It seems to me that one of the reasons that certain, very specific things take our breaths away is because we're lazy. We're too lazy to recognize these things every other time they appear to us. Make no mistake that they're there more often and yet we keep our breaths in-check, uninterrupted. Every day the sun comes up. Without fail, the sun is up there. Just ask the pilots and the birds above the clouds, if there are any ways of blocking the old girl out. Every day the sun sets. It always does - always! -- and yet, some of those times are seen or felt as mere formalities.
Others are seen as being more memorable, but all told, the properties of what we're appreciating are still there, in every single case, every single night. We just aren't looking most days and the fault is solely ours. The buck stops here. We lazily ignore what we just might find to be inspiring and awesome. Woodsman songs bring us to this discussion today, for the Denver band seems to get the delicate balance between the appreciative state and that of lukewarm whatever-ness, when it comes to gauging awe.
They tend to double-down on the appreciative state, growing and blowing out sounds and moods that cast our sight in gold leaf and silver tinsel. They smoke off, right into the blue, soaring into a descent that will take them into the heart gloriously golden light on every song we hear from them. Say we were hanging out at Wayne Coyne's house, deep into an 18-pack, just the two of us, staring out over the horizon at dinnertime and discussing what it might feel like to stop traffic or to melt mirrors with our eyes, we'd be tramping through the song, "All The Cards Fell In Place." We feel all kinds of different in the shimmery, swimmery vocals and touches of the spaced out jam brains of Woodsman songs, carrying us into what usually is a secluded part of our own heads, unlocking the glitter canons and the tripping giddiness.
*Essay originally published November, 2010