BEATS OF LOVE

124. Two Wrongs by Samana 

Thankfully, the poems have stopped. I worried the rest of my life would think out fifth rate rhyming couplets. Back to the music. An intense, but wonderful, purchase is Samana's self-titled third album. 

Some breathtakingly fragile tunes that carry great weight are at play. Opener Into The Blue sets the tone wonderfully, but this track is the stunner and I'm so glad to have it on wax. Franklin builds the sonics to a truly blistering crescendo abetted by lush soaring strings that stirs up some proper marvel. Rebecca's highly distinctive voice is its own instrument and her lyrics are both intense and profound.

We all struggle to contain and govern dual conflicting forces in our lives. Sitting on a wooden pew letting intangible thoughts of God's creativity pour into me, hoping to make the struggle easier, is my freedom quest. Rebecca's flickering imagery harks back to the freight trains of freedom that influenced writers in 50s America and beyond. Here's the mighty Kerouac;

'The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and left, lost, down a path—the gloom of love.' *

It smells fresh as we're still hopelessly addicted to exploring our inner-selves in less cerebral ways than classicism. Freight-train riding represents the big ideas we have about America. Its expansive, diverse and sensory imagery sparks our imagination and feeds our own freedom quest. These sensory lyrics reflect the transient nature of freight train images, encasing what, for many, encompasses the attraction of the true freedom quest, the great unknown. Albeit, in a more poetic manner than most. 

I'm off to bask in its majesty, at least until the footy starts.   

* Jack Kerouac- Maggie Cassidy   

                   

BEATS OF LOVE 

123. In a Heap by Me

'He's deep,' said someone

as I lay in a heap,

The rhythms of the night before 

lay with me on the floor,

'How could they possibly know how great the new 2 Lone Swordsmen LP is?'

I asked myself in emotive wonder

As they calculated that the glass-eyed shallow end of life is best,

The drizzle, not this thunder 

Drizzle that characterized my old man's days on earth

Sure, he'd seen the Stones at Belle Vue

but that was nothing new

I never thought Mick and Keith would outlive him or Lord Sabre

or never thought I'd be voting for this tepid form of Labour

Who I vote for to annoy my old man, still 

Whose upper body conceals itself behind an out-folded Daily Express

I see those flapping slippered feet untangling the mess

That life became

within a paper so lame

'He's in a heap,' said they

and they were fucking right

 BEATS OF LOVE

122. Reddish by Me

There's a school of thought

 says you are what you've fought

Doesn't say that man who's devised a scheme

to avoid being seen buying hemorrhoid cream

Disguised as a small redbrick house 

But not just that; its internal walls

He was duly mis-recognized as a billboard

There's also a school of thought

says conflict's bought

Doesn't say that same small redbrick house

Instead, stepping into the ring 

of someone else's imagination

Slack-jawed in puffy shorts 

It wins the bout

Only coz imagination knocked itself out 

Yeah, there's a school of thought