Ewy "World Is Mine" (2020)

Ewy is an artist that showed up on my Spotify Weekly a while ago and hooked me in with his melodramatic voice, British accent and sad guitar playing, it all mad me reminiscent of Crywank, The Front Bottoms or even Park national which are all bands I quite enjoy. This isn't the only aspect of that makes this small indie folk punk artist so enjoyable though.

This record is special to me because of it's big emotional impact, it felt strangely personal which is the result of this album being written in lockdown, it's presence of which has undoubtedly affected all of us and is something we can all relate to. Other topics of this album include failed relationships and his disappointment in the world in general, you know, typical folk punk stuff.

In a total of 12 songs and 30 minutes Ewy manages to capture all these topics perfectly via his sad British voice, sounding more like a rant than singing, this isn't a bad thing though, this and his acoustic guitar cause for his perfect capturing of the folk punk aesthetic Ewy is obviously aiming for. With poppy influences on these songs and fun but unique lyrics these tracks manage to stay in your head for weeks on end. Especially 'Itch' and 'Jewelry And Teeth' do this intricate mix well, they're fun songs with a way deeper meaning when you actually look at the lyrics.

Not only is Ewy a really great artist he's also a really fun and nice person to hang around with, he's often active in his Discord Server and I've often hung around with him in voice chats, he's really cool and likeable person.

9/10

 AJJ ''Christmas Island'' (2014)

With Sean's tragic voice an this band's Folk Punk sound consisting of acoustic guitar, bass, drums and some electronic keyboard tunes they manage to put pure emotion an nerdy yet fantastic lyrics into song. Getting this album recommended to me by someone online at 4 am a year ago made this a surreal listening experience.

AJJ was my first dabble into Folk Punk, this band utilises it's key components of acoustic guitar, bass, and drums masterfully, but in this album they've strayed a bit from their roots, experimenting around with more electric guitar and synthesizers than before which turned out better than anyone could have expected. Sounds building up and having it all come back down on top of Sean's lyrics or gentle guitar picking, drums for keeping track and adding a bit of spice with brushes instead of sticks, and synthesizers keeping a friendly swooning tone. 

The first song on this record immediately sets the tone for a large portion of this album with lyrics like ''Find a nicer way to kill it'' which is a mean and angry (yet still positive) take on Temple Grandin's (the person) work to strive for a more humane way of setting animals up for slaughter. This cynicism is heard throughout your time listening to these songs.

The lyricism on this album is nerdy and near perfect, classic AJJ. They often touch on topics like poverty, humanity, religion, addiction and politics. This 30 minute record is no exception of that, managing to check the box on quite a few of them.

All in all I can describe this record as nothing short of emotional, meaningful and almost tragic with it's distortion on the synthesizers, guitar, and drums, forming a solid background for Sean to perform his wonders. I could go on about individual songs for another 400 words but that's not what this is about.

9/10