I don’t have comfort food. I don’t have a box of tissues, or a complete Friends DVD box set to keep me company when I feel alone, sad, and like everything in the world is collapsing in on me. But I do have The Mountain Goats, and I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t.
Somehow, I had never listened to We Shall All Be Healed—with the amazing amount of EPs and singles Darnielle has released, something’s bound to slip under your radar—but it came into my life at the right time. It’s like a best friend that’s there when you’re down. It doesn’t sugarcoat it for you: this world sucks. It really blows. Bad things happen, you will get depressed, and someday, you and everyone you know and love will be gone, dead and forgotten on this little blue marble that they called home.
But that’s no reason to despair. Hell, if it’s anything, it’s a reason to celebrate. Because out of our sadness, out of our tears and desperation and crushed hopes, comes beauty. Our pain, like our existence, is only temporary, and worrying about it is worthless. We Shall All Be Healed reminds you to enjoy the now, and to disregard your fears of falling into oblivion.
So yes, I’ll cry for now. But just as these tears fall onto the floor and are never seen again, the same will happen to this pain. And then will come the tears of joy.
I’m pretty late to the whole Sufjan Stevens party, and boy am I kicking myself for that. After a crowdsourced purchasing decision and slight public humiliation, I bought Illinois, Stevens’ 2005 concept album, and it’s something beyond me. Through the album, Stevens’ is taking you on a journey—to where, you’re not sure, but you know wherever it is, it’s wonderful. Instruments beautifully overlap one another, the pace rises and falls before you even know it, and for some reason it just works, even though it seems like it shouldn’t.
I left the album feeling like I was simultaneously punched in the gut and patted on the back at the same time. It’s an emotional roller coaster, and a story told through the loveliest sounds. My friend Madi put it better than I ever could: ”It’s sort of really intense and incredible and fun all at once.”
James Blake—[self-titled] (Released 2011)
The debut album of London-based producer James Blake is a refreshingly mellow take on modern electronic music. It’s not terribly consistent in tone, but its versatility is where it excels. The perturbing and escalating claustrophobic tracks are complimented by floating grooves and rich piano ballads of others. The lyrics are intentionally ambiguous, at times layered and unintelligible, but through the hazy glass you get a compelling sense that there’s more going on here than just pretty sounds. Blake’s delicate yet powerful vocal delivery teaches you to fly, glides through the night air, and lands you right back safe at home. A soul album at its core, this is fitting post-dubstep for people who cringe at the word.
Album Raises New And Troubling Questions is a rare rarities album. Featuring a majority of tracks cut off of They Might Be Giants’ great new album Join Us, this B-side compilation does something interesting by being more enjoyable than the actual album it is supposed to compliment. Flansburg and Linnell’s creativity shines through with fresh takes on older songs like “Istanbul, Not Constantinople” and “Particle Man”, while showing their fun-loving sides in “Marty Beller Mask” and “The Fellowship of Hell”. Longtime fans are sure to love it, and newcomers will be able to get a taste of what to expect from the 30-year-old band.
Modest Mouse
Every moment on this album feels like a mind wandering. Songs don’t know where to start and where to end. Yet even (especially) the distant, quivering notes seem completely necessary. Songs surround you from a distance, forcing a strange (but not at all unwelcome) numbness upon you. It’s an album for road trips (obviously) that manages to capture the monotony, the seemingly endless stretch of the road while still maintaining interest – and, on more than one occasion, reflecting the kind of pain that can only be properly captured by the rough, scratchy whimper of a young Isaac Brock.
My favourite things tend to deal with direct contradiction. The Lonesome Crowded West is about being alone in a crowd, belonging to the urbanization that you hate. Cliché and trite as it may seem, it’s about never being understood by anyone, but never understanding anyone. It’s about isolating yourself and hating the isolation you’ve created. From the raucous beginning to the bitter conclusion, each song doesn’t waste a single second in portraying the sadness and anger that come with knowing that you desperately want to leave but won’t. It’s an album full of powerful emotions that don’t need to be masked by subtlety, and it’s my favourite album of all time.
Modest Mouse’s first album after signing with a major record label retains the emotionally naked quality of their first two records, but is interspersed with a different kind of sound - one more focused on, well, sound. The emotionally intimate moments of The Moon & Antarctica are contrasted with groups of songs that feel like they’re enhancing a narrative. Whereas previous Modest Mouse albums put you through a story, The Moon & Antarctica often feels like you’re watching a 3D movie starring someone else. A really great 3D movie that sometimes pulls you in and makes you the protagonist again.
I’m going to have to revisit this one. About as emotionally nude as Modest Mouse get, sometimes to the point of complete inaccessibility. Very easy to appreciate; a quicker, simpler, much more concise approach to the ideas in This is a Long Drive.
Good News is both Modest Mouse’s first top 40 album and their first album that is fairly obvious about its content, divided into three sections. The first of these sections expresses an uneasy dissatisfaction with the world. The second (started by Dig Your Grave) is more aggressive, a series of songs filled with malice regarding the world and bitter disappointment. The ending segment is a reflective, bittersweet conclusion. The added production sacrifices a little of their emotional honesty in exchange for a layer of subtlety and ambiguity.
We Were Dead expands on the contrast between bittersweet alienation and dissatisfaction expressed in Good News, using blasts of sound and polished ballads to balance the two. We Were Dead feels like a sequel to Good News, and a good one.
