"Better Things" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year or Portions For Foxes series. See the introduction for more.
And the last song in this series, the last one I post this year, is another obscurity - another noisy song from a band that never quite hit it big, but made some great songs. (Again, I almost seem to be begging readers to point out somewhere that I'm wrong - that a band I think is obscure actually has an unbroken string of #1 hits in Finland or something.)
The song is 'Til I Disappear, from Yellow Ostrich - but it's more complicated than that. There's a longer version on their 2010 record Wild Comfort, but the version I love is the shorter version, from a 2012 NoiseTrade sampler, where I first heard Yellow Ostrich.
So this is an obscure version of an obscure song by an obscure band - if I seem to be ending the year trying to maximize my hipster-ness, I have to apologize. That wasn't the point.
This is another slow burn song; I've mentioned several times how I love those. It starts with a keening guitar line, and then the singer's voice, also keening, above it.
Stay awhile fleeing taste of love.
Go ye now to the ocean peer,
Stay awhile till I disappear
I don't know exactly what it's about. It's the kind of nonspecific, slightly archaic language that the songwriter has clearly crafted specifically. There's some kind of ending - probably not a death, but you can never be sure in a song.
So: probably yet another breakup song. Fitting for me, I think. Whatever it's about, it has a great sound, a great energy, and a propulsive force.
So long farewell,
My love, I see it's time.
It's been nice to know you.
Maybe when we're older,
We can meet again.
We'll see if we remember.
Next week it will be a new year, and a new series of posts here on Mondays. As I write this, I haven't figured out all the details exactly yet - so both you and I will need to find out what that series will be. See you there.
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