Editor,

Pockets of Shillong are witnessing a rise in drug-related crimes. In the past weeks the law enforcers conducted counter-narcotics programs using community-based intelligence which has worked wonders on a temporary scale but this is a long war which will test the mettle of governments now and later. In this game of interests the lines are blurred from traffickers to a porous border along the North Eastern corridor. What we have not witnessed is the rise of rival cartels backed by corrupt states similar to situations in Mexico or Honduras. Unemployment is a matter of grave concern as each year students are getting out of institutions with degrees but no jobs. Technically, the distribution channels of narcotics are gaining ground in cyberspace too.Legalisation and decriminalization have always been on the cards but whether they will be implemented in letter and spirit is a debatable matter. We cannot be swayed by the capital punishment in Singapore or the failed Plan Colombia to draw a roadmap for ourselves, but the answer lies deeper than the series Narcos. Antony Loewensteins Pills, Powder and Smoke (Inside the Bloody War on Drugs) weaves it beautifully on this powerful multi-billion dollar industry which will not yield submissively.

Yours etc.,

Christopher Gatphoh,

Via email

Editor,

Apropos the letter Plight of NEHU students by Wilbert Thangkhiew (ST, July 15, 2022) I wholeheartedly endorse the views of the author. Being a victim of the issues highlighted issues in Wilberts letter, its even more frustrating to realise that youre not the only person struggling but a part of a larger disgruntled group. NEHU has become a den of politics for personal vendetta and vested interests. Many Vice-Chancellors have come and gone and we, the indigenous people, who have had multiple generations graduating from this university, feel sorry to witness the gradual downfall of this once esteemed institution. From having professors under CBI scanner for taking bribes from research scholars in broad daylight, disruptive forces meddling with everyday affairs to officials guilty of dereliction of duty from time immemorial, it seems NEHU has come a full circle with the appointment of the current Vice Chancellor.The VC is always out of station and a simple task of issuing a bonafide certificate takes more than two weeks to process. Whenever someone tries to raise an important issue there is an acting VC in office with no responsibility. Perhaps, employees in NEHU have gone into retirement mode with the VC eternally being away from the helm of affairs. So, the question is, are all VCs expected to be in Delhi for the majority of their tenures? I believe hefty salary and facilities makes the man affluent enough to neglect his primary duty of serving the state and the nation through quality education. The grapevine is abuzz that the VC has constructed a new chamber for himself from taxpayers money while vehemently giving false assurances of improving hostel facilities amidst crunch for funds.The Tura Campus has received step-motherly treatment with false assurances time and again. The question to be asked is how did NEHU find itself in such a situation of giving a 15- day time frame to casual workers, 7- day time frame to Tura Campus and again 15- day time frame to the students to meet their demands which has lapsed a long time ago?I hence urge the Chief Minister, all stakeholders and particularly the Chief Rector- the Honble Governor to initiate an academic audit to draw a comparison of how many days the VC has been in station and the reasons for his travels out of state. This culture of having institutional leaders being a law unto themselves should be done away with once and for all. And still, if the VC does not understand, which seems very likely, we do have a popular English coaching institute- Avenues in Shillong.

Yours etc.,

Benny Shira,

Tura

Excerpt from:

War on narcotics - The Shillong Times

KCTV5, after receiving responses questioning its reporting, appended an editors note that did not mention the medical consensus on this question, noting instead that medical records showed the officer was treated for fentanyl exposure and that the D.E.A. had affirmed that its agents potential exposure to fentanyl puts their safety and health on the line.

Three or four decades ago, the American media found itself producing plenty of readily identifiable villains in the nations war on drugs. The Miami of the 1980s, for instance, became a high-intensity zone of armed conflict between cocaine traffickers and the government, an era that inspired countless stylized Hollywood action flicks about cops, drugs and cartel enemies. By the 1990s, local news increasingly entrenched in the business of covering crime sustained a national obsession with urban gangs, which were depicted as so well armed and lawless that a bipartisan consensus formed around cutting the police blank checks to combat them; departments across the country received billions of dollars worth of military-grade equipment, from flash-bang grenades and night-vision goggles to armored trucks, for use in executing even low-level drug warrants. Nightly news broadcasts portrayed both drug users and dealers as dangerous elements concentrated in poverty-blighted inner cities, yet always at risk of creeping into the middle-class viewers suburb.

