An Introduction To Post-Rock

Sometime in the spring of 2011, I was assigned to read The Metamorphosis for a high school lit class. I was a little bummed that I had to spend some of my spring break doing homework, but it was a class I enjoyed, so I did it anyway. That year my family spent our spring break in a little house on the Oregon coast, and it was (unexpectedly) rainy for most of the week. Given the weather, I decided what better time to sit down and read this trippy-ass short story.

I laid down on my rented bed in my room that smelled distinctly “beachy” and listened to the raindrops patter against the window as the skies turned greyer and darker. I turned on my trusty iPod and decided that now was the time to listen to that new band I heard about called “Explosions in the Sky.” I put on The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, the album with the most striking title, and cracked open my copy of the book.

For the next 40-some-odd minutes, I became so absorbed in the reading that I completely forgot about the outside world until the album came to a close. It was a meditative and (fittingly) transformative listening experience. I’d never heard anything quite like that album, and I immediately started another one of the band’s half-dozen records I had loaded onto my iPod before leaving Portland. 

Over the course of the next year, I had an absolute love affair with post-rock. A love that was kindled by one record soon grew into a new realm of sound that I relished exploring. It wasn’t like the other rock music I was used to, it completely calmed my mind and helped me focus on my work, whatever that was at the time. 

The genre single-handedly helped me get through college, soundtracking thousands of hours of reading, studying, and writing. To this day, post-rock still offers some of the most breathtaking and timeless songs in my entire music library, and I believe it’s a genre that’s worth submerging yourself in entirely. 

What follows are nine albums intended to offer a crash course of the post-rock/instrumental genre. These are personal favorites from bands that I love, all with varying degrees of significance within the actual “scene” itself, but albums that I would recommend to anyone, regardless of background or experience with this type of music. I genuinely believe that these albums serve a dual purpose as a sort of driving but distraction-free background music while also being some of the most moving and compelling pieces of art ever created. 

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Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place (2003)

Arguably one of the few unanimous post-rock records, The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place would easily be on the genre’s Mount Rushmore. While Explosion In The Sky’s debut is a wonderful bit of glittering heavy-metal post-rock, I’d argue the band has improved their sound, production, and approach to music with nearly every record. Their sophomore effort is a more mellow and moody atmospheric experience (that also happens to bear one of my favorite songs of all time), but it wasn’t until The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place that the band found themselves at the forefront of the scene with a budding new audience. Thanks in large part to their contributions to the Friday Night Lights score, but also because Cold Dead Place is a tight, economic album that showcases exactly what the genre is capable of in its purest form. 

Opening with the faint siren song of a single guitar on “First Breath After a Coma,” the record eases the listener into the band’s style like a doctor birthing a baby. The group gently layers multiple shimmering guitars over a subtle heart-beat-like floor tom keeping time. They play with adding and removing elements until a steady drumroll sweeps the listener away, and just like that, we’re off. The band crests and crescendos with masterful ease throughout the record, whether it’s the pensive “Six Days at the Bottom of the Ocean” or the lovestruck “Your Hand In Mine.” It may only be five tracks in total, but that doesn’t make this record any less fulfilling. I literally could not imagine a better entry point into the genre for myself or anyone else. 

Mogwai - Come On Die Young (1999)

On the polar opposite end of The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, we have Mogwai’s sophomore album Come On Die Young. These two records are not connected in any way, other than the fact that I listened to them roughly around the same time and they both felt like stark counter-points to each other. While Cold Dead Place is a light, airy, and positive album Come On Die Young is a dark, confining, and foreboding piece of music. Just look at the two covers next to each other and tell me which one you think is going to be more oppressive. While I believe that the members of Mogwai are all great people, this record is simply one of the most evil things I’ve ever heard. This is darker than black metal, more unnerving than a horror movie soundtrack, and more overwhelming than anything you’ve ever heard. 

Opening with a swirling, distorted soundscape on “Punk Rock:” the band lets a soundbite from a 1977 Iggy Pop interview provide the thesis statement for the record: “Well, I'll tell you about punk rock, "punk rock" is a word used by dilettantes and, uh, and, uh heartless manipulators about music, that takes up the energies and the bodies and the hearts and the souls and the time and the minds of young men who give what they have to it and give everything they have to it.”

After that articulate introduction from the godfather of punk, the band pulls the rug out from under the listener with “Cody,” a precious and slow-moving love song about an ever-shifting relationship existing in an ever-shifting world. While it took me entirely too long to realize that “Cody” wasn’t named after a person, but instead an initialism of the album name, it also took me entirely too long to realize that this is the only song on the record with vocals. From there, “Helps Both Ways” utilizes a sample of John Madden commentary to navigate the murky waters of a crushingly moody riff. Meanwhile, “Kappa” and “Christmas Steps” both boast lumbering instrumentals while “Ex-Cowboy” features the more searing and rapid guitar strumming pattern dripping in reverb that the genre is most known for. Come On Die Young is far from a happy album, but it possesses an emotional catharsis the likes of which few other genres can provide. This record, combined with Cold Dead Place offer an excellent overview of the range that this genre can have with Come On Die Young existing in a more rotted and sinister end without being too offputting to newcomers.

