Ephemerides

Marty Willson-Piper has of course mainly been praised for his astounding guitar skills, but in this gorgeous song Happenstance, I was kinda struck by his veiled, enigmatic voice and the way he lends the song a very delicate, ethereal dimension. Not that hard perhaps, given the absolutely wonderful lyrics and of course the sublime way this song has so magistrally been crafted. But nevertheless, together with

Steve Kilbey, he turned Happenstance into a magical coinciding of different worlds, converging into a perfect unity, – like John and Paul perhaps did in “A Day in the Life” – a flawless musical metaphor, once more, for this, once more, grippingly philosophical tale Steve Kilbey is rendering here in such an astute and ingenious way, a utopian parable of love and intimacy and its reflection in the immensity of an infinite outer space sparkling and sending us light for what seems like for ever.

My little country Belgium is sweltering under an oppressive heatwave. It is covered in chocolate melting away from the houses, dripping from the trees and large quantities of an equally large variety of beers are being drunk. Everything is overheated and I need to write about this song I’ve fallen in love with, but quite unlike a summer romance, I feel it’s gonna last .

It’s such a universally sounding poem, as only this world’s greatest poets have known how to write them. Just listen to the opening stanza, the opening phrase, – no introduction is needed, Steve spontaneously mimics the sound of the proper words and it’s spot on right from the start -, as, to my knowledge, only Steve Kilbey knows how to write them in the realm of pop and rock: “When the distant charge of love is felt”, wow, I absolutely love this line. To me it immediately evokes all the mysterious forces that make the world go round… the one drive that rules our world… And then the splendiferous love of nature and the splendiferous nature of love, all coming together as if by chance. The way he subsequently ends this beautiful story of man-in-world makes me smile, such a peaceful acceptance and trust emerging from these truly wise words: “I should take some chance – Given happenstance”, oooooh!! And those angel-like voices of the guitars seem to approve, whirling and wallowing themselves in a tender lust for life. Even the voice of the drummer, Tim Powles, has chosen to follow the siren-like allure of the guitars, instead of the eternal beat, sounding all of a sudden far too prosaic. The drummer’s beat “only” adds a wakeful awareness – as if it were the easiest thing to do, laying down the path of time -, and a continuous nodding of the head, hearing so much wisdom professed all around it. The drums just take care of the natural progression of things, adding exclamation points here and there, doing the interpunction in the guitar’s sublime verses, the drums in a very sociable mood, still, mesmerising in their unescapable necessity, the song only fully takes off when they join in and bring all the instruments to life in the predicative manner of being (I so love drums with their natural insightfulness in the rhythm of things). This is the nature of music, speaking its language of previously unrevealed, hidden revelations. But yes…, the mystery stays. Reminding me again of the unfathomable, yet oracular humming sounds of Hanging Rock in the state of Victoria…

But the words…

Steve Kilbey, a postmodern humanist pur sang, hardly writes political or socially engaged lyrics, nor sentimental ones taking place in individual minds and hearts. He writes about the grand scheme of things, in the way of the pre-Socratic philosophers, as a “natural philosopher”, who always has the cosmos in mind when writing about mankind. Or he can be in an existentialist mood, writing “But a part of me will never be free – And the part that’s free will never be me”, words that could give Jean-Paul Sartre a run for his money… It makes him write fabulous verses on love, perfectly embedded in the mysterious whole. Like these ones: “I should take some time – Really make you mine”, in a simple physical symmetry with “I should take some space – Be with you some place”. It doesn’t get any better than this…

Everything is connected, twelve strings ringing in infinity.

Yet it is Marty who steals away the most precious sequence of this song:”If I lay me beside you – Your golden hair frozen”, one of those rare moments you wished would repeat themselves for ever. I have no idea where it comes from, but suddenly it’s there, as ephemeral as it is beautiful. Like rare celestial objects that appear in more or less regular intervals in our skies. Music behaves like celestial movements. Botticelli’s Venus, ideals of beauty reconfigured and reimagined through the golden timespan spun by the sounds of the guitars…

The song ends in the prettiest configuration of two male voices in a duet, like waves of sounds forming a miraculous angle of incidence, or like rays of light meeting and melting into each other. I feel so happy that I can listen to this song whenever I feel like it. It’s like a joyous game of chance, of light and sound. Life-affirming. A unique specimen of humanist expression written in a very specific, utterly refined jargon of the language of rock music.

All these wonderful musicians performing together must be a worthy instance of this unlikely phenomenon that is happenstance. Whenever this song is played live again, not only Marty’s guitar sound will be missed…

Joke Roelandt, August 2020