| Here,
all it does it go “Oooh” for a while while some guy with
a mixing board decides between tons of reverb and none at all. Combine
all that with the drenched piano and the somber, stately chord progression,
though, and the scene is well set for something portentous and grand.
The strings tentatively test the waters again and Yorke begins to
sing: Jumped in the river and what did I see? Black-eyed angel swam with me Moon full of stars and astral cars And all of the figures I used to see All my lovers were there with me: All my past and future And we all went to heaven in a little rowboat There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt The three-chord progression carries the lyric along its sad, mournful little melody, strings coming and going; then, here, Yorke breaks into the falsetto again, and the strings solidify, high up in the treble, and then there’s a drumkit playing in the loose, lazy feel of a ’70s jazz-rock drummer on one of the slow numbers. There are some other sounds -- high-pitched electronic tones, similar to sirens but ghostlier, like the shadows of sirens. As Yorke repeats the the first verse almost verbatim (he leaves out “what did I see?”: why? Because now, you’ve seen it too), his passion (or fear, or shame ) lending added force to his voice; his sheds his languor like a snake shedding its skin and settles into the telling of his dream, which he seems not to think of as a dream at all. More noises show up in the depths of the mix, unidentifiable sounds, more palpable than audible, adding tension to the already tense mood while leaving the piano, voice and strings to do all the apparent work. The work that they do is the work of the devil’s henchmen -- they make you feel uneasy about everything, or about nothing in particular. |
