Favorite Five: Editor Edition
By Mia Romanoff and Miles Silverstein
This year we are running an editor column where each month we ask people in the St Andrews music scene about their top five favorite albums. This first issue we thought we’d give you a peek into the Hearing Aid world by sharing each of our top five picks.
Drowners (2014) – Drowners
Mia Romanoff
Though this list is in no particular order, this is (and will always be) my number one pick. My undying obsession with this album is almost a decade old but runs far beyond sentimentality. A true gem from the indie rock scene of the 2010s, Drowners first album is the type of fun that has you dancing around your living room and folding laundry on beat. Even with its sunny riffs, Drowners capture lovesick desperation, callous rejection, and every other amazing shitty feeling with a smirk. It is an album that has grown with me over the years, turning the terrible and tumultuous into memories to be laughed off. If you listen to one song on any album from this column, make it ‘Button on Your Blouse’ – it is my go to recommendation and I am more than happy to attach my name to that on the internet. You just won’t find another song quite like it.
151A (2012) – Kishi Bashi
Miles Silverstein
Kishi Bashi’s first album, 151A, is an expression of joy, pure and full, shown off through bubbly baroque pop that soon finds its way into expansive, melancholic soundscapes. It is probably the closest anything can get to my favourite album. Through Kishi Bashi’s distorted violin, excellent backing band, and sheer songwriting genius, 151A is a treat that anyone can enjoy – give it a spin and rediscover how lovely it can be to be human.
I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning (2005) – Bright Eyes
Mia Romanoff
Don’t let the rambling introduction of ‘At the Bottom of Everything’ scare you away from I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning. Conner Oberst has created an absolute time capsule of an album; detailing Oberst’s life after first moving to New York, I’m Wide Awake paints an achingly vivid and real picture of the city. Through moments so small and personal mixed in with political commentary (see the brilliant ‘Land Locked Blues’), Oberst has boxed up the ethos of another time – and I’m a complete sucker for it. I’d be remiss if I didn’t point you towards ‘Lua’, which, while buried in the middle of the album, is a masterpiece through and through. There is no song that quite captures the bone-chilling cold of walking through New York at night in the winter. It is sad and sweet and lonely, and that is where the joy of this album lives. I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning is a project with so much heart and it isn’t afraid to be embarrassingly earnest and raw which makes it perfect.
Hellfire (2022) – black midi
Miles Silverstein
The swan song of experimental London art rock trio black midi, Hellfire is nothing short of a tour de force. From its marching first beats to its cacophonous final notes, Hellfire takes the listener for a ride through the darkest evils that live in the minds of men. Covering everything from the horrors of war to gambling addiction, depravity runs rampant through the record’s 39 masterful minutes. It is a tight sonic assault from the twilight zone, and it must be heard to be believed.
Third Eye Blind (1997) – Third Eye Blind
Mia Romanoff
My co-editor, Miles, and myself talked quite a bit about this pick, especially when it came down to deciding what makes an album a “favorite album.” Is it the album that means the most to you? The album that is innovative and musically genius? The albums you think best define so-called “good taste?” Or, is it just an album that you really fucking love? Third Eye Blinds’ 1997 debut definitely falls into that last category for me. While you may think of Third Eye Blind as “that band that sings ‘Semi-Charmed Life’” this album is chock-full of songs that are just great. The play time Third Eye Blind got in my car this summer speaks for itself. Favorites are hard to pick, but I am partial to the undeniably catchy ‘I Want You’,‘Motorcycle Drive By’, and ‘London’. That being said, Third Eye Blind makes this list in the purest way possible, because at the end of the day isn’t a favorite album just the one you want to sing in the shower?
The Inner Mounting Flame (1971) – Mahavishnu Orchestra
Miles Silverstein
Jazz fusion hit its high point with 1971’s The Inner Mounting Flame. Led by legendary jazz guitarist John McLaughlin, the Mahavishnu Orchestra journey through odd time signatures and Eastern tonal sensibilities to produce a racing epic of music. It is polished, clean, and perfected – there isn’t an unintentional moment on the record. And to boot, most of it was improvised. That may sound unimpressive when read on paper, but give yourself an hour and two minutes to sit with The Inner Mounting Flame – you will soon understand its genius
I Love My Mom (2018) – Indigo De Souza
Mia Romanoff
The first time I heard this album I had to pull over on the side of the road to send it to my friend. As a junior in high school, the way Indigo De Souza managed to pinpoint the unnameable, unsure, and all-consuming dissatisfaction of being a teenage girl nearly sent me into a coma. I Love My Mom is brimming with one of music’s most magical gifts: feeling seen and understood. While ‘Take Off Ur Pants’ gets at that nagging incessant voice screaming that everyone else has it together and you’re a flailing disaster that’s falling behind, it is directly followed by the transcendent track, ‘Good Heart’. I swear, if you pick the right moment, listening to ‘Good Heart’ can be religious. The song swells and breathes and can make you float. Pure and genuinely gut-wrenching, this song is De Souza at her finest. Though her 2023 album, All of This Will End was one of my favorite albums of last year, there is something so special and amazing about I Love My Mom that just cannot be beat.
A Love Supreme (1965) – John Coltrane
By 1965, John Coltrane had already amassed an impressive list of credits playing with the likes of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Johnny Hartman, and Red Garland, to name a few. Though already cemented as a great of the genre by age 30, Coltrane suffered from a debilitating heroin addiction. In his effort to get clean, he reestablished his connection to religion and A Love Supreme was born. The record moves like a meditation or a prayer. It reconciles angular instrumentation with complex harmonies and exists both as John Coltrane’s magnum opus and stylistic calling card. It is his midlife statement of purpose, and can only be appropriately described as divine.
good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012) – Kendrick Lamar
Mia Romanoff
good kid, m.A.A.d city is a truly phenomenal album. Kendrick pulls you straight into his world, placing you not just next to him, but into his mind. Packed with voicemails, side conversations, shifts in speed, and found sounds, there is not a dull moment on the 73 minute album. The creative production and genius lyrics that make good kid, m.A.A.d city so special don’t overshadow the fact that it is jam-packed with pre-game crowd pleasers (see ‘Backseat Freestyle’ and ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’). For anyone out there who just can’t sit through a whole album, still take the time to listen to ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’. Even being just-over twelve minutes long, the two part track shines the whole way through.
Paul’s Boutique (1989) – Beastie Boys
Miles Silverstein
Fresh off the smash-hit Licensed to Ill, the Beastie Boys came into a large sum of money in the form of world tours and a lucrative record deal. By the end of the making of Paul’s Boutique, they had found a way to go broke. The record was recorded expensively, and the band lived in a luxurious mansion during production. Sure enough, Paul’s Boutique is an album that sounds like it was made by people who care more about fun and enjoyment than other issues like “money” or “responsibility.” It’s stuffed to the brim with creative samples and interpolations, with every song invoking a different kind of get-up-and-jump feeling. Paul’s Boutique is a unique and inimitable kind of fun.