Being a precocious child (or pretentious, take your pick), I read Hardy's 'Tess Of The D'Urbervilles' at a fairly young age. One evocative scene that always stayed with me comes toward the end after the unwilling murderess Tess and her Angel Clare have absconded and made it as far as Stonehenge where Tess falls asleep before the police catch up with them. Clare goes on the offensive 'Springing to his feet, he looked around for a weapon, loose stone, means of escape, anything. By this time the nearest man was upon him. 'It is no use sir,' he said. 'There are sixteen of us on the Plain, and the whole country is reared.' 'Let her finish her sleep!' he implored in a whisper of the men as they gathered round. When they saw where she lay, which they had not done till then, they showed no objection, and stood watching her as the pillars round'.
And so the doomed Tess slept on in peace, oblivious to the fact that waking meant arrest and ultimately execution. I've always found something quite evocative and unsettling in that scenario - to be at ignorant peace with yourself when the reality is anything but. 'It's Almost Tomorrow' presents a similar situation, albeit reversed; the vocalist is in bed with his lover, but the relationship is on the rocks and he realises this is probably the last time he is going to lie with her. His own love is true ("I'll love you forever, 'til stars cease to shine"), but:
"Your heart was so warm dear, it now has turned cold
You no longer love me, for your memories grow old
It's almost tomorrow, for here comes the sun
But still I am hoping that tomorrow won't come"
It's the mirror image of Tess - sleep is preserving his own peace of mind in that it's the only thing keeping the relationship together. The coming of the sun, normally symbolic of hope or rebirth, is here a harbinger of the opposite, a neat reversal of the norm that ensures there's something acutely disturbing in the desperation of 'It's Almost Tomorrow' and also something voyeuristically morbid in us for looking on.
Compared to the Dean's and Bill's company it's keeping 'It's Almost Tomorrow' by The Dreamweavers lies in dust covered hush and shroud, virtually undisturbed for the past fifty years. It's quite the bleakest song to reach number one to date and in truth it will rarely be bested in its misery by anything to come. And though its been much covered since, no other version has come close to conveying the same levels of sheer desperation that The Dreamweavers manage. If it sounds slightly rough, then it's because The Dreamweavers wrote, recorded and produced the song themselves in the face of record company indifference. No matter, the sense of a song barely holding itself together adds to the fractured vulnerability of the singer and the lyric, though it's somewhat ironic that the band were in competition with no less that five other versions by artists not so blinkered as to not know a hit when they heard one.
And so the doomed Tess slept on in peace, oblivious to the fact that waking meant arrest and ultimately execution. I've always found something quite evocative and unsettling in that scenario - to be at ignorant peace with yourself when the reality is anything but. 'It's Almost Tomorrow' presents a similar situation, albeit reversed; the vocalist is in bed with his lover, but the relationship is on the rocks and he realises this is probably the last time he is going to lie with her. His own love is true ("I'll love you forever, 'til stars cease to shine"), but:
"Your heart was so warm dear, it now has turned cold
You no longer love me, for your memories grow old
It's almost tomorrow, for here comes the sun
But still I am hoping that tomorrow won't come"
It's the mirror image of Tess - sleep is preserving his own peace of mind in that it's the only thing keeping the relationship together. The coming of the sun, normally symbolic of hope or rebirth, is here a harbinger of the opposite, a neat reversal of the norm that ensures there's something acutely disturbing in the desperation of 'It's Almost Tomorrow' and also something voyeuristically morbid in us for looking on.
Compared to the Dean's and Bill's company it's keeping 'It's Almost Tomorrow' by The Dreamweavers lies in dust covered hush and shroud, virtually undisturbed for the past fifty years. It's quite the bleakest song to reach number one to date and in truth it will rarely be bested in its misery by anything to come. And though its been much covered since, no other version has come close to conveying the same levels of sheer desperation that The Dreamweavers manage. If it sounds slightly rough, then it's because The Dreamweavers wrote, recorded and produced the song themselves in the face of record company indifference. No matter, the sense of a song barely holding itself together adds to the fractured vulnerability of the singer and the lyric, though it's somewhat ironic that the band were in competition with no less that five other versions by artists not so blinkered as to not know a hit when they heard one.
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