It’s a lyric to Brand New’s “Sic Transit Gloria … Glory Fades” off of the absolutely stellar album Deja Entendu. That’s what this writing is about. …Not Brand New, but those essential albums. Those albums we put on and it described us down to every note, every vocalization, every harmony. In these albums we find essential for us, I think we find an emotional description that we want to be in. At the moment our heart is trying to communicate, a tempo will tell you exactly how you feel, felt, want to feel. It’s remarkable. These Arms Are Snakes I loved when I was younger and had no idea why they sounded so perfect to me. I got older and I loved the songs even more because it was an emotion that never really left me, depression and destruction to finding a change in chord or pacing that tells me there’s always a way to manage those feelings. “We’ll stay here, but eventually we have to move on”. Music to me is one of the easiest ways for me to understand how to describe an emotion. There are songs that move you to tears and you have no idea why, there are ones to express how angry/fed up with whatever. There are some albums though, that just fuckin get it. To be 17, 18 (I was a bit older than that), filled with angst and no real words to express how you felt then you hear “A Box Full of Sharp Objects” by the Used and you’re like “YES, EXACTLY!”
I don’t like just one genre because I am not capable of existing in just one place. Today it’s emo/punk/hardcore today because it’s like emotional support for whatever the hell my body is trying to tell me (reminisce of youth maybe?), tomorrow could be jazz or shoegaze, fuck if I know. There’s so many different emotions I can or have felt, I’ve heard a song telling me about that one moment I never let go of. Good or Bad becomes bittersweet. An album between friends where the experience of that moment can’t be shared because somehow you both understood where you were through the songs. It’s never communicated when it happens… you just sort of exist, in notes, as if somehow a moment of time belongs to you. Really that’s just what freedom feels like. And there is no shortage of that around. Incubus’ ‘Make Yourself’, Modest Mouse’s ‘Good News For People Who Love Bad News’, Cold War Kids ‘Robbers & Cowards’, The Mars Volta “De-Loused in the Comatorium’….there are so many albums that breathed new life into me that I wouldn’t understand much of the world without them or at least the possibilities of what are possible. Any time someone tries to tell me they don’t “like” a certain genre, my response is you probably haven’t heard the right song yet.
Seriously, have you listened to Mitski’s ‘Crack Baby’, I was on the verge of tears the first time I heard it because I could now understand the feeling to want something so bad and not know how to ask for it, or even if it was okay to ask. Ugh. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds ‘I Need You’ broke me, the video made me truly feel what someone’s feeling of despair feels like. The drummer cries the whole song on the video. Some things just can’t be said or expressed through words, it’s difficult sometimes. But if you listen closely sometimes, you can hear someone trying to speak to you through their choices that day. Just to let you know what kind of headspace they’re in. Really…just you know…listen to your favorite albums again. Music is great. It really helps feel like a friend is in the room sometimes, or at least it’s that way to me.
Something With Nothing 