At Least When She’s Around, The Trouble’s There

Belle & Sebastian “Slow Graffiti” (BBC session version)

Ten years ago, this song could kill me. Nowadays, it just sorta maims. The thing is, I’m not entirely sure why. I have not ever, at any point in my life, directly related to the song’s protagonist, though his plight certainly taps into some of my own worst fears. At the start of the song, he’s imagining a portrait of himself twenty years into the future. The lyric then shifts to a first person account of a man passively slumping through a dull life in which he tends to a girlfriend who comes across as something of a mess. Then the perspective shifts again, this time affectionately chastising the character for being “like a mother to the girl you’ve fallen for, and you’re still falling.” It’s funny that I’m only just now noticing the shift in perspective — which I suppose means that the second section is the imagined future, and the finale has him speaking to his vision of his future self — but had always intuited its conclusion as being this cutting bit of self-criticism that trails off into an abbreviated instrumental digression before returning to the thought once more.

Buy it from Matador Records.

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo De Cotonou “Se Tche We Djo Mon”

The particular guitar tone in this track is among the best I’ve ever heard in all my time listening to music. It’s a rather bright sound that perfectly accentuates the trebly notes of its nimble solos, and brings a clean, lightly metallic clang to its brisk rhythmic hook. That rhythm part is especially hypnotic in combination with the persistent hi-hat clatter of the percussion, which glides along at a quick clip, but leaves the middle range of the composition wide open for the arrangement’s more subtle elements.

Buy it from Analog Africa.

If you only read this site via RSS feed, you should take note of the first part of the 2008 retrospective in this week’s Fluxcast. It’s the closest thing you’re going to get to a year-end thing from me, unless you want to count my Pazz and Jop ballot, which you probably shouldn’t.