As previously mentioned in my review of Kaspall, I love comics…but I’ve never really managed to get into the traditional model. That means when it comes to superhero comics (as opposed to movies or TV) my knowledge is woefully lacking. So this fun comic is something new for me, especially since – based on my cultural touchstones – it’s not just a superhero comic but a sentai comic.
Legendary X-Knightsis a project by Jamsheed Studios, an international indie comics collective based in Uruguay, written by Bijhan Agha and illustrated by Swaptrap. Based equally on classic Jack Kirby and Power Rangers/TMNT, the story features three teenagers with attitude — sorry, they’re actually very much not teenagers. Three queers receiving messages from the future as they’re brought together to fight vampire assassins! I feel like I need some funky WordArt for that or something. Something suitably dramatic.
All of this is said with a bit of teasing, but genuinely: the sincere pulpiness of X-Knights and the (so far) lack of snarky self-awareness is actually really refreshing. Even as someone who enjoys the odd episode of Venture Bros and Q-Force, it gets old after a while to have every trope lampshaded and everything followed up by a quip. I’m not sure if this is for me, but I’m glad it exists, and I’m very curious to see where it goes.
Favourite moment in issue one: Part of me initially cringed when they traded pronouns right on meeting. And I’ve actually been sitting with that, because… I do that in real life. That’s a genuine, every day exchange for me with fellow queers. So it’s now a top moment for me, not just cause I’m glad it’s in there, but because it’s forcing me to re-examine some of my internalized biases that I clearly still have!
I love webcomics. I don’t read as many as I used to – but I still keep up with six or seven, not including xkcd, SMBC or Cyanide and Happiness. It doesn’t seem to matter the format or genre, either; it’s just the nature of a digitally-published (digital native, in digital humanities terms) comic. More and more though, I struggle to find long-runners that can keep my interest and that haven’t been abandoned or put on a long, vague hiatus. Some of this is the sheer amount I’ve already read or tried; some of it is that a lot of webcomics just…never get finished.
That makes Kaspall a very, very special creature. Started in 2004 and completed in 2015, Kaspall is a strange entity in the webcomic world – part anthro comic but with a significant number of human characters. That’s because Kaspall itself is a city of portals – ‘off-worlders’ fly or walk or fall into the wild gates seemingly at random and end up in Kaspall. Every so often, but rarely, someone from Kaspall will disappear — but for off-worlders, there’s no way home. This allows for a fun combination of tropes – Sam, misanthrope and cranky asshole human, has a bionic eye that keeps bugging him for upgrades and comes from somewhere where the only food were “NutriCubes”. Another off-worlder is a dragon who chews on coal and tries (badly and drunkenly) to teach Sam how to fly.
Part of what sells this clash of cultures so well is Lyall’s incredibly expressive black-and-white art style. Kaspall is a dense, urbanized throng of moles, rats, badgers, squirrels, rabbits, dragons, tentacled aliens, all existing in close proximity, all interacting with and bouncing off of each other’s cultures and traditions. There’s places like Coneywarren where the rabbits live in a culturally polygamous society, and the zone of the Separated, an anti-magic, low-empathy group, and the Skyways, strung out above the city on boardwalks and rope bridges. All of this – and every other world besides – is held together by the Skein, the dreamworld. This is a fantastic amount of worldbuilding to fit into a comic that, by the way, is 464 pages. That’s not a lot! And then there’s the contrast between the richly detailed main story, and the strange, almost coloring-book styled interludes…
If I have any one complaint about Kaspall it’s that I wish it was bolder with its queer themes, but I’m also thrilled that they’re there at all. The Captain is deliberately non-binary/ungendered, and the polyamory of the rabbits is mostly a joke but also quite charming. Caroline and Claudia keep feeling about a second away from kissing, and one wonders if, had Lyall started writing this a few years later, she’d have gone about it differently; but that might also be wishful thinking on my part. Sometimes writers/artists are just straight.
