Gina Harris's Blog, page 47

Outdoor Concert Review: Red Light Romeos

I am not back to two reviews per week regularly, but this week turned out to be special. We are in the season of free outdoor concerts! I will focus on the bands but also make note of the venues and series.

Last night that meant checking out Red Light Romeos at Sherwood's Music on the Green series at Stella Olson Memorial Park. 

The park is an interesting blend of public use and preservation, with a wetland section running between the stage and audience (meaning that if the audience were going to storm the stage, it would be considerate to stick to the bridge). A heron flew over the stage during the show, and I saw dragonflies, but I do not seem to be covered with bites today. That works.

The stage capacity could shelter a much larger ensemble than the four-man grouping last night, but the sound transmission was great. 
I don't know how much of that was natural acoustics and how much was technology, but it seemed appropriate for such a flexible band. 
Yacht rock cover band Red Light Romeos in photos is always three men with three guitars (it looked like two 6-string and one bass, but there was some switching around), and trading off on vocals.

However, they have the option -- depending on needs -- of adding another vocalist, a keyboardist, or, as was the case last night, just a drummer.

This is not a great picture, but notice some drum chimes, just like the Doobie Brothers used.

Because of course, the Doobie Brothers are covered, along with Christopher Cross and Robbie Dupree. There are also bands covered that might not be considered strictly "yacht rock", like Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, as well as bands that can fit pretty comfortably within yacht rock but may not be well remembered now. (I never even knew that band's name was Orleans.)

The band played two sets, opening up with a little bit more of an easy listening session that was perfect for being out on a warm summer day. Then after people had loosened up (there was been and wine for sale), they turned up the tempo for dancing.

Member Mike Johnson is in three J-Fell bands, and he says people often tell him Red Light Romeos is their favorite. I can see that. Some of that might just be timing -- there can legitimately be times when you want '80s dance music or Journey music -- but last night worked, and was a good experience.



Band page:
https://j-fell.com/redlightromeos/
Other posts about J-Fell bands:https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/01/concert-review-grand-illusion.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2019/01/concert-review-stone-in-love.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/01...

Music on the Green:https://www.sherwoodoregon.gov/communityservice/page/2021-music-green

A bridging anger

There was another incident of medical anger that helped me get mad about the insulin.

Yesterday I mentioned an A1C test. Technically, I should not have capitalized the "c".

It can also be HbA1c. It checks the amount of glycated hemoglobin, which is hemoglobin chemically linked to sugar. 

It was not considered a good diagnostic tool for diabetes back when I was diagnosed in 2000, though they seem to have decided that it's fine now. Previously, the diagnosis would be based on high fasting blood sugar scores, and maybe you would take multiple of them at different times. The A1c gives you an idea of your blood sugar level for the past 2-3 months, as your blood cells all die off and are replaced over three months. That seems like it would be indicative.

Regardless, it is used to monitor diabetes as well, and I get tested every 2-3 months.

Here is something I don't believe I have posted about before: I am a terrible blood draw. 

That was not always the case. Once I was first eligible to give blood I felt like I should do it as often as possible (there's that overinflated sense of responsibility again) and I gave regularly for several years. 

At some point, phlebotomists started having a harder time with me. It appeared that my veins had gotten all thin and stringy, where the needles would bounce off, or they were shy and would cringe away from the needle, or something like that. They would definitely see a vein, but then being able to draw blood from it was not guaranteed.

The worst time ever -- at that walk-in clinic -- the assistant tried seven times. Fortunately it was one of the good doctors that day. She got me on her first try, but cumulatively, it was eight.

(She also used a smaller, butterfly needle. That seems to be pretty standard now, but in the early 2000s it wasn't, at least not there.)

I am not particularly squeamish and I don't have any needle phobias, but the multiple pokes don't feel good. Even worse is that sense of being defective right down to my veins.

Recently one lab tech asked if I used to donate blood a lot, because it might be scar tissue. Possibly, but the question that they ask most frequently is whether I have had any water.

Yes. Always. I always drink water. Clearly I was not drinking enough. I mean, what other explanation could there be?

With this a blood draw shortly before I got mad at my pharmacist, I was determined to do better that day. I use a 25 oz reusable water bottle. I emptied it once, then twice; my veins were going to be plump and full. 

I emptied it a third time. I drunk so much water I literally felt sick to my stomach. I made myself sick, and I was still a tough draw.

