Metronomica.blog
gates’ ‘bloom and breathe’ is 10 years old
I know I am getting old because today I realized that my music listening journey no longer has just two eras. For so long it was “then” and “now” — the stuff that I grew up with, and the stuff I listen to now. But I now realize there is a third era: the music that bridged the gap between my youth and my 30s.
I had this realization while commuting home today. I turned on one of my favorite recent albums, gates’ “Bloom and Breathe.” Then I thought to myself, “hey, didn’t this come out 10 years ago?” It did, almost to the day. October 21, 2014. It wasn’t a recent album at all. What the hell happened?
I’d like to talk about the album and why it still rules. But I need to work through some shit first.
Here is my musical timeline, made as reductive as possible:
Ages 10-21: Third wave emo, some late aughts indie, crescendocore post rock
Ages 22-30: ???
Ages… mid-30s: Nostalgia, new emo, and heavier offerings like blackgaze and screamo
Until today, I didn’t really think about the stuff in the middle. It didn’t feel as transformative. When I was young, I cried to Radiohead’s “Reckoner” and rocked the absolute fuck out to Thrice’s “The Flags of Dawn.”1. I feel like time and pressure has hardened my taste into a diamond, and I gravitate to heavy, dynamic music that’s all about big, dumb catharsis.
But the middle was a transition. I had moved back to the city after a couple demoralizing post-college years in the middle of nowhere. I was finally starting to figure out what I wanted to be, and to do, with a degree I didn’t want to use.
When I listened to “Bloom and Breathe” today, it took me back to that time. I remembered getting off the subway, newly 24 years old, and heading out into the city. I remembered it was raining. I remember lots of rain from that time. It probably wasn’t raining any more than usual, but I can’t argue with the memories.
Maybe that’s why “Bloom and Breathe” feels like rain. It feels like puddles in concrete, soaked socks. It’s an emo album at its core but it’s bathed in reverb and delay. Clean guitars flit around the space. The drums begin driving things forward. And then the big, distorted choruses hit, the vocals switch from quiet and forlorn to aggressive and loud.
But the thing that really stood out to me today was how the album lurches. It chills out, then suddenly pushes some intensity forward, then draws it back, then builds, then explodes, all in a way that feels wonderfully natural. Even if it’s verse-chorus-verse-etcetera song, the dynamics throughout are so well-realized.
Like, here’s a normal song:
_graph1.png
You have your verses, then the choruses bring the volume, then the bridge might dip down to really quiet levels, then a big chorus or two to finish things off.
Here’s an actual, scientific charting of “Again at the Beginning,” the album’s penultimate track and de facto climax:
_graph2.png
A lot happens, is my point. But it never feels abrupt or unconnected. There is a point to every lull and intense outburst. The album is a structural triumph, teasing and pulling back and erupting. It even lurches in its heaviest moments — I will never not count along to the end of “Not My Blood,” which switches from 6/8 to 11/8, stuttering through three quarters of a progression before hitting eighth note number 12 at the end for a gorgeous resolution.
I’ve always gravitated to this sort of emo-post-rock hybrid, and gates wasn’t the only band I devoured in my mid-20s. There was Athletics, and shels, and of course Moving Mountains. And there were the other vestiges of my high school and college taste that stuck with me, or transformed themselves just enough to feel fresh. There was Mark Kozelek and Jimmy Lavalle’s “Perils from the Sea,” the most gorgeous and downcast album out there, and there was the regular diet of indie favorites like The National and Modest Mouse.. (And Sigur Ros, always.)
But the music didn’t feel like my identity the way music did when I was just a bit younger, or now, when I’m older but have spent so much more time creating my own music and thinking about the art through that lens. Back then, my taste slowly and surely changed. I left some pieces behind and picked up new ones. But I was mostly paying attention to the rain.
IYKYK↩︎
// tags: listening