My Most Favored Music
How can one choose only a few favorites? It feels nearly sacreligous to do because musical tastes change like the weather. What I say now could change in less than a year. However, there are some albums & artists that stick to me like hitchhiking seeds; the ones I love dearly and daily thank the five elements for. These are those which I sometimes treat like holy artifacts, listening with total reverence.1. Geogaddi by Boards of Canada.
The gif on this page is the cover of this album. Geogaddi was my first experience of what has become my favorite kind of music--the type that totally submerges you in its world. Geogaddi made me realize that music is actual magic; it changes your mood, your perception, your mind, etc.-- music is really a kind of drug. This album is like a warm and beautiful, nostalgic fever dream. The cover fits it perfectly.. when I listen to it I see a collage of landscapes and scenes from the 70s. I've napped to it many times & had prismatic, sinister half-dreams that soothed my brain. I also watched it with Chantel Akerman's Hotel Monterey a while back because I thought the setting in that film looked very similiar to the type of visions I get with the album on its own. You should try it out!!
2. Sing to God by Cardiacs
Manifold splendid array of worms & beasts! The sounds wriggle in my earholes! I am God & I am being sung to !! Cardiacs is known for being the type of band that some despise and others worship--well I suppose I'm the latter. I've done my fair bit of praising. This album has saved my melancholic temperment so many times and lifted me away from the folly of taking everything so SERIOUSLY! Every song is so intricately detailed and each sound another joy to discover, and the melodies are the most earwormy things I've ever heard. It has a sort of mischievous insouciance that could only be ascribed to a weird changeling-clown. AKA Tim Smith. RIP :(.
3. Pinback by Pinback.
Now this is a very close draw with Blue Screen Life. I love both dearly. I choose their title album mostly because of how perfectly it encapsulates their whole atmosphere. Pinback has this achingly beautiful sound that has dug into my soul & laid a blue and pristine egg. I think the reason why I love them and this album so much is because it attunes to my temperment so well--a kind of hopeful melancholy that reverberates across the world. When I put this record on I immediately feel like I've become a warm lump of bread. In a good way! A lump of bread with blackcurrant jelly and butter. Close to my heart. I recommend listening to them while driving or taking a long walk. I've seen Pinback live twice--it was delightful!!
4. No More Stories Are Told Today I'm Sorry They Washed Away No More Stories The World Is Grey I'm Tired Let's Wash Away by Mew
I KNOW that title is ridiculously long. But I think it's swell. This album is wistful and innocent and another visually vibrant one--it swallows you up in its world which doesn't really make sense but engulfs anyway. A really really hopeful & strange dream that makes you sad to wake up from. There's a sense of infectious mystery and drama in its euphoric layers and bubbly crescendos. I love it. It makes me want to travel the world when I listen to it. The lyrics are sort of a scattered collection of random lines, which is what makes Mew all the more perfect. A dalliance with nonsense is wonderful and in a way allows for more subjective and polysemic experience--one can project their own meanings and feelings onto it.
5. Dennis by Sega Bodega
Dennis is an album that I didn't expect to like as much as I do--when it came out I'd already been familiar with Sega Bodega but never really considered anything of his a favorite. Then one day Dennis came out of nowhere and hit me in the face. There's a lot of context behind my enrapturement for this album, including a dream that I had roughly a month before my first listen which I won't get into, but which enhanced the album a lot for me. The music itself is this immersive wave of shadowy colors (can you see a theme among these albums?) that imply a reality layered on top of this one. It makes me feel like the secrets of the universe are being transmitted into my mind. I only listen to it in the dark.
Those are my top 5 for now. I'll probably add more. I have a big list.