Kaspall can be read in its entirety over here: https://www.kaspall.com/pagelist. Watch out for Avast and other antiviruses giving false-positives on its host site Spiderforest – as far as I’ve been able to tell there’s no issues, just something being marked as ‘suspicious’ when it shouldn’t be.
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The all-time high performer of my website! I’m a little stunned at the reach this one has gotten. Like with my Metaphorical Incest post, I won’t be reposting the whole thing, but the link to the original post is below:
While much like Metaphorical Incest, there are some things I’d clean up, I’m still quite happy with the column itself. I want to get back to these kinds of columns – I’ve just been so burnt out and tired.
One fun note: This post made it onto Dreamwidth’s “FailFandomAnon” community, where it was found interesting and fascinating – right up until they “recognized” me from some prior hit posts, at which point they suddenly cared about the veracity of their sources. “I’m not taking fandom advice from THAT guy” rings a little hollow from an anon community, that’s all.
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There’s been a lot of people making peace with the political atmosphere with “well, we’re gonna get a lot of great music out of this” — which, I don’t think that’s a great coping mechanism, all things told. But so far, I can’t disagree. There’s a general atmosphere around music criticism that music is somehow worse or less diverse than it used to be, and that might be true in some senses. But every time I do one of these roundups, I’m always stunned at the variety and quality of the stuff that comes across my feed.
Before I get into the nitty-gritty, a few details about Genrefvckery. If you’ve released something lately and you’d like me to review it, send it my way! You can find me on Bluesky at @fiversdream or on SubscribeStar right here. There’s also a contact form on this site. I can’t guarantee I’ll get to everything but this is a great way for me to hear about stuff I might not otherwise. If you want to know how I find stuff, the best advice I can give you is to listen to music with purpose. The more diverse, strange and niche you make your listening habits, the more Spotify or Apple Music or your listening platform of choice picks up on that. My Release Radar gives me weird stuff because the algorithm knows I want stuff with less than 10k listeners.
Without any further ado, here’s my top ten for songs released in November 2024!
Никогда (Nikogda) – Lena Katina, ShonZi
If you put on this song and immediately feel like the vocals are familiar, don’t worry, you’re not hallucinating — Lena Katina first found fame as half of girl group t.A.T.u.! Unlike her co-singer, Katina’s remained pretty liberal, which is no small feat in Putin’s Russia; while the lyrics of Nikogda are pretty metaphorical, other songs of hers have flirted pretty closely with controversial topics while never quite getting blunt. (Who can blame her, considering Pussy Riot’s prison sentences?) ShonZi is less familiar to me, but appears to be an up and coming rapper. Language barriers aside, this song is awesome. The beat is engaging, the synth is smooth, and ShonZi and Katina’s vocals fit together beautifully. It doesn’t even feel like as short a song as it really is — it taps out at under two minutes.
2. Pretty Sweet Little Mess – Lilie Hoax
Lilie Hoax is another musician who can clearly be described as ‘up and coming’ – the first time I listened to this track, I could swear she had less than 1k listeners, and now, a month and a half later, it’s getting really close to 3k. (And that’s just on Spotify.) It’s not hard to see why, either. The track starts with a music-box intro and Hoax’s sweet voice in an almost singer-songwriter style. Hoax’s accent adds a really nice element to the song — I’ve always been sad about how often singers are ‘trained’ into singing with more or less American voices, and it’s lovely when someone gets some popularity singing with their own accent. (Bastille is another great example.) But the real achievement of the song is the chorus — where Joni Mitchell switches with a whine of guitar feedback to Sleater-Kinney riot-grrl energy. The overall energy is far closer to Alanis Morissette or Imogen Heap than anybody more ‘normal’, and it’s the kind of thing I dearly missed from indie rock. The best part is that this is from her first album and she’s 20 years old. I just hope she doesn’t get less weird over time.
