#56: the spectrum of pain always feels right
sadeyes; Your Arms are My Cocoon; Grave Flowers Bongo Band; KFC Murder Chicks; Martha’s Got a Limp Wrist
Sadeyes
Sometimes each element of a headline flows so logically that it’s practically art. For instance:
Emo Rapper sadeyes Shares Lofi EP
‘downpour II’
An “emo rapper” named sadeyes—stylized lowercase, naturally—yup, that tracks. A lofi EP? Surely. Entitled downpour II? Of course. Let’s check the track listing for downpour II while we’re at it:
leaves
i fall apart
embers
home isn’t home
my feelings are hiding
Other songs from sadeyes’ catalog are similarly predictable, such as “i’m not okay,” “hopeless,” “PPL ALWAYS MAKE SHT FKN WORSE,” “fragile teen,” “cryin too much,” “pretty sad,” “you’re my everything,” “you deserve better,” “sage’s memory,” etc.
I can only thank god that my teenage lyrics aren’t easily available online for all to see, because I cringe just thinking about them. And sadeyes, a.k.a. Nathan Lewis of Portland, is only in his early 20s. While that seems a touch old for all this lowercased melodrama, you do you, sadeyes. (Your Instagram is exactly what I expected.)
Oh look at that! Sadeyes is playing with his guccihighwaters, another unlistenable emo rapper from Epitaph Records, who was featured in BNB #12!
Your Arms are My Cocoon
Let’s keep the emo train chugging along with this preposterously emo name. Your Arms are My Cocoon sees your “my feelings are hiding,” sadeyes, and raises it with “In October 2019 I Called a Suicide Hotline for the First Time in My Life.”
That sounds traumatic, and I’m sorry to hear it, YAAMC. I hope it helped you. But can we agree it’s comical that the preceding song is called “Clifford the Big Red Stab Wound”?
YAAMC is the work of Tyler Odom, originally from Katy, Texas, but now residing in Chicago. He creates what the great Leor Galil of the Chicago Reader calls “bedroom screamo,” a mixture of lo-fi production with incomprehensible, screamed vocals buried in the mix. While you can’t understand what Tyler’s shouting, his Bandcamp helpfully provides lyrics, like these for “Metamorphosis”:
if i could be a river i’d sweep you away
deposit all my creatures at the grave where u lay
so i could sleep with you again
But the real poetry belongs to YAAMC’s Bandcamp supporters, such as motorized.jeremy:
clasped by this- the loudness of confusion, words echoing as they pass, not being sure where most memories belong. the spectrum of pain always feels right. my company is the errant cocoon that rises these ideas into a harbor of sensitized souls. recognition- even a knowing sigh. but I’m here with my body, the mass of which always seeks healing. Favorite track: snowy!.
OK, when I was 17, I wrote a song called “Fulfillment” or some shit that included lyrics to the effect of, “You once told me you’re a baby, wanting to be held / I tell you that baby is myself / I’m alone and just want to be fulfilled.” Yet even I, who wrote that purple drivel, finds all of this too much.
Grave Flowers Bongo Band
Say what you want about psychedelic or jam bands, but you’re not going to find them gazing at their navels. Sure, their bio will reference “woolly groves” and “pied-piper six string jangling down many lovely rabbit-holes of melody and exploration,” but they seem like a better hang, at least. I’m not gonna stick around when they put on some 29-minute version of the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star,” but even that sounds like a better time than five minutes at a sadeyes/guccihighwaters show.
Grave Flowers Bongo Band hails from LA and comes with bona fides: Ty Segall produced 2021’s Strength of Spring—of “woolly grooves” and “pied piper six string jangling” fame—and it was released by Castle Face Records, the label operated by John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees.
Their bona fides are easily found, but not the origin of their name. Poking around their Bandcamp, I clicked on the lyrics for “Lazy River” to discover this:
If I were
to pass along
the stream where
you kept your wrongs
I would cry
about the dreams
without knowing
what they mean
Dammit, maybe Grave Flowers Bongo Band has more in common with Your Arms are My Cocoon than I realized.
KFC Murder Chicks
I defy you to parse this paragraph from Discogs.com:
KFC Murder Chicks are a fictional homeless girl metal band created by DJ Rozwell (James Sherrill) that play a role in a supposed extensive sci-fi conspiracy augmented reality game, (AKA ARG) most commonly known as 'Erratas'. ChronosForLife Jurassic Park is a youtube channel who claims that they are a victim of the Erratas system.
It goes on for another 100 words that may as well have been created by a random-word generator. I’ll spare you the pain.
Martha’s Got a Limp Wrist
Perhaps you recall this suburban Chicago grind/hardcore outfit from the split they did with Cerebral Enema. (You know, the one with “Pompous Jizzrag.”) Or maybe you’re thinking of the split with Gutsack, because it had “You Should’ve Been Aborted” on it. I probably know them from 2018’s Vorarephilia, because I’m curious about “the erotic desire to be consumed by, or sometimes to personally consume, another person or creature.”
What does Martha’s Got a Limp Wrist actually mean? Beats me, but it’d be pretty awesome if it were a reference to Martha Kelly in Baskets.
POST-SCRIPTS
Since I created the Band Name Bureau playlist on Spotify a couple months ago, the algorithm has started feeding me appropriately random shit, like Kamikaze Palm Tree (which was already on my BNB candidate list) and Alienman, who has a song called “Twin Cities Titties.” Good to see that Spotify gets it.
Never mind stuff like “Beloved Father and Husband” or “Friend to All.” I like to imagine some hero putting the words “Pompous Jizzrag” on their tombstone.