Album Review - Titanic Rising by Weyes Blood

The first synths of Titanic Rising pull me back to December 2024, one of the most formative months of my life. After spending October in a brutal alcoholic bender, one that continued through most of November, there was a point where I realized that this was not a sustainable way of living. It wasn't any way of living. So, I picked up what little I had left of my life and started over. My soundtrack of choice? Titanic Rising by Weyes Blood.

I fell in love quite instantaneously, by the end of the first few songs I realized that this wasn't an average pop album. The melodies were soft, contrary to the harsh rock songs that filled my playlists at the time. These weren't songs to scream along to, at least not to me. I sat there and contemplated, writing my thoughts on pages of a spiral notebook. At first disorganized, these pages would come together to form the novel I have spent nearly every moment since working on.

On the topic of the music itself, bliss is a great way to put it. Dreamy but grounded, spacey synths, slow rock rhythms and harmonies galore. The cover is a wonderful representation of the sound - underwater surrounded by cool tones that provide a sort of warmth to the soul. The music exists in an ethereal wonderland with the main attractions being Weyes Blood's silky smooth voice and the several layers of lush instrumentation. It brings vague memories from previous lives, the progressive soft rock waves of the 70s, the same sort of usage of strings you would see in an Electric Light Orchestra project. She takes these vintage fundamentals and pushes them through lenses of contemporary ideas and production styles. 

This all together creates a strongly nostalgic atmosphere, melancholic in some ways. I could cry to some of these songs, but others are perfect for late night longing sessions. Or, if you aren't a loser, you could probably get a good makeout session going on to these tunes. Either way, by the end of my first listen I was head over heels. It was exactly what I needed in that moment, and through relistens, it kept me going forward on my rocky path to recovery. 

10/10

Book Review - Sky Daddy by Kate Folk (No spoilers)

 In one singular day, I had the pleasure of digesting the entirety of Sky Daddy by Kate Folk. The concept gripped my interest like a clenched fist - a woman with an obsessive, wildly sexual fixation to airplanes, and dying in a plane crash (which she sees as marriage). At first glance I considered it to be one of those strange romance novels where the protagonist and said inanimate object fall in love, this is not that. Sky Daddy is a deeply psychological story about our dear Linda, who works moderating comments on a stereotypical video sharing platform. The humor is dry, though whenever the subject of these Lovecraftian, metal flying beasts inevitably pop up on the page, the wetness seeps in deliciously, I mean Linda is HORNY for airplanes. I consider myself asexual, but I felt a few things in her numerous tangents about what makes an airplane attractive.

Near the start of the story, and what made me realize that this was not your average book, there is a moment where Linda rides a plane, something she does once a month. She takes a shard of a Boeing 737, pushes it inside her vagina, and proceeds to climax multiple times AS PEOPLE SIT DIRECTLY NEXT TO HER. At that moment I tossed the book across my room and contemplated every decision I'd ever made in my life, before deftly standing up, placing the book back into my lap and continuing on. I felt like Odysseus travelling through the treacherous sea getting through this book.

While Sky Daddy has a slow take off, and cruises smoothly, the ending is like the plane crashes that Linda daydreams about. I grew a little weary, that Kate Folk was perhaps being too safe. I wanted her to let loose, and allow the absurdity to take the driver's seat as restraint is tossed out the window. It felt almost too typical, and right as I dared to grow bored, Kate Folk clutched onto my neck, and dragged me across concrete with the last 80 or so pages. In vague terms, she sticks the landing, even if the entire plane is engulfed in flames. The chaos reins supreme, and every page is harder to get through - not because it is bad, but because it is like a violent, several-car-pileup on a highway. It's scandalous, terrifying, dreadful, and I was in love. The ending will be love it or hate it for everyone, the ambiguity could certainly be a turn-off like smooth flights are to our dear Linda, but perhaps that is the beauty of a story like this.

Sky Daddy impressed me, and I am certain in my decision to give it a 9/10.