We're approaching the dawn of 2022 tonight and it feels appropriate to be thinking about what one wants to accomplish in the coming year. Maybe you want to be fitter. Maybe you want to get a different job, or discover a new hobby. Maybe you want to burn down city hall... whatever, it's your life and your bag. I just hope you give it everything you've got. You'll never know what you could have accomplished if you don't. And even if you fail, you'll have another chance to try again. As long as you're alive, you will always have another chance. So the Mayor of whatever shit town you're from should probably check on the fire insurance policy for his office before the ball drops (I'm kidding... possibly).
An album that I enjoyed this past year and that I feel is appropriate to contemplate tonight is Phem's How U Stop Hating Urself (pt 1.5). Originally released in 2020 as an EP, it was expanded this year into a full LP with the addition of two new songs. The album is essentially an emotional, relational, and psychological bildungsroman, illustrating the journey of the emerging pop star from someone who lived and suffered for the benefit of others- cursed to roll a boulder of her own doubt and misery of a hill only to have it roll back and flatten her, again and again, like some hopeless greek charity-case- to becoming a subject in her own narrative, capable of making lasting decisions and learning to use her words and take action to realize her intentions.
Many of the songs smartly frame the punishment Phem elected to accept for herself in the past, as just that, her past. While the present tense of the songs usually involves her taking charge of situations, demanding apologies where they are warranted, and turfing out those who, in her assessment, are out of chances. More so than that, the album sees her embracing the possibility of her own agency and destiny and not allowing others' judgments of her decisions to be the determining factor of whether they were the right choice for her. On this album, Phem reminds me a little bit of a younger, US-born version of Lilly Alen (at least up to 2009's It's Not Me, It's You), only with a looser, more elastic sense of melody, as well as a penchant for pop-punk guitars!
Learning to accept yourself, live with your decisions and self-actualize might not necessarily be the most sexy subject matter for pop songs- although, being honest with ourselves and others can be pretty sexy too sometimes, if we're being... well, honest. If there is one takeaway you should have from this album, it's that there are some things that you just have to do for yourself, regardless of what anyone else thinks. Trusting your own decisions and not hating yourself for the consequences of those decisions (wanted, warranted, or benign) is the only way to love yourself enough to keep on living. Phem seems to get this, and it's something I hope you will keep in mind as you plot your course through 2022. Happy New Year.
This record is out via nvr giv up.
