Song 28: When I See Your Eyes I Swear To God That Worlds Collided

When I See Your Eyes I Swear To God That Worlds Collided - The Young Republic

I'm not Samuel Taylor Coleridge. I'm not Thomas De Quincey. No. Nor an I Lou Reed or Jason Pierce. I have rarely achieved a higher state of consciousness, nor lived my life in a gently medicated haze.

However, this song's place in my affections owes as much to its association with analgesia as it does to the fact that is, in itself, a very nice song.

When I broke my tibia and fibula playing football in November 2008, the actual experience was really not as bad as one might expect, and with the help of paramedics, laughing gas and doctors, I was reasonably happily ensconsed in a hospital bed on a Saturday evening. But, of course, the whole process doesn't stop there. And seeing as it was fairly late on a Saturday evening and I'd come straight from the football pitch and I couldn't get in touch with anyone soon enough to bring me anything that night, I just had two things to take care of me and my solidifying pain that first long dark night - my iPod and the occasional dose of morphine.

But I tend to think I must have been in fairly considerable pain by that stage as I think the morphine was meant to knock me out and at least allow me to sleep through this grim first night, before visitors could alleviate my discomfort with books and chocolates and clothes and toiletries. But not an actual wink did I get, just the vague haze and occasional moments of panic.

So thank goodness for my iPod, and thank goodness, in particular for this song, with its showy but sweet title, its mildly Spectoresque production, its arresting, open-hearted lyrics, its weedy but warm vocal. Above all else, it was the song that crept through the haze that night. I can't remember if I actually listened to it repeatedly or just once or twice but it is all I remember of that night, apart from summoning the nurse at 4am for more morphine. [I'd been warned to look out for compartment syndrome, and also I was particularly wary of anything blood-related, because I had/have a history of clotting. When I began to feel a sharp, recurring pain in my big toe, I got very worried. Hilariously, that pain turned out to be a piece of sticky bandage stuck to the hairs. Brutal!]

The Young Republic are a pretty obscure American band (so obscure they don't even have a wikipedia page) who were signed to the label set up by the founders of End of the Road Festival. So, that's where I'd seen them. They did a very nice line in whimsical Belle and Sebastian-esque indie pop with an Americana edge - very much my thing, and this, 'Paper Ships', 'Blue Skies' and 'Girl from the Northern States' on their debut album were all floating my boat.

This particular song has something very ambitious and epic about it, and hints at a band with great possibilities, but i'm afraid their next album may have been more expansive, but was rather a let-down.

If you listen to it, see if you agree about the Spector elements in the drum sound, the sense of mystery and wistfulness, the sense that the song like this deserves a wider audience than its had. Still, if you're out there, Young Republic, feel proud that you at least had a pronounced practical effect on a young man in a miserable place a few years ago.