Post by dance of days on Jan 7, 2012 0:47:51 GMT -5
Alright, I can already tell this is going to be longer than expected. Basically, my friend Adam (who also happens to be my manager at work) mentioned offhand that he thought Love's Forever Changes was the best album of the sixties. Coming from a guy who knows everything about the sixties music scene, especially the most obscure private-press psychedelic records that nobody normal has ever heard of, I knew this was a weighty statement, and given that he and I have a similar sensibility about what we find appealing in music, I figured I ought to give this "Love" band a shot. After all, I'd come into my job knowing next to nothing about the sixties and also completely disinterested in that musical era (save for the early pre-punk bands and a little bit of the folk music of the time), waving my punk flag high and harboring an open distaste for "hippie bullshit," but was slowly getting hip to bands like the 13th Floor Elevators, The Seeds, H.P. Lovecraft and lesser-known psych gems like the C.A. Quintet, Cold Sun, The Index, et cetera. Before I got hired at the record store I didn't understand psychedelia as a genre and a sensibility, a worldview, but rather it was a term I used loosely without really "getting" what it meant, but after a while listening to some of those bands I was starting to understand the whole "psych" thing.
Some of the groups in question more than bordered on the "garage" sound, which had all signs pointing toward the inception of punk, and the total rawness of some of these records really blew my mind. It was wild and gnarly and fearless and constantly recreating itself, bearing little resemblance to my then-perception of what "hippie" meant. This was far more interesting. After cutting my teeth on the Elevators and their ilk, making a couple psych mixtapes for friends, and noticing my growing fascination with this genre I'd sworn I'd never like, I decided it was finally time to listen to Forever Changes.
Anticlimactically, the album made no impression on me whatsoever. I remember very little. I remember some acoustic guitars and some strings. There was nothing at all that grabbed me, and I felt vaguely disappointed, like, "This is it?" A week or so later I tried again. Same reaction. On the third try, I realized the first song on the album ("Alone Again Or") had kind of a good hook. It pulled me back to it again, and the album slowly began grabbing me with its moments: the raw snarl of the word "Alright!" that bursts through the tension before the first guitar break in "A House Is Not A Motel," the way the line "sometimes my life is so eerie" is crooned in "The Red Telephone," the earnest and laid-bare delivery of "this is the only thing that I am sure of" in "You Set the Scene." Soon I realized I was dealing with an animal much larger than myself. I fell in love with the first song, then the second, then the third. And so on. Pretty soon I felt like I was being consumed entirely, like this giant mass of total bliss was swallowing me up.
If there's one thing I've observed about what makes a record really hit home for me personally, it's that it has to challenge me. Spending so many hours in the record store week after week and hearing a fair amount of the new stuff that comes out, finding records I haven't heard that actually push me has become increasingly difficult, and I would even say close to impossible. Of course I hear things that I enjoy, but I miss the feeling of listening to a record I haven't heard before and getting the sensation that it's like digging into my guts or something--then having that feeling actually last as I continued listening for more than a week or so. It happened all the time in middle- and high school. The lack of new visceral experiences like the ones I had with Husker Du's "Zen Arcade" and John Maus's "Love Is Real" kind of troubled me. I wondered why it never happened anymore. Overexposure? Saturation? Cynicism? Age? I mean, who knows.
But once I was submerged in the subtlety of Forever Changes, I found it so beautiful yet completely challenging. I still don't get what the fuck is going on in that record that is so magical. Something about this delicate layering of elements, like building a house of cards...vocally speaking, the mix of confidence, sincerity, and desperation just lurking beneath the smooth surface...the imagery evoked by the simplest of lyrics...but perhaps the most striking thing in my experience has been this strangely dreamlike outsider-looking-in sensibility of observing the world carrying on as it does.
