#6: Whirlpool // Late LPs
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve returned to this space. All I can really say is that I’ve been trying pretty hard to claw my way back here through the mostly awful days of February, to not much luck. I loved the consistency, the little ritual of my first few weeks writing this newsletter, but I kind of knew all along that that consistency wouldn’t last forever, or maybe very long at all depending on your perspective. I think it’s natural and expected to fall away from a routine that you’ve built for yourself, especially when it’s something that no one’s holding over your head or forcing you to sit down and do, especially when it’s something you set on top of a pile of other things you do have to do, especially when it’s a writing project and you’re prone to self-doubt on top of procrastination and well everything else.
I am not sure what kept me from writing in the end, but I do know that February felt long, protracted, strange. Pretty powder snow turned to plastic dirty ice pretty quickly, and there’s a harsh glistening white spread over the memory of the entire month. I faced a few personal rejections that compounded a general creep of time. And a few weeks ago, we lost our grandmother after a difficult few years.
I think maybe I don’t know what to say about that last thing. I feel strange and tentative about grief in the first place, I’m never particularly sure what to do with it. But the pandemic has made a loss like this ever stranger, ever more uncertain, and absolutely more difficult. I’m alright (don’t worry) but I feel a little...bewildered? It’s a feeling of, on top of everything over the last year, now we have this returning, familiar cruelty. And it’s somehow the same as it was before and completely new, although maybe that’s the way it is every time something like this happens.
If I sound a little wishy-washy to you, a little slippery and unsure, you’re right. Nothing is ever completely one thing, and I guess I’m feeling that way particularly strongly in the last few weeks, especially when I think about the slivers of lightness that have come through alongside everything else. A few days gave us that cautious warmth that previews spring, and I left my heavy coat at home while I meandered around the city with Nick. Stuck in between those rejections I mentioned was a single, luminescent affirmation. All of the good and all of the bad and all of the ambiguous things are sliding all around my brain in gentle but steady whirlpools. I’ll say it again—I feel strange.
I tend to sink into myself when I don’t know what to do—I drew back from social media and things like that for a week or so, I’m not sure whether that means anything but I needed a little barrier, even if it was an imagined one. I use that phrase often—“I sink into myself”—but I think it’s usually more true that I’m grounding myself, or maybe distracting myself, with something. It’s almost always music.
It’s unsurprising and maybe a little boring at this point, but I listen to music when I don’t know what else to do with myself. I listen when I’m trying to get my brain to a new place, out of the whirlpool for just a second. I listen to be alone and to not be alone.
And for the rest of this newsletter, since I’m still not entirely sure what I want to say, I’m going to write about music because that’s what I do, that’s what I’ve always done. Due in part to the Jimmy Eat World Clarity live stream a few weeks ago, I have turned to that record most often in the last few weeks. It is nothing short of perfect to me, and watching that live stream was one of a handful of pure moments of joy I’ve experienced in the past month (ask Tali and Danielle, whose conversation I could not even pretend to meaningfully participate in directly after the stream ended, I was still beaming).
But I’m not going to spend much time writing about Clarity right now (I’m restraining myself). Instead, I wanted to write about a few records that appeared in my mailbox in the last couple weeks.
Because of the way that the vinyl business is working these days, most of these records are 2020 releases, delayed in production at the overwhelmed pressing plants and in delivery by the even more overwhelmed postal services. The extended period that it takes to make and deliver vinyl must be frustrating and stressful for artists in a time when they really don’t need any more frustrations.
But I am personally okay with waiting for new records to arrive. Recently it feels like the attention we can afford to new music is extremely limited—a great album released on Friday is gone from my timeline by the time Monday rolls around—and it feels the same on a personal level too. I am drawn away from the latest records back into a constant stream of even newer records, or else back into the arms of an old favorite (it’s Clarity, I’m talking about Clarity).
