three.

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

Obstacle 1
Artist: Charlotte Martin
Album: Reproductions
Year: 2007
♥: Two reasons not to post: 1) This is a December song, through to the core. 2) I've been racking my brain trying to remember if I've already told you about this song, and I think maybe I have, but ---

Two reasons to post: 1) This song kills me dead. 2) WE ARE GOING TO SEE INTERPOL TONIGHT!!!!

I downloaded a ton of Charlotte Martin to listen to in Vienna, and the Reproductions cover album ended up being my favourite [at the time]. I think it's too easy to consider her Tori-lite, and something about that cover album breaks my heart. Before lighting upon this particular song on the album, I went through Bizarre Love Triangle, I Am Stretched on Your Grave, and Song to the Siren. The songs followed me through frozen Vienna, providing a strong zap of emotion when I felt like I was getting too far from myself -- this album is a huge part of why I was able to pull myself out of that 2009 hell-mire.

When I first stopped skipping over this one: I was walking away from Schonbrunn [note that one of my photos from that day is the base image for the graphic!], not having gone inside because I arrived too late and it was a Saturday. There was supposed to be a cafe nearby; The Nutcracker was waiting for me; I was cold and hungry, but it had just started snowing and the streetlights had just started coming on and then: "I wish I could eat the salt off of your lost faded lips." Wow. This cover exemplifies cold foreign architecture; cathedrals and caffeine; solitude. It made me feel powerful -- treading down the sidewalk in those steel-toed boots, alone but more alive than I'd been in a year.

So. I love the original, of course, but to be totally honest, I prefer her version to Interpol's. I know I know -- but. There's still something desperate, raw, in her rendition; she still suffuses her voice with something vibrant and a little violent. And, god, when she's crying out "she puts the weights" -- when she sings the "it's in the way that she walks / her heaven is never enough" line -- I die every time. She's losing her shit just as hard as Paul Banks -- but it's perfectly consonant, though still messy, in its chaotic beauty. Fucking stunning.

Moreover, this is kind of the 'literate girl' theme song: "But she can read, she can read, she can read -- she's bad."  Yeah, through to the core -- but the very best kind. ♥

Comments

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

1) It's interesting posting a cover, because it's almost like posting two songs, isn't it? I of course had to listen to BOTH the original and cover versions back to back over and over again.

2) I love that Charlotte Martin does on the piano what Interpol does on the guitar. Very cool.

3) I am going to make a t-shirt that has this dead center:
"She can read
She can read
She can read
She's bad."

4) I like when CM gets to the "It's in the way that she posed" verse and that drum is boom booming in the background.

5) "It's in the way that she walks
Her heaven is never enough
She puts the weights in my heart
She puts, oh she puts the weights into my little heart."
Dude. I die. And I agree, (after a zillion back and forth listens) that CM kills the "she puts the weights" refrain at the end.

6) Isn't it awesome when you stop skipping a song and take the time to listen to it and it turns out to be AWESOME/LIFE-ALTERING?

7) I listened to CM's version on the way to work this morning, walking in my leaky boots and with my broken umbrella and it was perfect. I could picture Vienna, the streets, the Schonbrunn (when you go back, make a point to go back, it's lovely inside), the cold, that satisfying alone-but-not-lonely feeling I sometimes have.

[cabaretlights.livejournal.com]

I ALSO WANTED TO SAY:
3) You better make one for me too.

and generally: I love love love reading your comments on the posts, because I have to immediately listen to the song again as related to your observations. It's awesome.