craaaaaazy question to ask me specifically because now I will never shut the fuck up
I first came into contact with this album in 2022 or 2023 because its final and titular track was featured in the end credits of an episode of Girls. It immediately became one of my all-time favorites. Both gut-wrenching and hopeful, the song's narrator reminisces on a previous emotionally dark time for them, a time when they were grieving and trying to hold onto things they couldn't keep (underweight, in the street, hot with grief). The hope in this song, which takes the breath out of my lungs, lies in both the crucial past tense of these feelings and in the final lines, 'get well soon, get well soon / I was once just like you.' This has become a sort of mantra for me. Tucek takes something you would see on a kitschy greeting card and turns it into a plea for recovery.
Unfortunately, it took me months to sit down and actually listen to the full album in late winter 2024. It happened very much by accident. I was itching to hear something new and thought, well, at some point I should check out the rest of this artist's work, considering this is one of my top 5 favorite songs of all time. I never expected it to be such a work. I figured someone else would've sang its praises by now if it was going to change my life (which is why I adore this ask, because I think we all have an album like this, or at least we all should). The albums contains stories of grief, regret, dissatisfaction, bad fathers, and ultimately Moving On with a capital M. The track order is perfection. My other favorite song from this album is The Fireman. Somehow it is able to invoke in me feelings I've never experienced as someone whose father was not an absent asshole. The Doctor is a beautiful song about wanting to surgically excise the negative aspects of us that we get from our parents. Things Left Behind is great for thinking about death. Wooden has a perfect guitar solo.
This album is unique, fleshed-out metaphors with mostly a handful of acoustic instruments and an excellent voice. I would change nothing about it. I plan on tattooing the cover on my body because I want it to be a permanent part of my skin.
I might have to write more on this. Transcendent album. if you like Weyes Blood, Angel Olson, Aimee Mann, you will enjoy this. If grief is as constant to you as breathing you will enjoy this. If you're mad at your dad you will enjoy this.
Get well soon (and I mean it)! xoxo
Oct 22, 2024
Related Recs
a year ago, a girl i was going out with recommended this album to me, after i heard the song "Insecure" while we made out in her car. a year later, we don't really talk anymore, but i finally listened to this album all the way through... and i loved it so much that i felt compelled to text her and thank her profusely for the recommendation. i kept my text to her short and sweet, but i have a lot to say about this special album.
i'm jewish, and though i'm not a religious person, i've been thinking a lot about religion lately and what it means to me. growing up, i went to synagogue with my family for the high holidays, and i didn't particularly connect with any of the scripture in this sterile environment. throughout college, i was involved in an alternative jewish space that welcomed everyone as they were and centered social justice, and we hosted events where we got to share food, space, songs, hopes for the future, etc.
now that i'm not in college, and not living with my family, i'm figuring out what religion means to me at an individual level and how it affects the way i interact with the world around me. it's been years since i've been to a synagogue, but i try to go to concerts as much as i can, because music means the world to me and experiencing it in a live setting, in community, is sacred... and by sacred, i mean that it commands your full attention, it swallows you whole, forces you to let go.
i haven't experienced this album in a live setting, and because northern picture library have since disbanded, i likely never will. but the other day, after smoking some weed, lighting some candles, laying on the floor in almost complete darkness, and playing this album on my noise-cancelling headphones, i saw god in my room.
every sound on every song envelops you completely. the vocals, the harmonies, the organ, the field recordings, the synths, the guitars, the lyrics... everything is perfection in its purest form. the mix makes it sound so close to you, yet so far away. the overexposed album cover feels incredibly fitting, with every song making up a sliver of a bright and beautifully blinding heaven. and it doesn't surprise me at all that the length of this album is an angel number (1 hr 11 mins).
i can't remember the last time i was this moved by an album. it solidified my desire to, one day, go to divinity school and do extensive research on the many religious qualities of music; i still have loans to pay, life to live, and lots of music to listen to, but i'm excited to go down this rabbit hole one day. it's kind of funny that i've come to this conclusion honestly, considering that the girl who recommended this to me is majoring in religion, and i never thought i would want to study religion at an academic level. i guess this is just a testament to how everyone you meet, and especially everyone you care about (or have cared about), are woven into the fabric of your life, no matter how long they're a part of it. what goes around comes back around... life is a spiral!
i hope you take the time to listen to this album and let it move you. i can't promise you'll see god (we're still getting to know each other), but i guarantee it'll restore your faith... if not in god, then in yourself <3
Oct 1, 2024
22° Halo’s Lily of the Valley is a collection of songs written by Philly-based songwriter Will Kennedy during his wife Kate’s treatment for a very rare brain cancer. For full transparency, Will and Kate are close friends of mine – Kate’s treatment was a tremendous weight on my chest, and the news of her cancer going dormant was one of the high points of recent years for me. This album hit me hard as hell knowing the people behind it. But the more I listen, the more I marvel at the specificity and universality of what Will achieved here.
