These Clouds We’re Seein’

Care to talk of days gone by, and the nights we remember forever? Even if it’s safer to gloss over the beginnings, for some nights are better to forget. Follow? What I mean to say, is that some shows have a good and a bad, and, provided the bad comes before the good, we still love them for it. And so we welcome Eluvium to the stage, and he gifts us a beautifully wrapped package of delicate guitar on a loop, before victimizing his guitar in a shocking display of instrumental abuse. Halfway through the song I began to feel as if a thousand Cockney louts were taking it in turns to kick me in the skull, shouting ‘Give us two quid what for a bot’le o’ Boddingtons you bloody Yankee sod!’ To which I could only writhe on the ground in agony and scream in reply, ‘A Major7 cannot follow a minor 5th chord progression!’ But they wouldn’t listen. Savages.

But, and I freely admit this, it was a very necessary sort of savagery, for it delivered us, whimpering and frayed, into the loving arms of the headliners, who led us gently by the hand into a garden of sound and put us to bed under the privet hedge. Literally put us to bed, or at least my neighbor in the audience, who drifted in and out of consciousness. But one got the feeling that that was the point. That consciousness and focus didn’t really matter, as long as one was there. Who needs the earth to keep spinning beneath their feet? Not when this world of sound is revealed to them in a greater glory. And I’ll say that my mind was anywhere but here, or there rather, but still every time I floated gently back to awareness it was in that, oh so sought after state, of bliss. And please let me add, lyrics are overrated. I saw visions of Moroccan sunsets and Italian coastline, and I didn’t need a singer to describe them to me. In fact, I’d rather he didn’t. I’d rather just be given the soundtrack to my life, and I’ll include the details. And they gave that to me. So for that, I’ll say they’re not bad. They’re even good. Maybe, maybe they’re wonderful.

They’re Explosions in the Sky.