This Will Destroy You - Young Mountain (2006)

Yet another record I’d put on the post-rock Mount Rushmore, the debut album from This Will Destroy You exists somewhere on the tonal spectrum in between Explosions in the Sky and Mogwai. Blending the cinematic builds of Explosions and the more brooding pensiveness of Mogwai, Young Mountain lies at a healthy middle ground of post-rock. 

From the first majestic keystrokes and gently-falling guitar notes of “Quiet,” you can immediately tell this record is something different. There are heart-pumping builds on “There Are Some Remedies Worse Than The Disease,” there’s world-conquering uplift on “I Believe in Your Victory,” and there’s hypnotic glitchiness on “Grandfather Clock.” While the band arguably has bigger “hits” on their self-titled record with songs like “The Mighty Rio Grande,” it’s hard to argue with the punctuality of Young Mountain. This is the debut of a band who knew exactly what they were doing and exactly the kind of art they wanted to put out into the world.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)

Quite possibly the defining work of the post-rock genre, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven contains only four tracks, each clocking in at roughly twenty minutes apiece. It’s less of an album and more of an experience that the band shepherds the listener through. These songs, or acts, are each composed of different movements, all of which are depicted in the vinyl in a timestamped illustrated diagram depicting the “intensity” of each segment. While that gatefold makes this a rewarding album to sit down with, focus on, and follow along with closely, these are ultimately just ornate layers of detail on top of an already-beautiful album.

Album opener “Storm” begins with a triumphant build of guitar, bass, and drums, eventually layering on horns, a string section, and an entire orchestra as the track gains momentum. This is not the dark and grim apocalyptic band that recorded F# A# ∞, or even Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada two years prior, this is Godspeed as a blossoming flower opening up to see the world as their stage. However, by the time the first track ends (a movement called “Cancer Towers on Holy Road Hi-Way”), it’s clear that there’s something more sinister brewing just beneath the surface. 

“Static” features ominous demonic hums that build to a cataclysmic explosion. “Sleep” is at once a dreamy, floaty, and wistful bad trip. Finally, the title track brings things home with a soaring and anthemic song that mounts into a beautiful conclusion. Quite frankly, Lift Your Skinny Fists is an album that must be experienced to be understood, there’s a reason why it’s become the defacto post-rock album for millions of fans. 

Sigur Rós - ( ) (2002)

At some point near the end of my high school experience I stumbled upon Sigur Rós, and that discovery (combined with copious amounts of metalcore) helped me realize how little lyrics really matter to me. With all of their songs being either instrumental, sung in Icelandic, or “Hopelandic” (a gibberish blend of English and Icelandic that the band invented), I didn’t understand a word these guys were saying. Don’t get me wrong; a well-written song is great, but as far as I’m concerned good lyrics are just a cherry on top, not a necessity. 

While some may sing the praises of their breakthrough Ágætis byrjun or the overwhelmingly pleasant Takk..., I believe ( ) to be their most consistent album. Comprised of 8 “untitled” songs, the record is divided into two even halves separated by 36-seconds of silence and bookended by two clicks of static. The first half of the album is more bright and optimistic, while the second half is more bleak and desolate. It’s a loose concept album in that sense, but ( ) offers a beautiful depth and breathtaking range of emotions over the course of its 76-minute running time. It bears the strange, otherworldly qualities that Sigur Rós is known for while still feeling grounded enough in reality that a newcomer can wade in comfortably.

Russian Circles - Enter (2006)

Admittedly a half-step away from post-rock and toward straight-up metal, the debut album from Russian Circles is a beautiful, heavy, and riff-oriented instrumental post-metal album. Packed with precise guitar riffs, tight drumming, and world-shattering basslines, this record truly has a little bit of everything. 

From the clockwork-like build of “Carpe” to the crushing bounding riffage on “Death Rides a Horse,” the record is a showcase for the absolute breadth of music that can be created with just three instruments. There’s the deeply-feeling “You Already Did” and “Micha,” both of which are palpable with remorse and pain, all without saying a word. While later Russian Circle albums may be tighter, darker, and more cinematic, there’s something to be said for the staggering range of both emotion and tonality on display in the 44 minutes of Enter.

Earth - The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull (2008)

Yet another half-step away from post-rock, just in the opposite direction, Earth are the all-important progenitors of drone as we know it. Characterized by spaced-out repetitive riffs that roll on like long arid stretches of desert, drone is a genre all about soundtracking a time and place that exists only in your mind. The albums work like witchcraft, slowly casting a spell on the listener’s mind until it’s transported to another world far away from this one. Through this slowly-unfolding transportive property, these bands are able to unwind gorgeous riffs that establish a sense of time and place unlike any other genre.

