8 Tracks is your antidote to the algorithm . Each week, NPR Music producer Lars Gotrich, with the help of his colleagues, makes connections between sounds across time. A slightly different version of this column originally ran in the NPR Music newsletter .
In high school, I'd Sharpie my favorite bands' logos in notebooks, decipher lyrics line by line, memorize riffs and strategically place songs on mixtapes. There'd be this feeling that those bands understood whatever was going on in my life — during that volatile teenage mixture of hormones, shame and uncertainty — generally expressed through music that was loud, fast, sad or some combination of the three. And then, inevitably, by the next album or tour, the most ambitious of them moved on.
.. to a different sound, look or theme.
Maybe there's less of the old stuff in the set list. As a teen with an undeveloped brain — not to mention a burgeoning music critic — there'd be a sense of betrayal. How could you not make more of the thing that is meaningful to ME, specifically? But when I fell in love with Starflyer 59 , I quickly learned that the SoCal rock band never settled in.
By the time Silver and Gold — two gorgeously heavy shoegaze bummers released in 1994 and 1995, respectively — hit my CD player, its primary songwriter, Jason Martin, had already moved on to doo wop-drenched hard rock ( Americana ) and dreamy Britpop ( The Fashion Focus ). Over the years, that restlessness — underscored by sturdy songcraft �.