I Don’t Feel Amazing Now is maudlin, romantic and, well, a bit self-absorbed. It’s also searingly painful. Boy, is it intense. This is a song where the yearning is absolute. But it is a beautiful, beautiful song and, although it is poignant on every count, it is also uplifting.It could get you hooked on lonesome melancholy.
This is sound of a man who has loved and lost – the other end of the scale to the giddiness of Made-Up Lovesong #43. It’s a song which is unashamedly raw and vulnerable. It starts off with ethereal and empty strings. The vocal is the sound of a man lost. Fyfe Dangerfield (surely one of the best names ever) is lost in anguished introspection and reaching out for human contact, for romance, however temporary. The lyrics imply that this is a relationship ending with pain and emptiness. Help me cope he seems to be crying, even if filling the void is only a temporary respite. “Take my hand and stop the moonlight fading” he pleads – “I don’t want to play any games”.
“See the stars have lost their gaze/ And I thought we had a lot of days to share/ Oh, anyway my heart is on the table/ You can take it if you want, it’s yours”. This is desperate stuff. The vocal has an aching quality and rings of truth. When he says his heart is on the table it is with a desolate break in his voice. (Just listen to the way he sings the word “heart” and the emphasis it’s given.) “Someone always loses and they usually share my name.”
This is a man at a low,low ebb, but seeking the redemptive help of his love. His self-worth is shattered, “Oh, take my hand and take me anywhere/ Oh, take my hand and make me feel amazing/ ‘Cos I don’t feel amazing now.” It could well be delusional and temporary but that doesn’t matter – the respite and relief from the moment is all that counts. “Just take my hand and laugh like you are crazy/ Oh, take my hand and tell me life is fair/ Oh, take my hand and tell me I’m amazing, darling/ ‘Cos I don’t feel amazing now.” This is a rebuild job for a broken heart. By the time the song is finished his won’t be the only one.
Of course with a broken heart everything surrounding him is a trigger, a memory of the good times – those shared songs, for example: “Can’t get the noise out of my head/ Singing away/ Can’t stop thinking about you instead/ Every day isn’t love when you’re lonely”. The pain is manifest,the song fading with a barely audible “Oh, did I let you go?”
By this stage it would be easy to insist on young Fyfe pulling himself together. But that’s the point – at this point, he is utterly adrift and lost. There is a painful voyeurism involved in listening to this song (or should that be audio-ism?). We recognise and empathise with his plight. There but for the grace of God etc.
Amid all this bleakness the melody and orchestration is genuinely uplifting and the counterpoint takes the song from the mawkish to the memorable. The bridge offers a strange moment of “normality” but even this respite is fragile and off kilter. (That’s the Guillemots all over. But to add Caribbean style steel drums by way of instrumentationis pretty quirky, however, muted.) It could jar horribly against the rest of the song and it’s a close-run thing in my view. However, this heart-breaking song is one to stop you in your tracks for all the right reasons. It has a plaintive ring of authenticity about it – Fyfe’s solo outing (Fly Yellow Moon) was largely about what he terms “a year of a relationship”. I Don’t Feel Amazing feels like it belongs from this same period, a raw memento of the time.
It is certainly uplifting, romantic and self-absorbed, but it is also beautiful and magnificent. It is testament to the redemptive power of song.
Listen here: http://grooveshark.com/s/I+Don+t+Feel+Amazing+Now/3L1BaO?src=5
Music Noises 