Body Of Years starts of with a meaty bass and drums riff that even the Pixies would be proud of. As soon as you think you know what’s happening a keyboard enters sounding like one of Kylie Minogue’s backing-band has got tired of playing Better The Devil You Know and has decided to throw himself off a cliff instead. Then things get really strange.
After having the song on repeat I’m reminded of a board game I had as a kid. The aim of the game was to construct a route to retrieve specific items (I remember a dagger, a crown, a treasure chest). The pathway was made of loose bits of card and to reach the items you had to push the card around and create a trail. However, this made other items or parts of the path turn up at unexpected points on the board. You could have your route to the crown planned out in your brain and then find it blocked off when it came to your go.
Trying to discern the structure of this song immediately took me back to that memory. When you think you’ve figured it out it throws you off course. After what might be the verse we get the first bar of a chorus that doesn’t appear fully for another two minutes. Vocal lines start and end with the same phrase like a snake eating its own tail. You think you hearing a new melody until you realise it’s in fact the harmony line staggered out of sync with the chords. Ideas are chopped off and stuck back on at unexpected places. And every time something dares to be repeated, you can be assured it’s with a completely revised arrangement.
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The fact that the end result flows so easily is astonishing. Every part of the song is so catchy that when there’s an unexpected shift it feels like a natural move we just hadn’t realised: like the end of a ‘whodunit’. However the constant swerves give the impression that Body Of Years is always trying to reach its destination without really getting there. The reprisal of the opening keyboard line as the songs outro comes close to being the revelatory moment, however after all the toying it isn’t the genius trick the song appears to be building to. That said, it’s all done within 2 minutes and 59 seconds and proves that some people are still pushing at the boundaries of what a pop song can achieve.
Mother Mother online
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