2.17.2003 [way too fucking late.]

duuude.

i'm in love again. i'm so fucking fickle. meav's out the door. i got her CD and it's so damn squeaky-soprano. so much for the great celtic revival on planet damon.

but:

i'm in love again. musically, yeah, but we all know music is one of those things that grabs me by the solar plexus and drags me through all sortsa other things/thoughts/places.

anyway: sarah mclachlan?

completely. utterly.
incredible.

this is gonna sound awfully familiar: but i think i finally get why people love her so much. she's got this rare talent with words, with catching exactly what it's like to be in love. all the grasping, needful, painful, frightening ache of it. the things she writes just echoes with such, utter, fidelity that reality of one of those crushing, earthshaking loves.

no puppies and roses, the love she talks about that.

now you combine that with her ability to sing - not just to write the right words, but to give it precisely the sort of passion it needs in sound - and... shiit.

it doesn't always work, of course. for the most part her songs are too slow for me. she's not terribly good at melody - i'll say that. for me, at least, most of her melodies bore me a bit and put me to sleep, which is a pity because the full beauty of her voice doesn't come through unless you can really delve into her songs. and i can't delve into most of her songs.

but. my fucking god. when she gets it right, she really gets it right.

for the longest time i thought sweet surrender and silence were her best two songs. that's not true, though. cuz those songs are like...catchy tune, and - well, they're damn good, but her best?

fumbling towards ecstasy.

oh my god.

i can't even rant right. man, it's been so long since i've ranted about songs. i'm trying too hard to quantify it, to make it make sense. i gotta take a minute here and just...let loose on what i gotta say.

i gotta say something about her voice first, cuz that's half the magic. maybe a big half of it. a lotta people are great songwriters but not great singers; a lotta people are the other way around. i think i kinda mentioned this stuff already. but no matter how beautiful or pitch-perfect the words, it doesn't fly without the voice behind it.

her voice? is behind it.

it's EXACTLY the right sorta voice for the songs she sings. it's her versatility - her midrange voice, not too high, not annoying. heh, i can't stand really high voices, in case you can't tell. but like.

sultriness, you know?

gaaah! so fucking incoherent.

her voice has the ability to be sultry. it's low enough, and with enough of a fuzz at the edges, to be sultry. but then she also has this ability - and this is really the core of her voice's amazingness - to shear apart. you know what i mean. when she lifts into the upper registers, she doesn't lilt like a bird. her voice doesn't stay together.

it slips. it slides. it shears.

and fuck me, that is so fucking sexy. hahahaha. oh man. i mean, that is the CORE of her voice's appeal. it's what takes her voice beyond "great" to "inimitable." there's nothing like it. i've never heard anyone else let their voice just...break like that, on purpose, without sounding horrid.

and she doesn't sound horrid. she sounds...ugh. adjectives fall short. i wanna say passionate, or wanton, or yearning, or even wild, but that's not it. she sounds like she feels what she's singing about - love in all its wild wanton painful desperation - in the core of her being. and you know? i bet she does. cuz otherwise WE wouldn't feel it so utterly in the core of ours.

my god, i don't know what i'm babbling about.

that voice, man, the way it slips...i can't get over it!! agh!

and the thing is, that voice alone would be incredible. but then - sometimes - fucking hell, sometimes she just gets it so. fucking. right. with her lyrics and things just CLICK and next thing you know i'm sitting in my chair with my headphones on or my subwoofers turned up, and i've just got my eyes shut because it grabbed some part of me that's just gotta drop everything and listen for a moment.

so, yeah. i used to think sweet surrender and silence - did i mention this already? - were her best songs, but those are just the ones whose melodies caught me immediately. but if you listen to them, the lyrics aren't all that great (esp. silence, heh) and...well. you can tell she's not all that into it, and things aren't QUITE jiving.

actually, that's BS. you can't tell til you hear the ones where it really. fucking clicks.

quick digression here. this song - "I will not forget you"? it fucking PISSES ME OFF. it starts off like it should be SO good. esp the live version. and it just! i dunno, this is one of those songs where her melody doesn't quite work out. the CD version is a little bit lackluster. i mean, it starts gorgeously, just brilliantly - with a simple percussion loop, acoustic guitars. and like, this lovely, lovely melody:

i remember the nights i watched as you lay sleeping. your body gripped by some faraway dream.

and then, just this incredible, incredible line:

and i was so scared and so in love then, and so lost in all of you that i'd seen.

and that "scared"? it goes up and like...just...AG. download it and listen. it kinda - shakes. it's fucking incredible. controlled uncontrollability. that's all i can say about it. so from this, you think - this is gonna be one HELL of a song, yeah?

but then it just...i dunno. falls apart. the melody loses its tautness; it gets too high or something. it recovers for like 30 glorious minutes - that minor melody again, only accentuated with a guitar that plucks out of the basslines, dredges right up in counterpoint to her voice:

i remember how you left in the morning at daybreak. so silent you stole from my bed. to go back to the one who possesses your soul. and i back to the life that i dread.

