Where has the time gone? The last week has passed like a needle skipping over a record (gratuitous vinyl reference for the over 35s, there), with snatches of reality blaring out in between bursts of static and ear-numbing scrapes. And all the time, the sensation of time ticking away, a gentle but insistent ticking to remind me of the things I promised myself I'd do, of the plans I'd made for this afternoon, or that weekend.
And on the subject of ticking, I've been listening to a gentle, insistent song that has spent the last year slowly winding its way around my gut, like an indestructible garden weed. It starts with a ticking clock, a single piano note, a thrumming bass drum, slowly gathering strength, until "I’ve been the needle and the thread/Weaving figure eights and circles round your head/I try to laugh but cry instead/Patiently wait to hear the words you’ve never said."
In contrast to the many, many songs that bleed passion, conviction or desire that I've written about before, this is a song of shoulder-shrugged, almost bland acceptance. Yes, the singer knows, as he says, "I’m letting you down," but then again, "There’s only so much I can do for you/After all of the things you put me through." You get the sense this is a transactional relationship that's finally broken down due to a lack of credit.
I like, I mean LIKE, this song. Maroon 7 are as tight as any band Stevie Wonder put together and Adam Levine sings like a god. Anyone who saw them perform at the Live 8 concert can attest to the fact that they can do it live, too.
It's a slow, gently-charged song that forsakes the medieval passion and grandiloquent gestures of another time for, effectively, a shrug and a mutter of "whatever." And sometimes that's about as much as we can muster.
3 comments:
they get a lot of flak from so-called-critics, but in my book they are allright.
THey do get a lot of flak, don't they? I hate when critics casually dismiss a band simply because they play mainstream music. Mainstream doesn't necessarily mean "crap," but the critics and other music snobs like to lump it all together with Britney and The Backstreet Boys. It's just not so!
i think Nat is right about mainstream. what on earth is wrong with being mainstream. doesn't mean that the music is less worthy only that it is easier to listen to. besides if we didn't have a mainstream how wwould we know or be able to appreciate leftfield stuff?
it is a big, big place is pop music and certainly big enough to support all sorts of acts.
Post a Comment