5 Albums that Changed my Life

Music as dramatic as I like to think my life is, ok... was

This pregnancy has completely abducted my mobility, my emotions, and my ability to write coherently. I can barely cobble together a sentence to a grocery store clerk, let alone pen that essay I’ve been meaning to write about planning parenthood in a post Roe V. Wade America. (Can’t wait to disable the comment section on that piece.)

Thus, I’m left with a bit of a blank space in my Substacks. However, I did promise some “fluff” lists in this IG post. So here we are!

5 Albums that Changed my Life

Dramatic right? Well, wait, I’m not done yet. I think music saved my life at a few different points in my teenage years. The combination of music, film, and books most certainly have. Bands, songwriters, poets, directors and authors convinced me that a world existed beyond high school, that life indeed can get better. As a kid, I saw some sad things and it seemed like I had a permanent magnet that connected my chin with my neck. However, it didn’t seem so strong when I was listening to certain music.

Some albums bring me back to such specific memories and places, it doesn’t matter if I’ve listened to them 100x, I’ll discover something new. (How is that possible?!) It feels like the mess of my memory only gets organized when music gives it a nudge. Some of the songs on these albums below hit me so hard, the feeling I get inside my ribcage is not dissimilar to dropping from the tallest rollercoaster. These 5 albums have had a huge influence on the world-building I did as a young writer to escape some darker times, and now each of them have been crucial to my writing process.

Loreena’s McKennitt’s - The Visit

This album is a part of my DNA. My Mom had this mysterious, sepia-colored CD on repeat until I stole it from her to add to my “I want to open a spa,” phase of preteen-hood. (Seriously, one year when I was about 12 or 13, I asked for a professional massage table for Christmas and got one.) McKennitt is a Canadian composer who plays the harp, accordion, and piano. Her vocals are straight out of a fairy-tale, and she’s often compared to Enya. McKennitt’s music is heavily influenced by traditional Celtic songs. Enter: The Visit. Released in 1991, this album went platinum four times in Canada, and gold in the US. From first song to ninth, listening to this album is like watching an epic fantasy film. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent daydreaming from my parents car window, with Loreena serenading me on my discman. “All Souls Night,” is easily my favorite for its drama, drums, and pagan energy. But the softer ballads like “The Lady of Shalott,” sparked an interest in literature and folklore, laying the groundwork for a future in English Lit. “Tango to Evora,” made me excited to travel and opened the door to other world music I would come to love (Honorable mention shoutout to Jesse Cook!). The Visit is a beautiful, timeless piece of work and I really think anyone of any age or musical taste, would find something beautiful in it.

Fun Fact! The Visit is on its 30th anniversary tour, which is nuts for so many reasons. I scored myself a ticket to the Portland, ME show Oct 11, one month post-partum. I’m going to go, breast pumps in my bra if I need to, and cry happy tears if anyone wants to join.

My favorite track today:

Enya - A Day Without Rain

If The Visit is a part of my DNA, Enya’s A Day Without Rain was, and still is my beating heart. Also taken from my Mom, when I first heard Enya sing I could have sworn I was imagining that the dragon fantasy novel I was reading at the time, was coming to life. This is why when she sang on so much of Lord of the Rings soundtrack, I doubled down on my obsession with both her and the films. But, A Day Without Rain came before my Elijah Wood spiral. Everything about this album was perfect. Even the album cover is stunning, with her signature namesake font splashed on a worn stucco wall. She sits in a subdued purple velvet gown, on a french antique bench (ok, just take a look but come back — Enya is really fun to Google). “Only Time,” was the hit, made super-popular when the film Sweet November used it during the scene we find out (spoiler alert!) Charlize Theron has cancer. My Mom was obsessed with this movie (and talked about it until the day she died of cancer), and because of that, it’s just not my favorite. Instead I prefer, “A Day Without Rain,” and “Wild Child,” on repeat. This album became the soundtrack to my after school hours, where I’d take her into the graveyard with me and write in my journal. I know, I know, but what do you expect when you’re a 13 year old girl going through puberty, who exclusively listens to New Age queens?

Fun Fact: She more than inspired the LOTR score. Howard Shore imagined her as a guiding voice in his compositions. According to interviews, she went to the sets in New Zealand and then later came up with some of the music that Shore seamlessly incorporated into his work.

