A few years ago, I accidentally listened to an ambient album. "Accidental" meaning that I was trying to listen to every album that Stereogum included in their Heavy Rotation for the entirety of 2019, and usually just started listening without knowing anything about the music beforehand. So, okay, I listened to like an hour of dulcet tones and field recordings of someone crunching their way through the woods somewhere. Great. Didn't do much for me, but it fascinated me like all things I don't understand do. It led to the ultimate sociological/archaeological question: Why?
I went to one of the only hiveminds I feel anonymously comfortable in—Reddit's indieheads subreddit—and posed the question. Why ambient music? Why would anyone listen to this? And the consensus seemed to be: Ambient music exists explicitly to be played in the background; it's deliberately abstract, as opposed to structured, because that makes it easier to project whatever emotions you are feeling at the time onto the music.
As I recall, I pushed back a little bit. Their reasoning behind ambient music made sense to me logically, but it didn't make sense to me personally. I get that abstract music can be soothing or meaningful in the right situation—say, during a particular scene in a movie, maybe—but I also argued that this is not why I put my earphones in every day and push play on the iPod. I want to be excited by music; I don't want it to take a backseat to whatever I'm doing. I want to be immersed.
If I'm being honest, though, my argument is only describing the ideal. Best case scenario, I'm sitting somewhere and I'm listening to music and that's all I'm doing. How often does that actually happen, though? I'd be lying if I said I had more than 20 minutes during any given day to focus every single ounce of my attention to music. To varying degrees, everything I listen to is essentially background music. For real! If I'm playing a-ha's "Take On Me" in the kitchen at 5 PM, it's not like I'm standing there, staring blankly at the aux-cabled stereo. I'm checking the temperature on the chicken breasts, I'm sautéing spinach, I'm microwaving mac and cheese for the kids, I'm setting the table, I'm trying to talk to my wife over two little girls screaming, I'm doing all kinds of shit while the music is on in the background. It dips in and out of my consciousness.
So I don't even know if my original argument against ambient music is fair. A particular piece of music shouldn't be derided just because it's honest about what it hopes to achieve (being pleasant background music, in this case). And if it happens to definitively achieve that purpose as well, then better still.
It would be easy to dismiss Mary Lattimore's Silver Ladders, since it is, to be clear, not an album I'd ever choose to listen to in a million fucking years. That would be too easy, though. That would be dismissing a piece of art just because it doesn't adhere to whatever rules I've established in my own mind, based on what I already know to give me joy. I.e. maybe I'm just not going it right. So I listened to Silver Ladders in three different scenarios, and tried to see if it worked for me differently in each one.
ONE: Rough night, and you can guess why without me complaining to you about it on the blog yet again. Rough night, rough year. But it's Pam's turn to sleep in, so I schlepp the kids downstairs for breakfast. It's an unproductive affair—W. takes a few bites of her french toast, M. throws her waffle on the floor immediately. I try to use Silver Ladders to calm everyone down, but it's not working. In fact, it might even be counterproductive—I can usually get M. to dance to music for a few moments, and if she's dancing, then she's not yelling, but you can't really dance to Mary Lattimore's harp, unfortunately. In any case, we bail halfway through and go down the basement to play with some toys while we listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival.
TWO: We've been in our home for over two months, and there is still a bunch of shit lying around that needs to be hung up at one point. There's a heavy standalone window that Pam wants hung over the bed, and after she marks the spot, it's up to me to do the drilling and the hammering and what have you. Never as easy as it sounds. And I'll admit, I get fucking miserable when I do this kind of shit and it starts going wrong (which is every time), like say the anchor is still too big for the hole I drilled and the anchor breaks, and I'm cursing under my breath and giving Pam some pithy sarcastic answer when she asks "How's it going?" and all that. But I have Mary Lattimore on in the background. This is different from Scenario One because it's a bit more mindless. I can focus on the music a little more than I would when I'm focusing on making sure no one chokes on their frozen breakfast carbs. And true, it would be ghoulish to have a happy, upbeat, structured song playing as I destroy our bedroom walls (akin to something like Christian Bale murdering a prostitute to the sound of Huey Lewis and the News), so maybe it was kinder on the psyche to have the ethereal harp playing instead. On the other hand, it didn't comfort me like ambient music fans promised it would. I dunno, maybe that's more on me than on Mary.
THREE: I'm taking the train to work, and I'll be sitting for almost the exact length of Silver Ladders, so I pop it on, close my eyes, let the music wash over me as I feel the gentle chug-a-chug of the train gliding on the tracks toward Center City. It almost feels like a meditation, like something Pam would play on a guided meditation app she just downloaded and makes us listen to before we go to bed (this has happened before). Do I feel relaxed? Sure. But it's not like the train ride before work has ever not been relaxing. I'd feel just as relaxed if I was listening to Fontaines D.C., or starting Season 2 of Degrassi.
That third scenario is probably key, in that, yes, it proves that original point made by the ambient fans on Reddit: Ambient music can be used to project whatever emotions you are feeling when you listen to it. If I'm stressed, then Silver Ladders only soundtracks that stress. If I'm relaxed and comfortable, then Silver Ladders will lay there on top of the comfort like a blanket.
But that's not why I listen to music! I want music (or a movie, or a TV show, or a book) to affect me emotionally in some way. It has to make an impact. Sure, sometimes music's impact is magnified due to context (see: pretty much anything you feel nostalgia for), but it's never just a blank slate. It tells you something new about yourself. And if ambient music truly exists to reflect what you already know back at you, then I'd argue that it doesn't do what I want it, and all music, to do.
I know, I know—can't really complain about what something isn't, you can only complain about what something is. Or, in other words, I should really only discuss whether Mary Lattimore achieved what she intended to in creating Silver Ladders. Did she? Sure, why not, and maybe that means Silver Ladders is a good album. But if her intentions—like all ambient artists—were to tell me things about myself that I already knew, then I don't really see the use.
GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5
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