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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans
@thewrittentevs.bsky.social
220 followers 130 following 700 posts
Writer/Marketer. He/Him. Writes about Doctor Who at https://readfnord.wordpress.com 'By an English Sea' is in 'Neon Magazine 44'; 'The Month You Were in a Relationship with Taylor Swift' is in 'Kiss Your Darlings'.
readfnord.wordpress.com
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Reposted by Thomas Evans
thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 14h
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 9

42. orange soda - FaeryBabyy (2024; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=91q6...
A common critique of modern culture, including music, is that it’s more interested in recreating aesthetics from the past than in inventing its own. One of reasons for this is that the internet has made the past incredibly easy to access, keeping texts that would’ve passed into distant memory extremely present in pop culture. This omnipresence has also had the effect of eradicating many of the distinctions between different forms of old pop culture, retroactively conjoining everything under the tag of “nostalgia”. This has opened up one of the few saving graces of today’s culture of repetition though: the ability of artists to throw random shit together into strikingly counter-productive feeling packages. Take today’s pick for the list, American artist Faerybabyy. Take a very attractive woman in her twenties, put her in extremely cheap videos visually based on point-and-click flash games aimed at young girls, then use this to house lo-fi indie rock songs with extraordinarily depressed lyrics. Yes, this is all built around bits of the 2000s, but they’re all bits that don’t actually go together. Located in the middle of this is Faerybabyy herself, a product of an incoherent world who’s been overstimulated into complete ennui. Of course, indie rock and girl’s point-and-click games would’ve been considered to be the opposite of each other at the time, one consumed by boys, the other by girls. There are definitely going to be many people who consumed both though and attempts to keep gendered boundaries like this can result in the exact type of disassociation that Faerybabby’s sound embodies. And so out of these incoherent pieces is a coherent portrait of what a certain type of millennial is like and where their personality has come from. As such, ‘orange soda’ is ironically ruthlessly contemporary in its focuses. If the critique against it is that its diagnosis of the present is incapable of escaping the past, well that goes for everything else in society too.
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Reposted by Thomas Evans
danthat.bsky.social
Dan Marshall @danthat.bsky.social · 13h
An image of three cool tories under the header "Meet the Young Tories deaming of a bright blue future" but I've replaced their portraits with images of Eddie, Spudgun and Dave Hedgehog from Bottom
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 12h
One day, we do need to have a proper reckoning with the fact that most modern fascism has come directly out of nerd culture.
bagpuss.org
Dave Bagpuss Forsey 🍺 @bagpuss.org · 13h
The photography in this article really feels like The Times are deliberately setting these people up for ridicule. (You can read it without visiting The Times here archive.ph/KZZC1)
An article from The Times: "Meet the young Tories dreaming of a bright blue future". Featuring bizarre portraits of Charles Amos, Rhys Benjamin and Daniel Campbell.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 12h
Pubs: frequented either by middle aged blokes or fetuses who move around in impenetrable groups. Cafes: where people go to stare at laptops. Art spaces and interest groups: dominated by the elderly. Cinemas and theatres: where people sit in silence. Gyms: you think I'd survive an hour in a gym?!
thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 12h
Goddamn, if there was a single place in my entire goddamn local area where 30-somethings went to natter, a lot of my mental health problems would subside greatly.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 14h
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 9

42. orange soda - FaeryBabyy (2024; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=91q6...
A common critique of modern culture, including music, is that it’s more interested in recreating aesthetics from the past than in inventing its own. One of reasons for this is that the internet has made the past incredibly easy to access, keeping texts that would’ve passed into distant memory extremely present in pop culture. This omnipresence has also had the effect of eradicating many of the distinctions between different forms of old pop culture, retroactively conjoining everything under the tag of “nostalgia”. This has opened up one of the few saving graces of today’s culture of repetition though: the ability of artists to throw random shit together into strikingly counter-productive feeling packages. Take today’s pick for the list, American artist Faerybabyy. Take a very attractive woman in her twenties, put her in extremely cheap videos visually based on point-and-click flash games aimed at young girls, then use this to house lo-fi indie rock songs with extraordinarily depressed lyrics. Yes, this is all built around bits of the 2000s, but they’re all bits that don’t actually go together. Located in the middle of this is Faerybabyy herself, a product of an incoherent world who’s been overstimulated into complete ennui. Of course, indie rock and girl’s point-and-click games would’ve been considered to be the opposite of each other at the time, one consumed by boys, the other by girls. There are definitely going to be many people who consumed both though and attempts to keep gendered boundaries like this can result in the exact type of disassociation that Faerybabby’s sound embodies. And so out of these incoherent pieces is a coherent portrait of what a certain type of millennial is like and where their personality has come from. As such, ‘orange soda’ is ironically ruthlessly contemporary in its focuses. If the critique against it is that its diagnosis of the present is incapable of escaping the past, well that goes for everything else in society too.
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Reposted by Thomas Evans
thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 1d
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 8

