U of T students drown—a lot. Or, at the very least, we like to complain about it: we “drown” in essays, in midterms, in lab reports, in recitals and presentations, and when we’re done all that, we “drown” our worries in club nights, pub crawls, and formals. The intensity of schoolwork before and after Reading Week threatens to drown us all, so I put together a list of 10 albums that accurately reflect our collective mental state, addressing, to varying degrees of literality, the topic of drowning.
“That’s your solution to everything, to move under the sea,” chides Marge Simpson. “It’s not going to happen!” “Not with that attitude it won’t,” comes Homer’s reply. Hopefully, once you give these a listen, you’ll acquire the perfect attitude to take advantage of some underwatery respite.
Björk—Drawing Restraint 9
You’ll find this on the soundtrack to Matthew Barney’s bizarre but beautiful piece of film-art (a “movie” which culminates in Björk and the director cutting off each other’s legs in a ship filling up with water and gelatin to reveal fetal whale tails). The icy sounds of the sho (a traditional Japanese instrument), waves of droning noise, wordless Björk vocals, gasping throat sounds from Tanya Tagaq, and stabs of submerged horns all combine to make something that’s literally breathtaking.
Sarah Blasko—What the Sea Wants, The Sea Will Have
The Australian art-pop darling released this follow-up to her hugely popular debut by going the usual (and usually boring) route of “maturing” dramatically in the process. Luckily for us, maturing in her case meant creating a whole bunch of intricate and heartfelt songs, little fishy wonders where you get the feeling you’ll have to scuba dive to see all their angles properly.
Kate Bush—Hounds of Love
The second side of this masterpiece is the most explicit “drowning” album ever put to record—The Ninth Wave is a concept piece, a suite of seven songs about a woman falling through the ice and her resulting hallucinations. Encounters with old lovers, doppelgangers, ancient crones, a demonic trial, and even a Gregorian choir make this well worth a listen.
Hildur GuÐnadóttir—Without Sinking
The album may be called Without Sinking, but “sinking” is definitely what these songs do in the pit of your stomach. In creating alien-sounding pieces largely for cello and electronics, the Icelandic composer tried to capture the feeling of flying through dense clouds, with all the majestic, watery oppression that entails.
Peter Droge—Under the Waves
The reclusive folk-rocker retreated even further into himself with this collection of songs that tilt gently back and forth like a sentient buoy addicted to the echo pedal. Perfectly satisfying.
Fennesz—Black Sea
The Austrian guitarist made a name for himself as the creator of some of the most perfect electronic glitch/ambient albums ever made (see: Endless Summer). Black Sea is not so much a description of what the album is about, as what the album is—it feels like a mix that a friendly body of water made for you, a puddle of salty water in a jewel case that somehow worked its way into your CD player.
James Newton Howard—The Lady in the Water
Goddamn M. Night Shyamalan. Not only does he make terrible movies, but he tends to pair them with unimpeachably gorgeous soundtracks. This ridiculous movie starring Paul Giamatti, which involves some sort of pool fairy with a bunch of evil monkeys, is blessed with a score that has everything Shyamalan’s films don’t: atmosphere, emotion, restraint, tension, horror, and beauty.
Tom Waits—Alice
Waits’ soundtrack to Robert Wilson’s play of the same name details Lewis Carroll’s obsession with Alice Liddell in an appropriately nightmarish and, well, Carrollian descent into madness. The opening title track has the “hero” skate Alice’s name into a pond again and again, only to have the ice give way under him. This acts as his rabbit hole and it’s a chilly reception to Wonderland indeed.
Joanna Newsom—Ys
On one of its many levels of meaning, this ambitious album is about the titular city of French myth, a metropolis doomed to sink to the bottom of the sea due to its sins and excess. Newsom’s hyper-literate imagery returns to these themes throughout, as evidenced by now-infamous turns of phrase like “hydrocephalitic listlessness.” The album is waterlogged, bursting at the seams with glorious, wet too-muchness. Now’s the perfect time listen to it, as her new triple album Have One On Me comes out the Tuesday after Reading Week.
Hector Zazou—Songs from the Cold Seas
Zazou brought a United Nations’ worth of vocalists to this project—everyone from the Finnish group Värttinä to Siouxsie Sioux and Suzanne Vega, from Björk to Tokiko Kato and Lioudmila Khandi. What ties it together, even more so than Zazou’s production, is the theme—each song is a gloriously shivery ode to the seas at the edge of our countries and our consciousness.
