It's a very good point, Alex. The music is great, as witnessed by John's instrumentals (my favourite being 'Swimmer 1') but the lyrics always add such a huge amount of emotional, atmospheric and poetic content to the music that lifts it up to another level.
The quintessential JF lyric is, for me, that section of Dislocation about the conversation with the stranger in his room. At the time I was getting into John's stuff I was a quiet, withdrawn, moody teenager (I was 17 at the time) and used to spend a lot of time alone in my room, reading, listening to music, contemplating what life was all about etc. (still haven't figured that one out yet!) and I often got a sense of being totally detached from the 'ordinary' world around me. Then I listened to Dislocation and that section just summed up perfectly how I felt at those times and the lyrics were permanently imprinted on my mind from then. On the off chance that someone reading this hasn't heard it, maybe a new convert to the cause
, this is the bit I mean:
"The sun was going down one quiet evening
someone came into the room while I was half asleep.
We spoke for a while
I couldn't see his face.
Later on, when he was gone
I realised I didn't catch his name"
There are other lyrics I love for other reasons (listening to 'Running Across Thin Ice With Tigers' while typing this, for example), particularly one section of In Mysterious Ways because it actually seems to describe two events in my recent life, the most recent being my arrival here in South Africa. I'm referring to the section of the song that starts with "So I put down my coat and case..."
Lyrically, my favourite from the Metamatic era is 'A Blurred Girl', not just because of the words but also the way they're delivered. There's that lazy, almost drawled spoken first part and then when he starts singing there's such a haunting quality to his voice. What makes the lyrics stick in my mind is the superb way he glides down about an octave on the last word of certain lines:
"we're fixing distances on maps
and echo paths in croooowds
the light from other windows
falls across me noooow"
Obviously I added the extra O's in those words to emphasize that these are words where John does that drawn out one octave drop. Try singing along with it (as I often do), you'll see what I mean.
OK, enough waffle from me for now, I've just put on Metamatic and I need to listen!!
ΤΏΤ
