jeudi 11 Aoû 2005, 11h26m

I get chills every time I listen to Unchanging Window; not literal chills - my body doesn't actually shake when I hear those quivering notes come fading in - but I am reminded so powerfully of the idea of cold that I can taste dry winter air in my mouth and feel it curling in my sinuses, beneath my eyes.

It is, I think, a "cold" song. It sounds like light on ice. I was never a huge fan of the Superman movies - which is probably an odd admission, coming from a lifelong lover of comic books - but one of the few visuals that really stuck with me was the interior of the Fortress of Solitude. This song, perhaps with the vocals stripped out (which is not to say that the vocals weaken the song, not at all, but they are the only vestige of softness and warmth - which, considering Trish's vocal style on The Noise Made By People, is saying a lot), would make an excellent soundtrack for a short documentary on the Fortress, were it a real, empty place. The song is really propelled along more by the percussion than anything else; they're the water to the other sounds' ice. I'm not trying to be precious or pedantic - I'm just trying to work out, in words, why it seems like such a cold song to me, and why it suggests slow movement through and over ice.

I first heard The Noise Made By People shortly after it came out - I was still in school, then, and I played the hell out of that album, especially in the car, at an obscenely early hour, driving to the campus so that I could begin and, hopefully, complete assignments due at eight o'clock. Unchanging Window is probably always going to be, for me, on top of all its other merits and elements, cold mornings, shivering over a heavy textbook in the parking lot, smoking foul but reassuring cigarettes, watching the wind snap and pop through bare branches and faded flags, hoping to see a girl in a scarf pass by.

After that winter, I don't think I listened to Broadcast again for a long time. Broadcast does not make music that will suffer the heat with you. Maybe Living Room.