Photo courtesy of an edited shot from Saint Pepsi’s music video for ‘Unhappy’.

Here at The Sights and Sounds, we take our monthly best of lists as sacrosanct. We put time, effort, maybe a few calloused ears and bloody thumbs from putting our face to the grindstone in an attempt to bring you a comprehensive monthly mixtape that doesn’t just summarise the month’s musical achievements, but provides an emotional theme tying all the tracks together in a way that sticks with you, that whallops your heart a bit. So, even though we’ve been absent write-ups for them the past few months (oye, cursed move to Saigon that upset everything!!), we’re back and we hope you are too.

As always you can grab free downloads at the Soundcloud link for the setlist.

‘I Only Go Backwards’ puts you right into the conflict of that old adage: if you just open up, if you just want to love, it will happen. Um, yeah, bullshit. Unless you want to love batshit; we all have things to work through first. I spent a lot of time thinking about that this month as I moved overseas and assumed I could just leave my baggage at the stateside terminal. I quickly learned, though, that no matter where you are, there you fucking are (for better or worse). So, you know, that closed off person suddenly couldn’t throw himself open to the world or a man. Because, fuck, openness can be heartbreaking. Jumping in headfirst–or even, truthfully at all–can make all the work you’ve done feel like you’ve just backslid.

This list is a bit more smooth and downtempo than what I normally curate, but its synths stick around in your mind, they carry you through nearly two dozen tracks that sends my emotional barometer (the metric that I use to see if a song is worthwhile) balls to the wall.

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