I have always arrived late to everything I love.
August 7, 2022 7:25 AM Subscribe
“So much of the art we love is really just about our loyalty to and softness toward our own memories; so often loving an album or a book or a song is really just a way to love an obsolete version of ourselves.” - Helena Fitzgerald on August and Everything After, without really discussing the album itself at all, pointing out that it might just be a perfect album.
This is a really solid essay; that penultimate paragraph (going to quote here to preserve against future bitrot):
This album isn’t about me, and that’s what’s great about it. The beloved memory that listening to August and Everything After calls up for me is the memory of listening to August and Everything After. This is one place, at least, to which I can always return, one moment to which I can always go back, one experience that is not lost. My feelings about this album aren’t nostalgic at all, because I can get to it, and can get the same things from it, just as easily now as I could twenty years ago. Maybe that’s what a perfect album is: Something that means you can always go home again.
It really is a perfect album. I think I have this same relationship to it, that listening to it is its own thing. I have hazy memories of a couple of the songs and being around other people but mostly I just remember the album itself.
It's going to be very hot today and I've been trying to get myself to go out for a walk before it's too terrible, so, time to go do that, and put this on.
posted by curious nu at 8:11 AM on August 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
This album isn’t about me, and that’s what’s great about it. The beloved memory that listening to August and Everything After calls up for me is the memory of listening to August and Everything After. This is one place, at least, to which I can always return, one moment to which I can always go back, one experience that is not lost. My feelings about this album aren’t nostalgic at all, because I can get to it, and can get the same things from it, just as easily now as I could twenty years ago. Maybe that’s what a perfect album is: Something that means you can always go home again.
It really is a perfect album. I think I have this same relationship to it, that listening to it is its own thing. I have hazy memories of a couple of the songs and being around other people but mostly I just remember the album itself.
It's going to be very hot today and I've been trying to get myself to go out for a walk before it's too terrible, so, time to go do that, and put this on.
posted by curious nu at 8:11 AM on August 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
This is brilliant writing
posted by uphc at 8:29 AM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by uphc at 8:29 AM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
August and Everything After is the debut studio album by American rock band Counting Crows, released September 14, 1993, on Geffen Records.posted by zamboni at 8:33 AM on August 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
For me, nothing quite epitomizes my college years better than that album. August '93 (of my freshman year), and everything after. It's perfect, indeed.
I recently upgraded to Apple's Airpods Pro, with the noise canceling and spatial audio features, and "Round Here" is one of the songs in a playlist designed to showcase that audio trickery. I know that record so well that I can't stand to listen to the updated mix, which changes based on which way you turn your head.
posted by emelenjr at 8:35 AM on August 7, 2022
I recently upgraded to Apple's Airpods Pro, with the noise canceling and spatial audio features, and "Round Here" is one of the songs in a playlist designed to showcase that audio trickery. I know that record so well that I can't stand to listen to the updated mix, which changes based on which way you turn your head.
posted by emelenjr at 8:35 AM on August 7, 2022
As I said here a few years back, I spent most of 2004 and 2005 listening to “Anna Begins” the first thing in the morning when I got to work. Looking back, I’m a little annoyed at myself for not realizing how profoundly unhappy I was.
Since then, I've taken Counting Crows out of my usual rotation and put them back at least twice, and nearly 30 years later, I think I've finally arrived at a place where I can let the songs shuffle in and out, with the occasional straight-through listen of A&EA. And I think they knew that would happen too, that a lot of people would find this album and not realize how much they needed it for a long time. Part of the reason I think that is that the album cover is the title song, which wasn't on the album, and which they played only a couple of times in concert and did not release until 2009.
posted by Etrigan at 8:37 AM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Since then, I've taken Counting Crows out of my usual rotation and put them back at least twice, and nearly 30 years later, I think I've finally arrived at a place where I can let the songs shuffle in and out, with the occasional straight-through listen of A&EA. And I think they knew that would happen too, that a lot of people would find this album and not realize how much they needed it for a long time. Part of the reason I think that is that the album cover is the title song, which wasn't on the album, and which they played only a couple of times in concert and did not release until 2009.
posted by Etrigan at 8:37 AM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Reminded me of the tone and tenor of early Pitchfork glowing reviews. Was struck by the author's attempts to insist
[the album] does not mean anything in my personal history ... So much of the art we love is really just about our loyalty to and softness toward our own memories ... But August and Everything After isn’t any of that for me ...
