Music Arcades: Appendix Out: Daylight Saving

As last Thursday turned into Friday, the Boy woke with a cry, then what sounded like a throaty cough, then more crying. He was being sick. Grown-up sick for the first time, not infant sick where you just open your mouth and a brief torrent of spew comes up effortlessly and efficiently, but the kind of sick that brings up your stomach acid, racking your whole being. After the initial clear-up (new sheet, pyjamas, sleeping bag) I took the Boy into the music room for a cuddle. Always one to try and optimise my use of time, I tried to find this CD to put on (to be clear, lest this seem a strange concern to have at such a time, let me explain that I was on the point of looking for it anyway, to accompany my pre-bedtime read). I couldn't find it immediately, so I played The Night is Advancing instead. Thrumming along at very low volume, it took on a wonderfully gentle, consoling presence.

I lost count of the number of times the Boy threw up, about five or six, but only once over me. Once he had nothing left in his tummy and was sleeping once more, I found Daylight Saving and listened to a few sons until I was confident that all was peaceful once more. To follow up, yesterday morning, I had the chance to put in a bit of the time and effort that I felt was necessary last time with Appendix Out. I was helped, this time, by the presence of a lyric sheet in the CD booklet — and a photo, too, which captures the feel of the album quite precisely. Or perhaps it projects a feel onto the album. It's a winter photo, a small church on the left, set in a crepuscular landscape. In the distance, what I took at first to be a frozen see, but the horizon is insufficiently true to the horizontal, so maybe it's a snow-covered hill in the distance. From the architecture, the church doesn't look like it's in these islands — maybe Protestant Scandinavia. Bones feature in at least two of the songs; fog in two others. Here the cycle of nature is not vibrant enough to reclaim the remains of the dead. Elsewhere turnips rot in frozen ground, there's a powercut "in the gloaming dark", and the heat pipes don't cough; they crack. "A fruitless new land / we're reckless in the sand / but we still find the time for glee", which sounds almost cheery next to this verse

famine-stricken little eyes
narrow body fallen bare
urges fated to expire
encrypted in ancient genes

It's like the bleakest of Thomas Hardy relocated to the North Sea coast. (Though Lucy came in and said, "This sounds nice; not so maudlin as Alasdair's other stuff". Hmmm.) I'm growing to like it.

And, by appropriately morose coincidence, today marks the end of Daylight Saving time.