them morbid appetites, lies in wait for each of their weaknesses
Track 21. all so that they can then demand the cash for this service of love.

Track 23… There is no horizon. The bald hillzones facing the spectator only form a line that merges with the void hanging over them. Anyone can see that this man and this woman are no longer alive. There is no pessimism here either. What had to happen happened. They did not kill each other.

Track 29. […] every person speculates on creating a new need in another, so as to drive folx to fresh sacrifice,
Track 30. to place them in a new dependence and to seduce them into a new mode of enjoyment and therefore economic ruin.

Track 32. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labo[u]r is ours, and the zombies it makes are us.

Track 34. Thus every factor, which works against a repetition of the old crises, carries within itself the germ of a far more powerful future crisis.

Track 36. The double bind, […] “[…] the simultaneous transmission of two kinds of messages, one of which contradicts the other, […]”
The contradictory instructions serve to destabilise the folx, keeping them in a state of permanent neurotic anxiety.

Track 39. […] in all spheres of social life the lion’s share falls to the middleman. […]
in religion, God is pushed into the background by the “Mediator,” and the latter again is shoved back by the priests, the inevitable middlemen between the good shepherd and his sheep.

Track 42. They were unwitting necromancers who had stumbled on a formula for channeling voices, apprentices who had lost their sorcerer, as mindless golems animated by folx’s vision(s).
(Thus, when folx died, they said that they felt they had lost their eyes…)

Track 45… The worker therefore only feels themself outside their work, and in their work feels outside themself.
folx feels at home when they are not working,
and when they are working folx does not feel at home. […]
Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague.

Track 50… Encounters with angels are as disturbing, traumatic and overwhelming as encounters with demons.
After all, what could be more shattering, unassimilable and incomprehensible in our hyper-stressed, constantly disappointing and overstimulated lives, than the sensation of calm joy?

Track 53. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and folx is at last compelled to face with sober senses their real conditions of life, and their relations with their kind.

Track 55… Giving them potions, attaching horns to their body for drawing up the incisor, making the drums beat, the folx proceeds with a ceremony interrupted by halts and fresh departures, flows of all sorts, flows of words and breaks […]
the members of the village come to talk, the sick subject talks, the ghost is invoked, folx explains, everything recommences, drums, chants, trances.

Track 57… At the top of the tower, there is no liberation from work. There is just more work — the only difference is that you might now enjoy it (life is too exciting for sleep).
For these CEOs, work is closer to an addiction than something they are forced to do. There are now two classes[…] those addicted to work, and those forced to work.

Track 61. folx make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

(Barrow, )Track 64. – “to give the listener the pay-off, the sanic money-shot, as soon and as obviously as possible.” […] there’s a tyrannical desperation about this [album]. It doesn’t seduce; it tyrannises.

Track 67… This is no longer the cruelty of life, the terror of one life brought to bear against another life, but a post-mortem despotism, the despot become anus and vampire[…]
“Capital is dead labour, that vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.”

Track 69. Vampires do not appear in mirrors. In the case of grey vampires — […] — this means both that they cannot recognise themselves as vampires and that their existence is entirely dependent upon the attention of the Other.

(Engels, )Track 71. […] a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer
who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom folx has called up by their spells.

Track 74. The re-staging of the death is less an admission of ethical responsibility than an attempt to own it, to make sense of it. Such is the logic of trauma.

Track 76. Self-contempt is a serpent that ever gnaws at folx’s breast, sucking the life-blood from folx’s own heart and mixing it with the poison of misanthropy and despair.

Track 78… Semio-capitalism is more like confronting the mythical hydra[…] cut off one head and three more grow in its place, […]
The good old days of exploitation, […] meant the annihilation of subjectivity, your reduction to an impersonal machine-part; […] Now, there is no time away from work, and work is not opposed to subjectivity.

Track 81… The death model appears when the body without organs repels the organs and lays them aside[…] no mouth,
no tongue, no teeth—to the point of self-mutilation, to the point of suicide.

