Last night I met an old man called Yoshiro. He’s from Nagasaki. He was 11 when it happened. He can remember the blinding flash of light, the furniture shooting across the room, the white heat.
He survived the A-Bomb, but he spend the following days watching his relatives die of radiation poisoning. He remembers the smell. Then, to support his remaining family, he worked from the age of 15 until he retired, aged 70. He’s had cancer twice. He now learns English from Audrey Hepburn movies. He’s pretty much super-human.
There only reason I relayed that story was to a) remind myself that jabbering about new bands every day is actually fairly inconsequential in, you know, the grand scheme of things, and b) simply to ramp up the pressure on Tristram.
One lucky member of Tristram had his name adopted as that of the bands’. I’d like to think that they drew lots, but I’m guessing that it’s just the name of the singer. That’s how a band hierarchy works.
Any potential moniker-related bickering was clearly put aside, otherwise a song as fragile and coltish as Dust Disturbed would never have been written. I suppose you could brand many songs ‘gentle and thoughtful’, but that description would rarely be as apt as it is when applied to this song.
Dust Disturbed is a delight, seemingly sprung from nowhere – born of nothing and wanting for just as little. It has exactly the self-contained beauty that most songs strive for, but never attain. Tristram, the man and the band, can be proud. Lovely, in every way.