SEVEN on SEVEN: Friendly Fire
SEVEN gatekeep!ers undertake a cross-examination of Favourite Artist as identity
For too long now, there have been whisperings in the wings: if it’s called SEVEN how come only ONE of these dorks sticks their head above the pulpit every week? Why can’t I decapitate a whole half-dozen (plus one) of them in one showing? Enough! You were right and we were cowards — but now we are here. All SEVEN of us.
In this series’ first collaborative instalment, those of us assembled undertook the following assignment:
Submit one of our favourite artists, along with one album to represent them,
Receive another writer’s pick of the above,
Ruthlessly, meticulously deduce exactly what this choice says about them as a statement of identity, or otherwise.
The upshot is about as disturbing and incohesive as anyone could have hoped for. Tyler smells demons, A.R.O. smells Kerry; Hugh scratches his head as Gen-Z stare at their feet, while Adam grapples with the ins and outs of tapping your toes to racial violence; Milo finds a salient basis of comparison between WWI and K-Pop marketing; BOFF makes a brave attempt at ambient listening. This isn’t your neighbourhood panel show(?); this is SEVEN.
Read on for further horrors.
Default Genders - Main Pop Girl 2019
Submitted by Kerry // Diagnosed by A.R.O.
Pop // Indietronica
Based solely on this artist, as far as music-based horoscopes go I can safely say that me and Kerry are the same person??? Ok, I hadn’t heard Default Genders yet, but the artist had been on my radar since their blend of indie/electronic/dance/pop seemed absurdly up my alley, and goddamn was I right. I knew from previous experiences/recs that our tastes aligned, but holy wowza did that not prepare me for how wholeheartedly I loved this. I wish I had jumped into their music back in 2019, it’s hard to imagine how much more concrete my love for this kinda music could’ve been if I did.
But what does loving this artist say about Kerry? Sorry guys, I can’t think of anything uncomplimentary—anyone who feels this artist in all of their knotty forms clearly loves a LOT of music, falling hard for countless subgenres and niches, as evidenced by the kaleidoscopic influences that feed into Main Pop Girl 2019. As tempting as it is to project my own experiences onto this music (as someone who just found a new queer icon in Default Genders), all I’ll say is that this clearly is the palette of someone with big feelings, a great sense of humor, and (probably?) some very high emotional peaks and deep valleys. Keep loving music Kerry! And please recommend me more music like this at your earliest convenience.
— A.R.O.
Curve - Doppelganger
Shoegaze // Alternative Dance
Submitted by A.R.O. // Diagnosed by Hugh
Doppelganger is one of the few shoegaze records that just about anyone will agree holds up a treat, regardless of how sceptical they are of the genre as a whole: let’s give that it’s due before we go any further. There are plenty of reasons it fares so well — so many, in fact, that I am none the wiser about what this preference says about you. Maybe “Horror Head” is a genre classic and it took me until now to notice how hard “Lillies Dying” went; maybe surging noise, driving breakbeats and achingly fragile pop hooks are a perfect cocktail; maybe the record’s Cranes-esque macabre side gives its more outgoing qualities a neat gloomy edge? Moot points all round.
As for general takeaways, yes, it’s nice to like things that came out an unintimidating number of years before we were born that have aged well because trendy revivalists have ripped them off badly. And you got there without riding on the old Slowdive/My Dying Bride [fuck off I am not fixing that] hegemony — look at you go. Do what your birth certificate could never and claim those ‘90s: no Gen Xer can come near you without cowering in their boots over their failure to fully appreciate this universally acclaimed album in its own time. Your peers are out there checking themselves into psych wards for cultural capital, but you future-proofed yours by loving that album everyone likes. Incredible.
However, this is not about Doppelganger being your favourite album, but Curve supposedly being your favourite band. What’s the statement there? Honestly, fuck knows. A quick glance at neighbouring artists in the shoegaze pantheon narrows things down somewhat – if you were after brownie points for sleazed-out Kool, we’d be looking at Medicine; if you wanted to be the rockist’s answer to a sophisticated mood-reader, you’d have gone for Bowery Electric – but that’s no substitute for a clear read. A broader look at Curve isn’t much help either: Cuckoo is a passable set of diminishing returns on Doppelganger but hardly an advancement on its appeal, though Wish‘s pairing of downtempo and cookie cutter alt rock probably stands as a stronger statement for the y2k nostalgia you may be fishing for here. They have other albums — for all I know, you’ve even heard one or two of them.
