CyberOasis

The Reverent Marigold is an artist i have a deep personal connection to. their music has helped me through a lot if rough shit. I actually didnt know this album existed until july of 2023, as i hadnt been keeping great track of releases.

1. Post-Op(penheimer:
   • opening with a rant against street preachers, the album quickly establishes its religious themes. It proceeds to insist on the speaker's resilience in the face of great hardship, 'youll be the bomb ill be the roach'. However, the song isnt ultimately about just surviving, but thriving. the song asserts its final conclusion, the speaker crying out, 'i share in my own creation, i love the snake, i stole your work and threw away your book'. In these lines, the song rejects god and strives instead for a Satanic principle of self-creation, of re-forming the self, one that many trans people, including myself, identify with. Afditionally, the song alludes to Oppenheimer's use of 'I am become Death, destroyer of worlds', which he somewhat famously said after the Trinity test.
2. Ahab, or The Whale:
   • The song opens on wide, almost overbearing rips through the sonic space, somewhat reminiscent, to me, of NMH's overdriven clipping. The rhythmic nature of these sounds gives them the feeling of washing over the listener, waves of sound coming and passing. then, RM comes in with lyrics, speaking in the voice of a sailor, who has only a spear, and 'only know[s] the music of the oars'. The song seems to wander a bit, before settling on beunf burned alive. once that theme is settled on, theres a synth section, which then continues, ans RM continues being a sailor. growing old and earning 'a cabin of my own' - in other words becoming captain. When the speaker - Ahab - finally finds the whale, his lover, the lyrics, 'So crack your backs over the oars, boys I want to see blood in your sweat' start to overdrive, like the waves, Ahab becoming this force of nature. the lyrics also start quoting Moby Dick. On the surface level, its just a retelling of Ahab's story from Moby Dick, but in Marigold's hands it becomes a bittwrsweet story of Mania, that all too dangerous love that can drive one to terrible choices.
3. Elegy for Laika and Albert II:
   • Both Laika and Albert II died on their space voyages. The song starts with this rush, the sound of a rocket below the listener, bringing us up to where the two would have passed, the upper atmosphere. Unlike all humans, Albert II and Laika died in space. The song begins asserting that Laika has written her name among the stars. She spent her life singing at the moon, howling like dogs do, and she 'heard [her] love sing back'. In reentry, laika thinks about the clouds, and then goes to sleep, sung to sleep by the moon. the song ends eith indistinct, distorted, vocals. I wish i knew what they said, but i dont and i likely never will. To me, the song sounds like unanswerable wishes and hopes.
4. Anti-Anxiety Medication :):
   • the song us full of 'be not afraid', the words of an angel, but also the goal of anxieety meds. he distirted vocals over the sound of runming water leaves the track feeling otherworldly, not necessarily heavenly, but definitley not of this world. As someone who struggles with anxiety and with dissociation i can. really fucking relate to that.
5. Oh! My Thousand Mothers!:
   • This track has got these impeccable vibes, 'My junk is not your business And my gender is thrash'. The song, to me, reminds me of the Post-Op(penheimer) theme of remaking the self, talking ahout transgenderism as a holy exercise, 'I feel red fire burning stubble from my face', electrolysis becoming an exercise in creation. The song ends crying out for tomorrow, and inssisting, 'Let my body be the dawn'. The painful transgenderism of the song makes me very happy, as the raw reality of trans people and bodies is often overlooked.
6. JUDAS (Accoustic):
   • JUDAS is a song thay has made me cry more times than i can count. This is a demo version, and demos always get me more. In this song, Judas is a transfem, a grimy dresser with blue pills, and the apostles some kind of t4t polycule. Jesus' top surgery scars are made a site of sexual joy, tracing the scars, and he is held and known by G-d. Judas talks of the poppies over his friends' graves, and Paul's deadname. The cries of Hosanna are some of the most legitimstely spiritual moments ive ever heard someone put to tape. the second verse is a sex scene, between Judas and Jesus, sinning together. The sheer eroticism of the few sentences given indicated the depth of the relationship that must exist. Judas then insists his giving Jesus up was necessary, that he was onlu Judas Iscariot, that He was the Son of G-d. It ends with hallelujah and amen, and implying Judas' suicide