I hear sadness

By Bill Pearse on July 31, 2013 • ( 0 )

You can hear what you want to hear – or if you’re not lucky, you can’t control it. I like the sound of sadness, when it’s based in love and celebration, a last goodbye, until next time.

So I hear it in what the band Guided by Voices thought would be their last record, Half Smiles of the Decomposed. It’s an autumn record – not “Nick Drake autumn,” but autumn in that each song sounds like the last, the end.

Sadness in the song “Then She Did…,” by Jane’s Addiction. And now that I know it’s about his mother’s suicide, well that makes sense. It’s some kind of beautiful expression of that, like pulling a large thorn out of his side. The sadness steeped in love is the one that knows we have to go, and can’t take it with us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Uj4Q4zbtfM