Have you ever felt that way, where your mind is buzzing so loud that the outside world just becomes white noise? Well, this is the place where I usually hang out, getting high on everything and nothing. God, that sounds annoyingly abstract. Meh. Anyways, when I’m feeling obsessively introspective like this I like to put on a certain type of music that really helps the inward ramblings.
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First up is Cloud Control’s “Gold Canary.” The track is a perfect blend of ooey-gooey folky goodness, filled with infectious harmonies and tinkering tambourines. Every sound is well-crafted and beautifully crisp. Their melodies fill your spirit with doses of mood-lifting-musical helium right from the get-go. Whenever a Cloud Control track pops-up on one of my Steve Jobs machines, I can’t help but bump up the volume several notches. Hopefully you all feel the same way:
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The next song is strikingly stripped and has just the right amount of weirdly bright melancholy. “Planes Like Vultures” begins with eerily reverberating vocals and builds to a boisterous round of echoing lyrics and deliberate instrumentation. Listening to the track makes you feel caught in an odd spiritual ceremony of some kind or as if you had happened upon the frantic pleadings of some religious diehard. Either way, you feel transported somewhere far, far away from wherever here may be. Take a wander:
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Finally there is “Love, Love, Love” by The Mountain Goats. The sound is uncomplicated and straightforward, but the lyrics tell a much more intricate story. And while the song may be construed as a bit angsty, there’s something sadly refreshing about the construction of it all. The excessive repetition of love, love, love is met with muted realism and the juxtaposition of the two creates something so basically beautiful. Now, disregard all my musical dissection and just listen:
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