A while ago, I wrote this passage:
“Music was a language that couldn’t be translated. You heard it in the way people fumbled to explain why they loved a song, before reaching for ‘you have to listen to it’. You saw it in the way people drove with their windows rolled down and radios turned up, the way they pressed their favourite records upon friends, the way courting lovers made cassettes for each other to express the inexpressible. They wanted to share in the only way they could. Yes, a musician could describe what he technically admired about a song in terms of keys, chords and melodies, or look at sheet music to understand the notes that must be played, although it didn’t pass on what gave music the potential to be so powerful and infectious. Styles came and went, and different genres and bands did it for different people, but Murmur had come to understand that the common thread running through them all could be summed up in one word: heart. All great music derived from this human core; the passion, pain or joy that artist poured into the song and transmitted to the listener. Without heart, a song was nothing more than an empty shell.”
In this spirit, I want to share some songs that have really been doing it for me recently (and yes, I did go on a spending spree after reading Pitchfork’s Top 50 albums of 2013). These songs give me the shivers.