3. I’m Not Sorry – The Pinpricks
We’ve been to Russia and Australasia — this time we’re in Germany with punk duo The Pinpricks, comprised of fiery female frontwoman Ronja Kaminsky and bass player Nils Degenhardt. I’m Not Sorry is from their second full album, and it’s got the raw energy of second-wave punk mixed with the acoustic grit of the OG grunge bands. Think Le Tigre meets Vice Squad.
What entertains me is that they’re apparently promoting themselves as pop-punk — which, I suppose, is accurate given production values and verse-chorus-verse models, but I’m always a little surprised at what counts as ‘pop’. The lyrics and music video are also an absolute hoot — low budget visual fun with a story that’s a more violent ‘No Scrubs’. I say this all one thousand percent as a compliment. If this means we’re finally getting pop-punk with some actual guitars back, then I’m down.
4. Day to Day – Acid Flashback at Nightmare Beach
Acid Flashback at Nightmare Beach is the project of phenomenally talented musician Lonny Starsky, who released the gorgeous Jazz from the Other Side Of The House in 2023 and is back this year with several singles. “Day to Day” is — not quite a sad song. It’s introspective, melancholy, and both about depression and — if I’m not projecting too much as a trans person living in horrible times — trying to take life ‘day to day’ after being handed an awful hand. Out of all the songs here, I think this is the one where the lyrics have affected me the most personally, and Starsky’s tender voice just makes them land all the harder.
Starsky’s work also defies categorization in a way I really enjoy, both creatively and as a stubborn hipster. Her works are tagged on Bandcamp as everything from ‘alternative’, ‘bedroomjazz’, ‘progressive lonnywave’ (a personal favourite) and ‘psychedelic emo’. This particular single hasn’t shown up on Bandcamp just yet and I’m not personally sure what words I’d use, butI think a lot of these tags speak for themselves.
5. Baliza – Driade
In case this list isn’t making it clear, I genre-hop with pretty extreme regularity. I listen to, quite literally, everything; I find the people who say “everything but country and rap” or “everything but opera” to be cowards. But the first genre I ever got into as a genre, under my own power, was metal. So I’m quite pleased to have at least one proper metal song on here, and what a song it is! Driade is a new band for me, but have been around under a different name since 2020. They’ve got a powerhouse combination of musicians, obvious just from listening to them, and it takes chops to play this kind of metal. All metal is a step or two up in difficulty; black metal is pretty high up there! (Although I’m still debating with myself whether this is black metal, doom metal, or gothic metal. It combines a couple different genre traits, and their Spotify unhelpfully lists them “modern, aggressive, delicate music from Madrid”. The only useful part of that is knowing they’re from Spain.)
Either way, though, this is a hell of a song and one I actually found much later than the rest of the list — it slid under my radar til well into December! I’m very glad I found it, and I’ll be keeping an eye on these folks.
6. Low Mood Season – Casey Lowery
This is the most popular song I think I have on this list, but in my defense… it’s very good. I love good singer-songwriter/folk-influenced work, especially when it’s not from the American South (Lowery is from the UK). And this song, about mutual struggles, hits in such a specific way. It’s not a coincidence that ‘Day to Day’ and this song are on the same list, but they also both came out in November, so who’s really at fault here? Winter, that’s who. Winter can go fuck itself.
Anyway, the production value on this song is incredible, but high production value also can’t do much for a song that’s already rubbish. Everything from the guitar to Lowery’s voice to the lyrics are like jigsaw pieces, and I’m almost annoyed at how much I like this song. I got a tiny bit of metal cred back with the last one and now here I am. Curses.
7. Say No To Drugs – We Don’t Ride Llamas
Now THESE folks are fucking cool. An Afro-Punk band of four siblings based in Austin, Texas, W.D.R.L. is made up of Chase, Max, Blake and Kit Mitchell. You might be expecting a silly song or a silly band, but ‘Say No To Drugs’ is actually a heartbreaking song about pain and — presumably — surviving withdrawal. With a surging soundscape behind Max Mitchell’s vocals, it’s a song you can fall into, and lyrics that might otherwise feel cheesy seem imbued with so much sincerity and genuine empathy that I find myself listening to the song over and over.
