That place you go to in your mind when you're listening to a song/album

When I listen to AoD, in my mind, I’m on a dark sidewalk with streetlights and it’s raining slightly. When I hear STS, it’s 1pm, but dark, because I’m in a locked room with full blackout curtains, and i just woke up half an hour ago. SYM, I’m outside on a porch swing at 6am in the spring time. All hallows, im in a Wal-Mart parkinglot in fall, smelling burning leaves.

Different songs all have individual feelings associated with them, but whole albums just have memories I associate with above all else.

Where does the music take you back to?

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LOh, man. Such a cool idea! I love the Wal-Mart parking lot memory.

Black Sails brings me back to 5th/6th grade sitting on my sidewalk with my friend’s huge headphones on. It was late summer; I was supposed to be catching fireflies with my little sister. It was just starting to get cool at night, so I was huddled in my other friend’s too big Batman hoodie that smelled like his older brother’s cologne.

AoD brings me back to scraped knees and early fall nights; playing manhunt with my friends after soccer practice. It reminds me of Munsters reruns and Nightmare Before Christmas themed sleepovers under blanket forts lit by Halloween fairy lights.

All Hallows is all about dark basements and my older friends blasting music and planning Mischief night shenanigans while I sit on the beat up old futon, eating frozen grapes and watching Beetlejuice. It’s my friend’s cranberry candles and drug store makeup as she teaches me how to put on eye makeup like she does.

Sing the Sorrow reminds me late October and being in the back of my uncle’s car as we drove through the falling foliage, the headlights just catching the red and gold leaves as they fell. It reminds me of the scents of clove and sage and my aunt telling me stories as she prepared her herbs and crystals for Samhain.

Decemberunderground brings me back to sophomore year of high school, of dusty floors and dimly lit art rooms, back to the smell of turpentine, rain, and petrachor. It brings me back to early summer and heather twilight and just wanting to disappear.

Crash Love brings me back to autumn of sophomore year of college, to cold nights and crunching leaves, and Salem, MA. Back to my friends’ houses crouched around Ouija boards and underground shows in basements.

Burials brings me back to cold NY and writing too much and hating everyone and everything. And everything is so cold when I think of that album.

The Blood? It reminds me of grey days and long drives and cold snaps, leather jackets, and silly string. It reminds me of late autumn surfing sessions on the Massachusetts coast and hot tea and Baudelaire. Of lots of velvet blankets and Target runs for extra costume paraphanelia.

So, yeah, that’s what the albums remind me of. Sorry for the long response. :slight_smile:

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First off, I love the thread idea.

AOD

I know exactly where “Initiation” and “Lost Souls” takes me… it’s 10th grade (2000) and a friend of mine Eric, is listening to his headphones. He wants me to check out this band and their new album. I forget how he worded it, but he was praising it.
He told me it was AFI. I put on the headphones and began listening. From there on… I fell down that rabbit hole.

Black Sails

This album felt so dark to me. This album I think made AOD feel cartoony to me. I think it was because of the album artwork and song titles as opposed to Black Sails art and song titles… Black Sails just seemed so dark and heavier.

Then there was Midnight Sun. I had let God Called in Sick Today play out… I was laying on my bed looking at maybe CD art, lyrics, magazines, etc and then… the bass of Midnight Sun hit. I got goosebumps and I was in love.

ATASF & VPOY

These don’t really have much to them for me other than just good memories jamming out to these song in my room.

Conclusion

Once I had become hooked on AFI in 2000, I literally listened to nothing but AFI for years. I considered it betrayal for myself if I listened to anything else for a long period of time. I would have to put AFI back in.

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Mind if I necro this thread? Cool, thanks.

So, there’s not one specific place that each album takes me to, but I will say that in general their music creates a very special, magical, imaginary internal world for a while, while I listen, and also I get specific feelings from certain albums. I don’t think I can articulate specifically everything about these feelings though, they are too complex…

One thing Sing the Sorrow has always made me think of, though, for example, is exploring like some old abandoned mansion or something, and finding a keepsake box full of someone’s memories in the attic.

Then there are certain songs that take me places, usually the same place every time. For example, A Winter’s Tale has always made me think of walking in a snowy forest in the middle of the night under a full moon with them. :slight_smile:

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That’s so cool about Sing the Sorrow. It definitely has that vibe to it. AFI is just so ingrained into my life that certain albums almost violently evoke memories, right down to scents and sounds.

And, yeah, A Winter’s Tale definitely has that cold, bright winter night vibe.

A lot of it really depends on what key the song is in. Bb minor is generally indigo, F# minor is red, Bm is red. Em orange or green depending on the timbre. You get the idea.
Black Sails is very much suburban. When I listened to it last, I imagined being Jade Puget living in a frat house and writing the tunes. As FM Vanished said, there’s something very old housey about it.
All Hallows EP is the same, except now it’s Fall. No surprise.
Art of Drowning is like driving into the woods. Sense of adventure heightened.
Sing the Sorrow is also in the woods, but everything looks like a Guy Maddin film.
Decemberunderground is also in the woods. And it’s snowing a lot. Lots of blue and purple. (Blue purple or purple blue? How about indigo?) With On the Arrow, the snow’s melting.
Crash Love is definitely the city at night. Lots of neon light. Or whatever noble gas it is that burns yellow.
Burials is the city at day. And it’s the bad part of town where everything’s falling apart. Lots of concrete.
Blood Album is that weird part where the city meets the woods. Like on the side of the highway looking into a suburban town. And there’s a river?

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Love this. The focus on the keys is great. I’m definitely not a musician, so I can’t really engage with the music in that respect, but I envy anyone who can.

Necroing my own thread for fun, and yes, automatic notification asking me if i am ok with that, i am, because i still have new things to add and want to hear new thoughts about it!

I didnt much like burials when I first heard it. In fact I was kinda over AFI since decemberunderground and crash love didnt inspire a while lot of love in me. The first time I listened to burials was in my bedroom on my tablet and just heard straight up noise. It was nothing to me in 2014.

In 2017 I went to my first AFI concert. Later that same year I went to my second one and woke up at 2am to drive 3 hours to get to the concert venue by 6am and there were still like 5 people before me who had been there all night. The album I listened to on that drive was burials, to hear some new AFI and see if i could learn to love it. And man once i gave it a real chance some of those songs really tore me a new one emotionally. So now my feeling of burials is the excitement of driving 3 hours in the dark in the early hours of the morning to wait 12 hours for my second afi concert.

The blood album now reminds me of leaving work on my lunch break to go drive in a rural area to listen to music blasting in my car, relax, and smoke a couple clove cigars. Because that is where I was in my life when that came out lol.

Please keep sharing.

For me, listening to an AFI album is all about cherishment. Whenever I listen, I am lifted up to a place in my mind where my heart, no matter how dark or deep, is in a place of God’s graces and where I find loyalty with AFI.