The calendar may say it is still summer, but for me, it's Fall. Just as spring and summer have their songs for me, so, too, does autumn. The first is by the appropriately named October Project, a short lived pop/folk group based in Nashville whose lead singer has the single best voice I have ever heard. This woman is the only person for whom the cliche about singing the phonebook would apply. She now performs solo. Nothing they have recorded has the emotional power of this song, called "Bury My Lovely":
Next is the British band Porcupine Tree, a band that originally began as an attempt at parody. The problem was the members, for whom Porcupine Tree was a side project, soon discovered that the music they were writing and performing was better than anything they had done, and getting a wider following than the music their own bands were doing. This is "Lazarus" from Deadwing:
There are rare moments in a person's life that stand out, even as they are happening, as vivid, precious, irreplaceable. One such time was the late-summer through mid-winter, 1991-1992. Seminary was going more than well, I was part of a group of friends and fellow-students to whom I was closer than any other group in my life, and there was a very special woman in my life, the only one beside my wife I can honestly say my love was honest and complete. That she was the first such made her very special indeed. One fine Friday evening in September, we missed a movie date because we spent the evening walking hand in hand through the neighborhood around Wesley Seminary, telling one another about our lives (we were very self-conscious and deliberate about how we went about being together). After missing our movie time, we went to a pizzeria in Bethesda, on Wisconsin Ave, after which she said, "The perfect ending to this day would be to fall asleep in you arms." The day ended perfectly . . .
The next day, as I sat and read Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics, I listened to Julia Fordham. This song, "Porcelain", perfectly captured my feelings at the time, and reminds me of that very special weekend.
