this album has made me less alone on days where i feel alienated from my family. it's made me bawl my eyes out on days where i feel particularly dysphoric. like,

the self-titled eighth song is about providing emotional support to a girl in the face of her transphobic parents, & eventually realizing that you need her support as much as she needs yours.

no wonder this album makes me cry lol.

"bone skull" reminds me of a headspace i'm sometimes in when i derealize that i'm gonna call "aimless wanderer". i like to go on walks thru my neighbourhood in this state, & i sort of. Notice the sensations around me? the mushrooms in the grass, the clouds, the metal-grid fences.

but i don't really Take Them In. i just kinda Observe the world, emotionlessly. that sorta helplessness is really captured in bone skull i think, esp the lines "standing motionless in doorways and parking lots / pigeons coo on the balcony". it's like you're Zooming In on random objects, and you're Perceiving™ them, but you're not really Feeling anything.

i think every time i've listened to this album, i had a secondhand mental breakdown from it. and i mean that as a compliment!

i have this memory from when i was a kid where i listened to Jetzt Bist Du Weg by the band Nena. that song is about that feeling when an important person in your life suddenly disappears… it got to me. after i finished the song, i was crying, and i had my mother comfort me. when i had calmed down, i listened to the song again, and cried again.

now i am an adult & i still sit down & listen to music that makes me cry. i guess there's an allure to the sadness.

there's the half-screamt, half-cried spoken-word parts, the dizzying synth leads that make me feel like i'm right there & overdosing with them, the brooding lyrics, the love, the heartbreak, the hurt, oh, the hurt.

this album also deserves an honorable mention for having the longest title i know lol.

i learned about this album from a youtube playlist called enawave. said playlist is in turn inspired by ena, a webshow which forever sits in my list of "yeah i'll watch that at some point".

i like this album because it sounds really weird. real Funky & Strange™. because of that, i can put it on while i'm on the bus & just kinda feel like a little creacher while listening. it provides a sort of save haven when i'm overstimulated or otherwise stressed out.

the stylized letters on the album cover resemble both the latin letters ⟨TILT⟩ and the katakana ⟨ナノレイ⟩ (nanorei), a nipponization of "NANORAY". this blew my mind when i first noticed it.

i listened to this album like twice & it made me so so scared. i guess it was something with the themes of doomscrolling online, or getting popular as a musician, being consumed by your ego, and having to fake who you are for an audience. even the voices you can hear throughout the album eventually become a senseless parody, as if mocking the artist for even trying to be genuine. and the artist dies at the end.

my second listen ever was on a long car ride, and by the time 'stung' came on, i had become the corpse in the back seat, laying limp & waiting for another punch. i haven't dared a third listen since.

and despite the heavy story, the album has really catchy production, this genre is called bubblegum pop, and it really tickles my brain just right. there is another uh…less damaging album that i recommend, no comments atm i just really like it.