Saturday, January 30, 2016

Songs I Love in 88 Words or Less: “Over the River”




“Over the River,” The High Llamas

Number 2 in a new series, this instrumental is like mainlining emotion, sad and sweet, tho some jerk on Amazon called it “kitschy.”

Is that a bird I heard? Yes, yes, a little brown one dressed in houndstooth decoupage, wandering forlornly through a crackly film strip on the wintry day his best friend moved away… On the path he finds a stray piece of yarn, rusty orange like a secret patch on a magical calico cat, leading him home.


True fact: This song is played by a quintet of chickadees who talked incessantly during the recording, their blip-chirps and tweet-beats perching like arpeggios on the sheet music they pretended to follow.




Oh yes, I’ve used this song here before.