#15 Take a Walk
Well hi. Rainy slushy grey kinda week right? Not so bad I guess. Felt a little too slippy out yesterday to ride my bike so I took a pretty nice walk to campus in the morning. Gave me a chance to think my thoughts and also listen to a really good new album from a Philly band that I want to talk about later but maybe not just yet. It took a little extra time to get to where I needed to go, but I actually think it felt good to have a little...empty space? Guess I've been a little too busy these past few weeks—not to mention the kind of jarring transition from zoom class to being on-campus every morning at 9 a.m.—and haven't had much time to just stare out into nothing.
It's amazing how much nothing I think I need but maybe that's another topic. But something about this seemed to realign something in my rattling little brain and all the sudden yesterday I decided I was gonna be a music writer again? Not that I was thinking of quitting or anything like that...I don't really have much to quit and like all of the things I do (this newsletter included) my bandwidth and interest waxes and wanes and over the years I've just accepted that that's gonna be the normal state for something I can't make a living on anyway.
Anyway, I hadn't written an album review since October and at that point I was starting to feel really unsatisfied with what I was doing in that form. Tale as old as time right? Everyone's saying the review is dead. I have always been a counter to that particular stance, mostly because I still just like reading album reviews and I tend to think that even the more straightforward ones can give you something to talk about, not to mention the really good ones which I believe still have a lot of power (if not the influence they once did, if that makes sense) at least for a little nerd freak like me.
I'm not really here to do a state-of-the-album-review or whatever, maybe later, but the point is that I kind of consciously put it away toward the end of last year (not really at an abnormal time I'll admit, blurb seasons starts earlier and earlier every year) with a bit of a sour taste in my mouth. I was writing these pieces and I just felt...I couldn't get to the heart of the matter under the constraints of the form. Maybe that sounds a little loopy but I do think that what I want to feel after I finish writing a review is that I've figured something out for myself. Even if it's kind of trivial, I want to feel that I've figured out what I think is happening here in a way that I can't just by listening alone. And I wasn't doing that. (Though I felt like I was doing a much better job writing about records in a more casual, personal way in this newsletter.)
I tell my students a lot (do I sound like a raging dork when I say this? I only have so many experiences to draw from these days) that sometimes the best thing to do when they're feeling stuck working on a paper—if things just aren't clicking right—is to walk away for a while. Take a break. This is one of those pieces of advice that's really obvious in some ways, like, no shit, but I do think that sometimes you just need to hear the obvious thing. Take a fucking break! Go for a walk! Take a shower! Lay on the floor! Let things settle in your brain and come back fresh.
So I guess I took a break in October and then three months later I went for a walk and that's when things finally settled in my brain and I could come back fresh. Not only did I write a review for the first time in months last night, but I also finally wrote a new On Shuffle. And now I'm here I guess.
I have a bad understanding of my own productivity. What I haven't mentioned is the guilt I feel when I take these long breaks. When I can't will myself to have something to say. I don't really have an answer for this. I have tried to frame this stuff I do every possible way to get away from the amorphous guilt I feel that I know is toxic, as unfair in theory as it is in reality (after all I had a really busy January, just in a different context). I have not figured this out.
But here's the point—it did feel good in the end. It felt so great to write that review, even if was a short one and it doesn't feel like a huge deal. It felt amazing to write the column again. And it's fine that it took a while, if that's what it takes to finally feel like I'm working something out for myself.
In the spirit of this rediscovered interest, I thought I'd do a quick rundown of the big four music-critic focus albums coming out this week and next. Maybe I am missing some big ones but these are the ones everyone seems to be talking about in my neck of the woods.
Mitski — Laurel Hell (out today) Nobody can decide whether this record is divisive or not. All week, I've seen one person say "this record's not that good" while another says "actually it's pretty good" while another says "this album is gonna be polarizing" and another says "it seems like everyone actually agrees." I did this too.. As is often the case these days...I can't tell what the actual sentiment is other than confusion here. I got my tape earlier this week (and you thought this wasn't gonna be another cassette-obsessive newsletter, think again bucko!) and here's my take: Laurel Hell is quite good. To me, it's very clearly a transitional album, a hinge, and I can really see a future where it gets buried in the bottom of the rankings in favor of what comes before and what (hopefully) comes after. But right now, Laurel Hell strikes me as a smaller, focused album where Mitski really keys in on these shiny synthesizers and tries to figure out all the things she can do with them. Trying to avoid the (also kind of confusing, tbh) narrative around this record, in the songs themselves Mitski really seems interested in building expectations and consciously undercutting them—the bookends on Laurel Hell show this most clearly, building and building toward an imagined big definitive moment that we never get to hear. I'm really drawn toward the slower songs on this one, particularly "I Guess," which plays out like a kind-of-eerie, kind-of-sweet dream waltz.
Black Country, New Road — Ants From Up There (out today) My first reaction to this album is pretty much the same as my reaction to their debut—sick album. I cannot be sure how much I will really want to throw this on, but I really admire the ambition and the maximalism of this record. I saw someone say that it was wrong to compare this to Arcade Fire's Funeral (sorry if that was you!) but now I can't stop thinking about it. Like Funeral plus Los Campesinos! plus jazz? One interesting thing about this record is that every time I think it's over, it really isn't. That is not a dig, usually I was like, "oh cool, more." The closer in particular gets somewhere really huge that I appreciate.
Animal Collective — Time Skiffs (out today) One thing about me is that I just don't think I understand Animal Collective. I have tried. I remember when Merriweather Post Pavilion came out—I was 14 or 15 and I really wanted to like it. Everyone was raving about it. The album art moved. And it's not that I didn't like it per se...it's just that it felt like this record offered nothing for me to hold on to if that makes any sense. It seemed to fall out of my brain the moment it entered. When the 10-year anniversary pieces started piling in a few years ago, I read a number of brilliant tributes to this record that I really enjoyed. But trying the record again, after 10 years of maturing AND growing...it still was just not for me. Kind of like The Suburbs, I spent more time reading great articles about it than I ever did listening to it and that's fine with me. Giving their latest record a try, I think it's pretty pleasant but that's about it. Cool sound, some good hooks, a lot going on, but I just don't know if it connects with me much.
Big Thief — Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You (out next week) I got my tape in the mail the other day and I've only had time to listen to this all the way through twice, but I can already tell that I'll be listening to this a lot for...ever probably? A truly gorgeous record that feels winding and occasionally even surprising without ever really getting grandiose like a lot of big albums would. The length does make it a little difficult to swallow as a whole, and I do wonder if I can find something that really holds these 20 songs together other than "they're on the same record," but honestly I'm not too bothered by that right now. The title track shimmers and ruminates like the very best this band has to offer. "Time Escaping" clangs and clatters with an odd communal glory. There's bluegrass and country and little electronic moments. All the while it feels inviting, simple—these songs are just good as hell.
Quick reminder—my (free!!!) fiction zine is still up for grabs if you haven't requested one yet. I loved every step of making and mailing these, and everyone has been unbelievably kind about it so thank you as always. I'll leave you with a song from the latest Pedro the Lion album Havasu, which I am totally enamored with. Until next time.
My name is Jordy Walsh, and I’m a writer based in Philadelphia. I write about music for The Alternative and Slant Magazine. I Keep a Diary is a newsletter about music, books, writing, and probably a lot of vague emotions. You can follow me on Twitter for more thoughts on all that stuff and also a lot of pictures of my dog. Thanks for joining me.