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’
