A few weeks before comedian Tig Notaro was set to perform at her regular gig Tig & Friends at L.A. theater Largo, her doctor broke the news that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was just another psychic gut-punch in a year full of them, from the end of Notaro’s long-term relationship to the death of her mother. She wasn’t sure how she was going to tell her absurdist jokes with this cloud hanging over her, but in the hours before the show, Tig hit upon an opener that made her laugh. So, as you’ll hear on her 2012 album Live (pronounced like “Live To Tell”), her first words are, “Good evening! Hello! I have cancer!”
For the next hour, Notaro pored over this news and the events of the preceding year, channeling personal tragedy into a deeply funny evening that left the audience and anyone who’s listened since amazed at her candor and bravery. As Lena Dunham put it on Twitter, “Listened to Tig Notaro LIVE right before bed and woke up surer than ever about art’s job. #tig #tig #tig.”
Dunham’s point about art’s ability to heal and offer catharsis in our darkest times is one that has always been a thematic mainstay across popular culture. It’s why music fans seek out these kinds of songs and albums: We need to feel our pain reflected back to us as a reminder that we’re not alone. Most often, that is done in the service of a romantic breakup; any given music library inevitably contains hundreds, if not thousands, of songs about heartbreak. But when it comes to the particular emotions that accompanies yourself or a loved one dealing with a life-threatening illness like cancer, the field grows much narrower. (Though curiously, as you'll notice below, this theme has grown slightly more common within music in recent years.) The songs and albums that do touch on these issues, however, can rank among the most heartfelt and heartening music made.
Such is the case with two new albums that grapple with the emotions surrounding a parent dying of cancer, by two very different bands: Blind Pilot, one of the crown jewels of Oregon’s indie-folk scene, and Touché Amoré, the hardcore-tinged punk band from Southern California. As befits their respective sounds, the two bands tackle this subject matter in wildly disparate ways. And Then Like Lions, the recently released album by Blind Pilot, is filled with warm, rich instrumentation, heavy on acoustic guitar and decorated here and there with strings and horns. It’s the perfect backdrop for band leader Israel Nebeker’s poetic explorations of the loss of his father and the end of a 13-year relationship that came one atop the other, with the images of a blackened forest, eroding landscapes, and an ever-changing sky helping to spell out his shifting emotional state.
Touché Amoré frontman Jeremy Bolm doesn’t bother with such conceits. Not only did he name the album Stage Four (out on September 16), but, over his band’s pulsating attack, he unpacks his feelings about his mother’s 2014 death lucidly and brutally. He spends much of “New Halloween” berating himself for being on stage when she breathed her last breath (“I was told that you wouldn’t have known/Told myself that I was where you’d want me to be/But it’s not that easy”), and in “Water Damage” recounts the flood of anger and regret that came over him standing in the kitchen of his childhood home.
By the end of each album, though, there is relief, hope, and a welcome readiness to move forward. For Bolm, that solace arrives at the top of a New York skyscraper, sensing that his mother still “lives there under the lights” of the city. Nebeker also points his gaze outward on the final song on And Then Like Lions, but he opens his arms up wide with it. As the music builds to a crescendo of splashy drums, Hammond organ, and the bleat of a trumpet, he encourages listeners to trust their inner strength and the support of their loved ones.
Like these two recent highlights, the works listed below are also records that seek to make some sense out of the senselessness of getting sick or watching a loved one become seriously ill. Through each of them, we are asked to go to one of life’s scariest places, and to not shy away from what we feel when we get there. As terrifying as it can be to face that abyss head on, the music might also provide some much-needed solace and comfort.
David Bowie — Blackstar (2016)
No one outside of David Bowie’s immediate family knew that Blackstar was going to be his closing statement. But when he passed from cancer three days after the album was released, it set an already fantastic collection into an entirely new light that was at times mournful and celebratory. Backed by a modern jazz ensemble, Bowie uses songs like “Dollar Days” and “Lazarus” to express his readiness to let go of the storied life that he led. That acceptance allows him to have a little fun along the way, like his quoting of “New Career In A New Town” (an instrumental from his 1977 album Low) at the beginning of “I Can’t Give Everything Away” as a winking acknowledgement that he was about to embark on his biggest “career change” yet.
Boosie Badazz — In My Feelings (Goin’ Thru It) (2016)
Early on this recent mixtape from Boosie Badazz, the Louisiana-based rapper sounds very much like Tig Notaro, plainly expressing, “Coldest words I ever heard was/‘Torrence Harris, I’m sorry. You got cancer.’” The diagnosis of kidney cancer from his doctor in 2015 was an even bigger wake-up call than the five years he spent in jail for drug and murder charges. And while he survived a successful surgery to remove the affected organ, the experience put the prolific rapper in a contemplative spirit on his first release of 2016. Throughout the mixtape, Boosie reckons with the sins of his past while also facing up to his mortality (“We all got to die/You got to understand that, son,” he says at the beginning of “I Know They Gone Miss Me.”) And while much of it keeps to the slippery beats favored by Southern hip-hop producers, there’s an air of spiritual anguish that floats through each song, particularly “I Know…,” which lets Boosie rhyme over nothing but gospel-inspired piano chords.
