Musical Moods

She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly off the coast and I'm heading nowhere.

I had that line trapped in my head for the last two days. It was a little earworm, gnawing away at the edges of my brain, taunting me to recognize the song or name the group or remember more than just this scrap. This evening, I went to I-Tunes and bought the song. I've listened to it 6 times in a row so far. It just suits my mood - a little melancholy.

Funny enough, I was never a fan of Ben Folds, but I guess the song must have gotten a lot of play on the radio. That line just soaked right into my subconscious. It wasn't until I listened to it again and had a look at the lyrics that I realised how sad it is. I keep turning the lyrics over in my head, trying to find at least a little hope in it. I can't see it though.

I thought I'd turned the corner on my obsessive song-listening compulsion after my teenage-angst-Smiths years but I still get into musical ruts. I find a song that matches my mood and I'm hooked. Sometimes it's purely the words, like Modest Mouse's Float On, which would be my choice for a theme song if my life was a TV show. Other times, it's the way the song sounds, like Interpol's "Say Hello to the Angels". Trust me, it's definitely all about the beat and melody in that one - the words make absolutely no sense.

Other times, it's a deeper connection. The song reminds me of a particular time in my life. In a way, the song becomes inextricably linked with both a mood and a memory. When my grandmother was dying, I listened to Modest Mouse a lot. Months later, when I was trying to process her death, I was in a Flogging Molly phase. A couple of times when I was fairly miserable and alone here before Peter sold the house, two songs came up in sequence on my I-Pod and it felt like my grandmother was talking to me.
The songs were "Ocean Breathes Salty" and "If I Ever Leave This World Alive".

That's the nice thing about music - it can provide a bit of mood therapy. Now that I'm reaching the double-digits on playing "Brick", I feel like I have a good bit of the gloom and hopelessness out of my system.