There's a point at which you're not supposed to like albums this much anymore — when the intense self-alignment that occurs with various albums during puberty functionally cannot be recreated, the brain has lost too much plasticity, fused various pathways shut. But when The Sun's Tirade came out, in 2016, it barreled through anyway. In hindsight, I know the suite of changes it signaled for me, cognitively and personally: leaving a job I had thrown myself into, betting on myself as a writer, retiring to Rogers Park, having a kid. But why did this album feel like the catalyst, why these tones, these dust-breathing Chattanooga sighs, why Zay's sleepwalking melodies? The definition of a long-player, the songs sound like a life well-lived, in that they are lived honestly: if I can pay my bills, still, goddamn, I'm good. You know that speech Michael Stuhlbarg gives at the end of Call Me By Your Name? That's this album, for me. I'm just lucky to have loved something this much.
No posts