Sufjan Stevens — Carrie & Lowell (2015)
After years of releasing brash, beautiful albums packed stem to stern with sounds and ideas, Sufjan Stevens’ most recent album was a restrained work that forced focus on his often wounded voice. It was the necessary complement to the songs, which find him bracing against the tidal waves of emotion that followed the death of his estranged and troubled mother from stomach cancer in 2012. The stark intimacy of the album is almost difficult to listen to at times, but that’s also the source of its enormous power and healing effects. When he gets stuck on the phrase “we’re all gonna die” on “Fourth of July,” it is by turns resentful and resigned. By the end of the song, though, the line has taken on a new meaning, as Stevens encourages himself and anyone listening to truly appreciate the time they have on this planet.
Gang of Youths — The Positions (2015)
The debut album by this Australian indie band was the byproduct of one of the darkest periods of lead singer Dave Le’aupepe’s young life. Just a few years prior, his wife was diagnosed with stage four cancer, at which point they moved to Nashville for her treatment. While she survived, everything else around their lives fell apart (including their marriage and their bank account), all culminating in Le’aupepe’s drunken suicide attempt. Wending through poignant cello-led ballads and explosive bar rock, the songs on The Positions don’t shy away from the lurid details and agony of this period. Le’aupepe often struggles to find the silver lining or light at the end of the tunnel, but the fact that they both ultimately lived through it is solace enough.
The Antlers — Hospice (2009)
Peter Silberman, the leader of the Antlers, has been cagey about whether this expansive concept album carries any autobiographical details within its sonorous electronic textures and scratchy post-rock. But listening to its tale of a woman dying of cancer and the romantic relationship she enters into with her hospice worker, there’s something about the richness of detail and emotion that makes it feel like it came from someplace very real. Whatever you may believe about its fact or fiction, Hospice remains a deeply affecting experience that perfectly encapsulates the feeling of holding tight to those last few days and months of person’s life before letting them go forever.
Warren Zevon — The Wind (2003)
As with Blackstar, Warren Zevon knew that The Wind was going to be his final album, having been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. With that thought in the foreground of his mind, the singer-songwriter used the record as both an all-star celebration of a long career—welcoming in friends like Bruce Springsteen, Emmylou Harris, and Tom Petty—as well as a thoughtful rumination on what was to come. The LP culminates in the shuffling folk of “Keep Me In Your Heart,” one of Zevon’s most direct and earnest statements, sung to his loved ones as reminder that “if I leave you, it doesn’t mean I love you any less.”
Current 93 — Sleep Has His House (2000)
Taking its title from Anna Kavan’s novel about someone retreating farther and farther away from reality, this album by the experimental ensemble Current 93 mirrors that notion in the passing of vocalist David Tibet’s father. The poignant abstract lyrics within are deepened by haunting, pastoral psych-folk (written by Current 93 cohort and Antony Hegarty collaborator Michael Cashmore) that centers around the haunting drone of a harmonium. But the most powerful instrument on the album is Tibet’s voice, which is mixed to lay just above everything else so you can hear every waver and tinge of sadness that is baked into every last word he sings.
eels — Electro-Shock Blues (1998)
The second album by Mark Oliver Everett’s long-running project has much of the same modern pop elements and whimsical spirit that ran through eels’ debut, Beautiful Freak. But here it is in the service of songs that recount the suicide of Everett’s sister and his mother’s death from lung cancer. To that end, it’s possibly the one album on this list that’s the easiest to spin even during happy times. Digging under the surface of Everett’s ’60s and ’70s-inspired pop reveals his deep pain and a more profound appreciation of the world around him. As he sings on the closing track, “P.S. You Rock My World,” he doesn’t know where he’s going but he’s ready to enjoy the journey while it lasts.
Lou Reed — Magic and Loss (1992)
The 1991 deaths of celebrated songwriter Doc Pomus and Warhol associate Rotten Rita left deep marks on Lou Reed’s life and inspired one of his strongest solo albums. While the restrained rock found within is imbued with the sleek, slightly overproduced sound of the era, the heart of this material remains strong and true as he explores his relationships with both men and the fragility of existence. Reed, like most of the artists mentioned here, comes away with one simple message that he uses to close the album: “There’s a bit of magic in everything/And then some loss to even things out.”
Joni Mitchell — Mingus (1979)
In the last years of jazz legend Charles Mingus’ life, he suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease, the neurological disorder that affects all voluntary muscle movement. While he couldn’t play bass any longer, he continued composing and collaborating to the end, including his contributions to this jazz-folk fusion album led by Joni Mitchell. Naming the album after him was just one way to express how large his presence loomed on this record. Interspersed throughout are little recordings of Mingus scat singing and talking, most poignantly about his own funeral and other mortality-adjacent topics. And each song—recorded with members of Weather Report and jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock—evokes the late artist’s puckish spirit, political fervor, and bawdy exuberance.