I didn't get mad at the phlebotomist right then, though she was a jerk and I did not have warm feelings toward her. When I really got mad was when I found out that the excessive water drinking had messed up my sodium levels.

I was hurting my body to try and make it conform to someone else's preferences, and all it did was mess more things up. 

Even I have to learn sooner or later.

There was something else that was off too. First, I am going to drop some more medical knowledge.

Sometimes (more frequently lately), when I get my A1c I also get a CBC: Complete Blood Count. It literally counts the amount of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, infection-fighting white blood cells, and clotting platelets in your sample. 

It also measures the concentration of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in the red blood cells,  and hematocrit, the proportion of red blood cells to plasma.

My mother had a round of anemia combined with a blood clot that was affecting her oxygen delivery, which led to many procedures and medication that can impact clotting. I was really boning up on the red blood cells and platelets three years ago. 

I could have drawn upon that knowledge if that were my problem. I guess I am still a bad draw.

And I am probably not going to get to that until next week, because music reviews and also have room to follow-up and rant a little. For now, let's just say I have a little white blood cell problem.

Knowing my body, part 1

Two quick notes: Today's post expresses some frustration with the medical establishment, but you should notice two things that are not there.

There is no reason to try and extrapolate it to anything about vaccinations, which I fully support as a measure in support of personal health and as a matter of doing the least possible to be a decent human being.There are no requests for advice.

I have diabetes. That means that I have to be concerned with my blood sugar. 

Too high sugar levels in my blood can cause organ and nerve damage over time; no one wants that. Taking things to correct for that may sometimes work too well, though, and if my blood sugar goes too low that can lead to other symptoms. Comas are possible in either direction.

The sugar from the food you eat gets absorbed into your cells, promoted via a hormone called insulin, manufactured by your pancreas. Therefore, you might assume that high blood sugar is a result of non-functioning or at least under-performing pancreas. That is commonly an issue, but other things can affect it too. 

Your liver will release sugar back into the bloodstream at night. Sometimes it overdoes that. Then you might wake up with higher blood sugar, but have it normalize during the day. Sometimes there is also insulin resistance, where your body does not react to the insulin well. Then your pancreas might not only be performing, but producing too much trying to compensate.

I write that because people make a lot of assumptions about diabetes, that frequently correlate with assumptions about fat people, but it is more complicated than that.

(For example, in children there is an assumption that it is just a faulty pancreas, and they call that Type 1 diabetes, and that you don't get to blame the patient for it. Both types are increasing now, and I suspect some of the perceived distinction may be unhelpful)

When I first got diagnosed with diabetes, I had excellent insurance. That may have been the luckiest break of my life. It came on the scene with an infection that required hospitalization, but that was all covered, plus an education class that put me in good stead.

Then, when I lost that job and did not have good insurance or a regular doctor, I went to a walk-in clinic where it was a different doctor every time. Some of them were good but a lot of them were not great. I did not do so well.

Then I got a better job and a referral to an endocrinologist. Things were really under control. Yes, it required expensive medication, but I could manage the co-pays, and I was doing well.

Then, I was unemployed again and became a caregiver. That disrupted everything.

I am blessed to live in a state that believes that poor people deserve medical care, but the quality may still be lower. No endocrinologist this time, but they did have a pharmacist that I would have phone calls with, going over my blood sugar scores and adjusting doses.

Getting back to the complexity of diabetes, I mentioned some things that affect it, but there are a lot more. How much water you drink matters, because dehydration concentrates your blood sugar and because dehydration makes everything in your body run worse.

Sleep affects your blood sugar.

Stress might.

What you eat and how much affects it of course, but different people react differently to different foods, beyond the mere measure of the carbohydrates inside. Some people have their blood sugar go higher than you would expect with tomatoes, but a lot of people do really well with nopales. 

I do great when I have a sausage McMuffin for breakfast; I suspect it's the (delicious) protein boost. It still doesn't mean I should have one every day. There is an extent though, where you need to figure out what works for your body, and you are the only person who can know.

There had been a lot of things going on in my life where I was not as good as I should have been for blood sugar. Generally you want to be under 6 for your A1C, and I was running at 7.

The pharmacist kept upping my dose of insulin. I felt like that wasn't the real issue, but I wasn't fighting it because even if I knew that I was not getting enough sleep ever, and not always enough hydration, the circumstances in my life that made that a problem were not changing.

