Smog

I don't really know why I like Smog so much. I mean, he doesn't have an extraordinary voice, what's more, he doesn't really sing most of the time, it's more talking most of the time, the music is so bare as to almost not exist (although there are some nice guitar arrangements on the new CD)...

I love it though. Maybe it's because you're always left wondering at the end of songs. Oh, it's not that they're cryptic, they're not, but there's always this feeling that something has been left unsaid. That the songs are situated in a bigger context, a context you keep guessing about. Even a more "well-known" song like "dress sexy at my funeral". I mean, at first it's just a funny concept, an amusing situation, but then you start wondering, why is it "for the first time in your life"? Why didn't his wife dress sexy, is it a reproach, and why is it a wife who never dress sexily who inspires this wish for provocation? For that matter, why do the narrator's relatives deserve this provocation? And so on. Maybe it's looking too much into this, maybe the reason was just that life rhymes with wife, but I wonder about these things.

Oh well. In any case, his music is mesmerizing, and, though it is corny to say, it moves me, somehow.

Smog's new album, "A river ain't too much to love", is definitely worth checking out if you don't mind your music to be a bit slow.

H.