Songs that inspire 'chrysalism'

From the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows:

chrysalism
n. the amniotic tranquility of being indoors during a thunderstorm, listening to waves of rain pattering against the roof like an argument upstairs, whose muffled words are unintelligible but whose crackling release of built-up tension you understand perfectly.

I wanted to start this thread a short while ago, but only came across this neologism the other day online and it seemed to perfectly encapsulate the vibe I'm going for. There are certain tunes that definitely give me that feeling of coming home on a blustery evening as a kid, having been outside playing; that warm but somehow empty feeling of a Sunday afternoon, knowing school awaited the next day.

Some tracks off the top of my head that do this include:

Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill (so SO much, probably THE epitome of chrysalism for me)
Broken Social Scene - Hotel (it really 'sounds' like a hotel, I don't know why. That dry, whispery vibe I can't work it out)
Chic - I Want Your Love (makes me think of European cities and my grandparents' old apartment in Paris and warm showers in the winter evenings)

Radiohead - Everything in its right place.

Because, um, but.

Imago to thread

pretty sure he's been thru this

https://f1.bcbits.com/img/a3395895971_16.jpg

tetuzi akiyama + toshimaru nakamura - semi-impressionism

that's a whole album though, sorry

"xtal"
"jynweythek ylow"
"no way down" (air france)
"you hear colours" (cfcf, re: "running up that hill")

Closer Musik - Maria
Suede - My Dark Star

Probably loads more, I need to have a think. Great thread idea!

Several Björk songs but All Neon Like in particular.

perhaps crude to list songs with actual thunder sounds in the background but i do love it when it's done well - cat power - say, john fahey - raga called pat pts1&2

Jill Scott - Comes To Light (Everything)

everything Hood have ever done

maybe 'SE Rain Patterns' the most

xp to ogmor -- I feel your love for that Cat Power song but don't find it especially soothing -- the vibe on that album much more "awakened by a terrifying thunderstorm & unable to find the switch for my rational mind, I hid in a dark closet and prayed for the lightning to miss me"

i have to say i find chic, and to a lesser extent running up that hill a fairly odd choice for this.

i mean the memory qualifies it and to each his own etc, but just v different from my personal experience of those records.

i think a huge amount of what i listen to has this feeling - stars of the lid, bohren und der club of gore, tim hecker, gas, huge swathes of ambient music. tho some tracks more than others.

Absent Friend by Bark Psychosis.

xxp ha, I've always found it incredibly cathartic, both very frail and steady, like a semi-conscious mumbling chant.

I always thought of Harvest as a sunny record, but the rain montage in Inherent Vice made me think of "Harvest" as a rainy day song.

Slightly off topic 50 Words For Snow comes to mind as a fantastic being-indoors-in-a-snowstorm-record.

LG - Yeah maybe it's partly drawing from experience, but also something to do with the overall tone of these songs for me. They all seem to share a sonically cold/warm vibe.

Running Up That Hill - something about the galloping/hammering drum-pattern which reminds me of thunder/rain/weather in general juxtaposed with those warmer vox-synths which remind me a bit of the sound made by a hairdryer or fan convection heater. We had a strange central heating system growing-up where warm air would come out of these grilles set into the floor, rather than radiators on the wall, and I used to be interested in them and look into them and throw small items down them etc...

I Want Your Love - most Chic makes me think, obv, of discos and dancing, but I Want Your Love (and to a similar extent 'Why Does Your Love Hurt So Much', have this particular European vibe that's different from other Chic. I remember hearing IWYL while staying in Paris with my grandparents as a young teen, but I don't know why I find it specifically womb-like or comforting. It just does.

xp If I were to pick a Neil Young album for this, it would be 'On The Beach'. I have a very vivid, mundane memory of working at a small company in a small town well over ten years ago now, and having nothing to do at lunch but walk around and listen to music. Just sitting eating ham, egg and chips watching the rain drizzle down from a pub window listening to Ambulance Blues and waiting for the afternoon shift to start again. Honestly, a run-of-the-mill event in my life, but one that seems to have stuck with me because the music and the mood seemed to work so well.

