Lazarettes – Do it all again
They try to avoid teaching you these things in school, but this whole business of being alive involves plenty of discomfort. What’s worse, the whole damn thing happens over and over again. You can only keep sane as long as you ask yourself if there’s something deeply wrong with you. And, you’re only able to keep going when you know for sure that others have suffered just like you.
And when it comes to this existential blues and the people who’ve suffered in the same way, what do they sound like? Does their voice ring out like that of a politician asking for votes in a future election, or does it sound seductive like someone trying to sell you a dream life? Neither. It likely sounds bruised and battered like that of the singer in Lazarettes.
The fact of the matter is that we’ve taught ourselves to recognise pain and hardships when we see them, but also when we hear them. “Do it all again” is a tune that brings in a strong dose of grit and weariness to a rootsy country-rock sound. It’s a song about tasting pain, but remaining on your feet. Lazarettes want you to hear that they’re on your side.
George Boomsma – Make A Start
Sure, individuals deal differently with hardships and grief. There’s no telling what they’ll do. Only that, usually, there’s a good way to launch into a prognosis, and that has to do with the place where they’re from and the manner in which their community tends to deal with the aspects of human existence that are the hardest to handle.
Swedes, for example, are so comfortable with grief and so bothered with talking about it that… they just move and never return to it again. Eastern Europeans, on the other hand, begin by wailing in despair and end by dancing on tables while ripping their shirts to shreds. What about the Brits? As the melancholy-ravaged purveyors of good taste, their own trajectory toward healing is more complicated.
Hearing George Boomsma’s sophisticated folk-rock of “Make A Start” is like watching hours of footage of someone who has just faced a tragedy while they’re working in the garden planting roses. You can’t tell for sure, but there’s something in Boomsma’s tender singing, in those lovely Nick Drake-like arpeggiated chords that tells you that something is wrong. It’s a good piece of music and one way to try and make things right.
