herbert - "we're in love" (from the scale lp, available for purchase here.)

music & politics, right. "movers & shakers" would have been the track to post, w/ its line about how "christian bones can orchestrate shock and awe."

but "we're in love" is the track i like best; and ultimately i want you to buy this music, b/c it's probably the best album i've heard all year.

when one knows that an artist or record or "political," s/he goes out of his way to find references. on "we're in love," dani siciliano sings of flights to china and a "smart designer"--was china chosen b/c of american pols' tough talk regarding what they see as undervaluing of the yuan? is "smart designer" a shot at "intelligent design"? does the song's first verse address a post-liberation iraq, in particular the mixed feelings of those who were opposed to invasion but must admit that, for a moment at least, it seemed a success?

truth be told, if i had another person here--i wouldn't be writing this write now, first--and there you have it, the seductive powers of music (and music & sex, which is an entirely different conversation). "we're in love" is opulent & luscious, the tenuousness of the orgasm elongated to two-hundred-and-eighty-three seconds. this is what, i think, goldfrapp intended to do w/ their last album; and it sounds like prince ca. 1986, the widescreen enchantment of the parade soundtrack, all strings, horns & the south of france. it's a sweet surrender, all things by necessity made secondary to pure feeling. moreover, it's an orgasm w/o a comedown, no postcoital doubts or fears--not until the next track at least. maybe that's the point, then : people take their opiates where they can get them, whether it's the drug, the sex, or the music; it's unbearable lightness of being, wild sex while the outside world goes to shit.

or maybe, just maybe, even "political" artists need love too, "we're in love," a brief, too brief a treat.