The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull is a mythical album. Aside from its biblical title and gorgeous leather-bound vinyl, the songs here capture Earth at the absolute peak of the band’s mid-2000’s era. Unlike their early trailblazing half-hour dissonant recordings or their more recent vocal pivot, The Bees Made Honey offers (relatively) punctual tracks that swirl and cascade around the listener with unparalleled divinity. Songs like “Miami Morning Comedown II” shimmer with opulent mid-morning light while tracks like “Hung From The Moon” feel more like a desert at twilight; blue and expansive but still hot enough for heat haze to be prevalent. The entire album is like a beautiful mirage, it almost seems too good to be true, but then you reach the end and realize you’ve made it out of the desert. 

Mogwai - Mr. Beast (2006)

Mogwai’s discography is immaculate. While Young Team introduced Mogwai to the world and Come On, Die Young has a special place in my heart (literally the first thing ever posted to this site, which I do not recommend you read) I’d argue Mr. Beast is also one of the best entry points into the band’s world. Their work ranges from spacy love songs, glistening immaculate creations, pensive piano-led remixes, and glitchy electronic diversions, but Mr. Beast is a personal favorite merely because it’s wall-to-wall riffs. While Mogwai are no strangers to The Riff (just listen to “My Father My King” or “Xmas Steps”), the band’s fifth album is arguably the most consistently heavy thing that they have ever created. 

“Auto Rock” kicks things off with a piano melody that gradually mounts along with electronic elements, pounding drums, and buzzing guitar that grows into a rhythmic tribal beat that abducts you into the world of the record. “Glasgow Mega-Snake” turns the metal side of Mogwai up to ten as multiple distorted guitars and bass coalesce into one fast-paced riff that pushes the listener forward like a violent current. Other highlights include the soft and electronic “Acid Food,” the anthemic “ Travel is Dangerous,” the riff-bearing “We’re No Here,” or the penultimate credit roll of “I Chose Horses.” 

One of the things that makes Mr. Beast a fantastic entry point to post-rock is that it’s very atypical of the genre. Lots of the songs here have vocals of some sort, and the average song length is about four minutes. It’s also an extremely-varied album with different sounds and approaches that always keeps you wondering what’s next. Truly one of the band’s many masterworks. 

Slint - Spiderland (1991)

Often cited as the record that invented the post-rock genre, Slint’s Spiderland is a masterpiece. If it wasn’t evident by the cover, this is an album that was created by a bunch of teenagers. Spiderland sold fewer than 5,000 copies, and the band broke up before the record could even be considered a cult hit… but cult status it soon achieved, eventually paving the way for the entire post-rock genre in earnest.

While not as purely instrumental as some of the other records on this list, Spiderland solidified the dark, pensive moodiness that became a standard of the genre. It crystalized the dynamic builds and ever-shifting cinematic landscapes that have become a staple of post-rock. Spiderland is flat-out one of the most influential albums in all of rock music. These guys may not be The Beatles, but in the space of 40 minutes they crafted a world so dense and lived-in that we still have groups exploring its corners nearly three decades later. 

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There you have it folks,  the single best crash course for a genre I could ever create. If you’re listening to these albums and find yourself hungry for more, I wholeheartedly recommend exploring each of these artist’s discographies because they’re all rich and rewarding in their own way. Beyond that, there are numerous other legendary post-rock bands I didn’t even get into here like Caspian, God Is An Astronaut, Mono, and more. If you’d like, all nine of the albums on this list have been placed into a playlist here for easy consumption. Thank you for reading along about this genre that has meant so much to me over the last decade. I can only hope that you’ll find as much solace and beauty in these albums as I have over the years.

My Favorite Songs of All Time

With this post, Swim Into The Sound has officially reached 100 articles! I’ll admit between the dreary weather and burnout at work I’ve felt less than inspired to post here regularly this year, however 100 blog posts is a big deal, and I wanted to make sure that I did it justice. I’ve got dozens of different ideas for articles jotted down in digital notes across various devices, but it felt ingenuine to put up “just another” write-up as my one-hundredth post. 

This January I celebrated all of the site’s recent achievements, and of course, the Favorites page has an ongoing list of our best articles, so I didn’t really want to focus on the blog from either of those perspectives. Instead, I’ve decided I’m going to do a write-up on something straightforward but important: my favorite songs of all time. 

My desktop has a 100+ song playlist of my favorite songs all meticulously organized, ordered, and ranked. While that playlist still receives some regular updates, the top 15 or so haven’t changed in a number of years, so I figured why not highlight all of these tracks in one place to celebrate the site’s recent milestone? Without further adieu, I’m excited to share my 15 favorite songs of all time.

