More Adventurous: Albums to Listen to #4 (Aaron West, Maggie Rogers, Nia Archives, & More)
Albums I'm listening to the week of April 15.
On the heels of Coachella, I feel like I need to catch up on some of the livestreams of artists that I missed over the weekend. I didn’t get a chance to watch Tyler, the Creator’s set, but I’d really like to see it. I’d also like to dive into the sets for a few of the smaller artists who played out in the desert this weekend.
While I didn’t tune in for Coachella, I did keep up with the new releases this weekend, and I even got to cover one of the ones that I was most excited about.
Aaron West & The Roaring Twenties – In Lieu of Flowers
Of all the albums that I’d been looking forward to this year, the latest Aaron West record from Dan Campbell of The Wonder Years has been high up there. I spoke to Campbell about the album for Atwood Magazine, where we went in depth on the new chapter in the Aaron West saga.
In the decade since Campbell released the first album We Don’t Have Each Other, Aaron has been through a ringer of ups-and-downs, and even though In Lieu of Flowers takes him to the dark depths of alcoholism, it ultimately ends on a positive note, showing him coming full circle, ready to shoulder up and be a reliable person as he heals from his troubled past.
While recounting the plot of the Aaron West story to friends over the weekend, I realized how much I’ve also grown over the decade since We Don’t Have Each Other was released. I spent most of the summer of 2014 with that CD living in my mom’s car, listening to Aaron’s sad songs on the way to work, screaming along to “You Ain’t No Saint” or “Our Apartment.” Listening to In Lieu of Flowers, I’ve not only seen Aaron’s growth, but my own. As he closes the record and sees how far he’s come, I also see how far I’ve come.
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