Wednesday!

As a huge fan of shoegaze, I’m not really bothered by the whole soundscape thing where the vocals are used as instrument rather than as medium for a message (intended or unintended) of a song. I am still in awe of the audacity of Kevin Shields, of My Bloody Valentine, when he didn’t give Belinda Butcher the lyrics to his song, but merely gave her a tape with the sung lines he wanted recreated without telling her what the words were. So she just had to recreate phonetically what she was pretty sure she heard the first time. (They also did this thing where they did her parts really early in the morning, so she is singing when she very recently woke up.)

So… yeah. I don’t need to know what the person is saying to enjoy the song. This has come back to bite me in the butt a handful of times… you shouldn’t make mix tapes for people you like and use such songs, for example. You might pick a song that is singing about something that is precisely the opposite of what you’d want to say to someone to whom you’d want to give a mixtape.

But you get back up and you dust yourself off and you go back to listening to the music that you like. Recently, I was introduced to the music of Sigur Rós. The songs are in Icelandic rather than English, which makes them a lot easier to project onto without getting caught up in whether the lyrics are saying something that you wouldn’t want them to say if you were playing the song for someone to whom you’d be inclined to give a mix tape.

Hoppípolla is the song that was played for me and it’s lush and a soundscape and I’m sure he’s singing about something about which one would feel triumphant and joyful.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the translation of the lyrics. “Hoppípolla” is Icelandic for “Hopping into puddles”. As for the rest of the words:

Smiling
Spinning ’round and ’round
Holding hands
The whole world a blur
But you are standing

And I get nosebleed
But I always get up
(Hopelandic)

Yeah. I guess I could see someone being pleased when they looked up those lyrics after I gave them a tape with this song on it.

So… What are you listening to?