Album #9

 

Album: The Virgin Suicides
Artist: Air
Released: 1999
Label: Record Makers, Source, Virgin
Genre: Ambient/progressive rock

A soundtrack? On my 1001 album list? Well not mine, but still, you get the joke. Boy howdy, this was a trip. I never saw The Virgin Suicides, but I feel like I know the movie from this soundtrack alone. I joked at the start, with "Playground Love" that it felt like a lounge song... just as the brass came in. The album became a soundtrack to a long drive and it was perfect. Bravo. 

Musically, the album has few to no lyrics, yet evokes such a beautiful picture of youth, innocence, and loss therein. I was absolutely gobsmacked when the final track "Suicide Underground" broke that near-complete absence with commentary about the death of several young women by suicide (the titular "virgin suicides"). Even though the album, to that point, had painted a nostalgic brush of high school and the pains of growing up, this track fit in a place that I didn't know existed. It took the pain of loss and stated that, to borrow from Paula Mejia of NPR, "now is not forever". 

Air, in this album, presents a story, a journey, and a future that never came for some, but could come for more. As a soundtrack, I have no doubt that it enhanced the movie that it scored. As a standalone album, it is an ensnarement of the teenage condition, both through the eyes of those who have been there and those who may still be there. 

Rating: 4.4 stars.