Two Of The Most Perfect Songs Ever
The following precedings will go off a bit different than usual, as even new readers can probably recognize the uniform rigidity found in the presentation of all of my posts (the product of my unshakeable habit of taking everything too seriously), but I’ve recently found my attempts at perfectly categorizing everything and keeping things as officious as possible to a bit suffocating and - to an extent - slightly contrived. Here’s a break from my unrelenting quest to find what’s new and unheard in favor of just appreciating two songs that have been around for a little while, but don’t get nearly the respect they deserve. So maybe you’ll see more of these pretense-less posts around here more often, but then again maybe not - as I said it’s not really my style - but here goes regardless.
MP3: “10,000 Lakes” - Kid Dakota
MP3: “Safe Travels” - Peter & The Wolf
It should go without saying how much I highly recommend these two songs given the title of this post, but I should make it clear I’m not trying to nominate these songs as two of music’s all-time greatest or that I even think a lot of you will agree with me, but these are just two songs which, for me, are just perfect. Each one of these songs serves to perfectly capture a specific, tangible emotion for me, despite the obvious differences in their mood and presentation, and each song has found their way (in that exact order), onto any downtempo mix CD I’ve made in the last two months.
“10,000 Lakes”, the only output from Kid Dakota to ever grace my ears, finds itself decidedly tied to a miserably-bleak, fatalist nature, despite lyrics referencing Paul Bunyan, the Minnesota Vikings and treadmills (in that order). Without a doubt the best song ever written about Minnesota - so much so that I wonder if even the by-all-accounts-untouchable Sufjan can top it when he finally gets around to the Land of Lakes on his fifty states project - “10,000 Lakes” operates with a cinematic scope and grandeur not found in the bare bones presentation of “Safe Travels”, despite what feels like an equally sparse arrangement. Darren Jackson unconvincingly delivers that “I’m optimistic” refrain to what feels like a sympathizing audience of backup vocalists, with their response of collective sighs and moans (found again in “Safe Travels”) providing the backing vocal track for Jackson’s opus. An ominous six-chord progression opens the track, setting the stage for the precedings to come, which are as haunting as anything I’d ever heard until “All Fires” reared it’s mournful head this summer. Shotrly after the tone of the piece is set by the opening bars, an equally-baleful fragmented chord progression that begins in the left channel and drifts over to the right in a beautiful example of subtle lo-fi production at its best arrives to grab the listener’s rapt attention, before the doom and gloom gives way to the lonely piano notes that close out the track. “10,000 Lakes” will likely never see it’s way into my most played list on my iPod, assuming I stay on this generally happy and decidedly non-suicidal path I’ve taken to this point in my life, but it will always be a curiously comforting soundtrack to the most desperate moments in my life, something I realized last night somewhere between relationship breakdown #1,362 and the realization that my impending exam schedule just might be too much for me to endure and still come out the other side with any semblance of well-restedness or stable mental health.
Thus, just as the fatalist desperation of “10,000 Lakes” will always be there for me at the lowest points of my life without fail, Peter & The Wolf will always be there for me to put on immediately after, as there may never have been a song that so ably convinces the listener that, “hey, everything’s gonna be okay”, without trying better than “Safe Travels”. The perfect soundtrack to the departure of anyone close to you and the song I’ve found myself listening to every single night before I go to bed (without fail) for the last month, “Safe Travels” takes the bleak melancholy of “10,000 Lakes” and channels it into a bittersweet optimism that is the perfect progression and pick-me-up from the hopelessness of the latter. The fact remains that the effect of art on an individual is subjective and will inevitably vary from person to person, but if either of these songs can mean half as much to any of you as they do to me, then this post (and the valuable time it stole from my already-last minute studies) will be well worth the change of pace from my usual fare.
[beautiful photograph taken by Grit, somewhere near the Baltic Sea]