Music Review - Negative Space

REVIEW by Jesse Smith

Title: Negative Space

By: Bittercup

Year: 2019

Track Listing:

1. Led Astray by a Chemical

2. The Ballroom

3. Sequel

4. Attracted to the Pain  

Hey Turkeys,

Following the tail-end of a North Island tour, Bittercup is wrapping the first half of this year having performed at over a dozen venues. To precede our interview with Callum of Bittercup, I’m here to give my opinion on their debut EP - Negative Space.

If you’re wanting to stirring, hypothermic song to fall out of a building from on a night so cold you can’t feel your face on the way down, the opening track is where to go. It wanders between a soft, sharp matter of falsetto and a crackling howl at its peaks, all the while forcing you to circle the drain with an unforgettable bass-line. It’s romantic without the ballad and the guitars are early Blindspott without the comradery. This is all clearly a one man show and it feels like it. A cold, synthetically-charged song and I daresay it’s my favourite so far.

Now if you’re expecting a strictly machine-driven experience, you’re going to be disappointed once track 2 starts. There are only two ways to listen to this song - isolated on headphones or cranked up all the way on surround. Whether this is the best track placement on the album is questionable, but that’s not to say it doesn’t work. It comes from a mostly curious place on my part and I can’t wait to talk about the process of how these songs came together in this way. The Ballroom dances your ears and is completely fucking immersive. It plays like noise therapy for the synesthesiac in you. He’s licking your brain with that voice and playing your veins with that guitar. This might have the best production of the album, but we’re two tracks deep so I’m happy to be proven wrong. A dizzying high of a song and I daresay it’s my favourite so far.

Track 3, Sequel, haunts the album and is where the love goes to die. It’s a dirty Western Gothic affair and at 5 minutes 10 seconds it still feels like it could go longer. There’s life in this track and it provides a sense of loss knowing I’m only ever going to get this close to whatever these words mean. If Led Astray by a Chemical is the end of the neo-noir pretending to be the opening scene, Sequel is the closing credit and fade to black pretending to be the Danny Boyle third act falling off the rails in futility. I can only imagine what this song is like performed live. It’s a short story and a genuine display of what could come from a full length album.  A manic-depressive duet and I daresay it’s my favourite so far.

Oh, you want to know if the boy can sing? Track 4. If the Pain is Callum’s throat, then I am indeed attracted to it. With the opening track if someone told me that Bittercup is one person, I’d believe them. But with this? No way. Something I realise coming to the end of the album is that it builds in four distinct pieces to culminate what feels like a fully realised band.  If you’re left wondering where the first half of the story that is Led Astray by a Chemical, it’s Attracted to the Pain. A song that convinces you that falling is okay, even on the coldest of nights and I daresay it’s my favourite so far.

To me, the mark of a good song is whether you can build a story, a universe, a film, something, beyond it. Delighted to report that Negative Space does, and it does it well. Of all the Bittercup albums, it’s my favourite so far.

4.5 stars out of a possible 4.5 stars.

Plug:

https://bittercupmusic.com

https://bittercup.bandcamp.com

https://soundcloud.com/bittercup

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGTCxuWGR6Jm9LN66wRTdrQ

https://twitter.com/bittercupmusic

https://www.facebook.com/bittercupofficial

Every goal's a hole

I’m not entirely sure what I want to talk about today. The lack of recent episodes should have me foaming with half-baked ideas about everything trivial, but here I am without a topic. There’s an absolute certainty that I want to engage with you, readers, but with a severe lack of direction it’s hard not to procrastinate so that’s what I’ll talk about until an idea comes to mind.  Is there a job out there that allows me to do such a thing?  I’ve been a student and it sucked, let’s not suggest that again. I’ve finally paid off the loan that came with 4 years of not even really drinking or fucking for that matter, so in that respect I have learned to spend my government’s money a bit better. But hey, I wrote a lot of essays and met some people that are both fantastic and in the same stroke barely in my life anymore. Shout-out, class of ’12, I barely tried! I now realise I’m going out of my way to write an essay. Fuck that AMA referencing though, this is Wired Shut Blog, damn it, and we’re as academic as we are diverse.

To those of you who don’t know anything genuine about me, I’m turning 30 this year and with that milestone comes the feeling that I’m dragging myself down with an increasing lack of satisfaction in life.  The difficulty with happiness is that you often take it for granted. To live one day at a time with joy and indulgence and simply doing what makes you feel good. Goals are dopamine goldmines, hard work should be satisfaction in itself – do something, make something, fix something, get that hit. Now that I put this to paper, this may actually be conditioning of a social construct...My bootstraps long to have me pull myself up with or something… all I can say is don’t weigh yourself down with that milestone like I’ve done. There’s far more to do than what you think you should do. How’s that for inspiring? Is it meaningful? Sure. Does it mean anything? Doesn’t matter, I have a website.

Safe to say, we’ve all experienced some form of self-doubt, of self-loathing, of not feeling as if you’ve caught a break when you’ve worked hard, or conversely by not catching a break that you don’t deserve satisfaction that you haven’t worked nearly as hard as everyone else. Which path to take, which life to live today? Surely it’s time to specialize. Look at the people around you, twice your age that you’re already three steps ahead of. How good does that feel? Does that make them feel cheated? Or do they measure themselves by a different standard? They might be younger than you and three steps ahead, at least by your measurements. They might own a home, be in a loving relationship, earning six figures, travelling the world. Maybe they’re managing to do all of those things at the same time. To compare yourself to anyone quickly becomes a damaging practice that requires constant work to manage without losing your fucking mind over. You see what someone else has done and want that for yourself, that’s how you know goals are attainable, right?

When it comes to your own life, it’s got to be only yours. Find that balance between selfishness and enjoying the successes, carrying the losses and toast the ideas of those closest to you because you’ve got to have more of a common ground, a convergence of living, than simply comradery, hobbies or habits. Remember, your friends lives are yours to share in too. Take them, celebrate them, own them and champion them. They’re likely to do the same. Internalizing your successes and pining for some aspect what brought you that happiness yourself. That is to say don’t live through anyone else. Live them adjacently. The world is a massive place so find your place in it. Chances are it won’t be with the people you grew up with, or with the people that raised you. Maybe it is, though, and that’s okay. Find your tribe. It’s what we’ve evolved to do and the shackles of a day-job grind is not your tribe. That’s the war. Don’t let the place that employs you define you. Go online and find the deepest, most fringe subset of your persona expressed in a group activity. “There are dozens of us!” you’ll hear them scream. “You’ve joined a sex cult!” your detractors will bemoan. Ideally you’ll find yourself in a position to fuck them both for such statements. And isn’t that why we’re really here?

More to come, but for now wire me shut and pour me something dirty, your host is turning 30.

- Jesse