RECORD STORE TALES #1112: Comfort Albums (ft. Peter Kerr)

Pulling into the driveway, you breath a sigh of relief after a long day at the grind.  Walking in the front door, removing your shoes, you begin to feel human once again.  Nobody is home and the place is yours.  After a stressful day like today, no more TV or news would help you relax.  You set about preparing dinner, and select some new albums to listen to.  More recent music, relatively speaking  Comfort albums.  Albums that feel like an old slipper, that remind you of a past era.  Familiar sounding music that just isn’t made this way anymore.  What do you choose?

I have a few records that fit this bill for me.  The latest is Invincible Shield by Judas Priest.  It is remarkable that this band have had such highs and lows, but still manage to put out a career-high record 50 years after their debut.  There are throwbacks a-plenty, of very high quality.  Some riffs or choruses bring you back to the 80s and Defenders of the Faith.  Several sound of the Painkiller era, particularly because of Scott Travis’ double bass.  Others pulls back to the 70s and Hell Bent for Leather.  Though the modern production and vocals of Rob Halford keep the album in the present, it otherwise sounds akin to the records I love so much from my youth.  They are of the same blood.

It takes a lot for new music to get my blood pumping the way my old favourites do.  When I play Invincible Shield, I’m 15 or 16 years old again, excited for this new album and rooting for my heavy metal heroes on a job well done.  It’s a comfort album.  The warm air of nostalgia blows through my window as another amazing outro guitar solo fades into silence.  I half expect to have to get up and flip the tape soon, so far back am I taken.

Peter Kerr of Rock Daydream Nation, who suggested this topic, had his own example.

“Black Ice,” he said.  “AC/DC did not put an album out for eight years.  “I bought it, and played the first track ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Train’.  It was like a comfort album…big smile on the face!”

Indeed, I remember hearing that song on the radio myself and just being happy to hear a new song that sounded like AC/DC.   Perhaps once upon a time, new AC/DC music was just expected regularly, like your tax bills.  Then there came a time when we had to cherish a new AC/DC album.  Black Ice was the first one where I felt like, “Let’s savour this one this time.”

Another album that had that comforting effect, but not because it’s by a heritage band, is 2022’s Impera by Ghost.  Now here is a band that loves throwbacks, but are not content to stick to any particular style or direction.  Listening to the Ghost discography was like rapidly traveling forward in time, until Impera seemingly brought us to the year 1987.

Impera is one of my favourite albums to play on my way home from work.  With the sun sometimes right in my eyeline and impatient drivers zooming from lane to lane, the commute home is best assuaged by good music that helps me decompress.  “Spillways”, “Watcher in the Sky” and “Griftwood” are the three that specifically warm me like a favourite blanket on a cold day.  They simply don’t make music like this very often anymore.  Oh sure, lots of bands try to do that “80s thing” but few can really trick your brain into thinking you went back in time.  Ghost do it, and they do it frequently.  Not just Impera, but also on Prequelle with songs like “Danse Macabre”.  The single “Kiss the Go-Goat” sounds like something from 1970 and might have a similar effect on someone from that era.

You feel the strain leave your body as you tap your feet to the song.  Comfort music often gets you to move.  I can’t help but play air guitar or air drums to real comfort music.  That’s just good, healthy activity!  I’m speaking about a certain age group here, but as it gets continually more effortful to get up and rock a bit, music like this becomes more and and more precious.

Here I am, as my back aches and my right shoulder reminds me it’s healing from injury, and I’m playing vigorous air guitar to the lively “Fight of Your Life” by Judas Priest.  I cannot throw shapes like I did in my bedroom at age 15, but I do OK, and it feels alright.  Until my elbow says “no more” and my knees falter!

The music feels good.  You can use any number of words:  nostalgic, warm, energising, recapturing…there is something unique about a true comfort album that just makes you say “Thank God this exists.  I needed this, to make me feel this way.  Thank you for the music!”