Funny how a change of heart can take you by surprise.
Whilst some songs simply bludgeon their way into your heart on the first listen, like this one, and others induce forehead-palming within seconds, there are a slender selection of songs that merely induce puzzlement.
A large, felt-tipped question mark loomed large next to Range Rover on the ANBAD To-Do List for over a week, a stern black reminder that at some point I was going to have to make up my damn mind.
Their name became an exercise in visual embellishment, and were, variably, underlined, circled and adorned with arrows. At one point I crossed them off. Then I decided to listen again – you know, just in case.
What I found was – surely – not the same song. What before left me unmoved now connected with a sharp snap, and the fug of procrastination dissolved. Soda may be a hard song to love, at first, but its lovely qualities, once noticed, are impossible to ignore.
Not unreasonably, for a song with such insistent momentum, it begins with a train’s toot. Increasingly delicate noises and melodies are piled high on top of one another, until the noise is a sweet, swirling mass of sonic barbe à papa.
Thus, having once ignored this song, I’m now in the enviable position of having listened to it a dozen times. It’s a hypnotic, fuzzy-headed, relentless, blissed-out, whited-out, drizzle-soft beautiful song. Underline that.