Nina Ryser - Laughing Tears (Ranch Records)

The kind of off-kilter strangeness that gets under your skin in the best way possible.

Because it actually isn't strange at all. If this doesn't make sense to you, if you don't recognize these ideas as already in your mind, in your marrow, then it's just because you aren't listening closely enough. I understand. People pay a lot of money to ingest chemicals that will silence the disturbing inconvenience of 21st century life. Me, I try to do like Jonathan Richman and take this world as straight as I can (though unlike, Jonathan, I don't stand outside people's windows at night, craft impossible fantasies around their existence, and I think it's totally fine if you'd rather be with Hippie Johnny because you should be with whoever makes you happy).

But I digress. Or do I? This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you more about this person, Nina Ryser, where they live, what other bands they play in, etc. I should compare it to other things I have heard before, in the hope that you will recognize one of the artists and therefore compelled. But if I compared it to, say, the insular hyper-consciousness of Young Marble Giants blended into the electronic sensory overload of OSR Records stuff, you would listen and say this doesn't sound like Final Day AT ALL you asshole. I should post a photo of her looking winsome, or enigmatic, or angry, so you can see the eyes and body of this person, and decide whether they look like a person whose music you want to listen to. I should tell you the story behind the album. I should provide you with context, because your time is valuable, because you need to make at least some kind of judgment before you listen. After all, you are a busy person, a busy cog in a neoliberal machine that only values your labor. You have the vast history of music at your fingertips, and you need to make an informed decision as a consumer. I can speak to you of beauty and mystery, and you ask for a compelling backstory. I say just listen. Trust me, a disembodied voice on the internet, a self that also refuses to provide you context, when I say that this album, Nina Ryser's Laughing Tears, despite having less than 1,000 plays of any of its songs on that corporate orifice of payola & PR called Spotify, is worth the 26 minutes it takes to listen to it.

You can buy this on cassette for only five fucking dollars. Click this link. This will make you a better person. It is better than medicine, better than candy, better than coffee, and better than the internet. Eat a big bowl of granola, inject this into your veins and go outside and sit.