Track 83. […] the belief in progress and the faith that one could describe new times in new terms wanes,
to be replaced by “the imitation of dead styles, speech through all the masks and voices stored up in the imaginary museums of a new global culture”.

Track 86. So far as living instruments of labour are concerned, for instance horses, their reproduction is timed by nature itself. Their average lifetime as instruments of labour is determined by laws of nature.
As soon as this term has expired they must be replaced by new ones. A horse cannot be replaced piecemeal; it must be replaced by another horse.

Track 89. (And you think, well, it’s not the sort of thing that you’d forget, killing yourself and your children, is it? But of course, it’s not the sort of thing that you could possibly remember.
It is an exemplary case of that which must be repressed, the traumatic Real.)

Track 92. folx returns to a cave dwelling, which is now, however, contaminated with the pestilential breath of civilisation, and which they continue to occupy only precariously,
it being for them an alien habitation which can be withdrawn from them any day – a place from which, if they do not pay, they can be thrown out any day. For this mortuary folx has to pay.

Track 95. Fragments of tunes providing minimal orientation in a labyrinth of abstract sound. Have you heard this before? You can never be sure.

Track 97… […] no eunuch flatters their despot more basely or uses more despicable means to stimulate their dulled capacity for pleasure in order to sneak a favour for themself than does the industrial eunuch – the music producer
– in order to sneak for themself a few pieces of silver, in order to charm the golden birds, out of the pockets of their dearly beloved folx.

Track 100… The one who is possessed is also dispossessed – of their own identity and voice.
But this kind of dispossession is of course a precondition for the most potent writing and performance.
Writers have to tune into other voices[…] performers must be capable of being taken over by outside forces –

Track 104… […] in such epochs of revolutionary crisis folx anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service,
borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.

Track 107. These “luminous new landscapes” were worlds beyond work, where drudgery’s dreary repetitiveness gave way to drifting explorations of strange terrains.
Listened to now, these tracks describe the very conditions necessary for their own production, which is to say, access to a certain mode of time, time which allows a deep absorption.

Track 110. Dear friend, I give you what you need, but you know the necessary condition; you know the ink in which you have to sign yourself over to me; in providing for your pleasure, I fleece you.)

Track 111. — nothing new here, the old man gamely and tirelessly going over his favourite riffs, once again —

Track 112. Does this story have an ending? Can an analysis be ended, can the process of analysis be terminated, yes or no? Can it be completed, or is folx condemned to a constant self-perpetuation?

Have fun with all of that. I’m sure there is some great analysis that can be done with it. But I have just collected it all for your viewing.

Folx All Suffixes

(Quite Long But Not As Much)

