Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Through Fog And Rain I Run My Train


"Ask Me About Pittsburgh" - The Asteroid No. 4

The first thirty seconds may sound like an ice-cream van drowning, but then the acoustic and electric guitars start , and shortly after that the rolling, lolloping drums drive things off. 


An evocative almost shoegazey voice comes in, singing a tale of a chance meeting with a beautiful stranger on a train, and then having to part ways. Love and loss on a small, realistic, everyday scale - "It's a real drag that you're leaving", he sings. I guess for twenty seconds here and there, we all fall in love with someone on the bus or train, the mind considers briefly what a relationship may be like with this person, and then the thought is gone, floating away to wherever thoughts go once they're over. 


The breakdown at about the two minute mark is fab, echoing the refrain from the intro of the song, before coming back in, with the drums, to to an spacey arpeggio


The song begins to fade at the 3 minute mark, and a most peculiar psychedelic outtro begins, as if a completely different song has been picked up by a badly tuned radio receiving signals from a far flung planet. 


Asteroid No. 4 have chosen to hide a wee pop gem inside this song, Only two and a half minutes long really, and I'm glad it has exposed itself to me. 


The lyrics, "I can remember, we sat together on the train / You asked about Pittsburgh, but I'd only been there in the rain" conjure up that sort of intangible abstract far-away place, a romantic ideal - an almost dreamilke feeling. 


4 comments:

Proudfoot said...

Hmm. I posted but it wasn't there. What am I doing wrong? Was it because I said nice things about Paul Simon's guitarist? Help.

Blimpy said...

Hallo Proudfoot!

It got posted under a different comments section - the one for "Joining The Fray" ..

Proudfoot said...

Right, I've think I've sussed this now. So if I want to say Vampire Weekend is great' (and it is), I post it there, not here. Whoops.

Blimpy said...

Spot on, proudfoot!

Now, do you want to be added as an author for this blog, so you can start posting?