despite reminiscing about the 90s and describing their personal semiotics of August (the month) and stealing sideways glances at the apocalypse. It's a doomed denial of the sort that a lot of writing about music usually tries to make as quietly as possible.
posted by Panthalassa at 8:41 AM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
[the album] does not mean anything in my personal history ... So much of the art we love is really just about our loyalty to and softness toward our own memories ... But August and Everything After isn’t any of that for me ...
despite reminiscing about the 90s and describing their personal semiotics of August (the month) and stealing sideways glances at the apocalypse. It's a doomed denial of the sort that a lot of writing about music usually tries to make as quietly as possible.
posted by Panthalassa at 8:41 AM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Love to read a gorgeous essay about an album I find literally unbearable to listen to.
posted by potrzebie at 9:03 AM on August 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 9:03 AM on August 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
Great essay with lots of good bits like this:
Perfect is a particular flavor, like sad or divorced or extremely online. A perfect album completes a single uninterrupted gesture from its first track to its last track
Exactly how I feel about this album. Like the essay author, I don't much care about anything the band did outside of this (and I tried). But August & Everything After? Perfect.
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:13 AM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Perfect is a particular flavor, like sad or divorced or extremely online. A perfect album completes a single uninterrupted gesture from its first track to its last track
Exactly how I feel about this album. Like the essay author, I don't much care about anything the band did outside of this (and I tried). But August & Everything After? Perfect.
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:13 AM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
The first few Counting Crows albums are (I think) pretty remarkable in consistency of tone and narrative, but this essay is correct, August and Everything After is perfect. It's one emotional line from start to finish, and there are no bad songs on it. They never quite got there again, although I like most of Recovering the Satellites and about half of Hard Candy.
posted by restless_nomad at 9:42 AM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad at 9:42 AM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
I loved both this and the linked essay about The National, even though neither is about a band or album that I actually know well. Elder millennial music fandom transcends specifics, I guess.
posted by rivenwanderer at 10:19 AM on August 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by rivenwanderer at 10:19 AM on August 7, 2022 [4 favorites]
Elder millennial music fandom
Elder millennial? This album was released in 1993! I have a vivid memory of listening to "Raining in Baltimore" and feeling mopey on a bus to Heathrow as a young grad student. Despite not being a huge fan of the band. Which perhaps lines up with the theory of the album as gesture to surroundings.
posted by praemunire at 10:23 AM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
Elder millennial? This album was released in 1993! I have a vivid memory of listening to "Raining in Baltimore" and feeling mopey on a bus to Heathrow as a young grad student. Despite not being a huge fan of the band. Which perhaps lines up with the theory of the album as gesture to surroundings.
posted by praemunire at 10:23 AM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
The style the essay is written in is Elder Millennial.
However, as Gen X was sent to the cornfield (a boomer pop culture reference) and cannot be spoken of, the parts of 90s culture that people like are millennial, while parts they dislike are boomer.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:37 AM on August 7, 2022 [19 favorites]
However, as Gen X was sent to the cornfield (a boomer pop culture reference) and cannot be spoken of, the parts of 90s culture that people like are millennial, while parts they dislike are boomer.
posted by betweenthebars at 10:37 AM on August 7, 2022 [19 favorites]
August and Everything After really is perfect. It comes and goes from my consciousness but I always come back to it.
I have a musician friend who pivoted to Friday night livestreams when the pandemic killed all his bar and wedding gigs, and especially in the first year when nobody had anywhere else to be there'd be maybe 20 of us on the stream (this is with zero publicity or anything, just FB followers really). He'd take a modest donation to learn and play an album all the way through each week, and he'd open for himself playing whatever he felt like, including the occasional CC song, and it was something of an inside joke that he'd find ways to drag out (or worse - loop) the "yyyyyeah!" from Mr. Jones.
Anyway, someone did the obvious and paid him to play AaEA in its entirety. Multiple times he stopped to say - sometimes with frustration - how good the album is and how good the songs feel to play. It's just such a good album.
One of my favorite albums of all time is (particularly the first disc) their double-disc live album Across A Wire. They'd toured August long enough to really get down into the songs, and honestly their live versions of the songs from Satellites are significantly better than the original studio versions (Angels of the Silences and Catapult in particular).
AaEA came out Sept 14, 1993. On October 6 they were the opening act at Deep Ellum Live in Dallas, nobody'd heard of them yet, they were so fucking good that when they just wandered out to the bar while the stage was getting reset for the Cranberries and Adam, being kinda unmissable even in a dark crowd, had to retreat from a group of well-wishers trying to buy him drinks. They didn't even have copies of the album at the merch table. I'm not even sure they had any merch at all.
