I'M A PROBLEM THAT'LL NEVER, EVER, BE SOLVED

A few posts back, I mentioned that my two favourite albums from last year were 808's & Heartbreak by Kanye West and The '59 Sound by the Gaslight Anthem. Today, I'd like to expand upon that statement with my thoughts about those albums:



- 808's & Heartbreak, as awesome an album as it is, is always going to make me feel a bit sad, partially because of the album's lyrical content and sonic design, but also because of a bit more personal reason. If you'll indulge me: In November, when the album was released, I felt awful about life, it was cold and miserable outside and I was having a lot of emotional issues, not too get too deep into that stuff but, really, 808's was the record I truly needed at that time in my life. I was really confused about myself and my attitudes and where I wanted to go and, as strange as this may seem, this album helped me through it. I felt a knowing empathy at some of the words here; in particular, there's a line in "Welcome to Heartbreak" which goes like: "Chased the good life my whole life long, look back on my life and my life gone". That really spoke to me because I was feeling that a lot of the decisions I had made weren't for the best, that I had wanted the wrong things in my life. But, overall, the record's mood of chill, misery and unease struck an emotional chord with me. I felt as if an egotistical multi-millionaire was going through some similar stuff as me and I felt a genuine empathy with his words. Of course, the record is a commercial product, as all music is, but it really worked for me as an emotional touchstone to one of the worse periods of my life. It was a sounding board, a confirmation, a confession. For these reasons alone, it'll always have a place in my collection.



Still, a few months down the line when I'm a lot happier, does the record hold up? With two caveats, absolutely. First, the caveats: "See You In My Nightmares" is awful except for Lil Wayne's bridge (the less said about his guest verse, though, better) and "Amazing" is far better without Young Jeezy's guest verse (he should really lay off the cigarettes, by the way). That said, the rest of the record is pretty friggin' sweet. The songs are at once spartan (with one exception, they have basic, coldly thumping rhythmic tracks) and grand (the string swoops at the end of "Bad News" just kill me, "Welcome To Heartbreak" has a world-swallowing melodrama worthy of Depeche Mode), with all sorts of little sonic tracks and details that enhance the overall mood. Speaking of which, this has to be one of the coldest, most emotionally racked albums I've heard in a long while. Kanye really provides his own defining image for the record in the packaging: a poster of himself standing alone in a white room, dressed in a suit, expressionless, wearing shades and that broken-heart lapel thing; I could think of no better picture to define the record.



There's a couple of points where he seems to be trying through sheer will to bring himself out of his emotional funk, but even those are uneasy: "Paranoid" could work as a dancefloor number, especially with its bridge of "lady, let's go out to the floor", but its hammering synth-pound evokes a a rush fueled by coke rather than dancing and the words are wracked with guilt, anger and pain (though Kanye does sing, via fairly intelligent use of auto-tune, as if he's trying to have fun). Similarly, "Robocop" is Kanye trying to laugh it off, crack some stupid jokes about his ex to get over her, but its internal drama is too grand for a joke and by the time the string-filled coda of Kanye calling the woman a "spoiled little L.A. girl" kicks in, one gets the sense that he isn't quite over it.



The record does swing wildly to emotional extremes (after lashing out on "Robocop", Kanye sheepishly apologizes on "Street Lights"; after dissecting his own faults on "Welcome To Heartbreak", he blames everything on the other party in "Heartless") but that feels more right than something more focused, it feels more true to the subject matter. People often swing wildly in the messy aftermath of a relationship and the schizoid nature of the words here mirror that perfectly.



Let's put this in a bit of perspective: I have a group of albums that I call "Good Music For Bad Times", it's the music I play when I'm depressed or upset about something. As you may guess, it's mostly stuff like Joy Division's entire catalogue, Disintegration by The Cure and Springsteen's Nebraska. Well, 808's & Heartbreak has been inducted into that exclusive class of albums, and that's a hard thing to do. It's an album that's willing to be emotional while not being "emo" and that's especially rare in hip-hop. Kanye was never a macho-thug type but it's still surprising, and satisfying, to see him take this big a risk by being completely emotionally out-there. It's a big change-up from the average-guy rap that balanced humorous boasting with warm sentiment that Kanye has, rightly, become famous and acclaimed for but it's just as great in its own way.

Wow, that took longer than I though. Well, I'll talk about the Gaslight Anthem some other time. Thoughts on 24, Lost and Slumdog Millionaire (which I'm seeing on the 'morrow) will be posted some time this week.