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15 | Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment - “Sunday Candy”

Two years after Acid Rap had cemented itself in my life, I was eagerly waiting to see what Chance the Rapper would do next. Suddenly on a late May evening in 2015, an album called Surf was uploaded to iTunes for free. Released under the name “Donnie Trumpet & The Social Experiment,” Surf was a collaborative project that combined the artistic powers of Chance The Rapper, trumpeter Nico Segal, and a host of other Chicago musicians. 

Making sure to savor every ounce of this new release, I wanted to ensure my first listen was special. I downloaded the album, grabbed a couple of hard ciders, and spent the evening in my backyard listening to Surf on a night that was just warm enough to enjoy without a jacket. 

Surf wasn’t quite the Acid-Rap follow-up I was expecting, but it ended up being a release I enjoyed nonetheless. The record is a joyous, warm, and creative outpouring that’s filled to the brim with collaborative spirit. As my first listen came to a close, the record began to wrap up with the penultimate “Sunday Candy,” a bright and loving gospel track that finds Chance reminiscing about his grandmother’s role in his life. These expressions of love are all wrapped around a sunny, infectious chorus courtesy of Jamila Woods that radiates with happiness and a vibrant zeal for life. My first listen of the song left me breathless, tearful, and overjoyed. To this day, “Sunday Candy” still has the power to make my day a little bit better merely by its presence. 

14 | Band Of Horses - “The Funeral”

While I have an overall preference for Band of Horses’ sophomore record, there’s no denying the brilliance of “The Funeral.” Far and away the band’s most popular song, “The Funeral” revolves around a sparkling guitar line and poetic lyrics that address loss and separation. At some point in the late-2000’s the song entered the pantheon of iconic alt-rock tracks alongside the likes of “Mr. Brightside,” and “Skinny Love,” yet no matter how many times I hear “The Funeral” in a bar, in a movie, or in a commercial, the song manages to disarm me completely. There’s something profoundly spiritual and awe-inspiring lying at the emotional core of “The Funeral,” and that feeling hits me harder each time I listen to it. 

13 | The Flaming Lips - “Do You Realize??”

Around the same time that I was discovering indie rock, I was also introduced to The Flaming Lips. While the entirety of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was a mind-bending discovery back in high school, “Do You Realize??” was anything like I’d ever heard in my life. Tackling death from an honest and straightforward perspective, the song genuinely made me consider what all my relationships meant to me. It made me think about the inevitability of it all, and what kind of life I wanted to share with those around me. I’d like to think it gave me a greater appreciation for life as a whole, not just existence itself, but life as it was happening. Because one day all of this will be gone, so why wouldn’t you savor every second? Good or bad, life is a gift, and it’s easy to take that for granted. 

12 | My Morning Jacket - “I Will Sing You Songs”

I still remember my first time hearing “I Will Sing You Songs.” After having My Morning Jacket’s discography on my iPod for nearly three years, I’d put off listening to them only for “I Will Sing You Songs” to come up on shuffle and stop me in my tracks. Almost instantly, I was swept up in the song and found myself frozen by its slow-moving melody. For nine minutes the song carried me gently into an expression of love and adoration that I felt down to my bones. It was dream-like, transportive, and absolutely gorgeous; precisely what I needed to hear at that moment. Years later, It Still Moves has become one of my favorite alternative records of all time, and “I Will Sing You Songs” remains it’s shining, perfect centerpiece.

11 | Radiohead - “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”

“Jigsaw Falling Into Place” is one of the most well-paced songs in Radiohead's discography. Starting out with a winding guitar lick and hi-hat keeping time, these two instruments set the scene for an explosive tale of flirtation, heartbreak, and love lost. Within a few beats, the bass enters the fray, and suddenly the song ignites like an engine. Within an instant, all of the instruments fall into a fast-paced groove as the guitar jangles underneath Thom Yorke’s moody humming. Depicting a series of drunken college nights filled with missed connections and possible love, “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” is a nonstop, evermoving journey that can only end in one way. The song continually mounts until every element is exploding to life with color and the song reaches its emotional fever pitch. Everything is humming at the right frequency, beguiling the listener in the most well-crafted and artistic way. 

10 | Sufjan Stevens - “Oh God, Where Are You Now?”

I’ve already written at great length about my love for Sufjan Stevens’ Michigan, but “Oh God, Where Are You Now?” is the single-song encapsulation of why I love this man’s art. It’s the song that led me to Sufjan. The song that carried me through countless winters whether I was alone or surrounded by loved ones. This song is everything that I love about the Earth, and art, and creativity, and beauty. It’s a haunting, spiritual, and heart-rending question of existence all wrapped in memories that make me feel like I’ve lived this story a hundred times before. It’s the soundtrack to my heart and the death of each year. An absolutely stunning and beautiful track that’s quintessential to my existence. 

