ALBUMS // Angie McMahon – Salt

Post by Misha

I’m not one of those people who up and move when they get tired of being in a place.

I’m one of those people who move in somewhere and then stay there for the better part of a decade come hell or high water – through all the feelings of aimlessness, of being overwhelmed, of hating it, even. Who wear down their own boredom and tiredness by the sheer force of habit and routine and by accumulating enough blankets and pillows and records and familiar coffee mugs that eventually it feels almost inconceivable that this messy tangle of memories and freeways was ever called anything but home.

I haven’t had to start from scratch in a while, and I don’t know what it is exactly but I’m not particularly well suited to it. I moved across the country at the beginning of the month and it’s taken me three full weeks to put up some string lights. Two weekends ago I found a pale yellow nightstand and a pretty geometric glass and copper jewelry box at a thrift store for $30. Last weekend I bought an inexpensive print of California poppies from a stationary boutique in Astoria. My room is slowly becoming a collection of things that I’ve chosen for their colors and shapes and the sigh of relief they produce when taken in all together after a long day, but when I say ‘home,’ this is still not the place I’m thinking of.

There are moments, though. Earlier in the week I was cooking lunch in my new kitchen and I noticed a Bluetooth speaker in the corner. I found it on my phone and watched it pop into the list of saved devices on my phone, a fondly curated jumble of past and present which includes my LA roommate’s Sonos and my ex-boyfriend’s car and the speakers at the house of the last party I attended before moving. I put on this album and poured some coffee, and as melancholy guitar floated out from somewhere underneath the spice rack, I felt something solidify under my feet.

Buy Salt here.