DISCLAIMER: These won’t be proper reviews -as if I could write those- or have interesting technical tidbits on them. These are more of a “ah, that song reminds me of…” thing. Like the part you skip on a recipe. So it goes.

Album: Relish.

Release date: March 21, 1995.

Track: 7.

Moods: Bluesy, Jazzy, Longing, Accepting.

Sadly marred by the gargantuan success of One Of Us, Joan Osborne’s Relish album gets unjustly pigeonholed as a one hit wonder album. If people only gave it a few spins, they’d be surprised of the wide spectrum of genres contained within.

Soul, Blues, Jazz, Art pop, Funk. It’s all there and this album, like many from my collection, was a gift from my dad. A certain department store (palacio de hierro) used to hold a 3×2 sale every so often with CDs, and while he was getting big band classics, crooner albums, and musical theater collections, he’d buy a couple of albums for me. Could sound wholesome, but it was actually to deter my mum from saying “more albums?” and passing the blame on to me. Forever the scapegoat, me.

Relish was an early summer of 96 gift and Tampico was in the works for the holidays. My aunt was always warm and welcoming and I used to just idle the days away at her home, sometimes doing errands, sometimes just drowning on books, and most often than not, stupidly walking under the sun, drenched in sweat due to the 100% humidity of the place.

Relish was my summer of 1996. I would just sit by the Carpintero Lagoon, listening to the album while a gentle breeze would give us all a bit of respite. The houses near Tampico’s city centre were a bit unkempt, if not downright in shambles. Rotten wooden doors barely clinging to life with rusted out nails, black mold on all walls, a creaking ceiling fan here and there with spider carcasses dangling about. I would just walk through all those old bits of Tampico, with Joan Osborne on repeat until the batteries died. Rob Hyman’s masterful key work on Ladders kept me going.

I love One of us, but I’ll be the first to admit that it was overplayed as fuck. Ladder is unfortunate enough to be placed after the big hit, and lazy listeners who didn’t bother rewinding would get those opening key bits, mesmerising as they were, accompanied by a drum sampled from T. Rex’s Mambo Sun. Those listeners were rewarded for their idleness. Forever the slacker, me.

Ladders is hopeful, cheeky, and comforting. Joan Osborne’s vocals are the right type of dreamy, but still with one foot placed firmly on the ground. “You wanted a long flirtation / your plane doesn’t ever land”. Ouch. If I only knew then, what I know now. Forever the bashful, me.

I still play Relish, not all of it, as I find Pensacola hitting too close to home. But Ladders and Right Hand Man always get love from me. I haven’t been to Tampico since 2002 and my aunt passed away in 2013. I think those halcyon days will never come back, those houses are now remodeled into airbnbs and we no longer waste batteries on walkman devices. But Ladders will always be there, like a faded Polaroid you revisit, sigh with the good memories, and carefully put away.

—Sam J. Valdés López