Happy Belated Melodramatic Birthday To Me

I am in 90's shoegaze heaven thanks to my Mom and Dad; for my birthday this year they ordered all three Mazzy Star 180g vinyl represses: She Hangs Brightly, So Tonight That I Might See, and Among My Swan. These came out a couple of years ago around the time that Hope Sandoval spilled the beans that they were working on a new record, which is slated for release before the end of the year. My vinyls arrived this weekend and I must say that I am thrilled with the quality of pressing and packaging - the robust sturdiness of the sleeves is simply delightful; all high grade vinyl should come like this. I'm too often disappointed with 180+ gram discs that are housed in cheap, nearly paper-thin sleeves.

The music of Mazzy Star is a hazy summer afternoon of introversion - alone in a smokey and softly quiet room, the rustling sound of wind through trees reminiscent of the ocean. You look out further and further to what surrounds you now and what throughout the years has been the backdrop of life. As this eventually fades you inevitably meet yourself. Roles and dramas fall away...feelings well up and out. As you open, you empty. You stop being the proprietor of emotion, and instead become the releasing of it. Though initially intense, as you continue to deplete this magnitude diminishes...until you become nothing - inanimate and void of substance. Depressing? Sometimes. But nowhere can only become somewhere, and no one can only become someone. Nothing easily turns to anything and to everything. You can't grasp at past identity if you want to be free; you have to completely let go so that you can take hold of the reins once again. Mazzy Star is the cathartic fixed stare into the mirror that we all need from time to time.