When that album I loved three, four, even five months ago finally arrives in physical form on my doorstep, it feels like a renewed demand for attention, and I’ve been grateful for that now more than ever. And a lot of the time these new arrivals somehow sound more powerful than before, as if they’ve been improving in the silence while I turned my back.
So, here are a few words on some LPs that arrived with a welcome lateness (and two prompt bonuses):
Sinai Vessel — Ground Aswim
I’ve been a huge fan of this record since the first second I heard it—I even got to write about it a few months ago as part of The Alt’s best of 2020 feature. The spacious atmosphere of Ground Aswim was striking to me from the very beginning, and I think I’ve been trying to put it into words for as long as I’ve been listening to it. This is not a record that’s sparse so much as alone— the rocking songs on the record (“Shameplant”) are just as ghostly and left behind as the skeletal ones (“Where Did You Go”).
Ground Aswim sounds absolutely beautiful on vinyl. Each erroneous pop or crackle that slides from my speaker brings a new kind of ache to some of the songs I hadn’t singled out before, like the overwhelmed fatigue on “Fragile” or the rich character sketching on “George.” And the songs I loved in the first place pop out even more—I can’t help but pause whatever else I’m doing during those key moments. Like when the pulsing loudness of “Birdseye'' hits, or when songwriter Caleb Cordes addresses himself on the powerful and lucid “Tunneling” (“listen, Caleb, listen/ please listen to me/ this is no way to live, man/ this isn’t healthy”). I knew that Ground Aswim was one of last year’s best records, but I’m still surprised to find these songs sinking in even deeper as time goes on.
Teenage Halloween — Teenage Halloween
This record rocks! I think that it came out during a particularly busy week last year, so I always had it in the back of my mind, knowing that I hadn’t given it the attention it deserved quite yet. When the LP arrived in the mail recently, I knew the time had come. Teenage Halloween reminds me of the kind of punk record I feel like I don’t hear a ton of these days, like a band on the rise in the early ‘00s gearing up to break into a major label and make a big-budget rocker. Something like Searching for a Former Clarity—these songs are huge and catchy and gruff. I think songs like “Clarity” and “Stationary” are going to be huge for me when the weather warms up and I need a little energy.
NNAMDÏ — Krazy Karl
It’s a blessing to live through this period in Nnamdi Ogbonnaya’s career—last year alone, we got the incredible LP BRAT, the fiery and intense EP Black Plight, and a sprinkling of outstanding singles. We were also treated to Krazy Karl, a special instrumental LP dropped on a Bandcamp Friday with a limited vinyl pressing to go with it. Inspired in part old cartoon music, Krazy Karl is a trip. It tumbles and falls down vivid jazzy rabbit holes, starting and stopping in caffeinated fake-outs. The LP version emphasizes the wholeness of the album—the spontaneous feel of these compositions trumps any semblance of transition between tracks, so why bother trying to figure out if you’re on “Pigeon Spikes on a Park Bench” or “Kitty Can’t Decide.” It’s all Krazy Karl.
ManDancing — The Good Sweat
This was another record that came out during a kind of busy period last year, and I was looking forward to the LP coming in the mail so I could dive back in. And the timing is perfect for this to come back into rotation—with the announcement of a new Manchester Orchestra album a few weeks ago, I’ve really been in the mood for this kind of anthemic, bold indie rock, and ManDancing fits perfectly into that mold. Like Teenage Halloween, The Good Sweat feels like a kind of record we don’t hear as much of anymore—the band’s label teased its release by comparing it to 2000s Saddle Creek. That’s a good indication of the vibe here, this is gloomy but polished indie rock that really hits in its biggest moments, like the dramatic climax of “Kenlock” or the dark buildup of “Wall Spot.” Perfect for nights that are still more winter than spring.
Shamir — Shamir
“On My Own” deserves to be a SMASH hit. I want all my friends to hear and love “On My Own,” I played it all summer long and I am still not even close to tired of it.
