Each day in November, I’m revisiting a song from the 90’s — a decade that was a sorta coming of age for me. In that span, I experienced high school, college and my time as a young single guy in New York City. It was a decade of ups and downs, and the music never stopped playing during that span. It was always there with me. #30DaysOf90sSongs
One of my favorite bands from the 90’s shoegaze era is Lush. They made songs that I could get lost in. However, there was a sense of grounding that I felt in their catalog, even as the songs were resolutely ethereal and atmospheric. That grounding took the form of bass lines that stood clearly as rhythmic cornerstones and more pop-oriented melodies that you could sing along to a cappella. One of the clearest examples of these musical attributes is “Light From A Dead Star.”
As the opening track to the 1994 release Split, “Light From A Dead Star” consists of four key movements. The first one is a gorgeous overture that sounds like an orchestra tuning up before a shoegaze concerto. The second movement is a brief interlude before the song launches into the stratosphere, beginning like the opening bars to Depeche Mode’s “Black Celebration” before settling into a mid-tempo cloud of listlessness. The third movement is where the dead star illuminates at its brightest, riding on the rhythmic bed of Chris Acland’s drum kit and Phil King’s meandering bass lines. By the fourth movement, the light begins to flicker out, sounding like a star on life support. Absolutely frail and gorgeous.
“Don't listen when they say they wish I could stay. And now it's just too late to wish me back again.”