Snapsongs: “She’s Gone” by Hall & Oates

Friday 28 February 2014 - Filed under Snapsongs

Quick and to the point: along a winter’s day, with the tap-tap-tapping of the furnace minutely echoing through the floor registers through the house, this little scrap of blue-eyed soul would get me stop what I was doing and crowd near the speaker of my stereo. I liked the song — the vocal interplay, the funky undertone, the chorus dynamics, the analog string synths — but my reason for suspending play was to catch the little one-two punch at the beginning of the last verse: the simulated Doppler-shifted traffic noise, and the line about carbon monoxide. I knew all about chemistry and stuff, so that was a thrill for my technical heart, and the sound effect put me into a little urban daydream — skylines, dull steel buses, rain-soaked concrete, and leafless tress sprouting from iron-clad grates in the pale gray sidewalks.

2014-02-28  »  Edward Semblance