On The Beach fits the bill, for sure--"Motion Pictures"/title track/"Ambulance Blues" feels like the endless rain in Cien años de soledad...

xxp ha, I've always found it incredibly cathartic, both very frail and steady, like a semi-conscious mumbling chant.
― ogmor, Monday, July 13, 2015 11:12 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is a cool reading & I like it! Mine obviously fails to account for the note of triumph (?) in "American Flag" & a few other places... & I've never known what to make of "Peking Saint"

More I think about it, I think there's a particular kind of droney organ noise that instantly sends me into this state.

xp I'm only really thinking of say, but it's such a singular and special song & I'm not very satisfied with my take. the (exquisite) slowly spiralling guitar has a kind of ineffable emotional weight, and the song also has a weariness, a wryness, sudden tenderness, but it has a very strong lulling effect that epitomises what I think this thread is aiming at

All My Colours by Echo and the Bunnymen.

Reflections After Jane - The Clientele

Though you can substitute that one for almost any other Clientele song and it would still work.

Much of the weird stuff on the Clash album Sandinista, particularly The Equalizer.

xp to ogmor -- I feel your love for that Cat Power song but don't find it especially soothing -- the vibe on that album much more "awakened by a terrifying thunderstorm & unable to find the switch for my rational mind, I hid in a dark closet and prayed for the lightning to miss me"

― Heroic melancholy continues to have a forceful grip on (bernard snowy), Monday, July 13, 2015 6:04 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not too far from the circumstances under which it was written.

Die Entdeckung Des Wetters by Stephan Mathieu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSaNXpD49Qw

Not too far from the circumstances under which it was written.

― Something Called Fudge (Old Lunch), Monday, 13 July 2015 15:37 (7 hours ago) Permalink
yeah I was sorta-familiar with the backstory, + maybe also projecting because we've had a lot of thunderstorms lately (including the one that woke me up at the crack of dawn this morning) & they do occasionally find me paralyzed with fear

and Disintegration, particularly in its slower moments, is TOTALLY on point

lots of stuff on Lovely Music.

also 'Listen, the Snow is Falling'

also 'Listen, the Snow is Falling'

And "Greenfield Morning"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb59WCJTs_Q

for me this would probably be something by massive attack

this is an interesting idea. it's tempting for me to think of this feeling as relating to music i've liked in the past because i think i used to connect to music more strongly in this way than others, the way i'm reading it in the original post as something that would make me feel comfortable and safe, like musical comfort food, defined in some sense by nostalgic attachment. now i just think of it as anything that i can just listen to in an extended way, hitting repeat, as background, as the focus, as something that has mass but nothing too detailed or insistent when it comes to form but curious and open to deeper inspection. some length is good, some room to breathe. most recently this has been dj sprinkles and mark fell tracks, the music from memory releases, dronier kevin drumm pieces, longer morton feldman solo piano pieces (for bunita marcus). oren ambarchi, probably la monte young's well tuned piano if i still had a copy.

can a noise dude recommend me some AMBIENT? type shit i guess

I swear I was going to say "well tuned piano" before you mentioned it, I'll share my copy with you if you want

well ok if it's not too much trouble. i sent you a webmail.

cd copies of "well tuned piano" are going for 800-1000 euros on discogs!? WTFF????

cmu- archway 272
the united states of america- cloud song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaDA4qHGvKc

Feel like a lot of Roy Montgomery qualifies

handclaps that sound like rolling rain splatting on a tin roof

Recommend me some extremely twinkly music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy77ioKI4lQ

This over anything else for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hhm0NHhCBg

lol I literally heard "O Superman" in the womb
(my parents attended a concert)

I wasn't even a year old when my dad bought the single. Possibly one of the first songs I was aware of. Of course, at the time I didn't think of it as a particularly weird song as I didn't have critical faculties or anything to compare it to. But I listened to it last night, and the whole thing is incredibly womb-like and warm, with the constant drone and female voice saying 'this is your mother/hold me mom'.