What is it about Stone Temple Pilots’ 1994 sophomore album Purple that keeps bringing me back? I didn’t really follow STP after Purple; in fact, I rarely even go back to their debut album Core, a record I listened to extensively when it came out. Yet, over the past year, I’ve been returning to Purple, again and again.

Last fall, I drove back to my childhood home, a ten hour drive, to see my mom who was in hospice at the time. I stayed a few days, spending time with her and seeing family members. When I left, I drove down the familiar interstate east, away from Louisiana, a road I traversed countless times during college and the years that followed. It’s a flat stretch of road, lined with pine trees and flood plains until you hit Mississippi. On that drive, I started playing some of the albums I used to listen to, and for some reason, I chose Purple.

When the groove of “Meatplow” started, I began thinking about the album as a whole, and it started to hit me that Purple, in many ways, is one of those rare albums that I can listen to from start to finish. Even though I am a huge Nirvana fan, and have been for years, I can’t say that In Utero or Nevermind are albums that I can play from start to finish and really enjoy. I’m looking at you “Serve the Servants” and “Stay Away.” Those albums are phenomenal, but even phenomenal albums have moments that we don’t enjoy.

I would never call Purple a masterpiece or perhaps even a completely phenomenal and transcendent album, yet it sticks with me. Part of it is nostalgia, flittering memories of listening to it while I was in high school, especially when I was doing community work at the Veteran’s Hospital. I’d have my Sony Walkman and some cassettes like Weezer’s debut album, In Utero, and Purple. I’d sit in a stairwell listening to it, from “Meatplow” to the hidden track “My Second Album,” a lounge act inspired track sung by Richard Peterson.

The nostalgia raises its head when I put the album on because the music brings backs memories and associations, not matter how fleeting they may be in my mind. When i physically purchased CD, I would remember where and when I got them. For example, I remember buying Bruce McCulloch’s Shame Based Man (an album I want to write about some day) at a Barnes and Noble in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, or The Gloria Record’s first ep at a Blockbuster Music in my hometown then going to Barnes and Noble and listening to it.

Today, though, I also think about my mother, even though we never listened to the album together and she wouldn’t enjoy it, for various reasons. I think about her because I put the album on the last time I saw her alive, as I drove back to my home a few states over. That drive has become a new memory associated with Purple, one added on top of the nostalgic memories of adolescence and coming of age. The album stirs within me different emotions and feelings, not necessarily tied directly to the songs themselves. It’s emotions and feelings connected , by threads spreading in my braid, between the album and my own experiences.

The entire first side of Purple carries me through a range of emotions, as good albums do. It follows the blueprint of albums such as In Utero with an ebb and flow from heavier songs such as the grooving “Vaseline” with its acoustic guitar underpinnings hinting at the later tracks or “Lounge Fly” with its buzzing intro to straight up pop songs such as “Interstate Love Song” with its melodic guitar riff to the slow moving “Still Remains” with one of my favorite lines: “If you should die before me, ask if you can bring a friend.” The first side of Purple moves through all of this before culminating in the acoustic “Pretty Penny” which reminds me of The Beatles, especially during the chorus.

Side two of Purple follows a trajectory that again ebbs and flows, moving from riff heavy “Silvergun Superman” and the slide guitar of “Big Empty” to punk filled songs such as “Unglued” and “Army Ants” before ending up with “Kitchenware & Candybars” (if we leave off the hidden track), a song that encapsulates the entire feel of the album from the quite opening to the cacophonous ending. It meanders and grows, bringing the eleven song album to a close with Scott Weiland screaming over Alice in Chainesque riffs, “What I wanted/ Is what I wanted/ Is what we wanted/ Is what she wanted.”

Like Nirvana’s songs, for the most part, I don’t know what the lyrics to songs like “Unglued” or “Lounge Fly” actually mean for me. Is that the point though? Music is much more than the lyrics. It’s a combination of instruments and sounds coming together to form something we connect with, in some way shape or form. It burrows into us and stitches connections within our psyches, bridging gaps and forming memories that reside with us for our entire lives. Music, like smells, brings to the forefront associations between it and specific spaces, emotions, or people in our lives.

There are a lot of albums and books that conjure up memories for me, but Purple has been sticking out in my mind a lot over the past year. It’s there because it connects so much in my life from those moments in 1994 when it came out and I was in high school, trying to find myself, to 2022 when I played it after the last time I saw my mom alive. It doesn’t matter if Purple is a masterpiece or one of the best albums ever. What matters is that for me it serves as a conduit to the past and people I love. It’s a record I can put on and play and sing along to while being transported somewhere familiar, somewhere I can never return but that lingers within me.

It’s for these reasons that Scott Weiland, Dean DeLeo, Robert DeLeo, and Eric Kretz’s Purple will always have a place in my life, no matter what happens.

What album has this effect on you? As always, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @silaslapham.