Pretty Goes with Pretty

Albums of My Life

Last week I referred to Paul Simon’s Graceland as an “album of my life.” Coincidentally, this thread at Last Plane to Jakarta took a brief tangent into what constitutes a “life-changing album.” Two different concepts, and I’ve had both on my mind in the last few days. The first is a lot easier to find examples of: albums that I played intensely during some period of my life, to the point of becoming something other than good or great albums; rather, they're the soundtrack to memories. The second category, life-changing albums, is harder to figure out. Before I try to sort that one out, I want to think about the other.

Albums of my life. Going back as far as I can, my childhood was filled with Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens, Jim Croce, Ry Cooder. I have strong mental associations with all those artists, and in retrospect they all must have set some kind of foundation for what I’ve come to like today.

George Michael’s Faith might have been the very first album I ever viewed as wholly mine: an cassette I kept in my own room, played on my own walkman. INXS’s Kick and Run-DMC’s Raising Hell, too. In elementary school I would walk laps around the track during recess with Danny Casares as we tried to piece together the lyrics to “You Be Illin’ from memory. By sixth grade I was transfixed by Appetite for Destruction—probably the first album I’d ever associated with danger. This led to junior high and high school, where Master of Puppets, Rust in Peace, and Persistence of Time set the template for my taste in metal. By my junior or senior year I was transitioning out of metal and into something else: Rollins Band (particularly the early stuff), Tool, and a band I’d discovered through a blind purchase at Tower Records, Craw, all made music that was heavy but was more dynamic musically and more sophisticated lyrically and emotionally.

Somehow from there I stumbled into indie rock without any real guidance (which I’ve written about before). By then I’d lost interest in heaviness but was actively looking for music that shifted dynamically. Slint, Fugazi, Rodan, Codeine. I vividly recall moving to college and trying to describe the kind of music I liked to a kid I’d met in the dorms. “It can be really loud and really screamy, but it can also get really quiet, and it’s not heavy like metal.” He just looked at me and said “what, you mean emo?”

Another dormmate gave me a dubbed cassette full of songs by what I thought was some friend of hers; the recording quality was exceptionally poor and all the label said was “Elliott Smith.” I played the hell out of the tape but was embarrassed to tell the girl I dug it so much because it seemed a little weird to be really into her random friend’s music. Six months later I was in a record store and saw the album in the bin—a real record by a real guy on a real label, and best of all that was another album (Roman Candle) in the bins as well!

The rest of college was Tortoise, June of 44, Blonde Redhead, Unwound, Superchunk, the Pernice Brothers. After college, when I met my wife: My Morning Jacket’s The Tennessee Fire, Cat Power’s Moon Pix, Rufus Wainwright’s first album, Ryan Adams’s Heartbreaker.

We got married in September 2001: she walked down the aisle to Sigur Ros’ “Sven-g-Englar” and we danced to Low’s “Two Step.” We moved to New York not long after. If you asked me to soundtrack the winter of 2002, when we lived in a spacious but empty loft above a functioning sweatshop in a shitty part of Williamsburg, I’d have to hand you Pete Yorn’s Music for the Morning After. When we moved to Boerum Hill it was Chutes too Narrow, Michigan, and Radio Dept.’s Lesser Matters. We bought Feist’s Let it Die in Paris in 2004. We moved to L.A. in 2005 and in the last two or three years it’s been Funeral, Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina, Midlake, and most recently Andrew Bird.

These are albums of my life. And really I’m just scratching the surface—this is what I can come up with just thinking about it in the time it takes to write these words. Were I to focus on one period of my life, other albums would come into view, sort of like staring at the night sky and seeing the stars reveal themselves the longer you look.

But not all of these albums are my all-time favorites, necessarily. Some I haven’t listened to in years, either because my tastes have changed drastically (everything pre-Spiderland), because I associate them too strongly with my memories (Moon Pix), because they’ve just not aged well (sadly, Spiderland), or because they’re frankly not that good (Music for the Morning After).

Thus we come to the difference between an album of my life and an album that changed my life. More on that later this week.

