11. Otis ReadingThe Very Best Of
My dad gave me this record when I was 13, at a time when I was beginning to get a lot more serious about music. He told me to listen to it: to feel how the band functions together. I can’t exactly emulate what they did, but I’d say that it opened my ear up to nuance. What happens when a vocal is slightly ahead or behind the beat, and how that can totally transform the physicality of a song; how it relates to your head and your heart. I find myself coming back to this record again and again when I need to remember how the intuitiveness of music and its technical aspects relate to a feeling. It’s an invaluable instruction manual for me. I mean, I could never accomplish myself but it’s certainly something to continue to learn from. My father was a complicated person. This record doesn’t instill a wave of warm memories of him. I think my musical associations with him are instructive, rather than warm and cuddly. He was not a great dad. But he did impart invaluable instructions to me. I wouldn’t be the person that I am today and Xiu Xiu wouldn’t be anything like it is without his influence.
