100 favourite songs: #22: "Gorecki" - Lamb

I fell in love with “Gorecki” through hearing it on the radio, a forlorn and compelling presence on the airwaves, but it makes even more sense on Lamb — the album — an initially hushed voice emerging in the aftermath of the punishing pummel and ricochet of the beats that have preceded it, drifting untethered and delicately, unhesitatingly weaving a crystalline bridge across an empty space, ascending cathartically to a culmination of its own.

(It’s a love song, of course — what else?)

Those first words and the tones in which they’re sung, “If I should die this very moment —” are hardwired into me, coupled with a melody that, yearningly pretty and shimmering like some dark gem, felt deeply familiar from the very beginning, as if a part of me had always known it; in its simplicity lies the song’s particular mystery and allure.

One uses this word charily in relation to pop music, but really, there’s no other way to put it — “Gorecki” is beautiful.