The Birthday Massacre - Pins and Needles
Last year I read this sweet little article on Jezebel, "How Tragic Kingdom Saved My Life," about the writer's therapeutic "relationship" with the No Doubt album, and I remember thinking, hmm, I'm so obsessed with carving albums up into patchwork playlists (and leave the dregs behind!) that I don't really have any especially meaningful albums. I think that's started to change a little - I can't imagine carving up The XX (The XX) or Loveless (My Bloody Valentine) because they're like 40-minute songs - and now I have discovered The Birthday Massacre's fourth album, Pins and Needles.
The Birthday Massacre is one of my guilty pleasure bands - they're so ridiculously Hot Topic with their Goth!-Alice-in-Wonderland aesthetic that they seem kind of embarrassing for a 24-year-old pre-professional - and I can't say they're musical geniuses by any stretch. I would not have discovered them had it not been for Pandora, which suggested to me "Lovers' End" and "Happy Birthday" off Violet. Today Pandora suggested "Two Hearts" off Pins and Needles and I was instantly in love:
Obviously I was particularly drawn to the lyrics: "Two hearts beating, one beats the other while the other just looks away." Yesterday I admitted in therapy that I'm attracted to people that seem damaged - instead of wholesome, normal, well-adjusted, generally sane, like they could go live in a little box made of ticky-tacky and be satisfied - because I see myself as damaged and dangerous, and at least if they're already messed up, I won't feel so guilty about the inevitable damage I will do. This is what I was thinking about while dancing (painfully sober) at a bar/club in Farragut North on St. Patrick's Day (the song I declared to be "my song": a techno remix of "Somebody That You Used To Know."). My friend Alicia was ecstatic as we left because she hadn't gone clubbing in a while - whereas I went to Pure and The Bank in Vegas this past weekend, and besides which I feel no great difference between a silver-glitzy club and a bar with a dance floor, so there is zero novelty for me - and I just ended up feeling claustrophobic and anxious to get home, which is I guess what happens when I go clubbing sober.
So anyway, Pins and Needles. Is very listenable, to start with, and has TBM's trademark sound, which I cannot describe as anything other than like, deathpop, although wikipedia calls it synthrock (they say that about almost everything I like, though). They are named after Clive Barker's Imajica, which tells you something. They go with Jack Off Jill/Scarling and Kidneythieves in my head-catalog. And this album in particular sort of perfectly describes the contrasting elements in my life - the high-pitched pop of everyday tasks and my "upwardly mobile" trajectory and my happenin' friends and contacts, vs. my melancholy, downward-sloping heartbreak. And the words. Even the title Pins and Needles pretty much accurately describes my existence.
From "In The Dark": "I'm in the dark, I'm alone around you. I've never been here before, nobody here to get me through."
From "Always": "Repeating words until they're true: it slows the breathing. Pretend they never came from you: it kills the feeling. I'm not what you want: you said what I never could."
From "Pale": "I'm looking at a face, a pointed chin towards the sky in arrogance./ Imitation, a fabrication, a pretty fake, but counterfeit, an empty carcass behind the artist, is there a trait of innocence?/ And much to our dismay, they're ignorant. The more that we make up, the more it fits./ This doesn't feel right, feels like everything's further away. Dead as the nightlife. Hindsight, watching another mistake. We never feel right."
From "Control": "Two-faced, too poised to shed a tear/ A new trend: indifference."
From "Shallow Grave": "She was always good for nothing when the good broke bad. All she's got to lose is everything she never has. Every back turned to her./ She never fooled us because she could never fool herself."
From "Sideways": "How can you criticize when you're not here to compromise? Words fade as time goes by without you."
From "Midnight": "I can't decide which one of us will leave here alive. Your fingers breaking as I place them over mine. The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./ I can't decide which one of us is dreaming tonight. I'm just a shadow in the light you leave behind. The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./ It's always darker at the end of every answer, like a finger down the back of your throat."
From "Pins and Needles": "It's been so long, feels like pins and needles in my heart. So long, I can feel it tearing me apart./ It's always a nightmare, it's never a dream."
From "Sleepwalking": "Wait, dear, the time is getting late here. I'm all washed up and graced with feigned applause, dressed in a cheap facade. I'm looking for a place I'll never see again. A night turns to a day, a street I've never walked on. I was never here, just a faint reflection. A day turns to a month, a second of affection./ Faking, there's nothing here worth taking. Just my reflection fading on the wall, not the fairest one of all."
From "Secret": "I woke up as I waited. Bleeding slow, there was no way to make all this blow over, so I started writing the ending. I said too much. And you just kept on pretending for both of us. I could never speak anyway. What you wanted to hear, I couldn't convey./ All the days that I've counted, you'll never know."
