0.11.1 - You're as cold as ice
This is all by way of an apology for the slower progress and only one article this week. I tell myself that when we get into April, things will calm down, and I know that it's not, but I have to believe that it is.I have to believe that it is. As is usual, I came into this week without a plan, and because of the whole work thing, one did not form until late on into this week, but I've got a topic and I listened to some albums and I'm damned if I am not putting something up this week, so let's continue to alienate the people I know and set my music taste credibility on fire in one fell swoop.
Where to begin?
I think just about everyone I know on a personal level (I haven't mentioned this at work so I can continue to moan about it in relative safety) is aware that I've embarked on this project. This means that not only do I still have a significant portion of my solicited recommendations to work through, every so often I get an Whatsapp message from someone I know which basically says "Hey, have you listened to this album for your thing?", sometimes with some notes as to why they recommended it. One such message came from my very long term friend D, some I've shared significant musical crossover with in my lifetime, and with whom I spent a good decade or so trading mix CDs* or full albums with each other; I trust D's musical taste and I take his recommendations seriously.
I knew this was going to be trouble. Because I know D likes Lana Del Rey a lot and we've never really talked about her or her music and that's in part because he's not the first person to recommend her to me. Her following is huge, and she's a significant artist in a genre and style of music that I'm known to be partial to - the female singer/songwriter with a hook, something to draw you in and make them stand out from what's become a crowded market in the last 15 or so years. On paper, it's a solid recommendation by D, it ticks a lot of the boxes of music I like and friends, it pains me to say that I just don't like her or her music.
I've tried, several times actually. Every time there is a new album, when she's done some kind of collaboration with someone I actually do like, whenever one of her albums appears on a "Best Albums of X" list, I wonder whether this time I'll put on one of her records, and something in my brain will click and it will unlock for me what everyone else finds appealing about her. No matter how many times I throw myself at that particular locked door, it has steadfastly refused to move. I listened to Born To Die this week for what I think must now be into the double-digits of full listen throughs, but my walls are up and I felt no better about it this time than I have the times before.
So instead of trying to force myself to like it, I've sat with it for the last two days trying to put into words what is it about this album, but also Lana Del Rey's musical catalogue, that pushes me away. And with 36 or so hours of contemplation, the word which kept coming back to me over and over again as I pre-composed this article in my head was bloodless. As we will get to, the albums in this musical style which sit with me most comfortably are those where I am drawn to the honest and genuine expressions of emotion. I want to believe this is who you are, how you feel, I want the music and lyrics to make me feel like I know you better, help me understand your perspective, your experiences, your emotional state, so I can relate it to my own. There is an artfulness, an intentional distance, a cool and hollow detachment which Lana Del Rey brings to her music, performance, and persona which exists as the opposing magnetic force to everything that attracts me to songs and albums like hers in every other respect. I get it - it's a bit, an act, a gimmick, a marketing ploy, a unique selling point, a musical poker face; it's obviously sensationally successful and works for a lot of people.
Not me though.
Maybe the problem is just one of timing. Too many years of loving albums by women in this vague genre filled with fire and passion; every Tori Amos and Alanis Morrisette and Ani DiFranco album created a new level of expectation. Maybe if I had heard Born To Die outside of the context of those other performances, I'd be able to appreciate it for the craft and musicianship it has on it's own terms. But we will never know; I tried, and I'm certain Lana doesn't care, but I hope D knows that just because this one didn't land for me, I'm always open to the next one, and the next one, and the one after that.
So, now that I've upset every Lana Del Rey fan I know, where do we go from there? Well, there are many, many albums that listening to Born To Die made me want to listen to, so if you like LDR, or female singer/songwriters in general, here's eight albums I'd strongly recommend instead.
The first time I heard Born To Die, which is probably a decade ago at least, I remember thinking how much it reminded me of Bat For Lashes, a.k.a. Natasha Khan. Not only does Khan have the vastly superior stage name, and obviously came before LDR, but she also committed hard to musical insanity by taking the difficult second album and deciding to make it a narrative concept album sung by an alter-ego she created in the deserts of California. This is also one of, I think, the last albums I listened to a bunch without Catherine. We started dating at the very end of 2007, and I'd already listened to Fur and Gold by Bat For Lashes that year; around the middle of 2009 I had moved out of my flat in Chesterfield and into cohabitation with her in Sheffield. However, it has taken many many years for us to bleed together the Venn diagram circles of our musical tastes, and there are still aspects of Catherine's musical opinion spectrum that baffle me, so when this came out, I just...didn't share it with her. I never really listened to anything she released after this, but Two Suns exists for me as a kind of whimsical musical folly, ethereal electropop combined with lyrics which range from inscrutably abstract to deeply personal. Daniel was the standout track, and is still the best on the album to my mind, but I've probably not listened to this album in 15 years and it felt like going back to an old friend.
I listened to Turn Out The Lights by Julien Baker because I heard her on an episode of Song Exploder (one of the very few music podcasts I unreservedly recommend) talking about her song Appointments. By the time I heard it, I was long since past the worst of my depression, through therapy, off my old meds, in a better, calmer place. Music is subjective, opinions vary, but for me, there's isn't better musical representation of what starting that climb out of an unhealthy mental state feels like. When she sings "When I tell you that it is / well it's more for my benefit / maybe it's all going to turn out alright / and I know that it's not / but I have to believe that it is" I feel that. The rest of the album continues that thread, brutally self-reflective, the diary entries of a young woman struggling to piece herself back together. I think it's a masterpiece, it was my favourite album from 2018 by an unparalleled margin, it's on my list of albums I need to own in vinyl. It's maybe not a fun listen, but it's a powerful musical experience from start to finish.
