From Time to Time

Last night, I fell in love with Ride's From Time To Time. How do you put a song like this into words?

I didn't pay much attention to it for the first 1:20 when it started playing on my ipod. It starts off nicely, but nothing to blow you away. Then the vocals started, so melodious that it made me look up from the book that I was reading and hit the back button to start the song over again. Then sitting for another 1:20, listening closer. "On a perfect day....I know that angels come from time to time...." An endless loop of swirly guitar. Sublime. Allmusic.com calls it a Vapour Trail, part II, but right now, I love the sweet hooks in this song a million times more. Vapour Trail, for me, never breaks out of its pretty shell, stays too distant. From Time to Time feels more intimate, closer and open. Falling into the opening chords now, looping over and over, it's so gorgeous.

The shock of a song that I must have heard hundreds of times reaching up and biting into my consciousness is easily the biggest reason why I love music. I was reading a moment before; not paying any real attention to what I was listening to. Maybe that inattention was what it needed to push itself up so that I would finally hear it. I know I've played it, sung along to it, before- OX_4 has for months been on high rotation on my car's CD player- but I never actually noticed this one song in the mess of great shoegazing on that album. Getting called to attention by a hook that I'd never expected, falling in love with a new bit of song, happens so rarely- I can remember almost every individual time it's happened to me, when I've scrambled to turn up a volume knob, jammed in earbuds tighter so I can hear what just slipped past in a moment.