Damon and Naomi: Song to the Siren

Something about Damon and Naomi's music makes it seem alternately nondescript and sublime, sometimes within the same song. Or perhaps it's me: sometimes I tune into the sublime, and sometimes I miss it. But I experience something similar with the DVD tour diary: sometimes Damon and Naomi look plain; sometimes they look beautiful, graceful and wise. A couple of years ago, I got to shake Naomi's hand after a gig, thanks to Andy introducing me. I didn't let on to Andy at the time, but that was actually quite a thrill.

I think it may have been the DVD that sold this album to me. The only music DVDs I had up to then had been things like Neil Young's Silver & Gold, which was sold separately from the CD it accompanied and cost more than it. To have a DVD included in the same package as the CD, and have it cost little or no more than an ordinary CD was a novelty then (May 2002).

The tour diary covers a journey through Manchester, Glasgow, London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Madrid and probably a couple of places I've forgotten. An English lawyer on a Virgin Intercity train inadvertently sits next to D&N, buys one of their CDs after asking who they are, and then proceeds to make Stephin Merritt's review of them (mentioned previously) sound absurd by reading it in his imitation of an American accent, but not as stupid as the Q review read in a London accent. There are clips of support acts, including two that mean a lot more to me now than when I first watched the DVD: there's 30 seconds of The Clientele jamming at the end of I Had to Say This in Wolverhampton, and a whole song by Richard Youngs in Glasgow, looking very young and sounding very well spoken backstage.

I hadn't listened to the DVD commentary before. It turns out that Damon concedes his W.G. Sebald dedication in Manchester (mentioned before) was mistaken: Sebald didn't actually live in Manchester, but in Norwich.

One way and another, mostly via eMusic actually, I've ended up with all but one of the D&N albums. I reckon the most recent is pretty good. Song to the Siren has the worst cover by some distance.

MusicBrainz entry for this album Wikipedia entry for this album Rate Your Music entry for this album Listen to this album in full at Last.fm

Comments

[Andy]

I assumed it would be a thrill! It always is for me so I guessed that would be the case for everyone!