([werewolf] w [impulsive borderline personality disorder] [cracks logic] to [produce] @ [the instrument store]) ([mUsIc_wIlL_Be_mY_PrOfEsSiOn])
([muse] w [insomnia] [bootlegs] to [dream] @ [the housing complex]) ([nOt_lIvInG_WiTh_mY_DaD_AnYmOrE])
([android] w [autism] [phishes] to [network] @ [the city upon a hill]) ([bOyFrIeNd_qUeSt_bEgInS])
([fairy] w [bipolar mania] [indecently exposes] to [impress] @ [the coworking space]) ([cAsUaLlY_DaTiNg_iN_SeArCh_oF_SoMeThInG_SeRiOuS])
([genie] w [alcohol addiction] [abets] to [collaborate] @ [the campaign fundraiser]) ([fAlLiNg_mAdLy_iN_LoVe_wItH_My_nEw_bOsS])
([gargoyle] w [panic disorder] [assaults] to [de-escalate] @ [the third space]) ([iT_WaS_My_fAuLt_mY_BoSs_rEaCtEd_tHaT_WaY_AcTuAlLy])
([fury] w [dysmorphia] [tortures] to [improve] @ [the 24-hour fitness centre]) ([tRyInG_To_bE_MoRe_lIkE_My_bOsS] [identity#01])
([headless horseman] w [bipolar depression] [racketeers] to [advance] @ [the property law firm]) ([tAkInG_ThInGs_wItH_My_bOsS_To_tHe_nExT_LeVeL])
([unicorn] w [amnesia] [misspends ubi] to [self-care] @ [the mid-century suburb]) ([hOuSeWiFe_fAnTaSy] [daydream#01])
([zombie] w [obsessive-compulsive disorder] [conspires] to [bond] @ [the military fortification]) ([i_nEeD_My_bOsS_AnD_He_nEeDs_mE])
([oracle] w [hypochondria] [obstructs justice] to [comply] @ [the forensic laboratory]) ([fOlLoWiNg_mY_BoSsEs_iNsTrUcTiOnS_PrEcIsElY_BeCaUsE])
([devil] w [discouraged borderline personality disorder] [extorts] to [negotiate] @ [the sympathy strike]) ([iM_NoT_ArGuInG_WiTh_mY_BoSs_iM_StArTiNg_aN_OpEn_dIaLoGuE])
([manticore] w [social anxiety] [stalks] to [supervise] @ [the processing plant]) ([lEtTiNg_gO_Of_fRiEnDs_wHo_cAnT_AcCePt_tHaT_Im_hApPy_dAtInG_My_bOsS])
([golem] w [dysmorphia] [attempts suicide] to [influence] @ [the vintage clothing store]) ([eLiMiNaTiNg_tHe_pArTs_oF_MySeLf_tHaT_ArEnT_CoNtRiBuTiNg_tO_SuCcEsS] [identity#02])
([friends& original not a cover]) ([i_hOpE_EvErYoNe_lIsTeNiNg_iS_EnJoYiNg_tHe_mEtApHoR_AnD_ThE_CoNcEpT_AlBuM_!!] [if rym mods don’t respect case sensitivity when cataloguing this album i will kms])
([skinwalker] w [alienation] [neglects] to [process] @ [the insurance claim centre]) ([aCtUaLlY_I_DoNt_eVeN_CaRe_aBoUt_wHaT_He_dOeS])
([devil] w [separation anxiety] [flees] to [reflect] @ [the silent retreat]) ([i_dOnT_LiKe_tAkInG_A_BrEaK_FrOm_hIm])
([witch] w [marijuana addiction] [loiters] to [serve] @ [his secret apartment]) ([hEs_sIcK_AnD_He_nEeDs_hElP_WhAt_aM_I_SuPpOsEd_tO_Do])
([sandman] w [sociopathy] [misrepresents] to [leverage] @ [the asset management department]) ([i_cAn_bE_JuSt_lIkE_HiM])
([spectre] w [autism] [trespasses] to [safeguard] @ [the housing complex]) ([iN_ChArGe_!!_LiKe_a_bOsS_!!] [property ownership is the only remaining job] [LANDLORD ANTHEM])
([sonic] w [dysmorphia] [violates copyright] to [restart] @ [the city upon a hillzone]) ([wAiT_Am_i_oLd_nOw_??] [identity#03])
([vampire] w [hyper-empathy] [coerces] to [mentor] @ [the community development]) ([gIvInG_My_iNtErN_EvErYtHiNg_sHe_wIlL_NeEd_tO_SuCcEeD])
([siren] w [petulant borderline personality disorder] [blackmails] to [motivate] @ [the benefit concert]) ([mY_InTeRn_nEeDs_mE_AnD_I_NeEd_hEr])
([fate] w [complex post-traumatic stress disorder] [corrupts] to [uphold] @ [the trauma centre]) ([fUcK_KiDs_tHeSe_dAyS_ArE_UnGrAtEfUl])
([ouroboros] w [secondary post-traumatic stress disorder] [perjures] to [reorient] @ [the experimental psychiatric clinic]) ([mAn_i_ReGrEt_wHaT_I_DiD_To_tHaT_KiD] [her accusations are true but im not goin
([hydra] w [narcissistic personality disorder] [betrays] to [satisfy] @ [the restorative justice zone]) ([gOnNa_mAkE_It_wOrK_WiTh_hEr_!!])
([horseman of the apocalypse] w [gambling addiction] [misappropriates] to [restructure] @ [the private equity firm]) ([aCtUaLlY_GoNnA_MaKe_iT_WoRk_wItH_HiM_!!])
([doppelganger] w [repetitive strain injury] [impersonates] to [entertain] @ [the tribute artist music festival]) ([sInGlE_LiFe_fAnTaSy] [daydream#02])
([grim reaper] w [self-destructive borderline personality disorder] [manslaughters] to [pivot] @ [the third space]) ([hEs_bReAkInG_Up_wItH_Me_fOr_gOoD_AnD_Im_wOrRiEd_tHe_mEtApHoR_Is_gRoWiNg_iNcOhErEnT])
([brony] w [chronic pain] [defrauds] to [live] @ [the social services hub]) ([hEs_gOnNa_mAkE_Me_bEg] [identity#04])
([minotaur] w [schizophrenia] [surrenders] to [recover] @ [the family farm]) ([lIvInG_WiTh_mY_DaD_AgAiN])
([hobgoblin] w [stockholm syndrome] [loiters] to [serve] @ [his estate]) ([uNcOnDiTiOnAlLy_sUbMiTtInG_To_hIm_cOmPlEtElY])
([friends& original not a cover]) ([iT’S_A_CoNcEpT_AlBuM_OkAy_!!_I’M_DoInG_My_bEsT_!!])
([phoenix] w [no pathology] [inherits] to [enlighten] @ [your estate]) ([dAdDyDaDdYdAdDyDaDdY_!!])
([valkyrie] w [no pathology] [retires] to [release] [the song]) ([fOrCiNg_tHe_dEaD_InTo_tHe_sOnG_WhEtHeR_ThEy_lIkE_It_oR_NoT])
([satyr] w [object schizophrenia] [volunteers] to [dance] @ [his private care home]) ([mUsIc_iS_My_hObBy_oR_SoMeThInG])

