Shygirl Cruel Practice

[Self-Released; 2018]

Rating: 4.5/5

Styles: The 13th Warrior, between 42nd & 125th on the A-/D- line at any time, Subway Creatures, Under Armour, Inc.
Others: Lolina, Tricky, Cardi B, Sega Bodega

Approaching middle age at decade’s pace. Nobody can relate to you, but that’s the modern world. Coming of age is a sex change or cis-marriage, followed by [maintaining your situation]. A World Tour we all do in the last years of youth to keep riding it out. Finding a line to separate identities; nothing presents itself of the norm. Outside of work is what takes a two-hour round trip that finds you contemplating YOU. ME: the subway rides that demograph a typography of societal interaction.

A flurry of Korean, [Southern “Chinese”], and Latinx people take the seven train with me every weekday morning, squeezing in the morning midst of an NYC commute. All almost the same age, as far as I can tell. For the day job; to having a day job; a drink after today if I see you here later; promise of a new day/life/agenda; what else is there to do(?), like. And my moms had a dream about you once — she told me in a drunken daze, in a hot tub — throwing your white scarf upon her: here it is in return as a blue and green flannel.
At work, all the interaction is with Harlemites, who are direct descendants of/or are native Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Africans: the most interesting people to interact with on the daily. A vernacular that is beyond wit that it’s self recurring, something you must feel and never question, because a moment is what’s happening toward every feeling. It’s all improv in the namesake of community. If someone axe you a dollar, you’d better be chopping. Everything comes back around. These is the streets that remember. Elephant status. Be big!
It’s only the bump that gets you turn’t. Anywhere between birthright and cultural being is the measurement of respect. Ima walk here on this side of the tracks; don’t approach me like you ain’t seen me this entire time because I been on this walk, so move the-fuck, or I’ll wait right here until you do. And if it be the train that breaks us, we’ll leave on neutral ground. Is that even, though?

Or I’m standing waiting for Sam Tornow at 103rd St B-/C-line, and I see this woman taking photos of me with a digital camera. I look up and around to see what she’s photographing, because it’s not my white-old ass on 103rd St. But it is, and I ask her to stop, only she keeps taking photos, so when I’m finally standing in the middle of 103rd and eighth avenue, she’s waving at me walking down the platform stairs.


Shygirl’s Cruel Practice is such a significant part of maintaining constantly interactive courage. Each of the EP’s five tracks contain nuances to their pieces of armor:

Whispering the words “unrelenting” twice comes from next to you, but it’s not directed to you, no. There’s some “Rude” boy sitting next to a family that’s tipping over too much when the train rocks — passed out — and they can’t keep him off. The mother steps up to this man adjacent to her, who then awakes in a panic and gets off the train at the wrong stop, almost perfect timing, falling into a hoard of commuters trying to enter the train as he stumbles onto the platform. The mother standing before him, parting the waves of people entering the train car, never unlocking her gaze from her kids making faces at the man through the dirtied window.

Step on my fucking shoe again! Act like this isn’t a missed connection, because if it repeats, you won’t appreciate my version of rerun. Seed shells now? “O” my patience can exceed a forefront, but get one more on me, like — LOL nice, that white girl next to me got some on her and the man with her is trying to communicate with someone who’s jamming to earbuds, maybe bachata (probably). I’ve a hook to clip on my belt for when I fall asleep so nobody steals my bag; of the past three years on this train, I’ve seen four sleeping commuters get their bags stolen right off their laps.

Planning with people on the weekend leaves puke on the train-car floor. People straight up leave if I puke or my wife pukes or a friend pukes on the train. Even if one is a locked train-car entry, they will take the full length of one last train car of puke smell to leave it. And then I find myself alone. “Nasty” is an ownership to a measly feeling, but brute acceptance is the more alpha you can obtain at this moment.

Explaining deeply psychological nuances to your daily thoughts to friends is too intimate for this opportunity. If anxiety overcomes your fruition, then maybe tomorrow. I want everyone to be into what I’m into, with the possibility that nobody is into what I’m into, and even my worst nightmares become a reality on such a level that my wife tells me this a rerun of a dream she heard me narrate the other day about failing at everything on a Wednesday, so I fail everything on a Wednesday. Without manipulation, I “Gush.” A Four Loko in a Taco Bell XL plastic cup that I/you/we drink for lunch, in this scenario. Please be with me, still.

An alarm clock. Visage in the correct stance, because a mirror image can forever be the falsest narrator. I don’t even know who I’m watching in this life anymore. It’s not fucking ME. When’d that even appear there? I want to know apparition status! It grew. On its own. Leave it alone. It’s playing, you see. Be with it. Accept a Cruel Practice. No pressed feelings of mess, etc. No. It’s not about you forever. Who the fuck is you, “Asher Wolfe?”

You. Don’t. Get. To. Enjoy. This, Atall!

Eureka!

Some releases are so incredible we just can’t help but exclaim EUREKA! While many of our picks here defy categorization and explore the constructed boundaries between ‘music’ and ‘noise,’ others complement, continue, or rupture traditions that provide new forms and ways of listening. Not all of our favorites will be listed here, but we think each EUREKA! album is worthy of careful consideration. This section is a work-in-progress, so expect its definition to be in perpetual flux.

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