Is Love my favorite band? I don't know. I'm just so completely floored by this record and it just keeps getting better and better and more massive every time I hear it. I can't seem to tear myself away to even begin to explore the rest of their discography, it's this feeling like Forever Changes simply has so many elements at work that I can't leave it alone (not that I'm trying to "solve" anything, but I want to bathe in it forever). Yesterday I somehow stumbled on an original copy of Da Capo (Love's second album, right before Forever Changes) and played it once, last night, sitting on the edge of my bed turning the album cover over and over in my hands, in total awe. Da Capo (at least the A side) is really good. But it's like I'm not ready to hear it yet. I don't know. I feel completely swept off my feet.
So I suppose this is a roundabout way of asking if anyone else here listens to this band (I'm pretty sure Devyn does!) and wondering about your thoughts. What a great group!
Some of the groups in question more than bordered on the "garage" sound, which had all signs pointing toward the inception of punk, and the total rawness of some of these records really blew my mind. It was wild and gnarly and fearless and constantly recreating itself, bearing little resemblance to my then-perception of what "hippie" meant. This was far more interesting. After cutting my teeth on the Elevators and their ilk, making a couple psych mixtapes for friends, and noticing my growing fascination with this genre I'd sworn I'd never like, I decided it was finally time to listen to Forever Changes.
Anticlimactically, the album made no impression on me whatsoever. I remember very little. I remember some acoustic guitars and some strings. There was nothing at all that grabbed me, and I felt vaguely disappointed, like, "This is it?" A week or so later I tried again. Same reaction. On the third try, I realized the first song on the album ("Alone Again Or") had kind of a good hook. It pulled me back to it again, and the album slowly began grabbing me with its moments: the raw snarl of the word "Alright!" that bursts through the tension before the first guitar break in "A House Is Not A Motel," the way the line "sometimes my life is so eerie" is crooned in "The Red Telephone," the earnest and laid-bare delivery of "this is the only thing that I am sure of" in "You Set the Scene." Soon I realized I was dealing with an animal much larger than myself. I fell in love with the first song, then the second, then the third. And so on. Pretty soon I felt like I was being consumed entirely, like this giant mass of total bliss was swallowing me up.
If there's one thing I've observed about what makes a record really hit home for me personally, it's that it has to challenge me. Spending so many hours in the record store week after week and hearing a fair amount of the new stuff that comes out, finding records I haven't heard that actually push me has become increasingly difficult, and I would even say close to impossible. Of course I hear things that I enjoy, but I miss the feeling of listening to a record I haven't heard before and getting the sensation that it's like digging into my guts or something--then having that feeling actually last as I continued listening for more than a week or so. It happened all the time in middle- and high school. The lack of new visceral experiences like the ones I had with Husker Du's "Zen Arcade" and John Maus's "Love Is Real" kind of troubled me. I wondered why it never happened anymore. Overexposure? Saturation? Cynicism? Age? I mean, who knows.
But once I was submerged in the subtlety of Forever Changes, I found it so beautiful yet completely challenging. I still don't get what the fuck is going on in that record that is so magical. Something about this delicate layering of elements, like building a house of cards...vocally speaking, the mix of confidence, sincerity, and desperation just lurking beneath the smooth surface...the imagery evoked by the simplest of lyrics...but perhaps the most striking thing in my experience has been this strangely dreamlike outsider-looking-in sensibility of observing the world carrying on as it does.
Is Love my favorite band? I don't know. I'm just so completely floored by this record and it just keeps getting better and better and more massive every time I hear it. I can't seem to tear myself away to even begin to explore the rest of their discography, it's this feeling like Forever Changes simply has so many elements at work that I can't leave it alone (not that I'm trying to "solve" anything, but I want to bathe in it forever). Yesterday I somehow stumbled on an original copy of Da Capo (Love's second album, right before Forever Changes) and played it once, last night, sitting on the edge of my bed turning the album cover over and over in my hands, in total awe. Da Capo (at least the A side) is really good. But it's like I'm not ready to hear it yet. I don't know. I feel completely swept off my feet.
So I suppose this is a roundabout way of asking if anyone else here listens to this band (I'm pretty sure Devyn does!) and wondering about your thoughts. What a great group!