9 | Funkadelic - “Maggot Brain”

I first heard “Maggot Brain” in middle school knowing nothing of George Clinton, Parlament-Funkadelic, or even rock as a whole for that matter. I’d barely dipped my toe in the water of psychedelia, and even less in instrumental music… which explains why this song felt so revelatory when I’d first experienced it. “Maggot Brain” begins with a disarming spoken word introduction followed by ten minutes of the most soulful guitar work I had ever heard...or have ever heard. Split into two halves, the first section of “Maggot Brain” reads like a eulogy. A wordless loss that commemorates the unspeakable feeling of discovering a loved one had passed. This builds up into an eruption of emotion found in the second half in a transition that flows seamlessly and makes sense on a cosmic level. The journey contained within the song can be read in many different ways, and I hear a different pathway each time I relisten to the piece. Truly a powerful condensation of the human psyche. 

8 | Radiohead - “You And Whose Army?”

There aren’t many words you can make out in “You And Whose Army?” Sure, you can hear the title (also about the closest the song ever gets to a chorus), but what’s left is a mush of phrases that are practically left up to the listener’s imagination. Individual words may make their way through, but for the most part, I love “You And Whose Army?” because it’s an endlessly-interpretable song. These delicately-delivered lyrics are placed above a gently-strummed guitar and Yorke’s own hums in the background. Midway through the song, these fragile elements meet a more precise bassline, rigid drumbeat, and shaky piano that all carry the song to its wounded emotional climax. “You And Whose Army?” is haunting, beautiful, and foreboding all at the same time. Everything feels at once obscured and perfectly in place. 

7 | Pink Floyd - “The Great Gig In The Sky” 

One of the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had wasn’t at a church, on a vacation, or in a relationship, it was listening to “The Great Gig In The Sky” in my backyard all by myself. Yet another album I was handed in middle school, I must have listened to Dark Side of the Moon dozens of times trying to figure out why everyone thought it was so great. It was on t-shirts, referenced in pop culture, and obviously meant a lot to everyone older than me… but I just couldn’t for the life of me figure out what made this record so great. Years later, I put the album on during a warm summer evening and let the LP carry me from beginning to end. It was an experience I’ll never forget, and “The Great Gig In The Sky” was the emotional climax of that journey. From the introductory dialogue, the way the instrumental lifts, and of course, Clare Torry’s brilliant performance on vocals, there’s nothing quite like “Great Gig” out there in the world. To this day, I’ve still never found a song that captures the hard-to-grasp emotions tied to life and death as well as this song does within these four minutes.

6| Explosions In The Sky - “Have You Passed Through This Night?”

For my money, there’s no song more frisson-inducing than Explosions in the Sky’s “Have You Passed Through This Night?” Centered around a sample of dialogue from The Thin Red Line, this is one of the only songs in the band’s discography to have any sort of lyrical content whatsoever. Maybe the decision to center a track around these words is what makes it even more powerful. 

As you listen to the gentle guitar strums laid carefully underneath this sample, a sudden gunshot cuts through the song. Then we hear the titular line. Then a slow-moving guitar. Then a series of increasingly-powerful drum strikes. The song then mounts for the remaining four minutes creating one of the most beautiful builds in the entire genre of post-rock. Truly a moving piece of music that instills a sense of something greater just beyond the next mountain. Absolutely awe-inspiring. 

5| The Cribs - “Be Safe” 

Generally speaking, I am not a “lyrics guy.” I tend to take songs as a whole without necessarily focusing on any one individual element, including the words being sung. That goes for just about every song except for “Be Safe” by The Cribs. An anomaly within their discography, “Be Safe” finds lead singer Ryan Jarman ceding control to Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo for long-winded spoken word passages that act as collages of random visuals placed over a ceaseless instrumental bed. Beginning in a definitively-negative headspace, the song finds its narrator complaining about “One of those fucking awful black days when nothing is pleasing” and how they hate everyone around them. Our narrator explains that he could change, but he knows his old self will always catch up no matter how hard he tries. Suddenly, without warning, The Cribs’ lead singer Ryan Jarman enters the song with a bright and shimmering chorus that seems to give our narrator hope:

I know a place we can go
Where you'll fall in love so hard that
You'll wish you were dead

From here, Ranaldo describes life through a series of abstract flashes, each of which brings a beautiful glimpse of the world into the listener’s mind. As these images pass through your headphones, the song gets brighter and picks up its pace. The words become more positive until they culminate in an escalating rallying cry of “Open all the boxes!” before one last scene-setting outro. It’s undeniable poetry. A reversal of mood that captures these two vastly different feelings and how one person or event can turn your life around in such a short amount of time. It’s a reminder that sadness isn’t permanent, and that the world is beautiful. That it always has been. 