43. I Love My Wife - Touchdown Jesus (2025; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3dI...
A mess of squeals build into a pumping bass line. A guitar starts blurting out like a trumpet played backwards, blaring out a stop-start rhythm designed to throw you around a bit. Things drop down and we get a chord sequence that I can only describe as Cardiacs-y. (If you know who Cardiacs are, your ears have either picked up or I’ve just alienated you from this song entirely.) A minute in, we get a key change before the music settles into an actual rock beat, heralding the introduction of our lead singer. Said man swaggers around the place, speaking a bit too quickly and stuttering his lyrics, talking about how ‘I like to get to know you, I really really really really like to get to know you’. Then we get to the heavy chorus and the guy is shouting at the top of his lungs about how “I LOVE TO COME HOME BECAUSE I LOVE MY WIFE!” Cue a final minute of solos. We are actually in something of a golden age of songs from men singing about how much they love their wives, these songs mostly coming from the increasingly trad-conversative country market or, for some reason, Justin Beiber. Those songs are rubbish though: with their edgeless sound and lyrics that are too perfect for their own good, they all end up trying way too hard to sound romantic and thus end up feeling like fakes. They’re pandering at best and PR at worst. Put this topic in an alt-rock context and it suddenly works though. This is the sound of someone whose love for his wife is so complete that it can’t help but burst out of him. I want a love like this. Screw the hollow promises of a chaste forever, give me grand proclamations of how much your humble homelife makes existence a joy.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 1d
#TheTwen2ie5 Day 8

43. I Love My Wife - Touchdown Jesus (2025; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3dI...
A mess of squeals build into a pumping bass line. A guitar starts blurting out like a trumpet played backwards, blaring out a stop-start rhythm designed to throw you around a bit. Things drop down and we get a chord sequence that I can only describe as Cardiacs-y. (If you know who Cardiacs are, your ears have either picked up or I’ve just alienated you from this song entirely.) A minute in, we get a key change before the music settles into an actual rock beat, heralding the introduction of our lead singer. Said man swaggers around the place, speaking a bit too quickly and stuttering his lyrics, talking about how ‘I like to get to know you, I really really really really like to get to know you’. Then we get to the heavy chorus and the guy is shouting at the top of his lungs about how “I LOVE TO COME HOME BECAUSE I LOVE MY WIFE!” Cue a final minute of solos. We are actually in something of a golden age of songs from men singing about how much they love their wives, these songs mostly coming from the increasingly trad-conversative country market or, for some reason, Justin Beiber. Those songs are rubbish though: with their edgeless sound and lyrics that are too perfect for their own good, they all end up trying way too hard to sound romantic and thus end up feeling like fakes. They’re pandering at best and PR at worst. Put this topic in an alt-rock context and it suddenly works though. This is the sound of someone whose love for his wife is so complete that it can’t help but burst out of him. I want a love like this. Screw the hollow promises of a chaste forever, give me grand proclamations of how much your humble homelife makes existence a joy.
2 11
Reposted by Thomas Evans
thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 2d
#TheTwen2ie5

44. Rose of Jericho - Albertine Sarges (2025; Germany)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPW...
Albertine Sarges is a singer/songwriter from Berlin. I started listening to her purely because Spotify recommended her latest album to me and I liked the cover. By the time that album had finished the first time, I had already gone to her website, found she was doing a UK tour and bought a ticket. Sometimes judging a cover works out for the best. A queer break-up album, Girl Missing is a varied collection of retro aesthetics unified by Sarges’ striking vocal melodies and mildly cryptic lyrics. It’s the type of break-up album where the ex is defined entirely in their absence, the album’s stylistic changes turned into the narrator’s endless attempts to grapple with the intangible. It’s a very existential take on the breakup; then again, what breakup worth its salt doesn’t eventually devolve to wondering “What’s even the point?” about everything? ‘Rose of Jericho’ is the album’s standout track to me – a mix of low and subdued instrumentation and high-pitched vocal melodies which then morphs into an immensely cool retro-70s spoken word verse about what the Rose of Jericho is (a resurrection plant, apparently). There is something mystical feeling about the whole thing, fittingly so given the song’s imagery of ancient plants regrowing in barren deserts. The magick is palpable. Other highlights on the album include ‘Girl Missing’, ‘Reflection’ and the wonderfully titled ‘I Love You Noodles’. Her music videos also reveal a wonderful personality driven by a sly sense of humour. I really recommend giving Albertine Sarges a go because she’s a genuinely wonderful artist. I look forward to seeing her live this November.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 2d
#TheTwen2ie5

