Active Child – You Are All I See

This album should be listened to: Biking early in the morning on the Minneapolis Greenway

I initially dismissed Active Child based on name alone, but one Saturday morning, I decided to listen as I biked to work the brunch shift at 6 a.m. After going to bed at 2 a.m. following a show I had covered the night before, I was desperately sleep-deprived. But as Pat Grossi’s ethereal voice swelled over the harp chords that begin “Hanging On”, I noticed that his rhythms rotated in time with my lactic acid-sore legs and made me bike faster and harder. Be it endorphins or discovering indie R&B, I gave myself up to a transcendent listening experience that has not only shaped my cold, tired (and yes, sometimes hungover) rides to work early in the morning, but what I listen to and how I listen to it. -Harley Brown

Active Child – “Hanging On”

Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago

This album should be listened to: On a frozen lake in Wisconsin

I had a friend who was going to school with Justin Vernon in Eau Claire, WI, who would go see his shows at coffee shops when he was just starting out. Christmas 2007, she sent me For Emma, Forever Ago of lore (the first version, I recall), and I put it on my iPod and went for a walk to a lake near my apartment in northern Wisconsin.

My galoshes crunched the snow out to the middle of the lake, and it wasn’t until much later that I learned about Vernon’s solitude during the recording process. At the time, it was my own solitude that Vernon made so palpable. I didn’t sit down and stare at the clouds or make a snow angel or anything, but I didn’t go back to shore, either — not until the album was over. Vernon’s twentysomething trials on For Emma, Forever Ago are surrounded by Wisconsin, and in 0-degree weather, with nature and thoughts hushed by a blanket of snow, there was nothing in the world more understandable than “lapping lakes like leary loons.” If you ever visit mine and Vernon’s home state, take a stroll out and partner up with “Lump Sum” or “Wolves”, and you’ll never feel so comforted by being alone. -Jeremy D. Larson

Bon Iver – “The Wolves (Act I & II)”

Radiohead – OK Computer

This album should be listened to: At Sunset Rock, Keene, NH

When you first get to college, you might feel slightly alienated. The pressures of having to meet all new people can be too much. It was a relief on a fall afternoon in New Hampshire that I was joined by a group of 20 or so newfound friends to go to a spot called “Sunset Rock” and “enjoy nature.” Upon arriving on this rock, one of us put on Radiohead’s OK Computer, an album that questions the future, technology, and where we’re all going. The next 53 minutes were some of the most important of my life. I had heard OK Computer many times, but sitting there with a new group of friends and viewing our new home made everything click. Everything was put into perspective; technology and industrialization were going to eat us alive, but we were exactly where we needed to be and with the right people. Looking down at Keene to “Airbag” and “The Tourist” made me realize we were all aliens in some respect, but we’d finally found our own colony. -Ted Maider

Radiohead – “The Tourist”

Loretta Lynn – Van Lear Rose

This album should be listened to: In the Kentucky mountains

Kentucky is a state of infinite beauty and heritage. A snapshot of the state, country legend Loretta Lynn’s Van Lear Rose burns brighter in proximity to its roots. Lynn hails from Butcher Hollow, a coal mining community in the crook of the Appalachian Mountains’ elbows. For two summers, I worked in a nearby college town and found myself in a very different culture: Alcohol wasn’t sold on Sundays, and the local bakery greeted you as “darlin’.” To while away hours, I played the Jack White-produced, critically acclaimed crossover. Hearing Lynn sing about county lines and scenery I drove by daily tugged at my heartstrings.

The album’s title track personifies the Eastern Kentucky region, telling the love story of Lynn’s parents (“Your mama, she’s the Van Lear Rose/ She was the belle of Johnson County, Ohio River to Big Sandy”). “Little Red Shoes” recalls the expressions of Lynn’s father’s love, and “High on a Mountaintop” echoes the folk-gospel roots of the area. Sweet and full of heritage, Van Lear Rose makes the Appalachian region glimmer. -Liz Lane

Loretta Lynn – “Van Lear Rose”

Burial – Burial

This album should be listened to: Lost on a Sunday night on San Francisco’s public transit system

On winter vacation in San Francisco a couple years back, I picked up a copy of Burial’s self-titled debut at Amoeba on a recommendation from my stepbrother who was away at school in the UK, ignoring his snooty contention that it would “only make sense” on a trip through the London Underground. Night fell long before I realized, and I soon found myself lost on San Francisco’s labyrinthine (for an LA kid) public transit system with nothing but my Sony Discman and that copy of Burial to keep me company. I remember how impossibly perfect that record was the first time around, the airtight production evoking a melancholy infinitely deeper and more compelling than most of the post-punk I was into at the time. From the cadence of “U Hurt Me”, which was simultaneously heavier and more delicate than anything I’d ever heard, to the dense ambiance of “Wounder”, the album (even through my tiny earbuds) managed to fill the desolate emptiness that is a solitary bus ride through an unknown city on a frigid Sunday night. In any case, I finally wound my way to my sister’s place hours later, plopped onto the couch, pressed play again, and fell asleep. -Möhammad. Choudhery

Burial – “Night Bus”

Sigur Rós – ()

This album should be listened to: At my childhood home’s kitchen table — in spirit, the womb I came out of

Once you’ve lived somewhere that’s not your childhood home, you never feel the same way about it again upon returning. The time you lived there feels like a different life. So maybe that’s why at the precipice of age 18, Sigur Rós’ ( ) brought me to a time when I felt no pain at all, to when I didn’t know what bad things in the world were: to the womb, adrift in amniotic peace. But there I was, sitting in my childhood home, grappling with what it meant to be turning 18 and soon moving out of the only home I had ever known, just longing primally for the warm, nurturing circumference of ( ), the womb. Its shape, its feel. That first listen of ( ) found me as a service-industry chump, sitting at his parents’ amber-colored kitchen table, afraid of the world I had to face. But suddenly in epiphany, moved to tears of fear and beauty, ( ) gave me respite, somehow reassuring me in nonsensical Hopelandic syllables that everything would be alright. And it was. -Paul de Revere

