The yawning reality of regret
The prequel to “I Live to Fall Asleep”, as Wire praises the bliss of falling unconscious for several hours so you can get peace from your anxieties at least for a little while. This time, with the perfect production to go with it. The shimmering, waning keyboards of the Forever Delayed period sound quite possibly the most wonderful here, drenching the song with thick atmospheric textures that evoke a permanent twilight hour, stumbling around as the sun cracks through the sky and sends out the first hazy rays of dawn. It’s an appropriately dreamy sound for a song that sounds as half-awake and sleep-deprived as it does. There is, arguably, some personal reflection there: the first time I heard this song was during summertime while still living in Finland, where the sun barely disappears at night during the warmest months, and thus I heavily associate this song with listening to it through headphones in the wee hours of summer holidays, watching the shy sun peeking through the clouds at 2am.
It’s not just the keyboards that shine here, it’s the production in general. The drums echo like the sound is being transmitted from another reality, James’ vocals have a soft roundness to them and the guitars – the only sharp element of the sound world – pierce through the surreal pillow-like cloud of a production and keep the listener on their toes. There’s a surreal quality to how the song echoes and shimmers throughout, almost deliriously moving across.
The sound of “It’s All Gone” is beautiful in its depth, but it’s also a thoroughly solid song in itself: typical for this period’s b-sides it’s relatively straightforward in how it moves along, but it packs a strong set of melodies, primarily focused around James’ vocals as the music focuses on creating the persistent dreamscape around him. You could argue that without the hi-fi production it would be lesser of a song… but in a song where the sound is so heavily in front and center of it all, the point feels moot. It’s a vivid marriage of both, and another stand-out b-side of this period.
[edited 28/07/2022]
Leave a comment