44. Rose of Jericho - Albertine Sarges (2025; Germany)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NPW...
Albertine Sarges is a singer/songwriter from Berlin. I started listening to her purely because Spotify recommended her latest album to me and I liked the cover. By the time that album had finished the first time, I had already gone to her website, found she was doing a UK tour and bought a ticket. Sometimes judging a cover works out for the best. A queer break-up album, Girl Missing is a varied collection of retro aesthetics unified by Sarges’ striking vocal melodies and mildly cryptic lyrics. It’s the type of break-up album where the ex is defined entirely in their absence, the album’s stylistic changes turned into the narrator’s endless attempts to grapple with the intangible. It’s a very existential take on the breakup; then again, what breakup worth its salt doesn’t eventually devolve to wondering “What’s even the point?” about everything? ‘Rose of Jericho’ is the album’s standout track to me – a mix of low and subdued instrumentation and high-pitched vocal melodies which then morphs into an immensely cool retro-70s spoken word verse about what the Rose of Jericho is (a resurrection plant, apparently). There is something mystical feeling about the whole thing, fittingly so given the song’s imagery of ancient plants regrowing in barren deserts. The magick is palpable. Other highlights on the album include ‘Girl Missing’, ‘Reflection’ and the wonderfully titled ‘I Love You Noodles’. Her music videos also reveal a wonderful personality driven by a sly sense of humour. I really recommend giving Albertine Sarges a go because she’s a genuinely wonderful artist. I look forward to seeing her live this November.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 2d
I've spent years trying to exactly map the ways my autism, self-image issues and chronic loneliness all lead into one another, only to hear her song "What's Going On?!" and, like, she's already done it for me? Astounding.
Madilyn Mei - What’s Going On?! (Official Lyric Video)
YouTube video by madilyn mei (elio)
youtu.be
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 2d
Why would Madilyn Mei's album 'A Thousand Songs About It All: Act One' spend its entire forty minutes attacking me directly? (complementary)
The album cover for 'A Thousand Songs About It All: Act One' by Madilyn Mei
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 3d
Overall, I took her chart history of "One UK Top 50 and one album where her singles got anywhere between 66 to 23 on the Irish Charts, plus the Irish Top 10" to equal "big name and massively successful but maybe not a consistent hit maker yet", though I am perhaps underestimating "between 60 and 23"
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Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 3d
Oh yeah, I did look up her chart positions while writing the above and "Euro-Country" getting to number 9 on the Irish Charts really is enough to disprove my opening paragraph.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 3d
New on #FNORD: Doctor Who's The Myth Makers, Hartnell's best serial

P1 (on myth): readfnord.wordpress.com/2025/09/15/d...

P2 (on satire): readfnord.wordpress.com/2025/09/24/d...

P3 (on farce/tragedy): readfnord.wordpress.com/2025/09/29/d...

P4 (on Vicki): readfnord.wordpress.com/2025/10/06/d...
Run a Little More Before You Die (Doctor Who: The Myth Makers P1: “Temple of Secrets” Review)
Written by Tom The Doctor interrupts a fight between Achilles, an Ancient Greek soldier, and Harold, a Trojan soldier, allowing Achilles to kill Harold. Achilles immediately declares that the Docto…
readfnord.wordpress.com
thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 3d
#TheTwen2ie5

