Anyone who knows me saw this coming twelve parsecs away. Sirsyis an amazing two-member band from Albany, NY, who is going to take the world by storm in 2013. You’ll want to know them before their next CD hits, so you can get the cushy seats on the bandwagon before it fills up even more. Just sayin’.
“Some Kind of Winter” is technically a seasonal song, not a holiday one, but let’s not be picky. It oozes gobs of seasonal affective disorder with a haunting tune that will make you look around for the ghosts of Christmases past, present and future — the scary ones, that is, as portrayed in the 1984 George C. Scott television production. In other words, it’s awesome.
The thing that gets me is that, despite the dark and evocative tone, rooted in the gloom covering the shortest days of the year, the song yet offers little glimmers, twinklings even, of hope that things will turn around and start to improve.
Out here the snow comes down like stars
I make a wish on every one
Wrap me in cold and take it like a drug
(Full lyrics at Sirsy’s website)
Even at the depths of depression, there is a sort of optimism in simply surviving. I get the same feeling every time I hear this song as when I re-read the parts of The Return of the King where Frodo can do little more than clutch the ring and take another trudging step…and another…and another….
Here’s a video of Sirsy performing the song a couple years ago at the Putnam Den in Saratoga, NY: