This track is on one of those New Wave compilations that I tend to hoard but never really listen to. Well, yesterday I listened to it and found this precious jewel that's been on constant repeat ever since. I've always known about The Go-Betweens, people always told me "The Go-Betweens this", "The Go-Betweens that" and "Why don't you listen to The Go-Betweens?" but, honestly, I never really bothered to. They didn't sound that exciting to me. But this here! Like most ingenious and overwhelming things, at 3 minutes running time it is much too short and yet it is just long enough. It is 3 minutes of concentrated beauty, drama, new-wavy-angst and poetry. It feels like a heartbreak after a night of heavy boozing with its swaying, jerky melody and Forster's manic-depressive vocal performance. Actually, I should try listening to it after a night of heavy boozing and see if it can get any better than it already is.
This unique song, unique to the whole body of work by the obscure Asylum Party, unique in every sense... If anybody ever wanted to create the sound of pure nostalgia in itself, this is the closest anyone ever got. I wonder what other people feel when listening to this song. I get utterly and hopelessly nostalgic, even though I don't know what for. It's not that I'm particularly old and know many times and eras, it's not that I have to dig particularly deep into my memory to get to that one dark part that's so irrevocably gone it makes one's heart ache and break. I don't know what it reminds me of, if of anything at all. It seems to be simply the soundtrack of some good times, times much better than the one you're stuck in right now, the soundtrack of reverie and the painful awareness that nothing will be the same again. I sometimes think it reminds me of beautiful summers I've known, the heat and sun that burnt my eyes, but then it seems just as fitting for a summer night at an open fire or an autumn window blurred with falling rain. The initial beats sound as if they could lead to anything, they even sound deceptively cheerful until the first melancholic screech of a guitar... "Feeling that hole that is just my soul..." Yeah, that must be it!