Five Influential Albums

I’ve always been equally drawn to the worlds of music and of writing. That’s partly why I like poetry so much. My mom was a piano teacher, and when I was little and a fear of the dark gripped me and held me, I would hear her playing downstairs before bed and the fear would subside. Many years have passed since then, but that same sense of ease and safety found within music has stayed with me. I’ve been down a million-and-one rabbit holes of different genres and different artists, but I just thought it would be fun to write about five albums that especially have had an influence on me.

Carrie and Lowell – Sufjan Stevens

When I was younger, my dad had an old faux wood multipurpose record player. It also doubled as a CD player, tripled as a cassette player, and probably had the capacity to toast bagels and shine shoes. It did a lot of things. Point is, I was drawn to the concept of the record player, and after amassing a small collection of vinyl I traded up and got a new system. I christened the new set-up with a record I’d bought on a whim, which is not something I typically do. That record was Sufjan Stevens’ Carrie and Lowell, which came out in 2015 and saw Sufjan grappling with memories of childhood and of loss, marrying beautiful melodies, whispered vocals, and stripped back picked guitar with often devastating lyricism interspersed with poetry. Beginning with the song Death with Dignity, the eleven tracks on the album floored me first and foremost from a sound perspective. I listened passively to the lyricism, but above all the sound was just so gentle and pleasing to my ears. The hopeful upturn in the melody halfway through Should Have Known Better still gives me goosebumps when I hear it, and songs like Carrie & Lowell and Blue Bucket of Gold stand out as favorites, though there isn’t even a mediocre song in the bunch. My favorite song on the album is John My Beloved, for its beautiful and somber honesty, and the raw emotion which comes through Sufjan’s voice. I loved Carrie and Lowell when I first heard it, and I still love it ten years after its release.

Licensed to Ill – Beastie Boys

Talk about a left turn when it comes to comparing the sound of things! Licensed to Ill sounds like Carrie and Lowell in the way that a bear looks like a goldfish. It doesn’t. When I was about nineteen or so, I came to the conclusion that I had excellent taste in music and that what I didn’t listen to must not be very good. I loved folk music, as evidenced by the album just above this, and generally thumbed my nose at hip-hop and thought it wasn’t very good or interesting. As it happens, I was stupid! I still am, but I was even stupider then.

I had joined a traveling Christian drama group sometime around this point, and I remember we were staying with a family somewhere in Kansas. I don’t remember where in Kansas, but it was flat and without trees…because it was Kansas. We had a free day, and I was by myself searching through the Android Play Store to see what music I could find. There happened to be a section for free albums of the day, and the one that caught my eye was Licensed to Ill. Maybe I had too much brewing angst, but the punk-adjacent sensibilities of Mike D, Ad-Rock, and MCA trading lines back and forth was just what I was looking for. The deep, echoey drums on Rhymin & Stealin were so different and ear-catching, and the zaniness of the lyricism and the energy the group brought were exciting! I laid in a dark room by myself with headphones on, and I must have listened to that album two or three times through. The three track run of Fight for Your Right, No Sleep till Brooklyn, and Paul Revere is still my favorite, and especially the storytelling and beat on Paul Revere. While I find myself going back to the Beastie Boys second record Paul’s Boutique more frequently these days, it was their debut album which really opened the floodgates of my love for hip-hop. It’s a great record and well deserving of the label of a classic.

Flesh and Bones Electric Fun – Mutemath

Flesh and Bones Electric Fun is a live album done two years after Mutemath’s debut self-titled record, and most of the songs on it are the same songs if done in a slightly different order. I’d say check out their self-titled before this one, but you can’t go wrong either way. I spent a lot more time with Flesh and Bones, so I’m including that one, and as far as live records are concerned the album is excellent. Mutemath is on a short list of bands I’ve seen live, and of that short list they sit at the top spot in terms of blowing me away. This live record really captures the band at the height of their powers, and Darren King’s drumming is as superb on this as it is on the self-titled.

I should say that my first emotion associated with Mutemath was loathing! Their first record came out in 2006, which would have put me at 12 or 13 when I first heard their sound. That would have put me in my prime when it came to acting like a brat and given that Mutemath was my sister’s band before they ever became mine, it was easy to despise them. Maybe it was Paul Meany’s voice I hated. Maybe it was nothing at all, save for the inherent contrarianism which tells me not to like something if someone else likes it. Whatever the case, I would stick my fingers in my ears and throw a fit if my sister played Mutemath in the car. As I said…I was a brat. This was when I was 12 or 13, and then a number of years passed before I heard anything from them again. I somehow came across the song Stare at the Sun / Obsolete—which is two songs on the self-titled but one on Flesh and Bones—and I didn’t have any comparison for the sound of it. The drums were crazy and hypnotizing, while Meany’s vocals were impassioned and sounded great. The bassline halfway through the track stuck in my brain like a tick, and I was hooked. Who could have made such wonderful music, I asked? I’m sure I laughed the first time I saw the band’s name beside that track I was enamored with. The band I hated as much as wasps was secretly awesome, and my sister had been right. Well, we all make mistakes.

