Pulling Out or Pulling In?

Debt of Joy

I'm listening to The Notwist's album Neon Golden as I work this evening. Because it has been in my iTunes library since I bought it, I hear songs from it on a pretty regular basis in shuffle mode. But it has been a long time since I listened to the record in its entirety. It's nice to remember how much I adore it and even nicer to be reminded that it's my ideal writing muse. I had the new Sonic Youth album Rather Ripped on auto-repeat for most of the morning and that one, like the band's other albums, is also great to work by. The Notwist is even better, however. Because their music is consistently interesting without ever getting too brash, it makes staying in a productive flow easy. In that regard, they are a lot like Stereolab, another favorite of mine in the music-to-write-by category. I spent a sizeable portion of my dissertation-completing with The Notwist's earlier Shrink playing for hours at a time, while the then-one-year-old Bean played next to me. Ever since, I've felt a debt of gratitude to the band. I haven't listened to Neon Golden with the same intensity before but, as I sit here tonight, I'm feeling that debt grow. I love some of these songs so much that hearing them in sequence is bringing tears to my eyes. It's hard to choose, but I've picked two to share, one that exemplifies the band's softer side and one that shows the use they make of a hip-hop sensibility. I hope that you like them and, if you do, that you will buy the album or go see them in concert, since artists deserve to make money off their work.