He was the Kind of Fellow who would see a Girl twice, and then, upon meeting her the Third Time, he would go up and straighten her Cravat for her, and call her by her First Name.
Macha – “Calming Passengers”
Forget Tomorrow
The synth-rock Macha creates is usually poppy and forgettable (not in a bad way), but they occasionally exhibit just a fantastic ear for sound. The ripples constituting the waves of sound lapping along in this song are superbly matched, and the overall rhythm, while not dancey, is difficult not be become caught up in.
But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:
Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,
Et documenta damus qua simus origine nati.Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,
"From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,
Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.“So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.
Bridge de Sant Roc
Gravenhurst – “Song Of The Summoning”
Internal Travels
It’s difficult to choose between Gravenhurst’s rich Flashlight Seasons and the delicate, straightforward Internal Travels. Fortunately, you don’t have to. They’re both great, and the latter is packed with songs like this one, unassuming yet melancholy, but without a hint of preciousness.
He flew out of his chair with deadly, inconceivable terror clutching at his heart. The shape, whose left hand rested on the table, was rising to a standing posture behind his seat, its right hand crooked above his scalp. There was black and tattered drapery about it; the coarse hair covered it as in the drawing. The lower jaw was thin—what can I call it ?—shallow, like a beast’s ; teeth showed behind the black lips ; there was no nose ; the eyes, of a fiery yellow, against which the pupils showed black and intense, and the exulting hate and thirst to destroy life which shone there, were the most horrifying feature in the whole vision.