Another great note about W.D.R.L. – they were formed in 2014, which means 2024 was their tenth anniversary! Not a small achievement in today’s music world.
8. Riders On The Storm – Mortemia, Sirenia, Emma Zoldan
Next up is an absolutely bloody brilliant cover of ‘Riders on the Storm’ by The Doors. (There’s been a swath of really original cover choices the last few years — I only recently found out about In This Moment’s ‘ARMY OF ME’ back in 2023, on their album Godmode.) This is an odd case of redundant crediting, though; Mortemia is a one-man band comprised of Morten Veland, Emma Zoldan is the solo career of Emmanuelle Zoldan, and Sirenia in its modern format is comprised of…. Morten Veland and Emmanuelle Zoldan. So I don’t know what that’s about. Brand recognition? (Even that doesn’t make any sense, though, since out of all of these Sirenia is the most recognizable.)
Anyway, the song is gorgeous. The Doors are already a favourite band of mine — they’re often considered a precursor to the goth movement, which is one of those observations that sounds bizarre the first time you hear it, and makes sense the more you think about it — and ‘Riders on the Storm’ is, in its original form, a western-tinged song with just a hint of menace lurking behind its bassline. For the time, The Doors were already doing music much grimmer than normal — but of course, in today’s world of distorted guitars and shrieking synth, their work sounds very tame. What Mortemia and Emma Zoldan have done is take the lyrics and the basic frame of the song and opened it up to its full potential. It’s shorter, for one — two, the synths that in the 60s were still in their infancy are at full power here, and layered into a wall of sound that feels like a stormcloud. The guitars are louder, and Zoldan’s voice is a rich alto that feels like the only possible choice. (It would have been very tempting, I think, to go for either a male vocal or a soprano; but there’s a Valkyrie vibe to this that I don’t think would have come across with a gentler or more high-pitched voice.) For those keeping track, Sirenia et al. are Norwegian.
9. Charlie – The Hex
This time we’re in Ireland — look, I swear I didn’t plan this. And this is another band fresh on the scene, which always makes me feel good to cover! In fact, ‘Charlie’ is only their second single, after a release back in 2023. This is another pop-punk/riot grrl-flavoured song, and — amusingly — another revenge song, although this one is a lot more directly about jealously. The rhythm of the lyrics makes me absurdly happy, and I don’t have the knowledge to explain why — it’s just really well written. These girls also have incredible talent; for a second single, this is a hell of a song. They’re determined to play music in both Irish and English, and just in case anybody misses the memo, there’s a line in Irish in ‘Charlie’.
The members of The Hex are Caoimhe Garvin (singer), Katie Moran (lead guitarist), Helen McCarthy (bassist and pianist) and Peas Kelly (drummer). And I am looking very eagerly forward to their first album.
10. In Dreams – Suvitar
For our last song, we’re going to Finland! For those keeping count, we’ve had exactly two Americans on this list. (Which is still more than anybody else.) Suvitar is another brand new artist, which is amazing to me, cause this song is baller. It’s fast-paced with crunchy guitars and gothic vocals, so in other words, exactly my kind of thing. All I know about Suvitar so far is that this is her first single and that she’s very happily leaning into the gothic label. Which, GOOD. There’s been a SHORTAGE.
Thanks for reading! If you want to support me, my Patreon is currently decaying in a premature coffin and will not be returning, but you can support me on SubscribeStar for $5 a month! You’ll get all my columns 48 hours early, and one bonus column a month. For January, it’s a review of Night in the Woods, which I’m only seven years late to.
Back in late 2019, I went through a stint of stumbling across rarer songs on Spotify. I do this every now and again; it’s yielded surprisingly awesome results (including otherwise-popular musicians who just aren’t listened to through the platform, like Joerg Reiter). But nothing compares to The Smelling Fresh, a university bedroom recording project by Brian Yates and James Matthews that was quietly and independently released in 2012.