Help I Am Lost

This album is just too big. It’s so hard to analyze. I get lost in its tracks. I think it is impossible for me to actually make one coherent point about this album. Maybe it is fitting that I am stuck just quoting things and pointing at lyrics and not saying much.

Who is Friends&

Hello, I’m JC from the band Friends&. And along with my pal clust.r, I run a label called dawk26. That’s d-a-w-k-2-6. The influence of psychedelic pop had a massive impact on indie music in the latter half of the 2000s and early ’10s. The era of Mediafire Blogspot millenials manifested a lo-fi pop boom, freak-folk revivals, and an era of hipster wubs.

Now in the late ‘20s, a new crop of psych-pop and freak-folk artists are drawing on everything, from The Beach Boys to The Zombies, The Flaming Lips and The Olivia Tremor Control, from The Go Team and The Books, to MGMT and Tame Impala. Today’s mix is an exploration of how Digital Audio Workstations and TikTok Brainrot aesthetics are shaping psych-pop and freak-folk revivals.

We’ve got singer-songwriters experimenting with plunderphonics, and Summer of Love shitposts. Think acid-era Beatles manually recreating the aesthetics of AI hallucinations. It’s the intersection between the demented sensibilities of Animal Collective and 100 Gecs. It’s the deep prying of Elephant 6’s grandiose DIY collective experimentation. It’s the memes clowning on stoned H&M flower-crowned hippies dropping LSD at Kevin Parker Lonerism Coachella sets. It’s a generation jacking swag from Meg Superstar Princess. A post-hyperpop neo-psychedelia. This mix explores artists who bring the ambition of Late ‘60s psychotropic tape experimentation into Ableton. It’s artists imagining how granular synthesis or Insta reel algorithms would have impacted the development of Odyssey and Oracle.