Sigur Rós – “Untitled 4″

Panda Bear – Young Prayer

This album should be listened to: Detailing ambulances inside and out 12 hours a day

One semester into college, I found a job working for one of my father’s friends in an ambulance auto shop. Having no real mechanical training, I was sent to detail each of the trucks inside and out. (The stench that arises from steam cleaning a floor of coagulated blood is one that will surely line the walls of Hell.) I was in a separate shop, totally isolated from most humans for 10 hours each day. Here in the echoing warehouse is where I found the precise meaning behind Panda Bear’s lonesome, billowing vocal melodies on Young Prayer. -Winston Robbins

Panda Bear – “Untitled 1″

Arvo Pärt – Tabula Rasa

This album should be listened to: The desert between the Grand Canyon and Flagstaff in a pitch-black roadside campsite

Despite being from the Soviet/Baltic state of Estonia, Arvo Pärt must have understood something about the desert. The clichés about the desert are all true: It’s expansive, frightening, lonely, awesome, powerful, and spiritual. All those characteristics embody this stunning, eerie piece for two violin soloists, strings, and prepared piano, an instrument created by jamming objects into the strings of a piano, turning it into a customizable percussion gamelan.

The piece is beautiful with a cinematic grandeur, but hearing the second movement in the still, staggering emptiness of the desert made me realize that this piece is also about nature and its transcendental, almost religious, power. The eerie pitched percussion sound of the piano perfectly reflected the cool weirdness of the nocturnal desert, above which two violins play a simple yet pained counterpoint, hauntingly desolate and beautiful. Like the desert, the music is wide open, scary, and gorgeous. -Jake Cohen

Arvo Pärt – “Tabula Rasa, II”

Bat for Lashes – Fur and Gold

This album should be listened to: In Prague and the Czech countryside

As Bat for Lashes, Natasha Khan crafts songs drenched in the kind of ethereal beauty that transports the listener into a dream-like world. My first Euro trip included a five-night stay in Prague, and my shuffled iPod jumped to Bat for Lashes with eerily improbable frequency. Surrendering to fate, I gave Fur and Gold a proper listen while wandering around Prague in the rain, and the album’s other-worldly sounds and imagery transformed a city renowned for its beauty and old-world charm into something truly out of a fairy tale, while simultaneously highlighting Fur and Gold‘s fantastical nature. Bat for Lashes became the official soundtrack for the rest of that leg of my vacation as I made day trips to Kutná Hora’s Bone Church and the Terezín Concentration Camp. -Frank Mojica

Bat for Lashes – “Trophy”

Weezer – Weezer (The Blue Album)

This album should be listened to: Stuck at a railroad crossing in rural Pennsylvania

On a rainy evening a couple years ago, I sat alone at a railroad crossing watching a coal train barrel through the wooded valley below my home in rural western Pennsylvania. After a few minutes, the railcars began to slow and finally came to a halt. (Presumably the train had broken down.) Given the road’s narrowness and incline, there was no way to turn around or back out. My car’s CD changer turned over, and “My Name Is Jonas” began blaring, with that fitting line “choo-choo train left right on time/A ticket costs only your mind.”

Lines like “the world has turned and left me here” and “watch me unravel/I’ve come undone” took on unintended meanings as an eerie fog enveloped my car and flashing, red crossing lights bounced between my windshield and several roadside memorials on the shoulder of this dangerous stretch. It was a geek/surf rock ghost story rave for one that lasted nearly an hour. It has forever put The Blue Album in a context that no other listener can possibly share. If I hear “Buddy Holly” or “Undone – The Sweater Song” come on the radio, my mind conjures up flashing red lights, thick country darkness, and the image of an automobile skidding into that earthen embankment that has claimed dozens. -Matt Melis

Weezer – “The World Has Turned And Left Me Here”

Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters

This album should be listened to: Driving from Tallahassee, FL, to Miami, FL, during the night

Deep into my freshman year at Florida State University, I decided to head home to Miami really late one night – roughly around 11 o’clock. It’s a 400-plus-mile trip. But, I had a girlfriend at home, and I really wanted to see her. Now, if you’ve ever lived in Tallahassee, FL, you’re familiar with two things: 1) Momo’s Pizza and 2) the feeling you get when you hop on I-10 and leave. (The former becomes a cruel form of nostalgia after you’ve lived the latter.) There’s also the quick realization of how mundane the drive is once you’re 20 miles out and you’re seeing the same sets of moss-covered trees. So, there’s music.

Now, by this time, I had committed the Foo Fighters’ self-titled debut to memory. It certainly wasn’t alien to me. Yet somewhere south of Orlando, roughly around one or two in the morning, it plucked some deeper emotional chords. Dave Grohl wrote this alone, I thought. Staring into the black abyss ahead, feeling the chilly nighttime air on my fingers, and hearing the wind struggling outside, the lyrics slid into my ears. There’s one moment that’s been bookmarked in my mind to this day. Towards the end, during the album’s most riveting track, “Exhausted”, Grohl sighs, “Give me a breeze that’s long-winded.” It’s almost like Grohl felt isolated yet with a purpose. But then again, driving alone on a desolate highway to the person I cared about most at the time, so did I. -Michael Roffman

Foo Fighters – “Exhausted”