- Red Face
- Night Bus
- Shiver
- Middle of the Bed
Everything just sort of stops.
Everything comes to a sudden halt.
There could be someone over in the corner and you could hear a pen laying ink to a piece of paper, the tip of the ballpoint pushing into the table to make the markings. It would sound like a chair being pulled across a tiled floored. It would sound like a child has just had their little fingers shut in the hinge of a door.
There could be someone a mile away, eating an apple, and you’d hear it. You’d want to hammer them upside the head, knocking them out cold, the apple and its core half-eaten, thumping to the ground, collecting a coating of dirt and rocks, anything to stop them from making that infernal, deafening racket. Anything to stop them from getting in the way of what this woman was singing.
You would find yourself leaning in and wondering what that sound was – the one that you wanted to hear so much clearer.
It started softly at first and then you thought that it became so much more about the things being expressed, rather than the actual sounds being made. Then you realized that that was just foolish as hell. It was the sounds. Then you changed your mind again. It went on like this for almost all of the four minutes that she was singing. You weren’t really sure what was happening to make these minutes so enthralling. You found that you didn’t want to question it, whatever the hell it was. You wanted her to keep singing, to keep making you feel like you were shaky and shaking – two very different things.
She did something to make you think about the very small number of people who have ever made you feel the way that she was describing. You found that the revisited pain – because of its start and what was originally intended – fell upon you in a lovely way. It was somewhat welcomed. You wanted it. You wanted to feel again those pangs of nervousness that an inevitable touch was going to bring.
This is Lucy Rose singing “Shiver” and it’s easy to think that not many people have made a break-up sound this sweet, or this sick. It feels like it shouldn’t have happened and it feels like there was no way it could have gone on. But the looks and the feelings, the times alone, when all was well…, boy, there was no denying any of that. It’s the sort of love that will be the skeleton in your closet for the rest of your life. You’ll always wonder about what could have been, no matter how happy you are and no matter whom you’re with. It’s one of those curses that we don’t speak about.