These sunflowers have been growing in a neighbour's front garden, just up the road from us. The tallest is over six feet tall. Walking home in late August they seemed perfectly framed against the sky. The picture I took was a bit overcast, the clouds and lowlight making it very heavy so I added a bit of a filter.
We've been taking sunflowers to Isaac's grave all summer as well. There is something magical about them.
In 2001 Low released Things We Lost In The Fire, an album recorded with Steve Albini that put them on the map of US indie rock royalty, a record that was dubbed slowcore. The first song on the album is Sunflower, a gorgeous, slow paced guitar song from a similar emotional space as Yo La Tengo (see last Sunday's post).
Paul Weller's Sunflower is from 1993, a, maybe the, song that marked his creative rebirth. Sunflower is a thunderous, reverb drenched song with a stop- start, dynamic, the guitars and drums summoning late 60s psychedelia but in a very early 1990s way. Over massive drum fills and rolls from Steve White and ringing, circling guitar lines, Weller sings to his love, 'I don't care how long this lasts/ We have no future we have no past'. A song about being in love, about losing love and being in the moment.
Ah, that's one of Weller's best, I reckon, from any stage of his career.
ReplyDeleteI dug out a couple of my favourite Low albums just recently after I read the news of Mimi's cancer diagnoses. Such a great band and lovely people.
ReplyDeleteLovely photos and a couple of great tunes. I'd forgotten how good that Weller song was.
ReplyDeleteThe Portishead mix is cool too
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