I’m of the belief that there is an appropriate soundtrack for almost everything that might happen in your life, whether it’s getting dumped, graduating, or fighting Mecha-Hitler in the dungeons of Castle Wolfenstein. Music is your friend, and like most friends, it’s there to help see you through things, whatever those things are.
In my case, for the past week and a half, at least, music has helped see me through a prolonged bout of nausea and fever which is only now fading away. Between sips of soup and bits of fruit and the occasional comic book, listening to music provided some much-wanted additional moments of relief. Here are some songs that made me feel better; perhaps someday, they may do the same for you.
Aztec Camera, Knife. This is a song that always sends me to a certain nameless place in my mind: in that place, it is always nighttime and I am standing alone on a beach watching the waves ceaselessly roll in as I quietly struggle not to feel too sentimental or lost.
Garbage, The Trick is to Keep Breathing. When I was confined to a hospital room a few years ago with dengue, for some reason the only album I had on me was Garbage’s “Version 2.0.” It turned out to be an appropriate enough companion, because aside from its pre-millennial cut-and-paste female-fronted pop-history-plundering sound, it had songs like this: sonically sultry, oddly reassuring.
Massive Attack feat. Tracey Thorn, Protection. Even before Thorn’s voice slides in, you’re already mesmerized and embraced by that beat, that echoey guitar, those perfectly chosen keyboard notes. And then she sings, and you sigh, with something like gratitude.
Tears for Fears, Listen. This may be a strange list for this band to be on, considering their reputation for angst, but aside from the nostalgic childhood associations, their music did have a redemptive, healing aspect to it. Listen is the quieter side of TFF: barely any words, mostly just interesting, enveloping synthesizer-sewn sonics and a certain contemplative mood. (See also: Pharaohs.)
XTC, Wrapped in Grey. XTC could be very cynical and sarcastic and savage, but here they are at their optimistic Beatlesque best, without ever coming close to that line that marks cheesiness country. Awaken, you dreamers, indeed!
Beth Orton, Sweetest Decline. Lovely and lulling and wise. “What are regrets? They’re just lessons we haven’t learned yet.”
Paddy McAloon, I Trawl the Megahertz. Better known as the prodigiously talented singer/songwriter behind Prefab Sprout, McAloon delivers a 20-plus-minute epic here, with beguiling music and calm-spoken poetry. “I am telling myself the story of my life, stranger than song or fiction.” Beautiful and haunting and healing.