Andrew Listens to...Intros

A new direction for my music blog and an introduction of sorts.

Alex and I sat around a campfire in Colorado and, over sips of whiskey, talked about what comes next for this blog, what my purpose was, who my audience is, and what I wanted for myself. I love listening to music. I enjoy thinking and writing about it too. So, I’m going to continue to do that. But now I’m going to allow myself to share some of the music that I love that I would recommend to you, Dear Reader, and invite you to think about how music shapes you and how your experiences shape your taste in music. For the sake of spoons, I’m shifting from albums to songs, building playlists to capture certain topics. The first playlist is an introduction of sorts, these are the songs that I think you need to hear to truly understand me. This is music that speaks to me, to the deepest crevices in the mantle of my soul.  

Andrew Listens to… Intro Music (Linked to Spotify)

1.Young Man in America by Anais Mitchell

2.When I Dream of Michelangelo by Counting Crows

3.When you Come Back Down by Nickel Creek

4.Ballad of the 20th of Maine by The Ghost of Paul Revere

5.Letters by Enter the Haggis

6.Amy AKA Spent Gladiator I by The Mountain Goats

7.A Little Bit of Everything by Dawes

8.Gloria by The Trials of Cato

9.Run by Delta Rae

The List

“Young Man in America” is a song about mythology, an American tall tale. It’s about feeling destined for greatness but lost at the same time. When I was a kid, I felt a tremendous pressure to be Great. But mostly I just felt lost, an outsider in my own community. So, when I heard this song, speaking to the hunger of being, of wanting to be more, I felt it deeply. I’ve always loved folk singer Anais Mitchell. She writes folk music with an eye on storytelling and a finger on the pulse of what ails society. And on the album of the same name, she has created a masterpiece. Anais Mitchell often crafts her albums to feature a spare combination of voice and guitar, but here the music swells with the tremulous wailing of fiddle, fills of haunting organ, and the light picking of banjo. For an artist of less particular vision, it might feel like a cluttered landscape. But here, it’s razor sharp, every second building into the confusion that drives the protagonist. Putting on my social historian cap, I think this song captures the postmodern disillusionment with the American Dream, a drive and identity that shaped a large part of the idealistic ethos of this country. But now we’re aware of how the American Dream has always been a mirage, hiding the empty promises of capitalism and the open sores of racism and classism. At that moment, the Paul Bunyon, the John Henry, the Johnny Appleseed must wonder, what is it all for? 

As I’ve mentioned before, my musical awareness was rocket launched at 11 with the gift of dozens of burned albums from my brother from his college music collection. Herbie Hancock. Nirvana. Tupac. But of all the albums, there was one that wedged itself immediately into my heart. 1998’s “Across a Wire: Live in New York City” by Counting Crows. Lead singer and songwriter Adam Duritz writes of sorrow, despair, love, and inspiration that stemmed from his experience with Borderline Personality Disorder. And it spoke to the nascent sinking I felt into the intermittent depressions that had begun to appear. But the song that spoke to me most was, “Angels of the Silences”, a song about love and beauty.  That is not the song I’ve picked, however.  “When I Dream of Michelangelo” is Adam Durtiz’s attempt to capture what he felt that he had failed to do with “Angels of the Silences”, the feeling that understanding beauty, truly being inspired, and reaching Greatness are always just out of reach. I’ve always been surrounded by brilliant, talented, and dedicated people. When I was younger, I was tormented by the feeling that I would never reach that level. At 32, however, I’ve made peace with that feeling. I know Greatness, and I know the feeling of reaching out my hand to touch it, but now I understand that living life fully is not the achieving Greatness, but the reaching. 

Nickel Creek was my first personal choice of music. I was young, on a plane to Nashville with my family, and the airline was playing the newest hit by the breakout bluegrass band, Nickel Creek. It was a sad song about a lighthouse and its operator, and the loss of the operator’s wife at sea. It was the first time I independently asked for an album, their eponymous 2000 hit, produced by Alison Krauss. The song from that album that you need to know to understand me, is “When you Come Back Down” because that shaped and epitomizes my relationship with relationships. I’ve always had a martyr complex, which might be charitably read as a feeling that my purpose in life was to support the people around me. And this song is all about how the best way to support your love is to let them fly free, burn brightly, and to catch them when they fall. I like to think that over a decade of therapy has helped me stop putting lovers on pedestals and to also value myself. But also I do still believe my greatest ability, as a friend and lover, is to be supportive. Therapizing aside, this album also cemented my love of fiddle and banjo, launching a lifelong swan dive into folk, bluegrass, indie, and country, and the myriad of genres they begat in the 2010s. In the end, this song teaches the listener that love is being there.  

After three songs in a row of songs from my youth, “Ballad of the 20th of Maine” by The Ghost of Paul Revere is a relatively latecomer. I was introduced to the song in 2016 by a friend from CityYear, who hailed from northern Kentucky. They rebelled against their southern roots with a sheer hatred of Confederate imagery. Nothing quite captures that feeling more than scream-singing, “Go straight to hell with your Rebel Yell, we are the boys of Maine.” As the state ballad of Maine (true story), this song tells the story of fisherman Andrew Tozier from Litchfield Maine, who joins the Union army in the American Civil War. Although I am not from Maine, this song makes my heart swell with New England Pride. It is one of a very few songs that I will always belt the lyrics to whenever it is on, and to be clear, I do not like singing in front of people. To me this song is about the necessity of doing what’s right, even when it feels hopeless. It’s also about death; about what makes a good death, a theme I’ve been continuously drawn to over the years. Musically it’s got the acoustic guitar, folk fiddle, and maritime sound that I associated with sea shanties, which I love, and the millennial whoop that is so satisfying for the people of my generation to sing along to. Alex and I got to see the band perform this song in Chicago and nothing will ever be as musically satisfying as 300 people singing along to how much the Confederacy sucks. 

