A lot of this music is very sad. especially the my bloody valentine. I spent the end of my junior year to the beginning half of my senior year up to my neck in internal introspection. I don’t think at the time I realized quite how much I was doing. It definitely was not good for me. I would go to the concrete barrier they built into the bank of the bayou by my house to try and prevent flooding, and sit by the mud and get bitten by mosquitos and watch the moon rise over the trees and the opaque brown water slide by, because this was the only time i could bare to go outside with the heat from the months of march-october. I would literally just sit there in silence and listen to nothing or music. I often sat for like hours on end, and I remember how the concrete would feel digging into the back of my legs becasue I had to sit on a slope. All the trees were covered in the Kudzu vines, and it was objectively an ugly and not an interesting “spot” to sit. But I wanted soooo badly to have a place to myself like in all the coming of age movies (cringe) so i willed it into that even though I always quite knew it would never quite be it.
I thought about a lot of stuff, mainly growing up and leaving home (that was imminent), and also my first girlfriend, who I was talking to at the time (as “friends” even though we both knew this wasn’t quite true). We had a strangely intimate frienship for a few months, before she got a new girlfriend. It felt different to all of the times we’d been contact, partly because we were doing it in secret, and for the first time it felt like I was the one in control and she was the one desperate for me. Usually it had been the other way around. I remember I got her this really intimate birthday present and took her out for breakfast in the early hours of her birthday, and we talked and hung out and went on a walk by her house in the bright autumn sun for a long time. We did this funny bit where we both went to a local high school homecoming as the dates of these 2, six-foot tall football players who were friends. So it was like a double date, except they didn’t know we were gay for each other and thought it was just 2 straight couples on a date. The guy paid for my food and got me flowers and everything, but I don’t even remember his name. Me and my ex just sat there and exchanged glances at each other and touched legs under the table the entire time. I remember we just spent the entire night together because we knew no one else. I think this period of my life was the only time I’ve ever felt that sense of special secretness with someone; that there’s this whole world only the two of you get ins on
It was such a melancholy experience, and I had to cut it off in the end because we were both toxic and painfully in love with each other but there was nothing we could do becasue being together just didn’t work. I’ll never forget a lot of those things she said to me during that time, because I don’t think anyone has ever seen me that way. One of the very last things she ever said to me was “I wish I knew how to be your friend” and i think that sums it up well. Our only options were to be together, not together, or unknown weird third thing.
I swiftly departed from this shoegaze-90s esque phase into a cringe world of basic indie pop when I was dating my second girlfriend, because i no longer felt a “need” for sad music. The relationship put a bandaid on a lot of my issues becasue I was gifted this beautiful, overflowing stream of love from this girl who was far too good for me. I never had to be alone with my thoughts - I was constatnly with her, or calling her, or texting her. I lost a lot of my identity and my interests in that relationship (not her fault, mine for loosing myself), and It wasn’t until the spring of 2023 that I really refound myself and what I actually liked, which was around the time I broke up with her.
The music from that phase before -- the fall of 2021 -- that will stick out to me the most is the cocteau twins. For me, they’ve really stood the test of time. Every single time i listen to one of their songs, its as if i’m listening to it for the first time. I think they’ve been my top artist multiple years now. I think a lot about what dean blunt said in an interview from the early 2010s and the “sound” of the UK. Even though he wasn’t referencing them here, I think this concept applies a lot to their music and is maybe why i feel like this connection to it. Because when I think about it, I don’t really have any albums that are truly no skip -- that I actually love and listen to every song, but i think Heaven or Las Vegas really is that lover for me. Which is so interesting, becasue they really don’t have comprehensible lyrics, and I’ve always been such a lyric person. lol.