Slow Down Csilla – The Spectacles
There are a lot of audio-snobs out there, who disdain the tinny little earbud headphones and compressed MP3s everyone uses now. That’s never been me, but I can at least understand why certain kinds of music appreciation would demand high fidelity transmission.
However, what’s sometimes missed is that there is a type of music – equally valuable – which can only be truly appreciated through 10 dollar headphones while sitting on the grass in the bright afternoon sun, watching people walk by with all their smiles and fears and cares.
Part of it is the sound – the scratchiness, the bedroom resonance – there is an intense intimacy here, one that is strangely magnified by the muffled acoustics. To listen is to reach out in the fog and just brush fingertips, to feel a tremendous comfort in the presence of a friendship that defies your capacity for explanation. But there is something more than that. There is a whole attitude here: a deliberate refusal to accept the premise of perfection, an embrace of all those things that makes us so wonderfully human.
The Spectacles make that sort of music. It’s what you would get if you combined the aesthetics of a Casiotone for the Painfully Alone with a Camera Obscura.
“Slow Down Csilla” is the sort of song that makes you want to call up every old friend you ever had, that makes you wonder at the paths your life has taken, that makes you stop for just a second and take in the world. And you see yourself reflected in the little problems that we all share but seldom mention.
You can pick up their record Home for a scant nine bucks at their website, or check out a few more songs at their myspace. I found about them from The Glorious Hum, which has mirrored me in terms of spotty posting this summer, but hopefully is back on track with regular posting.