Speaking of bands we’ve seen in concert; I’ve been to more concerts by Enter the Haggis than any other band. ETH was the great musical love of my 20s, and as of this week in 2024, they’re disbanding for an indefinite hiatus. I’ve loved this band for over a decade, but the song of theirs that I’d use to represent me at 20 is not the same as 32, because I’m a different person. My song of choice is “Letters”, and it is part of the story of Alex and I. I originally courted her platonic favor with burned copies of “Modest Revolution” and other ETH albums. I first saw them live with her at a pub in the suburbs, and when they sang “Letters”, I knew I loved her. We danced to “Letters” as the first dance at our wedding. At a later concert, the band played the song and actually dedicated it to us. The song is based on a true news story of an old man whose car died on some Canadian backroad during a blizzard. Thinking he would not last the night; he wrote letters to his wife Joan about how much he loved her. It’s about how we make peace with the inevitability of death, how we create archives as legacy, and how much a lifetime of love infuses all of that.  It’s just a coincidence that I’ve become an avid letter writer myself and write Alex a letter every month about how much I love her. Alex is my dear friend and lover, and her love is my compass rose. 

Have you ever heard of a band by reputation only, and avoided it because it would make you a cliche to love it? I felt that way about The Mountain Goats for years. A lyrically gifted singer songwriter with an unconventional singing voice, writing about the breadth of human experience and beloved by hipsters? I never had a chance. After years of avoiding it, I sat down and listened to their 2012 album, “Transcendental Youth”. And was transfixed. The opening lyric to the opening song is “Do every stupid thing that makes you feel alive/Do every stupid thing to try to drive the dark away”. As a suicide survivor, lifelong bipolar 2 haver, and dedicated therapy doer, nothing else comes closer to how that articulates the way I’ve kept myself alive. If other songs are about coming to peace with death, “Amy AKA Spent Gladiator I” says to the god of death, not today. Yes, it is a cliche that I love The Mountain Goats. But it is a cliche because it’s true. 

Part of my experience having bipolar 2 is having gargantuan emotions that batter me like waves. I am occasionally aware of the sublime enormity of the human experience. “A Little Bit of Everything” by Dawes really captures that feeling. The song tells three vignettes: a cop talking a young man off the edge of the Golden Gate Bridge, an old man contemplating his life at a buffet line, and a young woman preparing for her wedding. Dawes says that all three people have the same desire and drive, an awareness of “a little bit of everything”. Life is full of moments, large and small, and that is the beauty of life, the feeling of the length and breadth of human experience, how big and beautiful the world is, and the terribleness of it all. This is a song that makes me cry every time, but in a good way. Lizzy McAlpine does a really faithful cover that I’d also recommend. 

One of the triumphs of the Spotify algorithm was introducing me to the Welsh band, “The Trials of Cato”. I love this band. They quickly became my most listened to artist in the year I was introduced. I unironically know all of the lyrics to all of their English songs. I particularly love their song, “Tom Paine’s Bones” but there really was only one choice for the song to introduce me. “Gloria” is about a young miner, where “they said black blood flowed through my veins/ Yet in the pit all I knew was pain”. “But then a woman I chanced to meet/And I felt the coal move beneath my feet/ And in the mirror I did stare/ At Gloria with the short brown hair”. This young Gloria leaves the mine, and lives her life as femme as she can. The song can be interpreted a number of queer ways, but to me it's about the freedom of gender fluidity. Gloria never “forgets that I was born a man” but that the people that love her will always see her as she is. As I’ve started identifying as genderfluid and using he/they pronouns, I really see myself in Gloria. Gender is a performance, and both that and social expectations influence my gender. And when she sings, “ I dress myself as best as I can” I think about the struggles and joys I have had in learning to paint my nails and put on makeup. I will never forget that I was born a man, butI feel like I’ve been set free.  

The last song in this list (thank you for all of those who have made it this far), is “Run” by Delta Rae. While I was introducing Alex to Enter the Haggis, she was introducing me to Delta Rae, and we’ve seen them a bunch of times in concert. This is the song that I want you to know to understand me because it’s about joy and freedom. I listen to “Run” and have the feeling of liquid fire in my veins. I feel triumphant and hopeful and inspired. To me, “Run” is what feeling truly alive feels like. On my best days, far from the depression and the loss, I feel like “I wanna run to feel again, to be no one/ To run under the stars of Orion/ And all my life I've been burdened by the dreams I've had/ Now I wanna run/ I want to run.” Delta Rae defies genre, but they are big and bold, and singer Brittany Hölljes blows through this song with actual abandon. The cello hook is inspired and the harmonies from the rest of the band give this song a dramatic, almost musical theater feeling. 

This was a long post. I promise later ones will be more manageable. Thank you for going on this journey with me. 

Next time: Andrew Listens to…Monsters.