eotunun wrote:I forgot to mention:
Anne Clark:
~Our Darkness
~Weltschmerz
~Killing Time
If I may add for Anne Clark : the 'To Love And Be Loved' album and 'So Quiet Here' and 'Fragility' from the 'The Law Is An Anagram Of Wealth' album. People who've just broken up with someone should NOT listen to the former, as it's so very close to home.
Marillion
~Chelsea Monday
~Cinderella Search
~The Brave Album
Excellent picks there, Jümläut. Even though I'd have to recommend the 'Brave' VHS/DVD instead of the album, as they've omitted 'Made Again' on it to fit the story, which I think was a good idea. I guess the record company needed an 'up' kind of song after the whole depressing concept of abandonment (Runaway, The Hollow Man), incest (The Lap Of Luxury/Now Wash Your Hands, Brave, The Great Escape/The Last Of You/Falling From The Moon), drugs (Goodbye To All That/Wave/Mad/The Opium Den) and the inability to cope with life from early on in general (Living With The Big Lie)...
After all this time, just thinking about this album's concept and the way the songs were conceived makes my stomach turn with unease and while it is a beautifully crafted album - one of if not the best of the whole Hogarth era Marillion - I can still only stand to listen to it about once a year because it is just too intense for me to come to grips with.
I'm sure the Marillion haters that abound here will have many negative things to say about them, but Jüm's right : that album is just the epitome of depression put to music.
Another album where depression is put to music is the most recent Sophia album 'There Are No Goodbyes'. As if the other Sophia albums weren't bleak enough, this one is bleaker in the sense that even the up tempo - and at first glance upbeat - songs have lyrics that leave you bewildered as if being hit by a hammer. Even though I don't feel there's any song lesser than the other, my personal favourites are 'Dreaming', 'Heartache' (with the immensely beautiful line 'And the baby birds are singing as the world rustles from its sleep' while the melancholy drips off the orchestral arrangement behind it) and the final songs 'Leaving' (which has a fever like tension) and 'Portugal' (ever hear a man sing 'I decided today I'm gonna be a better person/No it's never too late to change' and not believe it with that intensity this side of Ian Curtis? Enter Robin Proper-Sheppard).
While we're on the subject of Robin, his former noise band The God Machine had a killer depression anthem as well : 'Pictures Of A Bleeding Boy'. This song is still my personal benchmark when it comes to attaining a certain level of musicianship because it has everything I consider to be the perfect song. That in itself is enough to get me depressed whenever I hear it. Which is quite often, really...
And lest I forget : Alice In Chains's 'Dirt', while being heavy as feck, is more depressing than anything Cobain ever put to tape in the name of Grunge : 'Rain When I Die', 'Rooster' Angry Chair', Down In A Hole', Would?'; that's only half the album...
By the way, the next Ahráyeph album will most likely by the darkest, bleakest and most depressed thing I've ever done, so who knows; I might make it into this thread by some time next year...