Unfortunately I am falling behind on a lot of my writing work lately, so I’m going to be taking a few weeks off to catch up. It happens from time to time…whether it’s the Day Job sapping my energy or other non-writing things taking precedence now and again, I just run out of space on the schedule. It’s not my favorite feeling, to be honest, and sometimes I have to sacrifice things here and there. It’s not always to catch up, either…sometimes it’s just to give myself a mental and physical break to rest.
I think it was around this time that I started running out of gas while writing The Balance of Light. [For those playing along, I’d stalled right about where Poe follows Denni and Amna up to Trisanda in Act 3. I knew how to end the book…I think I was just afraid of it this huge years-long project finally coming to an end and doing a crap job of it.] To clear my head I’d started working on the vampire novel more often.
Weirdly enough, I think I was just running out of things to listen to…? There’s this strange era between 2004 and 2007 where I’d lost interest in indie radio. It could be that I was stuck between the lingering effects of alternative metal on one end of the spectrum and indie folk that was a little too esoteric on the other, and neither were really resonating with me. That, and a lot of my favorite bands were in between albums so I wouldn’t hear from them for a while longer.
Danger Mouse & Jay-Z, The Grey Album, early April 2004. Looking at my mp3 collection, 2004 was the peak of the initial mash-up wave, and this one is bonkers fun: DM’s decision to take Jay-Z’s The Black Album and The Beatles’ white album and create something new could have been terrible but instead it’s surprisingly enjoyable and highly amusing. Allegedly both Jay-Z and Paul McCartney thought it was great!
Ambulance LTD, LP, 6 April 2004. This band sadly came and went too quickly, releasing only two EPs and a single album, but it’s all worth checking out. I played the hell out of this record in the Belfry at the time, especially the great opener “Yoga Means Union”.
tweaker, 2am wakeup call, 20 April 2004. Chris Vrenna’s second album remains one of my favorite albums of that year, and it got all sorts of play the entire summer. It features vocals from Robert Smith, Hamilton Leithauser and David Sylvian, and a hauntingly gorgeous instrumental track featuring Johnny Marr that I’ve embedded above. Highly recommended.
Prince, Musicology, 20 April 2004. In between all the funk-heavy NPG Music Club albums he’d dropped for the last couple of years, this was a surprise mainstream hit that got considerable airplay both with the title track and “Cinnamon Girl”. It felt like a record on par musically with Sign ‘o’ the Times for me.
The Beta Band, Heroes to Zeros, 4 May 2004. Their last record’s title may have hit a bit too close to home considering they were no longer indie critic darlings at the time, but that didn’t seem to bother them any with this oddball collection.
The Magnetic Fields, i, 4 May 2004. The fun thing about Stephin Merritt and his many projects is that you can never really take him all that seriously, even when he’s writing breakup songs. Between his basso profundo voice and his quirky and self-effacing lyrics, you can’t help but like him. “I Thought You Were My Boyfriend” was a college radio favorite.
Mission of Burma, ONoffON, 4 May 2004. Their first new album in multiple decades, three of the four original members come back with a loud and blistering record that successfully captures their chaotic post-punk sound that influenced so many others. The fascinating thing is that there’s also an element of quietness here as well, inspired by the members’ time in much calmer bands.
Secret Machines, Now Here Is Nowhere, 18 May 2004. This was another favorite of the year, and an album that got a ton of play during my writing sessions for its deep dive into hard rock tinged with eclectic prog and maybe even a bit of psychedelia. This one earned them a small but highly loyal fanbase that remains to this day and even spread to the side project School of Seven Bells. Highly recommended.
The Fall, 50,000 Fall Fans can’t Be Wrong: 39 Golden Greats, 8 June 2004. A near-perfect sampler of a band with a convoluted discography on several different labels and an always-shifting membership. It’s oddly missing songs from I Am Kurious Oranj however, the 1988 album that helped them gain considerably more popularity in indie circles.
My Chemical Romance, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, 8 June 2004. You either love this band or you hate them. For me, they were a band I disliked at first but heard “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” and “Helena” so much on WHMP that they grew on me. Not quite goth, not quite alternative metal, not quite emo, but somewhere in between.
The Killers, Hot Fuss, 15 June 2004. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t the biggest fan of this band at first, and the breakthrough single “Somebody Told Me” just kind of bounced right off of me as too glam and too alt-rock-goes-disco for my tastes, but the more I heard the other singles the more I liked them, and finally bought it when I heard “All The Things That I’ve Done” which remains one of my favorite songs of theirs.
The Cure, The Cure, 29 June 2004. I’d mentioned this one earlier when I blogged about the band’s 2000s-era releases, and at the time I really wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I liked it, especially the darker-edged songs like “Lost” and “The End of the World”, but its sound was just so unlike them that it was a bit of a hard listen.
I often say that 2005 was the year of major change in my life (getting married and moving twice and all, among other things), but it really started in 2004. I’d met A online and by the summer we were constantly running into each other on LiveJournal. I was writing The Balance of Light at the time and having a terrible time with it, and writing a vampire novel as a way to distract myself. I’d head to my first Worldcon that autumn when it came to Boston. I’d quit buying comics cold turkey when my go-to comics store closed up shop, and I even started thinking seriously about looking to find my own apartment. Life was changing whether I was ready for it or not.
Musically I’d latched onto LAUNCHcast, a sort of proto-Spotify site where one could curate a playlist by way of a ratings system. [And given that my house was in a radio desert, I couldn’t always listen to WHMP or WFNX at the time unless I was in the car or using my stereo upstairs.] Given my music obsessions, it wasn’t long before it provided me with the kind of indie and electronic rock I enjoyed so much.
