Many of us can link a certain album to pivotal moments in our lives. Whether it’s the first record you bought with your own money, the chord you first learnt to play on guitar, the song that soundtracked your first kiss, the album that got you those awkward and painful pubescent years or the one that set off light bulbs in your brain and inspired you to take a big leap of faith into the unknown – music is often the catalyst for change in our lives and can even help shape who we become.
In this series, Music Feeds asks artists to reflect on their relationship with music and share with us stories about the effect music has had on their lives.
Skegss’ Ben Reed – Black Lips, Arabia Mountain
To Arabia Mountain,
You have been in the CD stack in my car since I can remember, maybe for about four years now, and I’ve never taken you out.
You’ve kept me intrigued this whole time because I still don’t know what you’re singing about in some songs, and I feel like one day I’m going to figure it out. I think you’re so good because you keep a comical theme that seems like stories about yourself, but in looking at the world in a comical way.
I think the sound is unique too, because there’s lots of fuzz effects in the songs with the driving riffs and even just the fuzzed rhythm guitar mixed in, but it’s real compressed in a way I’ve never heard any other bands with this sound.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X1uvxFPpDs
Even Joe’s tight ‘cha cha’ beat is more unique than the classic ‘cha cha’, somehow.
Arabia Mountain actually seems like a place where all these feelings in each of the songs come from.
I think you are respectable because of all the unique dynamics that make up this album as a whole, for how simplistic the structure of each song is. It’s like you’re made with more meaning than one would assume, and no one will be ever be able to decode.
So thank you for always keeping me psyched to write songs.
Yours sincerely,
Benny from Skegss
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Skegss’ debut album My Own Mess is out now. The band will take the album on a national tour this October, which will include a bunch of under 18s shows.
