I started this venture as a way to share how music I enjoy makes me feel, and why I like it. So, naturally, I'll only write about things I love to listen to.
One rule I set for myself when I set this up was that I should listen to a song at least five times before writing about it. This has never been a problem because usually this works the other way around: a song, or group of songs, will find its way into my head, and compel me to keep listening to it, sometimes obsessively. Certainly more than five times ... When that happens, I know that I've found a prime candidate to feature here.
Although one of my goals is to champion 'new' music (particularly lesser-known artists), that doesn't rule out writing about 'old' music. This is why a lot of my posts so far have been about music which has been around for some time. Some of it has been with me for years and I'm only now getting the chance to share my observations with you. And then some of it has only recently come to me (so it's 'new' in that way).
This is all a long-winded way of excusing why I'm writing about a song from 2016 today 😅 It's Melin Wynt, by the prolific King Creosote (aka Kenny Anderson).
This particular song has been haunting me for several weeks, coming back into my head, begging me to listen to it again. I wasn't quite sure why until I started properly thinking about it.
There are so many elements which make this special: Bagpipes, obviously, and the conscious choice not to edit out the first sounds of the air-bag being filled at the start. King Creosote's voice, gentle and Celtic. The intriguing and sometimes cutting lyrics, mixing comments on the supposed 'green credentials' of wind farms with yearning for what could be lost. Beautiful and subtle production touches sprinkled through the piece, like the brief snatch of reversed vocals before the delivery of the killer line 'We're all set to die', and the incessant sweeping sound present in the background of most of the song (which I now know is a sample of a wind turbine).
It's not my place to analyse the meaning of this song - there are already some interesting reviews of it, and the rest of the album, out there already: see The Quietus and Folk Radio. But basically it's all about the invasion of wind turbines - King Creosote has also given his own explanation as to how he once followed signs for a windmill ("Melin Wynt") in North Wales, only to find "a general’s eye view of the impending invasion of the Wirral by a legion of much despised wind turbines marching in off the Irish Sea"
His genius has been somehow to capture that feeling in music: the atmosphere of wind, a blustery hillside, an early morning walk, and disappointment. I realise now that before I knew what the song was about, it was speaking those feelings into my subconscious.
Have a listen: