tremble clef

Monday, September 11, 2006

Maximilian Hecker, "No More Lies To Reach You" (2006)

There are some songs that are eminently bloggable, that, in their immediacy, seem made to be buzzed about. This is not one of them. It's slight: running under three minutes, with no real traditional verse/chorus structure, "No More Lies To Reach You" is practically over before it begins. It's drowsy, with perhaps a vague shoegaze feel to it: we begin with an acoustic guitar, but it plays the same few notes throughout. Something like a beat shuffles around, but is decidedly muted. Just as quiet and imperceptible are the horns; even though they lurk in the background for pretty much the duration of the song, it takes a while to actually hear them. Maximilian Hecker's voice is likewise narcoleptic, barely rising above a hushed whisper. At the 2'12" mark, that voice does climb a half octave -- "no more lies in my head" -- and it's a bit of an emotional jolt, but it feels like the song, in that one moment of coming to, is simply waking to a pained consciousness. It's therefore very likely that no one else will like this unsparing song, but there you go.

2 Comments:

  • The best part of this song is that it's so easy to imagine it as a response from the lover of the woman who narrates Bic Runga's "Counting The Days" -- "I've given you all these signals that you can only have an hour with me, and even though you've rationalized to yourself that that could be enough, I'm not going to keep up the pretense any longer. Will you be mine?"

    (NB: I may have totally misunderstood the lyrics of the MH track.)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:13 AM  

  • The blog, all this time, has in fact been structured as a series of clandestine call-and-responses between the tracks. So, well-spotted.

    By Blogger Brittle, at 6:33 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home