I just realized that on the last list I often found myself talking about the experience of hearing songs in the car, singing and carrying on and so forth as I drive somewhere. For this list, the scene is much more often my various living rooms, slashing away at air guitars, emoting into air mics from one knee, and/or otherwise dancing around like a fool. This is a prime example. Lloyd Cole, all bruised good looks and smoldering gesture on the slow build, may be altogether too self-consciously arty/literary for his or our own good ("it's just a simple metaphor, it's for a burning love" ... Lloyd, I think we had that much figured out before you even got to the line). But when the band brings it all up after a couple of verses, and the giant tidal waves of guitar washes set in, crunching slo-mo on chords as big as the moon, well. There I am again, miming histrionics and making foolish faces. Speaking from personal experience (and keeping in mind Lloyd's tip about the metaphor), this is a very nice song to play repeatedly at approximately those moments when you come to find yourself once again plunged into a crush on someone new, aka "falling in love." It's saccharine-sweet just like those feelings, perhaps even insufferably so under other circumstances. But it comes powerfully alive in the right moment, when lines like these start to work: "I believe in love, I'll believe in anything / That's gonna get me what I want, get me off my knees" or, my favorite, "If we get caught in this wind then we could burn the ocean." Actually my favorite is when the band cranks up, but I think you get the idea.
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