Identify the 43 albums I couldn't do without

Ryan Adams & the Cardinals, “Cold Roses”

This was literally the only album I listened to for months at a time during 2005 when it came out before the beginning of the summer. A couple of years later I gave this album to a friend to listen to, and he said that he couldn’t really get into it because he found it to be too “plaintive”. I had to look up what that meant because I had never used the word “plaintive” before, which basically means “melancholy”. Although he couldn’t really get into the album, he said he understood why I was into it because at that time he saw me as being conflicted or troubled and the songs on this album express those type of emotions. That’s definitely true about the album, and regarding my state of mind, there may have been some truth to that as well.

Anyway, I think this 18 song album is by far the most mature of the Ryan Adams albums. I’m told that the sound is very much like the Grateful Dead, and I guess it might be though I’m not so familiar with that band and can’t really say for myself. The sound is both gritty and delicate and combined with some beautiful poetry expressing thoughts I would never have known how to articulate myself. When I listen to the lyrics of a Ryan Adams song, I feel like someone has read my mind…

It’s hard for me to choose a favorite track from this album (and it changes), but at this moment I would choose Sweet Illusions. Here are my favorite part of the lyrics:

You never knew me but I did my best
I’m just lonely inside I guess
You gave me everything you really tried
Thanks….

If we were nothing and we’re only the past
Then I’m just living in a dream I guess
A long black dream that takes me down the river to you

Where it’s almost over
And we’re almost gone

And I can feel the Sweet Illusion coming
Sweet Confusion, honey
Sweet Illusion coming down

And I ain’t got nothing but love for you now

Kathleen Edwards, “Asking for Flowers”

What I like about Kathleen Edwards is that there is an “upfront” attitude with the way she expresses things in her songs. In many of the songs on this particular album, for instance, she’s pointing out things things that aren’t quite right (like not getting the right fulfillment out of a relationship or even observing things wrong with society society) and then saying something like “hey, this is dumb, we need to fix this”. There’s this emotional rawness in her directness sometimes like in this one track called “Sure As Shit” where she says “I sure as shit do love you / And I cuss because I mean it / And for that in my heart I am hopeful / And these words that I chose / I was so careful”...

My favorite track from the album is I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory. I’ve gotten complaints as I’ve been told that this seems to be the only song that’s ever playing in my car. This is in fact by far the song I’ve played the most times on my iPod since I’ve had it… I think it’s all the pedal steel that makes the song so catchy. I love the steel guitar, and if I could ever learn to play just one instrument it would be the pedal steel guitar… Anyway, here are some of the lyrics:

If I write down these memories
that I have saved away
Photographs of the years that have passed
inside my little brain

You’re cool and cred like Fogerty
I’m Elvis Presley in the 70’s
You’re Chateauneuf, I’m Yellow Label
You’re the buffet, I’m just the table
I’m a Ford Tempo, you’re a Maserati
You’re The Great One, I’m Marty McSorley
You’re the Concorde, I’m economy
I make the dough, but you get the glory

The Be Good Tanyas, “Blue Horse”

This was in the fall of 2001. I was a subscriber to the Erin McKeown fan newsletter, and I had read that she’d be opening for this band called The Be Good Tanyas for some shows she was doing in Canada. Since I liked Erin I thought I might like them too, so I looked for their CD in Borders and bought it one Friday night.

I was going through something emotional at the time and felt like I needed to get away. I woke up the next day at 5 AM Saturday morning and impulsively started driving up the coast along the Pacific Coast Highway, taking this CD along with me to listen to on the way. This was December 1, 2001. I though maybe I’d go to San Francisco where I’d never been up to at that time. . Well, ultimately I didn’t even make it as far as Monterey. I was tired after 5 hours of driving, and moreover I was confused and didn’t understand what I was doing. I got as far as Big Sur, this place on the central California coast where there are tall trees, windy roads, steep cliffs, small waterfalls, and fog. I just stopped alongside the road and listened, and I never wanted to leave. I felt like at that moment I belonged there, even if it was for just that moment. I often think of this imagery when I listen to The Be Good Tanyas, particularly when I hear the song “The Littlest Birds” with the lyrics, “You pass through places / And places pass through you / But you carry ‘em with you / On the souls of your travellin’ shoes”.