Getting back to those assumptions: there is commonly an assumption of non-compliance with fat patients and with diabetic patients. If it's a fat diabetic... oh boy! That made it harder for me to argue.

Did I mention that since insulin promotes sugar absorption, more of it promotes weight gain?

Over that time period where they kept raising the insulin dose, I gained thirty pounds and my A1C went up to 9.

I finally found my anger. Maybe I finally had recovered enough from the caregiver burnout to have enough energy to hold anger. We were going to lower the doses, and I didn't want to be reckless about it, but her strategy was literally making me sicker.

They hate not medicating you though. It's not that there are bad intentions or a lack of caring, but especially for a pharmacist, what other options are they even trained to see? 

I am now injecting yet another medication, though only weekly for this one. 

I am taking less insulin. My blood sugar is going down, though it also goes low more often. 

The extra fat is probably going to be more resistant, which is not great, because that can be a contributor to insulin resistance.

I should also mention here that I take a statin even though my cholesterol has never been high. Statins are recommended for people with diabetes (especially if you're fat), because they always think you are going to keel over of a heart attack. I resisted for a year on that one, and my cholesterol still never did anything bad, and but the doctor kept pushing and I gave up.

Initially when I was thinking about writing this, I thought it was going to be about my frustration with myself that I didn't put my foot down sooner. The first time my A1C was higher after the increased dose, I should have pushed back then, though also, I would like to think the professional might have had second thoughts about it. 

It is easy to be intimidated and think you should trust the authority figures, even if a lot of what they say comes via pharmaceutical reps pushing studies sponsored by pharmaceutical companies.

And yet somehow, having typed all of this up, I can't help wondering if the issue might be more systemic than a matter of personal responsibility.

Out of touch, over time

I think today's post is going to be messy, but I will start with a story.

My second year in college, I went to an acoustic night. A friend of mine was going to be playing, and I was waiting for him. 

This guy walked up that I found very attractive from seeing his picture in the football team's press guide. We had never met, but a couple of week's earlier I had made room for him at a basketball game, until some friends called him to their spot. So, our previous only exchange had been when he thanked me.

He showed up at the acoustic night, standing and watching for a while. I looked at him, saw he was looking at me, and turned away. Every time I looked back over, he was looking at me. Obviously, he was playing wrong; you are supposed to try and not be caught. 

He left, but after the show was over I decided to take our loop round the student center to see if he was still around. I saw him at the study tables. I went over, and he watched the entire approach.

Then we had a nice conversation and would talk whenever we met, but he never asked me out.

You could certainly decide that I fumbled the ball there, and more details would only make that more likely. However, you could also make a case that I was obviously interested enough that if he had any interest at all he had a green light to act on it. 

(Unless I was sending other signals that I didn't realize, which is a distinct possibility.)

Here is one key factor that I did not realize until much later: although he did not "know" me previously, I had attended a lot of spring practices while I was taking the Football Coaching class.

He almost certainly recognized me from that. Attending one practice was required, so everyone in the class did that, but I kept coming back because I was really struggling with the class. Also, most of the other students were guys. There was another girl, but she understood football better, so she probably only went to one practice.

Sure, they were busy practicing, but I would not have blended in. When he saw me at the game and at the student center, he probably recognized me. That didn't even occur to me until years later.

That kind of helped it occur to me that I was probably pretty visible when I was busily folding sweats and distributing water at high school basketball games. They were pretty well-attended. Maybe even at those assemblies where I won school spelling bees, people notice. 

Perhaps I was always more visible than I knew.

I have written before about how after the first time I was teased for being fat, I was never able to give myself any credit for the fitness that I had. That I was not really fat yet then never sunk in. I passed most of the presidential fitness tests, but only the two that I couldn't do mattered to me. They were my proof that I was just a fat slug.

There is a lot that sets us up to not know ourselves. We doubt our bodies signals and ignore them until we stop hearing. We doubt the connections we feel with other people and we put up protections that may not be necessary, but are also probably less useful than regular resilience would be.

And then, when we do get a bad signal, to keep us safe, we convince ourselves to be nice, and to not make a scene.

The next two posts are going to be about two things going on in my body, neither of which should be happening, but for different reasons.

Music Review: Hudsun

I cannot be satisfied writing this review; Hudsun's music reminds me of a music I heard in a commercial for Younger, and I have not been able to identify the right commercial, song, or artist. It feels like that would be very pertinent, and help give an idea of this music.

I can only try and describe.

