This is so surreal I’m a huge fan, avaa

Important note with the “Good Luck” - it’s playing with the convention of a beat tag. Essentially a watermark. To wrap beat tags into the meaning of the song/album almost constitutes a sort of 4th wall break.

i believe s*nny is spelled like that because it could be sunny or sonny, theyre both pronounced the same so you just pronounce it as either. avaa

Hi professor, avaa. I'm a trans woman, and myself and other trans people (not all mind you) experience dysphoria-instead of dysmorphia's contortions, it's often described as a misalignment, at least it feels that way for me. Realizing you're trans is colloquially known as "cracking the egg"

With regards to your point at 16:00 about what it is about hyperpop that lends itself so well to the trans experience; underscores has stated a few times in interviews and production livestreams that she is obsessed with taking something natural and giving it an artificial sheen of unreality. All kinds of vocal effects, piano and guitar licks that are impossible to physically perform, it's Baudrillard's concept of the hyperreal applied to pop music. I think this really took off with SOPHIE and her work on re-envisioning and deconstructing the body (Immaterial Girls, Faceshopping), especially the trans body, as something that is more than the sum of its parts. Then you take ideas from PC Music's hyperconsumerist satire, the concept of Pop Music as the ultimate form of consumerism (look, you can consume and purchase the concept of being popular and cool!), the fact that gender affirming surgery is an extremely expensive and invasive process, and you can kinda see this side of the hyperpop oeuvre take shape.

We're using artificially applied hormones, surgeries, FX plugins, makeup, etc to bring our physical bodies and our art closer to our hyperreal constructions of self.

I'm only that far into the video, hopefully you didn't already bring all of that up haha. Aava, what a wonderful first video to find from your channel! I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of the other great albums of the altpop/hyperpop/pc music/post-pc wave <3

About the horseshoe thing, based on interviews i think horseshoe theory here is about dualities and contradictions in the identities and attitudes of the characters; this is i think what the motif of “wrapping around” refers to.

Mara is S\*nny’s stalker, someone who is so obsessed with someone else they wrap around to being a danger to them.

S\*nny is both religious and trans, and her belief is so strong that it wraps around from being comforting to terrifying. In Geez Louise she accepts herself, which rather than making her lose her faith wraps around to strengthening her faith but changing her understanding of it.

OMB is very wealthy, but she wraps around by “acting poor” to hide it and/or to rebel against her circumstances.

Joshua Domingo, the thief, is someone so trusted by the bank her works for that he wraps around to being the greatest danger to it.

I think you could probably do similar analysis of Johnny and the other characters but I think this demonstrates the theme.

Also, AVAA!!!!

I did some thinking about how the "horseshoe theory" comes in to play with this album, and this is what I came up with:

Wallsocket is an album that pulls at the extremes until they bend backwards upon themselves. Never settling into a specific genre of sound, but hopping from genre-to-genre across the album, often within the same song, Underscores juxtaposes sounds that exist at the extreme ends of genre: jumping from hard-rock to bluegrass, hyperpop to slowcore, Wallsocket is an album where the outliers come to coexist in an interwoven tapestry. If you plan on predicting what you are in store for in listening to Wallsocket, then my message to that idea is the same as a recurring motif that echoes throughout the album— good luck!

In many ways, Wallsocket is an album that is non-binary in both content and form. If the horseshoe points towards the binary extremes, then Wallsocket is an album that engages in the extremes in order to collapse the binary, and reveal its ruse.

as a transfem, i think the closest term for when people realize they’re trans is “crack the egg”

AVAA! You should definitely look at more of Underscores' music, it's all really good!! Underscores has done a few "any%" streams, I believe the vods are still on youtube somewhere. Basically she walks through every song in a given album and breaks down all the individual parts. It's super neat and I think it might be of interest if you were interested in where she finds her sounds, how she makes them, the thought process etc.

avaa! I think every trans person’s conception of “transness” is different and I don’t think it’s something you can (fully) convey in words—but Underscores did something interesting in that (IMO) wallsocket seemed to explore the factors on the periphery of transness, if that makes sense. Like painting a portrait of something by painting everything around it, and I think that’s something no other artist has done.

on the topic of why does hyperpop lend itself to lgbtq: when i discovered the genre, it sounded like all the music i listened to in my childhood (maybe around 2007-2015) all in one. so that included mainstream 00s pop, edm, emo, dubstep. i think all those genres historically have been misunderstood and mocked, literally because they were perceived to be "gay" or "for girls" or otherwise embarrassing. emo in particular was extremely hated because of its display of "poser" depression and self harm, mixed with androgyny. i think hyperpop encapsulates the feelings of not fitting in and gravitating towards art before realising that the reason you don't fit in is because 🌈🌈🌈🌈

I don't think we need government. Avaa.

