come back to wednesday

Having a strange sort of evening tonight. Ever since I got back from my little hiatus it seems everything's coming out a bit starchy and forced, like that loaf of bread you pick up from Trader Joe's but leave in the fridge for a few days. I feel like my mind's having a hard time being quiet, and it's probably not helping matters that I'm trying to take this on after a long day of pushing the pixels around at work.

But, the only way out is through, so I've heard.

It's only April and, at least inside a poorly insulated house, it's a hot summer night, and a little bit of a dreary one at that. This song might relax things a bit, or at least give my mind the courage to go toward the bad mood side or just a thoughtful good mood before heading off for the night.

"Sometime Later" by Alpha

Came across this song courtesy of the beautiful and clumsy "My Life Without Me," a peppy little number about a young woman who discovers she has a terminal disease but decides not to tell anyone. Not her husband, not her kids, not her mother. But, surprisingly, it's not a three-hankie, toss yourself out the window special. She calmly makes a to-do list and sets about accomplishing whatever she can in whatever little time she has. Mark Ruffalo shows up and does what seems to be his usual Mark Ruffalo thing, except it's ratcheted up a bit with the whole strange, awkward tone the whole movie carries. Scenes go for about a beat, maybe a beat and a half too long, conversations bump into eachother like sleepy drunks, and you're a little putoff by the way the whole movie comes at you. Really, I'm not doing it justice, but it's a movie worth seeing.

ANYWAY, I don't know much about Alpha, but this track played over the closing credits. Much of their record struck me as nondescript electronilounge, the kind of stuff I used to say you could open a gallery to. But this track's a little different. Sure, it still walks on that cool, late '90s plain where DJs turned bandleaders along the lines of Air or Zero 7 dialed up what sounds like a vintage soul singer to crank up the atmospheric for their downtempo, but here it seems like Alpha's reached their own land. A torch song playing in a Film Noir-themed bar in the 22nd Century.

Whomever's singing is exhausted, but she's hit a point where she's comfortably between being happy and sad, like she's deliriously happy now but what's coming soon...well, that's got her a little uncertain. She's living in this grainy, black and white world full of slow motion and fuzzy contrasts, and she's right in the middle of this incredible night, the kind of night with someone that can't ever end. Maybe things will be just as good tomorrow, but it may not, so all you know you have is that night, and as the faux strings and synths swell and stretch around her you can just feel that clock ticking. Even the song's running out, so she starts getting desperate. Hold the sun down, she pleads, hold the sun down. It's never going to get better than this, let's just stay right here. But, really, it's going to be okay...let it come.