Albums that evoke certain feelings of nostalgia

My earliest musical memories come from this compilation album. I'm reminded of my mother, a tiny cassette tape, and the simplicity of childhood.

Highlighted track: "Lookin' Out My Back Door"

Outside of "The Homecoming: A Christmas Story" and sugar cookies from my grandmother, nothing reminds me more of Christmas than Bing Crosby.

Highlighted track: "Christmas in Killarney"

This album was one of my first conscious purchases, my adolescent foray into "rock" music. I find it and Amorica still hold up rather well today.

Highlighted track: "She Talks to Angels"

While Space Jam was certainly more important to the zeitgeist, I only ever owned the Men in Black soundtrack. I actually think I was lucky because I was inadvertently introduced to the likes of Nas, Q-Tip, Snoop Dogg, and De La Soul, which, certainly, became more impactful for me down the road.

Highlighted track: "We Just Want to Party with You"

None of us were impervious to the allure of nu metal or skate culture or JNCO (I never had a pair myself). I do remember owning the Walmart version of this album which is comically edited; however, I'm thankful that my Gen Xer mother bought this for me and saw some value in it. Despite my angst, I found Limp Bizkit undeniably cool, and, I suppose, I love them in my own little, unironic way.

Highlighted track: "My Generation"

Kid A was one of those albums that I revisited with my friends throughout high school. The band [Radiohead] was a constant in those days, and I think their music captured something a bit prophetic, a bit melancholic. With everything the world became, it's no wonder we gravitated towards it.

Highlighted track: "Idioteque"

My love affair with hip-hop was solidified with Wu-Tang Clan. 36 Chambers is the one album that presented story-telling and wordplay in such profound way that I felt I wanted to (inadequately) try my hand at "freestyling." Thus began a stupid hobby that lasted a good part of my university years and a bit beyond.

Highlighted track: "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'"

My brother and I had several musical commonalities in our youth: random electronica like Discovery and Daft Punk and fantasy-based metal with Rhapsody and Elvenking. But I think our love of Celtic punk and St. Patrick's Day was a greater "connecting force." After high school, we grew distant, but I could always talk Flogging Molly with him. In my late teenage years, the raucous punk and sad songs spoke to me, and, in many ways, they still do.

Highlighted track: "Death Valley Queen"

When I was 19 or 20, I was initiated into the hardcore punk scene through living in the college dorm. Here I was a mostly strait-laced contrarian skeptically listening to these yells and growls and noises while asking myself how could this be considered "legitimate" music? I'm thankful to have stepped outside my shell, if only for a moment, to see live the likes of Between the Buried and Me, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Horse the Band, especially in their respective infancies. However, I always connected the most with Every Time I Die because of their lyricism and Shakespearean allusions. Though I never braved the pit, I would be remiss if I didn't say that this music reminds me of my young adulthood, its kinetic energy, passion, and despair.

Highlighted track: "Off Broadway"

I believe that the auspiciousness of chance is what brought me to Silly Wizard. Initially, I was drawn to the name and album cover when I saw this CD tucked away at my local record store. I've since devoured their entire discography. I guess I cannot help but embrace sentimentality and woeful ballads as I age.

Highlighted track: "Golden, Golden"

Yoshimura's Green was something I discovered in my mid-20s and has been a sort of through line for my musical tastes ever since. I needed stability and calm and connectedness with nature. As things seemed to come together for me personally, this was the peaceful backdrop. The North American "sound effects" version has always been my personal preference.

Highlighted track: "Sleep"

There's a dreamlike nostalgia that I associate with this album. I remember swaying in a blue hammock with my three year old daughter as helicopter seeds fell to the ground during the dying days of summer. Lamp was quietly playing on a nearby bluetooth speaker during those serene moments. I try not to get caught up in longing, but I cannot help but feel that I've been chasing that memory ever since.

Highlighted track: "Hisoyakani"

'Odes' is a companion piece to Lamp. Slightly before the reality of the pandemic hit, I would sit in my makeshift office listening to this on an old stereo system that I no longer have. It is sweet and melancholic, and I would often find myself trying to find the right words to say, tinkering with various creative projects that never went anywhere.

Highlighted track: "Louisiana Honeymoon"

Isolated in the throes of COVID-19, I'm not sure if Khruangbin acted as a salve or not, but it was there. I remember listening to Mordechai while watching a livestream of our administration determine that it was necessary that we go back to in-person work. I knew people that were hospitalized and some that died. When I got diagnosed, I thought it was inevitable. I luckily survived. Regardless, my perceptions on people, power structures, and work were inalterably changed.

Highlighted track: "Dearest Alfred"

When "normality" returned, I would listen to this on the drive to work. Things were becoming routine. I hate to associate such a great album with the quotidian ritual of the morning commute, but it helped me find balance in the mundane, endless everyday. It's as if I would say to myself, "It's going to be okay. Keep going and there'll be peace one day."

Highlighted track: "Come Here Go There"

At home, I felt that we were moving at an uneventful pace. The word I'd use is "stagnation." After multiple setbacks, we started to go in some direction. Things settled, and I discovered a version of Sinatra that connected with how I felt. I've always loved "Ol' Blue Eyes," but this entire album hits differently when you're older. At some point, I think it's natural to grow accustomed to solitude, meditating on life and letting go of grief.

Highlighted track: "Guess I'll Hang My Tears out to Dry"

"We have all the time in the world" is quite the refrain. John Barry's masterpiece here changed me. Not only do I think it might be my favorite soundtrack of all time, but it also hit me at the right moment. Of course, there's the busyness of life and work and fatherhood, but time really is all we have. I guess I connect with especially saccharine, mushy things now and will cry on a moment’s notice. Don’t judge. It’ll happen to you, too, if you're lucky.

Highlighted track: "Try"

With The Car, a contentious album from the Arctic Monkeys, I had no familiarity with the band or their "evolution" in sound, so this departure didn't quite affect me as it apparently has others. Here you've got a crooner, almost Bowie-esque, lamenting about time passed, perfectly encapsulating the idea of nostalgia in a tight, little bottle. Every single track on here speaks to my present-day sensibilities.

Highlighted track: "Perfect Sense"

Watertown is such a work of art. The album captures the dissolution of a small-town man's relationship with his wife. Sinatra isn't Sinatra at all: he's just an average guy trying to cobble his broken life back together. The process is beautiful and messy and maudlin in the same way that living is.

I discovered this around the same time as I watched In a Lonely Place, Humphrey Bogart's magnum opus, and I feel they share a similar DNA. I think I like the idea of the "unsaid" in these tracks. While I'm in a relatively good place, the idea of hardship and having to explain the world to your own children certainly resonates with me.

Highlighted track: "Michael & Peter"