MUSIC: MUSINGS ON LYRICS, NOW AND THEN - COCTEAU TWINS
Reconnecting with bands from my youth always usher in a flood of memories and emotional responses. At times embarrassed, other times nostalgic and sentimental, it's easy to get lost in it all, but recently I've been making a concerted effort to take a closer look (or listen) at the details of my past musical affinities.
Take the singer Terry Hall, for example. A big fan of The Specials in my youth (and yes, they were waaay before my time - I was 7 when Dance Craze was shot...), I took the natural step of "Record-Store-Browsing" in attempt to follow the artist's trail, graduating to Terry Hall's next endeavor, Fun Boy Three, then The Colourfields, and so on. I did the same with Paul Weller and was at least old enough to witness the real-time release of The Style Council's "Confessions of a Pop Group," though it was clearly the end of an era.
In hindsight, it's alway easy to dismiss or criticize a particular music choice and write it up as fad or phase. Dan Gilbert's Ted Talk on "The psychology of your future self" offers plenty of insight into why we are so quick to regret and abandon preferences, as time reshapes our values, noting that, "the person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you've ever been."
I certainly have a long list of bands I pursued far too long, based solely on a their frontmen's musical pedigree. Still, for me, evergreen bands like The Smiths, The Cure, The Clash, The Jam and many, many more continue to find me, again and again (and again and again and again - "The Forrest" reference here, of course)...and I was recently swept up by the ethereal poetics of Cocteau Twins. Of course, the obvious soothing "voice of God" from Elizabeth Frazer goes immediately to work, conjuring up ebullient flashbacks from days past, but this time, my analytical awe grew stronger when I studied the lyrical and musical finesse of the song, "Wolf in the Breast" off the "Heaven or Las Vegas" album.
Wolf in The Breast - Cocteau Twins
I prefer just this vinyl image spinning as opposed to the 'difficult-to-watch' video version of the song... However, it's also misleading since "Wolf in the Breast" is track 3 on the vinyl B Side ...not track 1. Compulsive of me, I know. Just had to mention it.
Also, if you listen intently with headphones you will subconsciously (not anymore) be reaching for your phone if your ringtone is set to "Old Phone." There is a ring sound at the beginning next to the tamborines? that comes so close to a cut off "Old Phone" ring, that it had me checking.
Under my shirt, Have to amass
Sling the tainted words
I'm each arms they fall on
It's my body, Puzzles the trick in me
I lend it out to borrow, it might survive
My baby's cries
Laughing on my bed, I've pretended I knew the way
Especially when our love-angel unleashed that day
It's my body, Puzzles the trick in me
I lend it out to borrow, it might survive
My baby's cries
Laughing on my bed, I've pretended I knew the way
Especially when our love-angel unleashed that day
I feel perpetual
I feel perpetual
I feel perpetual
True blue and real
I feel, I feel
True blue and real
Laughing on my bed
I've pretended I knew the way
Especially when our love-angel unleashed that day
I'll feel perpetual, I feel perpetual
I'll feel perpetual
True and real
The cascading layers and harmonies that Frazer/Guthrie build towards the end as "My baby's cries" loops and then shifts, made me a better person. At least that's what my future self is saying, at this very moment.