I missed Phoebe Bridgers debut album on release, but as much as I immersed myself in Julien Baker, the insidious Spotify Algorithm continued to serve me up Stranger In The Alps as a recommendation, perhaps in an attempt to not have to play Turn Out The Lights for the ninth time in a week. My trust in the algorithmic recommendations has fallen dramatically in the last few years due to the enshittification of everything, but I was obviously in an more open-minded mood in 2018, because eventually I caved and put the album on without any real context for who she was or what the album sounded like. I remember listening to it, getting up to Scott Street at track five, and then stopping and going back and listening to Funeral on repeat three or four times before finishing the whole album. The whole thing is beautifully sad and melancholy, and like the album before it, I truly, deeply love this album. Funeral can still make me cry when I listen to it if I am in the appropriate frame of mind, and I'm a massive sucker for You Missed My Heart as well. I'd give a sizable portion of my earnings for the opportunity to see her live, and this album is another of my upcoming vinyl purchases.
While we are in 2018, a lot of people I know had a Mitski phase that year, and I was not immune. As we slid towards the December, every list I saw, every rumination of what would be the album of the year included Be The Cowboy somewhere amongst its ranks. This is not that album (obviously), but after overcoming some initial resistance to her 2018 album, I embraced it to such a degree that I made a point of going back to earlier Mitski albums just to avoid burning myself out on it. There are many things to like about Retired From Sad, New Career In Business, not the least of which is the title which is one of the great album titles of all time**. It's short (under 30 minutes and just 9 tracks) and punchy which makes it an ideal sampler platter for her electronic flair and acidic perspective on both herself and those around her. It's possible that the five albums which come after this are better (and I am saving them to do all together at some point, another reason I picked this album), but it's a fun listen in less time than it takes to watch an episode of Parks & Rec.
Well, it finally happened, and I'm amazed I made it to 351 albums listened to before I accidentally repeated myself. I'd listened to Tiger's Blood a lot last year after reading a random Rolling Stone review that I got served somewhere in my social media and just on a whim added it to Spotify to listen to over the coming weeks; I knew I had done a Waxahatchee album already, assumed it was Tiger's Blood, and so listened to Saint Cloud, despite that being the exact same logic I used when I listened to Saint Cloud the first time back in January. It's a good job I said I wanted to relisten to it then, because I did this week (still good). I remember specifically listening to Tiger's Blood on the train going up to Edinburgh and on the train back from going to see the Eras Tour in June; the country twang, the emotional sensibility of the boygenius set relocated from New York to the rural Alabama is what makes this so uniquely compelling to me.
Another buzzy album, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You got the full Be The Cowboy treatment a few years later in 2023, and once more, I had to know what all the fuss was about. My first thought when I listened to it was that this was someone who had listened to a lot of Imogen Heap. Also like Be The Cowboy, I didn't get it initially, but as I always do, I came back a couple of times to see if it clicked for me (a habit I formed after struggling to fall in love with Kid A many many many years ago), and what it really needed was just a little focused attention. I still think she borrows a lot from Imogen Heaps (and Roisin Murphy, once one of my favourite musicians now sadly consigned to the mental dumpster because of her terrible opinions) but that's not a bad thing - there's huge room for experimental pop and this album is a sublime incarnation of it.
Speaking of which, I chose to go back and listen to Sparks here because I got halfway through it when I covered Speak For Yourself and Ellipse... a couple of weeks ago and I wanted to make sure I covered it; This is the last Imogen Heap album I listened to before she managed the double whammy of writing music for the Harry Potter play and getting way into NFTs which drastically reduced my interest in her output, but she goes out on a high because I think this might be her most interesting album of that trilogy. There's a whole bunch of interesting poetry in play throughout this album - several of the tracks seems to manage to be both song lyric and screenplay at the same time, and somehow I always end up feeling like Imogen Heaps is breaking up with me personally when I listen to these albums.
My enjoyment of Orla Gartland comes directly through Catherine; I think sometimes she thinks I don't take her music recommendations on face value, but there are I think enough examples of her finding musicians we've come to mutually appreciate, or even that I've grown to enjoy more than her (like The National) to put the lie to that. This was another album where I walked into her office in an evening and said "what are you listening to?" a few times and got the same answer. I started putting in on in the car when we were driving places, and gradually and by degrees I grew more and more fond of it. There's a great sense of self-deprecation here, winning people onto her side by making jokes at her own expense, but she's got great range, operatic in Over Your Head, stripped back and sad on Pretending, and with a propulsive energy on You're Not Special Babe and Codependency. I'm extremely excited to have tickets to see her in Manchester (which are still available!), so if I can encourage you to do anything for me, I'd urge you to listen to both Woman On The Internet and Everybody Needs a Hero (which I'll cover in a couple of weeks post-gig) and come see the show in Manchester; it's at the best music venue in the north of England, and I will be there***!
In the meantime, let's hope my job calms down enough for me to be able to get back to doing three of these a week instead of two.
*For reasons lost in the mists of time, every time D and I trade a mix CD we always include Joan Osborne's 'One of Us' on the track listing; this I think originates from a mislabelled mp3 back in the day during one of our CD exchanges, but the bit has been ongoing for two and a half decades now and the in joke is too firmly embedded to give up on at this point.
** Along with Retired From Sad,... I'm particularly partial to the Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton album called Knives Don't Have Your Back.
*** I will be in the crowd, but the people reading this either know me in real life and so we can hang out whenever, or have no idea what I look like so will not be able to pick me out of the crowd. Still come to the show though, it will be good.
