tune: Pizzicato Five - Porno 3003: I Music for Sofa; II Galaxy One; III It’s All Too Beautiful
album: Happy End of the World (Matador, 1999)
scene: The lyrics tell of a sort of hallucinatory space station but, as a young girl listening to this (I was 15 when it came out), I always imagined a sort of smothering bamboo forest with rocks that eerily resembled people and seemed to talk at you, particularly one that looked like an old lady and delivered the monologue. In reality it is the beautiful and not old! Maki Nomiya and the song does stray from the hazy forest and into a poppier place around part III of the nearly 10 minute song. It’s like the sun peeking through.
Pizzicato Five does have that enduring quality, and as my favorite group over the course of my life with such pleasurable range, there are many more songs from their repertoire I can (and just might) post.