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ok, let’s give it a listen.
becuz - boring rhythm. like a repeating beep. kims vocals follow the same vein. in fact, everything follows the same vein. however, when the mad guitar stuff starts - WOW! my favourite sonic youth moment ever - always liked this. then i listened to it on acid once. ouch. great stuff. my friends were freaked out in a good way.
junkies promise - sounds like throwaway from dirty. again, boring rhythm that everything conforms to. lyrics are like something from some angsty kids deadjournal. pretension without poetry. when steve starts picking it up in the middle we get some better variation between the instruments. nothing special, though.
saucer-like - a cornerstone from lee. i don't particularly like this track but it is very prophetic of the stuff he goes on to do on later albums. i like his little monologue and the concept behind the lyrics in general, but wouldn't call it his most poetic piece.
washing machine - really bad song, but i love it. it's that playgroundy stuff again, i don't think it's supposed to be refined and intellectual, just fun. it's certainly fun. flies around a lot and the passages aren't so subtle. it's like someone with bad memory and/or drug-fuelled attention problems telling a story. it's like listening to grandmother speak about when she was a kid (if your grandmother is courtney love). another great one when 'under the influence'.
unwind - comedown material. sweet little ditty to put you in the right mood then some sweet, sweeping guitars to take you on a little journey with a nice little beat defining the crests and troughs. brings you back safely before you turn into a pumpkin at midnight.
little trouble girl - sweet-ish song. i like the little girl lost stuff going on here. detest the chorus - awful awful awful. could be jc-like but for the chorus.
no queen blues - like someone else said, i like this song but not sure why.
panty lies - not sure about this song. it has it's moments but overall pretty bland.
untitled - like the recycling of little trouble girl and other songs on the album found in here. it's like a rough demo of the whole album in 2 1/2 minutes. good place for it to appear if you're on something as it links everything together.
skip tracer - like saucer-like in it's prophecy, but with longer eyesight. love the poetry here.
diamond sea - i think the praise of this track is justified in every way possible. it's 20 minutes long not because they decided it should be, but simply because that's how long it is. it's organic, interesting every step of the way and flows wonderfully. thurstons strongest song lyrically. everyone has their own take on it - for me the key concept is time. "blood crystallised to sand" invokes images of egg timers to me and our inevitable aging. blood is often used as a metaphor for life, sand of time. of course there is the diamond sea itself (which possibly laps at the crystallised sand?). with all the references to mirrors i've always taken the diamond sea to be the mirror itself. i just get this grand image of self-image, time, change and consistency, life, death and legacy. it works on so many levels. love the reversal at the end.
"The Furies are at home in the mirror; it is their address. Even the clearest water, if deep enough can drown. Never think to surprise them. Your face approaching ever so friendly is the white flag they ignore. There is no truce with the Furies. A mirror's temperature is always at zero. It is ice in the veins. Its camera is an x-ray. It is chalice held out to you in silent communion, where gaspingly you partake of a shifting identity never your own."
Reflections by R. S Thomas
From "No Truce with the Furies", 1995
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