Italialaisella laivalla

This music section is the one I feel most vulnerable writing. Mostly, I'm comfortable with my musical tastes, but my education has been woefully incomplete. I've also had too many bad experiences with music snobs who couldn't forgive me for not having learned of some band's evolution or album's historic significance by age 14, nor did these snobs have the patience to educate me, because that would mean sullying themselves in my ignorance. Sorry, but in 1997, I was more interested in soccer, namely the fact that I got to play with the boys because we didn't have enough girls to have our own girls team that year. I think it's reasonable for a teenage girl to have been more absorbed by the varsity captains than OK Computer. (And still, some will bristle.)

But that's also meant I have plenty of catching up/rabid consumption left. When it comes to music appreciation, I'm mostly my own teacher (and then dangerously my own editor when I post on it). Sure, I try and glean as much as I can from others who have an investment in the art, but I am the one who selects the next loci for exploration.

As much as it makes me nervous, part of me likes it this way, too. If I'm being generous, it feels more unadulterated. I don't need to know who used to work with/produce/be labelmates with/be the muse for whom. I don't need to know who was the leader of a movement, who was a follower. Pop the disc in. Listen. Repeat. How do you feel? The end. I think this is also why I am initially drawn to (or repelled by) band names and cover art: It means you don't have to make your (initial) selection off the music reviews.

This is the cover that spawned November's theme of Scandinavian albums of goodness:


Dungen, Ta Det Lugnt (Sweden)
Do you miss 1964 or feel like you never really got to appreciate it because you weren't born for another 18 years? Me, too. Thankfully, we have Dungen. They swing from roughshod guitar to billowing flute in the same song like no one I've ever heard. Literally, I've never heard anyone else try to do that. Oh my, I love this album. Key tracks: "Det du tanker idag ar du I morgan," (no, I have no idea what any of these titles mean) "Sjutton," and this one, "Panda":



Múm, Yesterday Was Dramatic, Today Is OK (Iceland)
The album title sums up in six words what these ones did in 1,445.

José González, Veneer (Sweden, via Argentinian parents)
The spare balladier and a transport to 197----(choose wisely, Holly)---2. 1972. (Best link of this post right there.)

Paavoharju, Laulu Laakson Kukista (Finland)
This album is the argument for jumping into the mountain lake instead of wading into it. You'll never warm up to it if you try to ease in; you have to let it all go and go all in, because only completely divesting yourself from what you know is what will let you fully absorb what's hitting you. I listened to this album a dozen times in the first week I bought it.

I'm From Barcelona, Let Me Introduce My Friends (Sweden)
It's one of those obnoxious ironic names, but the 29-member band has something going for it, namely, a niche in indie rock for kids who have grown up. Also, they clearly wrote Track 5 for Miriam, who, despite living in France in high school, i.e. a ways from being married, refused to go up the Eiffel Tower with anyone other than her husband. So, however many years later, Jon proposed by asking her if she would go up the tower with him. That's about as precious as it comes, folks.

Sigur Rós, Ágætis Byrjun (Iceland)

Swimming in ice. That's all I could think of listening to these albums (especially Paavoharju, Múm, and this one). All stark, cold, lucid splendor.

I was pleased with this idea of ice bathing for the first week or so I was listening to these albums, until I started reading the reviews about this one. I found out that, not only was my idea of gelid images not unique, but it was universal. Everybody thought this album invoked glaciers and fjords.

My creative sensibilities sulked at first, but then I thought of something: How remarkable for a group to create an album that evokes the same, particular notion in everyone. If someone told you to create an album that made everybody think of climbing trees or watching elephants on the savanna or eating a hamburger and strawberry milkshake in a hole-in-the-wall Chicago diner, all via a language other than the majority of your audience's maternal one, could you do it?