I hate to bore you with quarantine talk, as we all know it’s a completely over-saturated topic of conversation, BUT we just so happen to be coming in on a month of isolation and as you and I both know, isolation needs company. Whether it's a film, a book, arthouse porn, zoom "house parties", your ugly/cute pet, or what I consider to be the ultimate companion, MUSIC, we all need something to get us through this indefinite period of pre-apocalyptic-homesick-blues. If you're anything like me(and hopefully you're not), you may be experiencing some extreme highs and lows, where one minute you're feeling perfectly fine after a neighborhood jog and the next minute you're say, sobbing over a scene from Paris Texas or crying tears of overwhelming joy during the last scene of Dirty Dancing. Whether you're quietly having a panic attack in your room or dancing like everyone is watching because we all know you're a complete fucking narcissist, we've made a list of albums that will get you through just about anything, no matter which self or mood you're currently channeling.
MELLOW AND INTROSPECTIVE
Julianna Barwick - Will (2016)
Julianna Barwick's warm, ethereal music will make you feel like you're coming off of a ship that just crossed the Atlantic, slicing slowly through a cloud of pale violet fog, and seeing land for the first time. And that land is filled with nymphs, echoes, falsettos, violins, and whatever else it is that means you've waltzed into some sort of Lynchian dream world far, far away from the fucked up dystopia in which you currently exist. Listen to this album as evening turns to night, headphones on, staring up at the sky.
Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of The Titanic (1994)
If you really want to feel sad, or rather just feel everything, listen to this album. I first listened to it while I was high at a friend's apartment in Bushwick, we were all dancing feverishly and then slowly ended up sitting on the wood floor crying and talking about how beautiful life is. British composer Gavin Bryars was inspired by the story of how the band on the Titanic continued to play songs of infinite sorrow as the ship started to sink. The songs have an oceanic, calming quality to them. Listen to it as you're falling asleep.
Arthur Russel "Instrumentals" - First Thought Best Thought (2002)
I like to listen to this in the morning when I'm writing. Volume 1 feels for the most part hopeful, upbeat, almost childish in the overall feeling but not in the production. It makes you want to do things. Volume 2 gets more serious, with darker, more introspective tones. Tower of Meaning is more on the triumphant, spiritual side, ending with "Sketch For The Face of Helen", which is an unnerving ten minute long concoction of sounds.
DANCE LIKE NO ONE (OR EVERYONE) IS WATCHING
Blood Orange - Cupid Deluxe (2013)
If you lived in New York City when this was released, you know this album was playing at every single dive bar and dance club in town. Dev Hynes, an absolute genius who has worked with everyone from Solange to Florence, released this sophomore album as Blood Orange just before his apartment burned down, losing everything from hard drives, to lyric sheets, to his beloved dog Cupid. This album is the perfect blend of nostalgia, funk, pop, and sensuality.
Madonna - Like A Virgin (1984)
I mean duh. This is every girl's bedroom dancing dream...visions of torn up 80s wedding dresses, crimped hair, eyes lined with smoldering black kohl....can't say Madonna didn't get it right. She was dating Jean-Michel Basquiat at the time and they were the King and Queen of the Lower East Side and basically the entire sub-culture of the NYC art world we still desperately grasp at today.
The Faint - Danse Macabre (2001)
This album was ahead of its time. Or behind it's time...in hindsight I can't really tell. All I know is that if you know you know, and if you know you've probably danced to it in front of your mirror or at an underground rave somewhere. Or maybe you were like me and danced to it at an underage music venue called Soma in San Diego after illegally consuming beer at the Mexican Restaurant next door and made fun of all the hardcore kids for being straight and then Bright Eyes came onstage and you started crying. "Glass Danse", "Total Job", and "Posed To Death" are the ones you can really get weird to.
BABY, LET'S GO FOR A DRIVE
Dirty Beaches - Drifters/Love Is The Devil (2013)
Drifters/Love Is The Devil is the kind of album you wanna listen to while robbing a bank or driving in a Cadillac convertible down the sparkling streets of Las Vegas in a perfectly tailored suit, or barrelling down an empty highway after midnight. It was recorded in Montreal and Berlin and the album cover, a photo of a man with shadows and club lights streaking his face, was shot at a gay bar in Kreuzberg. Alex Zhang Hungtai has also collaborated and performed with Elias Ronnenfelt under his solo project Marching Church.
Bat for Lashes - Lost Girls (2019)
Singer/songwriter Natasha Khan wrote Lost Girls with composer/producer Charles Scott shortly after she moved from London to Los Angeles and had sworn off music forever. "I was driving to from Joshua Tree up to the Sequoias, you know just sort of absorbing these pastel sunsets, feet on the dashboard, hands out the window...and I was just imagining this biker gang of witchy girls that come from the desert and what it might feel like if I saw them following me on bikes or creeping in my yard or if I bumped into them at the Hollywood Forever Cemetary," she said on a podcast for Song Exploder. She was working on a script at the time called The Lost Girls and was approached by J.J. Abrams' team to write a song for his new T.V. series. She wrote Kids In The Dark, which they didn't end up using for the show, but inspired her to make an entire album.
Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas (1990)
Sometimes it's a blessing not to understand what the lyrics are in a song. It leaves things open to interpretation and allows you to get wrapped up in the musical elements and sentiment. That being said, I have no idea what the fuck the Cocteau Twins are saying, but I understand it. I feel it. I remember listening to this album as I was driving from Indio to Idyllwild with the band Surfbort after they performed, and it put me into a trance as we swerved around the curves of the mountains and got further and further away from the blazing fire pits of hell(Coachella). Something I would just about kill to be doing right now, but alas, I am here writing this elaborate masterpiece of an essay to help you(and myself) through mental and emotional trauma.