Police officers on the front lines of todays drug war confront a very different landscape. The human misery of todays overdose crisis is largely hidden from view, and it is certainly not centered on the police; it is squarely borne by drug users and their loved ones. Every single hour of every single day, 12 Americans die from a fatal overdose, according to preliminary C.D.C. data a slow-motion disaster quietly playing out in banal locales like residential neighborhoods, gas-station bathrooms and strip-mall parking lots, in the smallest towns and the largest cities, across social and economic classes. Fatal overdoses occur largely among those who are using substances alone, with no one there to revive them with Narcan. Unlike the police officers, they dont hyperventilate and gasp for air. Instead, they slowly drift off, gradually stop breathing and never wake up again.

Todays astonishing overdose death toll comes not from gang violence or turf wars but from a ubiquitous market of cheap and potent synthetic drugs. And so it is in the drugs themselves that police officers now see grave danger, including to themselves. Last year, the San Diego County Sheriffs Department produced and released its own public-safety video featuring what Sheriff Bill Gore described as traumatic body-worn camera footage of an officers life-threatening fentanyl exposure footage that circulated through various media outlets despite the skepticism of health professionals. Its as though each of these videos seeks to identify the new villain, the shocking peril, in an era whose drug-war battlefields are too diffuse and mundane to capture the public imagination. Images of cinematic urban war zones and Uzi-toting gangsters have been replaced by the knowledge that drug use quietly pervades communities of all sorts. So fear attaches to something equally slippery: fentanyl particles lurking in the air, or even just a few specks on a police uniform, blamed for one officers overdose in Ohio. (According to local reporting, the officer was eventually terminated from the force for, among other reasons, gross misconduct.)

More:

Whats Really Going on in Those Police Fentanyl Exposure Videos? - The New York Times

The New York cannabis industry plans to prioritize those whove been disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs.

On Thursday, the citys cannabis regulators approved rules that make it possible to start accepting retail applications from injured parties.

RELATED: New Yorks Draft Conditional Retail Regulations Raise Practical Concerns

The regulations explain that, in order to qualify, applicants must have experience operating a qualifying business and must have faced a conviction for a drug-related offense before the state legalized marijuana. Applicants can also qualify for a conditional adult-use marijuana retail license if they have a close family member that was convicted with a drug-related offense.

While good intentioned, these regulations have been criticized in the past due to how limiting they might end up being. A person thats been impacted by the war on drugs may have had encounters with the law in the past, something that makes it difficult for them to also have experience managing and running a business.

New York legalized marijuana on March 31 2021, and has been working on how to implement it fairly and profitably over the past year. While its legal to consume marijuana and possess up to three ounces of cannabis, the sale remains illegal, a topic that has created some confusion in the state, especially since new businesses continue to appear in the form of trucks, pop ups and brick and mortar, taking advantage of the marijuana boom.

Responsible authorities have tried to control these businesses by sending out cease and desist letters while still trying to keep the police uninvolved.

RELATED: New York Senate Just Approved This Critical Marijuana Bill

Sale of untested products put lives at risk, said Tremain Wright, chair of New Yorks Cannabis Control Board. I implore these illegal store operators, and any other stores pretending to be legal operations, to stop selling cannabis products immediately.

Read more:

NY To Begin Accepting Cannabis Applications From People Harmed By War On Drugs - The Fresh Toast

In two blockbuster decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court throttled the power of government to regulate pollution (West Virginia v. EPA) and expanded the power of government to regulate women's reproductive lives (Dobbs v. Jackson). There is no contradiction in these two decisions. They continue a hundred years of right-wing support for private enterprise and control over women's autonomy.

