#309: sufjan stevens - jacksonville (2006)
as a 2009 valentine’s day present to myself, i’ve decided to rekindle that special feeling with nine albums i used to love. these records and i once really adored each other—we’d take walks, we’d sleep together—but then we drifted apart.
1. sufjan stevens - illinois: sufjan’s super-duper whimsical cuteness (angel wings! banjos! puns!) ruined our relationship, but now that time’s passed i’m glad to hear these songs’ slinky horns and grassy, fresh-cut melodies again.
2. beatles - beatles for sale: it’s not as throttlingly poppy as please please me or help!, and it’s not as bone-bendingly smart as rubber soul or revolver, and it’s certainly not as world-changingly enlightened as sgt. pepper’s or the white album, and it’s not even as fun as yellow submarine, but beatles for sale was the first beatles album my parents bought me as a kid. and the first is always a special one.
3. g. love and special sauce - yeah it’s that easy: senior year in high school i went to a tiny g. love show in the village, and g. love himself passed a joint to some guy who passed it to some guy who passed it to my friend who passed it to me, and i remember thinking, “g. love, i will love your band forever,” but four months later i was like, “sheesh, this frat-boy fake blues is totally lame.” the heart is a fickle monster.
4. modest mouse - building nothing out of something: i played good news for people who love bad news for my dad while we were driving to the beach once, and he said, “no offense but this band isn’t very good and the one song that’s a tom waits impersonation is an embarrassment.” and i realized he was right. still, their old albums are terrifying and taste like gray ice water.
5. phish - a live one: singing along to “stash” and “gumbo” and even “bouncing around the room” is nothing to be ashamed of.
6. strokes - is this it?: in retrospect the answer was, “yes, that was it.” the strokes were not as lastingly glorious as they should’ve been, though god knows they’ve aged better than those eyelined dweebs in interpol (whose newest album, which someone sent me, sounds like an suv commercial.) but is this it?’s bumblebee baselines and lollipop guitar hooks and skinny-tie howls, especially on nyc cops, are as good as iggy pop’s.
7. tom waits - heartattack and vine: “don’t want no whores on eighth avenue, ‘cause tonight i’m gonna be with you” is the best second line of any song in the tom waits catalogue, though it’s not as good as “the only thing i’m taking is the scarf off of your clothesline.” still, 1980 was an awkward year for tom waits: too late for the whiskeyed ivory-tickler era, too early for tom’s wild years.
8. regina spektor - soviet kitsch: i heard one of her newer songs and found it so profoundly annoying that i couldn’t go back to an album that once made me get mushier than joni mitchell’s blue. “somedays” is the lower east side’s “a case of you.”
9. beach boys - pet sounds: just kidding, i never fell out of love with pet sounds. but it’s extremely important to re-listen to wouldn’t it be nice on valentine’s day, and also to look directly at the picture of the band on the album cover and remind them of your undying love.
