Songs that make me smile

Elbow - Friend of Ours

I didn't really like this album when I first bought it, principally because I was listening to it through my ipod headphones, (the right ear doesn't produce any sound, and the left ear is pretty much just treble). A couple of days ago, I gave it another crack with my AKG recording headphones and BAM! - a world of difference. There is so much colour in this album. Yes it has some anthemic tracks, like Weather to Fly, One Day Like This and The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver, but for me, it is the attention to harmony that really got me fixed. This song, Friend of Ours, has a beautiful swelling violin riff, which I find just so simple and mournful. It's like a deep sigh. Can you hear the discordant brass at the end of the violin riff? Like the deft stroke of a master painter, it's so faint you don't quite know whether they meant it or not... but of course they did.

Turn the lights off, pour yourself a good red, turn it up and breath in.