The American right has held together as a political movement through its core commitment to conserving what it views as traditional Christian values and private enterprise. American conservative politics is not about limited government, states' rights, individual freedom or free markets. These are all dispensable ideas that the right has adjusted and readjusted to protect core principles. Conservatives have built their own versions of big government and carved out innumerable exceptions to free markets for tariffs, business subsidies, friendly regulations and pro-business interventions abroad. They have backed individual choice and states' rights, for example, on racial issues, but not on alcohol and drug use, pornography, contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage. In defense of core objectives, conservatives shifted from being isolationists before Pearl Harbor to aggressive warriors against communism and terrorism. They have abandoned protectionism for free trade, public education for private school vouchers, and deficit control for "supply-side" tax cuts.

Control over women's allegedly dangerous sexuality and autonomy grounds the moral appeal of conservative politics. In this view, a morally-ordered society requires a morally-ordered family, with clear lines of divinely ordained masculine authority and the containment within it of women's erotic allure. Salacious, non-motherly displays of female bodies, sex education in schools, abortion rights, easy divorces and the tolerance of homosexuality and other forms of "deviance" undercut the reproduction and orderly progress of civilization. Feminist demands since the 1920s to upset manly and womanly distinctions and erode patriarchy, through the right's lens, de-feminizes women and feminizes men, opening the family and the nation to conquest (rape) and subversion (seduction). The history of failed civilizations, conservative physicianArabella Kenealywrote in 1922, "shows one striking feature as having been common to most of these great decadences. In nearly every case, the dominance and [sexual] license of their women were conspicuous."

Conservative politics has had an enduring appeal to Americans seeking the clarity and comfort of absolute moral codes, clear standards of right and wrong, swift and certain penalties for transgressors and established lines of authority in public and family life. Ultimately conservatives have engaged in a struggle for control over American public life against a liberal tradition they have seen as not just wrong on issues, but sinful, un-American and corrosive of the institutions and traditions that made the nation great. To achieve their ambitious aims, conservatives had to stay disciplined, mobilize their resources and wage total war against liberals, with unconditional surrender as the only acceptable result.

During the 1920s, conservatives pioneered their programs for enforcing their vision of traditional values and protecting private enterprise, which endure today. Efforts to uphold the traditional family and control the licentiousness of women emerged in the 1920s, not just through the prohibition of alcohol but in lesser-known campaigns against sexual "deviance," "smut" and drugs, and in defense of conservative motherhood. In 1925, British historianA.F. Pollardcited the U.S. as "the rising hope of stern and unbending Tories." American laws, he said, "were not so much a means of change as a method of putting on record moral aspirations, a liturgy rather than legislation; and the statutebook was less the fiat of the State than a book of common prayer."

The erotically charged society of the 1920s led to fears that Americans, especially the young, were falling victim to deviant sexuality, such as oral sex and homosexuality, and to the scourge of venereal disease. After World War I,however, efforts to prevent venereal disease through education and the administration of chemical prophylaxis gave way to moral uplift and law enforcement. For moral reformers of the 1920s, preventative measures only encouraged prostitution and promiscuity.

Conservative answers to venereal disease involved the restoration of the supposed moral integrity of society and the rigorous prosecution of prostitutes and other sex offenders. Congress failed to renew wartime appropriations for controlling venereal disease, and state censorship boards banned as obscene sex-education films and other forms of anti-venereal propaganda. In 1926, the federal government eliminated federal aid to the states to prevent venereal disease, while state appropriations for this purpose declined.

After World War I, the Catholic Church crusaded worldwide for moral renewal. In 1920,Pope Benedict XVwarned that atrocities of war had led to "the diminution of conjugal fidelity and the diminution of respect for constituted authority. Licentious habits followed, even among young women." In 1930, his successorPope Pius XIissued 12 rules designed to assure that "feminine garb be based on modesty and their ornament be a defense of virtue." Catholic authorities joined by evangelical white Protestants promoted in the 1920s the censorship of books, plays, movies and artwork that displayed obscenity, nudity, drinking, sex outside of wedlock, suggestive dancing, drug use, homosexuality, prostitution and love between people of different races.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

In the 1920s, conservatives backed the closing of America's public drug treatment clinics and, as they did with venereal disease, adopted a moral and law enforcement approach to narcotics. Addicts had no recourse other than illegal sources of supply. For moral reformers, drug and alcohol use undermined the family and threatened the purity of American women. Even more than drink, however, enslavement to narcotics was understood to undercut discipline, self-mastery and the free will needed to follow a godly life.Richard P. Hobson, head of the International Narcotic Education Association, charged that civilization was "in the midst of a life and death struggle with the deadliest foe that has ever menaced its future." Narcotics threatened "the perpetuation of civilization, the destiny of the world, and the future of the human race." In 1929, Congress began the national war on drugs by establishing a Federal Bureau of Narcotics to enforce the drug laws.

Conservative women drew on a maternalist ideology that affirmed inherent differences between the sexes and women's unique role in rearing children as healthy, moral and productive citizens. Conservative maternalists urged women of the New Era not to slip the bonds of men and custom but to reclaim their motherly responsibilities to rear courageous sons and domesticated daughters. They opposed reforms that confused sex roles, weakened families or substituted state paternalism for parental responsibility.

Conservative women warned against radicals who would rip children from the home and rear them in nurseries run by the state. The radicals would end sexual restraint and manly competition. They would feminize men and coerce women into "unnatural" masculine roles through forced work and conscription. Conservative women found dangerous sex-role reversals in women who embraced the unisex hedonism of the times: short skirts and bathing suits, bobbed hair, drinking, smoking, vigorous sports, necking and petting, and sensual music and dancing. Patriotic mothers would uphold family morals and shun the competitive male spheres of business, politics and war. Like women of Sparta, they would raise patriotic sons ready to risk their lives for the common defense. This view of women and their place in society was represented in such 1920s organizations as the Women's Auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Federation of Women's Clubs, the American Legion Auxiliary and the Daughters of 1812.

Women of the right mobilized against the first federal welfare measure, the Sheppard Towner Bill of 1921, which provided aid to the states for the health care of mothers and infants. They argued that the law would weaken families, undercut traditional values and advance paternalistic government. In the Sheppard-Towner fight, wrote editor Mary Kilbreth of the conservative publication Woman Patriot, "we have with us as allies the Constitution, and all the institutions on which 'Western civilization is based.'"

The right's pro-business policies included the anti-government initiatives of deregulation and tax cuts. Yet they also turned to government for protective tariffs, support for foreign trade and investment, controls over strikes and labor organizing, and pro-business regulations. Our goal is "putting government behind rather than in business,"Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hooversaid in 1924. In 1926, under Hoover's guidance, the Republican Congress stabilized the struggling airline and railroad industries with the Air Commerce Act and the Railway Act. On the seas, Congress extended subsidies to shipbuilders and operators in the Merchant Marine Act of 1928. To impose order on the broadcast spectrum, Congress established a Federal Radio Commission in 1927 and let broadcasters keep or sell their existing frequencies and block competitors from sharing airtime. Republican presidents appointed pro-business jurists to regulatory agencies and the federal courts.

Support for profit-seeking enterprise may contradict the right's emphasis on moral probity. However, conservatives linked private enterprise to stable, traditional families that nurtured the virtues of thrift, sobriety, self-reliance, honor and diligence. Even as Americans evolved from savers and craftsmen to producers and consumers, conservatives sustained the linkage between family virtue and enterprise. "The whole fabric of Business rests upon these moral forces," wrote journalistEdward Bokin 1926. Cultural warfare, in turn, gave the right a mass base and a passion that economic conservatism lacks. By uniting traditional Christian values and enterprise, conservatives claim to have protected Americans' pocketbooks and saved their souls.

