Indie Albums That You Never Knew You Needed
In this unpredictable time filled with endless fear and panic, it is hard to avoid the discouraging reality we live in. With the constant negative news coverage and the increasing death toll of COVID-19, it makes it difficult for people to stay positive. However, this is precisely where the power of music can come into play. Music can transport us into a new world of lyrical and musical bliss. For me, indie music does precisely that.
Mt. Joy- Mt. Joy
Mt. Joy provides an album that is the perfect mix of acoustic and drums to make you feel like you are driving through the California coast.
When sifting through Spotify's Indie Road Trip playlist back in 2017, I came across "Astro Van," Mt. Joy's first single. I was astonished by the gravitational pull the song had to not only me but to others around the world. The song blew up, hitting over three million streams. What was a small band from Philadelphia has turned into a group that would change the world of indie folk music.
Released in 2018, Mt. Joy's debut album Mt. Joy is the perfect mix of indie-folk and soulful rock. The album creates a heartfelt world through its instrumental rhythms and integrates lyrics that allow the listener to fall into a travel trance. The collection introduces songs that make you feel as if you are riding around with your friends, exploring the world around you. Even though this is hard to do, their music delivers the perfect amount of musical bliss that you need to escape the harsh world around you.
Songs like "Silver Lining" and "Julia" showcase Mt. Joy's ability to encapsulate a human emotion to fuel the song's mood. Each song you listen to on the album brings a new emotion with the overarching feeling of happiness. It is an eye-opening experience to be able to look to a piece of music and feel sad but also happy at the same time.
Even though the album dates back to 2018, Mt. Joy has been able to create compelling pieces of music for their fans. Singles like "Strangers" and "Let Loose" have showcased that Mt. Joy's ability to create an engaging world for their fans is far from over.
So, if you are in need to feel like you are in an old Volkswagen Van driving through Yosemite, this is the album for you.
Light Upon The Lake- Whitney
Even though the band Whitney, has had a rough couple of years with members, their 2017 album
Light Upon The Lake provides listeners with a sense of musical euphoria.
Light Upon The Lake showcases Whitney's ability to redefine the label of "indie" and produce an immaculate piece of art. With its highly saturated singing and integrated music production, it provides the listeners with something new and bold. Listening to Whitney is something unlike anything else. It is like listening to someone like Frank Ocean or Smino; it is genre-bending. Whitney could be considered not to belong to the classical label of "indie" music; however, it is somewhat its own genre.
Whitney doesn’t just emulate indie, it takes in various genres of music to produce something unlike anything else. Songs like "No Woman" and "Golden Days" emulate what it means to be indie and rock. The songs showcase Whitney's ability to make the listeners feel as if they can relate to their music. Touching on the issues of love and wanting to be a kid again, it provides a sense of realism. However, later in the album the song “Red Moon” has no lyrics, just a beautiful symphony of instruments that branch from rock all the way to jazz. It just goes to show the genre bending music that Whitney is able to produce while still being considered to be “indie” music.
Whitney’s music is able to make the listeners feel as if they are reminiscing on their past. The album's fuel is the theme of being young and revisiting the past; the good old days. What Whitney is also able to do throughout the album is to force their audience to understand that they are in the present. Their music conceptualizes what it means to be nostalgic and flips it on its head. Whenever you press play on the album, you can't but feel as if you are living in the present, in the now. It is an intoxicating feeling that forces the listener to sit and listen in the now, the reality.
In these dark times, it is so important to try to escape what is happening around you to engulf yourself into something new. Indie music right now is the perfect source for feeling happy and alive. But, if you are interested in exploring more indie music and are looking for a new travel playlist, my playlist on Spotify is called “vw trip vibes” and it is the perfect playlist to listen to whenever you want to just get lost.