This sound is still developing, and I’m excited to see where it goes. I call it: Brainrot Psychedelia. Enjoy.
Brainrot Psychedelia

Content

The internet, as everybody knows deep inside even if they haven’t admitted it yet, is rapidly approaching its expiration date. […] the structures and concerns and realities of, well, reality, have been steadily impressing themselves onto the alleged walled garden of the internet for decades at this point, to the point where making a meaningful distinction between the two is starting to make less sense. […] Folx is an album that, even now, after all that’s happened, still believes in the internet. How naive.

[…] Folx, to me, also feels like a terrifying still life, but of a very different, more contemporary situation: the endless homogenous downpour of content that takes from everything and flattens it all into nothing. Or, in other words, the slop age.
— # e400ff (of The Symbles)

Disposession

Track 102, ‘But this kind of dispossession is of course a precondition for the most potent writing and performance.’, is an exchange with JC and a voice clone of his deceased dad. Notably, this is one of the times on the album where JC isn’t speaking or singing through a voice clone.

I think Folx is trying to prod at the absurdity of the modern moment. We have the technology to make dead people speak. What the fuck is happening. I guess it sort of fills a desire to like, go back and tell someone you loved them. That gesture is, really, just for you. That dead person cannot feel your love anymore. You just want that feeling back. You want to be able to feel their love just one more time. And maybe you can trick yourself into thinking that if you cloned someone’s voice you could feel their love again, but you know that you’re lying to yourself.

Track 109, ‘Old Man ([satyr] w [object schizophrenia] [volunteers] to [dance] @ [his private care home]) ([mUsIc_iS_My_hObBy_oR_SoMeThInG])’, is talking about this, I think. On this track, JC is singing over a song (it’s not cited…). I’d like to imagine that the song is playing on his phone, or something, and he’s sitting on the floor singing over it into a microphone. It sounds like he’s next to a playground, or sports game, or something? He’s singing rather poorly over it, not through a voice clone.

Make the old man dance like it’s a command
Volunteer your craft
Present some flashbacks
Do what you can do
Don’t expect thank yous
Don’t half ass the chance
Make the old man dance

Force the old man’s hands to give until they can’t
Provide one last laugh
Produce a shared trance
Perform a class act
Cause surprise collapse
Say thanks in advance
Make the old man dance
Make the old man do
‘I’m a lot like you’ (220)

I think JC is trying to evoke feelings of childhood. Sitting on the outside of those feelings, watching from a distance. Make the old man dance in your memories once more. Feel some version of his love once again. Nostalgia, sickeningly sweet.

Ending

Does this story have an ending? Can an analysis be ended, can the process of analysis be terminated, yes or no? Can it be completed, or is folx condemned to a constant self-perpetuation? (Track 112)

Folx is maybe about RateYourMusic? One of the first things in the Bandcamp description is JC’s dad’s RYM account. It’s a bit strange looking at a dead person’s account. You can look at all 512 CDs that he had owned. A wishlist that will never be fulfilled. What music he hated.

What’s the point of writing these reviews on this website? Personally, I have never been one for point scores. They seem kind of pointless. What makes something a ‘four’. It’s so abstract. I can only really say if something is good or bad, I guess. Maybe it’s just about communication. Writing for the sake of writing. If you like music, why not leave a message on how you liked it? What am I doing, even?

Do I even like this album? I think it sounds nice. When I listen to it, I can’t really do much more than just focus on it. I can’t do anything else — it’s a terrible album to do work to, sleep to — maybe it’s good for walking.

References I Guess

Grateful Dead, The. Playing in the Band. Song. 1970. (113).
Inside Llewyn Davis. Film. 2013. (121).
Mangum, Jeff. Puncture Magazine interview with Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk. Book. 1997. (139).
Marx, Karl. Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession. Book. 1835. (150).
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?. S05E13. TV Episode. 2015. (162).
Parton, Dolly. Jolene. Song. 1973. (181).
Peter, Paul and Mary. Leaving on a Jetplane. Song. 1967. (185).
Peyton, Caroline. Light Years. Song. 1977. (186).
Young, Neil. Old Man. Song. 1972. (220).