A little Nano break (a holiday from the day job is being spent playing a pretty frantic game of catch up, and I’m gaining ground so stopping for some idle Twitter nonsense and a Rice Krispie Square) led me to find this, a piece on songs that make Guardian writers cry, and I have to, gulp, admit that Will Young’s Leave Right Now has always had a similar effect on me. I’m not someone who generally cries at films (the first ten minutes of Up aside), but the right cadence, the right lyric, can easily make me sob. So the following, I would heartily recommend, should not be played near me in public.
Not a clue what it’s about, but it’s the wonderful Mew at their most melancholy, and “We didn’t know we’d seen their last show” hits hard every time.
It’s hard to separate Elliott Smith’s music from his much documented personal life, and indeed his mysterious death, but this one in particular is devastating, perhaps more so than Pitseleh. When he sighs “I’m tired of being down, I’ve got no fight”, you believe it completely, so utterly defeated is his delivery.
I’ve fallen out with Elbow recently after Build A Rocket, Boys, but Switching Off is still devastating stuff. And it shouldn’t be otherwise, really: it’s the story of an elderly couple entering into a suicide pact, choosing a moment to die together. First time I heard this live, I was all but bawling in the middle of Glasgow’s Academy. Very dignified.
Ben Folds Five – Fred Jones Part II
This prompted exactly the same reaction as Switching Off in exactly the same place. Never done than in another venue. Perhaps I just find the Academy emotionally damaging.
“Whatever went away, I’ll get it all back now, I’ll get money, I’ll get funny again. Walk away now, and you’re going to start a war.”
A bit of an OC kind of choice, I know, but it’s still a lovely song, and there’s something in her delivery of “your hair was long when we first met” that takes beyond it being the story of Samson to a nameless lover looking back on how things were when they met their other half, and its ingrained sense of regret is absolutely heartbreaking.
Shaky Shaky Handwriting 