The Smallest Room
  • Menu

    Music
    Arts
    About
    Travel
    Teach

  • MUSIC
    • record reviews
    • LIVE REVIEWS
    • features
  • ARTS
  • About
  • Travel
  • Teach
0

Spiritualized, ‘Stay With Me’

My contribution to 'Tracks Of Our Tears: 50 Songs That Make Quietus Writers & Artists Cry’, March 2014


Spiritualized – ‘Stay With Me’

It might begin as a bit of casual noodling and a waltz you could slow dance to, but it’s coming for you man, layer on layer. Cross yourself as a churchy harpsichord starts to rain down, then: a pause, a power socket found, and a spear of feedback that opens into a deluge of amplified guitar, as thick and warm and irrefutable as blood.

‘Stay With Me’ isn’t the post-coital pillow talk it seems on the surface. Oh no. It’s the sound of loved-up, smacked-out self-delusion and its bliss. In my mind, there’s no women being addressed here, or if there is, she’s long gone, leaving her ex-lover moaning “Oh babe … stay with me” to her lingering scent or to himself in a plea not to nod off for good.

Actutally, fuck it, I’m hazarding she died and he did too, and the song comes to us from the afterlife, a place full of angels and free of consequence, which would explain why all I want to do, every time I hear it, is to droop into the arms of the closest available disastrous decision just to remember how good it feels to surrender to the siren song of something wrong. “Make it all so fine.”

My other contribution, on ‘Faded From The Winter’

Share Tweet

Kate

You Might Also Like

  • LIVE REVIEWS

    Floors of Heaven underwater concert (Woolloomooloo Bay)

  • features

    The ‘Yolŋu surf rock’ of Yothu Yindi’s next generation

  • LIVE REVIEWS

    William Crighton (The Great Club)

Search

Twitter

Tweets by @smallestroom

Recent articles

  • Floors of Heaven underwater concert (Woolloomooloo Bay) February 19, 2022
  • The ‘Yolŋu surf rock’ of Yothu Yindi’s next generation February 17, 2022
  • A gentle hidden gem: a visitor’s guide to the NSW far south coast January 8, 2022
  • ‘An inscrutable and open-ended riddle’: the life and art of Jeffrey Smart December 11, 2021
  • Trekking the Great Ocean Walk: ‘Stand with no land mass between your sweaty skin and Antarctica’ December 7, 2021
  • MUSIC
    • record reviews
    • LIVE REVIEWS
    • features
  • ARTS
  • About
  • Travel
  • Teach

My name is Kate Hennessy. I am a freelance arts and travel writer and music critic. I contribute to Guardian Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald/The Age, The Saturday Paper, The Australian, The Australian Financial Review, The Wire (UK), NME and more.

Latest posts

  • Floors of Heaven underwater concert (Woolloomooloo Bay)

    February 19, 2022
  • The ‘Yolŋu surf rock’ of Yothu Yindi’s next generation

    February 17, 2022
  • A gentle hidden gem: a visitor’s guide to the NSW far south coast

    January 8, 2022
  • ‘An inscrutable and open-ended riddle’: the life and art of Jeffrey Smart

    December 11, 2021
  • Trekking the Great Ocean Walk: ‘Stand with no land mass between your sweaty skin and Antarctica’

    December 7, 2021

Twitter

Tweets by @smallestroom

Search