S - some devil, dave matthews (2003)

i drafted this entry on my way home from an intense two weeks of travel. as anyone who read the 'r' entry may have gathered, i'm exhausted, which has left me reflective, emo and - let's be honest - kind of melodramatic. it's kind of hard to believe, given how much i bitch and moan about travel sometimes, but i think i've actually got post-meeting blues.

dave matthews is one of my favourite artists when i'm feeling reflective like this. and this is album in particular holds many memories - i listened to it relentlessly when i backpacked alone through eastern europe and the balkans back in 2006, which was a time of learning and challenges and happiness and lots of other things for me. it's a gentle album really; dave matthews has a rich, distinctive voice, and ventures occasionally into some fun alt rock that might not usually be my cup of tea, but that sometimes works. this is one of his more downbeat albums, and it reminds me of a boy i fell for in europe. i can pinpoint a number of exact life-moments around that time where I listened to it: on a train from prague to berlin, on the gallipoli peninsula in turkey, on a stoney beach on the south coast of france, and on an overnight bus through the albanian mountains from kosovo to tirana. and now i am listening to it at 18,000ft above the united states.

i'm not going to pretend this album doesn't occasionally venture over-the-top into cheesiness - 'save me' is a pretty good example of this, as are the two opening tracks 'dodo' and 'so darn lucky'. but life is full of moments where that seems strangely appropriate. and there are other, softer, and less obvious points of cleverness in this album: 'trouble' brings with it a gentle melancholy, and 'grey blue eyes' is a pretty little song.

but to me, right now - and actually this has always been the case - the stand-out song is 'stay or leave', a song that affords a gentle, understated treatment to notions of loss and separation, of feeling your way through something without really knowing how it'll turn out, and of dealing with the fall out when it all goes wrong. i'm always struck by the notion of "making plans to change the world, while the world is changing us..."

this is a simple, beautifully-written song full of delicate lyrics epitomising confusion, idealism, reflection, and wanting what can't be had. i found this lovely accoustic version - i dare you not to adore these lyrics.



so yea, perhaps a little melodramatic - but good right now.