A COMET APPEARS

Listen to A COMET APPEARS by The Shins.

Jason dropping in.

For those of you who were at Bill and Amy's wedding, I was one of the two twisted turntablists (the less-handsome one). Living in England but a native Australian, I'm going to bring some international pedigree to this blinding blog of Bill's.

Bill was asking me over a bottle of wine (well, I was drinking a bottle of wine in London - I don't know what Bill was doing in New York) if there was some kind of theme I'd like to employ in my song selection. My answer, as I slammed down the bottle from my lips, was an emphatic "hell no!" I just want to write about songs that have something of the magic about them. You may know the band, you may even know the tracks, but I just want to share with you songs that can make you feel that music transcends(,) man.

And if I was to contradict myself by grabbing a theme by those last few words, it would be a great description of this first track - "A Comet Appears" by The Shins.

Much more below the fold.


There is a television programme, just finished here in the UK on the Sky Arts channel, called "From the Basement". Its been a long, long time since I've watched musical performance as a weekly television show. This one is different. Its stunningly shot and the performances are very stripped down - there is no host, no audience, not even song titles - just the music. Each episode features 3-4 artists: one "big", one "support" and ones you've probably never heard of. For example:

Damien Rice - Eels - Autolux - Architecture in Helskinki (check out the full lineups here).

The first show featured The Shins - a band who Natalie Portman catapulted to fame on the film "Garden State" when she tells Zach Braff's character that just listening to their song "New Slang" will "change your life, I swear":



....and it worked for me - I loved the song and checked out the band just as I did when John Cusack said "I will now sell 5 copies of 'The Three EPs' of the Beta Band" in the movie "Hi Fidelity":



One of the songs The Shins performed was "A Comet Appears" - the last song on their latest album. I knew the song (its very similar in itself to "New Slang") - but I loved the performance so much that I started playing it on heavy rotation on the 'pod.

The chirping songbirds at the opening, the wistful melodic guitars and evocative imagery of the lyrics belie a very dark song about one man's views of life's futilities as he grows older.

There's a heavy feeling of numbness and solitude; of an insignificance that only catches you when you listen repeatedly to the lyrics against the lightness of the music.

Let's carve my aging face off
Fetch us a knife
Start with my eyes
Down so the lines
Form a grimacing smile

The character compares himself with Nietzsche's concept of the übermensch only to conclude the he is "barely a vapour".

Songwriter and singer James Russell Mercer has quite a way with words. Its a song that could well have begun its life as a poem, with imagery like "thumbs and posture" (evolution), "wily comet" (earth), "burnt sage and a forest of bygones" (evoking a dual meaning of a melancholic meditation and sage also as wisdom).

For all of its reflection about the growing emptiness in the heart of one man, trying to avoid his awakening feeling of a life lost of purpose, it is a beautiful song.

Photo: Paris, 2004. Taken by Jason Bryant.