Song 82: Get Some Sleep

This is a song by the New Zealand singer-songwriter Bic Runga

Get Some Sleep

from the 2002 album 'Beautiful Collision' which I think I bought in 2003 but I want to talk about listening to it in 2004.

It's a rather lovely, perfectly wrought album. It doesn't really belong to a genre, it's too caustic to be easy listening though it is easy to listen to, it's not indie, it's just too clean, it's not quite pop or rock.

I listened to it a lot for a while, over the course of a couple of years, then not much for a decade or so, but it's one of the ones I've found myself listening to lately, along with the usual likes of Nick Drake, Kathryn Williams, Stevie Wonder and Carole King.

I think Carole King's 'Tapestry' might be the best point of comparison. It doesn't sound like it as such - it's guitar more than piano led, it's more reserved, and you know, less full of classic melodies which everyone knows.

But it's a wholly realised collection of songs, crisp and clear and grown-up.

'Get Some Sleep' is probably the poppiest track on the record (apart from one which I'll get to in a second). It has this lovely, simple lyric, which again, seems quite fitting in this time of distant connections - "tune into the station, make a dedication, this is going out to everyone".

Runga didn't linger in obscurity. The album was vastly successful in her native New Zealand, and a track from her debut album 'Drive', called 'Sway' was prominent on the soundtrack to 'American Pie'.

'Sway' was tacked on to the end of the UK version of 'Beautiful Collision' and I remember listening to the album and thinking "why does it feel like I've heard that song before?" ... and that way why, though it's one of those melodies which sounds like it's been done a million times before, but you still forgive it for the prettiness of the song. As I recall, 'Sway' does 'American Pie' a massive service. People like me, who wouldn't normally go and see a film like that, were sold on going to see it by reviewers saying despite its grossness, it had a sweetness, and, so it did, but I'm quite sure a lot of that sweetness is given to it by its use of a song like 'Sway' amongst the tuneful pop-punk of the time.

Anyway, 'Beautiful Collision', and 'Get Some Sleep' in particular, I associate with a brief trip to North Wales at Easter 2004, just at that very point when wintery spring was becoming summery spring.

I went with three other men, in a car, stayed deep in the heart of Snowdonia, in a, like, dormitory of a, like, outbound centre relating to the school of my friend Stephen. I think that's what it was. No signal or internet or anything. No sun right there, but in the daytime we'd go out to the castles on the coast - Caernarfon, Criccieth, Beaumaris, Conwy, Harlech, and I remember sun there.

Those castles are special. You may know them. Harlech Castle is one of the wonders of the world, simple as that (I've been a few more times since).

I remember us driving in permanent light rain and I associate Bic Runga with it, though I don't know if it was personal or shared listening, but I think maybe New Zealand and Wales are associated in my head, with wind and rain and beauty and sheep, just glistening.

Neil Finn of Crowded House is a significant sideman on the album, and there's a lovely bit on a track called 'Listening for the Weather' (assume deliberately referential?) where his backing vocals really come to the fore and the're really Kiwi - you can hear him harmonisng "never be afride of chinge" and it's just really nice.

Anyway, at the time, I was very in-between, and I remember that trip was completely free from everything else and that was very nice, free from phones and worry, and we drank beer and I remember one evening drunk cider in this old schoolhouse like teenagers - it was the weekend Brian Lara got 400*, I think I remember that.

But, yeah, I can't really describe how it is that I associate that Bic Runga album with it, its precision, its perfection, its glistening, some kind of renewal and separation from the usual.

I feel lucky this week amidst all the horror and dismay, I feel lucky to be working in the shed at the bottom of my garden, listening to old albums I've always loved, watching squirrels, cats chasing birds, a fox ambling through, seeing the blossom almost coming out and the grass starting to grow. So, perhaps, yes, separation is the right word- this album is a brief separation from the cares of the world.