| 4.5 superb |
| Arcade Fire Funeral |
| Funeral was released on September 14, 2004. I try to remember the person I was then. It's as if I'm trying to remember a character from a movie I half-slept through ages ago. She's 11 years old, she loves animals and reading, she wants to be a marine biologist someday. Her mother has cancer. Not dying. No way. She's sicker than anyone else the girl has ever seen. But she won't die because it never happens that way in the movies. Then I remember it's not a movie. In a month's time, her mother is dead. The girl tries to bury her grief. Sometimes she succeeds. Usually she doesn't. She spends most of her adolescence teetering between normalcy and a nervous breakdown. Somewhere along the way, she becomes me again. And for the most part, I'm okay. What the hell? In 2004, I'd never heard of Arcade Fire, and I wouldn't hear of them for several years yet. But I so wish I had had Funeral to accompany me in the initial period after my mom's death. It forced me to acknowledge all the pain I'd been holding back in a way nothing else did. Hearing "Wake Up" again was like hearing someone read my thoughts back to me ("Someone told me not to cry, but now that I'm older, my heart's colder, and I can see that it's a lie"). I couldn't make it through "In The Backseat", about the death of Regine's own mother, without sobbing. But this album is about so much more than just death-it's about life, and it's about the highest highs and lowest lows of loving anyone. It's a difficult journey sometimes, but it's also a stunning and worthwhile one-much like love itself. |
| Arcade Fire Neon Bible |
| Beck Odelay |
| Bjork Homogenic |
| Brand New The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me |
| Broken Social Scene You Forgot It in People |
| Built to Spill Perfect from Now On |
| Carissa's Wierd Songs About Leaving |
| DJ Shadow Endtroducing..... |
| Elliott Smith Either/Or |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven |
| Godspeed You! Black Emperor F♯ A♯ ∞ |
| Guided by Voices Bee Thousand |
| Jeff Buckley Grace |
| Modest Mouse The Moon & Antarctica |
| Modest Mouse The Lonesome Crowded West |
| The first time I heard this album, I was driving to a doctor's appointment in a shitty little town I hate. Somewhere along the way, I took a wrong turn and ended up terribly lost. I panicked, and as I grew increasingly late, my panic turned into rage. The music only heightened my frustration. Most of it was obtrusive and dirty and everything else I generally avoid listening to. But I couldn't turn it off. I found myself screaming, cursing, wishing I'd wreck the car just to relieve some of my aggression. Although I don't experience a reaction quite as intense upon subsequent listens, I feel a certain euphoric agitation, a mixture of purpose and energy and cockiness that makes me think, Yeah, I may be petite, sweet, and innocuous-looking, but no one better fuck with me when I'm listening to The Lonesome Crowded West. |
| Mogwai Young Team |
| Neutral Milk Hotel In the Aeroplane Over the Sea |
| Nick Drake Pink Moon |
| Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain |
| Pavement Slanted and Enchanted |
| Pixies Doolittle |
| Pixies Surfer Rosa |
| R.E.M. Automatic for the People |
| R.E.M. Reckoning |
| R.E.M. Lifes Rich Pageant |
| Radiohead Amnesiac |
| Radiohead The Bends |
| Radiohead Kid A |
| Radiohead OK Computer |
| Radiohead In Rainbows |
| Simon and Garfunkel Bridge Over Troubled Water |
| Slowdive Souvlaki |
| Sonic Youth Daydream Nation |
| Sufjan Stevens Michigan |
| Talk Talk Laughing Stock |
| The Antlers Hospice |
| The Avalanches Since I Left You |
| The Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots |
| The Go! Team Thunder, Lightning, Strike |
| The Microphones The Glow Pt. 2 |
| The National High Violet |
| The New Pornographers Twin Cinema |
| The Olivia Tremor Control Music From The Unrealized Film Script |
| The Smiths The Queen Is Dead |
| The Velvet Underground White Light/White Heat |
| Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot |
| Wolf Parade Apologies to the Queen Mary |
| Yo La Tengo I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One |
