A Million Parachutes

I've alluded in the past to a couple of songs I see as Sixpence's Big Guitar Tracks -- most notably "Too Far Gone" and the Sixpence ur-jam, "Within a Room Somewhere." These are the best studio recordings Sixpence has made of Matt Slocum's guitar prowess -- I never get tired of these tracks, and hear new things in the guitar sections every time I listen to them -- but the best example(s) of what Slocum is capable of on the guitar have been the various live recordings of "Meaningless" over the years.

Until now.

I will save you the suspense: the video below is a ten-minute version of "A Million Parachutes" from December 2013. Be patient, and watch it.



This song is the closer of Divine Discontent, all bittersweet melancholy as the narrator watches the snow fall and remembers happier times. It's a very sad song, made sadder perhaps by Leigh Nash's oft-repeated assertion that it was her late father's favorite Sixpence song. On the record, it meanders, and like many of the longer songs on the record, it doesn't seem to really go anywhere, simply circling back on itself again and again.

This live version seems to take a similar approach at first -- though Slocum changes the riff to be something more suitable for a single guitarist, it's still a slow, pensive 3 and a half minutes before the song's instrumental bridge.

 But then? Ho. Ly. Crap.

I heard this for the first time yesterday. I don't remember why I was looking for it, but I could not stop smiling as soon as the instrumental section started. This is the guitar solo I've kind of been fantasizing about since "Within a Room" ended abruptly on This Beautiful Mess. Slocum uses the spacey, reverby tone he was also using at the time on Sixpence's spooky and beautiful cover of Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat" (which you can see here -- guitar solo stars around 3:50), but instead of leaving and letting notes ring, he just lets freaking loose.

I almost don't know what to say about this. You watched it, right? I know, I'm always trying to find a way to show people that Sixpence is a Serious Artsy Rock Band and not a one-hit pop wonder, but seriously, you guys. This is epic post-rock territory -- Slocum's melodic instincts, but in the style of the soaring, impassioned guitar work of Explosions in the Sky or Sigur Ros. It's the ten seconds of "Paranoid Android" where Jonny Greenwood goes nuts, but for five minutes.

I don't know who's playing drums here -- I think Rob Mitchell -- but the eighth notes he's doing on the bass drum at the crescendo of this thing really work to propel it forward, too. And the end! That classic twinkly Sixpence guitar, fading out into nothing. Slocum keeps playing even when the volume is turned all the way down.

I thought I was kind over Sixpence as a Rock Band. I think I'm not anymore.