4 | Queens Of The Stone Age - “A Song For The Dead” 

It only took a few listens for Songs For The Deaf to become my favorite album of all-time back in middle school. The record was unlike anything I’d ever heard and introduced me to a vast array of genres that I’m still shocked all work in conjunction with each other. At this point, Songs For The Deaf has been my favorite album for over one decade, and “A Song For The Dead” is just one of the many reasons why. If you were to ask me why this song spoke to me specifically, I’d answer with one word: drums. 

Featuring Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters on percussion, “A Song For The Dead” is a marvel of precision instrumentation. It’s a middle-finger-extended ‘fuck you’ rock track that’s propelled by Grohl’s unrelenting presence on the drums. Beginning with a single organ note and hi-hat keeping time, a guitar sets the scene followed quickly by a series of drum fills courtesy of Grohl. Within seconds, Grohl lays down a swaying drum beat, and the bass enters mimicking the guitar line perfectly. Josh Homme’s trademarked snarling vocals throw the listener headfirst into song’s desolate, desert-themed hopelessness, all the while Grohl’s cymbals crash, snare snaps, and sleigh bells jingle. 

One of the best moments come in the songs final seconds where several fakeout endings are tied together by multiple drum solos and an unrelenting guitar line. This is one of the few songs I know every molecule of, and I have to give Dave Grohl props for contributing such a major element to the track’s structure. 

3 | Sharks Keep Moving - “Like a River” 

Picture this: It’s summer. You just graduated high school. You dropped your date off at her house, and now you’re going for a long drive through the countryside with your windows down as you watch the sun set over rolling hills in the distance. That’s what listening to “Like a River” is like. 

Helmed by Minus The Bear’s Jake Snider, Sharks Keep Moving was a short-lived jazzy-math rock band from Seattle featuring members who would go on to form groups like Pretty Girls Make Graves, Botch, and The Blood Brothers. The band produced one full-length, two EPs, and one split in their five-ish years together, and despite their relatively-small output, every song managed to strike a chord in the heart of a high-school-aged Taylor. 

While every song is worth a listen, “Like a River” is the crown jewel of Sharks Keep Moving’s discography. Front-loaded with a narrative tale of drunken love, the song is half storytelling, half gorgeous instrumental. Throughout the first half, Snider paints a scene of meeting a woman at a bar and becoming immediately infatuated with her. Ending the tale with a half-drunk rallying cry of “Get up / Let’s Walk,” the song then floats the listener along a river of sound with an instrumental that adds some color to the narrative brush-strokes laid earlier in the track. It gives just enough time for the listener to meditate and fill in the blanks of the story, whether that be with the words they were just handed or recent experiences in their own life. It’s a transformative piece of art that manages to clock in at 11-minutes long, yet not overstay its welcome. It’s pure contentment, captured to music. 

2| Radiohead - “Nude”

I know what you’re thinking… another Radiohead song? But hear me out, “Nude” is the perfect Radiohead song. A love song at its core, “Nude” may not be as popular as “Creep” or as catchy as “Karma Police” or as versatile as “Exit Music,” but it manages to reach another level entirely. Lying somewhere between the groovy approach of “Reckoner” and the lyrical content of “True Love Waits,” “Nude” was a long-shelved Radiohead track that took literally one decade to see the light of day.  

Centered around a pristine bassline, careful drumming, and a reversed vocal bed, “Nude” is a world-shattering love song. The defeated lyrics are sung in Yorke’s highest falsetto as Colin Greenwood’s bass rumbles lovingly below him. Meanwhile, Philip Selway’s drums fall into perfect synch with Johnny Greenwood’s gentle guitar plucks, and all of this swirls behind gorgeous orchestral swells that mount with each word.

There’s no other word with which to describe “Nude” other than beautiful. Each element works in perfect synch for a song that emulates love, loss, heartbreak, and sorrow all within the space of four minutes. Those feelings crest as Yorke belts out “You’ll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking” before the song is carried out by a build of double-tracked hums that feels careful, practiced, and achingly beautiful. A rare example of a song that was worth the ten-year incubation period. 

1 | Minus The Bear - “This Ain't a Surfin' Movie”

Well, here we are, my favorite song of all time, and I don’t even know where to begin. “This Ain't a Surfin' Movie” is perfect — a song of love, beauty, and escape that feels like it was tailor-made for me specifically. 

I first discovered Minus The Bear back in high school around the same time as Bon Iver, Portugal. The Man, and half of the other songs on this list. Specifically, I remember hearing “Pachuca Sunrise” (the band’s most popular song) and “Fulfill the Dream” on a friend’s iPod and being nothing short of blown away. Minus The Bear’s music just made sense to my brain, like it was something I’d been waiting for for years and finally found. Both of those songs coming from the same record, I decided to give the rest of Menos El Oso a listen, and wouldn’t you know that I loved it almost instantly. 