First, the original album. ‘Grounded Skies’ is a Moody Blues-esque opening track, showcasing Yates’ voice and lyrical prowess paired with Matthews’s guitar work. The mixing on the whole album is wonky; the louder bits have static buzz where it hits the limits of their microphones, the vocals could be a bit louder… and it is a testament to the skill on display that it does not matter. ‘Touch the Ceiling’ is just as grand, and actually the original track I stumbled on – a fairly relaxed verse leads into a killer chorus that seems tailor-made to get people singing along.
The influences on the album are clear, too; ‘Whoa Oh! She Go!’ is firmly in the arena of Blink-182, Bowling for Soup and early Sum 41 (and almost feels like it came through a time machine from 2005, in the best, most complimentary, most devotedly scene kid way possible). The reflective ‘Not the Same’, meanwhile, is heartbreaking and possibly Yates’s writing at its best – “It’s all the same/you told me you’ll never change/but I’m not the same/are you?” (Sobs into my T-shirt. It’s fine. I’m fine.) And the catchy ‘Daydreamer’ betrays some of their hidden but emerging jazz sensibilities underlying the pop-punk exterior, evoking both McFly and a little je ne sais quois. All through the album are the aches and worries of growing up and becoming “real” adults, both silly and serious, relationships and friendships, and even lifelong dreams – “I don’t wanna give up on my dreams at twenty-one,” is one of the most striking lines in Touch The Ceiling for its naked sincerity.
Of course, this is an album from 2012. The Smelling Fresh was a one-off, a small collaboration between friends. Brian Yates did some EDM work, but currently works in software in North Carolina; James Matthews works in New Jersey, both of them far from Penn State where they created the album. When I contacted them about the album, they were both surprised to hear that it was still circulating; Yates even said that he’d strained his vocal cords a bit.
So imagine my joy to hear, two years later, that They Fucking Did It.
If Grounded Skies was an amazing debut, Colors has – possibly through the sheer length of time between releases – completely avoided the sophomore curse. Every song on the EP takes the building blocks from Grounded Skies and builds upwards on it, leaning into aspects they shied away from on the first album. Where Grounded Skies suffered from quiet vocals and buzzing on higher/louder notes, Colors is crisp and clear; where Grounded Skies played lightly with but then veered from jazz influences, both the songs ‘Count On You’ and ‘The Smooth Interlude’ lean completely into it. In fact, ‘The Smooth Interlude’ is entirely instrumental, the kind of thing pop-punk/grunge outfits usually don’t have the guts to do until much later in their careers (or the skill to pull off, which TSF does in grand style!). The bouncy bridge in ‘Count On You’is slick and cool, which sounds ridiculous to say about music, but it’s the best words coming to mind — and it’s well balanced out by the crunchier guitar and soaring riffs on ‘Colors’ and ‘Fade Away’.
The lyrics, however, are another level of awesome. As mentioned above, Yates and Matthews weren’t even in the same state; whether they made this through long-distance or got together in person to make the album, I don’t know, but the lyrics in the whole album are about the importance and value of long-term friendships, reminiscing on older times and rekindling things once thought lost. Especially together with the first album’s fear of the rapidly-approaching future, it’s hard not to feel the joy coming off of every song. ‘Laughing At Ourselves’ says, “We found our way through the storms with our lights on bright and never looking back… When we were younger we had no fear of the end, like the last song we sang of the summer,” and ‘Count on You’ follows it up with “this time I won’t take for granted, you’re still on my mind/we’ll make the most of the days we have left, all the precious time”.
I dearly hope — and almost expect, at least if anybody has any sense — that this second EP will be what gets The Smelling Fresh some radio play or at least some attention. If you don’t believe me, take a listen for yourself – and let’s raise a glass to one of the sweet successes of an otherwise-grisly two years. I’m hoping there’ll be a third album, but even if there isn’t, this is a hell of a triumphant return.
Elliott Dunstan 