Reviewing my Top Five (Alternative) Albums
By: Allison P.
Tags: Music, Album Review, Alternative Music, Lyrics, Favorites

Paramore — After Laughter (2017)

After Laughter is what you get when you mix unapologetic depression with upbeat synth-pop. Or, in other words, it allows you to feel your darkest feelings while encouraging you to keep up a fighting spirit. It was exactly what I needed as a depressed grad student, singing at the top of my lungs while driving home from late-night classes, alone in the dark. Hayley Williams, the singer/songwriter behind Paramore, explained the origin of the album name in an interview with iHeartRadio:

“After Laughter is about the look on people’s faces when they’re done laughing. If you watch somebody long enough, there’s always this look that comes across their face when they’re done smiling, and I always find it really fascinating to wonder what it is that brought them back to reality. So, that’s what After Laughter is.”

Paramore creates a space to feel the aftershocks of the happiness as well as the sadness that brings us back to reality, the beauty and the incessant pain of everyday life.

One of my favorite songs is “Forgiveness,” which has been compared to Haim’s brand of soft rock. If you don’t listen to the lyrics, you’ll be bouncing along to the beat without a care in the world, but take a closer listen to:

You hurt me bad this time No coming back And I cried ’til I couldn’t cry Another heart attack If I lay on the floor, maybe I’ll wake up

and it becomes clear this isn’t your standard “bop.” It’s a sad bop, if you will, like the majority of the album, and I love every second of it.

2. Tigers Jaw — self-titled (2008)

If I had to describe Tigers Jaw in one word, it would be raw. Not just because it rhymes, either. The band is unafraid to engage interesting, sometimes flat-out discordant vocal harmonies to get their point across, and it makes for a sound I’ve never personally heard before. But they don’t overwhelm with complexity, either. The songs are instrumentally on the simple, minimalistic side. The combination makes it ideal musician’s music, moving one to try to sing and play all the parts at the same time. It gets me inspired to play and sing with people so that maybe I could reach others the same way Tigers Jaw has reached me.

Though I would argue that all the songs are good, my favorite off the album is probably “I Saw Water.” It references The Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones’s death by drowning, casting it as a suicide:

But my emotions ran unopposed I felt just like Brian Jones . . . I saw water I felt better I woke up feeling embarrassed from when I drowned in my swimming pool you thought it was an accident I just can’t get along with you

I will admit that I don’t know much about the history of Brian Jones other than what I can gather from some quick googling, but I think Tigers Jaw effectively employs the idea that the speaker saw an opportunity to allow himself to (metaphorically) drown, acting on impulse.

I think the feeling of wanting to just give up and give in to our most intense emotions, if only for a moment, is incredibly relatable and not often discussed. It feels bad to feel bad, and that energy needs release. Tigers Jaw is one such release for me.

3. Vampire Weekend — Modern Vampires of the City (2013)

Modern Vampires of the City is in a little bit different vein than the previously discussed albums. It, too, is on the dark side (hmm, is a theme emerging?), but it’s generically different in an experimental way. It’s one of the main reasons I hesitate to call all these albums “alternative,” but I suppose that’s the most appropriate term I have.

Musically, the album doesn’t even really sound like Vampire Weekend’s previous work (which I also love, for other reasons). With pitch-shifting and an often minimalist sound, it’s distinct from the earlier afro-pop sort of style.

Lyrically, singer/songwriter Ezra Koenig said of Modern Vampires of the City that it’s “a little bit of growing up, starting to think more seriously about your life and your faith.” Koenig goes on to suggest in the same article that the band’s first three albums (including Modern Vampires of the City) might be read as a bildungsroman, with this album as the conclusion. Coming out in 2013, it was the perfect time in my life to get reflective about growing up, as I was 18 at the time.

A particularly resonant song for me is “Hannah Hunt,” though in truth I can tell you I love 10/12 songs. (That’s 83%, for those folks at home.) To me, it’s a reflection on gradually losing people as you grow up, even those you were closest to. Hardly anyone sticks around as long as you hope they will. Consider the first and last verses:

A gardener told me some plants move but I could not believe it ’til me and Hannah Hunt saw crawling vines and weeping willows as we made our way from Providence to Phoenix . . . If I can’t trust you, then damn it, Hannah there’s no future, there’s no answer Though we live on the US dollar You and me we’ve got our own sense of time

It may not be particularly cheerful, but growing up isn’t a particularly cheerful time either. Modern Vampires of the City captures some of that true-to-life gloom.

4. Franz Ferdinand — self-titled (2004)

Franz Ferdinand really stands out on this list, both for its age and its, well, everything. But it belongs here because it served as the foundation for a lot of my later musical taste.

In 2004, I was only 9, but my brother and I were reintroduced to Franz Ferdinand a handful of years later, when we were in middle school. I don’t remember ever really being excited about every song on an album before that. It was probably partly due to my admiration of the reintroducer, but I also just genuinely loved it.

You probably know the song “Take Me Out,” which I’m quite sure is the band’s most famous single to date. But my lingering favorite is probably the first song off the album, “Jacqueline.” Its lyrics are not very complicated (most of them consisting of “It’s always better on holiday / So much better on holiday / That’s why we only work when / We need the money”), but its sound is so distinctly Franz Ferdinand.

What is that sound? Well I wish I had better words to describe it, but the best I can think of is a really great conception of slightly grungy garage rock, but European (Franz Ferdinand is Scottish). It’s somehow both refined and rough around the edges. It simply works.

5. The Strokes — First Impressions of Earth (2006)

The Strokes, like every other band on this list, hold a special place in my heart. I sometimes like to say if my life had a soundtrack, it’d be a Strokes album. That’s why it was so hard to pick only one to include here.

The Strokes have a very similar vibe as Paramore had during its After Laughter era — that is, dark lyrics with upbeat rhythms. Suffice it to say this combination really appeals to me for reasons I already discussed. The biggest difference is that First Impressions of Earth is even darker than After Laughter, and I unfortunately can’t belt out the lyrics as Julian Casablancas’s voice is well out of my vocal range.

For a long time my favorite song was “On the Other Side,” which will give you an idea of where my mind was at at the time. It’s practically a lyrical embodiment of the experience of depression (and alcoholism):

I’m tired of everyone I know of everyone I see on the street and on TV . . . I hate them all, I hate them all I hate myself for hating them So I’ll drink some more I’ll love them all I’ll drink even more I’ll hate them even more than I did before

Luckily, I am not an alcoholic. But the darkness resonates regardless.

My most long-standing favorite song, though, is “Ask Me Anything.” Minimalistically accompanied by only a Mellotron, Casablancas sings about having nothing to say. (Most of the lyrics are literally “I’ve got nothing to say.”)

There’s too much irony at play for me to feel entirely sure what Casablancas is trying to say, but I think the message is to point out the irony of having a platform like the voice of The Strokes but not having anything to say. Other, more obvious ironies surround the repeated lyric, such as “Harmless children / we named our soldiers after you.”

Ultimately I love it because of its simple sound and complex meaning. Self-contradiction is very pleasing to me.