Kippenvel krijg ik ervan, van het weergaloos mooie nummer Neighbor Song. Het wordt hier gespeeld door de Amerikaanse pop/soul-band Lake Street Dive, waarbij lead-zangeres Rachael Price versterking krijgt van de geweldige singer/songwriter Madison Cunningham.

Het nummer werd geschreven door Bridget Kearney, de bassiste van de band, en komt van het derde album van de band getiteld Lake Street Dive uit 2010. Hier kun je dit origineel horen met een trompet als opvallend instrument.

De band zegt het volgende over deze bijzondere opname: “Madison Cunningham is an extremely special musician, the kind who can make a single note sound like music and who breathes life into every song that she comes into contact with. We feel so honored to have had her join us on one of our songs. We first recorded “Neighbor Song” in 2010, shortly after a few of us had moved to Brooklyn. The song narrates an experience, all too familiar to many New York City apartment dwellers, of overhearing your neighbors making love. Involuntarily bearing witness to such intimacy inspires a potent mix of emotions from annoyance to despair to compassion. It’s a fun song to play live because we get to walk the audience through this emotional journey. Some audiences laugh a lot when we play it. Some cry a lot. In preparing to do this song on tour with Madison we came up with a new musical treatment for the song to bring out some different sides of those emotions. We recorded it with Madison in Brooklyn, live in one room in a single take. We hope it makes you laugh and/or cry!”

Alles klopt aan het nummer, de begeleiding, de meerstemmige zang en ga zo maar door. Ik vermoed het beste nummer van dit jaar wat mij betreft.

Neighbor Song
I can hear my neighbors
making love upstairs.
Their love is rattling
my tables and my chairs.
Keeping me awake.
The love they make,
it’s keeping me awake
While I’m just trying to get
some sleep on the ground floor.

I don’t mind my neighbors
making love upstairs.
‘Cause I was once the lover,
making all my neighbors scared.
You and me
thundering the floorboards,
with our power and our force.
While they’re just trying
to get some sleep
on the ground floor.

I can hear my neighbors
making love upstairs.
Their love is amplifying
all of my despair.
‘Cause I was once a lover,
now I have to listen
to my neighbors
making love upstairs,
from down on the ground floor.

In this city all the humans live in layers.
I got people down the hall
and down the stairs.
We all move in and out,
and live our lives
in stacks and rows and pairs.
And try to find someone
with whom we can share it.

I can hear my neighbors
making love upstairs.
I wish I didn’t have to be
so well informed of their affairs.
But if they have to be doing something,
at least they’re having fun.
Sometimes I forget
that all of us are only human.
‘Cause we’re all stacked
in rows and columns,
and if one of them
should fall on me.
My neighbors making love upstairs
would crush me.
I’m down on the ground floor.