Cultural and business conservatism converged forcefully again when the right regrouped in the 1970s. Conservatives then put a positive spin on their cultural prohibitionism. They weren't just against sinners and feminists; they were the "pro-family" and "pro-life" champions of wholesome "family values." Still, defense of the family meant battling the Equal Rights Amendment, abortion, pornography, gay rights and gun control. Phyllis Schlafly, the prime mover of the pro-family agenda, described "the family as the basic unit of society, with certain rights and responsibilities, including the right to insist that the schools permit voluntary prayer and teach the 'fourth 'R' (right and wrong) according to the precepts of the Holy Scriptures." At a well-attended "Pro-Family Rally" that upstaged the feminist 1977 "International Year of the Woman" gathering in Houston, she warned that feminists were "going to drive the homemaker out of the home. They want to relieve mothers of the menial task of taking care of their babies. They want to put them in the coal mines and have them digging ditches." The ERA would "only benefit homosexuals. The American women do not want ERA, abortion, lesbian rights, and they do not want childcare in the hands of government."

In 1971, corporate lawyer Lewis Powell issued a call to arms by conservatives shortly before his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. The "Powell Memo"guided the rebuilding of business conservatism and the presidency of Ronald Reagan. He warned that new regulations that cut across industry to limit pollution, control energy production, advance minority and consumer rights and protect worker health and safety threatened the survival of private enterprise. Powell insisted that conservatives, aided by the financial might of business, should not have "the slightest hesitation to press vigorously in all political arenas for support of the enterprise system. Nor should there be reluctance to penalize politically those who oppose it." Conservatives must aggressively capture the centers of power that shaped policy and public opinion: the political parties, the academy, the media, the courts and popular culture.

Consistent with the reformulation of cultural issues, conservatives in the 1970s put a positive spin on their pro-business policies, labeling them "supply-side economics." Entrepreneurs would create a new era of American abundance if they were free to innovate without penalty or control. They would produce enough goods and services to cure inflation, accelerate government revenue growth and reduce the deficit. Supply-side advocates promised that their bonanza to business would flow down or "trickle down," as critics charged to the lower strata because employment and wages would boom.

After his transformation election in 1980, President Ronald Reagan turned the supply-side dream into reality. His conservative economic policies rested on reducing tax liabilities for corporations and the wealthy, relieving businesses of civil rights, environmental, and economic regulations, cutting social spending and curbing the power of labor unions. It was a blueprint that the right would follow through today.

The history of the modern American conservative movement demonstrates that the Dobbs and EPA decisions are not aberrations. In fact, they realize priorities that the right has pursued since the 1920s. The only change is a right-wing grip on the Supreme Court that is unprecedented in modern American history. The court will likely extend its curtailment of air pollution regulation to water pollution in the upcoming case ofSackett v. EPA. And despite surface disagreement from other justices, it is also likely to follow Justice Clarence Thomas' call for reconsidering the rights to contraception, private sexual encounters and same-sex marriage. Given the right's quest for absolute power, it would not be surprising if the court then grants state legislatures controlled by Republicans in key swing states exclusive control over federal elections.

Read more

on the far right's assault on America

Excerpt from:

How the right waged a 100-year war to conquer America and why it's winning - Salon

1. Pink, Irrelevant. One day last week Pink tweeted: Woke up. Got heated. Wrote song. Coming soon.

The song that the Doylestown native born Alecia Moore penned and posted handwritten lyrics to is Irrelevant, an emphatic protest song, a rallying cry of defiance in which the singer refuses to be defined by others and works herself up into a righteous rage.

The collaborative effort with songwriter-producer Ian Fitchuk is clearly inspired by the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, but is ready made to fit all kinds of protests.

It strategically evokes both The Whos The Kids Are Alright and Cyndi Laupers Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, which was written by the late Philadelphia singer Robert Hazard. Girls just wanna have rights, she sings. So why do we have to fight?

In a statement, Pink wrote: As a woman with an opinion and the fearlessness to voice that opinion, it gets very tiring when the only retort is to tell me how irrelevant I am. I am relevant because I exist, and because I am a human being. No one is irrelevant. And no one can take away my voice. Proceeds from sales of the song go to Michelle Obamas voting initiative When We All Vote.

