sometimes, just a single element has enough power to change everything, such can be said for david lane's contribution to the song night friends. haunting and simply perfectly in tune with its companion elements that fluid piano trickles along in the shadows, the after midnight atmosphere, like some old blues when the bar is empty and the floors are being mopped but no one is sitting on the piano stool save some old melancholy ghost.
it's from one of my fave church albums, 'after everything now this' where i feel steve's lyrics are now on equal terms with the greatest of writers. if he was good before this album he became greater for it. it's not a quantifiable thing, there's no real boundary but there's some kind of definitive point where a writer earns the right, hard work, blood sweat and tears conjured up in the sound of suffering. you can hear it in steves voice, in the music but it lies deep in the words. what is that, so effortlessly dripping from his lips, like breathing, emotion, sadness, melancholy, loss?
like the magic realism of the south american writers night friends is at once ambiguous as it is meaningful, the listener is the observer in the quantum world of the church.
this is a great exercise in poetic imagery, one can ponder the nature of these night friends endlessly and still know very little other than what steve chooses reveal. we know they are behind the mirror, waiting for a moment, we know they displace time. towards the ending the lyric ponders the power of hate and concludes only love can counter it.
let's face it, i have no idea what it really means only how i feel when i listen to it. i've looked in that mirror.
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