"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.
I think this is another obscure one: a song I found randomly and loved, by an artist that might be bigger than I know, or might be as obscure as I'm afraid he is.
This is Weight of the World by Shayfer James.
Another almost honky-tonk song, over a rolling piano line. Long, rolling lines, wordy and detailed, giving vignettes of a dangerous, nasty world - maybe made more nasty by the singer and his gang of...whatever.
One woman whistling a wounded lullaby
And preaching pain to every unsuspecting passerby
We knew her well before this, she promised portraits of us
We cut her throat while she was waiting for the paints to dry
It's an ominous song, sung straightforwardly by James with some background singers adding color and depth - but it's mostly that piano and his voice, supported lightly by other instruments. It's a dark vision of Hobbesian world, told precisely and tautly.
And what can you do about it?
But that's just the weight of the world
We do what we must to get by
That's just the weight of the world
The weak and the weary will never survive
No comments:
Post a Comment