Parallax

A blog is for loving things whole-heartedly and so I must inform you that I love Parallax by Atlas Sound.

It’s an album that I come back to once a year and it reminds me of cold, snowy days at uni (was there really snow? That doesn’t sound quite right...). Either way, this album reminds me of learning how to panic-design in my dorm, of brisk morning walks to campus, of being optimistic and hopeful when nothing felt worthy of hope. These songs remind me of the kitchen that I read in, the kitchen with the windows that opened up to a little lane surrounded by bright green fields and red-brick buildings.

Parallax was the soundtrack whilst I plodded around in the dark at night being mopey as hell, walking back and forth to the bus station or slouching my way to the cinema in the dark. These were the songs that I listened to when I took the train down to see my dad get out of hospital and those I bopped my head to whilst I crawled back home in a drunken stupor from some failed something or other, singing and singing...

How many fantasies were interrupted by
A thousand galaxies, drifting by?

Listening to these songs now, more than a dozen years later, sure is strange. They were the perfect songs to be sad to, the perfect soundtrack to plodding around the UK whilst I figured things out. But now these songs don’t feel quite so mythical and important to me as they once did. It’s not I grew out of these songs or the style is tired—it still feels like a brand new album—but there’s so many memories bound to these songs that...well...