Daily Jam - All Mine

It never ceases to amaze me the way that particular songs can instantly take me back in time, reviving old memories, and inducing nostalgic pangs like some sort of weird aural sixth sense. They can paint pictures of times past or reignite old feelings, a whole series of moods, tones, and colors. I’ve written about it before (multiple times), and it just serves as evidence of how powerful music can be and the effect it can have on one’s subconscious and ability to recall.

It’s kind of beautiful really.

The opening horn blasts and trip-hop spy-movie beat of Portishead’s “All Mine,” from the band’s 1997 self-titled record are so intrinsically wrapped up in my first semester of college, that it’s difficult not to think about laying around in my dorm room, or smoking cigarettes with my roommate on the dorm’s outside steps, or exploring the campus or the city, nervous energy abounding as I find myself far from home among a sea of new faces and experiences. When Beth Gibbons joins in with her throaty siren’s call, I’m a teenager again, a whole future wide open in front of me, fear and excitement and exhilaration and joy all swirling around together in one big, kind of naïve mess of an 18-year old.

All nostalgia fever aside, the song is just a real wonder in its own right, a sexy and grainy amalgamation of colliding musical forces. It’s like some alternate reality Bond theme* that we’ll never deserve to get. Or like Lalo Schifrin making magic with The Wu-Tang Clan. Or like some piece of transcendent art that could maybe, sort of exist in any era, and be appreciated by any generation, if not for some far-out, exotic sound within that pulls it back to another. It’s gorgeous, and haunting, and like so much of the band’s output, can continue to challenge and seduce me over 25 years later.

So cheers to Geoff Barrow. Cheers to Beth Gibbons. Cheers to Adrian Utley and Dave McDonald. And cheers to me feeling like a young man again.

Or a stupid kid…depending on your perspective.

*It’s a goddamn shame that Portishead have never graced us with a Bond theme. My heart swells just thinking about it.

Listen to "All Mine" below, our Daily Jam.