Recently, my favorite album has been Le Loup's "Family." If you like any sort of tribal, chanted vocals, or folk music, you'd love it. And even if you don't particularly like those things, I'd still recommend it... It's the best new album I've listened to this year, and I'm shocked it was never at the top of the charts. I read a review which pegs Sherpa as the playful, youthful song on the album, but the reviewer must not have paid attention to the lyrics because I think it's the most profound song they have on Family. At least in that, this song is really unique because it addresses a feeling which I've never listened to a song about, and have rarely even heard articulated in any other way. Here are the lyrics:
I am a man, but I am taken further
Not just a surface, but a complicated structure
And all that I have dreamed
And all that I have seen
Wells up sometimes inside of me
And sometimes it seems to swallow me
But that is what I am, not that which controls me
Not a sculpted form, but a stone set in motion
And all that you can see
All that you can see if only a piece of an ocean
It’s only a piece of an ocean
Only a piece of ocean
I’ve one mind to celebrate that notion
History in one hand, and future in the other
And all that I have known
And all that I’ve been shown
I give to my sisters and brothers
Give to my sisters and brothers
And keep for myself an ocean
I keep for myself an ocean
But what is within me won’t stay within me
What is within me won’t stay within me
And what is in motion will be in motion
What is an ocean will be an ocean
I especially like the first two lines of the second stanza... Anyway, It's really great because the song talks about is about the complexity of man that lies beneath the surface, and the song sounds like this- at first you hear only what sounds like breathing and a soft beat, it gets louder, and instruments start to fill in, until you're in the midst of a huge amount of sounds harmonizing together in an unbelievably complicated way. Then as the song is fading out, the sounds faze out one by one, and you're left with the simple beat and breathing that has threaded the entire song together.
Here's the song.
