I’m not sure that people know this song exists, like Robin Campbell paces around his living room, stops, sighs, “It’s our best song, you guys don’t even get it.” Sure, Kingston Town is lovely, pensive, the kind of song that makes you miss a place you’ve never been to, but this convinces you, guilts you, into missing a love that never existed, a warmth that never held you. Do not: play this on a bitter winter’s evening, thinking it will distract you from the brittle winds. It won’t. Do: play this at home, alone, don’t let anybody hear you listening to it, don’t let them imagine, assume, pretend that they know. They don’t.
Vanessa da Mata (feat. Ben Harper) – Boa Sorte
Harper plays translator for da Mata here, and vice versa. He crosses his legs, crunches his toes, runs his thumb along the edge of his notebook’s cover, listens, misses a word, listens again, repeats. He doesn’t know if he agrees, his tone is uncertain, wavering. She’s foreign, unfamiliar. She sounds sweet, crouched in the fields of Alto Garças, running her fingers through the grass and dirt and diamonds, but her words are sad. Is he visiting? Is he coming to Uberlândia to see her? Is she waiting for him? The verses won’t tell you, no matter the hours you spend knocking on their door, begging. The chorus laughs from the other end of the bar when it hears you muttering, wondering, silently and under it’s breath. Nobody gives. Not even the two of them. Until they’re falling, then they’re sure. He knows, she knows, they’re falling, and for seconds they speak the same tongue, they make sense of each other.