2001 : 17 "I Want Wind To Blow" by The Microphones

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Readers of this blog may have notes that it's at least in part devoted to celebrating those clusters of memories which indelibly link specific albums to specific times and places. A partial listing of my own albums that feature in such memories might include Patti Smith's Horses (the soundtrack to my first apartment in Tucson) and Tortoise's Millions Now Living Will Never Die (the soundtrack to my final apartment in Tucson). By 2001, however, I'd left that city for the crumble and overcast glory of Chicago, and one of the first albums I listened to death there was The Glow, Pt. 2 by the Microphones. Its ramshackle song structures, ultra-low-fi production, and mumbled lyrics ("The sound of cars / the smell of bars / the awful feeling of electric heat") still evoke the feeling of being in that cramped apartment, surrounded by compact discs and books, looking out the window at the wires and brick of North California Avenue, feeling wistful for relationships that had ended, and generally being a man in my late twenties in every possible way. —Jeremy Bushnell Listen: The Microphones >> "I Want Wind To Blow"