This is perhaps most explicit on “The Hand Strikes and Gives a Flower,” in which vocalist Parker Lawson pushes back against the self-hate that the world has tried to instill in them by wearing their deviances as badges of pride. Mimisiku lead by example in this regard, shamelessly pouring out their deepest vulnerabilities. It’s a place apart from the rest of the world-not necessarily to forget that it exists, but to openly say and think and feel things that we might otherwise try to repress or keep hidden. It sounds like I’m describing an addiction, but it’s more accurate to think of The Thrill of Living as an oasis than as a drug.
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And over and over again, somehow unable to think about anything but Mimisiku for hours on end.
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So I listened to the album a second time. I found myself craving more bittersweet chords, more frantic drumming, more of Parker Lawson’s exasperated voice.
#Living for the thrill lyrics how to#
Then I started to feel the itch of lyrics that had inconspicuously burrowed into my skull: Lyrics like “I’ll stop your suffering by ending my own” (“Kettlers of Satan”), and “I’m choking on all this air that I never learned how to breathe” (“A Constant State of Disrepair”). I finished the album and continued with my day, thinking of it as a well written and refreshingly energetic emo album, but little more. I noted the comparisons that online blurbs drew between Mimisiku and bands like The Promise Ring and Texas Is the Reason, and I added to the list in my head, noticing touches of Kidcrash, mewithoutYou, and even Los Campesinos!-though I eventually concluded that no combination of comparisons could sufficiently encompass the 90s alt rock feel of “I Still Can’t Sleep,” the almost jazzy chords of “It Depends On Whether Your Conception of Time Is Linear or Circular,” and every other sound that makes an appearance on The Thrill of Living. And it is fun at times-certainly more so than the monotonously somber twinkly emo created by the likes of American Football and Empire! Empire! “Kettlers of Satan” bubbles along with a danceable energy, the distorted guitars kick in halfway through “I Can’t Sleep” in an incredibly satisfying way, and the dismissal of the hateful in “The Hand Strikes and Gives a Flower” is infused with a fantastic dry wit: “They said, ‘You’re queer,’ and I said, ‘You finally got something right.’” I made other surface-level observations during that first listen, about the strength of the songwriting, the tight musicianship, the balance of variation and cohesion in the collection of songs. My first time listening through The Thrill of Living, I began to think of it as “fun”.