Music

Song Times

Chill Music, Music Video, Video

Tonight, I was trying to think of which song I had listened to the most times in my life all the way through. And that’s difficult, as I listened to quite a few songs in high school over and over again in a way that I just do not tend to now.

A solid guess is “Bells Ring” by Mazzy Star. Damn, I must’ve queued that song up dozens of times in a row for a few years; it felt like its own tiny world to explore.

Incidentally, I saw that performance above the first and only time it aired. I even recorded it on VHS. Not sure why that version is cut off at the end, but that’s a great one despite the poor audio. In most ways, it betters the album version. I think Hope’s performance in particular is superior in the live edition. She sounds more pouty, somehow more depressedly impassioned, and more mysterious there. The album version is more sterile and more restrained despite using electric instruments.

The album version, though, does have a damn fine outro.

Shudder

Chill Music

Someone said that The Sundays’ bandmembers provided a canvas for Harriet Wheeler to paint her voice on. That’s the most beautiful and accurate phrasing I’ve ever heard about one of the most exquisitely transcendent voices in music.

That song still holds up and is an all-time great.

When “Goodbye” comes out of its very long bridge (really, it’s two bridges mashed together1) and Harriet breaks in at 3:58 with that “Oh, as the heavens shudder….” — that is pure frickin’ music magic there.

  1. Most longer songs have something like intro then verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge then chorus/verse/chorus/chorus then outro or something like that. “Goodbye” is an atypical song because it doesn’t have a chorus and the middle is either a really long bridge, two bridges mashed together, or an interlude and a bridge, depending on your inclinations. The outro is short and inconclusive — which of course is deliberate. It is intended to leave you unsettled and unsatisfied, while the rest of the structure of the song is also supposed to sonically mirror a lack of conclusion and unfocused frustration, anger and questioning. The repeating interrogative-like bass figures and the interspersed musically-disconnected guitar lines mimic unfocused thoughts in the wake of a betrayal. The declaration near the end of the song that “I belong to you” is manifestly untrue, and this is why it’s asserted so forcefully. It’s a wish framed as a romantic declaration, a lament posing as a confirmation.

1995

Chill Culture, Music

This line from Molly Nilsson’s “1995” is probably the single best encapsulation of what it felt like to live then: “Back in ’95, we thought we were standing on the threshold to the end of time.”

Nailed it in one line. I wish I had Molly’s succinctness, but that is as close as one can get in words to the feeling of living in the era after the Berlin Wall fell and before the Oklahoma City Bombing, before 9/11, before the world turned.

Yes, we were wrong and in retrospect delusional that it was the end of history. That there was a brighter future in store. That we’d solve racism and hatred and blood feuds and war. But it sure as fuck felt like that. That optimism perfused everything. Those who claim it did not were too young to remember or are just lying. Most of them have some agenda, as well.

But I was there. I know what happened and what it was like.

Con CPR

Chill Music

For many years, I lived my days through and by music. It was the continuous CPR that kept air in my lungs during the worst stretches of my life.

As I’ve said before, without Hope, Harriet, Tanya, Billy, Tori and others, I would not have made it. They showed me the better world that awaited me if I could find a way to turn the curse that was my existence. And I got there, barely. But I did. I’ll ever be thankful to them no matter the artistic merit their works do or do not possess. They kept me on this side of the dirt.

Early Hope

Chill Music

This is worth watching the first part of for a brief glimpse of Hope Sandoval when she was very young. In the video she’s 21 and though she doesn’t say anything or sing, she has the affect and mannerisms of someone much younger.

Just looking at that brief clip, if I had to guess her age I’d say she was 15-16. She also looks vastly different than her later much more goth-y look.

Strange seeing her like that, really. You almost get to hear her laugh.

Horsegirl Chat

Chill Music, Video, Video (other)

I have to like a band or an artist quite a lot just to listen to them talk. Horsegirl is one of those bands. They have wide-ranging taste, which is about what I expected given their sound and their sonic callbacks.

What’s up with the ridiculously-loud and super-repetitive background music, though? Bad producing choice. Perhaps to make up for the terrible mic.