Thank you for sharing this essay, now I have something to listen to all afternoon.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:39 AM on August 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
I have a musician friend who pivoted to Friday night livestreams when the pandemic killed all his bar and wedding gigs, and especially in the first year when nobody had anywhere else to be there'd be maybe 20 of us on the stream (this is with zero publicity or anything, just FB followers really). He'd take a modest donation to learn and play an album all the way through each week, and he'd open for himself playing whatever he felt like, including the occasional CC song, and it was something of an inside joke that he'd find ways to drag out (or worse - loop) the "yyyyyeah!" from Mr. Jones.
Anyway, someone did the obvious and paid him to play AaEA in its entirety. Multiple times he stopped to say - sometimes with frustration - how good the album is and how good the songs feel to play. It's just such a good album.
One of my favorite albums of all time is (particularly the first disc) their double-disc live album Across A Wire. They'd toured August long enough to really get down into the songs, and honestly their live versions of the songs from Satellites are significantly better than the original studio versions (Angels of the Silences and Catapult in particular).
AaEA came out Sept 14, 1993. On October 6 they were the opening act at Deep Ellum Live in Dallas, nobody'd heard of them yet, they were so fucking good that when they just wandered out to the bar while the stage was getting reset for the Cranberries and Adam, being kinda unmissable even in a dark crowd, had to retreat from a group of well-wishers trying to buy him drinks. They didn't even have copies of the album at the merch table. I'm not even sure they had any merch at all.
Thank you for sharing this essay, now I have something to listen to all afternoon.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:39 AM on August 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
That was a stunningly good essay, and I love the things she says almost as much as I love the way she says them.
Thank you so much for sharing this here, Ghidorah. I'm savoring the anticipation of reading more of Helena Fitzgerald's gorgeous and singular voice.
posted by kristi at 11:05 AM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Thank you so much for sharing this here, Ghidorah. I'm savoring the anticipation of reading more of Helena Fitzgerald's gorgeous and singular voice.
posted by kristi at 11:05 AM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Helen Fitzgerald is a tremendous writer. This is a great piece.
However, as Gen X was sent to the cornfield (a boomer pop culture reference
Some of us are specifically in the cornfield trying to figure out if there’s a way to go back and listen to the Counting Crows (who I found catchy at the time) without immediately recalling the feeling of crying on the floor of a shower in a smoking dorm (actually a thing!) at a Women’s College trying not too hurl up the 4-12 Fuzzy Navals and Zimas you consumed after you were rejected by a crush and surrounding you, on all sides, through the walls and windows all you hear through the spray of water is the noise of countless bookshelf stereos playing “Round Here” completely unsynched at top volume.
The 60 Songs that Explain the 90s episode on Counting Crows is one of my favorites in the series.
posted by thivaia at 11:23 AM on August 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
However, as Gen X was sent to the cornfield (a boomer pop culture reference
Some of us are specifically in the cornfield trying to figure out if there’s a way to go back and listen to the Counting Crows (who I found catchy at the time) without immediately recalling the feeling of crying on the floor of a shower in a smoking dorm (actually a thing!) at a Women’s College trying not too hurl up the 4-12 Fuzzy Navals and Zimas you consumed after you were rejected by a crush and surrounding you, on all sides, through the walls and windows all you hear through the spray of water is the noise of countless bookshelf stereos playing “Round Here” completely unsynched at top volume.
The 60 Songs that Explain the 90s episode on Counting Crows is one of my favorites in the series.
posted by thivaia at 11:23 AM on August 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
19 years old, sitting in my dad’s RV as we drove up 95, coming home from visiting my high school sweetheart who was stationed in Norfolk, listening to Raining in Baltimore while it was literally raining in Baltimore… That’s my perfect memory of this perfect album.
My less perfect memory is telling my Zoomer kid that AaEA is one of my desert island albums and then having to explain that concept to her. (Full answer: AaEA, Aladdin Sane, Weezer’s Blue Album, Life’s Rich Pageant, and The Murmurs’ self-titled first album. And I’ve just told you more about me with that than I have in the past twenty years of being a MeFite.)
posted by Ruki at 11:38 AM on August 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
My less perfect memory is telling my Zoomer kid that AaEA is one of my desert island albums and then having to explain that concept to her. (Full answer: AaEA, Aladdin Sane, Weezer’s Blue Album, Life’s Rich Pageant, and The Murmurs’ self-titled first album. And I’ve just told you more about me with that than I have in the past twenty years of being a MeFite.)
posted by Ruki at 11:38 AM on August 7, 2022 [11 favorites]
As a younger millenial, Hard Candy is the album that can hard yank me back into 2002.
posted by BungaDunga at 12:06 PM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by BungaDunga at 12:06 PM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
Regrettably, due to my birth year, Recovering the Satellites is my emotional support Counting Crows album.