My favorite song on the record jostled around from time to time throughout high school, but a piece of me was always impressed with the way the band ended the album on such an abjectly-beautiful and warm note with “This Ain't a Surfin' Movie.” Depicting a beach-side evening alone with a lover, “Surfin’ Movie” is a song about physical and emotional paradise. A day spent in the arms of a lover in a beautiful place where nothing else matters but you and the connection to that other person. It’s quite literally the most powerful, moving, and loving thing I’ve ever heard put to music. 

Keep in mind, this song comes after ten other dancy, catchy, groovy songs that soundtracked my high school years, so there’s absolutely some added power there, but even still, “Surfin’ Movie” caps off not just this album, but our list as my favorite song of all time. 

To this day, I still remember sitting in the parking lot of a 7/11 back in high school with my childhood friend. We were riding the high of having just attended our first Minus The Bear concert, drinking AriZona’s, listening to Menos El Oso, and reveling in what we had just seen. I remember feeling speechless once the album ended, wishing I could live in that feeling forever.

“This Ain’t A Surfin’ Movie” is a marvel to listen to. It’s a monument to love and an absolute artistic achievement. It’s something that I’m lucky to have found, and fortunate enough to have felt. It’s simply perfect. 

You can listen to a playlist of all these songs here.

Album Art, Visual Translation, and A Pride Week Collage

Album art is sacred. It is the physical embodiment of a record’s soul, a manifestation of the thoughts, strife, and emotion that went into its creation. Album art is often the one chance an artist has to distill their work into something visual; into one composition that translates the art they’ve made into an entirely different medium. An album’s cover is both the face and synopsis of the music that lies directly behind it.

Even outside of vinyl, the artwork of an album is a vital piece of the overall music experience. As we cram albums onto our phones by the hundreds and platforms like Spotify continue to shrink artwork down to hundred-pixel squares, it’s more important than ever to appreciate the work and artistry that goes into a cover. 

In 2018 it’s less important to have a cover that “sells” a potential listener simply because there’s rarely ever a sale in the traditional sense anymore. When everything is one click away, the listener has nothing to lose aside from the three-minute commitment it takes to listen to a song. Sure artists can still use sex or controversy to court discussion and clicks, but now more than ever the cover’s primary job is to translate the senses of the record into something outside of itself. Something recognizable, something beautiful, something with heart. 

I’ve long been fascinated with album art, and more recently I’ve found myself looking at my music library abstractly, organizing albums and playlists not by artist, alphabet, or genre, but by color. If records are the physical embodiment of the artist's music, then the color can tell us a lot about the mood and texture of their songs at a glance. 

Earlier this year I found myself face to face with a playlist of all pink albums and enjoyed the experience of interacting it so much that I figured why not do that for every color? I sat down, scrolled through my library, and after collecting all of these lovely records into one mood-board-like word document, it only made sense to talk about them here. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed apropos to have this multi-color collage coincide with Pride Week, the most colorful time of the year. So here are 60 (mostly single-color) albums that are largely well-regarded, but also definitively “Taylor-core.” 

And In addition to the six-row “Pride Flag” layout above, I’ve also created a “Full Spectrum” rainbow version, since white pink and black were three of the easiest colors to fill out. You can find the full-resolution versions of these collages here and here. I dare your ass to name all 90 albums.

But wait, that's not all! In addition to these images, I’ve plucked one album from each color and given it a short mini-review. Most of the covers above fall under "classic" territory, but there are also some deeper cuts that I've always wanted to write about on here, even if it's just for a short paragraph.

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Owen - I Do Perceive

Husband, father, and noted sad man Mike Kinsella has been making music for a majority of his life. From his work as a teenager in the late-90’s under Cap'n Jazz and American Football to his current solo work as Owen, Kinsella is a prolific artist who seems to be continually overflowing with both good music and raw emotion. While American Football’s self-titled debut is now viewed as an all-time classic in the emo/indie/underground circuit, I posit that I Do Perceive should be brought up with the same level of reverence. Offering a slightly more “adult” counterpoint to his younger self, Perceive is an early-morning exploration of Kinsella’s headspace and the inner-workings of his most intimate relationships. Packed with smart observations, clever topics, and lush instrumentation, this album aches with beauty and honesty. 

John Frusciante - PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone

Perhaps best-known for his work with the Red Hot Chilli Peppers during some of their most successful releases, anyone who dives into John Frusciante’s solo records will quickly come to realize what an essential (and artistic) role he played in the group. From his early drugged-out acoustic albums to later-career dissonant electronic phases, Frusciante is a complicated musician with a vast body of intricate work. PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone is a 2012 experimental album that blends electronic, indie, and hip-hop into one schizophrenic explosion of songs that shift rapidly and without warning. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard in my life and concrete evidence that Frusciante is a genius with a mind and vision all his own. 

