Roger Brugin often wrote about subjects that were assumed to be very personal in nature, made palatable (or less vulnerable) to the public via veiled metaphor - he knew exactly what sound he was looking for, but exhausted everyone else's patience trying to recreate it, in stark contrast to the method of a songwriter like Davy.

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This tension between the frustratingly complex purity of Brugin's emotions are never more clear than in the opening lines, "They told me there were words / To mine from somewhere in my heart". It's not quite a call for artistic expression but rather a yearning for being able to actualize it.

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When Brugin's lyrics were at their best, he was a maestro at packing so much implication and emotion into a single phrase.

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"I know there must be words / But all I can manage is 'ooh'". Tell me, how does that not cause a lump in your throat? Verbal expression and conventional words are scarcely sufficient - though more articulate - to express how he feels. But what is he feeling? Grief? Seems likely. Malaise? Also likely. The effect the nebulous feeling seems to have on him is numbing, as evidenced by the ethereal, almost lighter-than-air instrumentation.

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And then, once the first chorus ends, Brugin's call to "listen to the rain, the hush of my mother earth" and "the beat of the night train" brings the entire song back into the realm of the physical - the rain may cleanse and the train may carry you away, but it's all still part of the same cold reality. Is it a verse meant to ground the listener, to pull them back out of the quagmire of their mind and help them reorder their lives? Or is it a cry of despair, that a sorrowful soul has to return to an unfeeling realm?

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The juxtaposition of harshness and softness in the lyrics is a direct mirror of the instrumentation. Flanged acoustic guitars, smooth organs, and a singing harmonium are contrasted by a thudding, distant piano, a lumbering snare, and a pleasantly-piercing hammered dulcimer. Just as the singer is forced to live in a world of infinitely complex emotion irreconcilable with infinitely simpler physical rules, so must these groups of instruments coexist together in the song.

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And I think they do it rather well, save for Martin joining the harmony in the outro verse. Why, oh why, was Davy not asked for this? Or Brugin himself doubling his own lead? Martin's voice, as has been mentioned, does not carry well next to Brugin's in higher registers, to my ear. Oh, well. Nobody's perfect.

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But this came damn close.

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★★★★☆