Day Three hundred and fifty seven - This boy's in love

Don't let that title fool you, today's post was meant to be part of yesterday's, but I was so damn tired and sick yesterday that my head felt like mush, and for me to even wring out what words I could manage was no mean feat. This title comes from a song by a band called The Presets, and it just so happens that it's a) my favourite song by them and b) the only song of theirs I actually like. Now, this is only relevant because saturday I went out for dinner with my best friend, Hugo, and one of the very many things we talked about was that whole desert island discs thing, and how I would find it a nearly insurmountable challenge, to whittle it down to just the ten entries. And out of the top of his head, without even putting that much effort into it, he comes up with at least seven choices that would make his list. And there's the thing for me... I can't decide now because I feel I'm always in a state of flux, and what's relevant for me now, isn't necessarily going to be so in the future. This is true for everyone, I know. But when the idea first came up for this exercise, when we were supposed to do it on the podcast, I made sure to place some caveats, to make things more interesting. One, there would be no compilations. No greatest hits, no best ofs, no nothing. Two, there would be no live albums. Everything would have to be studio recordings. And then I ran into a problem.

You see, I immediately started thinking about albums that I'd really consider putting on the list, but the more I thought about them, the more I realized that what I really liked was only - and if I was really lucky - one or two tracks from the record, the others being truly unmemorable. And I couldn't waste such precious real estate, so to speak, on things that I don't love from one end to the other. So I made an exception... besides those top ten records, we would be allowed to record one single CD with the individual tracks we'd love to listen to - well, if not forever, then for as long as we lived. And that made me realize that are many, many bands I thought I loved... that I'd never consider one of their albums as a desert island disc. Bloc Party, for sure. There's always a track or three in each album I love to pieces, but I don't love the entirety of any of their records. Ditto for, say, Franz Ferdinand. But all those bands have at least one thing in common - I love more than one of their songs. And when I mean love, I mean these are songs I'm happy listening to very, very often. However, what I don't know is whether or not there are many bands that fit that particular 'I like one song only' bill. I'm sure there must be many, but for the life of me I can't think of any other than poor The Presets, a fine band in their own right, but one I can't never seem to really enjoy that much. And I did try - I listened to their two first albums, and found them so overwhelmingly 'meh' that only one song stuck in my mind all these years.

And it's a fitting song, I've recently gone back to it after a few years of not listening to it, and the way it ends, how it ends, my god, it's so fitting. 

'This town, these streets, your friends - we'll never see this place again

They'll think about you now and then - they'll never see our faces again.'

There's only one song left in our hearts. It's a song to say goodbye.