It’s me and … me and those big old waves.” It’s a track that captures the next steps, a new beginning, and the loss of what we once knew before, whether it be a lover or a setting. How many times have we felt that, understood that, or needed that? With “A Little Lost,” which is covered by Sufjan Stevens on the compilation, Russell sings “Now it’s harder. On “Time Away,” a sort of ditty that is easy to sing along to, possibly even requires it, Russell repeats the phrase “I just can’t be sure anymore” throughout the track. For the listener, it’s a song so vulnerable that it wraps itself around from uncomfortably piercing to essential. For any other musician, it would be a track created and discarded. In music form, with each note a joyous surprise, as if the song can and should end at any moment, we get this song. His was a vision that spoke from and for the heart first.Ĭonsider “Just a Blip,” ( covered on the compilation by Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire and Bell Orchestre) a track that is pulled from the inward, awkward, uncomfortable thoughts we have about ourselves when we’re alone, the kind of thoughts that, for many of us, happen more often than we’d like to admit. And although I don’t know for certain, I imagine Arthur created to create. So much art is consumed and created for the potential public. Regardless of what genre it falls under, Russell’s music is quietly revolutionary. His music has a singular personhood that is recognizable in artists today.

In his tracks, we hear a depth of creativity, a measure of silence, and the sound of aloneness. They’re just doing their own thing and it draws you in.”ĭespite his obscurity then (and even now), Russell greatly touched the way we consume and understand popular culture. “They’re not yelling at you, trying to get you to listen to them. “You don’t feel like somebody is trying to get you,” Sam Amidon, who is on the album covering “Lucky Cloud,” told me, referring to Russell.

A slow country twang can sound just as affecting as a lonely dance floor cry or a solo sojourn stripped seemingly right out of Russell’s bedroom. But within each of Russell’s songs are points of lyrical, emotional, and vocal connection. He made winsome country and hypersexual disco and delicate art pop. Russell never settled on one genre of music, and many of both his fans and the artists on this compilation have relationships to disparate parts of his work.

Walk the moon album wallpaper