TOP 10 INFLUENTIAL ALBUMS

It’s been snowing this morning and I’m finishing up my “winter holiday” gift boxes (2 months “late”!) to mail out. The snow and quiet had me in kind of a mellow mood, so I put on “Snow is Falling in Manhattan” by Purple Mountains, and after repeating it a few times, began side A from the top, and listened through several times. It got me wanting to send the record to my mom, but since it wouldn’t fit in the box, my mind began to wander, and I’ve arrived here.

Surely, you know that music is deeply important to me. A large part of its importance for me personally has been the aspect of sharing stories present in some music. My very being has been molded so deeply by some of these stories that I cannot help but think of them when I think of blending my life with another person. I generally want to merge deeply with those whom I am close to, and find it to be basically impossible, which is fine… but I think I’m comfortable with it being fine largely because of the intimate relationships I have with these musical ideas that have molded me.

As such, I’d like to highlight some of these records so I can share them with others I’ve been so fortunate to learn about and love. If your eyes are reading these words, or you are hearing them spoken, you belong here, and wherever you are. I think the AA people have a phrase “in the perfection of [their] own timing,” in regard to how we move through this life and world. It clearly doesn’t apply to politics lol, but, maybe it does…

I’m being coy and teasing because wherever we are, we got there incrementally, and we can move in the direction we wish at each moment. I think the earnestness and vulnerability of many of these songs appeals to me because I often feel aloof and naive in my belief that love is stronger than fear. My rebuttal cannot be classified as “logical” or “spiritual” because it is both and neither; I can’t identify it, other than in the recognition that I have connected with something as a part of relationships such as these I’m outlining here. Maybe we’ll never see “Love” “triumph” in this world we wander through daily, but I truly believe if we do, it will be because of small, personal adjustments and looking deeply into sadness and loneliness to find that core of belonging it implies. We cannot “run from” or “wallow in” anything essential. It simply is who we are. Sadness is hope, and it is also vitality should we accept and eventually welcome it as it is, without trying to force it to be something else, and letting our response guide our path…

I digress…

It all sounds so "easy”… Am I so naive? I am, yet I am also working on my own behalf, and I trust my assessment that it and not it are happening simultaneously sometimes, and at others sequentially. ..hence the rhythm, the melody, the on and off. The play. And the waiting. Listening, perhaps.

Annnnyway, let me mention some albums that have molded my being. I hope you “in_joy”.

*I’m going to embed these as youtube videos/playlists for ease of perusal, but I encourage you to use other sources to listen if at all possible

PURPLE MOUNTAINS by PURPLE MOUNTAINS (2019)

I’m gonna start with this one so you can just listen to it. Listen to the lyrics. I’m gonna embed a few other albums and return to write about them when I have more time. I’ll just get it started with some content and go from there. This page may be edited at any time, and might not always have 10 albums on it (as like now).

TEEN DREAM by BEACH HOUSE (2010)

HAVE ONE ON ME by JOANNA NEWSOM (2010)

AGE OF ADZ by SUFJAN STEVENS (2010)

AQUEMINI by OUTKAST (1998)

BAD MUSIC FOR BAD PEOPLE by THE CRAMPS (1984)

KID A by RADIOHEAD (2000)

PARALYTIC STALKS by OF MONTREAL (2012)

I could’ve chosen Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer, or False Priest, or Skeletal Lamping… even The Sunlandic Twins… but I ultimately chose this record because it has all the candor I appreciate from the other records I mention from this period of of Montreal, but aggressively battling for every remaining idealistic notion of beauty and generosity imaginable within a heavily tumultuous time in the musician’s life. It’s a coming of age record, and I am always doing (and therefore needing) that. I love the concept of fighting for peace, though I now realize it simply doesn’t work. But to have this record of the tragic death of idealism has been really important for me. I know neither Kevin nor myself have truly given up on radical generosity of spirit, though we have both likely given up to some degree on trying to battle disintegration and dystopia (to just accept it and try to make beauty anyway is powerful and meaningful and effective). In this record you can hear some of the most benevolent human hopes and scathing criticisms of our ego-driven failings of each other as alleged “brothers and sisters.” Hear the pathos of his screaming in “Ye, Renew the Plaintiff” or his unflinching assessment of our pitiful condition in “Dour Percentage.” Have your hopes dashed by a few moments of glowing optimism in the final track “Authentic Pyrrhic Remission” before they’re overwhelmed by a creeping discordant noise, which from this current moment can be seen as a shockingly disturbing premonition of the thick, anxious aesthetic that has come to characterize his work since about 2019 hence.

”THE BLUE ALBUM” by WEEZER (1994)

At this point in time, I am basically embarrassed by this, BUT, this is, in many ways, the most important album of my life. This is the album that led me through the most difficult, alienated period of my youth. At the tender age of 15, when I was in a new city and struggling to discover my identity and sexuality from within the context of skateboarding and high school, against the moralistic backdrop of my family in the Bible Belt of Atlanta, USA and the increasing personalization of tech devices, this album taught me that my confusion, jealousy, ambition, suffering were not only manageable, but also inviting (or more accurately, it suggested the possibility that such could be true). I am still on that journey of sharing as I write this, but it was during my insomniac nights of listening to this album from top to bottom in my room that I realized I HAD to become a musician myself, in order to “pay back” what this album gave me: the tools to survive being alive. All music builds on what preceded it, and though this album was the harbinger of my fate, it is also equally a “drop in the bucket.”

PURE GUAVA by WEEN (1992)

…..

SOUND OF SILVER by LCD SOUNDSYSTEM

KAPUTT by DESTROYER

FADING TRAILS by MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC COMPANY

MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY by KANYE WEST