Two Pieces of Criticism


I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, Ken Hodges

Rhys Meyers plays the kind of Londoner living it large that I would wish harm upon. Then harm is visited upon him in the form of Malcolm McDowell - playing his role as if still bitter about the scratched retina he received while filming A Clockwork Orange: 'I wanted to show him that he was nothing.'

We learn rape victims often ejaculate. Following the ordeal there are three common responses: the need to shout; entering a space of calm; and revisiting the harm upon oneself.


-

Black Star, Radiohead

As encountered via Gillian Welch and David Rawlings' spare cover. The long lines lack any spring, as if too sad to be sung. The phrase 'What are we coming to?' is repeated and most lines end in a rhyme of 'you'. This only stresses the absence of the narrator's lover in the final verse. He used to be concerned about his lover but now she is gone there is nothing to replace this care in his life. The high notes constantly veer towards becoming Maria McKee's 'Show Me Heaven'.

By comparison, the chorus is weak: what is a black star? It's difficult to use the word 'satellite' well and not recall MOR hit 'Sleeping Satellite'. Dylan manages in 'Where are you Tonight? (Journey through Dark Heat)' by combining the modern with the biblical:

There's a long distance train crawling through the rain
tears on the letter I write.
There's a woman I long to touch
and I'm missing her so much
but she's drifting like a satellite.



The verses:

I get home from work and you're still standing in your dressing gown,
Well what am I to do?
I know all the things around your head and what they do to you.
What are we coming to?
What are we gonna do?

The troubled words of a troubled mind, I try to understand what is eating you.
I try to stay awake, but its 58 hours since that I last slept with you.
What are we coming to?
I just don't know anymore.

I get on the train and I just stand about now that I don't think of you.
I keep falling over, I keep passing out, when I see a face like you.
What am I coming to?
I'm gonna melt down.