I don't know if Pins and Needles will save my life, but it certainly gives my inner turmoil some voice. It's alienation in a busy city, it's walking back to the metro at 2 a.m. alone, it's being "pre-professional" at all in this city of berserker networking, it's the pure sadness of unrequited love, it's the chase.
The Birthday Massacre is one of my guilty pleasure bands - they're so ridiculously Hot Topic with their Goth!-Alice-in-Wonderland aesthetic that they seem kind of embarrassing for a 24-year-old pre-professional - and I can't say they're musical geniuses by any stretch. I would not have discovered them had it not been for Pandora, which suggested to me "Lovers' End" and "Happy Birthday" off Violet. Today Pandora suggested "Two Hearts" off Pins and Needles and I was instantly in love:
Click to viewObviously I was particularly drawn to the lyrics: "Two hearts beating, one beats the other while the other just looks away." Yesterday I admitted in therapy that I'm attracted to people that seem damaged - instead of wholesome, normal, well-adjusted, generally sane, like they could go live in a little box made of ticky-tacky and be satisfied - because I see myself as damaged and dangerous, and at least if they're already messed up, I won't feel so guilty about the inevitable damage I will do. This is what I was thinking about while dancing (painfully sober) at a bar/club in Farragut North on St. Patrick's Day (the song I declared to be "my song": a techno remix of "Somebody That You Used To Know."). My friend Alicia was ecstatic as we left because she hadn't gone clubbing in a while - whereas I went to Pure and The Bank in Vegas this past weekend, and besides which I feel no great difference between a silver-glitzy club and a bar with a dance floor, so there is zero novelty for me - and I just ended up feeling claustrophobic and anxious to get home, which is I guess what happens when I go clubbing sober.
So anyway, Pins and Needles. Is very listenable, to start with, and has TBM's trademark sound, which I cannot describe as anything other than like, deathpop, although wikipedia calls it synthrock (they say that about almost everything I like, though). They are named after Clive Barker's Imajica, which tells you something. They go with Jack Off Jill/Scarling and Kidneythieves in my head-catalog. And this album in particular sort of perfectly describes the contrasting elements in my life - the high-pitched pop of everyday tasks and my "upwardly mobile" trajectory and my happenin' friends and contacts, vs. my melancholy, downward-sloping heartbreak. And the words. Even the title Pins and Needles pretty much accurately describes my existence.
From "In The Dark": "I'm in the dark, I'm alone around you. I've never been here before, nobody here to get me through."
From "Always": "Repeating words until they're true: it slows the breathing. Pretend they never came from you: it kills the feeling. I'm not what you want: you said what I never could."
From "Pale": "I'm looking at a face, a pointed chin towards the sky in arrogance./ Imitation, a fabrication, a pretty fake, but counterfeit, an empty carcass behind the artist, is there a trait of innocence?/ And much to our dismay, they're ignorant. The more that we make up, the more it fits./ This doesn't feel right, feels like everything's further away. Dead as the nightlife. Hindsight, watching another mistake. We never feel right."
From "Control": "Two-faced, too poised to shed a tear/ A new trend: indifference."
From "Shallow Grave": "She was always good for nothing when the good broke bad. All she's got to lose is everything she never has. Every back turned to her./ She never fooled us because she could never fool herself."
From "Sideways": "How can you criticize when you're not here to compromise? Words fade as time goes by without you."
From "Midnight": "I can't decide which one of us will leave here alive. Your fingers breaking as I place them over mine. The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./ I can't decide which one of us is dreaming tonight. I'm just a shadow in the light you leave behind. The only thing I need is time to change your mind, I said./ It's always darker at the end of every answer, like a finger down the back of your throat."
From "Pins and Needles": "It's been so long, feels like pins and needles in my heart. So long, I can feel it tearing me apart./ It's always a nightmare, it's never a dream."
From "Sleepwalking": "Wait, dear, the time is getting late here. I'm all washed up and graced with feigned applause, dressed in a cheap facade. I'm looking for a place I'll never see again. A night turns to a day, a street I've never walked on. I was never here, just a faint reflection. A day turns to a month, a second of affection./ Faking, there's nothing here worth taking. Just my reflection fading on the wall, not the fairest one of all."
From "Secret": "I woke up as I waited. Bleeding slow, there was no way to make all this blow over, so I started writing the ending. I said too much. And you just kept on pretending for both of us. I could never speak anyway. What you wanted to hear, I couldn't convey./ All the days that I've counted, you'll never know."
I don't know if Pins and Needles will save my life, but it certainly gives my inner turmoil some voice. It's alienation in a busy city, it's walking back to the metro at 2 a.m. alone, it's being "pre-professional" at all in this city of berserker networking, it's the pure sadness of unrequited love, it's the chase.