LIFE IS GOOD
Richard Hawley - Cole's Corner (2005)
This album is an absolute perfect masterpiece and if you have any objections I will never talk to you again. The first song paints a vivid picture of a dizzy, romantic night in the city and is the antidote for loneliness so long as you have an imagination. "Cold city lights glowing / The traffic of life is flowing / Out over the rivers and on into dark / I'm going downtown where there's music / I'm going where voices fill the air / Maybe there's someone waiting for me / With a smile and a flower in her hair." Hawley's most famous song, "The Ocean", is a beautiful, hopeful tune, and "Last Orders" is a heartbreaking instrumental track with piano that seems to echo to eternity.
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood - Nancy & Lee (1968)
I personally will be dancing to this all summer long as I waft around in my front yard and wait for the handsome cowboy of my dreams to come sweep me off my feet as we gallop off into the pink apocalyptic skies of the future. The album was arranged by Billy Strange and written by Hazlewood, topping the charts in 1968. The song "Some Velvet Morning" was named "best duet ever" by The Daily Telegraph. This is the quintessential album for summer, in its lightheartedness and innocent simplicity.
Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle (2009)
I admittedly just discovered Bill Callahan after reading Letters To Emma Bowlcut, a perfectly obscure book of prose he wrote that was recommended to me by a friend. The book is a collection of fictional letters to a woman named Emma, and feels very much like this album to me. Even the album cover and the book cover are reflective of one another, which makes sense because they were released a year apart. The music is visual and soothing, transporting the listener to a calm place with open skies, tender, innocent love, and a gentle breeze blowing through a faceless woman's dirty blonde hair(to be exact). The lyrics are very much rooted in nature, something we could all benefit from at the moment.
SONGS FOR SELF-PLEASURE (OR SEX WITH YOUR SIGNIFICANT OTHER WHO YOU PROBABLY HATE BY NOW)
Portishead - Dummy (1994)
Dummy is the perfect album to listen to while you strut down the streets of the Lower East Side, rain in your hair, and duck into an incredibly sketchy speak-easy bar in Chinatown while your boyfriend stays at home and jerks off to bad porn. Beth Gibbon's quivering, sexy vocals create tension against the eclectic drum beats and strings that pound and pull you into a much more bodacious, cocky version of yourself.
Nina Simone - Wild Is The Wind (1966)
This classic album is one of my favourites from Nina Simone. It's raw, bare, heartbreaking, and empowering. "When I think more than I want to think / I do things I never should do / I drink much more that I ought to drink / Because it brings me back you / Lilac wine is sweet and heady, like my love / Lilac wine, I feel unsteady, like my love" are lyrics from "Lilac Wine" which was later covered by Jeff Buckley. "Wild Is The Wind" was covered by David Bowie on his 1976 album Station To Station. The song is a live recording, as is "Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair", which is a rendition of an old Celtic folk song. In the video(also recorded live), Simone is a beautiful sixties queen in a long black dress, gold hoops, and blue eyeshadow. During the transition, the camera pans to musician Emil Latimer, who looks like some cross between a cowboy and a guru plucking the strings of his ivory guitar.
Caetano Veloso - Transa (1972)
Caetano Veloso is a Brazilian musician, composer, and political activist who made over twenty albums and won several grammys for "Best World Music Album" and "Best Score". Transa, recorded in '72 while he was exiled in London, is a wonderfully seductive and flirtatious compilation of seven songs sung in both English and Brazilian.
WE'RE DOOMED
Section 25 - Always Now (1981)
Lovers of Joy Division, look no further. Section 25 was an integral part of Manchester's burgeoning post-punk scene in the early '80s. Their debut 7", Girls Don't Count, was produced by Ian Curtis and Rob Gretton, followed by the release of Always Now, produced by Martin Hannett. While recording the LP, the band opened for New Order at the infamous Heaven nightclub in London. Always Now is the perfect soundtrack to the apocalypse, namely tracks 10-12. "New Horizon" almost feels like it should be at the forefront of the album, with it's slow intro into the prominent bassline repeated throughout the song. It's followed by "Haunted" and "Charnel Ground", a sinister track with the comforting lyrics: " You left the door open / A springtime morning / The sunshine filled me / Silence is everywhere".
Scott Walker - The Drift (2006)
If there ever were an album that felt something close to witnessing(or committing) a murder, it would be The Drift. "Clara" a twelve minute long recording of terrifying sounds that range from the pounding of flesh to schizophrenic string arrangements to horns that sound like a scream for help. It's hard to distinguish what the sounds actually are, as Walker would have various things brought into the studio while he was recording to achieve the sonic revelations he heard in his head. Walker's wholesome voice amidst the chaotic, grim music make it feel like a horror film or a Stephen King novel.
Mark E. Smith - The Post Nearly Man (1998)
"The Horror In Clay" opens with Mark E. Smith reciting words from H.P. Lovecraft: "The most merciful thing in the world is man's inability to correlate all of his mind's contents. But the sciences one day, some say it is already upon us, will eventually open up such terrifying vistas of reality that we will either go mad from the revelation or flee into blissful sleep, peace, and safety of another new, dark age." Smith's spoken word and manic poetry explore narcissism, drug abuse, and mental illness, all while making humorous stabs at modern society. In "Typewriter", he speaks over the sound of fingers pounding on the keys of a typewriter, interspersed with punk guitar riffs. The Post Nearly Man is the perfect combination of British humor and dark, opinionated verse.
