Favorite Music of 2019

2019 has been a good year for music. The Avett Brothers released their 10th studio album, and Amy Palmer released one of the most raw albums I’ve ever heard. And with a few earlier posts about music in mind, I thought it only fitting I do a post of some of my favorite songs of 2019.

Death in Midsummer, Deerhunter

The first on the list is the song Death in Midsummer by Deerhunter. The song’s cheery melody made by a harpsichord, piano, and guitar, belie the mortality-confronting lyrics. If you want to hear a new take on a 60’s psychadelic sound, give them a listen.

The Ride, Amanda Palmer

I wrote about the second song on the list back in February, so check that post out for my thoughts on The Ride by Amanda Palmer. Make sure you’ve got some tissue handy before you press play.

High Steppin’, The Avett Brothers

The latest album from The Avett Brothers, released in October, is their most political yet. They take on sexism, racism, and gun violence. In their announcement of the album on Instagram, Seth Avett says “We didn’t make a record that was meant to comment on the sociopolitical landscape that we live in. We did, however, make an album that is obviously informed by what is happening now on a grander scale all around us…because we are a part of it and it is a part of us.”

Closer Than Together isn’t my favorite record the Avetts have made—it’s a pretty heavy album. But I do feel it’s exactly the album that they needed to make this year.

High Steppin’ is one of the best songs I’ve ever known to give me a boost. Towards the end, they sing “The best beggars are choosers. The best winners are losers. The best lovers ain’t ever been loved. First place ain’t easy. The hardest part is believing. The very last word is love.” It’s a good “pick-me-up” in the midst of such a sobering album.

Bleeding White, The Avett Brothers

Closer Than Together opens with this rockin’ song that I would love to see live one day.

Get Yourself Together, The Black Keys

The Black Keys have a new album out, and it doesn’t disappoint.

Wade in the Water, John Butler Trio

These last 5 songs in the list weren’t released in 2019, but they’re songs and/or artists I’ve either discovered this year, or still get played quite frequently.

The first of these, is Wade in the Water by John Butler Trio. I’d never heard of this group until my brother introduced me to them while we were on a family fishing trip.

Ever since the soundtrack to Into the Wild came out in 2007, the song Hard Sun has been my personal anthem. I couldn’t listen to the album without wanting to just fill my backpack and just disappear into the woods. It took 5 or 6 years before that desire faded, though Hard Sun still remained my anthem. Until I heard Wade in the Water. Maybe it was the fact that my brother said it would make for a good fly fishing film intro, and then we started riffing on the idea. Maybe it was the fact that I was with my favorite people in my most favorite place on earth doing one of my most favorite things. Maybe it’s the fact that the song is about finding one’s self in the river and mountains. Really, it’s all of the above. Give it a listen.

We All Die Young, The Decemberists

Just like Deerhunter’s Death in Midsummer’s cheery tune belies the heavy, mortality-facing lyrics, so does We All Die Young by The Decemberists. I mean, the chorus has a bunch of children singing along to “We all die young.”

The Joke, Brandi Carlile

Holy dang, Brandi Carlile always knocks my socks off! There’s a part in The Story that still gives me goosebumps and chills every single time I hear it. The Joke has the same affect, and like The Avett Brothers’ High Steppin’, it’s a powerful song that gives me hope and strength.

When I Get to Heaven, John Prine

I love John Prine’s voice, both pre- and post-cancer. Maybe more so post-cancer. I think the rawness of it just adds to the words being sung.

Sugartooth, Brandi Carlile

Sugartooth is another one of those antithetical songs, with an upbeat melody, but a sad tale behind it, of a childhood friend of Brandi’s brother who took his life after becoming addicted to drugs. But perhaps the tune behind the lyrics fit a little better than the others on the list.

A lot of the music that has come out during 2019, and 2018 has been pretty heavy. And I think it needs to be. Art is there to help us understand, and to confront us with challenging topics, and with all that we are facing locally, nationally, and globally, I think we need hard art. I think we need songs and paintings and photographs and sculpture and poetry and stories by those blessed with those gifts to help us all cope and confront our fears and worries and anger and whatever else we may be struggling with. Great art can (should?) heighten our joys, and happiness, or turn negative feelings to positive ones. Amanda Palmer’s The Ride is a good reminder that we’re all going through tough things, or have gone through tough things. We’re not alone. We don’t have to struggle alone in silence. After all, “Isn’t it nice when we all can cry at the same time?”

It's Just a Ride

Let me introduce this post by saying: find some place to be alone for 10 minutes. 10 minutes 14 seconds to be exact. This song, The Ride by Amanda Palmer is bound to bring some pretty powerful emotions to the surface. So go find a corner, maybe bring a box of tissues, and hit play: (a quick word of warning: She drops the F-bomb at 6:20, so hit mute for a second if you're averse to such language)

This song was featured on NPR's All Songs Considered podcast on February 12. When I heard it that day, I had the thought "That was a good song, and I'm glad I heard it and had that experience, but it's not a song I need in my library, but I'm glad I heard it." But the song just wouldn’t leave me alone. It's become an ear worm in the last 10 days, but in such a good way, and I had to write something about it.