Several months later I was listened to this album while driving late at night on the freeway in LA somewhere with my thoughts wandering, and there was a moment where I was thinking that I finally understood entirely what was meant by the lyrics in the song “Only in the Past”, where they sing, “Run away to the seashore it doesn’t matter anymore / Doesn’t matter anymore / Words dry up and fly away with the passing of the days / Eventually you just let the stone fall ”. It’s about letting dreams and memories die and conceding defeat to the past. I was just thinking while listening to it that it’s too bad that nothing lasts. I can’t remember feeling so disconnected from life and from the world as I did around that time. All I could do was see the end of everything, and the end was never good. Happiness and sadness both seemed fake. If everything ended, it was hard to see the point of existence, and the only thing that seemed real was nothing… Hmmm… This song is supposed to be about moving on from a relationship and accepting that it’s time to move on, and it’s actually pleasant to listen to. Yet, for some reason it inspired me to think of all this other stuff that was swirling around in my mind at the time…

There are so many awesome tracks on this album that I find special meaning in, but if I have to choose a favorite one it’s Light Enough To Travel. It’s about not fitting in but not letting that get to you, or at least that’s what it’s about to me. Here are some of the lyrics:

Promise me we won’t go into the nightclub
I feel so fucked up when I’m in there
Can’t tell the bouncers from the customers
And I don’t know which ones I prefer

Promise me we won’t go into the nightclub
I really think that it’s obscene
What kind of people go to meet people
Someplace they can’t be heard or seen

Pete Yorn, “Music For The Morning After”

This is another one of the albums that featured prominently on the soundtrack of my life in the summer of 2001. Many of my favorite albums I first listened to around this time, and I think most people’s favorite music comes from particularly significant times in their lives. During approximately this period, plus or minus a year, I was in my early 20’s and experienced the most dramatic changes of my life so far, like being newly independent after finishing school and living in the city, the ups and downs of relationship drama, being totally in control of my own life for the first time and the opportunities and indecision that go along with that. Pete Yorn doesn’t really have the most brilliant songwriting, but I think he does an effective job of capturing that kind of restlessness people (at least I speak for myself) experience at that age.

My favorite track on the album is Life On A Chain. This is to this day one of the songs I listen to most often, and yet I’m still not 100% sure what it was intended to mean. To me, it’s about trying to move on but not being sure how to. Here are some of the lyrics:

Time alone is good, I spend my days in the city,
Dirty neighborhood, you know you’ll never convince me,
So I sold the town away, I couldn’t wait to forget you,
I was killed in half a day, I hadn’t time to regret you,
And I was waiting over here for life to begin,
I was looking for the new thing
And you were the sunshine heading my front line,
I was alone, you were just around the corner from me.

k.d. lang, “Absolute Torch and Twang”

This album actually came out when I was in junior high school, but I didn’t really listen to k.d. lang until I was in college. At that time, I was drawn to her for her persona more than anything. I had heard people rave about her voice and her performances and I was vaguely aware of her music, but I just thought her image was really cool. She shamelessly presented herself the way she wanted (androgynous, lesbian, vegan) and had a great deal of success making music that was mostly not easily categorizable into specific genres. I liked how she defied labeling.

So, to satisfy my curiosity I quickly amassed a collection of the albums she had released up to that time, and I was instantly won over as a fan. I thought “Absolute Torch and Twang” was the best of k.d. lang’s albums because it had the right mix of the serious ballads and the fun songs that make you want to get up and dance. Most importantly, I thought she took advantage of the strength of her voice in the right measure and on the right occasions, not overdoing it. There’s a particular song on the album that when I hear it I often have to completely stop whatever I’m doing and just stand in awe of her amazing vocals. It’s called Pullin’ Back the Reins she sings about love being this uncontrollable thing like a galloping horse that can’t be tamed. I just think the way she performed it is very effective.

My favorite song from the album is Luck in My Eyes. I still listen to it sometimes when I’m feeling kind of down. If I close my eyes and try to envision myself alone on some mountain or plain or wherever the imagery of the song takes me, I feel very calm. Here are some of the lyrics:

I can feel a mountain rain
That’ll wash away
And shine again
Empty my pockets
That were weighing me down
Sift through my soul
To see what’s lost and found
Gonna walk away from trouble
With my head held high
Then look closely you’ll see
Luck in my eyes

Erin McKeown, “Distillation”

It seems that many of my favorite albums came out between 2000 and 2002; either that or I first heard them around that time. This is one of those albums.

There’s something classic (or anachronistic?) about listening to Erin McKeown. It’s kind of hard to pigeonhole her style musically, although you can say this is a “folk music” album (whatever that means in today’s lexicon). She is my age and yet counts Django Reinhardt and Judy Garland among her influences. Included on this album is even a cover of the Rodgers and Hart song “You Mustn’t Kick It Around” (which appeared in the 1950’s musical “Pal Joey”). What’s also impressive is that she plays all the instruments on this album.

