While we’re on the subject, I’ve been thinking about that very question, because there are quite a few.
Sometimes it’s a song that resonated deeply with me in high school which didn’t just show up on multiple mixtapes (and was played deafeningly loud on my Walkman at night) but also made repeat appearances on writing soundtracks and was quoted in some of my juvenilia…
…or an obscure non-album single I discovered in the bargain bin at a K-Mart and fell in love with…
…or a deep cut that gets stuck in my head for days at a time, and also serves as a perfect point where DM and Yazoo intersect thanks to Vince Clarke…
…or another deep track where they are at their most German-inspired industrial…
…or a song that displays their ability to be both romantic and unsettling at the same time…
…and oh yeah, even some of their new tracks retain the band’s ability to be creepy…
…or mysterious…
…or have the uncanny knack of writing a catchy song about dark subjects like mortality.
So yeah, I have a lot to work with here. This is by no means a complete list, as I know I skipped at least five other songs I wanted to add. I’m really looking forward to revisiting this band once again!
The new Doves record Constellations for the Lonely has been on heavy rotation here at the New Digs, especially during writing sessions. They’ve always been a favorite of mine, and this new record was well worth the wait. Opening the album with dark and gloomy (and heavily reverbed) piano chords on “Renegade” definitely evokes that feeling of an oncoming rainstorm. Perfect mood music to inspire me.
Recently I’ve started listening to the recent Deluxe Edition version, which features the album in instrumental form. Not that I dislike Jimi Goodwin’s voice — his tone reminds me of Guy Garvey from Elbow, strong without having to exert power behind it — but it’s great to hear just how brilliant and slightly psychedelic this trio’s sound can be.
Who, you say? He’s the extremely underrated bassist for the band Ride, who you may well remember because I often mention via their brilliant 1992 song “Leave Them Far Behind” or their recent reactivation over the last five years. While the two vocalist/guitarists from the band (Andy Bell and Mark Gardener) have both had impressive solo careers, Queralt remained in the background, only resurfacing a few years back with fellow bandmate, drummer Loz Colbert, on an instrumental side project called ID. He’s just dropped his first solo album, Swallow, in mid-June.
I admit I wasn’t sure what I was expecting with this record, but I was definitely not expecting what sounds frighteningly like a Lush album! Part of it of course is that Lush’s Emma Anderson — someone who’s also recently resurfaced with a solo project — joins on vocals for a handful of songs. The record definitely has that reverb-heavy feel to it, but interestingly has moments of Radiohead influence as well, such as the strange ambience of “Mission Creep” or the rattling noise of “Messengers”.
I’ve been returning to this one a lot lately, quickly earning a spot as a writing soundtrack!
I really have no idea how this band passed me by for six years! Perhaps I’d heard one or two songs on KEXP, but somehow I never got around to checking them out until this last weekend, when their first album was reissued. And man, this band is totally in my wheelhouse: sludgy, noisy echoey shoegaze that’s equal parts Lush, MBV, Curve and maybe even a bit of Boston indie in there as well (especially Mistle Thrush and Swirlies). And Lush’s Miki Berenyi even shows up on one of their songs! It all screams this is now a part of your permanent writing soundtrack collection to me.
Yeah, I’m going to have to investigate this band further, because I am hooked.
Believe it or not I did not listen to Revolver this time out while I did our taxes! Just…didn’t feel in the mood, I guess. But yes, everything is done and away until next year. Who knows what they’re going to look like then?
In the meantime, I’ve been revisiting some music from 2001-2002 — the Belfry Years, specifically the albums that were on heavy rotation during the writing of A Division of Souls, which I’m currently ‘remastering’. [Long story short if you don’t follow my writing blog: It’s been ten years this September since I first self-published the book, so I thought I’d do a tenth anniversary special edition. I’m currently doing a bit of revision and clean-up where needed, fixing up the cover a bit, and perhaps adding some extra bonus things. And yes, I will most likely be doing this for The Persistence of Memories and The Balance of Light as well.]
