music music music
Music. What a significant catalyst for change, be it personal or collective. I am a self-confessed music tragic, a genuine musicophile. The top Urban Dictionary example of this word in use is pretty much my biography:
He is always listening to all kinds of music, because he is a musicophile.
I tend to keep away from most of the top 20 (well, top 200…), but otherwise I like to think I listen to a very diverse range of styles. I thought it might be fun to talk through some albums that I really love, and draw out some small thoughts on change, as inspired by lyrics, music and artists. This is by no means a top 10, I will save that for another day…but these albums all did have a significant impact on me. I trust you will be able to enjoy them also, and find some hope, inspiration and happiness in what they offer.
Haste The Day - Burning Bridges (2004)
It’s 2004, and it’s peak first-wave metalcore. There is a plethora of epic bands ripping up stages and bringing chunky breakdowns for kids to download on Napster and LimeWire.
Haste the day though, they caught my attention, mostly due to three songs on this raw debut album (and Jimmy’s skin-crawling vocals on them):
Blue 42
American Love
Substance
The rest of the album is great, but those three tracks…there is so much energy, emotion and meaning in them.
Just have a listen to Jimmy screaming out the final refrain of the opening track, Blue 42, over and over. It’s the perfect tag line for overcoming personal struggles and changing oneself for the better.
“Won’t look back, chains that bound me!”
Sputnik Music = 550 user reviews, average of 3.7/5
Project 86 - OMNI, Pt. 1 (2023)
I find this album confronting, scary and brilliant.
OMNI, Pt. 1 is a concept album (yes, with a part two on the way) that explores a dystopian future in which a technocratic government/corporation and its AI central power rules over a hollow humanity.
I love a good concept album, and this one is great. It’s a 'listen all the way through’ kind of scene, and doing so with some good headphones really allows for some of the great audio-work to shine.
Guarantee this album will make you shiver/give you goosebumps at some point, as you wonder if this is our collective fate due to eventuate sometime in the next century. Change isn’t always for the better, nor even for worse. Sometimes change is change. The change that is envisioned in this album though, it’s confronting!
The track titles give you a hint of what you’re in for, Apotheosis / User Agreement / Trust the Science / Tartarus Kiss as examples. There are some fantastic (and creepy) interludes, and the music is heavy and chunky.
I think this is a great album, and a top effort for something that was fan-funded (and came twenty-five years after this band’s debut release!). Sure, it won’t get much attention, but I hope it gets yours.
Sputnik Music = 19 user reviews, average of 3.9/5
Sufjan Stevens - Illinoise (2005)
Ok, I know I said this wasn’t a top 10 (it’s not), but if it was then this album would be right up in a medaling position!
Sufjan is all popular now, deservedly so - but this album was way back when only the very cool kids (like me) knew about him and his musical brilliance. Especially here in Australia!
The album’s premiere track, Chicago, is approaching 70 million listens on Spotify, and I’m only responsible for around 1.5 million of those! Actually, this is one of those albums where I kept the physical CD, not that I have any device to play it on anymore…
Anyway, Illinois, for me, was all about changing the way I viewed and understood music. At the time, I found this album ultra intriguing yet slightly musically-challenging. The more I listened to it, the more I was able to open my imagination up to a wider range of music - folk, jazz, orchestral and the other ten or more styles that Sufjan seems to fuse together across the album.
Illinois was part two of Sufjan’s now abandoned fifty album project, one for each state of the USA. The first, Michigan, was also good - Illinois though was great.
As a bonus, the album opens with what is my favourite song ever …
Concerning the UFO signing near Highland, Illinois
Oh, and Sufjan played over a dozen instruments on the album. You can read more about the recording session for Illinois here.
Sputnik Music = 2,480 user reviews, average of 4.5/5
Zao - Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest (1998)
Ah, we’re into the late 1990’s here! To be fair, I didn’t hear this album in 98, it was probably not until the mid 2000’s that I came across it. When I did hear it though, I was blown away. This was the first really heavy music that I fell in love with, and fair warning, this album is HEAVY. It’s also heavily spiritual, and it was the perfect remedy for me at the time - someone in their late teens, trying to understand the contradictions and complexities of growing up as a curious questioner of the world while located within the Pentecostal-Christian church.
That was also the experience of then members of the band Zao, especially Jesse Smith (drums) and Dan Weyandt (vocals). Just as I’m sure many others did, I found myself drawn to the poetically honest lyrics being viciously delivered to the setting of raw, heavy and pioneering sound of metalcore.
This is an album all about change. Lyrically, Dan explores the changes in himself as he strives to be a better person, while also touching on the changes he sees from a spiritual/religious perspective within topics like depression, loyalty and faith. It also dramatically changed the metal music scene as the forerunner for a whole new genre, metalcore
Also, I am pretty sure Jesse was channeling a mountain lion while recording this album.
That. Scream.
Woah.
Sputnik Music = 523 user reviews, average of 4.2/5
Silverchair - Diorama (2002)
Ok, I do see a trend here, yet another album that is like TWENTY years old … but what an album! Wonderfully musical, and showcasing Daniel Johns’ voice front and centre, this is another one of those ‘wow’ albums that helped me reaslise how much more there is to music.
Diorama came out during a time of significant change in the music industry. The early 2000’s saw the rise of the capability, and use, of autotune. Silverchair were having none of it though, and they gave us what is surely one of the most pure rock albums of a generation. Zero auto-tune, all talent - and there is a lot of it. In the face of a changing industry, Diorama stood up and stood out.
I dare you to find a better closing track to an album than After All These Years.
Impossible.
