I’m a train commuter.  I walk to a station, board a car with a bunch of other people I don’t talk to*, exit at a station in a stream of hundreds or thousands of others and then walk from the station to my office through artificial canyons, the result of 100 years of cool Chicago architecture.  It’s fairly rare that I run into someone I know.

This is the anonymous urban commute.  And it sometimes, not always, requires a soundtrack.  These albums** make a nice addition.

Bauhaus’s “Swing the Heartache” is probably my favorite for this.  I didn’t start listening to these guys until my junior year in college, when I was in Japan.  I would crank these to 11 on a (really tiny) Walkman, the tape made from a rented CD (yes, they rented CD’s like video tapes), and then board one of those trains they cram people in.  It seemed fitting.  Anyway, Swing the Heartache is ideal when your commute requires a little mild psychosis to go with it.

Madonna’s “Music” — aka The Last Good Madonna album — is actually a pretty good listen.  The Lovely J introduced me to this early on in our relationship.  I’ve never before admitted publicly how much I like the whole album, but I do.  It’s got feeling and a reasonably good beat.  Cheerier than Bauhaus.

Q-Tip’s “The Renaissance” is actually the whole reason I’m writing this post.  It’s new and it’s awesome.   The whole album is good.  Parts cheery, thought provoking, and lyrically complex.  It gets more interesting the more you listen to it in it’s entirety.

Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”.  Yeah, I know, who doesn’t love Wilco?  I hadn’t listened to these guys for a while but they came up at lunch yesterday.  They’re good.  And the album, as a whole, is a pleasant journey.  It reminds me that I’m not always anonymous.  Love it for the commute.

Jethro Tull, “Aqualung”.  Yeah that’s right — I went there.  I love this album but I don’t know why.  I could also throw it on a list of top five albums to code to.  It’s just one of those things, sitting in the background, that is always a good choice.  Even if it makes me think on Ron Burgundy.

BONUS ALBUM: Horowitz playing Scarlatti.  I love Scarlatti.  The first time I ever heard of him was while reading the Illuminatis! trilogy.  There’s some passage in it where he’s mentioned.  So when I saw a CD of someone playing Scarlatti I said sure — I’ll give this a listen.  And it was  good.  Anyway, I found this one a year or so ago and love it, more for the commute home and the one in.  I find it calming.***

OK, so that’s it.  Now I really need to get those expense reports done.

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* There are a few whom I’ve met and I talk to.  It’s actually a pretty nice addition to the whole thing.

**A quick note on the word “album”.  I have no idea what anyone calls these collections of songs an artist or band will release together under a group title — these things I used to call “albums” — so I’m going to still call them albums.

*** I can just picture The Calm Reid Down Conspiracy now piping Scarlatti into every environment I walk through.  There could be worse things.