“Certain songs they get so scratched into our souls.”
Ever true, not a month flows by that I don’t find some song that captures my mood and comes to define a certain moment or period. As a part of my move to more music writing, these Quick Cuts entries will chronicle the best (and perhaps worst) of those defining single songs.
Crashing in on the ever powerful wave of NPR’s infallible ‘All Songs Considered’, Oregon’s Typhoon demanded my attention with ‘Young Fathers’.
With a balmy opening worthy of summer, the song swiftly descends into the familiar elements of autumn… busier, darker, flooded with transition. Glimpses of beauty return like an Indian summer, only to be cast back by defiant percussion and and lyrics that delight in an intangible sense of futility. Wasn’t it only a few weeks ago that life was much simpler, that sunshine season that was never going to end?
The title is relevant to my circumstances without recalling them all too much. If anything, it’s a reminder that circumstances don’t last. Enjoy what you have while you have it, because it’s frightening and fantastic and everything that comes between but, wherever it hits, it’s not sticking there.
Truth be told, nothing else on the full album ‘White Lighter’ quite lives up to the promise of this track, but only because I adore it so. Certain songs, indeed…
“I was born in September and, like everything else, I can’t remember,
I replace it with scenes from a film that I will never know.”
Annnnd, scene.