Guest List: Her Space Holiday Says Goodbye

In early 2011, singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Marc Bianchi announced that Her Space Holiday (out now on Bianchi's own puckishly-named label No More Good Ideas) would be his last release under the Her Space Holiday name, which he's recorded under for the last 15 years. The album, an emotionally rich and sonically complex release far removed from the moody bedroom electro-pop of Her Space Holiday's earliest work, has echoes of artists as varied as Arcade Fire, Neutral Milk Hotel and late-era Prefab Sprout. As Bianchi closes the books on Her Space Holiday, he provides this Critical Mob exclusive on the songs that made him want to become a musician in the first place, as well as those that kept him going.

Marc Bianchi: I have been getting really sentimental lately. I don't know if it's the state of the world, me turning 38, or if it's simply from going to so many funerals. Whatever the reason, I have been playing years of footage in my head recently. Flickering shots from all different chapters of my life. Some painful ones of course, but mostly they are beautiful moments. Ripe with humor and joy. Even with all the location changes, variance in characters and wardrobe, there is one constant that flows through all of the scenes and that is music. Our lives are basically movies anyway, so it only makes sense that there would be a soundtrack to backdrop all of our victories and defeats.

Music can transport you effortlessly to a different time and place. It can recall emotions you forgot you had. It can make you relive moments against your will. You could be in the grocery store at 2 in the morning picking up cold medicine in your sweatpants, next thing you know "Didn't We Almost Have It All" comes trailing through the crackling speakers above and you're instantly 14 again. Helpless. Watching your mother clutch your father's photo in her hands while she sobs uncontrollably, asking the universe "What are we going to do now huh? Tell me! Please, what are we going to do now?" All of this instant emotion triggered by a simple, melancholic pop song from 1987.

Each defining moment of my life has had a song attached to it. Sometimes it was playing in real time while the event was unfolding. Other times it was put in rotation days later during the "processing" or "salvaging." Below are ten songs that conjure up memories of life-changing experiences every time I hear them. This soundtrack plays in chronological order, with track one being attached to the earliest of memories. These songs are connected to the moment I first learned about friendship, when I lost my virginity, when I learned to drive, when I first saw death, when I first loved, when I first lost hope, when I first learned what it meant to be sorry, when I learned about the true resilience of the human spirit, when I learned to forgive, and finally what it felt like to be truly happy for the first time.