Field Music "Sit Tight"

For Valentine’s Day, how about “Sit Tight” (mp3), a song that manages to touch upon relationships, communication, and problem-solving inside of three minutes. Okay, just kidding. Before you go leading off a mix for your S.O. with this, give it a close listen. The first few lyrics, for instance: “I’ve been sitting tight, didn’t you know?/Waiting for a chance to stop dead/And open these wrists for some useless joke.” It might not be something you want to use for purposes of romantic commemoration. Or maybe it is!

Either way, “sitting tight” here assumes a dual meaning. First: impatiently waiting for some sort of never-going-to-happen interpersonal breakthrough, to the point when tension becomes so palpable that any disturbance could send it spiraling. The second meaning has to do with the musical structure of the song: it’s pulled about as tautly as possible without snapping in two. The first few seconds—a sinister sounding carnival organ, a woman’s voice firmly yelling “no!”—set the scene for a tightly wound dialogue, but then the drums come in and take it somewhere else entirely. The drummer fills the same rhythmic role–scene stealer–as Paul Desmond on Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five”: consistently catapaulting and counterpointing (but never unnecessarily, always with an eye firmly trained on the backbone of the song), poking out from inside the inflexible canvas that surrounds the couple, jabbing to get free but frustratingly well-contained.

Occasionally, it all ceases—deep breaths taken, senses gathered—like when he tells her, “Stop all your weeping and spit it all out/I’m sick of all your talk/But I want you to talk/I want you to talk.” I’ve not been in all that many relationship squabbles in my day, but I’m relatively sure that that sort of passive-agressive approach isn’t the best way to spur conversation. The emotions, the contrapuntal sonic surroundings that push a lovers’ discourse into the realm of the absurd—it all adds up to an archly dramatic BBC serial drama (from the 70s), yet directed by Terry Gilliam. Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

Buy Tones of Town from Memphis Industries here.

For what it’s worth, this is my third (consecutive) Valentine’s Day with my girlfriend Forrest. The above song expresses naught how i feel about that. This is how I feel.