Feel Better Soon! - AJ Thompson

Feel Better Soon! is a multi-genre work but if boiled down, could be said closest to “experimental alt-pop”. It is meant for many different listening experiences whether it’s laying in bed at night, at a concert venue, in the car home from work, at a festival, etc. Preferably, listen to it in an angry or melancholy mood.

It is supposed to feel off kilter, strange and disorienting yet uniquely fresh, catchy and ultimately human. The mood is often angry but also often of a dejected, restrictedly positive nature, reflecting aspects of his own mental health and specific emotional experience of when he created it. Beyond that he can’t actually say what it means to him, both for personal reasons and because it feels as though it’s a direct piece of him. It was what got him through an extremely tumultuous period of his life. It reflects a certain ugly, rotten aspect of his human nature that was difficult to ignore at the time and felt as though it needed to be excavated in the only way he knew how, music. That’s why even though the EP goes multiple different directions, it remains focused and cathartic.

Upbeat, slightly off kilter pop music with catchy guitar hooks, juxtaposed with strange foley based instrumentation centered around a “four on the floor” drum pattern using warm, soft drums that to him are reminiscent of a more “tropical” vibe. The vocal aesthetic is the most accessible and least “processed” on the EP. The vocals reside in a more sonically “orthodox” space in the music compared to the other songs on the EP, this is because the melodies are more catchy and simple so he wanted to process it that way too. He wanted this song to be exactly what it was and not much more. One of his favorite quotes is simplicity is difficult and the rest of the EP is maximalist in nature so he wanted to give the audience something more familiar as the hook. This is the most “straightforward” cut on the album in his opinion. It’s also the most “feel good” and pop oriented. He wanted to start off with what was in his opinion the most accessible cut to give casual listeners a good entry point into the density of what’s to come.

Zippy, glossy synths paired with strange production (tons and tons of foley, most of it being detail oriented and somewhat quiet) and hard hitting drums and bass, aggressive lyricism and a unique vocal aesthetic. Come find me was supposed to feel “big” so the production is very experimental and remains bass oriented, almost as if it were produced and mixed to be trap or EDM song. The vocals on this song are massive and seem to fill up a ton of space; that’s because the vocals consist of many different takes layered densely and precisely to give a strange chorus effect that is actually not effects driven, but natural due to the unique layering process AJ uses. This process is used throughout the EP, but used the most here. He likes this sound because it feels clean and tight, yet messy and big all at once. This song was supposed to be a bit more aggressive and experimental musically, sonically and lyrically. The hooks are a bit more complex and less “straightforward” in it’s pop orientation, giving the song a really weird mix of aesthetics that blends cohesively, even though it almost feels as though it shouldn’t.

A mostly instrumental interlude consisting of strange, hi-fi, far-out electronics that are difficult to classify and a second half that is somewhat of the nature of “lofi hip-hop” except if it were a deep, explorable ocean of sounds. The first half is more “shiny” and has more crushing, hi-fi electronics that are comparable to experimental beat music paired with neurofunk basses while being submerged in a deep water of seemingly endless synths and unique foley sounds that interplay to carry the rhythm of the piece. The first half is also bass oriented in a similar way to Come Find Me and resembles a melancholic, experimental, eerie EDM. Then a burst of noise happens and a wave of silence grounds the song while the latter portion swells into itself. The latter portion actually samples the master of the first portion and buries it underneath an equally deep ocean of softer, less hi-fi instrumentation, revolving around thick rhodes layers, glistening ambiences and many processed drum bits put together cohesively. This song was supposed to be an anthropomorphic descent into the complex production methods and tropes that AJ was exploring at the time, resembling aspects of his personal life in a more symbolic manner.

The beat of this one consists of aggressive and dissonant synths playing disorientingly catchy melodies, interesting foley usage and hard hitting drums. The vocals are strange but they work in their own way, complimenting the experimental, aggressive instrumentation with an equally aggressive lyrical palette, sonic aesthetic, and delivery. This is arguably the most lyrically “to the point” and personal thing AJ’s ever written; which is why he considers it the emotional core of the album due to the extremely personal and cathartic lyrical style, difficult subject matter and supplemental sonic exploration contained in it’s runtime. It’s also the only thing AJ’s released where he screams, which he would like to incorporate more in the future. He buries the screams in the mix to a tasteful degree to subvert the usual expectation of screams being the loudest thing in the mix, representing a certain feeling of “screaming into the void” that felt a chronic symbolic facet in AJ’s life at the time. The vocals feel squished to the front with distortion (yet still well blended with the zany, biting instrumentation), representing a way AJ’s inner narrative can feel inside of his head.