simplejack's Recent Activity
-
simplejack liked sawhney[rusted]2's post in the thread Sleep Token - Even In Arcadia (May 9th 2025).
I just can’t get over how almost every song starts out with a slow piano/synth passage and builds - really wish the song structures were more varied. It wears me down as a complete record
May 12, 2025 at 10:08 PM -
simplejack replied to the thread Knocked Loose- You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (May 10th 2024).
Never been a huge hardcore or metalcore fan but it's my most played record of the past 6 years. Came out at the right time, when I needed it the most.
May 11, 2025 at 8:50 AM -
simplejack liked sawhney[rusted]2's post in the thread Knocked Loose- You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (May 10th 2024).
An absolute monster of a record
May 10, 2025 at 10:36 PM -
simplejack liked bobby_runs's post in the thread Knocked Loose- You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To (May 10th 2024).
[MEDIA]
May 10, 2025 at 10:36 PM -
simplejack liked bmir14's post in the thread Album The Wonder Years - The Hum Goes On Forever (Sept 23rd 2022).
Hum is their absolute best, glad they feel that way. Hope they continue to pull at that thread for their next release
May 10, 2025 at 8:54 AM -
simplejack liked Nathan's post in the thread Accountability in Music.
We can't control the way we react to art, and we certainly can't control the trajectory of artists after we've already found meaning in their art. Kanye is a case where I actually feel like I sort of understand most of the turns his career has taken (understanding being different than condoning), as someone who was a deep, entrenched fan for so much of 2005-2015. Is there a reason to wish I'd never connected to TCD or Yeezus? I don't think so. Part of his appeal was built on his grappling with his imperfections and his (appearance of) understanding how at least some of his personal imperfections were connected to larger societal issues. We just watched as he actively followed his darker impulses and eventually turned away from the level of introspection and thoughtfulness we perceived in his art. That's largely his fault, not his audience's (though there have certainly been swaths of enablers who stood with him past what I personally saw as points of no return). I don't think it's the fault of someone who connected with the insightful commentary of a Woody Allen film that Woody Allen is the person he is. I don't think Johnny Greenwood (and the rest of Radiohead)'s failures to recognize the genocide in Palestine speak to how much someone might love Kid A or King of Lost Limbs. I think it's healthy to recognize where an artist we adore's values conflict with our own, at whatever level*, and I think it's healthy to appreciate someone's art as one thing and their personhood and personal values as something that is more their own than it is ours, whatever that might mean. This isn't an argument for "separating the art from the artist" (which can often be used as an excuse to uncritically continue feeling good about liking an artist as a symbol more than a person), but more a recognition that art does transcend the artist, because once the artist puts it into the world, it isn't just theirs anymore. The work is free to be interpreted and understood independently of the artist (and the legacy of the work and artist just naturally get complicated by time and further revelations about the person, even if they aren't necessarily bad revelations). That gets complicated by artists whose egregious personal flaws bleed into the art (Woody Allen, Jesse Lacey, Kanye West), but part of the understanding of how art works is understanding that we don't know the person who created the art, and our attachment is ultimately to the work, not the artist. Even when an artist's output seems to consistently reinforce what we want out of their values, we could learn anything at any time about the person who created the art that conflicts with our own ideology, or makes us wish we never identified with someone who could create something that we, as our own personal selves, identified so fully with. I don't think it's a binary thing, I think it's fluid and for people to determine how they want to grapple with as they encounter those challenges. Ultimately I want the space for anyone to be able to chart a healthy and positive path forward (however unlikely I feel it is for Kanye or any public figure whose narcissism/ties to capitalist production of that scale of pop artistry seem an obstacle towards "accountability" or that path forward). Ultimately, this is an "accountability" thread, and isn't the ultimate idea that any one person has the capacity to recognize and atone for/correct their personal failings? Again, that doesn't mean Jesse Lacey should be able to tour again, or that Kanye should be allowed to post his Hitler album on Spotify, but this thread isn't going to solve all those issues, it's more for us to navigate as the ones who actually post here and grapple with these things when the artists mostly don't, and I wouldn't want it to be a place where paths forward for anyone are condemned as beyond possibility any more than I would want it to be a place where people come to defend "separating the art from the artist" for someone like Lacey/Kanye/etc. I'm not sure how much sense that all makes, just feeling out some thoughts. *(I mean, Bruce Springsteen is probably in the top 3 most important artists in my personal life, and I find his contemporary iconography of podcasts with Obama and $4000 tickets completely incongruous with the thesis of his art, and I think a lot of discourse around someone like Chappell Roan, as minor or relatively innocuous as it is, comes from people having preconceived ideas of what the artist's work means to them vs. who the artist themselves are, or what they are able to/want to articulate)
May 9, 2025 at 1:44 AM -
simplejack liked Craig Manning's post in the thread My Life In 35 Songs, Track 7: “Walk On” by U2.
@cshadows2887 would kill me and bury me in an unmarked grave if I did that, lol It's really something, looking back, at how effective those ATYCLB singles were in reinventing the band for a new era. I've seen people calling for "an All That You Can't Leave Behind moment" for most early 2000s rock bands, from Coldplay to Arcade Fire, but I can't think of a comparable album from the past 10 years. I'm glad you called out the last paragraph; definitely one of my favorite tidbits I've written for this series so far.
May 7, 2025 at 12:35 AM -
simplejack replied to the thread My Life In 35 Songs, Track 7: “Walk On” by U2.
The first four songs / singles off of AYCLB were my formal introduction to the band, even if, in hindsight, I appreciate more their influence in the last 40 years of pop rock than their actual catalogue. Anyway, back in the day when I loved making CD mixes, I made one for my brother and it had Walk On on it. As someone who is about to finally move out of their parents' house and start a new life in a big town, just me and my emotional baggage, the last paragraph hit me like a ton of bricks. Beautiful and powerful. Thank you.
May 6, 2025 -
simplejack liked cricketandclover's post in the thread My Life In 35 Songs, Track 7: “Walk On” by U2.
Stop making me cry during the work day!
May 6, 2025