No doubt that BOY HARSHER has listened to Suicide more than once. That’s not a criticism. Not in the slightest because that’s only one of the notable influences, and there isn’t anybody out there who isn’t drawing from someone else’s well. Nobody’s going to complain if you do what you do very well. I’m not complaining. Boy Harsher does their thing well, whatever you want to call it, synthpop, darkwave blah blah.

It could shape up to be a very strange day across the country. Proud Boys and MAGA goons were throwing down with the police in Washington DC last night, in advance of the big Trump rally today. Fingers crossed that nice people don’t get hurt. The people that aren’t so nice… well, what can you say? They could have stayed home. It looks like the Senate might flip to blue after a run-off vote in Georgia last night. Tempers will be… interesting. Let’s see where all this goes. At the end of the day, for most of us, it’s really about waking up today and figuring out what we need to do to continue paying the bills.

I’m thinking a lot about the music and art I’ve been immersed in over the last 10 months of semi-quarantine. Much of it is very new, as the artists are just continuing to do what they do. They’re creating. That’s their job. It’s what they do, and I’m grateful to those that didn’t lose sight of that. They were out there, creating… and sharing. That’s the message. Figure out the basics of what you need to do and stick to that. The rest will roll on under its own momentum.

Shoemaker, stick to thy last…

Boy Harsher apparently did go to film school and the influence is there. Careful is the soundtrack to something. It’s a deja vu thing. It’s familiar and evokes images but it’s impossible to pinpoint the source of the images. A movie maybe, or even a long weekend of clubbing in 1985. My memory has never been linear. It’s all in there and the images are very clear and focussed, but they don’t sit in chronological order so things get muddled. And yet there is a nearly cohesive soundtrack and it sounds just like this.

Going to move forward into the day with it, and dig deeper with some other album releases. It’s a mood, for sure. Voices coming in from the ozone on a low frequency. Get up and keep moving, they say. It’s not time to sleep.