A few of my favorite things: The Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice’s Moon Colony Bloodbath (2009)

In 2009, The Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice released Moon Colony Bloodbath. The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle described the nineteen minute EP as a “loose” concept album with a science-fiction theme: “Some of the songs have something to do with a loose rock opera/’concept album’ idea about organ harvesting colonies on the moon and the employees thereof, who spent their off months living in secluded opulence in remote American locations. Concepts like this are actually more fun when you abandon them but leave their traces kicking around, so that’s what we did.”

I discovered Moon Colony Bloodbath from this io9 article, for which I will be forever grateful. After I got ahold of the EP, I must have listened to it on repeat dozens of times in the first week alone (though that’s admittedly easy to do with something just nineteen minutes long). The first song, “Surrounded,” begins with the line “pale white moon shines down on Colorado,” and, at the time, I was in Colorado in winter. With its chilling theme, and Moon Colony Bloodbath was the perfect accompaniment for driving down dark winter roads at night.

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A few of my favorite things: Cowboy Junkies’ Open (2001)

When I write, there is a certain kind of music I like to listen to. It is difficult to pin down exactly what kind of music it has to be, but I notice that most of the music has a narrative thread running through it.

Sometime in 2005, I was browsing my local library’s CD rack for new music. I don’t remember how I conducted my search exactly, but, somehow, Open fatefully caught my eye. I had not heard of the Cowboy Junkies—not surprising since they are relatively unknown outside of Canada—but I checked out the CD and listened to it.

Cowboy Junkies OpenThe opening song, “I Did It All For You,” is a haunting narrative, about death, murder, guilt, and rage. What the narrative exactly is must be teased out from the lyrics and calls for the listener to dwell on its meaning. After years of listening, I am not even sure that I can entirely define what story, or stories, it tells. But the emotions communicated throughout the song are clear, and I listen to “I Did It All For You” when I am teasing out aspects of intense scenes.

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