A New Favorite Album

I have been thinking a lot lately about the nature of my musical tastes. For instance, people will often ask me what type of music I listen to or enjoy the most. Or perhaps they will ask which is my favorite band. I find questions of either type quite difficult to answer, and I'm not sure why. I do have favorite bands, but those change over time. The bands which I listened to the most in, say, middle school are no longer very often in my stereo, but I still feel as if that should not diminish their status as one-time "favorites." And one genre of music usually cannot accurately describe my tastes at any given time, which are in constant flux.

I thought about this, and realized something that, if not true in general, has definitely been true of my listening patterns in recent months. I tend to listen to music one album at a time. I find an album that I love, and listen to it, usually many times. I listen to this album almost exclusively over a span of time that can range anywhere from a week to a month or more. Starting in January, it was Plans by Death Cab for Cutie. Then sometime last month I went through a period of Graceland by Paul Simon. And last week I rediscovered Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. Over the past three months, the songs on these three albums have accounted for, I would say, about 80% of all the time that I have had music playing.

This naturally led me to explore possible connections between these three albums, ways in which I could classify them, explain their sudden juxtaposition. At first glance, you could not imagine a grouping of three albums of more different styles, not to mention time periods (disregarding classical music). Astral Weeks came out in 1968, with Morrison weaving acoustic arrangements into serene and mystical poetry. Come 1986, we find Simon blending folk-pop melodies with African song styles. Nineteen years later, in 2005, Death Cab brings a more polished studio sound to their simple but beautiful songs.

So what do these albums have in common? Love, of course, like all music. Death, most often that of a loved one and how we are reminded of our own. Loss, usually as relates to love and death, but also the loss of the past, of youth and adolescence. And finally, new beginnings and new destinations.

"And it came to me then
That every plan
Is a tiny prayer to father time"

Thus begins "What Sarah Said," a heartbreaking description of a man sitting in a hospital awaiting the news that his love has died, from Plans. The reactions are almost too realistic. He doesn't cry, he doesn't fall apart, he simply studies other people, rations his breathing, and dissects the smell of the place into its components (urine and 409). All the listener gets are these tiny details. There's no story, no Who, What or Why. The lyrics follow exactly the kind of broken and distracted narrative that would be running through the mind of the singer. This has an incredible emotional effect when combined with the relentless repetition in piano and guitar. This returns throughout the album, this theme of a couple who knows that one of them is dying, and of how their lives and their relationship are affected. In "I Will Follow You into the Dark," it is love that spurs the singer's desire to die with his love, in order to keep her company in death. It is the journey through life without her that he fears even more.

When Paul Simon sings "I'm going to Graceland," he is speaking of this same journey. Having lost his wife, he and his son embark on a trip to the sacred place. The wounds from his loss are obviously still fresh, as he sings:

"She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead"

But he has already decided to continue his journey. He has a new destination, and though it may be arbitrary, maybe it's just the idea of a new place to go, of a new start, that is driving him there. "Or maybe I've a reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland." The album as a whole has a slight feeling of melancholy, of world-weariness, even during the more upbeat numbers. There is a constant sense of randomness, as if the singer is aimlessly moving forward through life, while at the same time being hopeful of some possible progress.

I'm not quite sure what to say here about Astral Weeks. It has been said that W.B. Yeats was an important influence on Van Morrison's songwriting. That seems to be true to the extent that Morrison's lyrics, like Yeats's, are saturated with symbols and references, especially on this album. Trains, ribbons, rain, oceans, horses, stars, and avenues combine to form a world which could be seen in a million different ways depending on how you interpret the symbols. Regardless, the same themes are there, of love and loss, only he doesn't come right out and tell you about it. Instead he immerses you in his world and forces you to try to find your own way out.

In the eight songs on this album, Morrison reaches a beauty and a transcendence which is unmatched in any of his later albums. After all, when you are singing at 23 years old that "I ain't nothing but a stranger in this world, I got a home on high," where can you go from there? The answer is in "Sweet Thing," when he sings "And I will never grow so old again." He has already done his most mature songwriting, and all his future albums, in comparison, seem empty of meaning and emotion. Sure, he comes close at times, in songs like "Into the Mystic." But even then, what happens? He starts to work up to a climax, then when it just starts to get good, "Too late to stop now," and he cuts it off, seemingly right in the middle. He can't go back, can't face those emotions again. It's endlessly frustrating to listen to after you've heard what he's capable of on Astral Weeks.

If you're looking for a new favorite album, one that you won't ever get tired of hearing, I would highly recommend any of these three. Right now, Astral Weeks is my favorite, but that will probably change. If you want to know more about it, I loved this review by Lester Bangs (who, after seeing Almost Famous, I can't imagine as anyone else but Philip Seymour Hoffman).