Manafonistas

The only place where I listen to a song, maybe 15, 20 times in a row, or every day and nothing else for a while, is my car. It happened to the longest track of the last Wilco album, it happened to „Porpoise Mouth“ of Country Joe & The Fish, known as the first psycedelic rock album of history, and it lately happened to „Return“ from Eno’s and Hyde’s „High Life“. It’s vintage Eno, he sings, wrote the lyrics, plays all synths and shares background voices with Karl Hyde who also contributes CDJ groove, guitar and bass guitar. Marianna Champion is the third voice in the background. Even Brian’s delivery of the forefront singing is partly buried in the mix and the excellent, mantra-like strumming of Karl’s electric guitar. Is it a sad song? I can only catch up single words, a certain non-cliche kind of melancolia might be at work. A kind of yearning? Watching beauty fading? I really want to creep under the skin of this killing melody. When the singing of the real words ends, we come to Brian’s floating „Hu-hu-hu“-singing which seems to offer joy and relief, and then a mesmerizing synth melody enters the scenery of a song that could go on forever. As it, in fact, does, in my Toyota, on this rainy Sunday morning, and the days to come. No doubt about it, this is my song of the year. It wouldn’t add to the dose of endorphines set free here, but if anyone is able to transcribe the lyrics, I would be very interested in reading them. Sometimes I try to just concentrate on the words, but from one moment to another, my attention is blown away by all the other ingrediencies.