A Werewolf's Limbo
it's not the same anymore - plastic memories (Newer Music Tuesday)
Late at night, my attempts to sleep are thwarted by relentless, ridiculous thoughts. For example, I wonder if anyone else thinks about how when the man who created bubblegum made what he thought was his first successful batch, it turned rock hard the next morning? I try to calculate how many spiders are actually in my room at the current moment. I think about spaceships, try to predict how astronauts feel when they break through the atmosphere. Last night, probably informed by the upcoming “Hallo-weekend”, I wondered what werewolves might listen to as the moon goes down and the sun comes up, that limbo between their nightlife and the regular, so-called normal lives. Last night was one of the rare times that I got an answer to a thought, because I knew as soon as I heard Plastic Memories’ “it’s not the same anymore” that any werewolf would have that song on repeat.
Don’t worry though, the song isn’t only for werewolves. It’s the perfect late night pondering kind of song, one that acknowledges those racing thoughts but also has the ability to calm them, slow them to a crawl, hush them to a whisper. This is perfectly reflected in the song itself, when electric and acoustic come together, with the acoustic remaining at the forefront, if barely. The electric portion sounds like a wail, a repeated, emphasized slide that makes the song just a little bit unsettling. (In a good way.) The vocals are quiet, focused, and melancholy, perfectly matching the backing that accompanies them.
There’s so many things this song reminds me of. It could fit in an 8-bit video game as easily as it could accompany a rainy scene in a movie. It’s a settling song, one that is akin to wrapping a warm blanket around yourself after a long, cold day. The blanket is a little itchy, but it’s a comfortable itchiness, one that goes away after long enough. The end of the song is a slow fade, completely acoustic and stripped down in order to display the song’s chords in a vulnerable way. “it’s not the same anymore” is overall a hauntingly beautiful masterpiece of a song that will stick with the listener long after it’s done. It’ll bring up every feeling you have, put it on display, make you confront it, then let it go, allowing you to focus solely on the most important pieces of yourself, and that is one of the most powerful things in the world.
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