2. Nightlands, Moonshine. Besides playing with The War On Drugs you know, the Philly band that opened for the Rolling Stones in London last month Dave Hartley makes music as Nightlands, a project that leans toward the ethereal, with spacious synth-based songs and vocals that reach skyward.

Moonshine is the first Nightlands album since 2017s I Can Feel The Night Around Me, and its contemplative nature is in part the result of the musicians move from Philadelphia to Asheville, N.C., where Hartley, a new parent, worked in isolation during the pandemic in a studio in a barn outside his century-old house.

Lots of Philly musicians make contributions to New Age-tinged tracks like No Kiss For the Lonely, however, including Eric Slick, Michael Kiley, and Jessie Hale Moore, plus Hartleys bandmates Charlie Hall, Eliza Hardy Jones, and Anthony LaMarca. The War On Drugs play the XPoNential Music Festival with Patti Smith on Sept. 16.

3. Margo Price featuring Mavis Staples and Adia Victoria, Fight To Make It. Last September when Margo Price played the Mann Center with Willie Nelsons Outlaw Music Tour, she debuted a cover of Lesley Gores You Dont Own Me in protest after Texas passed restrictive antiabortion legislation that month.

Now, Price has teamed with gospel great Mavis Staples and blues and Americana songwriter Adia Victoria to release this rockin country fight song that she has said was originally inspired by Amelia Earhart and Rosa Parks.

Along with Irrelevant, its one of what will surely be many protest songs released in the coming months. In a statement, Price said: Every day I see more of our rights stripped away in America. The right to reproductive health in this country has become a luxury for the wealthy . Black women in particular experience maternal mortality at a rate two to three times higher than white women.

Proceeds from Bandcamp sales of the song benefit Noise for Now, which connects artists with grassroots organizations that work in reproductive justice, including abortion access. Prices memoir Maybe Well Make It is due from University of Texas Press in October.

Don McCloskey. Bucks County born Don McCloskey is celebrating the release of The Chaos & the Beauty, a 10-song collection recorded in Brooklyn with Philly expats Devin Greenwood and Ali Wadsworth and guitarist Ross Bellinoit and released on his own Lemon Hill Records label.

The St. Joes Prep grad has a varied history: He wrote Unstoppable, the Phillies anthem that was played at Citizens Bank Park during the teams (long ago) 2009 World Series run, hes toured with Wu-Tang Clan rapper Raekwon and last Christmas he released a terrific reworked version of O Holy Night.

On Friday, he was set to play Ardmore Music Hall with Philly songwriter Chris Kasper, whose 2017 song City By The Sea is a Jersey Shore snapshot of Ventnor before it went bougie. This show has now been postponed because of COVID and will be rescheduled for the fall. ardmoremusichall.com.

The music of The Bear. The highly bingeable series about a hotshot chef who comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop, that stars Jeremy Allen White, has a serious verisimilitude quotient in its authentic depiction of in-the-kitchen restaurant culture.

But the FX on Hulu series created by Christopher Storer also has something else going for it: a top notch, consistently surprising but not show-offy soundtrack put together by Storer and his music supervisor partner Josh Senior. Theres not too much music forced on the viewer as is often the case with prestige TV productions. Instead, its used sparingly, and often packs an emotional punch, whether its Counting Crowes Have You Seen Me Lately? or John Cougar Mellencamps Check It Out.

The shows Windy City identity comes through with Wilcos Via Chicago (and also Impossible Germany) and also Sufjan Stevens Chicago, though theres no sign of Sinatras My Kind of Town in the first season. But theres also lots of not-trendy far-flung acts, like Swedish hard core band Refused and perfectly fitting instrumental rock from Staten Island ensemble The Budos Band. Last week the show was renewed for a second season.

