I saw the Noisettes playing at the Roundhouse last night.
There’s nothing like a little live music to rouse the soul.
I’ve been a fan for a while and, whilst the performance didn’t disappoint, it was the encore that shot electric currents through the audience. You can always tell a good roundhouse gig from the mood at Chalk Falk tube station. At half 11 last night, it was buzzing.
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I haven’t just been reading the world through books; music works the same way.
It’s a little harder to pick out the salient bits, to identify exactly which bits you’re connecting with – and why – but the premise is the same: music transports you.
It takes you somewhere else and reminds you of where you’ve been.
It’s an emotional rollercoaster, a miraculous way of moving you from one headspace to another – an expression, a way of speaking without words –
I’m using it like I’m using books – to work out what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. I’m using it like I’m using the characters I identify with – to bridge the gulf between myself and the world a little.
It’s therapy all by itself – to make me happy when I’m sad; to energise and elate and excite; to speak what I can’t say; and feel what I can’t always reach -
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds:
And as the mind is pitch’d the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch’d within us, and the heart replies.
William Cowper
Some of the music I’ve been listening to:
It’s the desperation and the recklessness and the pure, red hot, energy, that gets me with Florence and the Machine.
I’m normally safe in my listening material. I know that my head can easily swerve off course with a little minor harmonisation. I have learnt to watch what I subject my ears to, however appealing anguished wailing or sombre melodics can be –
Florence and the Machine hits a strange balance: it gets the dark side – but it buoys you up.
It explores the things that we feel but rarely say – without being too much. It balances anger and anguish and despair – with exhilaration and delight and a strange kind of poignancy.
I like Eminem. He takes me out of my comfort zone. He forces me to imagine things I’d rather not imagine. He says things that most people wouldn’t dare to stay and, with a stroke of genius, turns the tables right back at you –
I can’t take offence when I’m buzzing on the rhythm –
I can’t complain when I’m singing along with the melodies –
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Lily Allen is cutting painfully close to the bone in ‘22’.
I have to resist the temptation to skip the track. The lyrics would be far too close for comfort – if I didn’t find myself singing along.
As a nearing 30 year old, I am, officially, over the hill and on the shelf.
I’d find it offensive if the social commentary wasn’t so astute – if I wasn’t caught off guard by the spotlight.
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