There's a meme on Facebook right now, which asks people to share ten albums they loved, and give no explanation. I am obviously not that person—my explanations cannot just live inside me!—so, having been nominated nearly a month ago, here are the first five albums, in the order in which they became essential to me. The first five are here.
Hidden In Buildings: Draw Your Sword and I Am Not Afraid (I forget what year)
Graham Van Pelt and I shared a music stand in grade eleven strings class, and we were sort-of friends: we cracked each other up and he made me a mix tape, and then we floated back to our respective friend groups when the bell rang. This music, released sometime in the early 2000, was the first time someone I knew personally had MADE AN ALBUM, with samples and instruments and that had a case and played on a CD player. I loved it, not only because it spoke to me sonically—lots of spoken-word snippets, loops, and drum machines—but because it offered me a portal into a world where making things like music and art was possible for civilians like me. Graham has since gone on to do such ho-hum things as being nominated for the goddamn Polaris Prize—the hipster music Canadian Emmys—and participate in art collectives.
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Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins: Rabbit Fur Coat (2006)
In 2006 or 2007, I had a BAD breakup. Like, breathtaking in how fucking terrible it was. It was so bad that I can remember exactly where I was standing when it happened, that chest-punch feeling, the room swimming around me. It was awful enough that I have completely black-boxed what year it was (in my defense, it was a very bad year: my best friend moved back to the US against her will, and my sister was diagnosed with lymphoma. Not a great time!), and I just think of it as That Summer. In the aftermath of That Summer, I decided to reclaim my status as a music person: like many women in relationships, this was a role that had defaulted to my male partner, who was, like many male partners, unwilling to listen to the music I liked because...it wasn't cool enough? Too boring? Other reasons? I digress. Anyway, I started taking late-night walks down to Bloor Street, where the new-and-used record store Sonic Boom was located. I would walk the aisles, under the overbright florescent lights, choosing albums based on half-remembered reviews on websites, cover art, and general buzz. I bought Alexisonfire's Watch Out! this way—selected in part because my ex had liked them but we never listened to them together—and I chose Midlake and Basia Bulat and Jenny Lewis this way too. Half-random grabbing. Take them home. Listen on repeat to the ones that landed. This album landed, friends. It was twangy and angry, pretty and low-end, glamorous and dusty. It was also feminine, which was a relief in an emotional landscape that was so dominated by my ex. Even now, listening to the song Rise Up (With Fists!!), I get a surge of power. I feel like myself when I listen to this album.
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Fever Ray: Fever Ray (2009)
I love the way this album sounds. I listened to it a lot when it came out, and still keep it in rotation: it's witchy and deeply aesthetic, with a throughline about motherhood and femme identity that only surfaced for me when my own identities shifted. I like their subsequent work less, but this album—the sonic embodiment of a black taper candle on an altar—holds a special place for me.
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Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Global A-Go-Go (2001)
This album is a summer day, a road trip, a paid of headphones and a long walk under bright-green leaves in a small town or along the waterfront in a big city. This album is rock and folk and global and punk and twang. This album is drinks with my dad at the cottage, cooking with Liz at the dining hall, dancing with my boyfriend (now husband) as we get ready to go out. This album is warm and crisp—a salad roll full of vermicelli and avocado, a burger on the grill, an ice-cold lager next to a bowl of curry. I love that Joe Strummer took all his experience with The Clash, and then several years of casting about in a well-financed but directionless way, and then produced this crazy-quilt masterpiece. This is the album that I listen to when summer emerges again, and when this kind of joy feels possible.
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GusGus: Arabian Horse (2011)
In 2012, we went to Iceland for ten days. Iceland is known for its music scene, and it was the summer of Of Monsters And Men and their absolute dominance on the radio (you definitely know this song), but when we went to one of the record stores on Reykjavik's main drag, I was like, "Okay, we all know about them and Bjork, but what do you like?" and the clerk, relieved not to have to pull out another copy of that album, handed me this one. We listened to as we drove through otherworldly landscapes of volcanic rock and dusty plains and thunderous waterfalls and lupin-covered glens. (Iceland is amazing, you should definitely go.) I love eerie beep-boop dance music a lot, as evidenced by several other entries on this list, but this is the one that I'd put on for parties and for when my mom and I had had too many glasses of pink wine and did impromptu Nia classes in the cottage living room.
Bonus albums:
* Stan Rogers: From Fresh Water (1984)
* The Roots: Phrenology (2002)
* Robyn: Body Talk (2010)
* Carly Rae Jepson: Emotion (2015)
