Best Left Unspoken: Recommendations for Music without Vocals
I know there are times where I really need to focus/tune everyone else out, and so I turn to music without any lyrics. Here are some of my recommendations for music without (or very minimal) lyrics/vocals.
In the animation industry in particular, it’s common for us to work on an open concept workspace. With so many people around us working, having conversations on the floor, helping one another out, a lot of us (including me!) listen to music while working to stay focused.
When I have a moment at my desk, you can almost always find me with headphones on, listening to music. I work way better with music playing, and confess that anything else—podcasts, webisodes, etc are too distracting for me.
While my personal musical tastes run the gamut, I know there are times where I really need to focus/tune everyone else out, and so I turn to music without any lyrics.
Here are some of my recommendations for music without (or very minimal) lyrics/vocals. Remember (where possible) to purchase these albums through Bandcamp or directly from the artist/label so that they receive the maximum revenue!
PLEASURELAND by HALEY
HALEY, formerly known as Haley Bonar, is a Canadian-American musician. In 2017 she changed her performing name and put out an exclusively instrumental album, PLEASURELAND.
I loved her 2016 album with lyrics, Impossible Dream, so I was unsure at the time about this new approach/instrumentals only when I so loved Impossible Dream. I was very pleasantly surprised and learnt with PLEASURELAND to always keep an open mind with music - it’s a truly beautiful album, so much so that I even want the track “Next Time (For C)” played at my own funeral some day.
Pang instrumentals album by Caroline Polachek
Pang is Caroline Polachek’s first album released under her own name and was one of the better albums of 2019. In April of this year, she released just the instrumentals for all tracks on Pang on Bandcamp. Unfortunately at the time I’m writing this, it doesn’t look like you can stream/preview the instrumentals album on Bandcamp, and only a couple of the instrumentals are available on YouTube. I quite liked regular Pang, so I recommend the instrumentals album, if you aren’t familiar with the album though, try a couple of the tracks with lyrics per usual to see if you might like the instrumentals version.
Pale Bloom by Sarah Davachi
Sarah Davachi is another Canadian composer/musician! I had the pleasure of seeing her live at Sled Island music festival in Calgary a few years back. Pale Bloom is her album from about a year ago and focuses on piano, with at least one of the tracks featuring vocals. Her other albums feature the organ, which is what I saw her play in Calgary! Davachi’s music is very chill, and this is possibly the most ‘out there’ of all these suggestions.
BONUS: If you are interested in women’s contributions and role in electronic music and sound studies, I would highly recommend Pink Noises: women on electronic music and sound edited by Tara Rodgers.
Caravan Palace (multiple albums)
If you’re looking for something more high energy I would suggest the band Caravan Palace for something fun and different. Their music is often described as ‘electro swing’—give it a go, you’ll feel like you’re doing your delivery night scramble while in a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.
Their newest album Chronologic came out in 2019, and while I’m not familiar with it (a quick skim of it on YouTube seems like there are actually a lot of lyrics) the older albums Panic (2012) and self-titled album from 2008 are solid.
Orange by Caroline Shaw & Attacca Quartet
Caroline Shaw is kind of a big deal. In 2013 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Music*, and was the youngest person to do so (she was 30). Orange was released in summer 2019, and I for listeners like myself who don't know much about music, I would def say this is more like classical music.
As Orange is available on Bandcamp, if you are reading this before June 19, 2020, I strongly advise you wait til June 19 to purchase this -- Bandcamp is doing a fundraiser: "This Friday, June 19th (from midnight to midnight Pacific Time), we’re donating 100% of our share of sales to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice organization with a long history of effectively enacting change through litigation, advocacy, and public education." You can learn more about this fundraiser here.
Ratatat (multiple albums)
I swear sometimes that Ratatat got me through studying during my undergrad degree at UBC! Interestingly, I owe my discovery of this band to a random stranger at a bar years ago when I was a student. Said stranger was chatting to me and my friend and one of Ratatat’s songs came out and they asked us if we knew this band. We responded no, and they suggested that we check them out — good for studying, partying, anything—and they were right!
Like Caravan Palace, Ratatat tends to be more high energy. I had LP4, LP3, Classics, and their self-titled album on repeat during many a late night at the libraries on campus, and while these albums are older now, they were as good for writing a term paper then for me as they are now when I’m wading through Shotgun notes.
Yeo-Neun by Okkyung Lee
I'm super new to Okkyung Lee's music, just discovered her at the beginning of July 2020 while reading this. I was drawn in with the all the strings -- cello, harp, she's got it all. Noah Yoo's review on Pitchfork says the album, "[...] has melodies so pretty, they are almost pop. On “Another Old Story (옛날이야기),” taut strings respond to tightly knit melodic passages, as delicate notes trail in their wake like leaves lifted by a gentle wind."
Movie Soundtracks
A lot of movie soundtracks are just instrumental, classical, or otherwise don’t feature vocals. My favourites include any movies with soundtracks composed by Rachel Portman (which includes Chocolat, The Duchess, 2009’s Grey Gardens, and Never Let Me Go). Portman, by the way, was the first female composer to win an Academy Award in the category of Best Musical or Comedy Score back in 1996*
Other favoured soundtracks of mine sans lyrics include The Brothers Bloom by Nathan Johnson, Amélie by Yann Tiersen, and Pride and Prejudice (2005) by Dario Marianelli and Jean-Yves Thibaudet.
*I would take a moment to read up on these articles about the under-representation of women and non-binary composers both in film and orchestra:
10 Great Film Scores By Female Composers https://filmschoolrejects.com/10-great-film-scores-female-composers/
7 Must-Hear Recordings by Hildur Guðnadóttir, Who Just Made History at the Oscars https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/7-must-hear-recordings-by-hildur-gudnadottir-who-just-made-history-at-the-oscars/
Take note – why do women composers still take up less musical space? https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/mar/08/sound-and-music-female-composers-musicians-susanna-eastburn
Women Are Great Composers Too, Why Aren't They Being Heard? https://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2017/05/01/525930036/women-composers-not-being-heard
Female Composers Are Trying to Break Film’s Sound Barrier
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/movies/female-film-composers.html