It is objectively not a good album, but I feel like somehow if it had some out in the LP era and not the CD era it would have had a chance of goodness. Like, there must be a way of picking ten songs from that album and trimming the fat from them that results in a really tight and meaningful hit record. But what we got was... not that.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:41 PM on August 7, 2022
It is objectively not a good album, but I feel like somehow if it had some out in the LP era and not the CD era it would have had a chance of goodness. Like, there must be a way of picking ten songs from that album and trimming the fat from them that results in a really tight and meaningful hit record. But what we got was... not that.
posted by nebulawindphone at 12:41 PM on August 7, 2022
Another Horsedreamer's Blues may be my favorite Counting Crows song overall, followed closely by Walkaways, which isn't even a song, so I forgive Recovering the Satellites a lot.
posted by restless_nomad at 12:53 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad at 12:53 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Bought the album on cassette when it was released. For me, the most memorable event surrounding it was when Letterman finally kicked a swearing Madonna off his show so CC could play Round Here. Which would have been a much better song if radio hadn't played the shit out of it that year.
The advantage of first hearing this on a cassette, not vinyl or CD, is getting exposed to all the songs equally, and realizin that Murder of One is by far the best song on the album.
posted by morspin at 2:01 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
The advantage of first hearing this on a cassette, not vinyl or CD, is getting exposed to all the songs equally, and realizin that Murder of One is by far the best song on the album.
posted by morspin at 2:01 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is one place, at least, to which I can always return, one moment to which I can always go back, one experience that is not lost. My feelings about this album aren’t nostalgic at all, because I can get to it, and can get the same things from it, just as easily now as I could twenty years ago.
A brilliant piece of work. the writer delivers a pitch perfect fulcrum between transitory emotion and music that seems off center sans sad and rainy but still has tracks that lead to aspects of ones own life. It's as if the writer captured numerous experiences and wraps them up into a template of memory and emotion. almost as if a ritual.
1995 I moved to Florida to help take care of my father. The second night after we got done talking it was about 1:30 a.m. I took my leave, driving his car to my new apartment, it was a rainy muggy Florida evening, when I started the car the windshield wipers started and the CD player went on and it happened to be Counting Crows perfect blue buildings which I had never heard before as it was my sister's CD. immediately I just listened and sat there, low wipers offering a tiny view back and forth and my mind kind of drifted into the song and started drifting out until
"It's 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
of these lives which are completely meaningless"
few seconds later I looked in the rear view, my father was standing in his doorway smoking a cigarette and I rolled on the window muttering something about sleep and he does this doorway careen, folding his arms. I got my bearings and pulled away turning the CD
Omaha came on:
"Start tearin' the old man down
Run past the heather and down to the old road
Start turnin' the grain into the ground
Roll a new leaf over"
and that was me at that very moment, gave up everything, moved away out of my element, lost.
for months that album became a go-to, a crutch and then I just stopped listening to the album all together. for me it helped at the time creating a memory that I had not quite gotten past the death of my father and somehow the album was no longer required. Dad called him a crooner but then again, he loved Conway Twitty.
posted by clavdivs at 3:18 PM on August 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
A brilliant piece of work. the writer delivers a pitch perfect fulcrum between transitory emotion and music that seems off center sans sad and rainy but still has tracks that lead to aspects of ones own life. It's as if the writer captured numerous experiences and wraps them up into a template of memory and emotion. almost as if a ritual.
