#TRXYE

Being involved as a fan of Youtube means you get to see people you've watched for years achieve their dreams and shit safely from your very own bed, which often makes you feel insecure about your life and your age. So now that lil Youtube kid from Perth (I say 'lil kid' he's literally the same age as me), Troye Sivan, has released his music, and gone to #1 in like 55 countries, we should probs talk about it. 

I'm gonna start this off by saying I was a little apprehensive about listening to his music, and I've never watched any of the songs he's posted on his Youtube channel. The reason for this is that I have this weird thing where I can't listen to/read anything that someone I know has created, and I know that I don't know Troye, but weirdly the same thing applies to him. I'm interested to see if it will happen when Zoella releases her novel. It probably will, but I will push on!

Anyway, when I finally worked up the courage to listen to his first single, Happy Little Pill, I was a little (a lot) surprised. The sound is awesome, he's a good singer, but I was really taken aback by the lyrics and they still kind of make me uncomfortable. I don't really like it when I feel like the singer doesn't have a personal connection to the things they're singing about, and this song makes me go Troye????? What have you been DOING????? But also kind of like, this kid is 19 and Australian like me, what am I not seeing? Even though his life is clearly a lot different to most normal 19 year old Aussie kids.

Upon learning he wrote it about something his friend was going through (taking antidepressants) combined with the feeling of emptiness when alone in a big city (LA), it became easier to handle and I feel like you can really concentrate on the way it feels like travelling alone in a car at night time looking out the window as lights flash by along a busy night strip. 

Right, the rest of the EP. TRXYE features 5 songs, all of which flow really well together and construct a sound that is sort of electronic but really chill and so cool at the same time. It makes me imagine bright neon light shining through fog above a road wet from rain. My favourite song is Fun, beats me what it's about but who cares when it has such a great feel to it. They all feel very American, as well. Do you get that? I don't know, they just do.

I've been listening to the EP on repeat for a couple of hours now. His voice is smooth and so nice, on all the tracks, especially the deeply personal Gasoline. He clearly has an aesthetic in mind that he wants his image to ascribe to and it certainly does. From the album cover, where his eyes are covered, to the X in the name, to the Happy Little Pill video, which is so beautiful and, random owls aside, really keeps in with the blue/pink/everything/nothing/who am I theme-ish type thing. From here, I can only see him skyrocketing to stardom. Pedestrian.tv has already called him Boy Wonder, and frankly, he's so cool he makes us all feel a bit inadequate.

Review: Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy is Marvel's newest venture that rolls everything you would ever need (Chris Pratt, a talking raccoon, Footloose references and a jukebox full of retro 70s jamz) into one crowd-pleasing outer-space adventure.

After a kind of sad cold open where his mother dies and he gets abducted by aliens as a young child, we meet a now adult Peter Quill, a self-proclaimed "legendary outlaw" that tries (and fails) to go by the name Star Lord, wearing a weird Cyberman mask as he moves seriously through the landscape of some random planet. He then unmasks, puts on his headphones, and presses play on his Awesome Mix tape, and proceeds to start having a lil dance. 

It's at this moment we realise that this is not just another cookie cutter superhero film. A world away from grounded Avengers, Spider-Man and the dark and broody Batman, this movie is making fun of itself while speeding through space and having a bloody great time doing it.

Peter travels through space fighting people who want the super powerful orb he's picked up, which is revealed to be a cousin of the Tesseract (Avengers link, oh yeah) and hooking up with a team of outlaws, assassins and green people to assist him in fighting people who want the super powerful orb (after they've broken out of prison, of course).

The plot was a bit confusing (what with all the villainous blue people wanting the orb and all) but it didn't really matter when it was really all about the ragtag gang of lead characters.

Chris Pratt, who has hitherto been known to most people as Andy off of Parks and Rec, made himself over big time to play basically a buffer version Andy off of Parks and Rec that is also in space. It works, though. Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is awesome and green, a trained warrior and badass fighter with some light family issues (she kind of wants to kill her dad). Drax, played by Dave Bautista, is a revenge driven family man, whose straightforward thinking makes for some great comedy opportunities made out of misunderstood metaphors. Rounding out the team is Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) and his tree sidekick Groot (Vin Diesel) who literally can only say the words "I", "am", and "Groot" and only in that order.

Together, they were a hilarious gang and they knew it, we knew it, the moviemakers knew it. And that's what made the movie so great. There was one scene that was a spoof of the "badass team slow mo walking in preparation for battle" shot where they were all yawning or pulling faces or itching their nose.

The whole thing was just so funny, not only because it was full of wisecracks from Quill and Rocket, but also because the 70s soundtrack was just so juxtaposed to the action and it just made everything that much more of a good time.

Overall, this sort-of origin story that's a bit Star Wars and a bit so much better is awesome and it knows it. "We're not The Avengers" it screams, "but we're fuckin' cool anyway."