(what have I been listening to... These will just be thoughts/feelings/memories tied to whatever I'm listening to. These are my interpretations of the music so don't take it too seriously!)

Activity Center - Sherry CD-ROM

Sherry CD-ROM is, according to their bandcamp "a revolutionary partnership between a flesh-and-blood human being (Sherry) and a flesh-and-blood digitally constructed lifeform (CD-ROM)". As a long time fan of Sherry's previous music I was so excited when this track dropped. It really is a dance-y jam to question your existence to! The song opens with a super fun bouncy melody and then Sherry declaring we start - or really start over. I'm not here to over-analyze the lyrics, but I definitely want to note my faves. Sherry has always been such a fantastic writer and it'd be a shame to not point that out. (Side note, Read Big Gray Miracle.)
I don't 100% know why, but the vibes of the instrumentals of this song remind me of early episodes of Petscop when it is just about a weird little game about collecting pets and not something more. Sometimes when I listen to Activity Center clips from Petscop play in my head along with it. I really love a good dialog within a song so the "(Even the lies?)" "Yeah!" absolutely gets me, it's such a fun bit. It just keeps up the party into the next verse so here's a list of banger moments in verse 2:

  • All of the lyrics. Particularly "We'll leave our younger selves dead on the street / I'm dead / I died already". I won't elaborate, but I feel like I understand very well.
  • The *pew pew - pew pew* after "Let's just dump it".
  • Honestly the flourishes after every line after that are all so fun there's like a sax-y synth that sounds like Tiny Kong could have played it, and a little pause, and a little xylophone tinkley bit.
  • and then they all meld together in the end and seamlessly carry you into the next part of the song!!!
Then we meet what will become our refrain: "Let's get to the center / The center of it all / Let's get to the center / Of who we really are". It's gonna come back later and be so delicious, but I'm getting ahead of myself. The next verse is perfect and I absolutely love the pure resolutions but I also felt so seen by "I'm not afraid of anything, not even getting shot", because yeah. That's so real. I think about getting shot a lot.
When the refrain comes back and amps up through repetition it feels like something that if I still drove a lot by myself, I'd blast loudly and scream to in the car. "YEEEAH LETS START OOOVEEER". I also cannot stress enough how much I love that it opens with "Let's Start...Let's start over" and ends with "Let's start over" it makes for an excellent 'listening on repeat' experience. Anyway, I give the first Sherry CD-ROM release a score of: "Don't think I didn't notice the switch to "What we really are" instead of "WHO we really are" in the last refrain!!". Happy listening! -Sav