![]() Or maybe that’s just what I wanted to hear. ![]() To my ears, The ’59 Sound was a modern take on Bruce Springsteen’s The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle: a record about bumming around on the beachside streets of Jersey, and about a time in life when responsibility was still far afield. In the early years, even after I started to fall in love with this album, I heard Fallon’s evocations of rock ‘n’ roll greats-coupled with imagery of summer nights and Ferris wheels-and mistook them for pure romanticism. (Note: this opinion is my worst first impression of all time.) Because I was never infatuated with this album like I was with many of the LPs that came out around the same time, I never “wore it out” in the same way.Ī bigger part, though, is the album’s thematic structure. The ’59 Sound got a lot of hype in 2008, but my first listens told me it was something dated and backwards-looking: songs stuck in the past that didn’t have relevance to my present. A part of the reason is probably my initial indifference to the album. Where other records I loved back then have drifted more into the background, The ’59 Sound is a record I’ve played regularly-probably once every couple weeks, at least-for the better part of the past decade. It’s a record that has grown with me over time, one that has meant a dozen different things to me from one year to the next. It’s the rare “favorite record” in my life that isn’t tied to any one specific moment or season or year. Those albums could never be life soundtracks to me today, because they already played that role at such vivid and crucial junctures of my life. My other 2008 classics-records like Butch Walker’s Sycamore Meadows and Jack’s Mannequin’s The Glass Passenger-are albums I revisit only every month or two, not because I don’t love them, but because they hold so many pieces of my past self within their songs. Most of my favorite albums fit into this category. It’s a beautiful thing when that happens, but it also tends to mean your favorite LPs eventually fall out of regular rotation, as you reach for new music to play that role for new moments and memories. You play those records so much when they’re new to you that they become a collage of moments and memories from your life. One of the undeniable truths of being a consummate life soundtracker is that most of your favorite albums end up being inextricably linked to certain periods of time. Over the course of the past 10 years, few albums from the 2000s have stuck with me quite like The ’59 Sound.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |