Cornelius – Chapter 8 – Seashore and Horizon
I live on a peninsula 800 kilometers in length, and I pine for the sea. I miss the cool breeze and light mist, white sand, and chapped lips. I spent my first 18 years with water folk along the often-picturesque southern coast only to find myself landlocked for the following five in the green that is North Central Florida.
“Now I see the trees are thinning / My eyes see the seashore there.”
This song is a three-and-a-half minute road trip home. In my mind I’m driving south, going back to beach and crescent moon. I’m saying goodbye to the prairie (yes, we have a prairie) and forests of which my current surroundings comprise. I’m bopping my head side-to-side—not up and down—in a style befitting the brighter side of Brian Wilson. For three-and-a-half minutes my eyes are squinting and teeth glinting in the sun of the passenger seat.
Every music lover wants sound to work for them in some shape or form. People crave music they can dance to, fuck to, or die to on a rainy day. Some people dream of a sound to sate nostalgia, of which Cornelius’ “Chapter 8 – Seashore and Horizon” is one.
The Fruit Bats – Seaweed
The aforementioned mind-trip (literally) implies a daytime drive, but this is winter and nights fall early around all parts. The Fruit Bats peck at the waning sunlight by picking at strings both of the guitar and heart variety. “Seaweed,” with its lullaby “ooh’s” and “aah’s,” and a banjo so drowsy it can only lift its head long enough to mumble “good night,” is for more than a drive home; it’s a song for running away.
Fruit Bats singer Eric Johnson needed a sound for “outer space where there is no oxygen and nothing makes a sound.” This was it. Intermittent harmonies and a six-string tiptoeing around half-hearted thoughts of “maybe next time” paint the already blue-black landscape. The pair sigh and flutter out a hand-cranked window to find a home amongst the hay and heavens.