Mira:
An autumn pastime for me is revisiting albums I loved in the past, and one that has been on repeat for me recently is “Worry” by Jeff Rosenstock. Although released in 2016, the topics from song-to-song are the anxieties of living in the American political landscape, which still feel more relevant than ever. “Worry” is the existential dread of aging, the increasingly corporate world of indie music, gentrification, self-destructive coping mechanisms, companies selling your data, police brutality, wealth inequality, and all the crushing anxieties of this dysfunctional world. The underlying theme of “Worry” however, is love, however distressing it can be at times. It’s hard to pick a single song on the album to showcase the themes because each one is unique, both in sound and lyrics, but “The Fuzz” is a quick track that I adore, about the dread of the modern age and love.
https://jeffrosenstock.bandcamp.com/album/worry
Christina:
Since moving back to Richmond after a summer break spent at home, I have made it a point to explore the city’s stores as much as I can before life gets too busy again. I have been to quite a few places in the past few weeks and plan to visit more in the coming days. Some of these places I have been to before, and thought they were cool enough to return to, and some places were a first-time visit. There are also a few that I have yet to explore, but am planning to soon.
I visited Lucky Girl Market for the first time at the Richmond Raceway, and it was filled with so many good finds. I got a Generation 1 My Little Pony figure, which I was very excited about finding. I recommend going next time they’re in town! I recently went to Letter Store in downtown Richmond, a skater-vibe store with screen printed apparel. I got a t-shirt that says “Too Cringe for New York, Too Based for L.A., Just Right for Richmond, VA,” after looking at it, and wanting it for a year. Definitely check them out. I went to Scoop for the first time and got confetti ice cream, it was too good. I also did some thrifting at Diversity Thrift and Uptown Cheapskate and found some cute stuff for great prices. Next on my list is Odd Balls Collectibles & Claire’s Antiques, a kitschy collectibles store, as well as Trolley Car Sweets and Treats, a Swedish candy store.
There is so much to explore in Richmond and I don’t know if I’ll ever see it all. More retail adventures to come!
Dani:
Since I moved back to Richmond at the beginning of August, I’ve been spending a lot more time in my head, which isn’t a bad thing at all. There’s something about going from quiet suburbs to an active city that reignites my creativity and makes me want to immerse myself in influences. I was listening to a lot of trip hop and psychedelic-adjacent music when I got here (specifically Sneaker Pimps and George Clanton), but now that the summer is allegedly coming to an end I’ve been listening to a lot more folky, stripped-back music. I find myself most revisiting “LP1” by American Football and “Punisher” by Phoebe Bridgers. American Football’s first album bathes its occasional meditations on young heartbreak and suburban nostalgia in stacked guitar layers and constantly shifting patterns that at times results in an almost jigsaw puzzle-like song structure. “Punisher”, while less complex in its instrumentation, shares a lived-in warmth to its sound that makes me wish that the summer would end already (I’d be wrong to talk about Phoebe Bridgers and not mention her new album “Lost Weekend”. 10/10). At this point, maybe she’s our last hope to stop global warming.
Okezie:
As I interact with art I find myself willing to be incredibly forgiving of a work’s shortcomings if ignoring them leaves me with something that is fundamentally awe-inspiring. Sometimes it’s hard to feel bogged down by a movie’s cheesy dialogue, or formulaic narrative when you can’t stop yourself from hooting, hollering, and pumping your fist as you watch its protagonist stop a moving train or outrun bullets. The same applies to Sisqo’s “Thong Song”, where no amount of repetition, unimaginative imagery, and downright objectionable lyrics can stop me from acknowledging the art’s sheer greatness.
The appeal of the Thong Song first became clear to me when I saw the music video, described by its director as a “booty video”. This phrasing appears accurate when you consider that the majority of the video features women in bikinis twerking as Sisqo retreads one verse, one bridge, and one chorus, over four minutes. But what the phrase fails to convey is the song and video’s absurdity, as Sisqo’s angelic vocals belt out lines like “She’s got dumps like a truck, truck, truck,” while accompanied by a string section playing a melody that interpolates Wes Montgomery’s cover of The Beatle’s “Eleanor Rigby”. The video visualizes this, where after a period of choreography that includes Sisqo making the ground shake and flipping 20 feet into the air to stand on top of a human pyramid, we are treated to the visual delight of a rave where the aforementioned women are wearing neon green glow in the dark thongs, juxtaposed against the orchestra that accompanies Sisqo as he belts out the song’s chorus. No matter how many “booty videos” you’ve seen, you’ve never seen one like this.
Sean:
This summer, the world talked a lot about the Odyssey. About Nolan’s movie being a must-see, or, for all its grandiose heft, being sexless and flat. About renewed source material discourse, both the meaningful and the run-dry and reactionary. About what it meant to “adapt”, what it meant to add life to a myth instead of flatten its abstract power. About our own deep biases. The world was in the middle of these talks and I was at the Reagan airport cleaning rental cars — and in one moment, up bubbled a dreamy but shockingly vivid recollection of a movie I watched as a high school freshman. English class. Odyssey unit. O Brother, Where art Thou? by the Cohen Brothers, watched for its respinnings of Odyssey beats and characters in post-depression Mississippi. I saw it exactly one time, seven years ago, and for the entire summer I could not get out of my head. Frames of the movie still somehow floated in this clear, vibrant middle-space of my skull. A single-mic studio session. White-linened lines of people sloping down into a river to get baptized. A valley flooding. At a certain point, I was far more interested in finding and rewatching it than jumping in on the Nolan conversation. Jump forward to furniture thrifting in Richmond with my roommate, and on a second cursory glance over a DVD section, it jumps out. Not a not niche thrift find. Like it appeared there somehow on the second look by higher magic. I took it home and watched it, ready to find out if it was actually good or my memory of it was just of a particularly fun school day ages ago.
I’m happy to report that it rips. Eccentric, funny, super tight runtime, aging mostly very well, and shots that were just as beautiful as they were in my weird memory. If there’s a rubric for advancing an ancient myth in something with its own round and beautiful identity, this is probably it.
Rhiannon:
Recently, I’ve been reliving the highs of good-ol-fashion television. On the second weekend of inhabiting our new house, my three other roommates and I travelled to the forgotten land of Best Buy to purchase such a technology, and the rest has been history. After two years of dull, TV-less dorms and apartments, our flatscreen has brought unimaginable color back into my life, as if its individual rainbow pixels were nursing my pupils back to health with chocolate ice cream. It offers the perfect balance between working and doomscrolling, an activity that is relaxing yet wholesome. Truly a procrastination paradise.
Aya:
As I develop my personal style as a surrealist artist, I’ve always found myself completely amazed and inspired by artists who have pushed boundaries through the years. To name a few I’ve been obsessed with this month … Younguk Yi is an incredible South Korean contemporary painter who creates glitch-like portraits that cross humans between an abstract digital plane and the real world. Martín López is an amazing Mexican illustrator, who in the mid 90’s was known for his depictions of cartoon characters and superheroes with a super unique airbrush-like style. Tseng Chien-Ying is a Taiwanese contemporary ink artist who makes some of the most beautifully rendered works I’ve had the pleasure to see! Dynamic ink works depicting the human form, foliage, animals, and nature are some of his many specialties.
Graphics by Ava Soong