Top 8 Songs of the Month ~ February 2023 ~ Pretty Addicted, Grimmel, Скубут

 I’ve lived through yet another month on this speck of dust floating through the endless cosmos. It wasn’t an easy one to get through either. I got sick, had a major back pain flare up for days after attempting to exercise, I got behind on my art, a crappy time all around. The ripple effect being that this blog was a bit late too, because I had to catch up on my webcomic. But of course, music is what gets me through the worst of times. Specifically making mixtapes. 

2023 has already produced some amazing hits in just over a month. I have a couple older picks but the majority of the songs are brand new. There’s a bit of a running theme that goes through most of them having to do with depression. I know that’s not exactly a new thing with my monthly picks, but I found January to be a very sad month. Hence these songs. 

Pretty Addicted ~ Heather

Vicious Precious of Pretty Addicted promised one single and music video per month this year culminating in a new album, which I look forward to. And January’s offering was an instant classic. In it, “Heather” is the name the singer gives to her mental illness, addressing it as a person who constantly causes her to catastrophize and be depressed, saying that it’s like sharing her mind with a psychopath. I think I have a Heather too. A voice that constantly tells you the worst possible things and tears apart your self esteem and makes you think everyone secretly hates you, a bully in your brain. That’s what it’s like to have a Heather living in your head. It’s almost like a split personality. 

Anyway, if you enjoy this song, go support her work, she’s trying hard to finance her new album.

https://prettyaddicted.bandcamp.com/track/heather

Grimmel ~ 7 Days

Those contrasting guitar riffs are what hooked me into this song, as well as the lyrics. “The lights go out on me.” It’s some great post-punk, very addictive, and it helped me through some dark times. I wish I had a bit more to say about it, but just listen to it. It was perfect for my mood many times in the last month. 

I don’t think this band is on Bandcamp, from what I’ve researched. In fact, all I was really able to find was where they are on Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube. But, hopefully there will be some way to support the artist soon. Some artists though maybe don’t go for that, I’m thinking like The Deenjes from Armenia, who specifically want their music to be for free. 

Yung Cortex ~ Time Won’t Stop

“Time won’t stop for me or you, drunk at the bar with an attitude, I don’t know where I can go, my house doesn’t feel like it’s a home right now.”

Maybe with the exception of the “drunk at the bar” line, the other three-fourths of this song us just so relatable to feelings I’ve felt over the years, in the past. My living situation, while it could be a lot worse, is not ideal let’s just say, and rarely ever has been throughout my life. My bedroom has always been my sanctuary, at least I still have that, even if sometimes I don’t feel at home anywhere else. And the years roll by. 2019 feels like a couple months ago, but it’s been four years. My kid is four years old. What happened? That’s the entire time I was in High School, and that felt like an entire epoch at the time. At some point, time started to move on without me. But that isn’t to say my body has been free of the ravages of time. Far from it. My spine certainly knows how many years go by.

As for the artist, Yung Cortex seems to be brand new, I don’t think they even have an album out yet. Although the music video for this song debuted in May of last year. You can support them on Distrokid. 

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/yungcortex/time-wont-stop

Скубут ~ Insasis

Скубут is back for more. And this is just a great track. You don’t often hear harsh vocals in post-punk so it was an interesting choice to use it. The song is still in Russian, and I haven’t been able to translate it but I just like the sound of it. It was released as a single on February 1st.

https://skubut.bandcamp.com/track/insasis

iamnoone ~ Happiness 

The artistic music video is probably what attracted me to this song, full of animated grayscale paintings. “I remember happiness”. It seems to be from the point of view of someone who has been depressed for a very long time. I was at my most happiest when I was at the perfect balance of intelligence and ignorance. Maybe at around 10-11 years old. I think I’ve probably ranted about that before on my blog. Happiness, when it does appear, has been fleeting since that time. Middle School, sigh. 

This is from their new album Together Alone, released on January 6th.

https://iamnoone1.bandcamp.com/album/together-alone

Male Tears ~ I Expire

I really like the musical direction that Male Tears has taken lately, as fun as the cheesy 80s synthpop was. Although it’s another of those music videos that looks like it was filmed on VHS to evoke a retro feel. It was edited for sure, but it does look like the original footage for the video before editing was filmed with a real VHS camcorder and not just a filter on a phone. I think I can tell, I still watch VHS tapes pretty regularly. If I’m wrong then it was a really good filter. Anyway, it’s a fun dancey goth club song, with darker lyrics than the beat would suggest. 

So this song is actually going to be on a forthcoming album, KRYPT, due out on April 28. For now, just enjoy the video.

https://maletears.bandcamp.com/album/krypt

Tones on Tail ~ Christian Says

“Babybabybaby wants an…EMPIRE!” This song is funny, catchy, some good early Industrial music. It’s hard to believe this song came out in 1984, it’s very ahead of its time. Reminds me of Skinny Puppy, which was also debuting around that time too. This was the side project of ex-guitarist for Bauhaus, Daniel Ash. Practically goth royalty, even if Peter Murphy gets all the attention. 

They have an album on Bandcamp, but it didn’t have this song. All I was able to dig up though. It’s not their personal Bandcamp page but it’s connected to their record label, so you have to dig through hundreds of albums on the record label to find the right one. Maybe Discogs is the way to go with these older albums.

https://beggarsarkive.bandcamp.com/album/pop

Softcult ~ Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle 

Yes, I’m still not over my Nirvana craze. But this was a cover I stumbled upon while looking up the original song, and I ended up liking it a lot. It’s a dreampop/shoegaze take on the song, that really plays up what I think is everyone’s favorite line in this song “I miss the comfort of being sad.” It sounds cosmic. Is being sad really comfortable? It’s better than being angry or stressed out, I suppose. It’s comfortable compared to that. But I think what that line is really about is how after being depressed for so long, during those rare moments where you feel happy, it almost seems like something is missing. You almost miss being depressed. It’s strange, but I’ve felt that way before. Kurt Cobain may have said he just wrote his lyrics at the last minute and they were meaningless, but they can still really be quite profound at times.

This was released in May of last year. The band is pretty new and very active, having released several singles since this one. They also covered another Nirvana, “Been a Son”. Worth checking out if you like the shoegaze, not really goth but perhaps goth-adjacent sound, like Drab Majesty. They say that they’re music for mall goths on their Bandcamp page, amusingly. 

https://softcult.bandcamp.com/track/frances-farmer-will-have-her-revenge-on-seattle