Original post:

DeLucas 5 Picks: Pink and Margo Price protest songs, plus Nightlands and music of The Bear - The Philadelphia Inquirer

It wasnt so long ago that music fans and critics openly ragged on adult contemporary as a rite of passage. The entire genre allegedly comprised treacly pablum and tender feelings designed exclusively for moms in minivans. An entire generation rejected those sounds, preferring songs that expressed emotions with heart-on-the-sleeve intensityno matter the genre.However, the soft rock of the 70s and 80s has recently experienced a slight resurgence. Artists such as Kevin Morby, Father John Misty, and The War on Drugs have built entire careers on updating and reinventing the music of acts such as Bread or Boz Scaggs. A generation of music fans that didnt experience it the first time now adore acts that embrace nuance, discomfort, and malleability. By taking slightly more care in how they express emotions, these musicians can hone greater songwriting acumen, production flairs, and compositional skill.

This is the environment into which Katy J Pearson strides with confidence. On her new album, Sound of the Morning, she delivers delightfully quirky singer-songwriter fare matched with upbeat pop-rock arrangements that would have been a perfect fit for 70s AM radio. Released on Heavenly Recordings, this 11-song project combines the chill vibes of Laurel Canyon with the sentimentality of 80s pop radio to delightful results. Its as if Joni Mitchell, Patty Griffin, and Destroyer collaborated across the decades to create thoughtful, yet catchy folk tunes.

It all starts with Pearsons expressive vocal range. Sitting comfortably in a high alto, she can both dip down low and reach for the heights as a song demands, complete with the rare break to seal the deal. She also displays a deft lyricism about a variety of grownup ideas and motifs including romantic misunderstandings, anxiety about relationships, and making sense of love, as well as feeling stuck in a dead-end situation and needing to grow so she can find a way out.

Despite this being a solo project, the album is rich with full-band arrangements. The production is bright and clear, allowing space for each instrument and vocal in the mix. Its also easy to become enamored with the superb musicianship in that the songs feel both light and substantivethe players are in sync, which means everything is intentional and nothing is overwrought. Crisp drums, warm guitars, lovely horns, and intricate piano phrasings flow together to create pristine arrangements packed with delicate flourishes.

Talk Over Town reeks with a delicious War On Drugs aesthetic, including spacey guitars, echoing vocals, and driving drums. The chorus erupts into a rich crescendo as Katy asks a simple question: Can you show me something Im missing? Is it something I can live without? On The Riverhead, the tempo slows down slightly, evoking a steady stroll between lovers as they walk around the banks of a lake in a park. The mood and lyrics call to mind a serious relationship about the future couched in pleasant memories of the past.

With Float, the tone takes a melancholy turn, as Pearson openly questions the long-term viability of a relationship. She plaintively sings about wandering the halls of their home, looking at pictures on the walls, and getting tired of pretending that her heart is fully committed. Game of Cards channels Fleetwood Mac by first fusing loping verses to a caustic chorus and then comparing a late-night chat with a partner to a high-stakes hand of poker. The album closes with the luscious Willows Song, a tune that features effervescent guitars, supple drumming, creeping string-centric synths, and well-timed horn bleats. Its a jaunty minor key affair that serves as both a mission statement for the project as well as a farewell note to the tumultuous relationships shes chronicled.

Sound of the Morning represents a profound progression in the career trajectory of Katy J Pearson. Like her musical forebears, she couches heavy feelings in immaculate, danceable pop grooves. The chord progressions seem familiar, but she turns them inside-out with artful aplomb so that listeners feel comfortable but never bored. Moreover, the sublime pacing to the track listing allows for terrific control of the emotional ebbs and flows. Pearson also knows how to express strong, yet realistic emotions with a matter-of-fact tone that belies her relative youth. Shes unafraid to face tough situations, preferring to persevere even if the journey isnt easy or the resolution very clean.

Label: Heavenly

Year: 2022

Similar Albums:

Originally posted here:

Katy J Pearson : Sound of the Morning - Treble - Treble

Reviewed The Woods WeHo

8271 Santa Monica BlvdWest Hollywood, CA

http://www.thewoodsweho.com

When an A-List actor like Woody Harrelson opens up a weed dispensary in a posh part of Los Angeles, you gotta go scope it out.

