Originally published in print November 2020.
Lockdown has meant many different things for many different people. Some of us have had to deal with the loneliness of isolation, others with the anxiety that comes with frontline work and even some have found some solace in a break from our usually fast paced life. It’s not surprising, coming with this uncertain territory that the music that has become our accompanying soundtracks to the pandemic will vary drastically.
We might need to rave in our kitchens to 80s cheese, go for our government-approved run to hardcore metal, or just stare at the ceiling to acoustic folk. During the last lockdown, I found myself drawn to contemplative music that told stories rich in emotions and description. I craved music that could leave me with images of other places but also sympathise with the general feeling of despair and longing. While my Spotify playlists became overrun with several different songs that captured this mood, there were two albums in particular I couldn’t stop replaying.
The first was Punisher, Phoebe Bridgers’ second album after her much-acclaimed debut Stranger in the Alps, which I had already listened to obsessively. It’s release in June was one of the highlights of lockdown and it genuinely seemed like the album I needed. It’s cathartic in many senses. Throughout the album, Bridgers takes the space to explore her feelings surrounding a multitude of complex relationships. Her relationship with her father is explored with dry humour and understated sadness in the album’s most musically upbeat track, ‘Kyoto’.
‘Punisher’ is a beautiful ode to Elliott Smith, Bridger’s greatest influence, and about feeling deeply connected to an artist that will never know you exist. My personal highlight of the album is ‘I Know the End’ which perfectly captures the sense of anxiety and dread that currently permeates the world as it is. It’s not an album to raise your spirits but it likely has a song that fits whatever scenario you end up overthinking while remaining unable to do much else.
The other was a revisit to a classic, Blood on the Tracks, one of Bob Dylan’s greatest albums and in my opinion, has some of the best written songs of all time. Despite being released in 1975, I consider this one of the albums of my childhood, but not one that I properly appreciated until last lockdown. Like many music fanatics, I had a parent who was also a music fanatic. I don’t think I ever had a long car journey where one of my mother’s many Bob Dylan CD’s wasn’t playing.
While it’s pretty much universally agreed that Bob Dylan is an incredible songwriter, the main example of this being his Nobel Prize for literature, I saw him as an annoyance for most of my life, an obstacle to what I wanted to listen to on the radio. Despite my rebellious ingrained distaste, I ended up spending the lockdown completely proving myself to be an idiot. Nearly every song on that album is a work of poetic art. He weaves astounding imagery within tales of love, heartbreak and longing. Many of these songs use poetic techniques and literary tropes to such a tremendous extent that it would make an English teacher dizzy. The possible interpretations are many and if you’re that way inclined, you could spend hours pouring over them trying to grasp the full weight of their meanings.
Listening to “Tangled up in Blue” is like having a perfectly succinct short story bouncing in your ears over acoustic guitar and folky harmonica. But despite what sounds like what could be a pretentious mess, the album is incredibly enjoyable to listen to. “Meet Me in the Morning” is an excellent example of the swaggering sexiness that can come when the blues merge with folk rock. The album switches from upbeat to subdued, energetic to mournful as you move through the album without losing its sense of cohesiveness.
We still have a few weeks left of the second lockdown and it will continue to be a difficult time for many. The stress of this isolating time combined with looming deadlines will mean that it’s easy to feel guilty when we binge through whatever we haven’t yet seen on Netflix or read something that hasn’t been assigned. Yet the beauty of music is that it’s art that can be enjoyed in the small pockets we have between Zoom university and our booked library slots. I personally find these albums great for that as well as a deeper listen when I have the time. The vibes of both actually pair really well with the cold winter walks I’ve started doing to stave away boredom. Good music can liven up the most boring of scenery and make the most mundane of tasks seem profound. The continued lockdown seems to be full of both, so good music is an essential service.
