What a task it is to capture and live up to sadness. Anyway, this is one of the things we look for in music, and no matter how many times we find it, it's always in need of satisfying. Sad music isn't just an emotional band-aid, it's practically life support, at least for a moment. And there are always a few old favorites to revisit; like the rare friend who knows what it feels like to be you, they somehow understand everything, emphasize all the most important parts of being sad. They validate and heal. It's another way in which we live with music the same way we do with people, and probably confide a lot more. Consequently, when the music doesn't suit our sadness, it's almost offensive. "How could I even think of playing that at a time like this?" It's all very dramatic and important, but suitably so.
Manchester duo George seem to work solely in the sad realm. Melodies lean, tempos drag, bells and harmoniums resonate in cathedrals of strained optimism: what little time there is for joy is used to drape a gray, rain-soaked filter over everything within earshot. Funny enough, someone sent me an instant message the other day saying that the new album wasn't sad enough. To my ears, A Week of Kindness (which I've repeatedly, Freudianly misread as "a kind of weakness") is only marginally less melancholy than their previous music, but so it goes. No greater crime than to be misunderstood, and sad music that isn't "sad enough" steps on feet like a steamroller. Nevertheless, I'm still pretty charmed by George. Although their 2003 cult-fave The Magic Lantern was indeed an almost perfect document of romantic gloom, it's not like they've changed their tune. Perhaps there's a bit more light at the end of the tunnel.
Still, it doesn't take too many passes through songs like "The Living Sound" or "The New and Better Heart" to remember your bruised, inner romantic. Suzy Mangion's vocals are still full of lilt, clear and never soaring, but drifting atop homemade arrangements of organ, snare drums, and bells. Before I'd read about "twee" music, I used to call this "precious" or even just "modest", and lines like "See the living sound; no metronome goes this far" perfectly encapsulate the kinds of miniature wisdom and diary'd epiphanies so suited to this music. George play music for being alone. Even when Mangion and partner Michael Varity sing together, as on the ultra-purple ballad "Now You Want to Settle Down" or ultra-daisy sing-song "Spend My Time", they seem dedicated to an audience of one (or less).
Elsewhere, the mood is a bit lighter, greatly assisted by stretches of "incidental" music like the "Week of Wonders" or "Vanishing Sounds of Britain". These pieces, short and instrumental, are like islands in between clusters of melancholy, but at a distance are hard to separate from their neighbors. When something threatens to stand apart from the murky depths, as on the bizarrely lo-fi "Supercharge" (borrowing a bass line from none other than Smile-era Brian Wilson), it just as quickly disappears, as if sucked into a dark area that my ears never quite figured out in the first place. And then I find myself back in George's living room world, banjo in the corner of "Song of Degrees" and waving goodbye after a whistle and swing on "Older Too". It's all very dramatic, sure. It's also beautiful, if only to visit once in a while.
