Saturday, February 14, 2009

It´s No Reason

by chrome3d

There was a rush to get the spot for the first songs of Seance. It´s understandable because that´s the kinda songs they are. Fly and One Day are songs that should instantly capture something in you if The Church is even somewhat familiar to you. Electric follows there after these two, not so excitable but good still. Then there is It´s No Reason. Now this song has been released as a single, it´s in the comps and there is even a new acoustic version or two. It should be one of the all time classics, right? SK says in Hindsight sleeve notes (once again) that this song is not suitable for general consumption and that is partially true. While the song has qualities there is still quite a lot holding it back from being a hit, even on the modest hit scale of The Church.

Let´s see. The church organ sounding keys start the song and they take their time. SK sings on top of this during the extremely sparse opening minute when sometimes it feels that even the keys are holding their breath and almost fade away. At exactly 1:00 minute mark the drums join in and the song starts to resemble a song, albeit not exactly a song for a 45rpm. At 1:40 the song finally comes to life, which is about 1:20 too late for a song to be released as a single. The steep black and white turns to colour photo and the camera lifts off the ground to fly over the forests...if this was a movie soundtrack to a movie that doesn´t exist, like many of their songs are. SK´s keys are the most prominent instrument here, carrying all the weight of the song. It´s surprising how little guitar-driven this song is.

And the colors take me down
It's no reason to be sad
And you leave without a sound
It's no reason to be glad

I see the colours there. This is very much a movement between colour palettes for me. People fade to gray and black smoke comes from the chimneys in other verses but in the chorus it all comes to life although it´s not very happy life as there is no reason to be sad or glad. No reason to be sad or glad? What is left then? Some kind of gray nothingness of every day life where the people you love has left without a sound? This sounds so hopeless that the next logical conclusion for the main character is probably suicide. Again, not exactly the summer hit material.

I found myself thinking that I should write something bad about this before I started. It´s not on the level of the previous 3 songs or it´s dull and boring or something. In the end that thing happens again that almost always does with the songs of The Church. All the details and the ability to create atmospheres is so strong that I can´t fight it. I have to surrender to those moments when the song flies in the sad skies and then accept the time in between when they wallow in the ashes.

1 comment:

Some Bloke said...

just stumbled upon this very nice part of cyberspace

not sure if comments on posts as old as this will ever get noticed

but, in case they do, two things:

1) there's a wonderfully long way to go with this blog - how does one earn right to submit a review?

and

2) here's something that is also about it's no reason (which is definitely a song that benefits from a context) when