It may be a newer style, where there is a lot of synthesizer and electronics, but it is not techno. Instead there is a harsher, more industrial sound. 

In this case, that is well-matched with the videos, created by playing around on the computer, but still not delivering emotionally. I wanted to love the cats in "Medicine", but they don't mean anything.

I do like his most recent release, "Passenger", more than the other songs. Perhaps there is a development in process toward greater depth. Sam Hudson, the person behind the band, seems fairly young, so there should be time for maturation.

In his own words, he says his music is like "being hit in the face with a stale box of cereal". 

I don't think it's that stale, but I also don't think it's that impactful. 

Ideally, it would just need to matter more.

https://www.hudsun.co.uk/ 

https://music.apple.com/us/artist/hudsun/1482854140

https://www.facebook.com/HUDSUN 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt_m0y2G2dDKCIV4DqBQHsA 

https://www.instagram.com/hudsunofficial/

https://twitter.com/hudsunmusic

Jeopardy! Guest Hosts

I wanted to take a moment to write about this anyway, but it is even better because I discovered this delightful interview with LeVar Burton on Esquire:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a37103004/levar-burton-jeopardy-host-interview-2021/

I acknowledge that I don't have the connection with Burton that people who watched Reading Rainbow have, but I like him. I love how he loves Jeopardy! and is so thoughtful about it. I could be fine with him hosting. 

Since I last wrote about this, the other person who I thought did really well was Robin Roberts. I want to give her her due.

About that last time I wrote...

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2021/04/about-jeopardy.html 

One thing I focused on was not wanting people to focus too much on who would be the new host. I believed that they were taking their time, and there was not going to be a new host until Alex's final season was completed.

Therefore, the real reason I am writing is that we seem to be there. I haven't been tracking it exactly, and some of the classic repeats may have thrown the schedule off a bit. 

Still, here we are, almost in August, which I seem to remember as the break between seasons, when they would re-air all the tournaments. It feels like it is almost time. If Burton's last week as a guest host is the official passing of the torch to him being the new host, well, that is still going to be emotional, but it will work.

The thing that I really wanted to say, though, is how touching they have made this time period.

Friends of the show and friends of Alex have come, and they have chosen different charities. I haven't been keeping track of the totals, but it is a beautiful tribute to his memory.

It wasn't just that; Burton mentioned in his interview that Mike Richards told him part of having the guest hosts was to give the audience time to get used to Alex not being there. Yes, it worked as a candidate search, but it also served as a mourning period. Because of how they did it, that mourning also allowed for caring and joy. 

I appreciate that. 

I also trust them as we find out what happens next, waiting for the clue that will tell us, "Who is the next host of Jeopardy!?"

Rag bag

It is not a coincidence that the name-calling that stuck with me -- even from a television show -- was fat-shaming. That was how I defined myself. Whether I defined myself by my fat because I assumed everyone else did, or whether I assumed everyone else did because I did, I don't know; I just knew that I was fat.

To a large extent, the way that I survived that was distancing myself from my body. I tried to focus on my brain (plus strenuously concealing romantic feelings from other people). I thought I had done that pretty successfully, until I saw a Twitter thread two weeks ago:

https://twitter.com/Artists_Ali/status/1415403809938026504

I had forgotten about clothes shopping. 

The thread is about Lane Bryant taking away the cute clothes in the early 2000s, at a time when plus sizes were also disappearing from other stores, though not in mens' lines.

This meant that fat teen girls had to dress like a "wacky sitcom grandma" and spend hundreds of dollars to do it.

This is true, and yet that isn't even my time period or income level. I never shopped at Lane Bryant because I couldn't afford them, and that wasn't my time period. In the 70s, it was lots of hand-me-downs and Goodwill, plus K-Mart and occasionally Sears. No, I did not dress cute.

As a teenager in the 80s, there weren't really hand-me-downs anymore, so it was mainly K-Mart, but yes, they were often old lady clothes. I can look back and remember how frumpy some outfits were, but at the same time it didn't feel like it was bothering me much then. 

Then I read the thread, and it did bring back memories, mainly of shopping for formals or dressing up. It's not exactly that doing so made me suicidal, and yet I do strongly remember wishing I were dead, and how much better it must be to be dead than to have this pressure of needing to look nice when you are a poor, fat girl. Even for the events where I didn't have to bother with a date, there was still trying to look nice.

