I don’t plan on doing retrospective reviews too often, but there are a couple of albums where during one particular time, I listened to them in such a perfect environment that the only way for me to do a good review of the album would be to try to relive the experience completely. One such case is I Want to Live by John Maus.
It was a frigid January afternoon with a pale grey sky and a sun that didn’t even try to look golden like the one you see in cartoons- rather just appearing as a circle slightly whiter than the space around it. Four inches of snow had accumulated on the ground, the roads had been near completely evacuated. At some point, my sister and I were out there, both playing tennis on the streets, almost never having to move off of it. Two tennis balls stuck on the roof later, she went back inside and I put on John Maus’ I Want to Live on my MP3 player. The first half of the record I’d spent building a large heap of snow. The second, I’d been lazily slumped over on the lawn, eyes closed, snow angel formation. I didn’t drift to sleep but instead withstood the bitter cold of Maus’s synthesizers. The album ended with me just lying there, thoughtless.
…”I long for you, I long for you, I hate you.”
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