Were here to report back that the rustic, outdoorsy, The Woods champions artisanal, craft sungrown flower to locals in each price bracket. Its kind of the perfect fit for Harrelson, who has spent decades advocating weed legalization, criminal justice reform, and environmentalism. Humboldt hippies helped make California cannabis the best in the world. The Woods hopes LA folks will pay fair-trade prices to see these farmers survive the high taxes and red tape of legal weed.

Opened May 16 just off Melrose Avenue in the northern part of LA, The Woods is a project of Harrelson and the owner of the Erba dispensary chain.

Harrelson has supported weed law reform since at least 1996 when he got arrested for symbolically planting hemp in Texas. Cannabis went legal in California in 2016, and stores opened in 2018. Four years later, Harrelsons team converted an interior design store into a chic sungrown boutique that embodies the actors values.

Walking up to the store you are greeted by a concrete horse next to a large, intimidatingly ornate wooden door. The shop has kept many of the pieces of its former resident, hence the horse. Its bougie. This is West Hollywood, people.

Walking inside, the store manages to give more of a high-end furniture store feel rather than a dispensary. But details throughout invite inspection and browsing. Thats not typical for dispensaries that often hide product behind the counter and have limited informational resources.

The Woods has plenty of plant life throughout and is abundantly lit by a skylight, so it has a fresh, open feel.

The abundance of houseplants creates a fresh, herbal smell in the air. Absent birds, you instead hear the chirping of local passersby, since the large front door stays invitingly propped open.

Display cases all throughout the space show off brands and their products for perusal. Certain cases focus on categories like edibles, or pre-rolls. The clienteles favorite? Staff said edibles.

You can also buy an entire walls worth of award-winners from the worlds largest outdoor pot contest The Emerald Cup. The awards show took place for the first time in Hollywood this year and coincided with the opening of The Woods. Several awardees of the Emerald Cup donated their trophy to the display in The Woods. The display encourages shoppers to buy organic, sun-grown cannabis and to support the legacy farmers in the state.

Support Your Local Weed Farmer, the merch reads. On the wallframed, historic photos of cannabis farms from times past. A mural painted by a local artist covers the back wall and carries through the long hallway that will eventually lead to a smoking lounge. In the hallway, a gallery of NFT art by people imprisoned for weed cycles through on digital screens.

In one corner, you can sit down and look into a dozen little branded, weed farm dioramas. Its not the easiest display to browse, but it does encourage close inspection.

The chill vibes continued with the friendly budtenders wholl explain sun-grown organic cannabis benefits, the impacts of the War on Drugs, or the plight of legacy farmers in todays market.

The spacious store fosters browsing, with a decent-sized, well-curated selection. We saw 155 flowers on the menu. Los Angelenos are hooked on indoor flavors, and outdoor has a tough time penetrating the concrete jungle. The Woods stands out with Emerald Triangle brands not usually available this far south:

Woody also made concessions to LAs indoor exotic pot culture. We see tasty new flavors from:

Typically, you can expect lower prices on outdoor weed, and eighths of outs top out at $41 plus taxes at The Woods. Better quality weed should be worth more, The Woods believes, and consequently, some of their outdoor prices rival indoor.

In the future, the store will be one of a cluster of related businesses: a bar, a smoking lounge, and a dispensary. Each will have separate entrances and requirements, and it sounds like the bar and lounge will be very upscale.

I admit Im not the typical client of a store like The Woods. I prefer a dispensary connected to a different facet of LA culturethe Backpack Boyz, Dr. Greenthumbs, Cookies, Sherbinskis, and Greenwolfs of LA. But Woodys chic Woods gives WeHoans the chance to put their money where their values liestarting with sungrown, organic top-shelf from small, legacy NorCal hippies.

Dan Wilson

Dan Wilson is an independent pot journalist based in Los Angeles. Wilson is the founding Editor of Visit Hollyweed, California's cannabis community newspaper. His Los Angeles Dispensary Guidebook was published in April.

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Woody Harrelson's weed store reviewed: Into The Woods - Leafly