My Room’s Too Small For Parties

Broadcast “Lights Out” (Evening Session 1997)

The studio recording of “Lights Out” on Work and Non Work is lovely but relative to this live session recording it feels colder and more distant. To put in terms from the song’s lyrics the studio version feels as though you’re the stranger on the other side of the glass as Trish Keenan waves to you, and this Evening Session version feels like you’re right there with her in her lonely little room. The recording implies intimacy, but only in terms of proximity as Keenan still seems aloof and unknowable as she sings about a loneliness and boredom so pervasive in her character’s life that it hardly even sounds melancholy. It’s more like an emotional equilibrium in which circumstances don’t seem likely to improve, but they’re tolerable enough as far as available options go. Keenan sings as though vague disappointment was simply the baseline of all feeling, and the music somehow conveys a drab existence while also sounding quite fascinating and stylish in the approximate musical equivalent of mid-century modern furnishings.

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