45. Stay for Something - CMAT (2023; Ireland)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Msm7...
I think you can call CMAT an indie darling, at least if you take “get played on BBC Radio 6 a lot” to count as indie. At the very least, if Caroline Polachek ever gets out of the Polachek Zone, I think you could rename it the CMAT Zone and no-one would get confused or upset (assuming they know what the Polachek Zone is). Nonetheless, there is part of me that still feels like CMAT is underrated. Being a messy, political young woman isn’t rare in modern music but she has a knack for finding idiosyncratic ways of framing this material, making her one of the few modern artists who’s interesting for the way she structures a song more than anything else. Not for nothing is ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’ slowly making a name for itself: there’s something about the arbitrariness of its components and the way that they fail to connect to each other that does somehow end up speaking to the narrator’s deflected self-loathing. It certainly sticks out from the pack. ‘Stay For Something’ is a more traditional song in many ways, though still oddly shaped. It spends a lot of its time sounding like it’s leading to a chorus that never quite comes, only for the backend of the song to suddenly become overloaded with one chorus after another. The song steadily builds momentum before becoming unwieldy and falling apart on itself. And hey, wouldn’t you know it, the lyrics are about a relationship that slowly burns before suddenly collapsing right as it gets going, form following function. The result is a song that I find myself easily carried away by. I put it on and I’m there with her, living life on the verge of success without ever quite making it. Maybe being an indie darling is the right place for CMAT after all given how well she plays the underdog.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 4d
#TheTwen2ie5

46. ringtone (Remix) - 100 gecs, Charli XCX, Rico Nasty & Kero Kero Bonito (2020; USA/England)

youtu.be/OmX4UPiVS-w?...
The story so far: Artists like A. G. Cooke, SOPHIE and the rest of the PC Music staple hadestablished hyperpop as the new sound of the queer avant-garde, while works like Charli XCX’s Vroom Vroom EP had constituted a first attempt to push it into the mainstream. This is when 100 gecs came on the scene, releasing the album 1000 gecs and the single ‘Money Machine’. These both massively caught on in TikTok videos and Spotify playlists, giving the genre its first actual brush with the mainstream and setting us the path that’ll lead to ‘Angel of My Dreams’ and 2024’s Brat Summer. Having suddenly gained a lot of fans and clout, 100 gecs quickly produced and released the amazingly titled 1000 gecs and the Tree of Clues, a remix album redoing every song from 1000 gecs with a bevy of famous guest artists. ‘ringtone’, as one of the more melodic songs from 1000 gecs, is the perfect target for a reinvention by three artists who each have their own broken visions of pop music. Charli XCX fulfils the same role as she does in her own work, smoothing her section into a solid hook that grounds the song, gifting her collaborators the space with which to do whatever they want. Kero Kero Bonito do exactly what they’re great at, providing two sweet verses that curdle into paranoia right at the end. Then Rico Nasty turns up and provides a multi-phase rap verse that makes the song their own, riding the beat up and down at will. In aggregate, the remix captures the exact thing that makes hyperpop so exciting: the pure generative fissure of interesting people ripping something apart and seeing what new things can be built from the scraps. Four indie artists fuck about for three and a half minutes, and the result is pure, vibrant pop.
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Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 5d
Show us the last four albums you listened to
The cover to 'Rainy Sunday Afternoon' by The Divine Comedy The cover to 'End of the Middle' by Richard Dawson The cover to 'Girl Missing' by Albertine Sarges The cover to 'The Life of a Showgirl' by Taylor Swift
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 5d
#TheTwen2ie5

47. Cure For Me - AURORA (2021; Norway)

youtu.be/K17df81RL9Y?...
I just really like AURORA’s persona in this song. You know that Ariana Grande track where she’s so good at sex that she’ll make you believe she’s a God? Well, how about that again, only the reason she’s so great is because she actually is a God. That’s basically what AURORA’s going for here and it’s a delight, taking the figure of the empowering pop star straight to its most batshit logical conclusion. ‘Cure for Me’ pairs this image up with a wonderfully wonky beat (my friends and I still debate whether the chorus is a deliberate interpolation of ‘Aquarela Do Brasil’ or not) and a music video that goes all in on the dynamic dancing, vibrant lighting and weird facial expressions. It’s easy to see why this is the song of her’s that’s most caught on – if you’re at least partly into pop for arresting spectacle, this is a package that delivers on all fronts. AURORA herself is a fascinating woman. Incredibly solitary as a kid, she made her music secretly due to her belief that it was rubbish and that her parents wouldn’t like it. Nonetheless, a classmate recorded a video of her singing at school, uploaded it to Facebook (much to her anger) and it went viral, starting a career that would grow into her becoming one of Norway’s major music artists. This perhaps helps explain the push and pull of ‘Cure For Me’’s lyrics and the slightly combative tone they have. This is a singer who’s accepted that they’re actually really good at their job but who doesn’t need or desire the validation of an audience. The song positions her as a God and then judges you for worshipping her. It’s emotionally avoidant in a way that’s confident and attractive - very good for this type of indie pop. All hail AURORA. She doesn’t have a God complex, she is God.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 6d
My main issue is I couldn't tell you why she released most of this other than it being her job. She's very good at presenting her discography as a narrative, one album leading to the other, hence the Eras tour. But this is just 12 Taylor Swift album tracks on a disc, nothing more, nothing less.
thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 6d
I have always defended Taylor Swift's discography from accusations of being self obsessed, but hoo boy if "The Life of a Showgirl" isn't a self-obsessed album. There is no way of relating to these songs unless you're Taylor Swift.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 6d
#TheTwen2ie5