Drums are my favorite instrument, and Flesh and Bones Electric Fun stands as a major influence in terms of building upon that rhythmic foundation. Drummers like John Bonham; Bill Bruford; Art Blakey; Ginger Baker; Buddy Rich: all of them fascinate me and suck me into their kits, and Darren King is a drummer who holds his own in the pantheon of guys who can wail away with the sticks. Heck, Darren King even does the old Keith Moon trick of taping his headphones onto his head before a show. Talk about wailing away. Mutemath is a great band, and I highly recommend Flesh and Bones Electric Fun as well as their first several records. Killer band.

Station to Station – David Bowie

I could talk about David Bowie until the cows came home. Now, I don’t have cows, and if I did you can I bet I wouldn’t let them roam about so as to need to come back home, but…what’s that? Oh, right, David Bowie. As is often the case with artists and new listeners, I heard about David Bowie after he passed away. I imagine a whole lot of Beach Boys fans are going to be born given the recent passing of Brian Wilson. Regardless, the year was 2016, and Bowie passed away just a few days after surprise releasing his swan song of an album, Blackstar. Amazing album, I should mention. You could write (and there have been written) whole articles about it. The final track, I Can’t Give Everything Away, is so good it hurts to think about. But I digress. Shortly after Bowie passed away, I downloaded a greatest hits album of his to listen to on a flight to somewhere. I don’t remember where the flight was to, but I remember listening to the album. Bowie was amazing, and that greatest hits album began me on a many months’ journey of going through his discography album by album. I could have gone with a number of albums here, but I figured I would just pick my favorite. Low or Scary Monsters would have been other options.

Station to Station begins with the sound of a train rolling over tracks on the way to somewhere. The title track, Station to Station, is over ten minutes long and those ten minutes fly by. A minute into the track a brooding piano comes into the picture, followed by the drums and the bass, and then the electric guitar. It’s not till three minutes that we even hear Bowie’s voice, and when he finally comes into the song the sound is a soulful and haunting croon. The song builds over the next few minutes, and a little over five minutes into the track everything switches. The piano starts driving faster, everything becomes funkier, and Bowie’s vocals get bigger and more impassioned. What a track. One of his best. The album is only six songs, and all six are excellent. Golden Years and Stay are top tier Bowie as well, and the album closes out with Bowie’s cover of Nina Simone’s Wild is the Wind. The percussion on that cover is remarkable and stark, and emotion pours out of Bowie’s voice much the same as when Nina sang it.

I don’t play piano like my mom did. The instrument just doesn’t make sense to me. But I do sing, and Bowie is one of my greatest influences in driving me to do so. He was always willing to try something different, and he never settled for doing the same thing twice. This list would be incomplete without David Bowie.

Aquemini – Outkast

The fifth and final album I’m talking about is the one I’m taking a liberty with. Aquemini probably didn’t influence me as much as the other four albums on this list, but it is one of my favorite albums ever, and I wanted an excuse to talk about it!

Outkast is the duo of Andre 3000 and Big Boi. They’re a hip-hop group based out of Atlanta, and for my money they’re the best group to ever do it. Andre probably gets more flowers than Big Boi, but if you were to argue either for a spot in the ten best rappers ever you could make a valid case. When I was really getting into hip-hop, artists like Kanye West, Kendrick, Danny Brown, and Pusha T had all of my attention. I didn’t go back to the eighties or nineties as much, which I think is typical for newer listeners. At some point I lost the ability to connect Bluetooth in my car, and I was backed into a corner and forced to switch to CDs for a time. The same year that Bowie released Blackstar, A Tribe Called Quest released a masterpiece of a last album which happened to feature Andre 3000 on the song Kids. Andre’s storytelling and flow were captivating, and that (as well as several features he did with Kid Cudi) forced me to go back and listen to Outkast. That was a very good decision.

You could argue Aquemini or ATLiens for the best of the best in hip-hop. They both fit the bill for stone cold classics. I think I lean Aquemini, though, by the thinnest of whiskers. Starting with a minute long instrumental setting the stage, the album really kicks off with Return of the “G”, a track which is urgent and features both Andre and Big Boi rapping like the rent was due a week prior. There are horns in the back, and layered vocals in the back, and it all sounds so good and aggressive at the same time. Rose Parks is the next track, and it’s funky and fun as all get out, with a chorus that’ll stick in your brain and rattle around for a week. The title track, Aquemini, is one of the best cuts on the album. It’s a sweeping track, and both Andre and Big Boi take two verses each, with the second of Andre’s verses being one constantly heralded in the best verse of all time argument. Top to bottom this album is incredible, and I love it to pieces. Other incredible cuts are Da Art of Storytellin’ Part 1 (though part 2 is incredible, too), SpottieOttieDopalicious, Liberation, and Chonkyfire. Classic album.