8 Good Songs From Albums I Once Loved

In preparation for my upcoming move, I've spent the past couple of weeks going through my CD collection one-by-one and ripping them to my hard drive. With over 400 CD's to my name, this experience has been...how do you say....a time-consuming pain in my ass. I'm almost done, though. As I write this I've made it through S, and am hard at work on T (which reminds me: why the hell did Tool split Undertow into 69 separate tracks? I mean, yeah, I know, 69 ha ha ha...whatever, it's effing annoying).

Overall, it's been a fun experience. I'm being reminded of albums that I'd forgotten all about (some of which I'm getting rid of), realizing how many crappy indie and hardcore bands I'd got into during my late teens and early twenties and wondering how the hell I even found out about some of them in the first place. There have been many pleasant rediscoveries, though. I keep coming across songs I haven't listened to in ages and falling in love with them all over again. So, in true music nerd fashion, I decided to make a list of some of them here. Many of them are really somber and depressing, but I was a pretty emo kid back in the day:


"Lies, and Release From Silence" by envy
(from All The Footprints...)
Before they went the post-rock route, Japan's envy (lowercase preferred, I guess) were a hardcore screamo band. Surprisingly, I like their screamo stuff better. If I heard this for the first time today, I'd be turned off by the vocalist's lack of vocal variety (he's all "I'M GOING TO SCREAM FOR THE ENTIRE FUCKING ALBUM", except in Japanese). But back in the early-aughts, I was really addicted to this song. Even after all these years this still might be the most mind-blowingly relentless song I've ever heard.



"Six Days At the Bottom of the Ocean" by Explosions In The Sky
(from The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place)
Pure post-rock perfection from a band at its peak [note: I didn't put the P's in there purposely [note regarding note: I did that time, though]]. This album has stood the test of time very well. On this song, from the 4:49 mark until the end just may be the band's best moment ever.



"Is This Desire?" by PJ Harvey
(from Is This Desire?)
PJ Harvey's music never really gets old. This is quite possibly the finest song she's ever recorded and one of the few songs I've ever heard that gives me goosebumps each time I listen to it. It's so simple and minimal but so haunting and powerful at the same time.


"Blatchford" by Ilya
(from Poise Is the Greater Architect)
Ilya are one of those run-of-the-mill indie rock bands (well, they're more trip-hop actually) that I found out about randomly and got really into for a short time. Listening to it now I realize just how average they were, but admittedly I still enjoy this song a lot.
(P.S. - I saw them live once, and the Brazilian-born lead singer, Blanca Rojas, was stunningly freaking sexy. Like ridiculously sexy. Like you see her and the word "Gawddaaaayum" escapes from your lips before you even realize that you just said it out loud. Not that that's why I liked them or anything, since I got the album before knowing what she looked like, but when I talked to her at the merch counter after the show to thank them for the performance (and for that dress she was wearing - ooohhhhhh!), I totally signed up for their newsletter when she asked me to and I received their emails loooooong after I stopped caring about them because I didn't have the heart to block them.)



"With You" by Linkin Park
(from Hybrid Theory)
Shut up. Don't act like you haven't heard ONE Linkin Park song that stuck in your head and you thought was kinda catchy and that maybe you would've admitted to liking had it been recorded by another more hip, more obscure band. So yeah, I was really into Hybrid Theory in my teen years; what of it? I harbor no shame about this (I'm trying not to, at least). They had about ten billion hit singles from this album, but this album track was actually my favorite one.



"No Closure" by Piano Magic
(from Artist Rifles)
I never knew much about Piano Magic. I still don't. Artist Rifles was the only album of theirs I ever bought and this was the song that made me buy it. Another song that I can only describe as haunting; driven by that thundering kick drum and topped with spoken-word lyrics. Ultimate sweetness.



"Hurricane or Sunshine? by Signer
(from The New Face of Smiling)
I have no idea how I ended up there, but I vividly remember somehow finding Signer's label's website (Carpark) and hearing this song, then listening to this song on repeat for the next few days in a row (still from their website) before I finally found it in stores. Pretty good lo-fi shoegaze/glitch pop here, but the rest of the album isn't as good for the most part.



"God In Neutral" by Sub.bionic
(from You I Lov///)
Any band that spells their name with a period and their album title with three forward slashes probably deserves to wallow in obscurity and fade away without ever registering even a blip on the popularity radar, but Sub.bionic actually weren't that bad of an indie rock band even if they were pretentious as fuck. I got into them after hearing the song "Reply (Without Recourse)", but it was this acoustic track that I was addicted to as a youngster.