Leaves
The Spell

This single, taken from Icelandic band Leaves’ second album, is one of those tracks about which it’s very hard to care one way or another. Elements of it should be notable enough to at least evoke some kind of opinion, but all the interesting bits – the tribal drums; the strange grating/howling guitar effect; the weird windswept noises – are buried too low in the mix to make much impact on the listener. Instead, the attention is drawn to the vocals, a Matt Bellamy/Bono hybrid which works well enough but which doesn’t succeed in stirring any emotion, and to a piano part which mainly consists of thin, spiky notes and isn’t always present, and which therefore isn’t best suited to carrying the listener’s engagement through the song. The overall picture is of a song which Just Doesn’t Bloody Matter.

And so I lost interest. There are some bits of good song in here, but Leaves have bewilderingly decided to negate any innovation they might show and to focus on the unremarkable aspects of their sound instead. I can only imagine that they chose to do this because they actually wanted to make something this unimpressive and mediocre, an idea which terrifies me. It’s a very strange world we live in.