Here's a photograph album. Digging through a closet doing your spring cleaning, you stumble upon a photo from over ten years ago. You haven't thought about any of the people or places in the photo in years—not for any negative reason, but you and they simply grew in different ways. So the photo is doing double work—bringing you the memory that you even have these memories, and then showing you all of said memories.
There's surprise in the fidelity of the memories you didn't know you had. For an album, every lyric and note is anticipated—you can still sing along, though maybe you still can't recall the song title. You remember many of the things you liked—the indie with emo sensibilities, Jenkins' vocals, the unique tap-dancing percussion, some real ear worms. But there are also some rough spots, places a younger you wouldn't or couldn't see—like the emo getting real cringe, the male vocals kinda suck, and the gimmick which sometimes overstays so they use a drum machine?
All this adds up to an OKish album that I can't help but really like. If I can digress and indulge in dime-store psychology for a moment... Why do we have certain attraction to certain art? Of course there's the core of genetics and early childhood development with all its plasticity—Disney Channel vs Nickelodeon vs books, or something. But adolescence is one last burst of real plasticity—hormonal rush combined with development into a social & species centered being. The paths treaded during this time will be definitional for life as the emotional-social foundation, and art—emotional-social in nature—can find a happy home. The art we get in these times creates grooves in our soul, and then our wealth of time and attention (something Sam pointed out already) cements those grooves.
When I was seventeen, I got to go to NJ Gov School (real boondoggle of a program) over the summer and met a girl I liked. We were friendly but barely talked while we were at school. Instead, we'd AIM each other all the time for months after. We exchanged songs like they were mixtapes and these songs would lay the foundation of my entire musical taste. Last year I heard from her again over Instagram and we both agreed our musical tastes hadn't really changed. Everything has been an outgrowth because of, or in spite of, these foundational days.
So there's a few hundred words on what's obvious at face value: I like this album because I like it, and because I like it, I'll always give indie with emo sensibilities the benefit of the doubt, and I'll always have a harder time parsing hard-core shreds. But I'm grateful to find the old photo in the closet to take my mind and memories back to before the adult world started heaping on its bullshit, to when we were untamed by society, to when we were wild like children.
P.S. is the 14:25 end track with five minutes of silence an artifact of Vinyl/casette/CD? Silly to put on digital when the track length is always right there yes? Is it the equivalent of a landline-based phone joke in sitcoms?
There's surprise in the fidelity of the memories you didn't know you had. For an album, every lyric and note is anticipated—you can still sing along, though maybe you still can't recall the song title. You remember many of the things you liked—the indie with emo sensibilities, Jenkins' vocals, the unique tap-dancing percussion, some real ear worms. But there are also some rough spots, places a younger you wouldn't or couldn't see—like the emo getting real cringe, the male vocals kinda suck, and the gimmick which sometimes overstays so they use a drum machine?
All this adds up to an OKish album that I can't help but really like. If I can digress and indulge in dime-store psychology for a moment... Why do we have certain attraction to certain art? Of course there's the core of genetics and early childhood development with all its plasticity—Disney Channel vs Nickelodeon vs books, or something. But adolescence is one last burst of real plasticity—hormonal rush combined with development into a social & species centered being. The paths treaded during this time will be definitional for life as the emotional-social foundation, and art—emotional-social in nature—can find a happy home. The art we get in these times creates grooves in our soul, and then our wealth of time and attention (something Sam pointed out already) cements those grooves.
When I was seventeen, I got to go to NJ Gov School (real boondoggle of a program) over the summer and met a girl I liked. We were friendly but barely talked while we were at school. Instead, we'd AIM each other all the time for months after. We exchanged songs like they were mixtapes and these songs would lay the foundation of my entire musical taste. Last year I heard from her again over Instagram and we both agreed our musical tastes hadn't really changed. Everything has been an outgrowth because of, or in spite of, these foundational days.
So there's a few hundred words on what's obvious at face value: I like this album because I like it, and because I like it, I'll always give indie with emo sensibilities the benefit of the doubt, and I'll always have a harder time parsing hard-core shreds. But I'm grateful to find the old photo in the closet to take my mind and memories back to before the adult world started heaping on its bullshit, to when we were untamed by society, to when we were wild like children.
P.S. is the 14:25 end track with five minutes of silence an artifact of Vinyl/casette/CD? Silly to put on digital when the track length is always right there yes? Is it the equivalent of a landline-based phone joke in sitcoms?
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