By Shiv Sidecar
Sit back and let the calm of the evening wash over you. The sun is going down in the west, and… hey, what is going on with the sun? Never seen anything like that before. Michael Chapman saw it too, and he immortalised it in 39 all-too-brief seconds of “Fishbeard Sunset”. If you see it, you won’t ever forget it either.
Sunsets – when you’re lucky enough to catch them – bring out a range of sensations, usually admiration and wonder, but also melancholy and a sense of ending. Little Stevie Wonder – then aged 12, or 10, depending on who you believe – had a voice and a half to plead his case to his beloved: “When evening shadows fall, that’s when I miss you most of all”. Ray Charles was somewhere in there, too. Nitin Sawnhey’s “Sunset” (with vocals by Eska) links the retreating sun to the falling of tears, rain and leaves. Things would be so different if he could set the sun at a time of his choosing. The recently-departed Gordon Lightfoot had an international hit with the brooding, evocative “Sundown” (strange name for a lady), but there’s no happy resolution here - this particular sun has set for good.
If you’re an admirer of sunsets, you can spend hours watching them by travelling westward at a constant speed. Roy Harper manages “Twelve Hours Of Sunset” in a 6,000 mile journey by “steel crow” to a happy reunion: “Be with you tomorrow, backwards in time”. 6,000 miles away (but now in Peru) lie the “Plains Of Nazca”, an early landing-strip for alien visitors to our planet – recounted on many websites, so it must be true – where every sunset is a veritable psychedelic lightshow, as described by Sun Dial: “Golden sunset… multipatterned light… new horizon…bright new vision…” It’s almost as though you were there! Whilst in the desert, let’s stop off at Captain Beefheart‘s “Cardboard Cutout Sundown”. I’m not even going to pretend that there’s a meaning here, but there is a circular logic at work– Beefheart is Beefheart, after all.
Somewhere there is a tipping point at which day ends and night begins – not easily defined, but we all recognise the word twilight. Jim Carroll’s phrase “The city drops in to the night” was new to me, but seems highly appropriate for his New Jersey street narrative – “Before the darkness there’s one moment of light when everything seems clear”. Carroll died in 2009 and is best remembered as a poet and author (“The Basketball Diaries”) – his music had its moments, too. The urban twilight is also celebrated as cover for nefarious suburban goings-on in Arcade Fire’s “Half Light I” – “Strange how the half-light can make a place new, you can’t recognise me and I can’t recognise you”
A couple of technical terms to remember: (1) the “blue hour”, which signifies that the sun is a significant way below the horizon, and visible light acquires a blue hue. Turin Brakes’ song is a plea for everybody to enjoy a blue hour. (2) the “green flash”, a semi-legendary outcome caused by sunset light passing through a prism/lens effect in the atmosphere, described here by the oddly-named Male Gaze.
Time for a racket: The Chemical Brothers’ “Setting Sun” is that rarity; a 90s dance record I liked enough to buy at the time. Setting suns barely feature in the lyric, but you probably won’t notice. Man-of-that-moment Noel Gallagher is on half-buried vocals.
We started with one (short) instrumental, and we’ll end with a rather longer one, from keyboardist Sanford Ponder. Nominator Banazir says “just in case you want to be out on an American oasis somewhere, listening near dusk...” Yes, I do. Thanks.
A-list Playlist:
Michael Chapman – Fishbeard Sunset
Little Stevie Wonder – Sunset
Nitin Sawnhey – Sunset
Gordon Lightfoot – Sundown
Roy Harper – Twelve Hours Of Sunset
Sun Dial – Plains Of Nazca
Captain Beefheart & his Magic Band – Cardboard Cutout Sundown
Jim Carroll Band – The City Drops In To The Night
Arcade Fire – Half Light I
Turin Brakes – Blue Hour
Male Gaze – Green Flash
The Chemical Brothers – Setting Sun
Sanford Ponder – Frontier
B-list Playlist:
Bright Eyes – At The Bottom Of Everything
Great Lake Swimmers – Imaginary Bars
Steven James Adams – Drinking From The River
Ry Cooder – Sundown Town
Mali Music (Damon Albarn + Afel Bocoum) – Sunset Coming On
Yothu Yindu – Djapana
Johnny Shines – Evening Sun
Johnnie Taylor – Hello Sundown
Them – Here Comes The Night
The Accent – Red Sky At Night
Screaming Trees – Alice Said
Shawn Phillips – Steel Eyes
Wendy Waldman – Sundown
Jackie Lomax – Sunset
Jane – Twilight
Duke Ellington – Dusk
Kate Bush – An Endless Sky Of Honey
Guru’s Wildcard Z-List:
The Eyes – When The Night Falls
Paul Weller – Light Nights
Jack Bruce – The Consul At Sunset
Seth Lakeman – The Gloaming
Lisa Gerrard – Vespers
A bucolic farewell to the day
These playlists were inspired by readers' song nominations in response to last week's topic: The full spectrum: songs about sunset and twilight. The next topic will launch on Thursday at 1pm UK time.
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