That she kind of seems out of time wasn’t the only thing that appealed to me on this album but also it was the way she expresses things that people in their early twenties might experience in terms of relationships and experiences. It’s the reason I’ve seen Erin McKeown perform live five times, more times than I’ve seen anyone else. There’s one song on the album called “Didn’t They” where she sings about the awkwardness you experience with someone when they discover your big secret and neither is sure how to act.

My favorite track on the album is Blackbirds, where she describes people at a party trying to hookup as blackbirds milling about. Here’s a passage from the lyrics:

Said one blackbird to the other, “You must be my queen,”
And the other replied in turn, “Well, sure enough you my king,”
Four and twenty blackbirds and two began to sing

Josh Rouse, “Home”

I first heard this album in early 2001. Back then I was working at my first job out of college in this area called the Warner Center in Woodland Hills, and after work I would often stop at the nearby Borders to kill time before going home, listening to the featured CDs at the listening stations. “Home” was one of the albums featured for a few weeks. The opening track on the album is a song called “Laughter”, which got my attention with the lyrics, “I think I got it all figured out, I think I’ve got it made, I think my plan is safe from laughter.” It’s about finally figuring out what you’re supposed to do with your life but you’re afraid to tell anyone about it because they might think it’s crazy.

What Josh Rouse captured for me on this album was the uncertainty and anxiousness associated with being in your early or mid twenties. The songs on this album alternate between a type of melancholy and a restrained optimism. When I first listened to this album I was 23, and I wasn’t sure if I had chosen the right career. I felt like I was young and still had lots of possibilities ahead but was yet wasting my time away in indecision. I wasn’t sure where I’d be when I was 30, if I would always be alone, and so on and so forth. That’s why I could relate to this album.

My favorite song from the album is Directions. One of my happiest memories in recent years was closing my eyes and listening to Josh Rouse sing “Directions” live Friday, April 22, 2005 at a show in LA. It’s a song about always finding something missing with life. These are the lyrics:

Don’t like the direction you are going to
Seems to lack the attention, that it used to
Stay out all night and get high with your friends
Wonder why you don’t get one thing done
Don’t like the direction you are going to

Don’t like the direction you have come to
Now it has the attention that it used to
Stay home all night with the TV and wife
Comfortable life’s not all it’s cracked up to be
Don’t like the direction you have come to

It’s easy to get caught and the weight of the world
It’s falling on your face, so unsure that you would

Ryan Adams, “Demolition”

Friday October 11, 2002 about 10:30 PM, exactly one year to the day from what was up to that time what I considered the start of the worst period of my life, I was pulling into a tight space in a West Hollywood parking structure too quickly and put a nasty dent on the front bumper of my car. Exasperated, I thought it must be that this day in October was cursed. I was spending my free time these days around the time I turned 25 alone, unhappy, restlessly trying to find various forms of escape. I had come to the Sunset 5 movie theater opening night for the midnight showing of “Bowling for Columbine”, which as luck would have it, was already sold out.

So, not making it to the movie, I killed some time hanging out among the obscure movie snobs, gay party boys, and Hollywood-wannabe-glamorous types in the (now defunct) Vigin Megastore browsing through CDs and DVDs. I was kind of frustrated because even among all these interesting people in the store I was still hopelessly alone. I was standing there bored, not finding anything good, when over the speakers I heard for the first time the haunting opening chord of the song Nuclear, which I instantly recognized to be a Ryan Adams song. In those sounds, in those words, I heard the expression of feeling stupid, being in pain and yet at the same time being numb to the pain, like there’s no way to win, like wanting to be anything other than what I was feeling now. I was in total awe because this song encapsulated so perfectly and exactly everything that was my life at that moment. I immediately bought the album and listened to it on the drive home and over and over again the next few days.

“Demolition” is not usually regarded as one of Ryan Adams’ most critically acclaimed albums, it being basically a compilation of demos and outtakes (get it? Demo-lition?). Yet, this album contains the highest concentration of my favorite Ryan Adams songs, and as I thought about it, is the one album I couldn’t do without the most. Often, I think the albums that are our favorites are such because of the personal experiences we associate with them more than for how they stand alone. The songs on this album convey a general sense of drifting, of the pain from not finding love but wanting to have it, and of messing up.

My favorite song from the album, and the song I usually say is my favorite when asked, is called Dear Chicago. It’s an emotionally raw account of a man trying to convince himself that he is over a past love when he is so obviously not. Here’s an excerpt from the lyrics:

Nothing breathes here in the cold.
Nothing moves or even smiles.
I’ve been thinking some of suicide.
But there’s bars out here for miles.
Sorry about the every kiss,
And every kiss you wasted back.
I think the thing you said was true,
I’m going to die alone and sad.