Author Topic: songs that send a shiver up your spine  (Read 3258 times)

ian

songs that send a shiver up your spine
« on: 17 April, 2021, 09:47:00 pm »
Technically it's a musical or aesthetic frisson, btw. It's a complicated and weird psychophysiological effect, but I figure we all know songs that send a shiver tip-toeing in its high-heels up the vertebrae and leaves you feeling plucked and ready for basting.

It just happened with Silk by Wolf Alice (normally not so big on them, but it's an awesome song, along with Soapy Water) and then immediately afterwards Dissolve by Tusks.

I think I'm shivered out now.

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #1 on: 18 April, 2021, 12:29:48 am »
Go, Leave - Kate McGarrigle

I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight - Richard and Linda Thompson
 
You're A Lady - Peter Skellern

If I Fell - The Beatles

There are so many and I'm so susceptible.  I think it's probably genetic - and why I've never got as much done as I should have.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #2 on: 18 April, 2021, 12:43:02 am »
Its Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings

Every time i hear it, i feel like I do when I hear Nimrod from Enigma Variations.  ;)

I once saw it performed in Bristol Cathedral, chorally. Mesmerising.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #3 on: 18 April, 2021, 12:58:21 am »
Yes, that's good, J.  It gets me, too.  It has melodic and harmonic similarities with Mahler's 5th(?) - the Death In Venice bit.

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #4 on: 18 April, 2021, 01:28:58 am »
The Ocean ~ Dar Williams.  The part where the bloke tells the narrator she hasn’t got a clue about the reality of the town she's visiting.

No Man's Land ~ Eric Bogle (though I'm most familiar with The Men They Couldn’t Hang's version).  All of it.

Sonho Dourado ~ Explosions In The Sky (originally by Daniel Lanois).

Ride Into The Sun ~ The Velvet Underground (the version from Another View).

Between The Wars ~ Billy Bragg.

Fun House ~ The Stooges.  Mostly because Steven Mackay's incendiary tenor sax.
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

ravenbait

  • Someone's imaginary friend
  • Pudge controls the weather.
    • Someone's imaginary friend
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #5 on: 18 April, 2021, 04:48:41 pm »
I could have an entire playlist of songs that did this, but it would probably do horrible things to my brain. I think I'm particularly susceptible because I have really weird synaesthesia. Anything that's a proper wall of sound can trigger it, purely by the way it activates my proprioception, but there are other tracks that do it in the more traditional way. A small selection...

Goat - Gathering of the Ancient Tribes
Luup - Horse Heart
Dead Can Dance - The Host of Seraphim
Blowzabella - The Man In The Brown Hat
Genesis -- Duke's Travels/Duke's End
Queens of the Stone Age -- In My Head
Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus
Rossini's Stabat Mater
Allegri's Misere Mei (we once heard this performed at Exeter Cathedral -- it was extraordinary)

Also Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, but that's more because I have so many memories associated with it that it can just be overwhelming sometimes.

Sam
https://ravenbait.com
"Created something? Hah! But that would be irresponsible! And unethical! I would never, ever make... more than one."

Mr Larrington

  • A bit ov a lyv wyr by slof standirds
  • Custard Wallah
    • Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #6 on: 18 April, 2021, 06:21:23 pm »
One more for the list:

Stones From The Sky ~ Neurosis
External Transparent Wall Inspection Operative & Mayor of Mortagne-au-Perche
Satisfying the Bloodlust of the Masses in Peacetime

citoyen

  • Occasionally rides a bike
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #7 on: 18 April, 2021, 07:03:36 pm »
It just happened with Silk by Wolf Alice (normally not so big on them, but it's an awesome song, along with Soapy Water)

Not so familiar with either of those, but Blush by them does it for me every time - perfect song about teen angst. Saw them live a few years ago and they did Blush for their finale. It was awesome.

The video is brilliant too...
https://youtu.be/O_QBC_pDkeU
"The future's all yours, you lousy bicycles."

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #8 on: 19 April, 2021, 10:50:58 am »
Hazel O'Connor - Will You
Led Zeppelin - Trampled Underfoot
Steve Earle - Johhny Come Lately
Ralph McTell - Streets of London
Pachelbel -  Canon in D
And another for Barbers Adaggio - I heard it in Chichester Cathedral, with a choir.
ETA Springsteen’s The River.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

ian

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #9 on: 19 April, 2021, 10:54:01 am »
It just happened with Silk by Wolf Alice (normally not so big on them, but it's an awesome song, along with Soapy Water)

Not so familiar with either of those, but Blush by them does it for me every time - perfect song about teen angst. Saw them live a few years ago and they did Blush for their finale. It was awesome.

The video is brilliant too...
https://youtu.be/O_QBC_pDkeU

Never really rated them, but actually, I'm enjoying them a lot more now (the new single sent me back to listen).

The aesthetic frisson is an interesting effect though, and shows the power of the mind over the body.

There's a bit in Daughter's Mothers that always gets me big time.

Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #10 on: 19 April, 2021, 01:27:15 pm »
Another for Bogle an Barber.

