Saturday, October 4, 2008

a plan to get us out of here




this was an album that came tucked inside a package from someone special to me. music is one of those gifts that sticks around and stays with me, especially when there is something about it so connected and relevant to life, and to a connection i share with someone, a cord of intimacy and memory that an album can contain. this album stayed in my car for weeks and weeks. i played it so much, and so often, that it became the soundtrack to the 210 freeway to the 134 freeway, and back again. i started to expect certain songs to play at particular turns in the road, and i took in the lyrics and they took me inside of them. the songs, they worked their way into a few stories i wrote down, and a few that just lived in my head - call them fantasies, or imaginary friend play dates, or maybe just the way my visual consciousness processes music i fall in love with.

very loud is my favorite. it is full of personal connection and meaning, and it has those unspoken and interwoven truths that i used to stop and wonder about. did the sender know how much the both of us are in this song, or how significant it would become to me during our ins and our outs. it is full of longing, of determination, of heartache, and of desire. i always - always - always have to turn it up, and i always - always - always have to sing along. maybe you knew it would remind me of you, with each and every listen.

the comeback is a near perfect start to an album. it has that feeling of starting something, or to be more precise, starting something over again. it is that feeling of knocking on someone's door, or dialing their number with shaking hands, because you know someone has to make the move; someone has to say the first word; someone has to say "i miss you, and i was wrong." there is that tinge of sadness to it, and that stain of jaded hesitancy, a brutal honesty, i suppose. the lyrics match up perfect with the rough smoky vocals. together it sounds like too much coffee, half a pack of cigarettes, or a shared bottle of whiskey sentiments - something akin to "i've been up all night waiting for you to show back up again."

please please please starts up and i am scanning the room searching for johnny marr, and waiting with breath half-held for morrissey to start singing. it has that jangly, streets of manchester on a bicycle kind of feeling to it. and the melancholic trills and melodic tale of a mundane existance, and the wish for the return of an errant lover. a cry of please don't forget me, you don't forget me, do you? and yet there is a pop-drenched resilence to it, a feigned happiness, we all wear that mask sometimes, don't we? so many stories, this album is just overflowing with so many stories.

oh sweetheart. this reminds me of something - or maybe just a sometime - though i can't quite place it. it is more a feeling; a time and place; and old apartment with certain corners with stacks of books, and particular smells of sandalwood incense and half-full bottles of vodka. back then we all drank vodka, but now i cannot stomach the stuff. there is something early nineties to this, something reminiscent of songs i used to spin back then. i cannot pinpoint it exactly, but i know i like it, the way it sounds, and the way memory recall it hands over to me.
go sadness makes me cry. there is a sacred beauty to it, a tragic beauty, the feeling of goodbye. the music, it sounds like a lullabye. the kind you cry yourself to sleep to, a damp pillow under your cheek as you slip into a dreamstate comfort. i love the song though. it is so many kinds of beautiful.thanks for the album. i am pretty sure you knew how much i'd love it.

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