Stuck in an album and you can’t get out of it
I hate that I’m referencing a U2 song I don’t even like, but the phrase makes sense for me with the Beach House album “Teen Dream” that came out in February. I wish I knew the formula for what makes for an addictive album. I wish Pandora could come up for a formula, break down the DNA of my taste. I had the same months-long, enduring obsession for Slowdive’s ‘Souvlaki’ and Elliott Smith’s self-titled album.
But you can be addicted to an album in many different ways, I think. For example, when the XX album came out, I listened to it for about two weeks straight, constantly and then never wanted to hear it again. My feelings changed and already it seemed trite, too spare to be entertaining. I still can’t really enjoy it anymore. Yet with the Beach House album, I listened to it for about a week when I first got it, and have gone back a few times and now can’t turn it off. This song attached to the post in particular, “Silver Soul” has some bit of romantic nausea, if i can make that term up, that feels relatable.
Another song on the album had haunted me out of nowhere over a month ago. It popped into my head on a morning after I hadn’t heard it for weeks. My brain had done this a year before, when I was in the same situation, with another song “Eat Yourself” by Goldfrapp. The similarity of the two events seemed to make the musical synapses in my brain go firing off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFPMPLELTZU
But it brings up an interesting question. I love Pandora - which connects the elements of one song you’ve chosen, to dozens of others that are a match. itunes now has the Genius function, which can pull songs together that have some sonic match, can reccomend songs it will know you like. As much as I love this function, had been dreaming of such a thing for years, the idea of itunes telling me what to listen to is in conflict of my support of Record Store Day (aside from the fact that I’m using itunes in the first place). Maybe there aren’t many corporate interests at heart here except to get you to buy new music, but it’s still a machine telling me what to like, what I should like. Maybe it’s wrong, but I won’t reject the help, considering I’ll be looking for my next “beach house” score probably next week. Am I wrong, music industry, record stores? Tell me.
