DommeDamian
Imperfect, sensitive Aspie with a melody addiction
Gender: Male
Age: 24
Location: where the flowers grow. 
- #2
- Posted: 02/28/2025 21:44
- Post subject:
|
I hate you Townes Van Zandt. Like, I met you around 2019, and you didn't really jump out on me with creativity, you were laid back and gave room for all the other records I dug at the time. However, when I discovered SellMeAGod and saw his soft spot for you (counting in Repo as well), I should've seen that as a red flag. Because then, I gave you a listen with much more psychological attention. What a great mistake, as of how much you took away the time I could've jammed many other albums including my conventional favorites, because you just got me addicted to your ten songs. But that's not even the worst part. You made not only most of the normal music that caught my ear, but even the majority of my core favorite, sound pale, dry, uninteresting. How dare you, self-titled? How could you? You just had to reinvent a way of unfilteredness, mixed with soul-crushing lyrical elegance and direct honest delivery, that makes most of my listened music look too polished, and focused. Have a bit of mercy.
But at the same time, I love you Townes Van Zandt. Very dearly indeed. Even if you are too internally beaten to care, you saved me from stagnation. Sharing waters like Jesus in a desert, the sonic and psychic captivation you gave me was unique and profound in comparison with so many pasts of memories supreme. You filled unknown desires, when I least knew I needed them, you even redefined my love for musical listening freedom. My poignant melancholic soul let her guard down, cause you understood and taught more than most could achieve. On top of that, you are an independent phantom: you wrote and played everything on here, and it's highly personal, one of the best displays of using music as a creative way of expressing and conveying your inner dark emotions, ever written.
To anyone who dislikes country for the tiresome stereotypes and modern garbage it's buried under, show 'em this album and it'll pull the rug underneath the stiffest of legs. One could argue that it's basically folk-singer songwriter stuff with a country accent, but Townes surely composes traditional country structures, reserves those melodic refrains to maximum impact, purpose, and emotion, as well as keeps it to the core of the genre: three chords and the truth. Every song features a few instruments more than the honest singer and superbly charismatic guitar, and they add more color, atmosphere, and memorability than what it intends, as well as what the listener notices, myself included.
Somebody once said to me many summers ago that a classic, whether a song, film, painting etc, should appeal to any age. And even though I really disagree with that, if that was the case, this album would still be by definition a classic. A newborn, a toddler, my teenage self, a mid-life person, and an elderly person would have it easy to fall in love with the blood-shedded songs here.
His self-titled opens with For The Sake of The Song, which contains a super duper hypnotic guitar progression (almost as if it's sampled from a Spanish classical piece) and Townes singing about his dilemma of breaking up but simultaneously being empathetic towards his girlfriend's emotional distress. Honestly, it's up there with wanna thee most mature country songs. What's phenomenal is that I don't know who he is singing about, yet I absolutely do. Because after all, we all sing, for the sake of the song, living for the sake of life - and there it lies: he does it himself. However, this collection of emotionally and potently unmatched masterpieces is the closest we get to somebody singing for more than just the songs themselves.
Waiting Around To Die is a prime example of how I feel life is a waiting line for death, some cheat by suicide. Considered wanna the darkest pieces of truths that Zandt spills, it's a crippling story that is as tragic by the verse as it's wavy. And it continues effortlessly on Don't Take It Too Bad, culminating in the intervention of "A man needs a woman, to stand by his side, and whisper sweet words / In his ears about daydreams, and roses and playthings, and the sweetness of springtime, and the sound of the rain".
I used to think Fare Thee Well Ms Carousel was overrated, but now I see that this is actually an exceptional stroke of real genius. A song dealing with toxic relationships, and witness that in the verses he tries to break free but every time the chorus comes along, he's giving in to giving it another chance. Perhaps the ultimate precise depiction of how emotionally attached we are to a lot of things that realistically don't want the best of us, an evil cycle. I wouldn't call this song Stockholm Syndrome because Townes is very aware of the situation and is making an effort to exit. On top of that, the simplicity in all of the instruments and even the melody is extraordinary as much relative to the concept as in itself, in every way.
The self-awareness plants another tree in the one true buoyant and true blue acoustic track here, I'll Be Here In The Morning. Because when people use the point of music being like a friend or there for you, this song literally states it to the listener, like a parent singing and protecting their child. The least minimalistic short song is the bluesy Lungs, which rhythmically, instrumentally and impressionistically thrives on like speedway wheels on a thick gravel road.
There is the God-gift penultimate Quicksilver Daydreams of Maria, a musical apotheosis. The metaphysically aquatic melody unfolds inventive colorful landscapes, TVZ's naked crooning wind gravitates to new grounds of authentic bliss, every single strophe contenders for a favorite poetic piece in music, and the supreme tenderness lying in the combining sensory makes awe-inspiring seem pale. A few of the songs here, including this, are renewed acoustic versions of earlier ones already released, but they never dared to have a newfound pristineness that they embody here. Especially with this, comparing it with the 1968 version is like a light flower in a small line of grass, to a bed of staggering ever-blooming flowers in the silkiest garden in Heaven.
If we take Quicksilver Daydreams of Maria as the artistic closer to the record, Townes musically answers the question of what happens when you are done expressing yourself inside out, what are you left with? His answer is the closer: None But The Rain, a song with true magic in its simple nature. Cause making great art about the bad stuff isn't gonna spare the pain, so when you are done, the depressive nature still carries on. And as rain is the go-to symbol for sadness, Townes writes arguably the best song about it, alongside Bob Dylan's Buckets of Rain that closes Blood On The Tracks out.
In a kitsch-driven world where most beloved stuff falls apart too easily, and where sincerity loses meaning throughout time, albums like the self-titled Townes Van Zandt seem too good to be true. But it's also direct evidence to how immersion into utter beauty, melancholy, and melodic poetry is peaking. And in an age where too much mediocre music is being released, since it is virtually free to drop whatever you record and compose, it is indescribable how life-affirming it is to have this album to remind me what truly special music actually embodies and what it actually feels to capture the heart, the spirit, and soul.
BEA been choosing a lot of favorites lately, but this is truly one of my favorite albums of all time, wouldn't be surprised if it ends up being my 7th 100/100.
_________________
My Top 100 :
www.besteveralbums.com/thechart.php?c=4...amp;page=1
My music:
- www.hyperfollow.com/dommedamian
|
|
|
|