The song is all about fear, and the ups and downs in life we all experience using a roller coaster ride as a metaphor to express the idea. The music perfectly reflects this in a waltz with an ascending and descending scale. Before she wrote the song, Amanda asked her fans on her Patreon website to tell her something they were afraid of in 50 words or less. They responded with 1,183 comments. On the list are things like the fear of dying, parents dying, inability to have children, losing a child, breaking up, finding new love. She wrote the song in 36 hours after reading those comments (which itself took her 3 hours) posted in response to her request. She told the NPR hosts in an interview about the experience:

“There was a guy who commented ‘I’m not afraid of anything anymore really.’ I just remember what Bill Hicks said, and I knew exactly what this guy was talking about, I’m a huge Bill Hicks fan, I’ve referenced him in my songs, he’s a hero to me. And I knew he was talking about this monologue that Bill Hicks ended one of his shows with about how life is like a ride at an amusement park, and it has thrills and chills and you go up and down and around and around and it’s very brightly colored and then there are people who remember it’s a ride and they come back and they tell you don’t be afraid of anything ever. It’s just a ride. And I found myself thinking, like, ‘oh am I allowed to steal that for a song? I can write anything I want, I can steal that.’”

What she came up with is something so mind-blowingly powerful. And ultimately, I feel, so full of hope and comfort. One of my favorite lines, which consistently puts a lump in my throat, goes "I wish you could think of me sitting and singing beside you." I just love how badly she wants to sit next to these fans of hers that told her so many heartbreaking stories and put her arm around them to comfort them. Another favorite line goes "Isn't it nice when we're all afraid at the same time?" and later a variation of the same: "Isn't it nice when we all can cry at the same time?" We've all gone through tough times in our lives, so we should all be able to sympathize and empathize with each other, and be afraid or cry with each other.

So if you're struggling, remember "it's just a ride." And I join Amanda in her wish that you "could think of me sitting and singing [or] riding beside you."

Music and Me

I love music.

I know I’m not unique in this aspect, so why bring it up? Why devote a post on my photography blog about my love of music?

There was a recent period in my life when I wasn’t the voracious music listener I was before and after. The only time I listened to music in any degree was while I was driving. But last year I gradually paying more attention to my iTunes library, and one of my resolutions for 2019 is to really get back into music.

I’m going to make perhaps a long-winded correlation, but hear me out: In the past 12 to maybe 18 months I’ve felt a resurgence in my confidence as a photographer (this whole topic of confidence deserves its own blog post, which I may or may not write), and I feel like my return to searching for new music and listening more often has been a big contributor to that change I’ve seen in my creatively, especially over the last month and a half. It was in early- to mid-2014 that I stopped searching out new music and listening so much, and it was around that same time that I felt a decline in my confidence level.

Music has always been one of my favorite things. I love the memories that certain songs can bring to the surface; I love the excitement of hearing an old favorite I may have neglected or ignored for a long time; I love the thrill of hearing a brand new song that stirs up emotion in whatever way, be it happiness, or sadness, or rowdy, or hopeful.

And while I’m on this topic of music, and its impact on my creativity, music has been a part of my photography. I’ve often thought of what a soundtrack for projects or individual photographs would sound like: what style of music would it be? would it be a score? who would compose it? what artists and songs would be on it? During the years of 2015-2017 and part of 2018, whenever I went out photographing I played music in the car that had an impact on me when I was in college or during my time in grad school. Artists like Interpol, Death Cab for Cutie, Wilco, The New Pornographers, and Elliott Smith. My thinking was that that music inspired me and helped channel my creativity back then, so it should inspire me now. I felt my work was strong then, so listening to that same music should help me make strong work now. Right? I even made a playlist with all of those old favorite songs and albums.

Looking back on that period, I feel like I was making work that was trying to by like the work I was making during college. I feel like I was trying to make that old music inform my present-day creativity. In mid-2018 I realized this, and thought “it’s 2018. I’m not in my early or late twenties. I need to be making work that is more authentic to my 2018 self. Why not update my music?” And once I did that, once I started playing the music that was inspiring me currently, today, I think that was when my confidence began to really return. I had, without stating specifically, decided to live in the present and look to the future as an artist, and turn to those things that are currently inspiring, informing, and influencing me. I’m not trying to make the music I listen to be responsible for my success or failures, or ups or downs as an artist. I just mention all this to illustrate the music’s power to influence me.

The lesson I’ve learned (and maybe it’s still sinking in) is that I’m not the same person I was when I was in college. I’m not the same artist I was then, or in 2008. I’m not the same artist I was a month ago, nor am I, I think it would be safe to say, even the same artist I was yesterday. We’re all progressing—or, god forbid, digressing—and we need to embrace that progression, grow with it, and learn from it. It might do us good to take a minute periodically and identify (if it’s not obvious) what is causing that growth.