--ag. such incredible lyrics. such incredible singing. and then! it just! falls apart!

i'm so pissed!!

and the live version's worse. at least the album version is just...kinda a light, high song. potential wasted, but not THAT bad.

the live version? god. the good parts are just...so good you wanna scream. it's lower by a few keys, a bit slower, more utterly passionately sung. and that "scared" word? GOD. first time i heard it after my friend sent it, shivers were running up my spine.

and then second verse - it's different from the album version. her voice does this amazing little downward pullll that's so. damned. sultry. then - just all the little twists she puts on the original melody. and the way she stretches the notes. and just! stuff like that.

and then?

it doesn't just fall apart, man. i mean, it gets completely FUCKED UP. the chorus is too...loud or something, too echoey. and someone? cannot play the drums. there's this drum in the back that's barely even on the beat. it intrudes more than anything else. it's utterly frustrating. there are like, a total of maybe 1.5 minutes of utter divinity in the song, and the rest of the 5.5 minutes are just crap. i wish there was some what to, i dunno, remix it somehow to JUST have that 1.5 minutes.

know what it reminds me of? it reminds me of that delerium song, flowers behind screens. is that what it's called? the other one i ranted about - the one with the UTTERLY subversive first 2 minutes that quickly degenerates? that one. that's what this reminds me of.

but.

dude.

it's all right that i will not forget you falls apart. it's okay.

because.

this damn "fumbling towards ecstasy" song.

just MAKES UP for it, and then some.

i don't think i can put this into words. i'm not sure i should even try, because i think i'll fuck it up badly and come off sounding like a raving lunatic. it's just incredible, and the gut reaction you get from it -

well, it's one of those songs you gotta just put on headphones for - good ones with good bass - and just sit there and shut your eyes and listen. the lyrics are actually simple enough, the chorus at least - which is the part that really moves - but this one's really just buoyed by the force of her voice.

it just...pulls you. dude. it moves you like the tide.

i mean, not even giving a shit about the verses, just the chorus alone? "and if i shed a tear i won't cage it." - almost spoken, just this deliberate, lowering line, from a second chord into the primary, instability to stability. the melody's fucking perfect, and the singing - well, it's perfect too. just so...deliberately. open-eyed.

then: "i won't fear love."

and that line is absolutely. just.

ooog, man.

the way it arches up, shears apart just at the end of it, and ends in a breath out.

it's just insanely perfect. this is the sort of music that takes out what's normally the deepest, most private, most untouchable, most indescribable emotions at someone's core, and lays it into song and text. voice and rhythm.

and if i shed a tear i won't cage it. i won't fear love.
and if i feel a rage i won't deny it. i won't fear love.

am i stressing this enough? this song's incredible. i keep saying the same things - i keep repeating the same damn adjectives. they're the only ones for it. IN.CRE.DI.BLE.

hah, you know? i've realized i haven't even ranted about sex that much, which is RARE when i'm ranting about songs. usually i link it right back to baser, carnal matters. this is just too fucking sublime, though, to be even linked back to what's arguably (all joking and snickering aside) the most sublime experience this side of divine miracles.

(now there's a topic for another day. divine miracles.)

but - yeah. hell, i mean, i'm sure i do link it to sex somehow (have i talked about the way you can hear her breathe? hehh.), but: well.

it's one of those songs that doesn't need to be linked back to sex to have this sort of effect. it just moves you. you listen to it and it just surrounds you. drinks you in. moves you, literally. and it takes so much attention to try to listen, to follow the pattern of the song and the voice, that i don't even have time to make some sorta connection out of it.

it's not a song you nod to, or even move to. it's a song that moves you, and breathes you in.

i'm going in hopeless circles. i can't describe it. i'm just gonna give up now and listen another...oh, 59 times or so. heh.

jesus, it's 5:15am. and i was gonna sleep EARLY.