What does it say about your favourite artist that I don’t take general familiarity with their catalogue for granted? What if neither you nor Curve needed an identity beyond Doppelganger‘s hedonistic downer aesthetics in the first place? That would certainly explain a lot. Why bother with an elaborate statement when smudging your mascara says all you need. Why stand out from the crowd when you can cultivate your aura mooching in it. I hope you are happy. Who am I writing about again?
— Hugh Puddle
Vladislav Delay - Anima
Ambient Dub // Glitch
Submitted by Hugh // Diagnosed by BOFF
I’m aware that Hugh’s tastes are broader than the exhaustive list of things I’d rather be doing than listening to this, so psychoanalysing his personality type based on this one record would be a big disservice to his openness to new things, and would likely equate to little more than character assassination. However, this is my piece and I’m taking the recommendation as a direct attack on my sanity, so I’m going to do it anyway.
I don’t doubt that a person who would spin this album out of choice has a more refined audio palate than I (or at least a far more robust tolerance for bullshit, which I can also respect/ point-and-laugh at), but in this case, the person almost certainly lists attention to detail and performs well under pressure (amongst other non-statements) as assets on their CV. They would undoubtedly subject themselves to Anima with comically overpriced headphones to fully appreciate the depth of that one click at 36:41. Either that or call queue hold music really gives them the horn. As such, this record tells me I would not enjoy hanging out with this person.
To give the album (and I suppose, Hugh) some credit here, the sound design is incredible. To its detriment though, it’s in service of absolutely fuck all. There’s certainly a place for albums that exist to be appreciated rather than enjoyed, but this album doesn’t conform to this ideal either: the focus has to be on the atmosphere, texture and negative space because discussing what actually occurs here would be a far shorter conversation. Hugh is evidently a person who views enjoyment as some kind of vulgar distraction, having spent so long painstakingly cultivating his taste that he’s accidentally weeded out pleasure. To him, the album’s opacity isn’t an issue: it’s a convenient filtering mechanism that allows him to separate the enlightened from those who have lives to lead.
And bizarrely, I understand that level of elitism and, to an extent, relate to it. Deep down, we’re all terrified of being perceived too ordinary lest our NPC tastes give us away. Unfortunately, it’s possible to go too far in the opposite direction, and next thing you know Hugh’s stood at a busy intersection snapping his fingers and tapping his toes to the curious synchronicity of revving engines and squealing tyres. Hugh: self-flagellation of this degree makes you seem less of a music nerd and much more of a martyr. I’m still unclear on why this unpleasant, time-consuming slurry would strike you as the hill on which to stake your aural superiority, but perhaps that’s the final joke: an album so devoid of tangible rewards (and not even an operator picking up at the end) that its greatest achievement is making its listeners feel clever. But then, I suppose every personality needs a coping mechanism. Some drink. Some gamble. Some listen to Anima.
— Benjamin Jack
State Faults - Clairvoyant
Screamo
Submitted by BOFF // Diagnosed by Kerry
SUBJECT: Benjamin “Boff” Jack
ALBUM: State Faults - Clairvoyant
HOROSCOPE: Kind of a gimme— there’s literally a track on here called “Moon Sign Gemini”. Boff, you are uhh, intellectually curious, adaptable, and communicative, as per otterspirit.com! What really jumps out at me reading this horoscope, however, is that Gemini Moons are easily bored, and for all the cinematic emotional anguish Clairvoyant evinces, it strikes me as fundamentally immediate, an album of physical thrills made-up pretty and proper enough to convincingly pitch itself as a serious statement (about what? Something something endless sanguine, something something love is a rose— surely, you get the picture).
If State Faults are your GOATs, your #1 criteria for Great Art™ is an endlessly fascinating surface gloss that offers only the occasional t-t-tasteful glimpse of anything beneath; you’re more than happy to supply your own dark, conflicted depths, otherwise a heart more bloodily on-sleeve like Converge or Touché Amoré would be here. Moment-to-moment writing that loves to move fast and break things is a top priority too, which I’m guessing is what gives this the edge over its siblings in the Jack Shirley production discography (mostly more formalist punk and borderline muzak-metal). And apparently, screeching banshee wails aren’t a deal-breaker. It takes all kinds, I guess.
Your pick conveys a certain refined ear for the intersection of texture and catharsis, but that’s just the thing: if you come to screamo of all genres for refinement, I probably don’t want to know what qualifies as a guilty pleasure in your book. Grow up and listen to real post-rock already.
— Kerry Renshaw
Vince Staples - Big Fish Theory
Hip-hop // UK Garage // House
Submitted by Tyler // Diagnosed by Adam
Unless one has grown up under similar socio-economical and racial tensions, there is an uncomfortable dynamic at play as a listener and consumer here; on one hand, it is natural for music consumption to be used as a tool towards building personal empathetic development, but at the same time, there’s almost an innate bedrock to how deep you’re actually able to dive into the subject matter. Just when the topic starts getting too heavy, the party kicks in to alleviate any uncomfortability. Vince does this by design, but that doesn’t mean the mirror is any less difficult to look into.