1995 I moved to Florida to help take care of my father. The second night after we got done talking it was about 1:30 a.m. I took my leave, driving his car to my new apartment, it was a rainy muggy Florida evening, when I started the car the windshield wipers started and the CD player went on and it happened to be Counting Crows perfect blue buildings which I had never heard before as it was my sister's CD. immediately I just listened and sat there, low wipers offering a tiny view back and forth and my mind kind of drifted into the song and started drifting out until
"It's 4:30 A.M. on a Tuesday
It doesn't get much worse than this
In beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
of these lives which are completely meaningless"
few seconds later I looked in the rear view, my father was standing in his doorway smoking a cigarette and I rolled on the window muttering something about sleep and he does this doorway careen, folding his arms. I got my bearings and pulled away turning the CD
Omaha came on:
"Start tearin' the old man down
Run past the heather and down to the old road
Start turnin' the grain into the ground
Roll a new leaf over"
and that was me at that very moment, gave up everything, moved away out of my element, lost.
for months that album became a go-to, a crutch and then I just stopped listening to the album all together. for me it helped at the time creating a memory that I had not quite gotten past the death of my father and somehow the album was no longer required. Dad called him a crooner but then again, he loved Conway Twitty.
posted by clavdivs at 3:18 PM on August 7, 2022 [9 favorites]
I never owned this album, although I still know all the words to Mr. Jones and sang it to my spouse a few months ago, much to his consternation. He is a year and a half younger than me and grew up with access to college radio, so my mid-90s regular rock radio tastes have always been too plebeian for him.
Unlike the author, this album has a crystal clear mid-90s memory for me. The only time I think ever heard it all the way through was some time in Spring 1994, skipping Economics class with my two best friends, we went to Dairy Queen and then just rode around killing time until school got out in a mid-80s Toyota Tercel Wagon named Tallulah. I recognized Round Here and Mr. Jones and knew that the rest of the album was so much better than I would have expected it to be, and that's why I still remember that one afternoon, and not the many other times we skipped Economics to go to Dairy Queen.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:07 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
Unlike the author, this album has a crystal clear mid-90s memory for me. The only time I think ever heard it all the way through was some time in Spring 1994, skipping Economics class with my two best friends, we went to Dairy Queen and then just rode around killing time until school got out in a mid-80s Toyota Tercel Wagon named Tallulah. I recognized Round Here and Mr. Jones and knew that the rest of the album was so much better than I would have expected it to be, and that's why I still remember that one afternoon, and not the many other times we skipped Economics to go to Dairy Queen.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:07 PM on August 7, 2022 [2 favorites]
This album was the soundtrack of my senior year in high school. Some of my best friends made fun of it - the theater kids hated Adam's overwrought vocal turns, like "She has trouble acting normal when she's NERVOUS" in Round Here.
I didn't care. I loved that album, and still do. Like Helena, I didn't keep up with them, and have never really considered myself a fan of Counting Crows. (I have a similar relationship with Pearl Jam and Ten.) Who cares?
Our lives are just a series of moments. If a moment was great for you, and not overtly harmful to others, let it be great. 10-year-old me thought visiting Disney World for the first time was awesome. Middle-aged me feels a little differently about it. But we've both changed a lot since then. I've been learning how to hold both things at the same time - to have a lot of fondness for Past Me, and while also appreciating how that kid has grown over the years.
posted by sockshaveholes at 4:10 PM on August 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
I didn't care. I loved that album, and still do. Like Helena, I didn't keep up with them, and have never really considered myself a fan of Counting Crows. (I have a similar relationship with Pearl Jam and Ten.) Who cares?
Our lives are just a series of moments. If a moment was great for you, and not overtly harmful to others, let it be great. 10-year-old me thought visiting Disney World for the first time was awesome. Middle-aged me feels a little differently about it. But we've both changed a lot since then. I've been learning how to hold both things at the same time - to have a lot of fondness for Past Me, and while also appreciating how that kid has grown over the years.
posted by sockshaveholes at 4:10 PM on August 7, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is really good writing, and she is right. It is a perfect album.
The measuring stick for me musically is usually “is there a note you could change to make it better?” and in this case, no. It’s a complete work of art.
But also lyrically, it is eternally evocative. I come back to it from time to time, and it always transports me in the way it did when I first heard it. There is a power in its cohesiveness.
There’s a few records that do this for me, notably Jeff Buckley‘s Grace, that I would have to deem perfect for the same reasons, and really those albums are very rare.
I went to see them on the tour for this, and on the whole, the show was disappointing- Fiona Apple opened and she was just a kid who hadn’t gotten the air beneath her wings yet, Adam Duritz is an extemporaneous singer, and saw fit to change every single melody line to suit his mood, and good lord, the self-absorbed audience that was there to be seen there and proceeded to talk over the whole show… but the band was pro. They’re journeyman players. I appreciate that, though to me they only briefly had one subsequent moment that came close to August.
