Wednesday's Emotional Setup: Comforting Sounds
Do you have any idea how much I hate not updating my journal? Every week that there's no entries between each WES (or worse, as in the past two weeks, I forget to do it as well), I feel bad.
But these days, between the paper, Stylus, school, moving, holidays, friends, girlfriend, and so on and so forth ad bloody infinitum, my time is at an all-time premium. Again, it's in kind of a nice way, but there are downsides as well.
Comforting sounds. That's what I need. But wait, the actual song (from Danish neo-shoegazers Mew) isn't nearly as reassuring as I might like:
I don't feel alright
In spite of the comforting sounds you make
And the back of the CD booklet explains the title of the album, Frengers: "Not quite friends but not quite strangers". An uneasy haze of slight unreality hangs over the album, the pure high vocals, the thick, warm, fuzzy blanket of guitars, the weird disconnect that has enabled me to hear the whole thing for the first time without really listening. I like a good shoegazer band probably more than the next person, so it has just been lurking in my outer ear, lulling me into contentment as I try to clean up my inbox.
But 'Comforting Sounds' itself, the lengthy end track, is a sightly different beast. It sounds, when I'm only paying half-attention to lyrics, a bit sweetly nostalgic. And then the singing stops and the de rigeur instrumental ending occupies the second half of the nine minutes. It goes on, strings swelling demurely in the back, drums keeping a bog standard beat, and the guitar doing something that guitars have been doing in these sorts of records for a good, I don't know, 15? 20? years now.
It's no Readymade, and the quasi-theremin bit they bring in is no 'Hamburg', but I've heard that abum and that song a million times now. This is enough, this is a sound that is new but familair, and now it lulls me to sleep.
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But these days, between the paper, Stylus, school, moving, holidays, friends, girlfriend, and so on and so forth ad bloody infinitum, my time is at an all-time premium. Again, it's in kind of a nice way, but there are downsides as well.
Comforting sounds. That's what I need. But wait, the actual song (from Danish neo-shoegazers Mew) isn't nearly as reassuring as I might like:
I don't feel alright
In spite of the comforting sounds you make
And the back of the CD booklet explains the title of the album, Frengers: "Not quite friends but not quite strangers". An uneasy haze of slight unreality hangs over the album, the pure high vocals, the thick, warm, fuzzy blanket of guitars, the weird disconnect that has enabled me to hear the whole thing for the first time without really listening. I like a good shoegazer band probably more than the next person, so it has just been lurking in my outer ear, lulling me into contentment as I try to clean up my inbox.
But 'Comforting Sounds' itself, the lengthy end track, is a sightly different beast. It sounds, when I'm only paying half-attention to lyrics, a bit sweetly nostalgic. And then the singing stops and the de rigeur instrumental ending occupies the second half of the nine minutes. It goes on, strings swelling demurely in the back, drums keeping a bog standard beat, and the guitar doing something that guitars have been doing in these sorts of records for a good, I don't know, 15? 20? years now.
It's no Readymade, and the quasi-theremin bit they bring in is no 'Hamburg', but I've heard that abum and that song a million times now. This is enough, this is a sound that is new but familair, and now it lulls me to sleep.
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