What Means the World to You: 2015 in Musical Memories
May: Little Dragon — Nabuma Rubberband
I bought Nabuma Rubberband back in March as a pre-road trip loose end before a rather spontaneous girls’ weekend with a good friend. I was on my last leg of college in Indiana, in a serious relationship with my high school sweetheart, and surrounded by the warmth of friends that, in the course of four years, had become like a second family for me. Everything was familiar, and I had grown comfortable and almost complacent with the direction my life was heading toward, because everything before had been so rudimentary.
We never got around to listening to the album because my friend was enamored with Drake, which meant listening to If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late nonstop on a commercial free, premium Spotify account she wooed from her then love conquest. Needless to say, the album was tossed aside and forgotten, until it resurfaced two months later when I was rifling through this vintage home delivery milk box that I used to store my CDS, books, and art supplies when I moved to Jamaica Avenue in mid-May. It was wedged between a Hiatus Kaiyote CD and the last issue of my school’s magazine, sealed and untouched like the day I bought it.
I stopped everything I was doing and popped it into my computer for this intimate listening session of the entire album twice, which involved me crying while dancing. The entire album is a collection of break up and moving on songs over magnetic rhythms, which really struck a chord for me because I was friendless, single, and in a foreign place for the first time, but had refused to acknowledge that I was afraid of the unknown and being alone. Within a week, the album became my way of saying goodbye and letting go of everything that was holding me back from living.—Dominique Stewart