My Listening Hours: The Spring's Best

Midlake: The Trials of Van Occupanther and Bamnan & Silvercork
I bought The Trials of Van Occupanther in December after seeing it on other people’s top ten lists and hearing the absolutely fantastic opener, “Roscoe.” When the time came for me to make my own best-of-’06 list I mentioned Trials but was hesitant to show it much love since I hadn’t really had time to digest it. Three months later, this album has not left my hard drive, my iPod, my car stereo, my dreams, my waking hours. It easily would have been my #1 of last year had I heard it in time. “Roscoe” is the song that sucks you in, and on first listens it seems to sit head and shoulders above the rest of the album. But this is one of those albums—the best kind—where the more you listen to it, each individual track at one point becomes your favorite. The first time I mentioned Midlake I provided an mp3 to “Roscoe.” This time I’ll give you “We Gathered in Spring.“

I listened to a few tracks from their first album, Bamnan & Silvercork, at the time, and I liked them but was too immersed in Trials to be distracted. What I’d read on the internet also kept mentioning that the album was heavily indebted to the Flaming Lips. Not a bad thing, necessarily, but it sounded like code for “this band has not found their way.” When I bought tickets to see them at the Troubador last month, I picked up B&S just so I’d be familiar with the songs. It’s true that the album is not as fully formed as Trials, and there are a few Lipsy elements—the keyboards and the distorted drums, in particular—but nevertheless B&S surprisingly sunk in and gripped me. The record really has its own charms, very distinct from Trials. “The Balloon Maker,” for instance, has become inescapable for me. My experience of Midlake reminds me of the way I reacted to the Scud Mountain Boys seven or eight years ago. I bought Massachusetts and was possessed by it for many months, then made my way to the supposedly lesser Early Year; it was lesser, but it was quite different and wonderfully in its own way.

What I’m saying is: I can’t recommend Midlake enough.

Peter Bjorn & John: Writer’s Block
Sometimes you just have to turn the Cynic Switch off. This trio was popping up on the internet friggin’ constantly for much of last year. I don’t know about you, but I’m largely to the point where when Pitchfork leads the charge, I run the other way. Then “Young Folks” started getting rotation on my local radio station. I didn’t know it was PB&J at first; I thought it was a good song, catchy, nothing life-changing. But then my brilliant wife started getting into it and we went to Amoeba and picked it up. And wouldn’t you know it but this is a really great album. It’s much more layered than I would have thought based on the single. Parts of it make me think of the Kinks if Kevin Shields were the guitar player.

I touched on the trio in this post, if you can wade through the parts about book-lookin’. That post includes an mp3 for my personal favorite, “Roll the Credits,” so here I’ll give you “Let's Call it Off.”

The Little Ones: Sing Song EP
Like Midlake, this was another one I bought in December but too late to digest before making a year-end list. I have disclaimers about this band—it’s that Cynic Switch; sometimes it turns itself on automatically—but first let me get the main point out of the way: this is a great little batch of songs. There’s really not a dud in the bunch. Now, here are the caveats: these guys really don’t bring much new to the table. Their album cover is disturbingly close to the Shins’ Chutes too Narrow, and for that matter their sound is not that far off. The singer reminds me of the days when Ben Gibbard was not quite so cloying and over-earnest—there was too a time! In other words every influence I hear in the Little Ones is a band that is probably the same age as them. But so what? All I really know is I’ve been playing this album over and over. My wife and I blare it out of our car windows as we drive up the PCH to Malibu on the weekends. Try out “Lovers Who Uncover” and see what you think.

Tomorrow, a few words on those albums I purchased, liked well enough, but didn't stick.

Midlake

Despite talking music more than anything else here, I have for the most part refrained from attempting to appear as an mp3 blog. Mostly this is because I think it is a difficult thing to do well. Amazing obscure bands cannot be broken on a daily basis, meaning that's a lot of mediocrity to host on your blog, and a lot hyperbole covering up for the pressure to supply daily content. It is for this reason that I tend to read a lot of mp3 blogs, yet I frequently distrust them—and I usually don't have the time to actually listen to everything they'd have me digest. If a certain group comes up enough times on different blogs, maybe I'll click that link—though invariably even then I'm still not phased (see Grizzly Bear, Margot and the Nuclear So and Sos, and Joanna Newsome for recent examples).

Meanwhile, 2006 has been a shit year for music. Is this related to the glut of mp3 blogs and myspace pages? Could very well be, though the established acts like the Flaming Lips, Walkmen, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and others have left me cold as well, and they shouldn't need the blogs to aid in their hype. Nevertheless I find myself in this month of December looking at more mp3 and music blogs than usual, hoping that the filter of the "Top 10 of the Year" will weed out the mediocrity and something I might have missed will rise to the top.

And it looks like that has happened. Things I'd Rather Be Doing posted their favorites of the year, and one that I hadn't heard of at all was Midlake. Most of the others on TIRBD's list (and the lists of other blogs & magazines that have posted so far) have been at least familiar to me. And guess what? They're fantastic! Very 1970s, very America (the band). But somehow that sounds fresh to me. There are a handful of tracks streaming at their website (click on "media"), but my favorite so far is the one TIRBD supplied, "Roscoe." I love the harmonies, and I love the way the lines get longer as the song goes on. I haven't had the opportunity to buy the album yet, but I expect to do so soon, and that it will wind up on my best of the year list as well, as long as the rest of the album is this good.