It’s disingenuous to label your pick as a disaster tourism listen, but I do find that, in some ways, this is an emblematic album for the type of consumption habits a lot of folks looking in from outside of the black community in America tend to have. Police brutality and street violence cutting dreams short turned into poetry is haunting to listen to (and to watch unfold), but just when you think your empathetic jar is about to overflow into tangible action, the album ends and loops back to the beginning and the hook in “Big Fish” starts repeating again: “I was up late night ballin’, countin’ up hundreds by the thousand.” Your head starts to bob. Damn, that beat is funky. What was I mad about again?
— Adam A.
TWICE - Twicetagram
K-Pop // Dance Pop
Submitted by Adam // Diagnosed by Milo
Here we sit; a collection of prized arses wallowing in our own odour, trying to amplify the kind of art that we believe humanity should aspire to. To dedicate your spare time to such a fruitless endeavour in an age where Popular Opinion’s media presence outweighs Thoughtful Criticism is an act that usually sees its proponents gathering together at the margins, celebrating art that might never get the flowers it deserves. In these circumstances, poptimism is often deployed tactfully, a drawbridge left open so that more people may enter your castle of criticism and discover what it is that actually furnishes Your Taste™.
Not so for Adam! Asked for a favourite among favourites, they wracked their brains and came right out with the band so nice that the bloke that brought all nine of the members together named them Twice, a group whose Wikipedia page—effectively an exhaustive account of every survey of their popularity ever put to publication—has more references credited than the page for World War I. I’m clearly too old and cynical to look past just what kind of marketing hell this kind of stuff emerges from, but Adam’s pure adoration for the group makes me feel as if my cynicism is more weakness than strength. There is, of course, a serious adroitness to the music of Twice and the ragtag pile of influences they pull from in order to release at least one chart-smashing album annually, along with a cultural significance to their endless virality that I’m sure I’ll never understand seeing as I’ve never looked at TikTok and don’t know what the hell point choreography is. Critics should be invested in trends with such depth, nuance, and multimedia presence as Twice, whose career seems to be central to the continuing K-pop phenomenon. I guess Adam is sensitive to most of this, or at least lives in a country where karaoke doesn’t suck arse (sounds nice!). The distance between their pick and the others tells a story of a pure enjoyment of music, a spark of joy in a muddle of melancholy, and a wake-up call to the ignorant cynic in all of us. Be more Adam.
— Milo Ruggles
Bark Psychosis - Hex
Post-Rock
Submitted by Milo // Diagnosed by Tyler
First let me start off by saying I had never heard of this band before, so I went in completely blind. I won’t dive too much into the album (because as we all know, that’s not the point here), but I found the record absolutely gorgeous. The atmospheric post-rock sections are stunning, and the weird, cacophonous moments do a great job of breaking up the beauty with sections of eerie and uncomfortable sensations. Which leads into my newfound impression of Milo here:
This band tells me everything I need to know. They are a laid back individual for sure, it’s no surprise given how dreamy and ethereal their favorite artist is. But those short spurts of disjointedness point to one thing: they cannot for the life of them get rid of the musical demons inside of them. Now I’m no therapist or psychiatrist, but there is something deep down inside Milo that tries to escape but is constantly pushed under the rug by the facade of post-rock beauty. It’s as if the early twenties desire for darker Swans and Godspeed You! Black Emperor bursts its way to the surface before being shoved under by the blanket of eerie tranquility and laidbackness. It’s almost terrifying.
At least if someone listens to something downright terrifying and haunting, we know there’s something entirely wrong. But this is far worse. The beauty of Bark Psychosis feels like a cover up. There is something musically sinister going on with Milo and I can’t put my finger on it. On the surface everything is fine and dandy, but underneath, there is something downright improper… and I’m going to do everything I can to get to the bottom of this Milo.
Or there’s nothing wrong at all and Milo has outstanding taste and is as awesome as this album is, you decide.
— Tyler White
That is all! Who deserved worse, and whose hospital bills should we paying? Let us know down below, and forgive us if we revert to one-writer-per-SEVEN from next week…
 | A guest post by
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Excellent work everyone, I feel sufficiently humbled.
>grow up and listen to real post rock already
Consider me bodied
Leave my skeletons alone, Tyler. They are silent for a reason.
(Listen to Codename Dustsucker and Scum xx)