Rostam - "Bike Dream"
Rostam - "Never Going To Catch Me"
A few minutes ago, in the fall, when it was still summer, I had this perfect routine. Every morning, I'd lift myself from the dream of the revolving city and walk over to the city's biggest park, to the secret side entrance where two steps in you're surrounded by impossible forest. Green everything somehow, nature-quiet absorbing the car-sounds that should be coming from half a block away. Light moving on light. All the sweet dogs of the neighbourhood rushing past me on their way to meet each other. River snaking around under the ground under my feet. I'd walk through the forest every morning, clamber around on the unpaved levels, and then when this album was over I would sit on a log in the quiet, trying to absorb some of it, to take enough home for the poems. That waiting's the swell at the centre of these songs - the strobing joy in those back chords, the sunshine. That moving silence, the park as a glitch in the city, all that green.
[buy Half-Light, which is maybe my favourite album this year]