Insomnia entry #1
January 13th 2014 - 2:39 AM
After so many nights of tossing and turning in my bed, desperately trying to slip into some state of being other than wide awake, I have decided to make productive use of this time that would otherwise be spent frustratedly getting nowhere. Since I seem to have some of my motivation back at the moment, I have already made a promise to myself to write a short "album of the week" review each weekend- however I'm getting irritable with having to wait a whole 7 days to write. So this is a little something just to keep me going through the week on those long nights when my mind is annoyingly buzzing at it its loudest volume. Some nights I'll write, some nights I might be lucky enough to be able to sleep, and other nights I might just not feel like writing anything. I feel that after some time of trying to figure myself out, I've realised that the best way to get myself to do something is to tell myself that it doesn't really need to be done, ironically. I guess that's just the commitment-phobe side of me needing to be eased into the idea a little more gently. Sometimes everyone needs to take a break from analysing things to let themselves simply consume. You've probably already figured that tonight falls into the former category of "those long nights", so let's hope my nocturnal brain leaves you with something that makes at least a bit of sense and doesn't sound utterly insane.
I feel obliged to mention one of my absolute favourite artists of all time in this first 'insomnia entry' post, considering it's context and my reasons behind writing it. There are some albums which are only to be listened to at night; Gregory Alan Isakov's 'This Empty Northern Hemisphere' is currently and will continue to be crowned at the very top of this list for a very long time, or at least until my body finally decides that it's going to let me sleep at a reasonable time. Not only do I personally feel that this album is more beautiful to listen to at night, it seems that Isakov himself intended it this way, lulling "I’ll send you my words from the corners of my room, and though I write them by the light of day, please read them by the light of the moon" in the stunningly smooth 'Words'. The album's opening track, 'Dandelion Wine', is an arrangement as thick as honey yet as light as the froth on the cappuccino that's going to keep me alive in the morning- and I've lost count of the times I have listened to it.
I think you've probably established by now that I am not just writing this out of the passing excitement for discovering a new interesting band, I'm writing out of pure love for this album and it's poetry. 'Dandelion Wine' is my favourite song of all time, and that is a very bold statement for me, being the commitment phobe that I am. This is admittedly not even a review, it's a stripped down, controlled appreciation constructed from some of the things I've thought about this wonderful collection of songs during all of the sleepless nights it's sailed through with me.
So, trust me when I say that this album is really something spectacular. Each track runs like liquid from one into the next, beautifully humble and buttery but inspiringly intuitive and actually quietly extraordinary. This album brings out the hopeless romantic in me that I quite often worry has disappeared. From the simple yet implicitly deep "summer days were just a magazine", through to the vivid imagery of "that full bellied moon she’s shinin' on me, yeah she pulls on this heart like she pulls on the sea" to the romantic modesty of "you were a magazine, I was a plane Jane, just walking the sidewalks, all covered in rain" and the melancholy of the question "where were you when I was still kind?"- Gregory Alan Isakov's lyrics and natural musicianship allow a story teller's spirit to shine through. There's not much more I can say about this album without writing forever, other than I adore it. This is artistry at it's finest and I urge you to listen to it now and then a billion times over, but always at night, remember.