Shriek Review #1

[tinhuviel]

I'm about to send it off to B. I figured I'd do the easier one first, this one being my favourite.

''In the Dream Life of Dogs"

What occurs in the mind

of a cur by the fire?

on the rug as he growls and he drools;

as he spasms and twitches ?

A bloodbath of rabbits

where the faecal aromas are sublime?

in the Dream Life of Dogs

these we think are the riches.

There the crow's provocation

will no longer be endured.

There the insolent rat is subdued

and is stricken and shaken.

There as King of the Rains

The Wild Rover -the bitches' rump so fine...

This the Dream Life of Dogs?

or are we mistaken?

(solo)

For all that we know, in the hound's inner world

there are marvels to rival the greatest that man can envision:

a Palace of Scent

where the Laws of the Pack are redefined

is the Dream Life of Dogs

maybe ripe for revision?

But the dog as he sleeps

is opaque as we are.

We dream as we live all alone

in this nightmare of history

and as much as I know who you are in the dark behind your eyes

the Dream Life of Dogs

is no more of a mystery

Of the two songs, this one is my favourite, I must admit. The philosophy sings (for lack of a better word) to me. I love the lonely delicacy of the instrumentation in this one, communicating a kind of longing for something we humans assume is a simple thing. But you suggest it might be more complex than we believe (and it probably is. We humans tend to dismiss anything that’s not directly of our own narrow little world) and you paint a vast sonic painting of Dog’s inner world. The music, both lilting and a little bittersweet, matches the language of the lyrics perfectly and the phrase “palace of scent” I found particularly striking. It brought to mind the psychological term 'Memory Palace,' which I first encountered in the book Hannibal, having to do with spatial mnemonics. The dog's olfactory sense is basically his Memory Palace, so this fit so sublimely. The ending of the song is just as satisfying, though, with your comparison of how little we really know about each other to the mystery of a dog’s dreaming mind. This is what made me fall in love with Shriekback’s music, the more introspective melodies on ‘Oil & Gold’ and the whole of ‘Big Night Music.’ This is the kind of music I think about when someone asks me to try to describe your music. And this will be logged alongside my many favourites you’ve written over the years. Thank you for sharing with me. As always, it’s an honour to get previews of the wonders to come and to have my opinion valued.

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As an aside, it never fails to humble me that he even thinks my opinion counts. He's been writing music since I was a mere 12 years of age and has had raging success long before he even knew I existed. I never take my insignificant place in his big world for granted and I wonder sometimes how I even got on the radar to begin with, excepting for the wonders of Teh Intartubes. What's so funny is, even after all these years, I'm still scared stupid, stupid being the key word here. I've said it many times over the past few days, so I'll reiterate here: therapy, I need it.

I'm going to hold off on the second review until tomorrow.

Now back to our regularly scheduled Vampiric wordy words.