Song 65: Trellick Tower

Trellick Tower - Emmy the Great

This is not only one of my favourite songs of the last decade, but also one I consider a truly great song.

It's on Emmy the Great's second studio album, from 2011, called 'Virtue'. The album generally expanded the sonic palette from her debut album 'First Love' but this song stands out for its spare simplicity.

The melody is simple, lilting and repetitive, shifting subtly every now and then to great effect.

Though biographical knowledge shouldn't really matter and might often be deemed intrusive, in this case it was well known, and is helpful to know, that Emmy the Great wrote the song about a former fiance who had broken off the relationship in order to pursue the work of God (as a missionary, I think, though perhaps that's padding).

The song is an elegy for the relationship. If you didn't know the back story you might reasonably think it is about the death (even religion-inspired suicide) of a loved one. It mourns.

Trellick Tower, in case you don't know, is that beautifully ugly towerblock that dominates the West London skyline, the one with the lift shaft at the end attached only by occasional walkways. It was designed by Erno Goldfinger, and is a thing one is never sure whether to love or hate.

I'd guess 100s of 1000s of people have some kind of sentimental attachment to it, some tale in which its shadow looms.  I think of it in terms of Sundays as a child, my father picking us up from Ealing and driving us that short stretch of the A40 into his flat off the Edgware Road. Trellick Tower is visible pretty much the length of the journey. I'd always stare at it as we drove past, measuring the journey by our angle to it. Weird and wonderful.

Trellick rhymes with Relic. That's serendipitous for this song. The song is grounded in an urban reality but also makes skilled and learned use of Christian imagery. Perhaps that's one of the reasons I love it. I sometimes think the reason I had some hope that there was something for me in Coldplay was Chris Martin's lyrics often reminding me of the Book of Common Prayer or Hymns Ancient and Modern, that beige and comforting version of Christianity which provided some succour in my teenage years.

But Emmy the Great does it 50 times better. This is a deeper, more passionate and spiritual understanding of the lure of faith. There is one line in particular which I think is a little masterpiece. Funny, as is sometimes the case, that, here 2 minutes 9 seconds through the 10th track on an album from 2011 few people bought, is a line of an insight and simple beauty I've rarely heard. She sings "I think relics ache for when the saint had breath, they miss the thing that changed them".

Perhaps the line has a particular resonance for me. I always enjoyed learning about relics when I studied Medieval History - these random items supposed imbued with holiness, the way that a place could become a site of pilgrimage, of renown, by claiming to have a spoon which was once bent by St Frodo of Ithicum.

But, also, it's just a great line in a love song.

I remembered, as well, that one of my less appalling poems in my splenetic youth was some concise albeit melodramatic relic of a relic. I was but 20, I don't know how it stands now, but I minded it less than other things for a long time. I've edited just a couple of words nevertheless.

If i took a holy relic
in these clammy palms of mine
maybe i'd use it an ashtray
or maybe i'd drink cheap white wine
out of the sacred chalice,
maybe i would be that careless
with my brittle little soul,
maybe i'd use the ancient bowl
in which Christ washed disciples' feet
to vomit out a night's deceit.

Fun guy, i was ...