MVP features artists and their favorite albums.

This week Raphaelle of Braids, whose In Kind // Amends 12″ will be out June 11th on Arbutus Records, discusses her old and lasting love for Deerhunter‘s Turn It Up Faggot.

It seems odd to talk about a record that I haven’t listened to for five years as being my favourite, but I listened to music differently when I was younger. It had a much more impacting and intense effect on me—and so when I think about the most important records for me, they were all ones that I listened to from the time I was 16-20.

That being said, after much racking of past memories, I think the record that changed my world was Turn It Up Faggot by Deerhunter.

I had never heard anything so harsh, grating and confrontational. I was listening to a lot of Top 40 or folk music up until then. My friends had gotten into indie rock and were listening to bands like Modest Mouse and The Unicorns. I found most of the bands they were listening to to be rather annoying, and so I felt very embarrassed and confused when my friends would talk about Animal Collective or Tokyo Police Club, and I would fib and say, oh yes, I liked it very much. I started going to the record store down the street from my high school to try and find something that I could connect with.

I stumbled upon this record, Turn It Up Faggot, one day after school in my final year. I spent the majority of the summer and fall listening to this record on my headphones, walking around the streets, taking the bus. I felt like I had found music that resembled how I felt—I guess, at that time, misunderstood, angry, lost—all of the cliché feelings that most of us experience during our teenage years. It felt harsh like I did. The playing was so loose and ragged. I was just learning to play electric guitar, so I tried to learn some of the songs with my reverb turned up really high, just thrashing on the guitar, pretending like I had found the chords.

Oh gosh, I probably listened to that record 200 times.

I’m not sure it’s the best record ever written, but I found it at a time when I really needed it. For all I know I could definitely still be covering Feist songs in my bedroom if I hadn’t stumbled upon this record. It showed me that confrontation and angst could be expressed in a modern time. I knew that the punk movement happened, I listened to my fair share of The Ramones and The Clash, but it felt like that time had passed, and people had closed up again. This album really opened up the emotional and honest aspect of expression for me.

I met Bradford Cox a couple of years after I had heard the record, and I thanked him profusely for it. He said he didn’t really like that record. Whether or not he fully stands behind it, I’m not sure I would know how to stand as strongly without it.