Sunday, August 4, 2013

Music That Leaves Marks - 1307**

As I've gotten older, it's been more and more rare that a song becomes an instant and permanent favorite. Most of the songs I'll post in this series will have attached themselves to me in the 1980s and 90s. One reason for the rarity is that my tastes have grown increasingly varied. I tend to sample many artists from many genres and subgenres now, enjoying a bit of this and that, but generally not putting any one new track on repeat.

When The Night from School of Seven Bells revealed itself to me, though, it engulfed me and I listened to it hundreds of times in the span of a few weeks. It's hard to say why, exactly. It doesn't have the extremity of emotion in it's music or vocals that I tend to favor, nor a particularly strong melodic line. On the other hand, it is cinematic, has good hooks, and it deals with loss of love in an interesting manner lyrically. The combination of deep drone and driving rhythm are also attractive. All in all, it's a little mysterious, though, why it affects me so strongly. But it just does, and sometimes that's all that matters with a great song.

As a bonus, I'm posting a video the band declared the winner of a contest held for the song. It's much more artistic than 99.9% of most music videos, and features an impressively expressive young girl lip-synching, posing, and dancing in a surprisingly wistful depiction of the emotions of heartache.



**Yes, I know it's August. I'll post twice to make up for it. But this song was the soundtrack to my July.