Speechless!

(This recommendation post has been written by our very own Heptapod.)

I remember that first feeling I had when I heard Loveless. At first I thought, “What the hell is this?” and a few minutes later Bilinda Butcher’s insane, breathy whisper brought everything together and I heard what I assume is what religious people feel on a regular basis. I could not stop playing this album and made a point of sitting in a dark room where there was no other stimulus beyond the music and the little red LED light on the tape player. Each time the album became more of me, an essential part of my mental double that some call a soul. There was great humor and fellowship singing along under my breath without knowing the lyrics because the singer didn’t know them either. Story goes that she was told to sing what she thinks they sounded like which is what most people do when they buy a new album but don’t peek at the lyrics. Loveless was an album which had to be heard from beginning to end and in no other order. This was a singular piece, a latter day electric rock combo symphony where every note was just so.

No one would dare fuss with perfection.

Eventually the tape broke. I couldn’t find a replacement and embraced Frank Sinatra for a few years. Still find myself drowning in the poison of nostalgia, picking over the cultural bones of my father and grandparents for the sheer novelty of their music compared to insanely loud, overproduced, Rick Rubin pastiches that are peddled with 80% markup. That old music is light and sounds happy. For one reason or another music of the final two decades of the dearly departed twentieth century and early aughts of the Information Age are dark, murky, obscenely loud without any art. My heart skipped a beat when I discovered Loveless available as a torrent. Minutes later it was on my computer, touching me and I feeling where it used to fit in my ears yet not the same. I am older, my tastes have shifted and the shock of the new means nothing for a man who regularly sees internet atrocities and makes a point of eating a sandwich with goatse on his monitor “just ’cause”. As Only Shallow began it dawned upon me.

This modern, muddy, murky, obscenely loud stuff is the thalidomide Down syndrome child of My Bloody Valentine. Not exclusively since there’s a mix of Seattle grunge and hints of metal in the mix. I bit back tears. I realized why I thought Led Zepplin was awful (they are you know) because all I heard before I became acquainted with them (I was a sheltered boy) was Metallica. The undeniable genius Metallica when Cliff Burton wasn’t stamped flat by a bus. Yet they owe Led Zepplin a great debt.

I remember the first time I heard The Birth and Death of Day. A YouTube video set against scenes from Koyaanisqatsi. All four hundred and sixty nine seconds were pure music. No words, no lyrics, no singers. After the final movement I told my wife’s nephew this was Good and set about acquiring every album. Each album is instrumental. There are some pieces but they are unobtrusive, like a recording of a phone call after their van broke down or a quote from The Thin Red Line. With each song I fell in love as you fall in love with a girl as an adult realizing f***ing her /would/ ruin the relationship. The kind you can’t have or share with your wife. Their music is so very wonderful. A quote came to mind from an Allen Steele book.

“Nope. No lyrics.” Ash glanced up at me, and I was surprised to see a sly smile on his face, as if he was sharing a private joke. “That’s what I like about music. You don’t need words to get a point across. Just screws things up, really, when all you really should have is…” His right hand abruptly shifted farther up the neck of his guitar, and he produced a quick succession of warbling, high-pitched notes. “That’s you… trying hard to rationalize something that doesn’t really need to make sense.”

Everything made sense when I listened to Explosions in the Sky. Some songs I desperately wanted to sing along with but I couldn’t and that was all the more perfect. Had Chris, Mike, Munaf and Mark desired anyone to accompany them in the privacy of their car they would’ve made it so. This is Music. Highs that twinkle like streetlights in a snowstorm and lows like a whisper on the back of your neck that raise gooseflesh. Albums that can only be appreciated on one of those crazy sound systems owned by hifi enthusiasts who used to rub a green marker around the edge of their CDs in the name of fidelity. The kind of music I can listen to in a darkened room and feel that frightened animal part of my brain gaze with awe from under the broad-leafed understory at the pebble-skinned gods of paradise.

Listen to Explosions in the Sky.

Hear Explosions in the Sky.

It’s my fervent desire that you will feel what I feel.