Healer

"Healer," recorded during the sessions for This Beautiful Mess, was just way too perky to be anywhere near that record, and the band was right to leave it off. It's a kind of proto-"Kiss Me," jangly as all-get-out, but with a clear brightness, a crispness, I guess, that is pretty absent from any other Sixpence guitar work pre-1997. It's effortlessly complicated and beautiful, and subtly peaking at the moment when the backwards guitar and Nash's pre-chorus "hey-ey" crescendo.

I'm not really sure what it's about -- "Healer" isn't a mishmash of imagery like "Musings," or a collage of depression like a lot of the songs on This Beautiful Mess -- it's more like an oil painting of a scene in a city park. Those backward loops sound like bees to me. The song's central couplet: "Today, Beauty is my Healer / Today, I'm gonna steal Her." These words are wide open to interpretation, as far as I'm concerned. I have no idea what they mean, yet on a day like today, when the sun makes my skin feel warm, trees seem greener, and life seem bearable, I know exactly what they're talking about.