A bit of intro
Last year I didn’t listen to as much music as I often do, and discovered fewer songs while I was drowning in my growingly boring routines.
Music has been a key part of my life (for better and worse, but mostly better) specially ever since my late elementary school years around 2009; the same time I started to put my characters into a story that would evolve to what now is Break Umbrella.
Several songs I like feel like siblings to my story and characters, and if I don’t have a song for a character, I urge myself to find them one.
Is a never-ending but exciting quest for the best songs that match each character’s personality and story, and my lack of music in 2024 diminished that part of the process.
I want to fix it!
What is Album Gallery?
I am mostly a songs person, more than I am an artists or and album one.
So I will listen to a whole album I haven’t listened completely every month. It can be one that contains a song I like, an album that is totally new to me, a collection of a movie’s insert songs, an album that YouTube or Spotify or a talking crocodile recommended me while I am fighting a giant robot mutant duck over some french fries.
Anything goes.
While listening, I will make a drawing with my characters, hopefully making something that goes well with the mood of the album.
My road to “So Much for the Afterglow” by Everclear
The first time I remember listening to Everclear was around 2017 while refreshing my playlist’s recommendations, specifically their song “Santa Monica“. It was the only song I listened from them up until 2023 when I got “Amphetamine” into my weekly playlist.
I didn’t put much attention to the lyrics, my mind was just too occupied imagining the Future Devil from Chainsawman dancing to the beat:
When realizing they were the same guy who played “Santa Monica”, I said to myself that I should listen to more of them, starting with “So much for the Afterglow” (which contains “Amphetamine”), but I never gave myself the proper time to until I got “I Will Buy You a New Life” recommended.
Listening
While drawing I let album play two times, and replayed on my own:
- Normal Like You
- I Will Buy You a New Life
- White Men in Black Suits
- Sunflowers
So I can say I liked it!
The album is very late 90’s, at least the idea I have of late 90s music: overall melodic, with some punk/grunge-ish sound, acoustic instruments at moments and lyrics about angst over consumism, romantic love that may feel corny at times, and some sadness mixed into it too.
Drawing
Maybe it is because English isn’t my mother tongue or maybe I’m just a bit stupid, but I can turn off my brain to not really pay attention to the lyrics of a song, so actually putting attention to “Amphetamine” surprised me.
It is very upbeat for most of its duration, but in ends with calm violins, so I knew it had to have some degree of melancholy, but I didn’t expect it to be a critique of Women’s beauty standards of the 90’s, by telling the story of poor Amy, nicknamed “Amphetamine”.
I guess that’s why I had Alonse and Natasha as the main characters of the drawing.
I see Alonse as a someone who would enjoy the melodic but still energetic songs of late 90s, and Natasha is a sweet person in a bitter world, and in a way, their stories are similar, hope you can find how they mirror each other once I finished Break Umbrella.
I didn’t find a way to add Téa to the piece. At the moment in the story I imagined this scene to occur, Téa is not as joyful as Garras and the other Brillantis and Crystals; however, I knew William needed to be in the drawing. You will start to see why in Volume 2!
Would-Replay-Meter!
I though it would be fun to show how the character is the drawing would react to the album itself, so allow me to show you: the “Would-Replay-Meter”!
As the name implies, it shows how much a character would replay their favorite songs, or how much they would avoid their least favorite.
- If a character is in the green side of a song, they would replay it a lot.
- If a character is in the red side of a song, they would avoid it.
- The close a character is to either extreme, the more the song hits them (most of the times)
The red-haired guy is Baltazar, who will debut in Chapter 8!
If you wonder where is Gretel, the album wasn’t her style.
New Year!
My intention this year is to publish Volume 2 and 3 fully (18 chapters), while I also work on other drawing projects and keep my batch huge.
This is one of these projects of course!
Expect the next Album Gallery in early February, and don’t forget to check Chapter 8 on January 8th!
Stay tuned and stay safe!
– HappyMonkeyRookie
BREAK UMBRELLA 