This Year 365 songs: January 10th

[js_thrill]

 Today's song is Seeing Daylight

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Sometimes Darnielle is able to make this sort of minimalism work for him. And you can see why, even with a track like this where, frankly, it doesn't come together. The chorus has a haunting beauty to it, when he switches from what sounds more like spoken word poetry into something that more resembles a song, and the repetition in the last few lines: before the final chorus:

And your voice on the other end
And the impossibility of your voice on the other end
And the impossible echo inside

That bit right there starts to bring more, lyrically, than when it was just prosaic observations about an ordinary afternoon.

As the song started, I almost hoped we were going to get a soup recipe, in the form of a song, but it transitioned away from the soup.  Anyway, this song doesn't quite work for me, but it's not unpleasant or anything.  What I am reminded of in two different directions are "What's He Building?" by Tom Waits, which is my core association for the gravelly voiced spoken-rather-than-sung minimalist piece, and, though I am less clear on why listening to this track put me in mind of it, "Don't Know When But a Day is Gonna Come" by Bright Eyes. I think maybe because it is also somewhat minimalist but manages to build in a way that helps it come together quite successfully (it actually boils in a way that this Mountain Goats song doesn't).