Driftwood

A lot of these songs I already have a good idea in my head what I'm going to write about them and just have to listen again once or twice for confirmation or to see if anything new strikes me. When "Driftwood" came up, though, I could only really remember a couple of lines emerging: "The road to paradiso must pass through the inferno/Came seeking purgatario..."

Like many of their early songs, this B-side to their debut single proper is built around Adam Devlin's layered, wandering guitar lines. "Driftwood" is much lighter on hooks and heavier on atmosphere than anything else of the time though, subdued all round til one great swell at the halfway point brings it those weirdly triumphant sounding lines. After that it's essentially one very long, graceful fadeout. No surprise that I didn't remember it any better or more fondly as it's all a bit wispy, but for a song where limbo of the religious kind stands in for the personal ('I've lost count of all the times that I've listened to you leaving' is as close as we get to a chorus) that's not too bad a thing.

mp3: Driftwood