SOUNDTRACK: YEASAYER-“Ecstatic Baby” (2019).
I
really enjoyed Yeasayer’s Odd Blood album, but I didn’t hear much about them after that. I had no idea they’d released four albums since then.
“Ecstatic Baby” is the fourth (!) single from the album. Odd Blood had an early Depeche Mode-with-an-edge vibe. This song is much poppier. But I feel like the production feels kind of muted and claustrophobic.
The main melody is a fun sliding synth sound over a sliding bass. There’s falsetto vocals that remind me a lot of pop songs from the 1980s. But the song isn’t all that interesting.
I enjoy retro pop, but this song goes in places I don’t really like that much.
[READ: August 10, 2019] “Two Stories”
There are indeed two stories here.
“He Wants Forgiveness from Her” is written from the point of view of a boy. The boy says he wants to be a writer. His father is a rabbi and a man in his thirties has stopped in to ask him questions.
Essentially. the man explained, he had been engaged to a woman twelve years ago. It is customary that when you break an engagement, you ask for the other party’s forgiveness. But he never did. He found someone new and moved on. But he had been having terrible luck ever since.
His business failed, his children were stillborn. He believed he needed forgiveness to move on. So he asked the rabbi to call her to his office.
The rabbi’s son was sent to get her. She had found someone new and was living quite happily. She even had a hard time remembering her former lover’s name.
I love the detail that on the way to the rabbis, the narrator is more interested in the horse than the woman.
The couple appeared before the rabbi but they couldn’t stop looking at each other. They marveled at how good each one looked and began chatting about things that had happened in the last decade. Meanwhile the rabbi was looking for the proper texts.
Ultimately they both happily signed the forgiveness pact. But as the boy watched them leave he was sure he saw them holding hands.
“A Guest in the Shtibl”
One afternoon a man appeared in the shtibl, the small Hasidic prayer room. He was clearly goyim, but he prayed with intensity and accuracy. He had converted and took his new faith very seriously.
In fact, although everyone was friendly and welcoming, they soon grew irritated by him. He would hush people during prayers. He complained that the rabbi was rushing through the Silent Devotion. He yelled at them for focusing on money rather than God.
He began talking more loudly than anyone, intoning in a way that made everyone else chuckle. They soon found more and more things to laugh at.
The Hasidic shtibl had him removed so he went to another shtibl and was more visible on the streets where he complained about everyone’s lack of modesty. The convert complained to the rabbi that no one was listening to him, but the rabbi showed him a law that if the person you preach to was unwilling to hear then you must give up.
One Sabbath he was carted away by the police. In Russia (where he was from) it is forbidden to convert to Judaism. The citizens wondered if they should look after him, but no one did.
Then a rumor started that he had converted to Christianity–Jews had driven him away. What is the message to take away? Probably not what you think.
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