Salads and Elbow

At lunch I ordered a to go salad at a restaurant, paid for it, and waited for my receipt. The cashier stared blankly at me as she pulled the receipt out of the machine, crumpled it up, and put it in the trash, all while continuing to stare at me. After an uncomfortable few seconds of silence, she said, “You can go now.”

Haha okay I guess I’ll just trust that y’all will make it right and I wont have to prove to anyone that I ordered it a specific way when it inevitably gets made wrong!

A couple of days ago, Kathryn introduced me to a band she thought I would like and she was extremely right! They are called Elbow and when I checked them out on Wikipedia I figured out a big reason I like them so much. The vocalist said: “I grew up listening to every Genesis record. I learned to write harmonies by listening to Peter Gabriel.”

A-HA!

Now listening to them with a new ear, I can definitely see how his voice shares a lot of similarities with Peter Gabriel’s. My jaw nearly hit the floor when I heard their lovely cover of “Mercy Street.”

And I’m also now trying to put into words the synaesthetic experience of listening to his voice (and Peter’s voice too). It’s gravelly but very consistently and smoothly gravelly, with sweetness and a bit of something magic/mysterious. To me, his voice sounds like how the surface of a snickerdoodle cookie feels. (Weird-ass synaesthesia FTW!)

If you want to give them a listen, try “From the River” and “Balu” from their 2024 album.