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. ♥