Well, if it isn’t REALLY a recognized sub-genre, it should be!
I’ve got a bitch of a head cold, I’ve been coughing up phlegm every hour for about three days now, and I really don’t feel like listening to anything ‘happy’. No cheery, dancehall, sunny psychedelia for me, no sir! I require lots of melodrama today; sighing bassoons, aching violins and lone, quiet acoustic guitars. Lyrics contemplating life and death, perhaps some otherworldly musings on what it would be like to be a vampire.
Yeah, that’s the ticket!!
The Goth kids down at the mall know the score with their runny mascara, teased Robert Smith hair and black teenie-bopper bondage garb. Middle to upper class kiddies wanting desperately to escape their privileges and be seen as “deep“ and “contemplative“. They want you to know that they HURT, that they are the true outsiders, and the type of music they listen to is conclusive evidence of that, according to them. And after brooding at the mall for about six hours mumbling under their breaths about what a fascist and unholy thing the mall is, they go home, eat their dinner (bought at the food court) with their folks and siblings and fall asleep to the music of Bauhaus.
So, I’m in THAT kind of a mood today. It’s raining and cold, Christmas is over and it’s a perfect day for wallowing in one’s self pity.
I offer you the perfect soundtrack for such a day as today. Music so gosh-darned miserable one cannot listen to one note without weeping uncontrollably. Music to contemplate existential philosophy or to simply bathe in the sinister-ness of it all.
In the immortal words of Beck Hansen,
"I'm a loser, baby/ So why dont'cha kill me?"
If I have left off your perfect sad bastard album, let me know.
The Cure, Disintegration
Leonard Cohen, Songs Of Love And Hate
Nick Drake, Pink Moon
The Smiths, The Queen Is Dead
The Velvet Underground, the Velvet Underground
The THE, Soul Mining
Tears For Fears, The Hurting
The Sisters Of Mercy (get the Cohen, reference?), Floodland
Bauhaus, Burning Blue Sky
Radiohead, Hail To The Thief
Pink Floyd--ANYTHING!
Nirvana, In Utero
Nick Cave, The Boatman’s Call
Mercury Rev, All Is Dream
Joy Division, Closer
M Ward, Transistor Radio
…AND, anything by Kenny G.
...................happy weeping, y'all!
4 hours ago
2 comments:
I'd agree with 'Pink Moon' by Nick Drake - much as I love it, it is a classic middle class indie boy mooching soundtrack.
Others I'd suggest:
'Songs of love' by Mark Eitzel - it will make you clinically depressed, but in a good way.
Red House Painter's first or second albums the ones with the bed and the rollercoaster on the front.
Pornography by the Cure does more for me than Disintegration (not sure there's a pun in there to intend)
Great comment, Howard. I totally forgot Mr. Eitzel. Everclear by AMC should have been added as well, although it's a beautiful album.
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