48. Right Back to It - Waxahatchee feat. MJ Lenderman (2024; USA)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL3i...
There’s something irrepressibly liminal about this. I first heard it aged 31 during my first time properly dating someone. (I was late to this party and am still to arrive anywhere of note.) There, the tentativeness of the vocals combined with the romanticism of its music made sense to me. It was the sound of someone who’d been hurt before but really wanted this to work; I could relate. Then, four months later, I had my first break up and found that the song still made sense. Now the vocals were just defeated, playing over an Americana pastiche that was sweet but unobtainable. I could relate. This disjunct between lyrics and music let the song function both ways. It was remarkably resilient. (Chappell Roan’s ‘Red Wine Supernova’ was the other song of the time that sounded like this relationship, and will not appear on this list because it was not resilient at all.) This is very deliberate part on Waxahatchee’s part. She had just released the album Saint Cloud to great success. The issue is that it had a completely different sound to her earlier work, making it something of a poisoned chalice. Unsure how to keep advancing her career, she met the guitarist MJ Lenderman and found that their two styles meshed well. Going back to her old style, secure in the knowledge that Lenderman would add new elements to it, she started taking advantage of the collaboration by writing material that played with the ebbs and flows of relationships. The first result was ‘Right Back to It’, a song about a long-term relationship in the process of returning to normality after a major upset. That’s a very specific moment to be writing about and is emotionally complicated enough to make for the slipperiness that defines this song. The result is the perfect track for every occasion. If only I could find my MJ Lenderman.
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 6d
Did something happen behind the scenes before they recorded this week's Taskmaster? Half the cast seem genuinely pissed off at each other. (I'm not convinced Maisie was joking about walking off set.)
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thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 7d
Compare and contrast with the original version. Turns out actually taking the dimensions of the site you're posting your work on into consideration produces better work.
Another image saying the same thing as the previous message, only it's much wider, the text looks much smaller, and the background is plain white.
thewrittentevs.bsky.social
Thomas Evans @thewrittentevs.bsky.social · 7d
I spent ages designing my Twen2ie5 posts, only to find that I don't really like how they look in action. Welp, time to completely redesign them two days in
Richard Dawson: he of strange voice, oddly strummed acoustic guitar and lyrics that just sorta follow their own path no matter what the rest of the song is doing. I adore his work. ‘Polytunnel’ is the lead single from his album End of the Middle, a collection of skeletal ballads joined by the fact that they’re all quietly heartbreaking. In this case, we have an ode to British allotments and their communities as provided by a grieving narrator maintaining the patch of his dead wife. Released only a few months before news stories about Labour selling off allotments to land developers, the allotment here becomes the archetypal Dawson location: a semi-forgotten place belonging to an older time, offering warm respite from the troubles of our age (both personal and societal) while still being defined by them. Meanwhile, the song itself is defined by its small details and the nurturing relationships that they imply. What we really have here is a testament to community, the British tradition of muddling together, and the way that little niceties can culminate into something quietly radical. The sadnesses of the song are there but get shunted into the background as the narrator focusses on his broad beans and asks everyone if they want a cup of tea. Form follows function in this way. The nearest allotment to me is called Root ‘n’ Fruit in Longport, Staffordshire. It’s located within urban squalor, nestled between a cheap car wash, an abattoir, and the factory of ceramic manufacturer Steelite (the British ceramics industry being in absolute freefall at the moment with at least three major manufacturers having shut this year). It’s a delightful place, fully booked and dense with produce. This year’s ludicrously hot and dry summer means that everyone has been absolutely overloaded with courgettes, so they’ve put them all in a bucket outside the front door with a sign saying “Take what you want”. They’d make a lovely side for the pig caresses being sliced up next door.
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