My Imaginary Attic Bedroom
Red Clover/Remain Over Me by Peter Jefferies & Wio - Newer Music Tuesday
Often times at night when I’m trying to sleep, I develop a hatred for my dorm room. There’s really no reason for this. Everything is exactly where I wish for it to be — my posters stuck perfectly on the wall, books arranged on my desk shelf, clothes set out for the next day. My only issue is the stuffiness, and that can be solved with my fan set on full blast. I think this hatred stems from a wish to be in a larger space, one that is cool and calm, one that boasts a gorgeous view out the window. In these times, I close my eyes and imagine an attic bedroom in a very old house, one with creaky floors and kitschy curtains that move with the wind. And of course, in this imaginary attic bedroom I have two songs playing, and they are Peter Jefferies and Wio’s “Red Clover” & “Remain Over Me”.
“Red Clover” and its companion track “Remain Over Me” have been on heavy rotation since I first heard them a few weeks ago. (Think Nick Drake but slightly more modern.) These tracks, out on Almost Halloween Time Records, have a beautiful sense of intimacy that makes them so interesting, one that is extremely difficult to capture in a song, and they did it with not one, but TWO!
For me, double-tracking the lead vocal in a song can be a tricky thing. However, in the instance of “Red Clover” and “Remain Over Me”, I think it enhances the sort of otherworldly feel that the songs have. I also really enjoy the constant repetitiveness of certain layers of each of the songs. Something I also really like is how the same instrument sounds so different in both of the songs. For example, the simple piano line in “Red Clover” adds a sense of urgency to the otherwise laid back song, while the punctuating notes that play during “Remain Over Me” drive the rhythm and feel almost comforting as they continue on and on.
There’s nothing I like better than a song that has a homemade feel to it. An example that comes to mind is Paul Simon’s “Everything Put Together Falls Apart”, where it’s just him and a guitar. “Everything Put Together Falls Apart” actually has a pretty serious message, but the musicality sounds like a yawn, in a good way. There’s a moment in that song I always think about, one where you can hear Simon lean back from the microphone and scratch his stubble (or at least that’s what it sounds like to me!). While there’s no stubble scratching in these songs, I believe that Peter Jeffries and Wio were able to capture that same intimacy, that same vulnerability that doesn’t necessarily have to do with emotion, but instead with just being human.
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