The Crystal Method, Legion of Boom, 13 January 2004. I’d completely forgotten there was an album between this one and their mega-selling Vegas (the one with “Busy Child” and “Trip Like I Do” on it), so I thought I’d try them out again. This one got a bit of play in the Belfry during my writing sessions.
Air, Talkie Walkie, 20 January 2004. This band is on the ‘I will buy anything from them’ list, and this one became a huge favorite of mine that year, getting a lot of play all around, not just during writing sessions but my occasional road trips as well. I loved that it retained the dreaminess of their Moon Safari album yet sounded futuristic.
Stereolab, Margerine Eclipse, 27 January 2004. Another band I was woefully behind on in terms of collecting at the time, I liked playing this one on the weekends when I had my hours-long writing sessions.
Yes, The Ultimate Yes: 35th Anniversary Collection, 27 January 2004. I’d always been a huge fan of this band, though everything I owned of theirs was on scratchy used vinyl, having acquired them over the years in dollar bins, heh. This was a great full discography-so-far collection that was quite a pleasure to listen to.
The Walkmen, Bows + Arrows, 3 February 2004. Long before Hamilton Leithauser showed up on indie radio with his solo and collective projects, he was the lead singer of this great indie band that got a ton of play on LAUNCHcast and college radio with the song “The Rat”. Highly recommended.
Incubus, A Crow Left of the Murder…, 4 February 2004. Sure, you hear those same two or three hit singles from this band on alternative rock radio these days. Back when this came out, the singles “Megalomaniac” and “Talk Shows on Mute” got a ton of play on alternative radio, but sadly this album tends to be forgotten for the most part. It’s one of their most tense and dense records though, and well worth checking out.
Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand, 9 February 2004. Yes, that band with that song! They’ve always been a bit of an oddball band that slid between arty post-punk and groovy glam and somehow made it not just fresh and new, but made it irresistibly catchy as well.
Junkie XL, Radio JXL: A Broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin, 10 February 2004. One of my favorite records of the year, this is a two-cd collection of electronic rock and house mixes and a thrill to listen to. Released just a few years before Tom Holkenborg focused mostly on film scores, this one’s highly recommended.
Audio Learning Center, Cope Park, 26 February 2004. This not-quite-grunge rock band from Portland were big on the moodier pockets of the genre, leaning a bit more towards emo and post-rock in some places. They only dropped two albums (this is the second) but they’re well worth checking out. This one got a lot of play in the Belfry.
TV On the Radio, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, 9 March 2004. I picked this one up mainly due to the fact that every music critic out there were getting their minds blown by this record, and they weren’t wrong. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of this band at first, considering their sound back then was a bit difficult to describe. But the track “Dreams” was just so emotionally dire that I knew then that this was a record I’d enjoy.
The Vines, Winning Days, 21 March 2004. Their second record after the critically acclaimed Highly Evolved was a bit of both ‘more of the same’ and ‘heading further into psychedelia’ and while it wasn’t as popular as their debut, it was just as enjoyable to listen to.
The Standard, Wire Post to Wire, 23 March 2004. I latched onto the track “Even Numbers” via LAUNCHcast and I picked this one up soon after I’d heard it maybe twice. They were another Portland band made out of former members of other local indie groups, and this was their third and most popular album. This one got a lot of play in the Belfry as well.
Jem, Finally Woken, 24 March 2004. This quirky British singer had a minor hit with the trippy “They” single that got a lot of play on the local indie rock stations and kind of labeling her as a one hit wonder in the process, but the rest of this album is well worth checking out. To me she was like Alison Goldfrapp only a lighter and trippier.
L’arc~en~Ciel, Smile, 31 March 2004. I’d been a fan of this band since hearing “Spirit Dreams Inside” at the tail end of the 2001 Final Fantasy movie, but alas they were always super hard to find unless I was willing to spend thirty dollars on Japanese imports. This was one of their first American releases and featured one of their best hits and their most popular, “Ready Steady Go” (which at the time was also the opening theme for the anime show Fullmetal Alchemist).
Sorry for the lack of interesting things to blog lately, but I’ve just been super busy at the Day Job and trying to get more writing work done on Theadia. Because of that, my blog schedule for Walk in Silence might continue to be a bit askew until further notice. Stay tuned!
It was only a matter of time after the brilliant Get Back documentary that they’d polish up the footage and sound that would become the official movie Let It Be, and it’s finally here and officially available for the first time in who knows how long.
I’m looking forward to watching it partly because my copy is definitely bootlegged with muddy and grainy sound and visual. I mean, they shot it on 32mm to begin with on the original idea that it would be a TV show and not a full-blown theatrical release, so it’s going to be kind of need to see it as clear as the documentary was.
(It drops tomorrow on Disney+, by the way.)
And will I own it in my movie collection when it becomes available? Of course I will!
I was reading some random posts on Threads the other day and someone mentioned how when some people talk about ‘the 90s’ (specifically about music), a lot of what they mention really started in the 80s, like Jane’s Addiction and their amazing 1988 album Nothing’s Shocking.
To which I responded: “I always say the truly formative alt rock years were really ’84-’89. It just happened to reach wider popularity in ’91.”
Which of course made me think that I really need to get my act together and finally write and complete that Walk in Silence book project. I think at this point it would be less a historical book and more of a personal memoir in which I write about the important albums and singles that influenced and inspired me during that time. And I’ve kind of been doing a very abbreviated version of it with my daily 750Words, so perhaps I’m a bit further ahead on this than I think I am…?
Walk In Silence 