Dogs that love the rain

Being a soulless scientismist, I am less aware of music. Consequently, I've decided to take Pete's concept in a bit of a different direction. Here are a few litmus-paper tracks taken at different depths of history.

Music I was raised with: Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley and the Wailers. My exposure to any Reggae or Ska apart from the patron saint is pretty limited, and this isn't even my favourite track of his. I listened to it a whole lot as a child, though.

The first music I purchased included You're in the Air by REM. My abiding affection for REM is attested by the fact that I included this track in a custom playlist I made a week ago. (It was called "Bishop Princes".) It's not the intention, but I don't know a track that better summarises the haze of angst and confusion that is being a young teenager.

The teenage years were dominated by REM and my trajectory through Radio 1's key demographic, and consequently I listened to rockstars like Coldplay and Stereophonics: Pick a Part that's New is as good an illustration as any. When I arrived at university, pretty much the first thing I did was to stick in REM's Monster album and mash play: Track one is What's the Frequency Kenneth.

Association with indesque types gives my mid-years litmus: I fought in a war by Belle and Sebastian. This will always be associated with the chronic friction between me and the indesques based on my two most unpopular opinions: poetry is just bad prose and CS Lewis's arguments blow chunks. Hard.

There was a fairly distinct discontinuity at the end of my third year, because most people graduated. Going into the fourth year entailed a lot of realisations, like "I have no ambitions beyond graduation" and "Some of my friends are sub-editors now". One summer-vacation track is The Lord God Bird by Sufjan Stevens (download), introduced to me by the rebirth of music radio. The song was played as a requiem for London, which gives it more staying power in my mind because I was on the Tube later that same day.

Another track I first heard on that podcast was Woman King (download) by Iron and Wine, which might be considered the seal on my process of musical americanization. The actual nod for my fourth-year title track, though, is going to go to The Trapeze Swinger, if only because it reminds me of all the funfairs we went on.

What's the track for The Loughborough Year? I don't know, though Calexico's Black Heart is looking strong.