Best of Month: AotY #7: Trust Fund Ozu's "Tribute Summon"


Every January I spend some time trying to find music I wouldn’t normally listen to. It just feels like correct timing, no label is really letting anyone put anything they think is a heavy hitter out and having come down from the year end lists and celebration of greatness it feels good to reset with something strange. This year, on a thread from Anthony Fantano asking for just that, I found “JK ROWLING DISS TRACK” and knew I had to hear it. I was expecting to laugh, I wasn’t expecting to listen to the album attached to it for the whole year to come.


Now, as someone who's sick to death of that name, I wince at any mention of Rowling to the point that I have her name muted on Twitter. Fae Fadem gave me a chance to laugh at that. She did a lot more than that to be honest. Fae Fadem is a rock star. All her outfits are incredible, Her live show looks like a blast, she’ll even play Sonic with you. If fifteen year old Claudia had songs like “Peppermint” about reclaiming your personhood through transition and refusing to lose out on any more of your life, maybe she wouldn’t have waited eleven more years to take the plunge herself. Of course, there’s so much more than even that. She also sneaks anime references into her bars and makes constant allusions to her love for Yu-Gi-Oh. If I were still fifteen and Fadem quoted my writing on the timeline? Well, I’ll be honest, I actually already did scream about that.


Let’s put all that aside though. The record is just outstanding to begin with. Metal and hip hop influenced hyper pop with tinges of video game OSTs with the hardest lyricism you’ve ever heard. An artful and entertaining music video presentation. There’s also the constant little humorous and memorable moments that I embarrassingly do every single time. I once got caught by a stranger at a stop light reciting the skit portion of “Succubus.” I yell along to “I don’t want to fucking see you!” whenever I think no one’s around.


It’s the first record from this year that I knew would stick. It’s also given me a foundation of being desensitized to the noise of people who would shame me for being who I am. It’s given me so much joy and hope this year and the artist behind it deserves all the attention in the world.


Support Trust Fund Ozu

Best of Month directory

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The BRAT review

Image
Oh my gosh, Claudia AsterTracks got a review out less than four months after the album is out! In all seriousness, I’ve been sitting on this review for a bit. It always feels weird to post long reviews about huge pop albums being an indie blog. Sometimes they’re just too long for MusicBoard though, so this one fit here. In spite of being gay, formerly terminally online and generally a fan of modern-day pop, I have actually never liked an entire Charli xcx project. I remember a very awkward conversation with an ex once after she found out I find it very hard to get to the end of even the twelve and a half minutes of Vroom Vroom. In spite of all of this I still want to stay current and know what albums are coming out, so I gave BRAT a try and I’m sort of blown away, I absolutely love this one. Something I noticed just minutes into BRAT is how the production is so bare and yet also feels so club ready . Opening track “360’ s ” beat is only about seven notes total with barely a drum...
Read more

Review: Get Off the Internet by Eliminate released via Create Music Group

Image
Sometimes you’re just here for the features. After a bit of a dry spell for me album wise, it was the debut album by dubstep artist Nathan Merrill, better known as Eliminate, which finally got me out of my seat. I’ll be honest, I came here solely because I saw Frost Children and I Set My Friends on Fire on the track list but was pleasantly surprised by the entire record. I had no perception of genre or who this artist was going into it. While I’m not usually a rave girl this is presented in a way where you don’t really have to be to appreciate what’s going on. There are a lot of nice, thought-out moments of downplay which don’t feel overblown or like they’re using cheap shots to make them memorable. It’s all just very real and expressive and most of the time it conveys this without words. The progression and sequencing is all very natural as well, pretty much all of these songs could be used as singles, but they also go hand in hand cohesively. I know I likely sound a little cynical to...
Read more

Review: analysis/paralysis by Four Year Strong released via Pure Noise

Image
Four Year Strong is a band who has always meant a lot to me growing up in New England. While I Specifically spent my adolescence in RI, Worcester was only a forty-minute ride and most of the shows I attended were out there. I'm less online now, but I have a feeling I know the consensus on this record isn't very hot. Being an over twenty-year-old easycore band in a time where scene bands are nostalgic acts can't be easy. But to be honest I quite enjoyed this one. Analysis paralysis as a record has a lot harder an edge than 2020's Brain Pain . The hardcore elements were never really missing from the Four Year Strong formula, but on this record songs like "aftermath/afterthought" are actual moshable moments, complete with a full breakdown, a lot of intensity and a guitar pedal like a buzzsaw. A part of me wonders if a band like this needs to be put on an indie music blog. I know lately we've shied away from this, but there's talks behind the scenes to ...
Read more