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What makes Lily of the Valley such a remarkable album is the graceful confidence Kennedy presents these delicately intimate moments with. It’s incredibly difficult to write confident, commanding songs about such immense uncertainty. My jaw would drop at the sheer chutzpah of the recurring lead guitar on album opener “Bird Sanctuary” – it sounds like This Heat playing Thin Lizzy! And these are somehow the first notes we hear to set the stage for Kennedy’s recollections of some of the most precious, intimate moments of his relationship? It’s incredible.Â
This propulsive feeling sustains throughout the album. “Orioles at Dusk” is anthemic and climactic in an almost literal drive-into-the-sunset sense, and the closing, titular track could throw a crowd makes me want to beat the air with my fists. That an immense tenderness can remain at the forefront of songs with such electric energy, rather than something masked by the music itself, is a big part of what makes this album such a wonder.Â
I hate to use a word like “juxtaposition” but it really is this juxtaposition that got under my skin the first time I heard this album and has kept me coming back for 3-5 listens per week since then. If I heard this album without knowing the backstory, without paying attention to the lyrics or knowing Will or Kate, I would still place it as a new high point in the jangle pop canon. It’s how effortlessly Kennedy can get you to sing along with a song about the terror of watching the person you love most endure chemo that makes this a truly transcendent record.Â
The lyrics are bracingly beautiful and generously specific. The songs sometimes take on a stream of consciousness quality, as if Kennedy is remembering moments both painful and uplifting in the same thought and listing them out as they arrive to him. The moments where Kate accompanies him vocally are among the most moving I heard this year. Kennedy has an uncanny ability to shed off self-consciousness in his music without ever demanding the listener’s attention. He is beautifully articulating a truth too deeply, painfully human to present as anything other than that; the truth.
Dec 30, 2024
this is an album I return to in the fall/winter, and while it might not sound like a comfort album from the description i’m about to give it still plays a sort of comfort album role for me during this time of year where it’s easy to isolate and feel listless.
this album was made in the midst of a period of debilitating illness for the artist that left him mostly bedridden for months at a time, during which he had little else to do but languish in his deteriorating mental and physical state. each song focuses on a different thought spiral that took over his mind in this time: his past relationship failures, his unhealthy coping mechanisms, his “inner demons,” and his increasingly frail body.
though the subject matter is pretty bleak, the production and composition across the album is gorgeous, and the care that went into making the album reveals how music became an escape for Baths–a medium into which his suffering could be channeled into something which allowed him to transcend the restrictions of his illness and give meaning to his pain.
I found this album during a time of similar struggles in my own life, and the album was a sort of companion to me throughout that period. It gave me some sense of not being alone in my experience, and if Baths could make it through his period of isolation and pain, then there was no reason to think that my own wouldn't also pass eventually.
luckily it did, and now I can listen back to this album and find comfort in the role it played for me and also just enjoy it for being gorgeous music regardless of any personal connection I have to it. also I think it’s a hopeful album simply because it exists–a testament to Bath’s resilience as an individual and talent as an artist. and since he’s found health and happiness and gone back to making the very cute and wholesome music that is his usual style
anyway all this to say if you tend to feel a little bleh this time of year and have a high tolerance for hearing other’s tragedies then this album is a great fall listen and oddly kinda cozy
Nov 1, 2024
Top Recs from @erikrikrika
🦷
I encourage you to rip into me if you disagree because shying away from disagreement is what??đź‘‚ OUT!
IN
• Reading books
• Folk-rock and folk-country
• Doing stuff on the computer and not your phone like god intended (social media, online shopping, etc.)
• Clothes-wise: colored tights, mini skirts, scarves
• Being late to work
• Talking to strangers, in the same vein: making new friends
• Writing
• Taking the bus and the train
• Saying what you need to say and doing so succinctly
• Unionizing your workplace
OUT
• Boring convos with coworkers
• Wearing clothes you don’t really like
• Minnesota nice (see also: being nice is not always the same as being kind)
• VAPING OHHH MY GOD. WRAP IT UP!!!
• Caring about makeup, unless you’re a drag queen or a goth. Like you get 15 minutes max
• Shying away from disagreement
• Fast casual chain restaurants - go eat local and sit down for a while
• Paw Patrol (copaganda)
• Ass kissing
• Being under 25
Dec 23, 2024
I mean. Wow. I wish I could formulate coherent literary analysis but I think I just need to sit with this for a month. Humanity, gender, politics, fear, love. The heart of culturally long-lasting, impactful sci fi is when the sci is merely a background to the fi, ya know?
Tried to pick a quote but can’t right now. If you hear shrill screaming in the distance just know it’s me wailing over this book
Illustration by David Lupton
Jan 30, 2025
đź’”
Even though it hurts like hell. Even though it’s wildly inconvenient. Even though you feel stupid or embarrassed for feeling it. Even though you’ve psychoanalyzed yourself to death and traced the issue all the way back to your childhood mistreatment. The only way out is through here.
Oct 20, 2024