The White Stripes - The White Stripes

While they achieved greater success and recognition with later records, The White Stripes’ self-titled debut remains a fantastic release that marks the beginning of an incredibly strong discography. Featuring punchy, thrashy, and messy garage rock, The White Stripes shows us a band in its charming infancy. There are well-crafted choruses and catchy melodies, but at the same time everything is so ragged and distorted that the entire record sounds as if it was recorded in one take. There’s something pure about pre-fame Jack White, and the band’s rough-around-the-edges debut is eternal proof that everyone must start somewhere. 

Sharks Keep Moving - Pause and Clause

While it’s only three songs long, Pause and Clause stretches out over a luxurious and lavish 21 minutes. Technically only an EP, this shorter format allowed the band to embrace some semblance of punctuality while simultaneously giving the songs proper time to breathe. Fronted by Minus The Bear’s Jake Snider, Sharks Keep Moving is a reverse-super group whose members went on to form Pretty Girls Make Graves, The Blood Brothers, and These Arms Are Snakes. Pause and Clause, the group's final release, features long-winding and arid songs of love, heartbreak, and disappointment, the centerpiece of which is the 11-minute “Like A River.” One of my favorite songs of all time, “Like A River” tells a tale as old as time of a man, a woman, and a bar. It’s a song that’s not afraid to writhe in its emotions and say exactly what it’s thinking. The lyrics are few and far between, but each line hangs in the air as a poetic observation of the simple beauties in life. The song’s instrumental outro is thrilling and gorgeous, allowing the listener’s mind to reel in their own experiences and project themselves onto the multi-colored soundscape of love and affection.

Sorority Noise - Joy, Departed

After gaining a cult following with 2014’s Forgettable, Sorority Noise returned one year later with their landmark Joy, Departed. Decidedly more serious, mature, and musical, the group’s sophomore effort sees a shift from half-goofy pop-punk into full-blown heart-on-sleeve emo. In retrospect, this release does a fantastic job of acclimating the listener into the band’s more-grounded later work, but still manages to strike a balance between sing-along pop-punk and moody emo that I find enchanting. With poetic lyrics tackling depression, self-harm, and drug addiction, Joy, Departed is far from a “fun” listen, but that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable or important.

Band of Horses - Everything All the Time

Assisted by Seattle’s own Sub-Pop, Everything All The Time was Band of Horses grand unveiling to the world. While “The Funeral” will probably always be their best-known and most widely-recognized song, Everything All The Time is an incredibly-well put-together album featuring personable and charming songs of lackadaisical indie rock with just a tinge of country. Tracks like “The First Song” and “I Go To The Barn Because I Like The” offer laid-back earthy slice of life vignettes that all add up to one of the better debuts of the 2000’s. 

Explosions in the Sky - How Strange, Innocence

For an album that was recorded in only four days, How Strange, Innocence is absolutely immaculate. Even when taken in nearly two decades later, Innocence fits squarely into the Explosions In The Sky’s discography and feels like a group that already knew exactly what they wanted. While the band’s later work gradually became quieter and more subtle, their debut is the loudest, most distorted, and most singular thing they’ve ever recorded. Each song explodes with a wall of guitar, drums, and bass that all chug forward relentlessly until crescendoing into sparks of violent beauty. It’s an absolute wonder. 

Tame Impala - Currents

After achieving commercial success and near-universal acclaim on his first two records, Tame Impala’s third album found Kevin Parker moving away from Beatles-esque psychedelia and further into electronic progginess. Much like Joy Departed, Currents does a fantastic job of segueing long-time fans into the band’s new sound. Opening track “Let It Happen” begins as a classic Tame Impala psychedelic rock song before glitching out into a prolonged electronic section marked by a dancey explosion of sound and light. Mid-album cuts like “Eventually” all bear the same clean production and showcase the specific type of beauty to be found at the intersection between these two seemingly-disparate genres. 

Japandroids - Post-Nothing

Comprised of only two Canadian men, a guitar, and a drum set, Japandroids pack a gigantic, anthemic, and cathartic punch into a small package. While 2012’s Celebration Rock is arguably the rock album of the decade, Post-Nothing will always hold a special place in my heart as that record’s fuzzier, more nostalgic older brother. Beginning with the Thin Lizzy-referencing “The Boys Are Leaving Town” Post-Nothing immediately casts a late-summer spell upon its listener, hurling them into a suspended animation of their own memories. Mid-album cuts like “Heart Sweats” and “Crazy/Forever” find the duo settling into well-crafted melodies and lulling the listener into a sense of trust and inner-peace. Finally, album closer “I Quit Girls” is a soul-rending adult lullaby that builds to a climactic groove which eventually ferries the listener off to the end of the record.