My house in Durham is in a really bad location. I mean, really bad. With all of my friends living either in Elvet or Claypath, I feel totally alienated living in the deepest depths of the Viaduct. I’ve got far too much FOMO to ever say no to plans, however, but what might be a quick trip to The Swan for the rest of my friends is a 1-hour round trip for me. Previously, I never had this problem; my house always had the best location out of all my friends, and I would never go out without my housemates. But now, living on the opposite side of the city to everyone else, I find myself in a unique situation: walking home alone late at night.

In perhaps any other city in the UK, the thought of walking for half an hour in the dark by myself would send a shiver down my spine and my hand into my pocket for my keys. But with Durham being named the safest university city in the country I tend to feel nothing but a sense of strange serenity when walking back after a night out. Of course, like most students you see walking around Durham, I won’t go anywhere without my AirPods in. The first time I walked home from the club in Durham by myself, I found myself opening Spotify and wondering, what should I listen to?

I found my perfect album without too much trouble, though. Having recently watched Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film Lost in Translation for the first time, there was one song on the soundtrack that instantly came into my head. In a scene where Charlotte and Bob, played by Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray respectively, take a taxi home after a long night of karaoke and sake, the song “Sometimes” by My Bloody Valentine plays, as we watch the nighttime cityscape of Tokyo through their taxi window. The song itself – lush, distorted guitars and barely discernible vocals – is imbued with a sense of melancholy that the night is over, yet a sense of satisfaction at a night well spent. I truly believe that this song, and the rest of the album it is from (Loveless), is the perfect music to listen to when heading home after a night out.

I have found that it fulfils a very specific set of criteria that I believe any post-club-walk album should follow. They are as follows:

1. Nothing too fast, nothing too slow. You want to wind down a bit after what I’m sure was a hectic night at Jimmy’s, but not actually put yourself to sleep before you get home. Loveless does this perfectly: the first track “Only Shallow” kicks off with punchy drums and jarring glide guitars, yet as the album develops the production seamlessly mellows out, yet doesn’t get any quieter. Which brings me onto point number two:
2. Something loud. Chances are, your ears are ringing after a night of putting up with DJ Dave B blasting his favourite tunes. Mine always do, but I tend not to realise it until I’ve said goodbye to my friends and the drunken shouting (which is definitely all me) has died down. Ideally, you want an album that merges so seamlessly with the ringing in your ears that you can no longer tell them apart; Loveless does this perfectly.
3. Something (borderline) instrumental. Let’s face it: you’re probably drunk, and you’re probably not in the mood to be analysing the intricacies of Taylor Swift’s lyricism at 2 in the morning. You want something where you can just let the sound wash over you and barely pay attention to it, yet something that still feels worth listening to. In Loveless, the vocals function primarily as another of the many layered, distorted instruments that make up the hazy sound of the album, rather than a conveyor of lyrics: Kevin Shields himself has admitted that, in some songs, he didn’t actually know what vocalist Bilinda Butcher was singing. 

It is in my humble opinion that Loveless is the perfect blend of these three elements. A hypnotic mesh of wall-of-sound guitars and dreamy vocals, many argue that the band pioneered the shoegaze genre with this album, and is often hailed as one of the greatest of all time. Not only that, but there is something indescribably perfect about the album that means that it just sounds like what walking home drunk feels like. While specific tracks jump out (“To Here Knows When”, “Soon”, and of course “Sometimes”, to name a few of my personal favourites), it is instead the general shoegaze-y soundscape of the entire album that just completely washes over you and, if you turn your headphones up loud enough, consumes you from the inside-out. Not to mention that the album cover looks exactly like most of the photos I end up taking in Jimmy’s (see featured image for reference). 

My only fault with the album is that it is longer than my walk home: coming in at a 48-minute playing-time, it only takes me 20 minutes to walk home from the Market Square Tesco (the point at which I say goodbye to my Claypath-inhabiting friends). Maybe I’ll have to start walking slower or (God forbid) start the album halfway through next time. If there’s anything to take away from this, however, it’s that the next time you find yourself walking home drunk, please listen to this album. You’ll never be able to walk home in silence again.

Image by: Myrtle Watts