three

[amethysting.livejournal.com]

Someone Great
LCD Soundsystem
Sound of Silver
2007

I woke up this morning with that familiar, sad feeling at the back of my throat.

I downloaded Sound of Silver when it first came out, but didn’t really listen to it. Consequently, I heard “Someone Great” for the first time at the Musée d’Art Contemporain last September. I thought the museum was a bit of a write-off and was about to leave when I decided I might as well check out a music video exhibit in the museum’s basement. The exhibit consisted of folding chairs set up in front of a huge screen in a very dark, velvet-curtained room.

The videos were shown on a continuous loop, so people were constantly coming and going. I walked in to a video-in-progress. Nature shots. A country song. Snow melting off leafless branches. Next a video featuring Robert Downey Jr. singing straight into the camera. An awkward teenage girl lip-synching ‘NSYNC’s “I Want You Back.”   

And then “Someone Great.” When the song started, it felt like my heart was waking up; like it was thumping in time to the pulsing beats that open the song. I like how that beat steadily throbs throughout the entire song. The little electronic blips and beeps that eventually join in make me think of a hospital; of the beating heart and the machines that track its rhythm. There is something sterile about these sounds, and yet, they bring something up; some vague, sad feeling from the pit of my stomach. The video is beautiful. A two-dimensional shadow-girl weaves her way through a grocery store, runs her fingers over the spines of LPs in a used record shop, greets friends at a roof-top party. The combination of the words being sung and the images in the video made me shift in my seat; made my eyes well up.  

I never notice that this song is over six minutes long. I’m carried by the music—floating over the sound of a child’s toy xylophone, the scratching of a record, the lyrics delivered in that calm, melodic monotone. Towards the end, that repeated “and it keeps coming/till the day it stops” makes me feel nauseous, and anxious, and hopeful. I love the “safe for the moment/saved for the moment” too. It’s like being inside of this song—feeling it trickle into my ears from my headphones—makes me feel safe for a moment; like I can kind of lose myself in the song’s beauty and forget about everything else.

The worst is all the lovely weather,
I'm stunned, it's not raining.
The coffee isn't even bitter,
Because, what's the difference?

 

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. ♥