4. Beth Gibbons & Rustin ManOut Of Season
The opening track, ‘Mysteries’, I still think: "I wish I could have written that!" I keep coming back to it. I think it’s one of the most beautiful hymns I’ve heard. It is like a hymn or a prayer, or like a goodbye. A friend of mine had a mentally ill sister who died one day from complications involving medicine, and my friend didn’t know what to do or listen to. It was extremely confusing and painful for him, and he was looking for music to play. I thought to myself, "Can I do this? Should I give this to him?" I handed him that song, and it was like it was providing forgiveness or absolution, or the lyric was like a letting go for him. A catharsis. I’d never met his sister but every time I play it now I think of her, and I think of it coming from that place of surrender and being let go after something so difficult, after so much fighting and struggle. That song has such a release of emotion. When I feel extreme anxiety that song always just gets me some sort of salvation.
