Music doesn’t always make it easy on you. It often challenges you. It shocks you. It confuses you. And through that, it makes you hear other music differently after a journey down a twisty path leading you through unfamiliar cultural and artistic territory to destinations you didn’t anticipate. Soon, you find yourself both challenged and Read more about 2.8: Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um (1959)[…]
Moving on. We all find ourselves at the end of one era of our lives and with a new one ahead of us. It can be exciting. It can be sad. It can be both at the same time. Sometimes, it happens when you’re a kid, and there’s a feeling of helplessness attached to leaving Read more about 2.7: Nanci Griffith – Flyer (1994)[…]
Sometimes, the best advice you can follow is: shut up and listen. That way you learn more, particularly about the stories of others that often remain hidden from you, yet are vital to know and understand. During a period of discovery for Rob around the issues of feminism and the burdens placed on women by Read more about 2.6: Tori Amos – Under the Pink (1994)[…]
The comfort album: in times of trial, it offers just the right song to make things bearable. It give us lyrics that speak directly to us when we’re most in need. They make us feel less alone, and remind us that “this too shall pass” – sometimes very literally. That was Graeme’s predicament at one Read more about 2.5: OK Go – Of the Blue Colour of the Sky (2010)[…]
Sometimes an album can offer you a point of departure: that moment when suddenly – WHAM! – everything clicks and new musical vistas are in front of you. We return to a theme we discussed back in episode 7 of our first season as we talk about Shannon’s journey with Tom Waits, specifically with his 1999 Read more about 2.4: Tom Waits – Mule Variations (1999)[…]
Your parents’ music. It can shape your own taste in various capacities. Or it can give you something to rebel against. Sometimes, it can be both. Either way, the music your parents put on when you were a kid isn’t just a soundtrack to your childhood; it’s a part of the tapestry of their personalities, Read more about 2.3: Anne Murray – Let’s Keep It That Way (1978)[…]
Sometimes you find your favourite music. But in those rarer moments, that music seems to find you. That’s the experience Rob had with 1971’s Bryter Layter by singer-songwriter Nick Drake. The record was Drake’s second album, exploring English folk-rock textures with some chamber pop and jazz thrown in, and with some interesting lyrical content to Read more about 2.2: Nick Drake – Bryter Layter (1971)[…]
Break-ups! Autobiography! Pop crossovers! Season 2 of Deeper Cuts kicks off with a HUGE record from the late nineties, and a formative one for Shannon to boot while she was a musically curious 14-year old. Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill consolidated the nu-soul movement as it connected with hip-hop, reggae, and other genres by the end of Read more about 2.1: Lauryn Hill – The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1999)[…]