Day 43 – I’m Drawing Pictures On Your Skin
The continuing adventures of “Eric’s Trip Around the Sun”. One final trip with the iPod.
Released on January 6, 2009, Animal Collective’s ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ must have been a problem for many critics who had to make the revelation that they probably heard the best album of the year only 6 days in. While the album was released on LP on January 6th, the CD was released in the US on January 20th, the day that Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States.
There are moments in my life which I will never forget, such as one of the first times I listened to it, on a cold winter day with sub-zero temperatures walking to the El, with the sun on my face and getting lost in their music.
Unlike some of the more “Experimental” sounds of Animal Collective in the past, the album’s experimental tendencies did not overwhelm it’s welcoming features. There are songs that became immediate hits, such as ‘My Girls’, a call to love as well as living a more simplistic way of life, or ‘Summertime Clothes’, the perfect song to see live at a festival on a humid summer evening.
I still remember when I was describing the album for Lisa for one of the first times and commented to her that I think that I found the song that made me think of her.
Bluish.
There were a couple “Lisa” songs before this, such as Lou Reeds ‘Lisa Says’, but this one felt immediate and genuine, as if the lyrics and the meaning were written specifically for us. The underwater sounds parallel to her zodiac sign, Scorpio being a water sign. There were also simpler messages such as, oh, when the album came out that we both lived together in an apartment.
It’s not one of the things that you typically blurt out, especially yours truly. I imagine that when couples have their couple’s songs, the event is more organic. While there was a cannon of music on my iTunes at the time, picking out something from the past would never seem right. The song might have had a different purpose or meaning. The song had to be a virgin to my ears. It could not be affected by something that happened in 1995. It was within a day that I had made this proclamation to her.
For me, it was only natural that the song would be a key component, the song that my wife walked down the aisle 9 months later, looking stunning and beautiful. 6 years later she is more bluish than she was then.
• Billie Holiday – Blue Moon
• Jesus & Mary Chain – Blues From A Gun
• Animal Collective – Bluish
• Sex Pistols – Blues From A Body