So Tonight That I Might See — Mazzy Star

#365Songs: August 20th

Sometimes it feels like my life mission to prove that no band has influenced modern music and culture more than the Velvet Underground. The band’s many moods — frenetic, melancholic, nostalgic, angry, dreamy, dark af — and genres — punk, rock, experimental, new wave — fueled countless artists and paved paths for new mainstream sounds.

Few bands better articulate the VU’s soft side better than Mazzy Star.

Mazzy Star was the soundtrack for an entire era of my life — and an entire generation of high school and college students late at night in basements and dorms around the world.

A few years ago in a post about the track, Halah, I wrote: “Like everyone else back then, I played Fade Into You on repeat. But that’s a song for a different phase of a relationship. If Fade Into You is the warning sign for impending doom, Halah is the doom you feel when you miss those warning signs.”

I could write similar reflections on just about every Mazzy Star song, but nobody needs that.

Come up crash with the muses
Fells dust into ash
Come so close that I might see
The light inside me I might see
Let me hold you tight and arms
Tight and arms you lost your chance
Come so close that I might see
The crash of light come down on me

In their review of 1993’s So Tonight That I Might See, Pitchfork wrote: “Mazzy Star made music for those who implicitly know darkness is the reality of life — introverts, wallflowers, loners. People who spend enough time lost in their own minds to understand that melancholy is often mistaken for misery.”

That was me. That’s still me. To quote my fictional doppelgänger, High Fidelity’s Rob Gordon: “What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss.”

I wouldn’t want it any other.

With good luck I’ll find
The dark stop me now
Find me to your heart
Let me hold you tight
Like rain and sunshine on a rainy day
See the lights
Come so close that I might see
See the light come down on me
Searching like the fresh goes by small
Like wind refuse to die
Free me now so I can see
The taste of wind who lock me
Does the wind indeed like me

I’ve aged away from many of my life’s earliest soundtracks — perhaps I’ll write a future post about the most embarrassing music I ever loved — but Mazzy Star and Hope Sandoval have followed me. A ghost of my own moodiness, a dark voice whispering to me late at night.

Paste Magazine wrote a retrospective about the 30th anniversary of the album last year, and this quote hit home: “This lends the work both a nostalgic quality and a timeless one; most of their songs sound like they should be playing on a car radio somewhere in the middle of the night, parked under a streetlight or driving in circles.”

Title track So Tonight That I Might See is the most obvious relationship to the VU, a sort of cousin to Venus in Furs. Both are driving songs, that repetitive rhythm that urges you forward, blurring the background, calling attention to whatever scattering creature or ominous fate awaits in the darkness.

There are few things I love more than driving in circles in the middle of nowhere, alone, lost in my own world. No matter what waits in the darkness, I always know whose voice will accompany me.

Does the wind indeed like me
With good luck I find the dark stop me now
Find me to your heart
Let me hold you tight
Like rain and sunshine on a rainy day
Let me hold you tight and arms
Tight and arms you lost your chance
Come so close that I might see
The crash of light come down on me
The crash of light come down on me
The crash of light come down on me
Let me hold you tight and arms
Tight and arms you lost your chance
Come so close that I might see
The crash of light come down on me
With spin luck I’ll find the dark
Stop me now find me to your heart
The crash of light come down on me
So tonight the crash goes by
Small like wind and refuse to die
The crash of light come down on me
Come so close that I might see
See the light come down on me
I hold you tight like rain
Sunshine on a rainy day
Sunshine on a rainy day

~

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