Just me and the water
Without lyrics to entice exegesis, music can become anything you want it to be, and it reaches places you can’t touch. Tonight I will share with you four instrumentals from my library, each reaching separate itches that other songs won’t scratch. My places are different than yours, of course. Leave a comment and let us know what yours are.
1. I grew up in the rural part of rural Pennsylvania, where at night I’d hear trains from across the cornfield and I’d wake uneasily, remembering the trouble I had gotten into that day and how mad my Dad got.
Tindersticks: Vertrauen II
2. I’d try to fall back to sleep, and suddenly I’m floating on a flooded world, my twin-size bed the last life raft for me and my friend from school. I hold her hand gently, and we become best friends, ready to be lovers when we get old enough.
Brian Eno: Deep Blue Day
3. Older now, the same waters are imagined, and they’re inside out now. I’m the flood, and the world is a stone in my stomach. Joy is terrible and close.
My Bloody Valentine: Glider
4. I’m still the flood, but now I’m friends with the water. I look over the tops of the trees of the childhood forest, over the farmers’ fields, over the toy trains, and into the window of a rowhouse with warm light.
The Clientele: The Dance Of The Hours
Well, The Smiths’ “Oscillate Wildly” and “Money Changes Everything.”
Felt instrumentals when Maurice Deebank was still in the band, especially on The Splendor of Fear.
Jay – I’d like to post a few of those Felt instrumentals, are you up for it?
I agree that “Glider” is as seasick as it gets; MBV’s “Instrumental B” is merely queasy by comparison. A good instrumental should be more than pretty or messy or formless (i.e. etherial) or, God knows, a genre exercise. And it sure as hell shouldn’t sound like a “sans vocal” mix like many B-sides of the 60s. So needless to say I don’t have too many favorites. My pick of late is Go! Team’s “Panther Dash,” a mash of surf, spy music, and Lower East Side guitar noise. Shut up and play.