Anxiety (2013)

1. Did gloomy hipsters ruin R&B in 2012? (the guardian, 29 December 2012)
2. Nah (everyone)
3. Will gloomy hipsters ruin R&B in 2013? (someone, 5 March 2013)
4. Nah (most people)
5. Anxiety's all about disconnection and Ashin already told you that before you heard it
6. I guess the inclusion of Munch's The Scream on the cover would've been too obvious, though obviousness isn't something Anxiety avoids, ever
7. The art of disconnection- anxiety as the byproduct of desire and lack, of not having and wanting, or of having and not wanting, behold the nature of desire and the inevitability of anxiety
8. Behold the opening and closing tracks
9. Peter Gabriel
10. Post-internet
11. Grimes
12. Turgid solipsism or a treatise on the self (universal) and r&b in general (pretentious, unnecessary)
13. Seriously though
14. He'll probably fess up and say that's the point, man
15. And I'll be like yeah I know, man
16. And he'll be like did you hear where it's all poppy and there's a buzzsaw
17. And I'll be like yeah that was a cool song, man, is it about your anxiety, my anxiety, their anxiety, or every r&b song ever
18. And he'll be like it's all the same, man
19. Anxiety in the age of superficial knowledge+connections+identities
20. A scream through the vaporwaves
21. Climbing Up the Walls for gloomy 21st century hipsters
22. Does its status as a socio-technolo-musico-psychological dissertation add to or lessen its value?
23. Well, when it gets me by the balls...
24. And then when it doesn't...
25. Love it when it screams to me and gets all in my head and like makes me feel sick
26. Because at those points it's beyond the self-awareness, irony, and intertextuality supposedly defining it- it's startling, and human- a sort of cure for the conditions of its (his, and our) anxiety
27. And when it fails to transcend...
28. A failure. Don't let anyone tell you that its failures enhance its message (Lacanian self-analysis)
29. Because they will, and it matters more than that- Anxiety occasionally transcends both the problems it deals with and its ideological arsenal- an emotional mess that utilizes the 21st century existential crisis for moments both reassuring and genuine (if absurd) 
30. It's about moments, I'm sure, and it has them, sure, and to have highs you need lows, and if it was all desire achieved without the subsequent lack then it would be to avoid the condition of having and not wanting, meaning no anxiety, meaning no Anxiety, and so he sticks to his conceptual guns, so it's more truthful, fine, but man, this makes me lame, or whatever, but on a third of these tracks we get something transformative, something curative rather than reflective, evidence of the power of art, and emotion, whether it lifts or crushes, it breaks us out of our heads rather than telling us what's in there and why we're in there, occasionally it's a work of art beyond the one that people are saying it is, and how am I in the minority not being frustrated by this

B-

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