Track of the moment

Charles Mingus - Duet Solo Dancers

Coming off of one of the great Jazz albums, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Duet Solo Dancers is Mingus at his mad genius best. The album itself was intended to be a meditation on Mingus' fractured psyche and the emotional struggles he was enduring at the time. Chaotic, erratic and messy, Duet Solo Dancers can be a difficult, but extraordinary listen that encapsulates a wide array of emotion in one movement.

The piece starts with a fairly tender, melancholy piano intro, with the horns soon taking over and giving a very similar introspective sound. One that seems to resound with regret. From here we delve deeper into a personal struggle as the horn playing becomes more erratic and the tempo begins to increase, representing a loss of control and a free fall through an emotional mire - where one is trapped despite an apparent attempt at resilience. After a brief pause for thought, the sound then develops into an acceptance of this sad fate. Towards the end, a sax breaks through the feeling of complete abjection to offer a glimpse of hope despite being seemingly defeated. However, this is soon enclosed by the instrumentation that forebodes only inevitable doom.

Sufjan Stevens - Forth of July

Of the few fresh LPs I've managed to listen to this year, Sufjan Steven's is one of the standouts. Of the handful of really great tracks on the album, Forth of July is easily the standout one for me. Simple, but emotionally potent, it's the best kind of Steven's track (reminiscent of the likes of Redford and Casimir Pulaski Day).

Following the album's theme of yearning and abandonment, this track recounts a deathbed conversation between Sufjan and his mother. Here, she apologises for her continued absence during his childhood ('And I'm sorry I left, But it was for the best) and the pride she holds in her son. For his part, Sufjan expresses an unconditional love and affection that surpasses simple forgiveness. The most heartbreaking thing about the whole exchange is the fact that it is probably fabricated, a fantasy of a relationship that many will have wished they had had with a lost loved one. For Sufjan, it is the motherly comfort and reassurance that he never received (My little hawk, Why do you cry?).

What I love about this track is not only its tender and emotionally charged feel, or its open and personal lyrics, but how easily relatable it is. How many of us regret the missed opportunities we had to tell lost one's things we had on the tip of our tongues? And how many of us never heard what we needed to hear from those we lost?

The track ends with the repetition of the line 'We're all gonna die'. At first, this comes across as another line of reassurance given by Sufjan's mother about her inevitable passing, then a more sweeping realisation and finally a chilling reminder of our own mortality. Like his best work, this song is simple and harrowing, but incredibly beautiful.

Best listened to - Through headphones in the backseat of a car driving down a midnight road.