Letters to Musicians
To: The Strokes
From: Alden
Subject: Re: Is This It
Yes; I'm afraid this is it.
I don't care if you're somehow one of the greatest five hundred albums of all time; in less than ten brief listens, you've become utterly dull to me.
No. That's not entirely fair; you're interesting at one or two times, more than Rage Against the Machine can really speak for. But in even your best tracks, you never give me even half the energy that even the weaker tracks from (say) Picaresque provides. I'm sorry; you're a dead album, and I don't have the time for driftwood.
Best of luck in the future,
nedlum
PS. It's spelled "night"
To: Loreena McKennitt
From: Alden
Subject: Re: The Book of Secrets
I just wanted you to know that this is a beautiful album you've got yourself. Sort of. I mean, this is one of those albums where most of the tracks sort of merge together in my head, and a lot of the instrumentals are at best evocative without quite making it to moving.
So, really, I want to praise two tracks: "The Highwayman", a tale of sacrifice and doomed love and the Romeo-self-destruction complex, which I know you didn't write exactly but you do such a good version of it that I am compelled to praise it now and listen most intently to it whenever it comes up. And "Dante's Prayer", which you did write, and which I am utterly transfixed by. There is real poetry in it, the song of a love less romantic than spiritual, transcendent and transforming and as such doomed to fade. And the echoes of the chorus: "Please remember me..." Heard in your Canadian-Celtic lilt, with the strings sweetly climbing to heartbreak in the background, it becomes transparently clear that there is no gift, no mercy simpler or greater than this. Remember thee? That commandment alone shall live within my brain; for there is no sweeter love than remembrance, and no comfort finer than knowing you are remembered.
So, thank you. And I should investigate Nights from the Alhambra.
Your admirer,
nedlum
Which just leaves... God, that's a lot of albums I have thoughts about.