...view of a burning city

…i’ve always held some sort of strange fascination with the last track on an album. i don’t really know why…there’s just something about that last track that tends to move me more than any other track on an album. for some reason (to me at least) they tend to be the tracks that evoke the most emotions. there’s a sense that the artist is emotionally spent, and that last track is that final outpouring of emotion; that feeling of closuer. it may also be because most closing tracks tend to be epic in some way. they may be grandiouse and almost cinematic in scope; or they may be sparse and lilting - as if the artist is so spent from the emotional outpouring of the rest of the record that all they can muster is a simple melody and maybe a few poingient lyrics. i like that feeling you get from those tracks, it’s the feeling of ghosts - that’s the best way i can describe it…

…so with that, here is a list of my (current) top five favorite closing tracks…

(in no particular order)

• a lack of color - death cab for cutie - transatlanticism
• lots more stairs - the octopus project - one ten hundred thousand million
• the ghosts of saturday night (after hours at napoleone’s pizza house) - tom waites - the heart of saturday night
• hurt - nine inch nails - the downward spiral
• videotape - radiohead - in rainbows