Info
- Artist:: 石橋英子
- Album:: Works for Everything
- Year:: 2006
- Label:: Rhythm Tracks
- Catalog:: TRACK-001
Track Ratings
| # | Title | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | ★★ |
| 2 | 夜鷹の星 | ★★ |
| 3 | Moroheiya Sun & Rainbowz | ★★ |
| 4 | ベラのテーマ | ★★ |
| 5 | 友を想起す | ★★ |
| 6 | Gastank | ★★★ |
| 7 | Ask My Dad | ★★ |
| 8 | Game IV | ★ |
| 9 | Born to Be Born | ★★ |
| 10 | Escape | ★ |
| 11 | ベラの食卓 | ★★ |
| 12 | Bird (That Cannot Leave G) | ★★★ |
| 13 | Game II | ★ |
| 14 | Water Face | ★ |
| 15 | Crash | ★★★ |
| 16 | Nobody There | ★★★ |
| 17 | Game V | ★★★★ |
| 18 | 光る窓に | ★★ |
Log
2014-09-19
this is cool but i’m not sure why.
2014-10-04
it’s brilliant but i think it’s because it’s so fucked-up. there’s an element to purity behind everything but it ends up being distorted and perverted. perhaps it comes from discontentment? like bjork but instead of being clever she’s out to burn it all down. watch it all crumble as she watches from the hill, knit cap trembling in the wreckage.
she’s quickly becoming one of my faves.
2015-06-27
my current theory is that works for everything is about decay. not explicitly, and i don’t think implicitly either. it just is. that’s what it’s about.
- cat on the piano, trying to regain some sort of minsky pickup or something, until it buzzes and breaks.
- by far the prettiest song on the album, with a childlike melody and uplifting lyrics.
it’s based on a children’s story. the children’s story is messed-up.
the rhyme scheme is messed-up and falls apart by verse 3.
(oh and she leaves the breaths in!) - fuckin feedback and panicked drums and noise.
she knew exactly what she was doing when she made this. everything here is intentional, including the chaos.
then we get to ベラのテーマ and it’s almost terrifying. this is also where things get sad because i can’t find the lyrics for most of these anywhere. even 夜鷹の星’s lyrics needed to be pulled from some obscure tumblr.
they might be in the booklet. let’s hope so. (todo: buy the cd)
but stuff like “私の存在を証明して” isn’t too promising for bella.
gastankに登り / 地上・・・ (among others) and this is disheartening. especially since she likes to recess her vocals too (like on ask my dad)
anyway ask my dad is just a mess. and yet things are trying to exist around it.
i wonder what her goal was behind the game series, given how they go IV, II, then V and are, instruments aside, some of the most straightforward interludes.
haha and it takes half the song to confirm that born to be born is in 6/8. also the lyrics are in english and i can only make out fragments here too.
ベラの食卓 is a cool development of that wandering melody. for some reason the bella melody is incredibly iconic. so it makes sense that it’d show up later.
and whoa bird (that cannot leave g) feels like a recap of gastank. or maybe the other one. but just a little. (is escape reminiscent of something too? if so that would be a really cool mid-album development. everything comes back in shadows)
and crash’s solo that goes on for a bit too long for what it should’ve been intended to be. not that the backing track cares.
then nobody there, which is metrically astounding. 5/4 and 3/4 meshing perfectly and sometimes the heartbeat skips.
and that to game v to 光る窓に is a perfect penultimate, finale, coda.
finally, 光る窓に. and i think this is supposed to be 夜鷹の星’s fucked bookend. it’s beautiful, emotional, uses rubato well, and then the drum comes in and ruins everything.
「光る窓に 何を聞く 鼓動聞く \
夏の影から 死の谷間
光る窓に 何を聞く 鼓動聞く \
死の谷間から 夏の影」
…that’s perfect.
★★: 1-7, 9, 12, 15-18 \
★: 8, 10-11, 13-14
2015-07-13
dear diary,
today my copy of works for everything came in! i wasn’t expecting it for like another two weeks, but it made for a wonderful surprise. especially cause it answers a lot of my questions!
- front cover is of that pretty sculpture on the beach.
- back cover is very similar, except now the sculpture has been lit on fire.
- inside case, back of inside, and booklet use low-contrast shots of the sculpture as their background, with overlaid beziers and codes indicating perhaps its schematics.
- booklet pages 1-2 contains the lyrics for 夜鷹の星 and ベラのテーマ.
- 3-4 is just a two-page spread of the sculpture now reduced to smoldering ash.
- 5-6: Gastank, Crash, 光る窓に, credits.
which is brilliant and confirms my suspicions to an almost didactic degree. works for everything is about making something pretty and setting it on fire.
the lyrics to bella’s theme provide the most insight here. it’s about someone who goes unseen by the world (for possibly supernatural reasons) and how she wishes that you might notice her and dance with her. so now it’s a matter of interpreting the あれは何？ section; i take it as her being a complete outsider to this world.
its effect is magical.
gastank is more impressionistic, and pretty much about what you might see atop a gastank. as far as pictures-as-music songs go it does a great job at inspiring imagination
crash:
finding the edge of watermoon
crying in bed beyond warm noon
i don’t know what this means but it feels wonderful on the tongue.
it’s still missing the lyrics to bella’s opening (because there’s no reason to unless you’re a fanatic like me), ask my dad (if there are any intelligible ones, i dunno i haven’t asked him yet), born to be born (kind of a glaring omission; probably intentional).
the end of gastank sounds like 下は多い and i wouldn’t be surprised if she put in a few ambiguous homophones and overtones. (keys/kiss too)
Notes
in event of moon disaster v2:
Gastank
ガスタンクに登り From the gas tank I can see
ちぎれるまま All is severed, scattered
下は青い Only blue beneath me
遠くは雨 Distant rainclouds gather
ガスタンクに登り From the gas tank I can see
途切れたまま All is at a standstill
花は落ちて Airborne flowers falling
頬を濡らす Faces bathed in water