Songs Redux

Before leaving on the trip, I had a post up about my last trip's traveling tunes. This summer was a little unusual in that I had my headphones in a lot less than I usually do, following the pattern of my surrounding cultures. But I still had some songs, albums, and artists whose work is now melded to the trip. After the jump, a few of those albums.


 While a lot of songs from earlier stages of my life stuck around here (including most of the songs on my earlier list, The National and a bunch of other favorite bands) I'm focusing here on albums that were either new to me this trip or shifted in my sense of them on this trip.

A lot of the tracks on these may be familiar from showing up in videos over the course of the trip - I tried to lock cities to the songs that were in my head while I was there, which has proven to be a great instant-sense-memory machine. There's a bit of a temporal quality to this collection, moving from the early-summer, still-depressed, putting-my-heart-back-together material to the late-summer, more-hopeful stuff. Let's track that journey!

Early hardtime tunez

Beyoncé, Lemonade. Shortly before the trip, another friend going through a divorce texted me during this album's HBO launch to say "ummm you need to listen to this." And she was right - it's one of the great breakup albums (even if Beyoncé and Jay-Z ultimately reconciled), and it showed up at exactly the right moment to feel the truth behind its articulations of the gut-wrench of abandonment and loss. But the thing is: this album is also super not only (or even primarily) a breakup album. It's very, very about the experience of being a black woman in America. Definitely seek out the Lemonade Syllabus for an impressive rundown of the works that the album (and even more so the jaw-dropping "visual album") responds to and builds from. This thing is about a lot of things.

Noah and the Whale, First Days of Spring. Funny - the last time I was in Europe, their song "Five Years' Time" was in my ears, and this time around it was an album about the breakup between two members of the band (one of whom is no longer in it, obviously). This was one of those albums that morphed over the early days of the trip - its tracks follow something like a stages-of-grief progression. The standout here was "Blue Skies" (which I used in my Rome video), but the whole album came in and out of focus as the trip went on.

Better time tunez
Lucius, Wildewoman. My friend Casey gave me a mix tape with a live version of "How Loud Your Heart Gets" this spring and the album became a huge mainstay on the trip. These people are awesome and I am positively cheesed that I missed them playing in Boston this weekend.

Oh Wonder, Oh Wonder. Another friend-pick! Dan sent this my way, and from the first track ("Livewire," which I used in my Glasgow video) it had a pretty good grip on my heart. Funny enough, even though it's got its fair share of breakup songs, I never thought of it in that camp - I think having come to it a little later in the summer and further along My Journey, it stood on its own terms.

Bayonne, Primitives. Oh wait these are all friend-picks really. Well, this one's from my friend Paul, in response to a Facebook post asking for travel music recommendations. This was spot on - perfect for rapid transit days and urban landscapes. It's still in regular rotation back in Boston.

Mountain Goats, Tallahassee. I'd gotten into them a few years back through Transcendental Youth, but somehow in Italy this earlier album in particular came into focus for me.

 Rufus Wainwright, Take All My Loves. Found this after seeing the Berliner Ensemble's Shakespeare's Sonnets, for which Wainwright wrote these songs. A wide range of tunes, many fantastic, though the linked track will long be my favorite as it's welded to my favorite sequence in the production. Check out All Dessen Müd for some top-notch Kurt Weill pastichery!

Civil Wars, Civil Wars. My friend Sara passed this along sometime in early June, as I recall, and the track "Dust to Dust" became a huge part of my travelin' tunes as hope and newness filtered in. The whole album is great and moving and wonderful! Whatever!

Sufjan Stevens, Carrie and Lowell. I had this pegged as my favorite album of last year, though The Tallest Man On Earth's Dark Bird is Home may be eclipsing it now that I've heard it. Either way, this was the one that kept cycling up for me all across the continent. It's perfect train-travel music.

Cloud Cult, Light Chasers. I always associated this album with my last show in Chicago before moving (a fantastic Arcadia) but something about its narrative - a journey of unknown duration, uncertain success, and self-sacrifice required along the way - really hit me strong as I got into Venice, and it stayed with me for the weeks that followed.

I don't think any of these are particularly elusive or marginal picks, but they're the sonic world I swam in this summer - and will likely form the basis for the playlists with which I'll leave for my next extended travel whenever that is. Music is fun and nice!