Plus
Synphony 6, all of it, Mahler
Sinfonia da Requiem, Britten
Cousin Jack, Show of Hands
Ne me Quitte Pas, Brel
Tonight's the Night, Neil Young
The House at Pooneil Corner, Jefferson Airplane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJJE5Wo_OY

Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

Redlight

  • Enjoying life in the slow lane
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #11 on: 20 April, 2021, 03:31:27 pm »
This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ldHxsGDkd0

I first heard it performed at the Union Chapel in Highbury, a church with, as you might expect, superb acoustics.
Why should anybody steal a watch when they can steal a bicycle?

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #12 on: 20 April, 2021, 04:27:03 pm »
The opening bars of piano on Silent All These Years  by Tori Amos

The start of Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes in an African language - although the whole of Graceland qualifies.

Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No.1 also takes me back to a Bergen vegetarian eatery in June 1988.
Haggerty F, Haggerty R, Tomkins, Noble, Carrick, Robson, Crapper, Dewhurst, Macintyre, Treadmore, Davitt.

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #13 on: 20 April, 2021, 06:09:50 pm »
https://youtu.be/lJJT00wqlOo
Should Have Known Better by Sufjan Stevens.

https://youtu.be/6xN3hbJG2tc
Tomorrow Is Today by Billy Joel.

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #14 on: 20 April, 2021, 07:03:55 pm »
Springsteen, The Rising, Youngstown
McGuire, Eve of Destruction - it was played on the pirate stations in the late 60s when Vietnam was a war.


Move Faster and Bake Things

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #15 on: 20 April, 2021, 07:06:15 pm »
This one
Sleeping Sun
https://youtu.be/ZMvkunOnkAM

Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #16 on: 22 April, 2021, 01:09:23 pm »
This one, written in and about the Kent village where I used to live
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hii76Plz7bI

Which flows directly into this one  on the album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5tKgi2Un-4


The first one has the painful words, the second has the passion
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #17 on: 23 April, 2021, 08:43:04 am »
Emmylou Harris - Boulder to Birmingham

https://youtu.be/Klh7sAv9hu4

Sandy Denny - Who Knows Where the Time Goes ?

https://youtu.be/RSABfJWqh38

Richard Strauss - .Im Abendrot (from four last songs)
Especially this version from Gundula Janowitz, and Herbert von Karajan

https://youtu.be/ANdPoigJ_qw
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

rogerzilla

  • When n+1 gets out of hand
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #18 on: 24 April, 2021, 07:36:18 pm »
Quite a few bits of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

10cc - I'm Mandy, Fly Me (if you know the inspiration behind the song, which came from real life).

An obscure track by Furniture, "Bullet".
Hard work sometimes pays off in the end, but laziness ALWAYS pays off NOW.

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #19 on: 25 April, 2021, 01:24:32 am »
This is Chris Smither singing Roly Salley's "Killing The Blues".  Practically anything Chris plays does it to me.  I don't know if many of you know of him, (Steph and Pat, maybe) but I hope he does it for you, too.  Could equally go in the covers thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8t-i606WA8

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #20 on: 25 April, 2021, 01:46:25 am »
This does it, too:-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4WYgS8H9tA

Beware imitations!  Tom Jones and Jeff Beck do a good performance but the chords aren't quite right.  Alison Moyet's is good - and the video!

Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #21 on: 25 April, 2021, 06:05:53 pm »
Emmylou Harris - Boulder to Birmingham

https://youtu.be/Klh7sAv9hu4

Sandy Denny - Who Knows Where the Time Goes ?

https://youtu.be/RSABfJWqh38

Richard Strauss - .Im Abendrot (from four last songs)
Especially this version from Gundula Janowitz, and Herbert von Karajan

https://youtu.be/ANdPoigJ_qw

All of those, especially the sSandy. As for the first...

My late partner was a fan of Emmylou, and introduced me to  her music, along with Beefheart, Cohen, Tom Waits and many others. That particular Harris song was one I already knew, though, and on two occasions I was reduced to tears by it. The first time was in the early 80s, when a girlfriend of my youth had just called it a day. It was played at my local folk club, and I had to walk outside.

The second time, I was in a pub with a juke box, not long after Carolyn's death, and it came on the juke box, much to my surprise. I spent about twenty minutes in the toilet afterwards, before I washed my face and felt fit to rejoin my friends.

Memories; something music is so effective at triggering.
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #22 on: 25 April, 2021, 08:24:40 pm »
Simon & Garfunkel - The Boxer.
We are making a New World (Paul Nash, 1918)

Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #23 on: 25 April, 2021, 08:44:46 pm »
Steph, did you know that Boulder To Birmingham was co-written (with ELH) by Bill Danoff, who co-wrote (with Taffy of the ilk) Take Me Home Country Roads?  I imagine his pension is ok!

Steph

  • Fast. Fast and bulbous. But fluffy.
Re: songs that send a shiver up your spine
« Reply #24 on: 26 April, 2021, 03:55:58 pm »
No, I didn't, ta. 'TMHCR' is featured in Chris Beckett's 'Dark Eden' books, in a distorted fashion. I wonder if he got the idea from Gerald Kersh's disturbing story 'Voices in the Dust of Annan' and the song 'Balasamo'

Balasamo
Balasamo
Sarna corpano
Binno mosha
Sada rosha
Chu mila balasamo
Mae angen arnaf i byw, a fe fydda'i