As a new columnist that will focus on mostly music, I feel there
needs to be a little bit of an introduction
– considering musical taste is about as personal as you can
get.
Someone once told me that music is love looking for the words
and for me, music is simply life. A world without it isn’t a world
I want to live in.
As a new columnist that will focus on mostly music, I feel there needs to be a little bit of an introduction – considering musical taste is about as personal as you can get.
Someone once told me that music is love looking for the words and for me, music is simply life. A world without it isn’t a world I want to live in.
Music can change our mood – it can make us happy or sad. It can say the words we can’t find.
And regardless of what your taste is – music is our universal language.
I don’t like things that are very simple or normal. The strange sounds of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits pour out of my iPod. My taste seems to follow a simple motto – the weirder the better.
Every week I’ll review an album new or old but first to understand my taste and the base of my opinion, here are my five favorite albums:
5. Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me, 2010
Well, if I could only use one word to describe this album it would be ambitious. The 18-song, two-hour album is as cryptic as an album can be but it’s heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. Most of the songs are based around the native Northern Californian’s trusty harp. Yes – a harp. And each song hovers around the seven-minute mark.
Backed by a swirl of trumpets, violins and just about any instrument you could think of, Newsom sings of love and despair. And it’s her voice that makes or breaks the album but it’s not for the faint of heart. Some describe her voice as shrill or compare it to a dying cat but with the beautiful harp and strings in the background her voice shines.
This 2010 gem isn’t an easy listen but if you take the time to sit down and let it play, it’s a rewarding and remarkable experience.
4. Bob Dylan: Blood on the Tracks, 1975
If I could only listen to one Bob Dylan album for the rest of my life it would be this one. Inspired by Anton Chekhov short stories, the album’s themes revolve around heartbreak, anger and loneliness.
And through Dylan’s words and voice it’s hard not to feel his pain. The songs “Tangled Up In Blue” and “Idiot Wind” are among my favorite songs from this musical legend.
3. Radiohead: Kid A, 2000
Simply, this is my generation’s defining album and band. Previously, Radiohead was a guitar rock band but with Kid A, everything changed. Gone were the pop melodies and the swelling rock-guitar choruses and instead an electronic pulse took over.
Influenced by jazz and classical composition, Radiohead used the new century’s technology to push their sounds to the limit. It took me awhile to get passed its alienating nature when I first heard it years ago, but now I can hardly go a week without hearing at least a song.
2. Arcade Fire: Funeral, 2004
Heartbreaking – it’s the only way to describe this masterpiece. The first time I heard it was my freshman year of college. Sitting on my dorm room bed after studying for the first test of my first finals week, exhausted, I decided to finally give them a listen. It was 2005 so I had the album for some time, a few months at least, but I had never listened to it.
And after the first few seconds I was overwhelmed. It was an onslaught of emotion and passion that blared through my laptop’s speakers. The album was written by the Montreal group during a time when family members were dying around them – hence the title – and unlike any other album I’ve heard you can feel their emotions.
Violins, horns and even a hurdy-gurdy help lift the albums emotional core. Just listen to “Wake Up” and never look back.
1. Modest Mouse: The Moon and Antarctica, 2000
This is everything I love about music put into one long and winding record. There is the reflecting, “Lives,” the wonderfully loud, “Life Like Weeds,” and the weird, “The Stars are Projectors.”
This album is my high school and college years.
But the core of the album is its lyrics. Frontman Isaac Brock, sticking with the theme of life and death balances the playful and the emotional heartbreak throughout. One song will be about dogs stealing a baby and the next will bring out his loneliness. Brock balances the weird and the surreal brilliantly. And musically, the band shows glimpses of the commercial success that would come a few years later.
