100 Greatest Songs of the 2010’s #45 Sleigh Bells – I Can Only Stare

arcticreviewsblog

Released : 2016

Love songs used to be pop’s default lingua franca. Now that we find people and bodies long, long before any emotional attachment grows the real love song is the lust song, the heartbreak being not able to touch what you can see.

Alexis Krauss and Alex Miller made I Can Only Stare all about this post-romance age, a celebration of the broken by the obsessive, “Why are we sharing a breath/’til there’s nothing left” she sings, before pleading “Why don’t you come over/And do what you want me to”.

It’s a longing for something you can’t have most adults on the planet have felt, channeled into a synth pop mini opera with slow-burning hand claps and Krauss’s soulful, no prisoners voice giving life to a desire turning someone mad. It won’t be there the morning after.

 

Published by arcticreviewsblog

Hi, my name is Andy & I live in Leeds, in northern England. I've been writing about music for more than ten years. My work outside of this blog is featured on Live4ever and Contact Music.