APROPOS OF NOTHING: Don't Divorce Them

"Fidelity": Don't Divorce... from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.

FIDELITY
by Regina Spektor

Shake it up

I never loved nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost in the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind all this music

And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart

And suppose I never met you
Suppose we never fell in love
Suppose I never ever let you kiss me so sweet and so soft
Suppose I never ever saw you
Suppose we never ever called
Suppose I kept on singing love songs just to break my own fall
Just to break my fall
Just to break my fall
Break my fall
Break my fall

All my friends say that of course its gonna get better
Gonna get better
Better better better better
Better better better

I never love nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind
All this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart
Breaks my
Heart
Breaks my heart

Songs I Adore:David Sylvian's "Nostalgia" (1984)

Voices heard in fields of green
Their joy their calm and luxury
Are lost within the wanderings of my mind

One of the most extraordinary songs from one the best-produced albums I know, David Sylvian's "Nostalgia" from his album Brilliant Trees (1984) hooked me the moment I heard it nearly 25 years ago. From the opening strains of a wordless (Hindi? Hebrew?) vocal/chant, "Nostalgia" is deeply steeped in the album's lush musical layers of East-meets-West influence and Sylvian's own metaphoric lyrics.

I'm cutting branches from the trees
Shaped by years of memories
To exorcise their ghosts from inside of me

There are long, gorgeous instrumental passages within "Nostalgia". Sylvian's collaborators suggest Eastern musical influences electronically here, while Kenny Wheeler's jazz-like flugelhorn drifts in and around the proceedings. Co-produced with Steve Nye (Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Bryan Ferry, Frank Zappa) Brilliant Trees was Sylvian's first solo foray after leaving his reasonably successful rock/punk band, JAPAN. "Nostalgia" remains my favorite track on Brilliant Trees, and it heralds the complex beauty that Sylvian has built in subsequent recordings.

The sound of waves in a pool of water
I'm drowning in my nostalgia

Lyrics I Love: The Snow Leopard (Shearwater, 2008)

"the way is to climb
the way is to lie still
and let the moon do its work on your body

and then to rise
through forests and oceans of lives
and through the way of the black rocks, splitting, wide,
and flow
ten thousand miles."

well, i've had enough,
wasting my body, my life
i'll come away, come away from the shallows

but can this sullen child,
as bound as the ox that i ride,
climb to the heart of the white wind, singing, high,
and blow
through my frozen eyes?

LISTEN: Shearwater's "The Snow Leopard"

Groove of the Evening:k.d. lang's ALL YOU CAN EAT (1995)

She's not lyrically as specific a songwriter as her fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell, but Kathryn Dawn Lang has an amazing gift for metaphor and melody and those traits are on rich display in ALL YOU CAN EAT, probably my favorite of all k.d.'s albums. It is in some ways a sort of INGENUE TWO but I personally find it prettier and more open than that monster smash predecessor. Which makes sense: she'd come out, her best charting album was behind her, maybe the pressure was off. It's a laid back, sensuous, groovy album that snakes its way into your head. The layered harmonies (all k.d.; no other vocalists) are thick honey behind the lead vocal, That Gorgeous Voice. One of a kind she is. In a word: wow.