Thursday 31 January 2013

Song 40: The Trapeze Swinger



Why not, I thought to myself, continue to write about timelessly beautiful songs I really, really love, which have incredible lyrical precision, which are built around a deceptively simple rhyme scheme? Why not do that?

So, here's The Trapeze Swinger, and as a special treat, it's The Trapeze Swinger just as I first heard it, at Green Man Festival in 2008. Up until that point, I'd been an Iron and Wine agnostic, though the rest of the set had converted me somewhat, this was the encore and this was, obviously, a level above. Just as with Hallelujah and Into My Arms, it's a song of such transfixing beauty I just didn't think, for a while, that there had ever been anything comparable.

I'm a little more confident with this one that I am providing a genuine service by highlighting it - it's still quite an obscure song - it's not on an official Iron and Wine album, and it was on the soundtrack to a film called 'In Good Company' (though in a kind-of-reggae recorded version which I really don't think is anywhere near as good as the one-man-and-a-guitar live version above). Do listen to it. Really. Do.

Now I'm here, I'm not really sure what to say. He has become pretty successful, Sam Beam who is Iron and Wine, and in particular another beautiful song of his called 'Flightless Bird, American Mouth' which is the prom/wedding theme in the 'Twilight' films. His last full album 'Kiss Each Other Clean' (around which time I saw him live twice) I was not such an enormous fan of - he was going for a whole different sound, which involved a lot of jamming and squawking saxophone, which I felt was only partially successful.

He's a very clever man, a professor of film and cinematography or something, it's a very clever song, and it invites numerous interpretations - who's dead, is anyone dead, what's the trapeze etc ... for once, I'll quieten my literal mind - it doesn't really matter what it's about, but it's very moving.

So if I'm not going to pick the song itself apart (I probably won't be able to resist a little), then I will perhaps talk about that rare feeling that song gave me, about seeing music live and about the vagaries of festivals.

I've seen a lot of musical acts live - I totted it up recently and in all it's at least 250, a fair few of whom I've paid to see in their own right but more of whom I've seen as part of a festival bill.

Obviously, these are different experiences in various ways - but the main thing for me is not one's own response but the crowd around. At a gig, pretty much everyone has come to see the band, people know their material, they've paid good money, they want to be entertained and a part of that involves pretty high expectations.
The downside for a festival crowd is that they don't know the material often, they can drift wherever they want, the sound won't be as perfectly adjusted for the band, the set is shorter, sometimes they're just lazily kicking back rather than actively listening to music. The pay-off to all the negatives is that expectations can be vastly surpassed, and there is something gloriously exciting and fulfilling about a) enjoying something a lot more than one thought one would and sharing that experience with other people or b) being a fan of a band watching as that band wins over a doubting crowd and enjoys a triumph.

My experience with Iron and Wine was the former. I had bought their latest album and kind of got into it a little, and was fan enough of the band to be there, but equally blase enough about them, I recall, to go and get my Pieminster pie while the set was going on (not far to go, and the music was still very audible). As I came back with my pie (the excellence of which no doubt contributed to the magic ...) I was able to take a look at the whole crowd on that August evening in the striking natural bowl setting of Green Man's main stage and see that there was atmosphere, that people were into it, that something was happening here.

I remember he had to persuade the stage manager to give him time to play one last song, which turned out to be The Trapeze Swinger, I remember the frisson of delight and recognition from the hardcore Iron and Wine fans at the front which alerted the more casual listener like me that this was a good one, and I remember (as you can tell from the clip) that the whole audience was utterly enchanted for those seven minutes.

That's what live music should be like, but, if we're honest, very rarely is. Sure, I enjoy most things I see one way or the other, but how many times have I truly been captured, mesmerized, elevated, transfixed like that?

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