The last time I wrote a post about some of my favorite music, I wrote about Mumford & Sons. It was just after their second album had been released, and after hearing a couple of their new songs on the radio, I decided I had to have both. I spent the next few weeks blaring them in my car with the windows rolled down feeling bad-ass and angsty. I never intended to start up a new feature on my blog, but then a few weeks later, I was listening to my right-hand man, Ray LaMontagne, and thought he would be a great artist to talk about if I did want to make this into a new feature.
It was the song Winter Birds that decided me. I have a bad habit of hearing a song and being more taken with the music than the lyrics, but being that I’ve listened to Ray’s album, Gossip in the Grain, one hundred thousand sixty seven times since my mom gave it to me for Christmas in the winter of 2010, I’ve memorized all my favorite songs. What I love about Ray’s music, especially the slow, lyrical ones, is that if you were to take the music away and read the words aloud, it would sound like poetry.
“The stream can’t contain such the withering rain
And from the pasture the fence it is leaning away
The clouds crack and growl like some great cat on the prowl (my favorite line)
Crying out I am, I am over and over again
The days grow short as the nights grow long
The kettle sings its tortured song
A many petaled kiss I place upon her brow
Oh, my lady, lady I am loving you now
….
Though all these things will change the memories will remain
As green to gold and gold to brown
The leaves will fall to feed the ground
And in their falling make no sound
Oh my lady, lady I am loving you now”
That, to me, anyway, is beautiful writing. Ray is truly an artist. He not only writes brilliant music, but his use of imagery is astounding. How he suggests the water bulging over the bank of the river to the point the fence is sagging, and that is the best description of a thunderstorm I have ever read. And the tortured kettle – whistling, straining, screaming. Tortured was the perfect word. But I will stop here before I write you a whole paper analyzing the words and “what it all means,” because poetry was always my favorite topic for writing academic papers. I could write a paper deducing poetry with less content than I could write a paper on a book the size of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with 99% more pages to work with, if that tells you anything. According to The British Professor from my junior year, anyway.
So, now, I will leave you with this video of Ray performing the song live in Chicago, and look out for my next Music That Fills Me artist/band/soundtrack. I have a feeling this is going to turn into a beautiful thing. :)