Wednesday 23 June 2010

Dishwasher tablets

Fever Ray's 'Seven'.
I've got a friend who I've known since I was seven.
We used to talk on the phone if we have time
If it's the right time

Accompany me by the kitchen sink.
We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets
And we dream about heaven.
It's a nice trick (calling it a 'trick' is maybe cruel), this close juxtaposition of the mundane and the metaphysical. It works, in part because Karin Dreijer Andersson's vocals have the right pitch of slightly strangulated intensity to carry it off. To talk about love and dream of heaven on the one hand, and to talk about dishwasher tablets on the other, and you might think you were talking about radically different things. But the effect (and affect) of this piece is that you're not; either because the mundane is actually a plenum of spiritual intensity, or else (I prefer this one, I think, although it's less consoling) because heaven operates only on the inconsequential, trivial level.

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