One Day

by timetunnel

Quite often I associate the colors of an album cover with the music of that album. If that happens it's maybe caused by the fact that the album cover is either well chosen by the band, or at least is seen by the band as something that somehow correlates with the music. One of the albums that really bring up this album color <=> music connection thingy in my brainery is "Heyday". The colors of the carpet and band's shirt colors on the cover and the music simply fit like an ass on a bucket (as we say in Germany). Warm music, warm colors. Now on to "Seance". The cover shows this pale faced woman and gives it a kind of gothic feeling. The European vinyl version was blue, whereas the Australian (and maybe other) and the CD releases featured Gothic Girl in pink. Pink, whoah! I had owned the blue vinyl version for some years until I bought Arista's pinkish CD release, and I remember thinking something like "oh my, what the hell is THAT? PINK?!?!". Now, that was all a long time ago and today I'm quite used to the pink cover. Same music, different colors. Seance's music IS pink now. As it once WAS blue. Or not? What does that tell us about the color-music-connection in this case? Well, either it's all rather about just being used to an album cover and connecting that one to the music (whatever it looks like), or maybe in this case blue and pink both fit the music. I dunno. All in all the color-music connection was never as strong on "Seance" as it was on "Heyday". So why the hell am I writing about it then...?

Better on to "One Day": it's the first song on "Seance" featuring the, uhm, "distorted" drums. This dums sound - it never disturbed me on "One Day", even after I had learned how angry Steve was about it and how the band and producer/mixer Nick Launay must have fought about it. On "One Day", it fits somehow - though it wouldn't make the song worse if it had normal drum sound. Actually, it might even sound better with normal drums sound. However, the distortion exists and there are other songs like "Electric Lash" or "Disappear" on which the drums' sound is more annoying.

The song starts with a guitar riff that is more or less the cornerstone of the whole song. It's catchy, and it's edgy. It's smooth in the first few notes and then let's you trip over it. Imagine riding your bike on a street with frequently changing surface: asphalt - cobblestone - asphalt - cobblestones. It's a beautiful ride on the asphalt, but each time you enter Cobblestone Area you'll be shaken to the bones. Additionally, each time you get shaken by the cobblestones a hefty wind starts blowing in your face and you have push the bike's treadles heavily in order to keep going. So that's how the intro riff feels... but only until all the other instruments join, because from then on it all makes sense and the cobblestones are suddenly a joy to ride on.

The song's structure is standard: intro - verse - chorus - verse - chorus - middle part - verse - outro (or what the hell do you call the opposite of an intro?), but this standard structure is melted together and therefore made more interesting because the riff is going through verse and chorus most of the time, and the middle part guitar solo appears in the succeeding verse as well. It's the cobblestone guitar riff and this kind of "melting" the parts together that elevates "One Day" above a plain rock song.

If I remember correctly "One Day" was the song which made me realize that I should pay more attention to the The Church's lyrics. Songs on former albums "Of Skins And Heart" and "The Blurred Crusade" hadn't done that job for me to that extend (I actually bought all these three albums together one day, because they were the back catalogue from my point of listing view in 1986). "One Day" was the one that started my imagination engines because it's painted with lyrics all over. Like some other songs on "Seance" are. On one hand there were lyrics parts which somehow deal with our everyday live, but without being too concrete: "Tell me, is everything unplanned, is all so unexpected that we just can't understand? We run so hard and always end up in the same place, 'Glad that went so smoothly', well that never is the case"). On the other hand there were parts which simply hijacked and transported me into other worlds: "A woman standing on a hill is gazing out to sea, dreaming of a new age, waiting there for me". And all that in one song!