My favorite track today:

Thrice - The Artist in the Ambulance

I lied about knowing about Thrice, before I ever heard of them. One of the handful of things I did trying to impress the guys I befriended in late high school. Thrice was my gateway-drug to other punk/ska/emo bands since they toured with other epic acts that similarly altered my life course: Thursday, Rancid, Alkaline Trio, Coheed and Cambria, Hot Water Music, and get this — Dashboard Confessional. (I went to the Dashboard/Thrice show in Toronto that year and it really felt like the music universe was saying: “Hello lost little girl, right this way. Come for the Dashboard, stay for this post-hardcore band that will change your life.”)

The album starts with “Cold Cash and Colder Hearts,” and its one of my favorite album beginnings. It throws you in right away, and it’s absolutely impossible not to throw your head back and forth (fine, headbang), if you have it on max volume in your car. I will warn you, three year olds might think it’s “scary.” But what I love about this album — and band in general — is that there’s so much packed into each of their songs. String sections, singing, screaming. Critics have called them thrash metal, emo, and pop-punk, sometimes when referring to one song. I also don’t know shit about drum timing, but I’ve heard they do a lot of cool “things” with “that stuff.” Something about talking in fractions doesn’t compute with my math-deficient brain.

Fun Fact: David Eggers, one of my fav writers, created the cover art for Vheissu with Brian McMullen. The band and author were mutual fans of one another and that just makes me more stoked to listen to them again and again. Fun Fact pt II! My friend Dave just pointed out that they re-released this album this year. Hearing them sing again but “aged,” is just wonderful. I picture them trying to convince their kids between takes they’re still cool. Which they obviously still are.

My favorite track today:

The Postal Service - Give Up

“I want so badly to believe that there is truth and love is real, and I want life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd.” These lyrics are from “Clark Gable,” the 6th song The Postal Service’s only studio album, Give Up. This was also my yearbook quote, and as much as I wish I could have changed how much eyeliner I wore in that photo, I wouldn’t change anything else. Like many teenagers in the early aughts, I was all-in for Death Cab for Cutie so if Ben Gibbard was starting a new indie-pop supergroup on Sub-Pop (with Jenny fucking Lewis on backup vocals), you’re sure as shit I’d be buying that album. But I didn’t just buy this album, I listened to it so many times, I can still sing every lyric from start to finish. The electronic element was massive in my cross-over from loving punk to getting into dance and electronic music in my college years. My mosh pit evenings were slowly morphing into all night raves thanks to drug redacted, drug redacted, & person redacted. But before those sloppy years, I was a girl with a dream of writing and studying film and this band satiated everything I looked for in art at the time. Some of their more uplifting songs (“Such Great Heights”) made me feel like anything was possible, and more intense ones (“This Place is a Prison”) validated my that feeling stuck somewhere shitty, wasn’t a singular experience.

My favorite track today:

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Howl

Good god this album is perfect. As I ventured into my twenties and into a very unreliable career in music photography, I started consuming a lot of music docs. I’ll never forget watching Dig! which followed the love-hate relationship between the frontmen of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, respectively: Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe. Long story short, Anton Newcombe battled serious drug issues and his supremely talented band, BJM, would have been massive if he didn’t have so many demons. In a very brief scene, you see guitarist Peter Hayes leave Anton to start BRMC. Peter is not even in the doc much, but that crumb led me to finding and listening to Howl. Something inside me totally shifted when I first heard it play in its entirety. I honestly think I “grew up” at that moment. Is that a thing that an album can invoke? It’s uproarious, harmonious rock & roll from another age. It’s timeless songwriting over pared down acoustics. It’s tambourine-shaking, harmonica licking, guitar-shredding. Suddenly Peter is singing at a piano and you’re crying. Then you’re back on your feet chain-smoking on a road trip across the US.

Wanna dance? “Ain’t No Easy Way.” Wanna pretend you’re in a saloon in 1899? “Shuffle Your Feet.” Wanna cry? “Promise,” or “Open Invitation.” Wanna trip out across the desert with your best buds? “Still Suspicion Holds You Tight.”

Not so fun, fact: Before he died, an old friend from those music days in Toronto, listened to this entire album with me when I was going through a breakup. Due to the tragic nature of his passing, I wish I could have told him how much that moment meant to me.

My favorite track today:

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There’s so much more I could say and write about music and how it’s changed my life. There are of course more albums than five that have gotten under my skin in my short life. But, right now, I can’t feel my right leg, my heartburn is making me want to vomit, and I should probably shower before I jump in the parent-pickup line at summer camp. Dear daughter, I promise I was cool once, albeit very briefly.

Dear readers, thanks for sticking around for this one.

xo,

Coco.