Well, I woke up in mid-afternoon 'cause that's when it all hurts the most. I dream I never know anyone at the party and I'm always the host …
Another song that just transports me instantly to a place where I was hearing it for the first time, and a place I am happy to be in whenever I hear it again.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:57 PM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
The measuring stick for me musically is usually “is there a note you could change to make it better?” and in this case, no. It’s a complete work of art.
But also lyrically, it is eternally evocative. I come back to it from time to time, and it always transports me in the way it did when I first heard it. There is a power in its cohesiveness.
There’s a few records that do this for me, notably Jeff Buckley‘s Grace, that I would have to deem perfect for the same reasons, and really those albums are very rare.
I went to see them on the tour for this, and on the whole, the show was disappointing- Fiona Apple opened and she was just a kid who hadn’t gotten the air beneath her wings yet, Adam Duritz is an extemporaneous singer, and saw fit to change every single melody line to suit his mood, and good lord, the self-absorbed audience that was there to be seen there and proceeded to talk over the whole show… but the band was pro. They’re journeyman players. I appreciate that, though to me they only briefly had one subsequent moment that came close to August.
Well, I woke up in mid-afternoon 'cause that's when it all hurts the most. I dream I never know anyone at the party and I'm always the host …
Another song that just transports me instantly to a place where I was hearing it for the first time, and a place I am happy to be in whenever I hear it again.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:57 PM on August 7, 2022 [1 favorite]
> Toyota Tercel wagon named Tallulah
My head cannon is that it's named for the Tori Amos song.
'Boys for Pele' is the 'Paul's Boutique' of nineties sadartrock.
posted by kaibutsu at 7:13 PM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
My head cannon is that it's named for the Tori Amos song.
'Boys for Pele' is the 'Paul's Boutique' of nineties sadartrock.
posted by kaibutsu at 7:13 PM on August 7, 2022 [3 favorites]
The B&N college bookstore where I get my morning coffee, the music obviously not chosen by the young African American staff members, and the acoustic version of "Round Here" comes on. About a minute later the door to the kitchen slams open and the manager, also a young African American woman, storms out and says "what in the damn hell is wrong with that poor white man?" and changes the station to hip-hop.
posted by goatdog at 9:17 PM on August 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by goatdog at 9:17 PM on August 7, 2022 [8 favorites]
The power of AaEA is so great that, for me, it bleeds over and fills in the cracks of Recovering the Satellites and This Desert Life, the album a perfect blue building upon which everything after can be templated.
I appreciate this sort of sorcery, the writing in the article, where that deep, shared, limnal space and emotion that music gives so many of us is given voice and we are encouraged to add our own.
posted by riverlife at 12:15 AM on August 8, 2022
I appreciate this sort of sorcery, the writing in the article, where that deep, shared, limnal space and emotion that music gives so many of us is given voice and we are encouraged to add our own.
posted by riverlife at 12:15 AM on August 8, 2022
So I spent the day listening to Counting Crows because of this essay and it was an experience. I really do like all their albums through Hard Candy, the Saturday Nights and Sunday Mornings has a couple fun songs on it, and then... nope. A cover album of country standards? Not for me. Somewhere Under Wonderland? I listened to it literally within the last three hours and I already can't remember it. There's a fun song on their 2021 EP (and some depressing ones) and I will have to remember to catch up when they put out the notional second half of the album, but it really seems like they and I diverged somewhere in the early 2000s. That's fine, I feel less guilty for not keeping up with them.
posted by restless_nomad at 2:28 PM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by restless_nomad at 2:28 PM on August 8, 2022 [3 favorites]
The advantage of first hearing this on a cassette, not vinyl or CD, is getting exposed to all the songs equally, and realizin that Murder of One is by far the best song on the album.
Mr. Jones is one of my go-to karaoke songs, and Rain King is a favorite, but this is the one I've been humming to myself the last couple of days.
posted by curious nu at 7:31 AM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
Mr. Jones is one of my go-to karaoke songs, and Rain King is a favorite, but this is the one I've been humming to myself the last couple of days.
posted by curious nu at 7:31 AM on August 10, 2022 [1 favorite]
It took me literally years to realized that the song title “A Murder Of One” is a reference to the band’s name (yes, despite the lyrics of the song making the reference more explicitly).
posted by mbrubeck at 11:41 AM on August 12, 2022
posted by mbrubeck at 11:41 AM on August 12, 2022
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From the essay:
August is the meds wearing off, the bottom of the afternoon, the text and the email you let go unanswered. It feels like waiting for something to happen, and it feels like everything that was going to happen already has.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:31 AM on August 7, 2022 [10 favorites]