Cast No Shadow

‘Bittersweet Symphony’ 

I one hundred percent understand this now. I mean. Fuck. It’s about his dad dying isn’t it. I think most of his songs were around then.

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I think you have to have lost someone. No, not lost. They have to have died, then you can really get the actual sentiment of this stuff. Not sentiment. That word seems weak. 

The song of it. The primality. The expression. The confession.

I used to write about music using words like that years ago too. But I only had the odd glimpse of the real significance. I wasn't equipped by life yet.

Now I understand it more it’s too big to even comprehend how someone can distil that into a four-minute pop song.

I suppose that string sample helped, but if you really listen to it at the start there’s some absolutely beautiful synthy keyboard work that is tuned and in tune but not really transcribable notes. It gives the song a breathless itchy forward motion.

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That’s why that video of Richard Ashcroft walking down a street and people bouncing off him is so good too.

I always thought it was just him being a cokey New Lad Twat at the time and – well, it was, a bit. But also and underneath it was the sense that no matter what, then you are forced to be, or cursed with, ever walking forwards. The destination is not as important as the motion. 

People come in and out of your life; some bounce off. Some you shrug off. Some face you and sneer. Some turn away. Some even smile and challenge like the girl near the end. She is hope. She is the reason, if there was one, to travel from where you were to where you are.

At the end he’s joined by his band. Compadres. Cause friends can and do walk at least some of the way with you. They haven’t walked your entire path but there they are, and there you are.

We don’t know what will happen after the song ends, of course, and there the metaphors all break down. We’re back out of the track, the video, the conceit.

There’s a good case to be made that the conceit is life. 

A life.

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Go back to the start of the video. Richard Ashcroft gets himself into position whilst the strings and the tuned non-notey synthy stuff begins.

He takes his first step when the drums and the band kick in.

But he’s ready, somehow.

So you can find agency, even if it’s not deviating from your forward motion-to-nowhere-in-particular.