CW136
I enjoyed hearing the way “with my umbrella” (from Maya Properties (2012)) stretches the listener across the odd frame of the phrases when I was transcribing the lyrics last week. Simple chords energized in their accommodation to a liberally phrased melody: the Beatles ideal. (And when the phrasing goes square, as it does in the bridge, it gets to be experienced as a relief, as opposed to just a prison you’re always in.)
The song is instantly confusing. The first bar, though melodically and harmonically fully at home, functions as a pickup. And the downbeat measure that follows it makes no adjustments to pitch. You’re home early, but you also know you’re not yet.
I think I played “with my umbrella” at a show once. I relearned it for today. I find singing and playing it easy to do and pleasantly disorienting at the same time.
Perhaps you noticed the flaw at the beginning of this recording: an electrical pop during the “With” that begins the song.
This seems like something that could have happened when I was digitizing the 4-track cassette with a friend in 2012. On the other hand, I would’ve noticed it—this is precisely the kind of thing my OCD vigilance, especially heightened during mastering, does not miss—and we would have redone it. Which makes me think it was on the tape itself somehow and I had classified the flaw as a “choice” already.
Though the pop bothers me a little, and even if it did happen once a computer got involved, I would never get rid of it. I’ve always promised myself I would not become someone who does that. I will, though, allow myself to imagine it is a fat, electric raindrop. Error: yes. Text painting: also.