So what’s popped up that I’m enjoying once more?
I’d forgotten how much I loved Zero 7’s Simple Things! It’s a lovely record that feels a bit like Morcheeba with a hint of Air and “Destiny” is just a wonderful track.
The Chameleons UK shows up on my playlists partly because I love the track “Swamp Thing” so much, but this 2001 album was an amazing return to form after a long hiatus for the group. Highly recommended.
Big Wreck has always been one of my unsung favorites. They’re one of those bands that are absolutely amazing yet have never had a huge following. Loud and extremely melodic, they’re definitely not alt-metal, but they’re not just another 90s alt-rock band either. I highly recommend checking out all their work.
I kinda sorta liked Coldplay’s “Yellow” when it came out, but I wasn’t completely sold on their lighter sound. I even passed up picking up their second album A Rush of Blood to the Head until I heard them do “Politik” live on the Grammys in early 2003. That’s when I realized just how amazing “God Put a Smile Upon Your Face” is, and how this band has a lot more going on than just radio friendly fare.
I’ve been listening to a lot of music from 2000-2001 lately, and this song popped up on my playlist. Blur can be kind of odd at times, but this one’s strange even by their standards. It was a new track to sell up their Best of album that dropped on 30 October 2000, but it pretty much sounds like an extended jam session set in a single key, feedback and all. It might be filler, but it’s also infectious and demands to be cranked up.
Still, one of my favorite songs of theirs, and I absolutely love the oddball video they made for it.
I’ve been going through my music library for the year 2000 to revisit what I would be listening to in the Belfry, and I think I’ve figured out the point where I knew the HMV days were truly over and when the Belfry days kicked into high gear. It’s actually a surprisingly stark line that jives with when I was given the quit-or-be-fired ultimatum from my terrible boss. It’s August of 2000, and by the end of the month I’d be gone.
The Dandy Warhols, Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, 1 August 2000. Although I’m almost certain I bought this in my final days at HMV and listened to it around that time, I want to say this was an album I spent more time listening to in the Belfry. I wasn’t even the biggest DW fan; by this point I’d heard their earlier hit “Not if You Were the Last Junkie On Earth” for the zillionth time on WFNX and did not like it to begin with, hearing “Godless” turned the tables for me. I remember listening to this one a lot during the summer evenings and weekends while figuring out what I wanted to do with The Phoenix Effect.
Between then and the end of the month, I did pick up a handful of CDs both from the record store and from Newbury Comics — by then my weekly comic book run had started to include a quick stop there to look for things my own store might not carry (or sell cheaper).
Goldfrapp, Felt Mountain, 11 September 2000. I’d left the record store by this point and was just starting at Yankee Candle — a westerly commute instead of an easterly one, and twenty miles shorter at that — but I really didn’t want to disconnect from my weekly accumulation of music. I could just as easily buy copies of my favorite music magazines, CMJ (College Music Journal) and ICE (an industry magazine featuring news on new releases) at Newbury Comics. I think this was one of the first that I bought there after starting the new job.
VAST, Music for People, 12 September 2000. I know I bought this one the same day as the Goldfrapp album (and the Barenaked Ladies album Maroon as well). I’d been a big fan of Jon Crosby’s first album under the VAST moniker and while this one felt slightly more upbeat and less steeped in Nine Inch Nails-esque gloom, it featured some amazing tracks that got a lot of play in the Belfry.
*
I actually wouldn’t start writing A Division of Souls for another year and a half, maybe early 2002 after the frustrations brought about by The Phoenix Effect and its sequel The Mihari, which I was writing at the time. The two books do have a lot of similarities to A Division of Souls, however, and it was simply a decision to stop work on both TPE and TM and completely start over from scratch. [Very similar to what I’d done recently with Theadia, actually.]
