why I need to start actually listening to albums again

I thought it would be interesting to recap some random musical discoveries over the years and how the act of listening to physical music and the album experience helped shape certain years. There's many parts to this whole story, lots of technology turnover, and plenty of really weird music along the way. Anything I say about pre-2006 might be completely inaccurate but lets just say it's close enough.

All the music I listened to as a kid happened in the car. We listened to the radio a lot and my dad had a cd changer in his car that could hold something like 10 discs (this was actually a huge flex at the time...I promise). Here, I probably heard a bunch of his favourite songs from the 80s, which by the way is the same as someone today listening to songs from the 2000s hahaha yep we're getting old. I was really little at the time and I had the hardest time finding some of these but it was definitely worth it since these songs bring up so many memories. The way music can tap into that complicated emotion is really profound to me. I used to work at a drum store in Toronto during high school and we had this big sign by the entrance that read "rhythm is the soul of life" and I love the idea that the physical sound waves from music can interact with the particles that you are made of. Think singing to your plants to help them grow, or a cat purring at a specific frequency to self-heal. Certain wave frequencies can create fractal patterns in sand, and these same patterns appear constantly in nature. There's something mathematically beautiful about music and how we use it to catalog our memories, so here's some deep cuts from the old volkswagon that I rediscovered while writing this:

I was a late bloomer when it came to listening to music on my own, and back then the biggest way to discover music was to watch Much Music on channel 29 after school to see new videos drop. We didn't even have cable but somehow that channel still worked. They filmed the show live at Queen and John and in the summer they would sometimes open up the studio windows and you could just watch from the sidewalk. It was a vibe and is a huge reason that stretch of Queen West is what it is today. That was like the city's heartbeat and you never knew who you would catch performing. 

Back then if you liked a song that you saw on TV you had to remember it (no youtube yet), maybe buy the cd if you had $15 (you never had money), borrow the cd from a friend if they had it (they never did), burn/copy the cd onto your computer and turn it into MP3 files (illegal), and put it on another cd to keep (very illegal). 

ALL OF THIS WAS A STRUGGLE. 

When I was 12, I distinctly remember my friend bringing a CD to school, so I borrowed it for a couple days, went through all of these steps, and I listened to this record every day for all of Grade 7:

Shoutout to that friend, you know who you are. I didn't realize it at the time, but this was a huge and significant coming of age moment for me. I went from listening to classic rock and 80's music to listening to this new Toronto-based post-punk band every single day. On the way to school, on the way home, during class. These guys were like my heroes and every track on this album is a goddamn classic.

Technology I used from 2004-2009

Sony CD Player

• played cds (~10-12 songs)

• had to carry in your pocket

• if you walked the cd would skip

• pretty shit but necessary

Sony Minidisk 

• played things called minidisks

• no one sold minidisks

• smaller than a cd player

• never caught on but I felt cool

iPod Mini

• played mp3 files

• 4GB storage 

• had a game called brickbreaker

• no more AA batteries

iPod Nano

• smallest one yet

• way better screen

• you would carry this + your phone

• absolute brick

There's something to be said about listening to music when it's on a physical device like this. It feels like you own it, and it was created to be listened to by you. This is definitely old-head of me, but once streaming services came around, it's been very difficult to experience an album in it's whole. Back in high school, this was the main way I would listen to music. Taking a CD, burning it, and moving the files onto your own device was an involved and time consuming process. Once you went through all that trouble, you'd better believe that you would get every ounce of joy out of that listening experience.

As high school dragged on, there came another paradigm shift with the new MacBook release in 2008. This was another huge moment for the culture; we finally had a laptop computer with a functional music library program in iTunes, the internet had finally caught up with YouTube and other listening platforms; and thus began the rise of music pirating of the mid-2000s. 

Total game changer. Between 2007 and 2009 I went all in when it came to finding new music. Except the difference was that I wasn't crate digging like they had to in the 80's and 90's, I would go to music blogs, pitchfork posts, and get friend recommendations to find music I would never have listened to in the past. The indie music scene was literally blowing up and everyone wore American Apparel hoodies. But with all that cringe came some seriously compelling music that I still listen to this day. It's scary to think that most of these albums are almost 20 years old.

Just to name a few:

Controversial, but a pivotal change in the Toronto music zeitgeist. What do you listen to? Just some noise electro pop that should only be played at night - you wouldn't get it. It was like a gift from the hipster gods.

Listen to: Untrust Us, Courtship Dating, Vanished, Black Panther

At the time, this was the genre blending that no one ever wanted until it happened. It's like lo-fi folk music from the future on acid. The drummer and singer recently scored the music for the movie Past Lives. Indie legends.

Listen to: Easier, Knife, Colorado

Came out of nowhere and was a great intro album to the growing experimental rock scene. It's lush, has shoegaze elements, beautiful yet challenging. You could throw this record on and it would carry the listener through the tracklist. A listening experience in it's truest form.

Listen to: Cryptograms, White Ink, Lake Somerset, Hazel St

This was one for the ages and changed the mf game. Every song is an anthem for my generation, and I think we all have a special place in our hearts for this one. I only bought a handful of CDs during these years since CDs were pretty much obsolete by 2007ish. This was one of them.

Listen to: Weekend Wars, The Youth, The Handshake

I feel like this album could never have come out at any other time. Only in 2008 could you release an afro-pop indie record and have it be wildly successful. Lots of good memories listening to this one. The hooks are catchy, it's happy, the instrumentation is so crispy and clean; it's a time capsule for my high school summers.

Listen to: Mansard Roof, A-Punk, Campus

A heavy hitter for the NYC dance-punk movement of the mid-2000s. I can't remember when I first heard this record but I do remember listening to it A LOT in 2007. This felt like being invited to a dance party that the adults were having in a downtown basement. From top to bottom, it's probably the most complete record on this list.

Listen to: Get Innocuous!, Us V Them, Sound of Silver, New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down

This takes us to about 2009, end of high school and feels like a good place to stop for now. Maybe I'll do a part two on this another day.