@
dragonowl21 Thank you for the rec! I have enjoyed the album :D Rating: will listen to again! Sorry it took me a bit to get to; I have been tired.
Notes on songs that particularly drove me to write notes (it took me a bit to get into the swing of Writing Notes - my main point before this is that I like the almost-windchime sounds of the guitar that come in just before the last two lines in Ashes):
Jaylen Hotdogfingers Settles The Score: I LOVE THIS SONG'S TITLE. also the emotion in the singing contrasting with just. guitar. kinda reminds me of the mountain goats.
Godspeed: I forgot this album was about blaseball until now! it feels like there's a massive tone shift between the first couple of songs being v angsty and now we are winning a blaseball championship. I am not actually sure what blaseball is. I've decided based off this song that it's like baseball but the winning team - or possibly the losing team - gets sent to space for a bit, as a treat!
Between Violences (A Late-Night Turnipfingers Speculative): Again with the fantastic song-titles! I love the tension at the start of the song - the juxtaposition between talk of the batter's tragic past (perhaps a return to the earlier angst), and blaseball, and the relationship between the batter and the ...pitcher? a touching meditation on blaseball as a release-of-violence and a refuge-from-the-world, a place where you can truly open up to your team (and the batter on the opposing team) - and yet you're never quite free from your troubles, even here in the magical world of blaseball, as we see from the pitcher being haunted by the memory of 'the ones she's lost'.
Curse of Crows: I spent most of the song thinking this was maybe about eldritch horrors, but I think it's actually about crows maybe, now I look at the title? I will forever wonder exactly what the birds want. maybe they just want to see a really good game of blaseball. the lines 'they might have come for you / they might have smelled your fear / you can't run for safety' suggests they have darker motives, perhaps: and yet this is immediately followed by 'you've already struck out', suggesting the birds are perhaps bound by the rules of blaseball itself. is a crow audience mandated by the rules of blaseball? it's strange that an animal so strongly associated with mischief and the Trickster Spirit is perhaps so closely tied to the rigid structure of a sportsball game. the line 'but they will set us free, and they won't hear your plea' suggests to me that the Blaseball Crows are perhaps the ones to bring about the end of the game. perhaps it may not seem in the spirit of The Trickster to bring about the ending of something fun, something which brings some illusion of freedom from the wider world - but perhaps to a degree the ending of the game is decided in part by the whims of the crows? or perhaps the crows, in tying the world of The Game and the world of Not The Game together, act as almost-psychopomps, guiding the poor souls of the blaseball players between the two realms? perhaps the players' souls are transported between the worlds at the crows' whims, and the singer views this as being set free... certainly the mention of the 'just reward' at the end of the 'final run' brings to mind the rewards of the afterlife in certain belief systems, supporting the view of the crow as the guiding spirit between worlds (interestingly, this would place the world-outside-the-game - which I intuitively refer to as the 'real world' - in the position of the afterlife! not sure what this says about the singer or my literary analysis abilities). I would also like to say that crows are cool and if I were a sports ball player and a large number of crows turned up to watch, I would feel so incredibly honoured.
Peace and Prosperity: we return to a world of gods and of war! or, a world of no gods and a war that's over. technically it only
implies that the gods being gone are connected to the singer's team (the singer's
blaseball team, perhaps?) winning. which means I could technically read it as the two being mostly-unconnected: perhaps the fighting and winning refers only to the blaseball teams' battle against each other, and the gods who have been and gone are the crows! woah. crow gods. nice. they played a much more central role in this world than I'd expected - very trickster of them indeed. on a slightly plausible level of analysis, perhaps the other blaseball team is - was - made up of the gods. the singer also raises interesting questions with 'do we need an enemy? a foe to beat? do we fight, just to be happy? where do we go from here?' - while many aspects of many sportsballs can be practised simply with one's team (such as making sure one can throw the ball to one's team-mate successfully), sportsballs are generally played competitively. I assume this includes blaseball (I am still not sure if this is a real sport). in a fairer world - a world where people were able to work together, a world with no conflict - a world with no hatred, no wars - no gods, perhaps - in a world where we have shed the horrors of battle and hierarchy - would we shed too our friendly competition? would we lose that which brings meaning to so much of life (including, but not limited to, sportsball)? how does this play into the singer's previous connection - conflation, even - of blaseball with the violent swing of the blaseball bat and the memories of the horrors of the non-blaseball world? fascinating questions indeed!
A Warning: I assume the blaseball team has a new manager and they don't like it, which tracks with their previous aims of winning against the gods and deposing the fierce and wretched hierarchy of The World and perhaps also of The Game Of Blaseball (And Other Sportsballs). perhaps they should look into a co-operative ownership structure? also to note, I read 'cash cows' as 'cash crows'.
We Killed a God: The switch to instrumental with the blaseball crowd cheering in the background for this one feels powerful - what is there to say, really, about the death of a god? What is there to say, really, about the end of the game?
Stars of the Hall: 'leaves blow through the hall we've once filled with life' - again our narrator equates the World of Blaseball With Life, and the World Outside Blaseball with the Afterlife. although they may have won their blaseball game against the gods, our heroes suffer the same fate in the end: the return to the ordinary life - or the afterlife. The crow-crowd comes for us all in the end, winners or losers, gods or humans: perhaps this is the true break in the hierarchy. All are equal once the game is over!
Crashing: ''cause now we're crashing back to earth after it all' - I'd forgotten about the winners and/or losers perhaps getting sent to space for a bit! I hope they had a good time and have a smoother landing than this lyric suggests :P
We May Not Look Like Much: I like this one! Not much to say other than 'The Shelled One has pulled together its pods / And The Monitor has summoned their stars' could link to the eldritch horror undertones in Curse of Crows... or perhaps the Shelled One and the Monitor are well-known crows. I also like the singer's defiant atheism in a world which has thus far been presented as Objectively Having Gods! A reminder to us listeners that the narrators may not be reliable? Or simply a mortal trying to insult the gods?
OLL-E (Flesh Boy): Ah! Our first confirmation, I believe, that the gods' opponents are humans (as opposed to, for example, crows)! Perhaps the people who call Ollie a robot instead of a human are to be compared to the singers in We May Not Look Like Much denying the nature of the gods? I also relate to Ollie's dislike for CAPTCHAs. I hate them too, and he is correct to note that poorly-implemented CAPTCHAs may produce a serious barrier to accessibility! ...AHA Ollie has now come out as a robot! I am glad he is able to speak his truth :) If we assume the parallels between this song and WMNLLM are intentional, could this in fact be commentary on the true nature of the gods? Are they perhaps less distant - more human - than we first imagined? Maybe so, if they can be beaten through means of a blaseball match! Anyway, I love Ollie :)
Hall Pass: I like what the low piano line is doing in this :) Funky
I've decided the lack of coherence in all that is A Feature. I am very sleepy and very Not A Literary Analysis Person :) I think the crows are going to stick with me. I want answers on the crows!
Edit: Wikipedia has provided me with some interesting context - I am glad I read this
after listening to the album!
@
Vulturereyy I'm glad you enjoyed my rec! I get what you mean about them being credits songs, and also good for a road trip :D I first listened to them on a wander type of walk in a place I hadn't been to before and it Added A Lot Of Atmosphere!