The music that inspired the project, however, started around this time when I switched day jobs. It wasn’t a clean switch of course, as I actually worked second shift for my first couple of months (3 – 11pm or thereabouts) and wouldn’t move to first shift until sometime in November. It would be around that time when my writing sessions would truly become more stable and frequent, as would my weekly trips to Newbury to pick up new music.
I said I was going to do it and I’m doing it now: I’m currently going through the albums and singles from 2000 onwards as a soundtrack to the Bridgetown Trilogy Remaster Project. I started the revisit on Monday afternoon on my day off with William Orbit’s remixed take on Barber’s Adagio for Strings, one of my all-time favorite classical pieces.
I know, this is sort of an arbitrary place to start and doesn’t really line up with the writing chronology. I’d started and finished The Phoenix Effect (the early ‘demo’ version, if you want to continue the music analogy) but hadn’t yet started writing its aborted sequel The Mihari (that would take place that summer if I’m not mistaken), but the actual day-one of A Division of Souls wouldn’t take place until late 2001 or early 2002.
So why start the relistening at January 2000? Partly because I knew my days were numbered at the record store by then. I still loved the job and wished I could stay there forever, but a) I could definitely see the downturn of the music industry happening in real time, and b) I wasn’t sure how much longer I could handle the store manager without eventually ragequitting. It was also a bit of a weird time musically; grunge had long given way to adult alternative which had given way to meathead alt-metal, and pop was having a huge resurgence with its sugary overproduced electronica.
A lot of music I listened to at the time felt a bit out of place. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to listen to, because very little of it was resonating with me at a deep level, as it once had just a few years previous. That could very well be due to personal issues and changes, and at the time I was feeling unmoored.
Still, I was willing to see where it all took me. Life changes and all.
Okay, so I have to remind myself that sometimes I don’t need to listen to the entire broadcast day of KEXP when I happen to have the time and access to it. It’s great background music, but by mid-afternoon I start feeling that I’ve lost the plot of what I need to get done. No offense to Larry Mizell Jr — he’s a great afternoon DJ and I pick up a lot of great tunage from him, but sometimes I really should focusing more on, say, my writing session or getting a blog entry done. And I can’t always do that when my favorite station is dropping new things that capture my attention. It’s too easy of a distraction.
This constant connection not only distracts me from my writing work, it also takes away from my ability to occasionally deep-dive into my own library sometimes. I mean, it’s not as if I’m missing out…KEXP stores their show streams for two weeks so I can always listen to that if need be. Point is, I’ve been visiting the old Songs from the Eden Cycle mixtapes and realizing there are some great tracks there from albums I haven’t played in years! I feel it’s far past time to give them another spin.
I know, I know…I’ve been talking about doing this listening habit reset for years and never quite doing so. But considering my decision to make this year about Following Through, perhaps now is that time. Even if it means I have to work out a schedule to create some kind of stability (hey, that’s what my whiteboard schedule is there for). That might not be a bad idea, considering I’ve been feeling the urge to get back to Doing All The Things. Not just the writing projects, but revisiting the 750Words site as well as returning to my drawing. I have the drive and the inclination, I just have to, y’know, do it now.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve actively listened to Radiohead, especially during my writing sessions. During the Belfry days, The Bends and OK Computer would get a lot of play, but the last time I played them a lot while writing was back in 2016 when A Moon Shaped Pool came out. [Has it really been that long since their last album?]
I think part of it is because I was working on different projects at the time. In Rainbows came out when I was writing the trunked Love Like Blood. I’d just started working on the multi-year revision work for the Bridgetown Trilogy when The King of Limbs dropped, but by that time I was obsessing over several other bands and Radiohead kind of fell by the wayside. The ever-increasing gap between albums caused a bit of a distance for me as well.
Now that I’m working on the ADoS remaster, however, I’ve been tempted to do another revisit of those albums. I’ve been a longtime fan literally since “Creep” dropped here in the US in early 1993, and I’ve picked up most of the members’ solo releases as well. Perhaps this is the perfect time!
