drumming for take-off
i’m limited by indecision and myopic musical taste to even attempt a ‘top five’ of the year, much less the decade. instead i offer a song, “i knew” by lightning dust, that kept me company this summer.
it’s a brief, 2.5 minutes of burgeoning excitement — a fast, steady pulse of a drum machine that gives way to fluttering vocals painting an image of a love out of nowhere, of its headlong first moments. the song knows its limits, and doesn’t try to do more than it should, even though it seems like those pulsings and synths would burst into something big. “i knew” acts as poetry should: brief, disciplined, aimed at capturing, verbalizing, and representing (however inadequately) specific snapshots of thought/life/feeling that will always escape verbalization anyway.
pretty much summer perfection.
edit:
for further appreciation: live. in tiny desk concert form, starting at 8:30 (file under: hippy-like; pregnant; knowing glances).