Night Of Light

There is a consensus that Night Of Light is perhaps the one of the weakest tracks in Heyday. It has all kinds of additional elements such as strings, horns and even a choir buried somewhere in the mix.Has the band gone too far and was it all worth it? It has also been revealed that the band made little or no money from Heyday as most of the budget went to the lavish orchestrations. Night Of Light is the black moneyhole where it went and it´s sad that their creators feel that it was not worth it. I still think it was a road worth taken in order to see how far the bands sound can be taken. Most of their contemporaries were dabbling with orchestras and it was about time that they did it too. All those "additional" elements make Heyday what it is and that is why I like Night Of Light so much. It was all worth it at least to me.

Night Of Light is quite simple and driving song with insistent beat and lot of layers caked on top of it. Many of the songs in Heyday make for perfect soundtrack for driving and Night Of Light is perhaps the best for flying in the dark highways. The liftoff to the starry skies just around the corner. The strings coat the catchy chorus in huge amounts of fairydust and then after 3:24 the orchestra builds for a climax and the last minute is spend in a bliss after the most enjoyable climax. Taking the sweet time extending the blissful moment. There could have been more of this kind of symphony and now it feels that the "second part" of the song doesn´t reach it´s conclusion. That leaves me wanting for more. I understand that they didn´t visit this style later on and their art went to another direction. Maybe it was a reactionary move to create atmospheres with fewer elements later on in Starfish. The lavishness of Heyday reached it´s climax somewhere around here and never recovered after that.

Lyrically there is many sad and even dystopian elements in Night Of Light. Small hibernating wintery seaside towns, unwritten books, a doomed relationship perhaps. "I let her go in to the night...". To me it is still a happy song. A song about this moment right here. The night has to be accepted and the darkness must be enjoyed. Under the satellites and all other modern space elements life is good right now if you only make it so. Send my love upstairs, everything is complete. All the verses are the drab everyday life that fades away and then the chorus lifts the spirits higher than heaven. There can´t be revelations all the time.

I have taken hundreds or maybe even thousands of photos of cars and office buildings glowing in the black night that lasts for most of the time between november and march in northern Europe. In my mind they are all homages to Night Of Light. All those blogposts I have made with this subject are called Night Of Light. What else could they possibly be?