Slang Editorial :: Never Underestimate The Value Of A Holla'

Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Lonely Soul

I'm listening right now to a bleak you've-been-dumped-and-you're-alone mix I made for myself in 2003 called Crying and am having an odd love affair all over again with a wonderful song called "Lonely Soul" from the 1998 DJ Shadow-helmed UNKLE superproject Psyence Fiction (James Lavelle, founder and later director of UNKLE, was also "involved", but at the time the music was entirely Shadow's).

The album, featuring guest appearances from Thom Yorke, Mike D, and Badly Drawn Boy, among others, was considered to be somewhat of a flop when it dropped in '98, after tons and tons AND TONS of hype. It's not that it wasn't good, but it had just way too many over-the-top expectations and, yes, it wasn't as good or important (at all) as Endtroducing... and so people gushed, they booed, and then they forgot. But really, it's a good, fun album, and is enjoyable to listen to, especially in the context of late 90s electronic-pop/trip-hop, and worth a spin if you haven't heard in forever. The two "Drums of Death" hip-hop experiments are pretty boring, but the rest is pretty solid, and two tracks tower above the rest as truly inspired pieces of music worth holding onto: the obvious one, "Rabbit In Your Headlights," featuring Thom Yorke, and the other, "Lonely Soul," featuring Richard Ashcroft of the Verve.

"Rabbit in Your Headlights" is stunning, and frankly deserves it's own post, as it is in some ways the ultimate "Thom Yorke, Cultural Figure" vehicle he has ever had (and certainly the best of the many "guest appearances" he's had in his career). I will get to this one someday. "Lonely Soul," though, is its own wonderful monstrous beast: nine minutes, multiple parts, beginning with quiet and silence before slowing building and erupting into a special kind of bombastic "melancholia-phoria" that Ashcroft (and the late 90s) specialized in. The song is absolutely epic, in the traditional sense of the word, and even given the gloss and age still does a number on me today.

It's no coincidence that both of these songs appear on the Crying mix, as one challenges to trump the other in a battle of over the throne of King of Mega-meloncholia-melodrama--albeit in different ways: "Rabbit in Your Headlights" in first person Lynchian-darkness narrative, "Lonely Soul" in a distanced, bright-lights full blast. But both are great, and both slay me still.

Listen:

UNKLE ft. Richard Ashcroft, "Lonely Soul"

Which reminds me... sometime coming down the pike: first entry in upcoming "Revisiting The Mixes" series, on Crying.

xo,

Labels: loved sounds, memories, mp3

posted by Nihilist Loves Hate, Hates Everything at 2/03/2009 11:17:00 PM 0 comments

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