In retrospect, the persistence of my regret for letting my mother talk me out of the strapless green dress for prom makes more sense. I really think I could have looked good, when chances for that were so rare, and it was my money; why did I let her discourage me? (Thus ending up in a frilly pink taffeta monstrosity.)

Also, that time in 1993 when I found a (casual, but still) dress I liked at Target, and I bought it in all four colors... I was well aware of the rarity of finding something that worked for me.

Currently, my personal style is to try and avoid standing out as much as possible. I look to have my body as covered as possible, and loosely (though straps come out a lot in that case), and also knowing that some things make me look fatter than others (round necks, full sleeves and 1/4 sleeves both, shoulder seam farther in, short shirt hem), and I try to find them as cheaply as possible. Ethical consumption is generally not even a remote possibility. 

Actually, the current wardrobe does have some hand-me-downs, because one friend's other fat friend died. Still, it's otherwise mainly online ordering, and I don't wish I were dead (at least not because of that), though I also never feel cute.

I am mostly accepting of that, but what the Twitter thread reminded me of was that there were times when I tried.

In junior high once I took an art class, and we talked about complementary and supplementary colors. I tried pairing up different things in my closet, though the only result I really remember was purple pants with a yellow sweater vest. 

In high school I tried some thing inspired by photos of musicians, though they always had cooler starting materials. I do remember pairing suspenders with a news cap, and one time I had these pink pants with an open button down shirt over a T-shirt, and a fedora (lots of hats in the 80s). 

Well, that day I had forgotten it was St. Patrick's Day, so the first thing that happened when I walked into school was my math teacher pinched me. That was discouraging. Other times, well, I don't remember actual teasing, but people looked at me more. Even if they were approving looks, it felt too out there and wrong.

(Plus, I had thought that snap up shirt was cool, and that was the one Steve ripped open.)

All of which is to say that eventually the safest goal seemed to be invisibility. If actual camouflage really did camouflage you in a non-jungle environment, I suppose I would be wearing that. Instead, it was just gradually moving away from patterns and details and accessories (I tried a metal belt once; it interacted with my digital watch to set off the alarm in the library) and trying not to be noticed.

Except when there was something dressy where baggy knits wouldn't work, and then wanting to die.

Garbage Barge

That sense of responsibility I referenced yesterday may be overinflated in general, but there is definitely a strong environmental component. It hits in other ways. I also really hate waste.

Now, I do not doubt that a part of that is also the poverty; the need to conserve resources feels different when things are scarce. The unemployment, care giving, and pandemic have me in a total scarcity mindset now, and it has been that way for a while. That is one complicating factor out of more than one.

It is also complicated by the specific dynamics of my household. My sisters are wonderful, caring, environmentally conscious people, but they are also squeamish and weird about a lot of things where they cannot be budged.

That plays out in multiple ways. For example, they are big moisturizers, so they go through lotion quickly. Once the pump starts getting air in it, they are done with that container, but there may still be about a third of the bottle left. I put another cap (previously from an Aquafina bottle; more recently from an ACT bottle, standard sizing has its up side) on the lotion container, turn it upside down, and keep it in my room so I can get all the dregs out.

They do not have patience for small soap bars. They will open up a new one, while I am trying to compress slivers together and make it work, even as it gets slimy and keeps sliding out of my hands.

They don't eat leftovers, so that's on me, even if I don't like the thing that much. (I have learned that I can get them to eat bread heals if the heal part is facing the inside of a grilled cheese sandwich.)

I believe it was when I was reading Marie Kondo's The Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up that I noticed -- perhaps it was the emphasis on sparking joy -- but I started feeling like I was making myself a second-class citizen by always choosing the slimy and leftover and unappealing for ethical reasons.

Carol Burnett had a sketch show in 1990, Carol & Company, that I enjoyed. One sketch focused on different couples in a restaurant. 

The younger couple were two people who had met and had instant chemistry, and were now trying to get to know each other. They discovered they had a friend in common. He started reminiscing about that girl's fat friend, wondering whatever happened to her.

"She slimmed down and became a lovely person who goes by Marjorie."

Before that reveal, he repeated what he had used to call her. I think was "Large Marge the great big barge." I don't think he actually said "garbage", but that was how it entered into my head: garbage barge.

It had been many years since I had seen that sketch, but I got to the point where every time I stepped into the shower and saw the slivers of soap "Garbage Barge" flashed through my head.

I don't want to be wasteful, but in that time period my goal to be kind to the earth was working in opposition to being kind to myself.

I'm not saying it has to be that way, but it was a complication. At its core was not my thrift, but my inability to value myself.

It's about two years later, and that's still a struggle. Then again, so is the scarcity.

Garden stress

Wednesday I wrote about the emphasis on personal responsibility being destructive when collective efforts -- often focused on governments and corporations -- are necessary.

Understanding that does not mean that I don't take my personal responsibility seriously. In fact, the extent to which I worry about it may be pathological.

That may be more clear from tomorrow's post, but for today I want to focus on one specific problem:

I feel like an utter failure and bad person every time our yard guy comes.

Lawns are bad, and I know they are bad. They are bad for water use and fossil fuel use, but they are also bad for local wildlife. That doesn't mean just adorable (or less adorable) mammals; it also means birds, insects, and arachnids. 

I am soft-hearted, so that does bother me. I also find nature beautiful so I care about that balance. 

Beyond that, we need pollinators. Even animals that don't transport pollen may be an important part of food webs that include pollinators.

We need the creatures that help move matter into soil. The most organic nutritious diet in the world is less effective when grown in nutrient-poor soil.

I know all that, and I have seen it. Back when it was still grass in the front, even just getting longer I would start seeing different species in the yard. We had never had a Wilson's warbler before, and there it was, perching on a stalk of grass.

It is still grass in the backyard, but I did get rid of it in the front. Volunteer clover took over better than I could have hoped.

Except there are still strong ideas about an appropriate way for a yard to look. We have had people come and mow without asking. (We're just really lucky there is not an HOA.)

Now we pay someone to come every two weeks, so that's when I have those feelings of being bad and a failure, especially when they do the front.

I know, I need to put something else there, to fill up the space. I am getting closer to knowing what to do, but there are obstacles in the way.

Obviously the biggest is money, but an unfortunate runner-up is a sad lack of energy. 

Well, the weather didn't help. The clover was delightfully springy underfoot, but the heat dome was pretty hard on it.

The hard part is how far we have strayed as a culture from even thinking about nature. 

For example, we had three butterfly bushes. The grew way too well, not being native to the area and so not balancing here, but in a thriving kind of way.

They did in fact attract butterflies, which seems like a good thing. 

They did not provide a place for the laying of butterfly eggs, and food for when the caterpillars hatch. Supporting life needs to allow for multiple aspects of life. Feeding adults is only a small part of it.

Most of my plans for this year have fallen through, though I may still do something destined for failure, just to feel like I tried. 

There is one thing that was recently encouraging. 

I have felt this fear of getting a wrong start, that then everything will go wrong. I recently read The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka. When he decided to immediately switch to natural methods, he killed an entire orchard. He later was able to get to thriving fields and orchards, but there is something to be said for gradual adaptations. 

Fukuoka simultaneously shows me that recovery from disaster is possible, and that it's okay to start small.

So if this fall I put down some cardboard and mulch in the NorthWest and SouthEast corners of the front yard, then get two native plants in the ground to act as anchors (probably one ocean spray and one mock orange, but it's also dependent on what I can find), then that will still be a start.

I believe the clover will come back to fill in.

And then, if the back yard is more complicated because of needing to allow space for the dog and it being larger, well, right now any success will be meaningful.

Music Review: Magic Toy Missing

Magic Toy Missing is a duo based in Zurich, Switzerland that classifies itself as somewhere between indie pop and rock.

(I assume the band name was inspired by the Meat Puppets song, but I have not seen it definitively declared, and I wouldn't guess it based on sound. It just seems like too big of a coincidence to be otherwise.)

They remind me a great deal of a band I reviewed last year, Sound of Su. Unfortunately, they are not familiar enough to give anyone else a good idea. It might be more helpful to say to imagine a quieter, gentler Cranberries.

There is a quietness and unease present in the music. Lyrics are delivered softly, except for a rap solo that surprises on "Goodbye To All Of You".

There is a tensely insistent rhythm on "Got Away".

Their self-titled album was released close in time to when I reviewed Sound of Su. I don't know if that influenced the follow, but there does not seem to have been a lot of activity on any of the accounts for some time. 

Well, it's not like life went as planned for most of us last year.

Music is available on Spotify and Bandcamp.

https://www.magictoymissing.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/ToyMissing

https://magictoymissing.bandcamp.com/releases

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN0UzS0mf1HjztoAz3JoIdQ

https://twitter.com/ToyMissing