Will you just listen to the production on this track? Seriously, will you? It’s damn good. Twin Shadow has got everything right with this. Right off the bat we’re moving forward to the quick guitar plucking and smooth bass line. It’s the bass that keeps me coming back to this track for more. Somehow it manages to sound like summer and autumn at the same time. Perhaps its the bass’ refusal to stay on one note for too long. The line is forever in flux and as a result, the song keeps going and going until it reaches a breaking point and calms itself down allowing for the strings (which have been quietly mixing in the background) to have their way. Then bit by bit each element of the song is reintroduced.
I listen to this song and feel like I’m in Sofia Coppola’s vision of Marie Antoinette’s Versailles. This track would fit seamlessly between New Order’s “Ceremony” and The Radio Dept. tracks on the film’s soundtrack. There’s an odd 80’s vibe to this track that maintains the fresh quality of the production. Singer, Kip Berman’s pre-pubescent voice chills the track down with his New York City aloof boredom while Twin Shadow gives the track its movement. It’s as if the production is telling Berman to give it up and move on because what’s the point in hanging on to someone whose actions have leveled them entirely?
Take a look around when you’re going down ’cause you’ll never feel so high as when you hid her arms in the sky and the world slept. And there’s no use to say just how much it kills when it still kills all the same. Every thought of her name, like a hand to an open flame.”
You know, despite the tracks melancholy lyrics I’ve found some hope within them. There’s an odd irony to the verses that are lost with the original tracks poppy-OK GO-like production. Twin Shadow switches the sonic roles up, and focuses us on the story by providing a production that stresses the very act of moving on. Sometimes it seems we get all wrapped up in the words of things and find words to describe the wrapped up feeling only to find ourselves more off-put and down than we were before the introduction of words. That’s where music and sounds truly come in to save us from the dismal cycle of defining something.
When I was in musical theater, my music director and choreographer told us that when words aren’t enough, sing; when singings not enough, dance. I like to reverse that and believe that when words are too much, listen.
Cheers.
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Heart In Your Heartbreak (Twin Shadow Remix)
