Daily Jam - Sometimes

This column was originally published in 2016.

I have not slept much in the last week. My seven-month old son is teething (it seems as if he’s been doing this for the last four months) and he’s contracted a cold or something, snotty and congested little nose (most likely from the germs his older brother brings home from pre-school everyday), and so he’s not sleeping well. He’s been waking up every 45 minutes or so, my wife and I taking turns as to who has to get up with him, but the waking is so constant that neither one of us ever gets any real sleep. And so my brain is mush. My body hurts. The seemingly endless cup of coffee I’m consuming does nothing. And I sit here writing, listening to “Sometimes” from My Bloody Valentine’s 1991 masterpiece, Loveless, and it calms and soothes just as it always has.

The floaty, almost ethereal “Sometimes” has always been comforting to me, the layers of distorted guitar playing melodically, the light, reverby, and faraway-sounding vocals of Kevin Shields coming in like a gentle coo in your ears, and the serene bits of synthesizer that feel like waking from dream caressing my mind, body, heart, and soul. It feels like it’s about unrequited love, a kind of yearning for comfort or to be held. And for years, decades even, it served as a soothing elixir to wash away the lament of a Loveless follow-up that never came. That follow-up eventually got here in 2013 to much rejoicing, so now, for today at least, “Sometimes” will still calm my nerves and relax me, but as reminder that I will get to sleep again one day.

Some day.

Listen below, our Daily Jam.