Recently, my friends and I spent the night in one of the coolest Airbnb’s that I had ever been to. My eyes immediately gravitated toward the record player that the host had left out for us to freely use and I recognized many of the several records they had. To set the mood, I flipped through them all and my eyes widened once I saw the distinguishable album cover of bright red and white. In shock to see it in a vinyl version, I carefully pulled out We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic by the indie-rock band Foxygen. Having been one of my many favorite albums ever, I dropped the needle and we listened to the entire LP from start to finish.
Introducing the album is its beautiful first track “In the Darkness,” with its heavenly background vocals that create a phenomenal entrance to the album. It starts to get groovy with “On Blue Mountain” with a catchy tempo, and with their most popular song that many know, “Shuggie.” These songs along with “Bowling Trophies,” have some of the best instrumentation that just leave me in awe.
I got so happy once “San Francisco,” my favorite song off the album, came on. This song puts me in the best mood, simply just makes me smile, and makes me want to drive to the bay area to explore San Francisco. It has several musical elements of psychedelic rock and honestly sounds like something that would have been made in the 60s. The lyrics: “I left my love in San Francisco (that’s okay, I was bored anyway)” just make me feel some type of way that I can’t explain!
As the album got near its end with its self-titled chaotic track “We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic” I thought that the singer’s, Sam France, voice was very reminiscent of Mick Jagger from The Rolling Stones. The LP then ended with a grand finale of its song “Oh No,” which felt so dreamy and soft that it made me know the record was coming to its end. France’s dramatic vocals paired with the grand piano was the finishing touch as the last piano key was played and the needle lifted off the vinyl. After this amazing experience of relistening to it, I’ve been replaying them over and over in my head.
Rediscovering music is such an amazing feeling and hearing the entire album as a whole after not hearing it for a while made my entire week. This album needs to be heard from start to finish in order to gain the full experience of how wonderful each and every one of the songs blend in together, yet still have distinguishable traits that make this record very unique.