Shamir is one of our most inventive and interesting working songwriters, and his self-titled record is definitely his best full statement yet. This is his return to a more pop-oriented direction after diving into a darker, more inscrutable sound on his many albums since his debut Ratchet, but this record infuses its hooks with a kind of post-punk flavor. Last year I was really stuck on some of the singles here, namely “On My Own,” “Running,” and “I Wonder.” Coming back, I took better notice of Shamir’s less straightforward experiments, like the western-ish vibe of “Other Side” or the jittery Joy Division echo of “Pretty When I’m Sad.”
Wild Pink — A Billion Little Lights
Ok these last two records actually arrived in conjunction with their release dates, but this one still kind of feels like it fits into the “Late LP” distinction because I got the chance to hear it several months ago. Quick story about that—I got the advance the day before Thanksgiving, so I figured I would wake up in the morning and listen to it while I walked Nick. It was kind of a wet morning, but whatever, it wasn’t raining that hard, big deal, we can still go. Plus it was a pretty quiet day and the atmosphere was perfect for a record like this. And I’ll probably cherish the memory of that first listen to “The Wind Was Like a Train,” one of the most beautiful Wild Pink songs (a profound distinction), for a long time. It was perfect. But while listening to track two, “Bigger Than Christmas,” I slipped in a patch of mud and fully fell down, scraping up my hand and arm while Nick just tried to keep walking. We hurried home and I didn’t listen to the record much for a while.
Looking back, the reasons why I had a little difficulty connecting with A Billion Little Lights like I connected with Yolk in the Fur may have had something to do with that spoiled first listen, which is not fair. My friend Zac Djamoos wrote this really wonderful review of the record which gave me second thoughts about my kind of meh feelings, so when the LP showed up I decided to give it a more honest shot.
And now I think it’s a wonderful record. The closing trio of “Track Mud,” “Pacific City,” and “Die Outside” really shows the way the band has adapted to this more Americana-leaning style. I still don’t think that the album quite lives up to the promise of Yolk in the Fur, but maybe that’s another unfair bias I was putting on these uniformly lovely songs.
Julien Baker — Little Oblivions
This one actually arrived on release day, I can’t think of the last time that happened. I love Julien Baker’s music so, so much. I think a lot of people talk about her records as these overwhelmingly sad things, but I dislike how simple that distinction is. To me, her music feels so heavy in such a true and piercing way that it ends up bringing me joy more than anything—Baker’s songs feel powerful more than they feel sad. I’m thinking of the time I went to see her play at Union Transfer around the release of Turn Out The Lights, alone in the back left corner, holding her two records (fresh from the merch table) under my arm, just a little bit on my tippy toes. I think I smiled all through her set because it was just so inspiring to me. It felt so good to sing along to something like “Claws in Your Back,” a song about calling out the little demons by name, about the weight of doing that.
I think I put Turn Out The Lights at like number 2 or 3 when I listed out my favorite albums of the decade a couple years ago, so I’m not super interested in making comparisons quite yet, but Little Oblivions is an excellent record. I love that Baker’s fuller, more rock-driven sound instantly reminds me of High Violet/Trouble Will Find Me-era The National, it’s so clean and echoing and nervy at just the right times. The last three songs, “Repeat,” “Highlight Reel,” and “Ziptie,” all build on each other in such an exciting way, and Baker’s vocals are just a tour de force of their own accord. I know I’ll spend a lot of time with this record this year, and I can already feel it growing sharper and more resonant with every listen.
A couple things before I go:
I’m hoping to get back to a regular weekly thing at some point, but it may take me some time! Thanks as always for sticking with me.
I have a few things outside of this newsletter coming up—excited to share some words on Another Michael, and some words from Closer and Nervous Dater in the next few weeks.
Recently I wrote about The Hold Steady, american poetry club, and For Your Health if you’re interested in those!
Yesterday I listened to the incredible I’m Glad It’s You album Every Sun, Every Moon again for the first time in a while. This song is still my favorite on the record, and it really hit harder than ever this time, so I’ll leave you with this:
Will I see you soon?
Thanks so much for reading I Keep a Diary. Be back soon.
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.