the Kinks :: I Go To Sleep
Listen really carefully to the pick-up notes at the very beginning of this song. As the the harmony enters on the down beat it’s almost drowned out, but the melody’s upper voice sustains right smack up to the cadence (four seconds in) introducing the song’s major motif. In that little space is the point in the song where my eyes close and my chin folds into my chest. My breathing slows way down and in my mind’s eye I can picture Ray Davies recording the scratch track at night, alone in someone’s attic. You can hear the faintest flub just before the vocals enter. That makes me smile.
The vocal melody invokes the image of a somnambulist’s ballet. Each syllable is a new dancer falling gracefully into the spiraling shadow of the next. The successive pulses in the piano’s tenor line suggest an awkward sort of antagonism, like when the sound of your own heart beat keeps you frustratingly suspended between rest and restlessness. As the song continues though, this line seems to settle into a subtle half-time loll. Its rhythm becomes like a mother slowly rocking her fidgeting child into a deep and heavy sleep.
Then all of a sudden the bright intervals of that glorious major chord shifts the song’s mood from haunted, to hopeful, and the narrator daringly admits to losing his loving faith for only a moment. You get the sense that bliss can only come when consciousness slips away. So when the main motif recapitulates, ushering in the final verse, the new dawn doesn’t appear majestic but empty and cold. Like waking up without the person you love by your side.
I Go To Sleep (3.8MB MP3)
the Kinks (wikipedia)
barbara said on friday, august 22nd, 2008
vj said on friday, august 22nd, 2008
I’m pretty sure it was only ever recorded as a demo and never had a “proper” release…I could be totally off on that but I’ve only seen it on the “Kinda Kinks” best of comp. There are so many great Kinks songs but this one has stuck with me forevs!
hiram said on sunday, august 24th, 2008
I may have said this here before, but I’m a fairly huge Kinks fan. I actually picked up a music magazine for the first time in a very long time last month because Ira Kaplan was interviewing Ray Davies (yeah, I’m a sucker—the interview wasn’t that great, but it was worth the price of the mag at least). Anyway, thanks for posting this one. It is on the Kinda Kinks album as one of the many unreleased tracks. Also, Barbara, one of the better 33 1/3 books is the one on “The Village Green Preservation Society,” so I would suggest picking that one up if you want to know more about the band (as well as the album if you don’t have it yet).
I am slowly making my way through the Kinks and had not yet heard this one. What a beauty.