DCB

Katherine

“Dev Hynes records his music with the windows open. You can hear the dulled urgency of a siren and the promise of more sirens. You can hear the neighbours. An errant screech. Ghosts and those who came before. A mother. Sweet greetings and voices chatting about the day’s complaints. Or the way a woman’s inflection – when she’s among her women – warms, gets real, plots, and receives affection. How her laugh means, “I love you.” You can hear pavement; chronic, comic car horns. You can hear a basketball; it sounds like a bass drum that sounds like a basketball, and so on. You can hear a saxophone; how solo and unescorted the saxophone sounds. Its noise, like loneliness next door. Its noise, like companionship just next door. What is it about saxophones that make them sound like fire escapes?

You can hear the city in the summer, at dusk. Because you can hear that, too – heat that won’t relent even as the sun begins to set. The echoing rhythm of whatever thoughts we keep to ourselves, competing with thick, thick air. You can hear muffled bass, confined to a car. The way some songs sound especially – the most – familiar when they are once removed. When you encounter them through a car pulled up to a red light. The way bass awakens us to the tension we hold in our chests. Or the joy that can spring from it, too.”