Ohrenschmaus

you break away
without a sound

Why have fun on carnival if you can also be depressive and suicidal? The thing about this slow, dark, brooding song from sunny LA is that it never actually brings me down. On the contrary in a way it lifts me up, it works like a balm for the wounded soul, when I am in a bad mood this kind of heavy tuneful music is like a friend who comforts me. Besides that the CD this is on which was one of my 40 albums from this project is our favourite soundtrack for bed action. The gradually evolving songs with lots of pauses and the deep baritone make it easy to totally forget about the rest of the world and just do it. The slower, the better.

There are things I want to do but I don’t know
If they will be with you, if they will be with you
There are things I want to say but I don’t know
If they will be to you, if they will be to you

The ninth song and already the third one from 1991. It definitely has to do with the fact that during that year I seriously got into listening to indie rock but I also think that 1991 objectively was one of the most exciting years in rock music history.

It took me some time to appreciate the music of the band in question. In the beginning I found it boring and too soft. In comparison to the other music at the time I might have had a point. But after a while I got into their extremely tuneful version of noisy pop (that’s how the French DJ from France Inter, Bernard Lenoir called this kind of music, others called it power pop). They are from Scotland and there is something about the knack of Scottish bands for melody. Could it have to do with their rough, hard, germanic accent which they can hide when singing? What always amazes me is that I can’t hear their accent when they sing but when they talk it kills me.

The name of this song which I only found out about a while ago still makes me smile. It basically condenses how I spent my vacations when I was twentysomething. The word is invented. Like many German words it concatenates two other words. It makes me think of the image for a hangover a Scottish bloke told me on my travels. It’s when your head feels like a box of frogs.

That verse above always breaks my heart when I hear them sing it. It is so bloody cruel. Because somehow I imagine she is in love with him which is probably totally off the mark. Anyways this is a song I can bath in and bathing (together with walking) is my favourite pastime. One last advice: I think on headphones this sounds better than on loudspeakers. But what good song doesn’t?

Look at me, I always get the blame
But I can’t even learn to spell my name
I like to read, I like to write
But where I live I learn to fight

Another light-weight song I also chose for nostalgic reasons. When this album came out everybody within our clique in Luxembourg purchased it within a couple of weeks. It was the soundtrack to the early summer of 1991. A very consistent album of easy-going europop numbers by a supergroup which for once delivered the goods. The lyrics were not exactly poetry but that has always been part of the charm of the songs the singer wrote in this or his more famous other band. It is weird that this beat driven music which uses a drum machine, a synthesizer and many electronic sounds from the can did actually find the way into my ear. One reason might be that I was younger at the time and more open, other and more important reasons are probably that the melodies despite all the elaborate production are breezy and that there is this sunny, good vibrations side attached to the tracks. There might be better songs on this album than the one I selected here but this one has the advantage that it lasts 5 minutes and 27 seconds. That’s what iTunes says at least.

To lay underneath the red sky there

Tom Ewing, the person who started the wonderful music forum I Love Music about ten years ago has kicked off another project on 1st of January called It Took Seconds where he posts a song a day and writes about it. Nothing special really but there is a twist to it. He started with a track which was 6 minutes and five seconds long and he intends to finish on December, 31st with a one second piece. Each day he is going to lose a second. A lovely idea which I would like to take up. I am a month late so I start with 5 minutes and thirty-four seconds. I will neither name the artist nor the name of the song, of course you are all invited to guess or discuss about what I have posted if you like.

The band behind this song found a magic recipe. But unlike the alchemists formula of how to turn shit into gold theirs actually worked. They managed to create blissful melodies out of guitar noise. Who could have thought before that there is so much beauty hidden in distorted guitar feedback? Behind all those layers of mist there is a fuzzy ray of sunlight warming the heart. I was listening to the album this is on at carnival 1992 on my car hifi when a love was lost and I was driving by night through an impermeable fog with my VW Golf from Trier to Luxembourg. I was doing an average of 30 km/h, instead of half an hour it took me two hours. The slowdown, the poor view and the blurred music fused to something strange, something out of this world. I stopped and only listened to the music inside the car. I gave up all hope to ever arrive at home again. Somehow I got there in the early morning just before dawn but I don’t think I would have made it without this tape on repeat.