Why I like depressive music Sad music has always had the strongest impact of all music on me. I guess it really got started with Nick Drake whom I discovered in the late 70s when his box set Fruit Tree comprising his three studio albums was released in Germany. I made a post on him a while ago (a search should find it but I am too lazy to look it up now). I usually listened to his music on headphones as it was too intimate to be shared with the outside world. He only sang for me with his gentle pure voice and told me about the beauty of life and love and the hopelessness of it all. It was the soundtrack of my growing-up. A 1-1 identification, a comprehension beyond words. After having listened to Nick Drake I did not feel alone in this world anymore. I knew that there had been somebody who had had very similar experiences to my own and who could write and sing about them which I obviously couldn't. It may sound stupid, but he was my teenage the idol of my teenage years. Later on I listened to Nick Drake with my best friend who was on a similar trip as me. But it wasn't the same anymore. I felt awkward to listen to this music with somebody else. It was almost painful and very uncomfortable. I could not share Nick Drake with anybody else. The thing with sad music is that I love to listen to it when I am sad and though it does not make me happy it gives me a relief. There is a hidden power in it which gives me strength. Afterwards I discovered other music in a similar vein but the impression was less intense. Joni Mitchell's incredibly poetic songs, mostly on lost love. The Smiths melancholic tuneful pop songs with their witty and weird adolescent lyrics. Neil Young who made me overcome my first real lovesickness with After the Goldrush. Mark Kozelek from the Red House Painters who sings as if it is his only chance to survive. Idaho's first album Year After Year, another slow dive into darkness. The Tindersticks' First Album full of passion. The Gun Club's energetic psychobilly: Jeffrey Lee Pierce's doomed voice. Joy Division, maybe the climax of it all. Punky and rough in the beginning, gloomy, claustrophobic and atmospheric in the end. I have to stop now, there are so many I have forgotten and go back to the beginning and give the word to Jody Beth Rosen from Freezing to Death in the Nuclear Bunker who describes the effect of Nick Drake's music better here than I ever could: "I'm not the most fervent Nick Drake kneejerker, but I've always considered Pink Moon one of those albums -- one of those special, private experiences that signal a communication between someone in distress and another whose ship drowned years ago. It's like drinking tea when you're sick, and you hold the cup to your nose so the steam can come up through your nostrils and make your eyes tear -- that tea is a remedy, it's homeopathy, your best friend when you're grouchy and curled into an antisocial knot left on the sofa to be otherwise choked on by your stupid cat. It's not modern medicine, not a multimillion-dollar miracle of research and development, not shelling out kickbacks to charlatan medics, no apple-cheeked actresses breathing easy on mountaintops as African music zoom-zoom-zooms away. And that's what I find hard to stomach about this Volkswagen business."

To get an impression of sad music just listen to Nick Drake or Bright Eyes: Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh (whom I just discovered and whose tortured vocals are sadness in nuce) More on the still quite young Conor Oberst and Bright Eyes here:

• Bright Eyes: There Is No Beginning to the Story EP: Pitchfork Review (7.4/10)
• ILM: Bright Eyes: Worth a damn?

Linkage

• Joe Panzner from the Oligarchist Home Journal reviews the soon to be released new Sonic Youth album Murray Street (rating 8.5/10). Excerpt: "The most immediate difference between Murray Street and Sonic Youth’s post-1990 output is the newfound emphasis on clarity, focus, and outright melody. The guitars, which are every bit as likely now to jangle as they are to clang and buzz, are clean, crisp, and recorded bone-dry in trademark O’Rourke fashion."
• Maybe I should check out the new Flaming Lips Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots which is Elasticheart's fave album of 2002 up to now. He says: "The album is a step beyond what the band reached with "The Soft Bulletin" and blends the creativity and experimentation of that album with some of the catchiest songs I've heard this year." I preferred "The Soft Bulletin" to Mercury Rev's "Deserter's Songs" which came out at about the time and was in quite a similar style as it was somehow less predictable and more glamorously pop. I saw the Lips live at about the same time and it was one of the weirdest concerts ever with the singer hitting this enormous gong every minute or so and bizarre videoclips being projected on a screen.
• Practical stuff: Why Won't We Read the Manual? (MeFi discussion)