Sometimes a song just grabs you and holds you.
It's Friday, the end of a long November week. I'm spent from packing boxes and moving furniture, a task that will only become more involving as the next week tears on. Yet as I write this, I find myself unable to turn my tunes off. There's a song that's been haunting me for a while now, and I think you need to hear it.
See, I first heard this song over the satellite airwaves a few weeks back. Initially I thought it might have been some descendant form of a Modest Mouse mutation, given the voice of the lead singer and the general feel of the track. Upon further research I found that it was actually a song by Georgia indie-rockers Manchester Orchestra off of their latest concept album Simple Math. While the eponymous single is more heartbreaking and contemplative, the single 'Virgin' has been stalking me at every turn, invading my dreams and haunting my waking hours as of late. It's the kind of ominous, foreboding heavy rocking tracks that evokes the best elements of the sturm and drang of grunge while tapping into our modern sensibilities of nuanced niche music that speaks to the cerebral listener.
Thrumming away with lurching, swaying guitars and eerie choirs of children singing "We built this house with our hands and our time and our blood", 'Virgin' gets under your skin as it unfolds. Lead singer Andy Hull moans about our modern state and the heartbreak of a world crumbling around him while the song washes like waves, only to break into its dinosaur-stomp of a refrain. Coupled with an unsettling, iconic video, it's the kind of single that you listen to over and over to in the fear that you've done something terribly wrong. Only repeated listenings will tell you whether or not that's true.
I love this song. During the lead up to Halloween I made sure to crank it as loud as I could to wring every creepy, weepy bit of angst out of it as a form of musical penance. Check out the video and see if you don't pick up on what I mean from the imagery. It's a great single from a band that absolutely deserves a much, much wider audience.
It's Friday, the end of a long November week. I'm spent from packing boxes and moving furniture, a task that will only become more involving as the next week tears on. Yet as I write this, I find myself unable to turn my tunes off. There's a song that's been haunting me for a while now, and I think you need to hear it.