I find myself listening to hyperpop not only as a style or vibe, but I feel like it understands my brain, constantly introducing me to parts of myself. Being neurodivergent and queer makes you feel so isolated, and this wacky, free, creative space of flow and flux gives me a sense of community and being understood for the odd way I exist.

This album has been on repeat for like the last week.  Literally heard of underscores from a couple i met at a Jockstrap concert.  As a trans woman there's a lot to connect with

AVAA but the lyrics in Duhhh... "I drown in my antibiotics" feels like an obvious reference to the one of the joke names of trans girls and transfemmes make about estrogen, AntiBOYotics.

avaa, this is my aoty by a longshot underscores is the most talented musician i've ever heard. I did want to share my interpretation of geez louise though, which to me is about the religious trauma that comes with growing up in a very religious household (catholic in this case apparently) and how that can affect one's identity as a result. The three sections of the song implying different stages of coming to terms with it. The first about the rage and grief and anger associated with the realization that everything you know about the meaning of life stands contrary to your core beliefs about yourself and your worldview, and is accompanied with fast paced screeching metal guitars and harsh noise to compliment. The second part with the country square dance vibes signify a feeling of denial, trying to convince yourself that it's always been this way and that's a good thing, and the production just echoes those country town values. She says that "people like us" are superior (contrary to the chorus, realizing that actually "they're just like me [dammit!]") and without it you couldn't make it ("without my mother i'd be dead in an instant"), but of course, "we don't have to talk about it". The final ethereal part representing acceptance, that you aren't responsible for all the wrongdoings of the religion you were raised on and you can't do anything to fix it either. The "womanoid" line being about the realization that that worldview will never accept you for who you are, so finally you conclude in a completely new light, "we don't have to talk about it" because you are not the embodiment of the religion you were raised on. This song is easily one of my favorites because of how every little bit of chaos is symbolic and meaningful, underscores' ability to assign meaning to every little nuance of her production and lyricism is why she's my favorite artist by a mile

aava! i'm so glad that you focused so much on the narrative of this album. i feel like it went over so many people's heads, and i was a bit disappointed to see that in fantano's review he doesn't mention the narrative at all despite giving it an 8/10, and for me the narrative makes this album an easy 10 and possibly one of my favorite albums of all time, so it was especially nice to see you spending so much time on it's narrative and giving underscores the credit she deserves for it!

also, my personal interpretation of uncanny long arms in relation to the album's narrative is that the song is from mara's perspective and how, after the events of seventyseven dog years, she suddenly feels as if s*nny is tangible and within her reach as opposed to when she would just stalk s*nny from a distance, and her having her arms surgically shortened again and temporarily dying during surgery could be a metaphor for mara attempting to almost re-calibrate the way she builds relationships with people and having an epiphany about how she wants to live the rest of her life, but again that's just my interpretation

Im not sure what April intended exactly with You Dont Even Know Who I Am, but it registered deeply with me as if it was being told from the perspective of my undiagnosed mental illnesses. How its always followed, it knows everything about me, what makes me happy, sad, scared, etc. And then when she says the bit about crying the makeup off. It just felt like comint to terms with not being "normal". The illness and the self coming together for a moment of realization.

53:49 To give you an answer of what the metaphor for the long arms is, from what I think, it’s that Mara is making a realization that she can be interfering with things (touching things) that she isn’t physically close to. For example she is damaging S*nny even if S*nny doesn’t actually know she’s being stalked, or have any idea of Mara’s existence at all. She says in the song, “I had a terrible feeling that i could touch you from over here,” proving that she likes S*nny, and doesn’t want to make her life any worse, so she feels that she could be doing that even by secretly admiring her and obsessing over her from a distance.

Those who kill for peoples rights and not becuase they just want to destroy certain groups is why it’s a horseshoe and not a circle.

And i’m hitting the big 4 0 soon enough so YES, seeing a 23 year old create art that should require way more life experience than I have even now pisses me off, but in a way that makes me smile and appreciate that human creative greatness still has much to reveal and culture is far from being at a dead end.